God, before whom his profaneness and process of quickening, which nature canprofligacy have hitherto risen as a smoke not originate, and nature cannot carry of abomination. Let even him buoy up forward-a resurrection of the soul, that his expectations, against the whole weight is as far beyond the bidding of any huand burden of this despondency. Impro- man voice, as is the egress of a reani.

bable as it may look to the eye of nature, that an outcast so polluted and so loathsome can be admitted into the honours of righteousness; and that though onward to the point of his present history he be crimsoned over with the guilt of ungodliness, can not only be forgiven, but be justified-yet let him against this hope believe in hope, and the stronger his faith the more abundant to him will be the imputation of righteousness. In that very proportion in which he has heretofore

mated body from the grave. The man who knows how steeped all his feelings and all his faculties are in ungodliness, knows the moral and spiritual birth that we are now adverting to, to be against the current of all his former experience, and beyond the achievement of all his present most strenuous exertions. And if against hope he believe in the hope, that such a regeneration shall be begun or perfected in him, it will be on the footing of some such promise as sustained the expecta

trampled on the glory of God by his diso- tions of the patriarch. This unfolds to bedience, will he render a glory to His us the link which connects our faith with truth by now believing in Him who justi- our sanctification. God hath promised fieth the ungodly. Let him consider the the clean heart and the right spirit to all faith of Abraham, and let the expressions who are in Christ Jesus; and, according which the apostle employs to characterize to the firmness of our reliance upon this

it now crowd upon his observation, and carry all doubt and timidity before them. It is just by standing on the truth of the gospel, and then bearing up under the sense of the guilt that hangs over us-it is just by firmly and determinedly persisting in this attitude of confidence on the word of God, even in the midst of all which without that word should sink us into despair-it is just by so doing, that like Abraham we stagger not because of unbelief; and like him we against hope believe in hope; and like him we are not weak in the faith, but by being strong in it give glory to God; and like him are fully persuaded that what God hath promised, He is able to perform; and like him be assured, the guiltiest of you all, that if such be your faith, held firm and fast even unto the end-like as unto him so will this faith be imputed unto you for right

cousness.

There is another great unlikelihood in the matter of Christianity, to call forth the exercise of against hope believing in hope -not merely that God's disposition towards us should be so changed as that He shall regard us with an eye of acceptance, but that our disposition toward God shall be so changed as to make us happy in the fellowship of a common character and of a congenial intercourse with Him. This we are not by nature. Our delighted converse is with the things that are made, and not with the Maker of them. In reference to Him there is the insensibility of spiritual death; and the great transition that we have to undergo ere Heaven can to us be a place of kindred enjoyment, is to be made alive again. For this

promise, will be the fulness of its accomplishment upon our persons. Believest thou that I am able to do this? says the Saviour to the man who looked to Him for a miraculous cure; and according to his faith so was it done unto him. The apostle Paul looked upon another man under disease, and perceived that he had faith to be healed. Peter affirmed of the cripple whom he restored to the use of his limbs in the temple, that the name of Christ through faith in His name had made this man strong-yea the faith which is by Him, had given him this perfect soundness in the presence of them all. And thus do we recover our spiritual health. And thus are the blindness and the paralysis and the impotency that have so benumbed our moral faculties done away. The full and firm persuasion of the patriarch, that what is impossible with man is possible with God, will bring down this possibility in living demonstration upon our own characters. He who promises also says, that for this I must be enquired after; and the prayer of faith brings down the fulfilment; and the man who asks for what is so onsonant to the will of God, as that he shall be made alive unto himself, has only like Abraham to believe Him able to call from the womb of nonentity that power into being, by which he is made a new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord. A creature from the depths of his conscious depravity, thus knocking at the door which he cannot open, but who believes that one is standing there to hear and to answer him-a humble aspirant after the character of Heaven, who prays in faith for the love to

