What we have already noticed, about | goodness, that we have been spared to the alternative character of that dispen- this present moment of our history; and sation under which we sit, is strikingly now hear Him in the very language of brought out in the verses before us. Good- His own revelation bid you turn and turn, ness to the innocent. or goodness to the for why will you die. But if you will not deserving, merely displays this attribute draw from the treasures of His forbearin a state of simplicity; but the goodness which remains unquelled and unexhausted | that is heaping by every day of your neafter it has been sinned against the goodness which persists in multiplying upon the transgressor the chances of his recovery, and that in the midst of affront and opposition-the goodness which, loth to inflict the retaliating blow, still holds out a little longer and a little longer; and, with all the means in its power of avenging the insults of disobedience, still ekes out the season for its return. and plies it with all the encouragements of a free pardon and an offered reconciliation-this is the exuberance of goodness, this is the richness of forbearance and longsuffering; and it is the very display which God is now making in reference to our world. And by every year which rolls over our heads-by every morning in which we find that we have awoke to the light of a new day instead of awakening in torment-by every hour and every minute through which the stroke of death is suspended, and you still continue a breathing man in the land of gospel calls and gospel invitations-is God now justi-ed under the first covenant, but what will ance, there is treasure of another kind glected salvation, in a storehouse of vengeance; and which, on the great day wher God shall ease Him of all His adversaries, will all be poured forth upon you. And thus it is, that if you despise the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, and suffer not them to lead you to repentance, you will by your hardness and impenitency, treasure up unto yourselves wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgments of God. Let us therefore, in plain urgency, bid you repent; and, untramelled by system, set before you, as the apostle does, both the coming wrath and the coming glory: and tell you that the one is to him who doeth evil, and that the other is to him who doeth well; and we may be sure that there is nothing in faith, or in any of its mysteries, which will supersede the day of judgment as it is recorded in the passage here before us. The apostle is not only describing what would have happen fying His goodness towards you. And earnest as He is for your return, and heedless as you are of all this carnestness, does it call as time moves onward for a higher and a higher exertion of forbearance on the part of the Divinity, to restrain His past and accumulating wrath, from being discharged on the head of those among whom though God entreats yet no man will turn, and though He stretch out His hand yet no man regardeth. Now if such be the character of God in His relation to man, mark what character it stamps upon man should he remain unsoftened and unimpressed by it. It were offence enough to sin against the authority of a superior; but to sin against his forbearance forms a sore and a fatal aggravation. Thus to turn upon the longsuffering of God and to trample it-thus to pervert the season which He has allotted for repentance, into a season of more secure and presumptuous transgression- a belief, you both be what you ought and happen under the second. For though justified by faith, we shall be judged by works: and let not the one of these articles be so contrasted with the other, as to throw a shade either of neglect or insignificance over it. When rightly understood, they reflect upon each other a mutual lustre, and lend to each other a mutual confirmation. Faith is the high road to repentance. Our acceptance of the righteousness of Christ as our title for an entrance into heaven, is an essential stepping-stone to our own personal righteousness as our preparation for the joys and the exercises of heaven; and if there be a stirring of conscience and an agitation of alarm in any of your hearts, under the sense of your not being what you ought to bc-we can do nothing more effectual, than to propose the blood of Christ to your faith, in order that under the transforming and sanctifying influence of such do what you ought. thus, upon every delay of vengeance with which He favours us, the more to The great object of the apostle's demonstrengthen ourselves in hard and haughty defiance against Him-this indeed is a highway of guilt, which, if you be not arrested therein, will lead to a sorer judgment and a deadlier consummation. Turn then all of you at the call of repentance, or it is the very highway on which you are treading. It is because He is rich in stration is, that men should make their escape from the penalties of the law, to the hiding-place provided for them in the gospel. And though he here intimates the rewards which it holds out to obedience, and the fearful vengeance which it holds out against transgression-yet he does not intimate that any individual ever earned the one, or ever secured by his own right- | Jesus Christ to whom this judgment will eousness an exemption from the other. His object is to make known to us the constitution or the economy of God's government, that, should any of its subjects fulfil all its requisitions, they should be rewarded; but without saying that they actually did so-or, that, should any of its subjects fail in those requisitions they would be punished; but without telling us whether any or some or all come under this condenination. How it was that they actually did conduct themselves under this administration, he tells us afterwards -when he says of all, both Jews and Gentiles, that they were under sin; and that by the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified, for that all had sinned and come short of the glory of God. And yet after all there will be a judgment; and this judgment will proceed upon each individual according to the deeds done in his body; and it is upon those who bring forth fruit with patience, or