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itual light upon which he is entering, he | last messenger is at the door. There is will learn that he never can be at peace not time for cold criticisms, or laborious with God till he lean on a better righte-investigations, or splendid oratory, or proousness than his own-yet such is the in- found argument-when death has broke fluence of the doctrines of grace on every loose amongst us, and is spreading his genuine inquirer, that, from the first havoc amongst our earthly tabernaclesdawning of his obscure perception of when he is wresting away from us the dethem, to the splendour of their full and lights and the ornaments of our society finished manifestation, is there the break-upon earth-when he is letting us see, by ing and the stir and the assiduous effort examples the most affecting, of what frail of a busy and ever-doing reformation- and perishable materials human life is carrying him onwards from the more pal-made up-and is dealing out another and pable rectitudes of ordinary and every- another reproof to that accursed delay, day conduct, to the high and sacred and spiritual elevation of a soul ripening for heaven, and following hard after God.

which leads man to trifle on the brink of the grave, and to smile and be secure, while the weapons of mortality are flying We know that we are now standing on thick around him. When will we be the borders of controversy. But we are brought to the beginning of wisdom-to far more solicitous for such an impression the fear of God-to the desire of doing as will lead you to act, than for any spe- His will-to the accomplishment of that culative adjustment. And yet how true it desire, by our believing in the name of is, that, for the purpose of a practical ef- His only-begotten Son, and loving one fect, there is not one instrument so power- another even as He has given us comful and so prevailing as the peculiar doc-mandment? Let us work while it is day trine of the gospel. It is the belief that a--and, set in motion by the encouragedebt unextinguishable by us has been ex-ments of the gospel, let us instantly betinguished by another-it is the know-come the followers of them who through ledge that that God, who can never lay faith and patience are now inheriting the aside either His truth or His righteousness, promises. has found out such a way for the dispensation of mercy as serves to exalt and to illustrate them both-it is the view of that great transaction by which He laid on His own Son the iniquities of us all, and has thus done away an otherwise invincible barrier which lay across the path of acceptance-it is the precious conviction that Christ has died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and thus has turned aside the penalties of a law, and by the very act wherewith He has magnified that law and made it honourable-it is this, which seen, however faintly by the eye of faith, first looses the bond of despair, and gives a hope and an outlet for obedience. The subtile metaphysics of the So that all which is said of the Scripquestion, about the order of succession tures in the New Testament, must be rewith the two graces of faith and of repent-garded as the testimony of its authors tc ance, may entertain or they may perplex | the value and importance of those writings you. But of this you may be very cer- which compose the Old Testament. And Lain, that, where there is no repentance, it would therefore appear from Paul's all the dogmas of a contentious orthodoxy epistle to Timothy, that they are able to put together will never make out the re- make us wise unto salvation. ality of faith-and, where there is no faith, all the drudgeries of a most literal and laborious adherence to the outward matter of the law will never make out the reality of repentance.

You occasionally meet in the New Testament, with an express reference to a certain body of writings, which are designated by the term of Scriptures. We now apply this term to the whole Bible. But, in those days, it was restricted to that collection of pieces which makes up the Old Testament. For the new was only in the process of its formation, and was not yet completed; and it was not till some time after the evangelists wrote their narratives, and the apostles their communications, that they were gathered into one volume, or made to stand in equal and coordinate rank with the inspired books of the former dispensation.

There can be no doubt, however that one ingredient of this ability is, that they refer us in a way so distinct and so autheritative to the events of the New Dispensation. They give evidence to the coinLife is too short for controversy. Charg-mission of our Saviour, and through Him ed with all the urgency of a matter on to the commission of all His apostles hand, we tell you to turn and flee and The wisdom which they teach, is a wismake fast work of your preparation for a coming eternity. The sum and substance | of the preparation is, that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you. Bestir yourselves, for the

dom which would guide us forward to the posterior revelations of Christianity. The Old Testament is a region of comparative dimness. But still there is light enough there, for making visible the many in

dices which abound in it, to the more illu- | Christian can now read the very first pro minated region of the New Testament-mise in the bock of Genesis, that the and, by sending us forward to that region, seed of the woman should bruise the head by pointing our way to Christ and to the apostles, by barely informing us where we are to get the wisdom that we are in quest of even though it should not convey it to us by its own direct announcements, it may be said to be able to make wise unto salvation.