purpose there must be a revival, which God which he has never yet felt, and for no putting forth of any constitutional the charity to man with which he has energy in man can at all accomplish-a | vainly tried to animate his own cold and selfish bosom-the labouring disciple of revelation, whose ear has taken up the promise of our internal inheritance, but who knows that it is only through the medium of a birth in his own heart as preternatural as that of Isaac that he ever can arrive at it-let him imitate the father of the faithful in his confident reliance on speculations-when the proudest of our faith over vision, and of trust in God over of all who do believe in that, when the the apprehensions of nature; and the un- commandment came forth upon him from

seen witness, who all the while is most intently looking on, can out of the infinity of means which He has at command, again bring sufficiency to his door-can fill him with all that peace of contentment, with which godliness is great gain, and bless with the light of His approving countenance that humbler walk to which he has descended-can throw a sweetness and a shelter around him that perhaps he never felt in the loftier exposures of society; and irradiate his more modest and homely dwelling place, with a hope that beams beyond the grave, and soars above all the changes of this fleeting and uncertain pilgrimage.

There is still another lesson that remains to be drawn and enforced from the example of Abraham, besides the strength of his faith; and that is the practical movement which it imprest upon him. To be the children of him who is called the father of the faithful-it is not enough that we imitate him in the principle of his faith-we must also, according to the language of the apostle, walk in the footsteps of it. It is very true that it was the belief of Abraham which was counted to him for righteousness. He believed what the Lord had spoken; and had there not been another communication to him from Heaven, than simply that he was to have a son through whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed, we can conceive a firm persuasion of the truth of this announce ment, resting in the mind of the patriarch, without stimulating him to one deed or to one movement in consequence. It might have found ingress there, and taken up a most inviolable lodgment in his heart, and he be reckoned with as righteous because of it; and yet he may have occupied the very station, and lived the very life that he would have done, though no such message had ever come to his door, and no such promise had ever been addrest to him. But, instead of this, we find that his faith in the heavenly visitation was instantly followed up by a change in the whole course and habit of his pilgrimage; and a painful abandonment of all that was naturally dear to his heart was the very first fruit of it, and he forawith put himself under a control which maintained an authoritative guidance over the whole of his future history; and in the full attitude of service and subordination, did he wait the bidding of that master's voice, who prescribed to him the conduct of all his journeyings through the world, and often laid upon him the most arduous tasks of obedience: And nothing can be more completely passive and resigned, than the posture of him who has been styled the father

able

God, he never once imagined that there was any thing else for him to act in the affair, but just to render an instantaneous compliance therewith. We have heard belief and obedience contrasted the one with the other, and in such a way as if these two terms stood in practical opposition. In the case of Abraham we see them standing in sure and immediate succession, so that the one emanated from the other; and just in proportion to the strength of his faith, and to the glory which he rendered unto God for His faithfulness, and to the unstaggering reliance that he had upon His assurances, and to the thoroughness of his persuasion that what God had promised He was able also to performjust in that very proportion, did he commit himself to the authority of God, and amid all the uncertainties incident to one who was going he knew not whither, did he take counsel and direction from Him who was his master in heaven; and nothing can be more evident than that character of devotedness to the whole will of God which stood imprest on the subsequent doings of his life upon earth; and, instead of a mere contemplative persuasion with which he looked forward to the country that was promised to him, did he shape his measures with all the preparation and activity of a man who had been set upon the enterprise of travelling towards it. So that faith, instead of lulling him out of his activity, was the very principle which both set it agoing and kept it agoing. It was the moving force which first tore him away from those scenes and from that society to which nature so adhesively cleaves; and after he had been loosed from all that was dear to him, did the same force act upon him with that continued impulse, which made him just as exemplary for his works of obedience as he was for the strength and determination of his faith. It is most true, as Paul says to the Romans, that by faith Abraham was justified, and not by obedience. But it is just as true what he says to the Hebrews, that it was by faith that Abraham obeyed-when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance; and he went out not knowing whither he went. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. And he walked as a stranger and pilgrim upon earth, and declared plainly that he had gone forth in quest of a country.

The truth is, that God did not confine

LECTURE XVI.

ROMANS iv, 23-25.