who maintain a patient continuance in well-doing, that these accents of invitation will descend-" Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord;" and it is also upon those who are contentious and obey not the truth but obey unrighteousness, that the awful bidding away to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels will be pronounced, by Him who conducts the solemnities of that great occasion. But then, as we read afterwards, it will be be committed; and the judgment will be according to 'my gospel,' or the gospel which the apostle proclaims to his hearers. The judgment of condemnation will be upon those who have withstood its overtures; or who, if these overtures had never reached them, have withstood the instigations of their own conscience, which ought to have been a law unto them. And the judgment of acquittal will be upon those who have obeyed the truth, or who have rendered obedience unto the faith those whose persons and whose works are accepted for the sake of a better righteousness than their own-those who, after they believed, were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, and were made the workmanship of God in Christ Jesus, and were created anew unto good works. So that, after the first covenant has been superseded by the second-after man has become dead unto the law and made alive unto Christ-after all its demands have been satisfied, and it has no more power to challenge or to condemn him who truly believes in Jesus, Jesus himself takes up the judgment of him, and tries him on the question whether he is actually a believer; and the deeds done in the body are the evidences of this question, and make it manifest on that day that the faith which he professed was no counterfeit, being fruitful in all those works of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the praise and glory of God. LECTURE VII. ROMANS ii, 12-29. For as many as have sinned without law, shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the law, (for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another,) in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law; and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law. Thou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? for the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written. For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law; but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumsion. Therefore, if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? and shall not uncircumcision, which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law? For he is not a Jew which is one outwardly: neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew which is one inwardly: and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." of a condemnation brought to bear upon him by a law which he did not know of. They who have sinned in the law, that is V. 12. WITHOUT a written law as the Jews had-they shall perish without being judged by that law. There will be another law to judge them-and, whosoever in the written law, are they who have perishes, it will not be the consequence | sinned under that law-the Jews who will be judged by it. V. 13. There is a term which we may often have to recur to and which we therefore shall explain at present. Some would have it that justification in the New Testament means the making of a man personally just. Conceive a thief, for example, to undergo such a transformation of character as that he henceforward is honest in all his transactions-this would be making him a just person in the sense which some choose to assign to the word-it would be justifying him. We believe it may be made out, in almost every place where it occurs, that this is not the real meaning of the term that it should be taken, not in a personal, but in what may be called a forensic signification-or, that to justify, instead of meaning to make just by a process of operation upon the character, incans to pronounce or to declare just by the sentence of a judicial court. This is called the forensic sense of the term, because a court of justice was anciently called a forum; and it is evident that, here at least, the word must be understood forensically-for the doers of the law do not need to be made just personally. They are already so; and therefore for them to be justified, is to be declared just by the sentence of him who administers the law. V. 15. There seem here to be two distinct proofs of the Gentiles being a law unto themselves. The first is from the fact of there being a conscience individually at work in each bosom, and deponing either to the merit or the demerit of actions. The second from the fact of their accusing or excusing one another, in the reasonings or disputes which took place between man and man. For what is translated thoughts,' may be rendered into dialectic reasonings, or disputes which one man has with another, when a question of right or justice is started between them. It proves them to be in possession of a common rule, or standard of judging, or, in other words, that a law is actually among them. So true is it, even in its application to the Gentiles, that there is a light which lightath every man who cometh into the world. V. 22. To commit sacrilege, or to take to our private use, that which is consecrated to God. This is what might very readily be brought home to a Jewish conscience-it being matter of frequent complaint against the Jews, that they offered what was lame and defective in sacrifice. V. 24. This is written for example, in Ezekiel xxxvi. 