The quotation taken in all its completeness is in full harmony, with the statement which we have now given. From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through the faith that is in Christ Jesus.'

of the serpent,' which only served to light up a vague and general expectation in the minds of ou: first parents-he can now read it with the same full intelligence and comfort, wherewith he reads in the book of the Romans that the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.'

But there is still more in it than this. If there be any truth in the process whereby the Holy Spirit adds to the power of discernment, as well as to the truths which are to be discerned-then this increased power will enable us to see more—not merely in the later, but also in But there is more in it than this. The the earlier truths of revelation, than we same light from heaven by which the would otherwise have done. It is like a doctrine of the New Testament has blind man, in full and open day, gradually been made visible, has also made more recovering his sight as he stands by the visible the same doctrine, which in the margin of a variegated parterre. WithOld lay disguised under the veil of a out any augmentation whatever of the exstill unfinished revelation. In the first ternal light, is there a progress of revelablush of morning, there is much of the tion to his senses, as to all the beauty and landscape that we cannot see at all-and richness and multiplicity of the objects much that we do see, but see imperfectly. which are before him. What he sees at The same ascending luminary which re-first, may be no more than a kind of dazveals to us those more distant tracts that zling uniformity, over the whole length were utterly unobserved, causes to start and breadth of that space which is inout into greater beauty and distinctness, scribed with so many visible glories; the fields and the paths and the varied and, afterwards, may plants and flowers forms of nature or of art that are imme-stand out in their individuality to his nodiately around us-till we come to per- tice; and then may the distinctive colours ceive an extended impress of the charac- of each come to be recognized; and then ter and the goodness of the Divinity, over may the tints of minuter delicacy call the whole range of our mid-day contem-forth his admiration-till all which it is plation. It is thus with the Bible. That light, in virtue of which the pages of the New Testament have been disclosed to observation, has shed both a direct and a reflected splendour on the pages of the Old-insomuch that from certain chapters of Isaiah, which lay shrouded in mystery both from the prophet himself and from all his countrymen-as in reading of Him who bore the chastisement of our peace, and by whose stripes we are healed, and who poured out His soul unto the death, and made intercession for transgressors— we now draw all the refreshing comfort that beams upon the heart, from an intelligent view of our Redeemer's work of mediation; and behold plainly standing out, that which lay wrapt, in a kind of hieroglyphic mantle, from the discernment of the wisest and most righteous of men under a former dispensation. This power of illumination reaches upward, beyond the confines of the letter of the New Testament; and throws an evangelical light upon the remotest parts of an economy which has now passed away. The rays of our brightest on have fallen in a flood of glory over the oldest and most distant of our recorded intimations; and a

competent for man to perceive, of what has been so profusely lavished by the hand of the great Artist, either in one general blush of loveliness, or in those nicer and more exquisite streaks of beauty which He hath pencilled in more hidden characters, on the specimens of flowers and foliage taken singly, shall all be perceived and all be rapturously enjoyed by the man, whose eyes have just been opened into a full capacity for beholding the wondrous things, which lie a spread and a finished spectacle before him. And it is the same with the Bible. That book which stands before the eye of many an accomplished disciple in this world's literature, as transfused throughout all its extent with one pervading and indiscriminate character of mysticism, gradually opens up to the eye of him who is rescued from the power of the god of this world, and whose office it is to blind the minds of them whọ believe not; and he beholds one general impress both of wisdom and of moral beauty upon the whole; and he forms a growing and more special intimacy with its individual passages; and feels a weight of significancy in many of them, which he never felt before; and he is touched