• Now, it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification."

It should rivet our souls on this sure foundation, that God hath said it, and shall He not perform it? It should clear away the louring imagery of terror and distrust from the sinner's agitated bosom: And if the most characteristic pe peculiarity in the belief of Abraham was, that it was belief in the midst of staggering and appalling improbabilities-should not this just stimulate to the same belief the spirit of him, who, feeling that by nature he is in the hands of a God in whose sacred breast there exists a jealousy of all that is evil, is apt to view with incredulity the approaches of the same God when He proffers reconciliation even to the worst and most worthless offenders; and protests in their hearing, that, if they will only draw nigh in the name of Christ, He will forgive all and forget all?

V. 25. The circumstance that is singled out in this passage as the object of the faith of Christians, is that of God having raised up Jesus from the dead. In other parts of the Bible the resurrection of the Saviour is stated to be the act of God the Father; and, however much the import of this may have escaped the notice of an ordinary reader, it is pregnant with meaning of the weightiest importance. You know that when the prison door is opened to a criminal, and that by the very authority which lodged him there, it evinces that the debt of his transgression has been rendered; and that he now stands acquit ted of all its penalties. It was not for ilis own but for our offences that Jesus was delivered unto the death, and that His body was consigned to the imprisonment of the grave. And when an angel descended from heaven and rolled back the great stone from the door of the sepulchre, this speaks to us that the justice of God is satisfied, that the ransom of our iniquities has been paid, that Christ has rendered a full discharge of all that debt for which He undertook as the great Surety between God and the sinners who believe in Him. And could we only humble you into the conviction that you need the benefit of such a redeeming processcould we only show you to yourselves as the helpless transgressors of a commandment that cannot be trampled on with impunity-could we thoroughly impress you with the principle that God is not to be mocked, and that the sanctions of that moral government which He wields over the universe He has thrown around Him are not to be treated as things of no significancy-could we reveal to you your true situation as the subjects of a law, that still pursues you with its exactions, while it demands reparation for all the indignities it has gotten at your hands Then would the topics which we are now

attempting so feebly to illustrate, and which many regard as the jargon of a scholastic theology that is now exploded, rise in all the characters of reality and truth before the eye of your now enlightened conscience; and gladly would you devolve the burden of your guilt on the head of the accepted sacrifice, that you may be rescued from the condemnation of those offences for which He was delivered, that you may be lightened of all that fearful endurance which He has borne.

And raised again for our justification.' We are not fond of that repulsive air which has doubtless been thrown around Christianity, by what some would call the barbarous terms and distinctions of schoolmen. But it will, we think, help to illustrate the truth of the matter before us, that we shortly advert to the theological phrases of a negative and positive justification. The former consists of an acquittal from guilt. By the latter a title is conferred to the reward of righteousness. There are two ways in which God may deal with you--either as a criminal in the way of vengeance, or as a loyal and obedient subject in the way of reward. By your negative justification, you simply attain to the midway position of God letting you alone. He does not lay upon you the hand of retribution for your evil deeds; but neither does He lay upon you the hand of retribution for any good deeds. You are kept out of hell, the place of penal suffering for the vicious. But you are not preferred to heaven, the place of awarded glory and happiness for the virtuous. Now the conception is, that the Saviour accomplished our negative justification by bearing upon His own person the chastisement of our sins-He was delivered for our offences unto the death. But that to achieve our positive justification, He did more than suffer, He obeyed. He accumulated as it were a stock of righteousness, out of which He lavishes reward on those whom He had before redeemed from punishment. It was because He finished a great work that God highly exalted Him; and from the place which He now occupies does He shed on His disciples a foretaste of heaven here, as the earnest and the preparation for their inheritance hereafter. He does something more than work out their deliverance from the place of torment, and thus bring them to the neutral and intermediate state of those who are merely forgiven. He pours upon them spiritual blessings; and, by stamping upon them a celestial character, does He usher them even now into celestial joy-so as that, with their affections set upon things above, they may already be said to dwell in heavenly places with