20, where it is said that the Heathen in mockery said unto the people of Israel when they were carried away captive-"These are the people of the Lord and are gone forth out of His land." This is all that needs to be advanced in the way of exposition-and the following is a paraphrase of this passage, For as many as have sinned without law, shall also perish, not by the condemnation of that law, but of another which they had; and as many as have sinned who were under the dispensation of the written law, shall by that law be judged. For, as to the Jews, they are not the hearers of the law who are reckoned just before God: but they are the doers of the law only who shall be justified. And, as to the Gentiles, they having not the law of Mount Sinai, yet, when by nature they do the things contained in that law, these, though without a written code, have a something in its place which to them has all the authority of a law. For they show that the matter of the law is written in their hearts-both from their conscience testifying what is right and wrong in their own conduct, and from their reasonings in which they either accuse or vindicate one another. No man shall be judged by a law known only to others and unknown to himself; but all shall be judged by the light which belonged to them, in that day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, and agreeably to the gospel which I now declare unto you. Behold, thou art called a Jew, and hast a confidence in thy law, and makest a boast of thy peculiar relationship with God, and thou knowest His will, and canst both distinguish and approve the things which are more excellent-being instructed out of thy law. And, with all this superior advantage, thou lookest upon thyself as a guide of the blind, and as a light of them who are in darkness, and as an instructor of the ignorant, and as a teacher of babes-seeing that thou hast the whole summary of knowledge and truth which is in the law. But it is not he who heareth, or he who knoweth, but he who doeth that shall be justified; and dost thou who teachest another, teach effectually thyself?-thou who proclaimest that a man should not steal, dost thou steal?-thou who sayest that a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery?-thou who abhorrest idols, dost thou rob God of His temple offerings?-thou who makest thy boast of the law, through the breaking of the law dost thou dishonour God? For we have it upon record, that through you the name of God has been blasphemed. For your circumcision, and other outward observances which form the great visible distinction between you and the Gentiles these are profitable if you keep the whole law; but if you break the law, the keeping of its external ordinances will not raise you above the level of those who know them not, and practise them not. But, on the other hand, if these latter do by nature the things which by the light of nature they know to be lawful, and so keep righteousness as far as they are informed of it-though they have not practised the literal and outward ordinances, they shall be dealt with as if they had kept them. And what is more, they will even have such a superiority, as to sit in judgment over you, who, notwithstanding your written law and your ordinances, are in fact transgressors of the law. For he is not a right Jew who is only one outwardly. Neither is that the circumcision that is regarded by God, which is out wardly in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and the genuine circumcision is that of a heart subject to the spirit of the law, and therefore crucified as to its cornal affections, and not that of a mere outward conformity to its visible observations. And the praise of this real circumcision is not of man, who can judge only according to appearances; but of God, who weigheth the secrets of the spirit, and who can alone judge righteously.' Let us now pass onward to a few practical observations, founded on the passage which we have attempted to explain. You can readily enough perceive, how, both with Jews and Christians, there are materials enough for such an examination, as renders them the fit subjects both of a reckoning and of a sentence on the great day of account. But this is not so immediately seen in regard to rude and uninformed laganism. To be without the pale of a written revelation, is held by many, as tantamount, to being without the pale of all moral and judicial cognizance. And yet, we have many intimations, that the Heathen will also be brought to the bar of the general judgment that, though perhaps more gently dealt with, yet they will be dealt with as the responsible subjects of God's moral administration that there is a principle of judgment which reaches even unto them, and upon which it will he a righteous thing for God to pass upon them a condemnatory sentence. Sodom and Gomorrah, we are informed, being to be sisted before the tribunal of that day; and a punishment awarded them, which will only be more tolerable than the vengeance that awaits those, who have sinned in the face of clearer light, and better opportunities. Insomuch, that we know not of any age, however far back it may lie removed in the darkness of antiquity; nor do we know of any wandering tribe, humanity, and there, on the review of their doings in this world. will have such a place and such a portion assigned to them in the next, as shall be in fullest harmony with the saying that all the ways of God are in truth and in righteousness. It were repeating over here what we have already more than once and on various occasions endeavoured to argument, did we again enter upon the question, How this can be? The Heathen will not be judged by the written law of Judaism, neither will they be judged out of the things that are written in the Scriptures of Christianity. God will not, in ther case, charge them with the guilt of a sin, for that which they were not taught and could not know to be sinful. It is not their helpless ignorance, and it is not the fatality of their birth, and it is not the thick inoral envelopment that has settled itself over the face of their country which will condemn them. It will be their sin, and that coupled with the circumstances of their knowing it to be sin, which will condemn them. And we have already remarked in one lecture, that there do exist, even in the remotest tracks of Paganism, such vestiges of light, as, when collected together, form a code or directory of moral conduct-that there are still to be found among them the fragments of a law, which they never follow but with an approving conscience; and never violate but with the check of an opposing remonstrance, that by their own wilfulness and their own obstinacy is overborne-in other words, that they are a law unto themselves, and that their own conscience vests it with an authority, by bearing witness to the rightness and obligation of its requirements-So