with the discernment of a precious adap- | they could offer their vows and their tation in this one and that other verse to thanksgivings in the courts of the Lord's his own wants and his own circumstances; house, and in the midst of thee, oh Jeruand this more minute and microscopic salem'-in all this, a Jew might express acquaintance with the truths, and percep- the desires of a fainting and an affectiontion of the excellencies of revelation, ap- ate heart, after that ceremonial in which ply as much to the verses of the Old as it he had been trained, and that service of does to the verses of the New Testament the temple which he loved; and yet in -so that if he just grow in spiritual clear- all this, there is enough to sustain the sightedness, he will have as growing a loftiest flights of devotion in the mind of relish and observation for the one part of a Christian. There is a weight of expres Scripture as he has for the other: And sion, altogether commensurate to the feelthus it is, that, unlike to any human com- ings and the ardours and the extacies of a position, an advancing Christian ever soul exercised unto godliness. There is a reads the Bible and the whole Bible, with something to meet the whole varied expea new light upon his understanding, and rience of the spiritual life, in these ages a new impression upon the affections and of a later and more refined dispensation. the principles of his nature. The books And such is the divine skilfulness of these of the former dispensation never stand to compositions, that, while so framed as to him in place of the rudiments of a school- suit and to satisfy the disciples of a ritual boy, which he may now abandon. But and less enlightened worship, there written as they are for our admonition on a holy and heavenly disciple of Jesus in whom the latter ends of the world have our day, who will not perceive in the effucome; and maintaining to this very hour sions of the Psalmist, a counterpart to all the high functions and authority of a the alternations of his own religious histeacher, all whose sayings are given by tory-who will not find in his very words, inspiration from God, and all are profita- the fittest vehicles for all the wishes and ble; and still instrumental, in the hands sorrows and agitations to which his own of the Spirit for conveying the whole heart is liable-and thus be taught by a light and power of His demonstrations writer far less advanced in spirituality into the understanding-let us rest assur- than himself, the best utterance of desire ed that the Old Testament is one of the for the manifestation of God's countetwo olive trees planted in the house of nance, the best utterance of gratitude for God, and which is never to be removed; the visitations of spiritual joy, the best and one of the two golden candlesticks lighted most expressive prayers under the disup for the church of Christ upon earth. tress and darkness of spiritual abandonand which while that church has being, ment. will never be taken away.

not

|
Let us read over without any comment
the whole of the 84th Psalm-and just
simply ask you to consider how those very
materials which form a most congenial
piece of devotion for a Jew, admit of be-
ing so impregnated with the life and spirit
of a higher economy, that they are able
to sustain all the views, and to express all
the aspirations of the most spiritual and
exercised Christian.

It may illustrate this whole matter, if we look to the book of Psalms, and just think of the various degrees of spirituality and enlargement with which the same composition may be regarded by Jewish and by Christian eyes-how in the praise which waiteth for God in Zion-and in the pleasure which His servants took in her stones, so that her very dust to them was dear-and in the preference which "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O they made of one day in His courts to a Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth, yea, chousand elsewhere—and in the thirsting even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; of their souls to appear before God-and my heart and my flesh crieth out for the in their remembrance of that time when living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found they went to His house with the voice of an house, and the swallow a nest for herjoy and praise, and with the multitude self, where she may lay her young, even that kept holiday-and when exiles from thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King, the holy city, they were cast down in spi- and my God. Blessed are they that dwell rit, and cried from the depths of their in thy house: they will be still praising banishment in the land of Jordan-and thee. Blessed is the man whose strength when longing for God, in a dry and thirsty is in thee; in whose heart are the ways land where no water was, they followed of them, who passing through the valley hard after the privilege of again seeing of Baca make it a well; the rain also fillHis power and His glory in the sanctuary eth the pools. They go from strength to -and in the songs of deliverance with strength; every one of them in Zion apwhich they celebrated their own restora-peareth before God. O Lord God of tion, when their bands were loosed, and Hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God their feet were set in a sure place, and of Jacob. Behold, Ŏ God our shield, and

look upon the face of thine anointed. For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of Hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee."

We think it necessary to say thus much -lest the Old Testament should ever be degraded below its rightful place in your estimation-lest any of you should turn away from it, as not fitted to augment the faith and the holiness of those, who lie under a better and a brighter dispensation -lest you should abstain from the habit of reading that letter of the Old Testament, which is abundantly capable of being infused with the same evangelical spirit, that gives all its power to the letter of the New Testament. And be assured, that, if you want to catch in all its height and in all its celestial purity the raptures of a sustained and spiritual intercourse with Him who sitteth upon the throne, we know nothing fitter to guide your ascending way, than those psalms and those prophecies, which shone at one time in a dark place; but may now, upon the earnest heed of him who attentively regards them, cause the day to dawn and the day-star to arise in his heart.

In turning now to one of the fullest expositions of Christian doctrine which is to be found in the New Testament; and which was drawn up for the edification of the most interesting of the early churches; and where, in the conduct of his argument, Paul seems to have been fully aware of all those elements both of intolerance and philosophy which were in array against him; and where, as his manner was, he suits and manages his reasoning, with the full consciousness of the kind and metal of resistance that were opposed to him; and where he had to steer his dexterous way through a heterogeneous assemblage of Gentiles on the one hand, enlightened up to the whole literature and theology of the times, and of Jews on the other, most fiercely and proudly tenacious of that sectarianism

