How that the law hath dominion over a man so long as it liveth;' and many, for the sake of preserving a more lucid and consistent analogy, have adopted this translation. But then this does not. just suit so well with the fourth verse-where, instead of the law having become dead unto us, we are represented as having become dead unto the law; so that a certain degree of that sort of confusion, which arises from a mixed or traverse analogy appears unavoidable. It so happens too, that either supposition, of the law being dead or of the subject being dead, stands linked with very important and unquestionable truth-so that by admitting both, you may exhibit this passage as the envelope of two meanings or two lessons, both of which are incontrovertibly sound and practically

of

very great consequence. This of course, would add very much to the draught that we make upon your attention; and altogether we fear that, unless there is a very pointed and strenuous forthputting of your own intelligence on these verses. we shall fail to render any explanation of them to you, which you will feel to be at all very vivid or very interesting.

It is in the first place true, that the law may be regarded as dead; and that he our former husband, now taken out of the way, has left us free to enter upon that alliance with Christ considered as our new husband, which in many other parts of the New Testament is likened unto a marriage. And it is true also, that the death of the law,

which gave rise to the dissolution of its authority over us, took place at the death of Christ. It was then, that, in the language addressed to the Colossians, it was then that our Saviour blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross. It was then that the law lost its power to reckon with us, and its right as an offended lord to take vengeance of our trespasses against him. You have read of certain venomous animals which expire, on the moment that they have deposited their sting and its mortal poison, in the body of their victim. And thus there ensues a double death-the death of the sufferer, and the death also of the assailant. And certain it is, that on the cross of our Saviour, there was just such a catastrophe. Then did our Saviour pour out His soul, under the weight and agony of those inflictions that were laid upon Him by the law; but then also did the law expend all its power as a judge and an avenger, over those who believe in the Saviour.

There is something in the consideration of the law alive and of the law dead, that should bear practically home upon the fears and the feelings of every inquirer. Without Christ the law is in living force against us; and were we rightly aware both of its claims and of our provocations-then should we feel as if in the hands of an enraged husband, who had us most thoroughly in his power; and who, incensed with jealousy and burning with the

spirit of revenge, because of the way in which we had aggrieved and degraded him,-held us in the daily terror of a resentment, which no penitence could appease, and which he was ready to discharge upon us by some awful and overwhelming visitation. It is some such appalling imagination as this, that gives rise to what is familiarly known by a phrase whcih often occurs in our older authors -a law-work. It is a work which passes through the heart of him, who is conscience-stricken under the conviction of sin, and terror-stricken under the anticipation of a coming vengeance. The expe

rience and degree of this state of emotion are exceedingly various; but at all times it is the state of one who feels himself still under the law; and liable to be reckoned with by him as an unrelenting creditor, who can allege such an amount of debt as never can be paid, and of deficiency that in his own person can never be atoned for. Some are pursued with this thought, as if by an arrow sticking fast. Others, without such intense agony, are at least haunted by a restlessness,' and a discomfort, and a general uneasy sensation that all is not right, which leads them to cast about for the peace and deliverance of some place of refuge, in which they fain would take shelter and hide themselves. All are in the state of the apostle who says of himself, that, when the law came, sin revived and he died-or that, when a sense of the law and of its mighty demands visited his heart, there revived within him a sense his own fearful

deficiencies along with it; and he gave himself over to the despair of one, who had rightfully to suffer and rightfully to die. Men under earnestness, and who at the same time have not yet found their way to Christ, are in dealings with the law alive-stand related to him as the wife does to an outraged husband, breathing purposes of vindictiveness and resolute on the accomplishment of them-A state of appalling danger and darkness from which there is no relief, but in the death of that husband; and a state exemplifying perhaps the spiritual condition of some who now hear me, who know themselves to be sinners, and know the law wherewith they have to do as the unbending and implacable enemy of all who have offended him-who feel that with him there is no reprieve and no reconciliation-who have long perhaps wearied themselves in vain to find some door of escape, from this severe and stern and uncompromising exactor-and, as the bitter result of all their fatiguing but unfruitful endeavours, are now sitting down in heartless and hopeless despondency.

And perhaps the illustration of our text, may open up for them a way of access to the relief which they aspire after. It is just such a relief as would be afforded by the death of the first tyrannical husband, who, at the same time, had a right to wreak the full weight of his displeasure upon you; and by the substitution of another in his place, who had cast the veil of a deep and neverto-be-disturbed oblivion over the whole of your

past history, and with whom you were admitted to no other fellowship than that of love and peace and confidence. It is thus, my brethren, that Christ would divorce you, as it were, from your old alliance with the law; and welcome you, instead, to a new and friendly alliance with Himself. He invites you to treat, in trust and in kindly fellowship with Him, as the alone party with whom you need to have to do; and as to the law, with whom you so long have carried on the distressful fellowship of accusation on the one side and of conscious guilt and fear upon the other, He bids you cease from the fellowship altogether-by having no other regard unto the law, than as unto a husband who is now dead and may be forgotten. And to deliver this contemplation from any image so revolting, as that of our rejoicing in the death of a former husband; and finding all the relief of heaven in the more kindred and affectionate society of another-You have to remember, that the law has become dead, so as to be divested of all power of reckoning with you-not by an act which has vilified. the law or done it violence, but by an act which has magnified the law and made it honourablenot by a measure which has robbed the law of its due vindication, but by a measure which sets it forth to the world's eye in the full pomp and emblazonment of its vindicated honours-not by the new husband having with assassin blow relieved you of the old, but by the one having done full homage to the rights and authority of the other;