that, among the secret things which will be brought to light in the great day of revelation, will it be seen, that all the sin for which a Heathen shall be made to suffer, was sin committed in the face of an inward monitor, which warned him through time, and will condewn him at his outset upon eternity. In another lecture we observed, that what brought the conscience of Paganism palpably out from its hiding place, was the undeniable fact of the charges and the recriminations and the defences, of which the most unenlightened Pagans were capable in their controversies with each other. This capacity of accusing and of excusing proved a sense and a standard of morality to be amongst them. With the feeling of provocation after injury, was there mixed the judgment of a differand even in the rude outcry of savage resentment and the fierce onset of savage warfare, may we detect their perception however secluded from all the communi-ence between the right and the wrongof what is honest and what is unfair in | fact have been entitled to sit in judgment cations of light and knowledge with the rest of the species-the men of which will not be called before the great tribunal of the dealings of man with man. And just grant of any individual amongst them, that he is keenly alive to the injustice of others to himself, while, under the hurrying instigations of selfishness and passion, he works the very same injustice against them; and you make that individual a moral and an accountable being. We grant him to be sensible of what he ought to do, and thus make him the rightful subject of condemnation if he does it not. "For thinkest thou, O man, that judgest them who do these things, and doest them thyself, that thou wilt escape the judgment of God?" Even we therefore, unknowing as we are of the inward machinery of another's heart, can trace as it were an avenue by which the most unlettered barbarian might be approached in the way of judgment and retribution. And much more may we be sure, that God, who judgeth all things, will find a clear and open path to the fulfilment of the process that is here laid before us-summoning and superiority over him. It is observable, that, in this work of convincing the Jews of sin, the apostle fastens, in the first instance, on the more glaring and visible delinquencies from the law of righteousness-as theft and adultery and sacrilege. He brings forth that which is fitted to strike conviction into the mind of a notorious transgressor; who, just because the evidence of his guilt is more palpable than that of others-just because the materials of his condemnation more immediately meet the eye of his own conscience-is, on that very account. often more easily induced to take the first steps of that process which leads to re. conciliation with the offended Lawgiver. And this is the reason, why it is said of publican and profligate persons, that they enter the kingdom of Heaven, before the Scribes and the Pharisees. But the apostle is not satisfied with convincing them only. Before he is done with his demonstration about the law, he enters into the all to their account, without exception; very depths of it-even as the Saviour, in and, from the farthest limits of the human his sermon on the mount, did before him territory, calling heathens to His jurisdic- It is possible to undergo the outward rite tion, as well as Christian and Jews, and, under a law appropriate to each, dealing out the distributions of equity among the various families and denominations of the world. In this passage, the apostle, after the gradual and skilful approaches which he had made for the purpose of finding his way to the Jewish understanding, at length breaks out into the warfare of open and proclaimed argument. Hethrows out his express challenge, and closes with his adversary-thus entering upon the main business of his Epistle, the great object of which was to bring over his own countrymen to the obedience of the faith. After affirming of the two great classes of mankind, that each was subject to a of circumcision, and not be circumcised in the spirit of our minds. And it is possible to maintain a conformity with all those requirements which bear on the external conduct, without having a heart touched by the love of God, or in any way animated by the principle of godliness. He does not end his demonstration of sinfulness, till he has completed it; and, while the first attack of his expostulation is directed against those who do the covert acts and wear the visible insignia of rebellion, he sends it with a penetrating force into the recesses of a more plausible and pleasing character-where, with nothing to deform or to shed a disgrace over the outward history, there may be a heart still uncircumcised out of all its affections law of its own acknowledging; and after, to the creature, and utterly alive unto the upon this principle, having convicted the Gentile world of its being under sin-he addresses himself to the Israelite, and dexterously lays open the egregious folly of his confidence-a confidence resting, it would appear, not on his practice of the law, but barely on his possession of it-a satisfaction with himself, not for following the light, but simply for having the light -an arrogant sense of superiority to others, not in having obeyed the commandment, but just in having had the commandment delivered to him-thus turning into a matter of vanity, that which ought in fact to have aggravated his shame and condemnation; and bearing it proudly over others, who, had they acted up to their more slender advantages, would in world, and utterly dead unto God. We conclude with two remarks, in the way of home and personal application, founded on the two senses given to the word letter as contrasted with the word spirit. The first sense that is given to the word letter, is the outward conformity to the law, which may be rendered apart from the inward principle of reverence or regard for it. Now it is not merely true that your sabbaths and your sacraments may be as uscless to you, as the rite of circumcision ever was to the Jews. It is not merely true that the whole ceremonial of Christianity may be duly and regularly described on your part, without praise or |