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which they regarded as their national glory-in such an epistle, written in such circumstances by the accomplished Paul, when we may be sure he would bring up his efforts to the greatness of the occasion, it is natural to look for all the conviction and all the light that such an able and intellectual champion is fitted to throw over the cause which he has undertaken And yet what would be the result in a discussion of science or politics or law, we will not find to be the result in a discussion of Christianity, without such a preparation and such an accompaniment as are not essential to our progress in this world's scholarship. To be a disciple in the school of Christ, there must be an affectionate embracing of truth with the heart; and there must be a knowledge which puffeth not up, but humbles and edifies; and there must be a teaching of the Spirit of God, distinct from all those unsanctified acquirements, which we labour to win and to defend, in the strife it may be of logical contention. For, let it be observed, that the wisdom of the New Testament is characterized by moral attributes. It is pure and peaceable and gentle, and easy to be entreated, and full of mercy and good fruits, and without partiality and without hypocrisy. Let us not confound the illumination of natural argument, with that which warms the heart as well as informs the understanding-for it is a very truth, that the whole demonstration of orthodoxy may be assented to by him, who is not spiritual but carnal. And while we are yet on the threshold of by far the mightiest and closest of those demonstrations, that ever were offered to the world, let us "bow the knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He would grant us according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith; that, being rooted and grounded in love, we may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth all knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God.”

17

LECTURE II.

ROMANS i, 1—7.

"Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holi ness, by the resurrection from the dead: by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ: To all that be in Rome beloved cf God: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

We now enter upon the work of expo- | held, in the language of the ceremonial sition. law, to be synonymous. And it is thus that the devoting, or setting apart of an apostle to his office, is expressed by the consecration of him to it; and even, in one part of the New Testament, by the sanctifying of him to it. This explains a passage that might be otherwise difficult, John xvii, 17-20. " Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." To sanctify here is not applied to the personal, but the official character. It is not to moralize the heart, but merely to set apart to an employment; and thus bears application to the apostle Christ, as to the apostles whom he was addressing.

People, in reading the Bible, are often not conscious of the extreme listlessness with which they pass along the familiar and oft repeated words of Scripture, without the impression of their meaning being at all present with the thoughts-and how, during the mechanical currency of the verses through their lips, the thinking power is often asleep for whole passages together. And you will therefore allow me, at least at the commencement of this lectureship, first to read over a paragraph; and then to fasten the import of certain of its particular phrases upon your attention, even though these phrases may heretofore have been regarded as so intelligible, that you never thought of bestowing an effort or dwelling one moment upon their signification; and then of reading the passage over again, in such extended or such substituted language, as may give us another chance of the sense of it at least being rivetted on your understandings. We shall generally endeavour to press home upon you, in the way of application, some leading truth or argument which may occur in any such portion of the epistle as we may have been enabled to overtake.

V. 1. “Paul a servant of Jesus Christ called to be an apostle separated unto the gospel of God."

An apostle-one who is sent, one who obtains, not a commision to do, but a commission to go—‘Go and preach the gospel unto every creature.' Jesus Christ is an apostle-because sent-and is therefore called not merely the High Priest, but the Apostle of our profession. God sent his Son unto the world. The call of Paul you read of several times in the Acts, both in the direct narrative of that book, and in his own account of it. And it is to be remarked that as he got his commission in a peculiar way, so he evidently feels himself more called upon than the other apostles, to assert and to vindicate its authenticity. Separated unto'-set apart to a particular work. You know that holiness, in its original meaning, just signifies separation from the mass. It is thus that the vessels of the temple are holy-it is thus that the terms, common and unclean, are

'Gospel,' a message of good news.

V. 2. "Which He had promised afore by His prophets in the holy scriptures." 'Which' refers to gospel-which gospel he had promised.

V. 3. " Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh."

This verse gives us the subject of the message, or what the message is about— or, omitting the second verse as a parenthesis, separated unto the work of promulgating God's message of good news about His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.' The phrase 'which was made' might have been rendered which became' of the seed of David in respect of His flesh, or His human nature. He took it upon Him. He received from this descent all that other men receive of natural faculty--or, in other words, the term flesh comprehends the human soul as well as the human body of our Redeemer. According to,' is, 'in respect of.'

V. 4. "And declared to be the Son of God with power according the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead."

'Declared,' or determinately marked out to be the Son of God and with power. The thing was demonstrated by an evidence, the exhibition of which required a putting forth of power, which Paul in another place represents as a very great and strenuous exertion. According to the working of His mighty power when He raised Him from the dead." "The spirit of holiness'-or the Holy Spirit. It was through the operation of the Holy

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