His utterance w th Abraham to a bare | to him, that led him to the first step of his promise, on the truth of which it was his obedience; and it was his faith in God's part to rely, The very first utterance that future addresses, where precepts and prois recorded was a precept, on the authority mises are intermingled together, that led of which it was his part to proceed. "Get him on to future steps of obedience: And thee out of thy country, and from thy kin- it is just by walking in the same path of dred and from thy father's house, into a obedience that he did, that we walk in the land that I will show thee." It is very footsteps of the faith of our father Abratrue that ere he would obey there was ham. An article of belief may lie up in something to believe. He had to believe our minds, without any change or any that it was God who spake unto him. He transition; and such a belief can have no must have believed in the land of which footsteps. But when it is a belief that he had been told. He must have believed carries movement along with it-when it in the truth of the promise, that came im- is a belief in one who both bids and mediately on the back of the command- blesses with his voice at the same timement. He must, in fact, have given an when it is a belief that is conversant with entire and unexcepted glory to the truth such an utterance as the followingof God-and must therefore have had a "Arise, walk through the land in the faith reaching to the whole extent of God's length and in the breadth of it: For I testimony, Had God simply said "I will will give it unto thee;" or with such an make of thee a great nation," the belief utterance as the following-"I am the Alof such an announcement did not essen- mighty God: walk before me and be thou tially lead to any movement on the part perfect, and I will make my covenant beof our patriarch. But when God said- tween me and thee, and will multiply thee "Get thee out of thy country, and I will exceedingly"-when it is belief in a God make of thee a great nation"-the belief who so manages this intercourse with His of the announcement, extended in this creatures, as to cheer them by His promanner, would lead Abraham to perceive, mises, and guide them by His directions that the act of his leaving home was just at the same instant-there is a dependence as essential to the fulfilling of it, as the that will issue from such a faith, but there act of his becoming a great nation was is an obedience also; and the successive essential. And the joy he felt in the lat- parts of that practical history which it ter part of the communication, would just originated at the first, and animates be in proportion to the prompt obedience throughout afterwards, are the footsteps that he rendered to the former part of it. of the faith. It was his faith in the first address of God

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."

THESE things were written for our ad- the ground that we judge Him to be faithmonition on whom the latter ends of the ful who has promised. It ought to enworld have come. The circumstance of courage our faith, when we read of him Abraham's faith being proposed as an ex- who was the father of the faithful, stagample to us, should bring up our confi- gering not at the promise of God through dence to the same pitch of boldness and unbelief, but being strong in faith, and determination which are ascribed to his thereby glorifying God by his persuasion in the preceding verses. He against hope that what He had promised He was able believed in hope; that is, he trusted in also to perform. When we read that it the face of unlikelihood. So ought we, was this very resolute and unfaltering rehowever unlikely it is to the eye of na-liance on the part of Abraham, which ture, that sinners should be taken into friendship with that God whose holiness is at irreconcilable variance with sin. We just do as Abraham did before us, when we rest and rely upon God's friendship to us in Christ Jesus; and that simply on

God counted to him for righteousness. and that the same faith upon our part will bring down upon us the benefits of a like imputation-this ought to overrule the fears of guilt. It should rebuke all our doubts and apprehensions away from us

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.

It should rivet our souls on this sure | attempting so feebly to illustrate, and foundation, that God hath said it, and shall which many regard as the jargon of a He not perform it? It should clear away | scholastic theology that is now exploded the louring imagery of terror and distrust from the sinner's agitated bosom: And if the most characteristic 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 ?

'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 let

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 autho-ting you alone. He does not lay upon you rity which lodged him there, it evinces the hand of retribution for your evil deeds; that the debt of his transgression has been but neither does He lay upon you the hand rendered; and that he now stands acquit- of retribution for any good deeds. You ted of all its penalties. It was not for His are kept out of hell, the place of penal own but for our offences that Jesus was suffering for the vicious. But you are not delivered unto the death, and that His preferred to heaven, the place of awarded body was consigned to the imprisonment glory and happiness for the virtuous. of the grave. And when an angel de- Now the conception is, that the Saviour scended from heaven and rolled back the accomplished our negative justification great stone from the door of the sepulchre, by bearing upon His own person the chasthis speaks to us that the justice of God tisement of our sins-He was delivered is satisfied, that the ransom of our iniqui- for our offences unto the death. But that ties has been paid, that Christ has render- to achieve our positive justification, He ed a full discharge of all that debt for did more than suffer, He obeyed. He acwhich He undertook as the great Surety cumulated as it were a stock of righteousbetween God and the sinners who believe ness, out of which He lavishes reward on in Him. And could we only humble you those whom He had before redeemed from into the conviction that you need the punishment. It was because He finished benefit of such a redeeming process-a great work that God highly exalted Him; could we only show you to yourselves as and from the place which He now occuthe helpless transgressors of a command-pies does He shed on His disciples a forement that cannot be trampled on with im-taste of heaven here, as the earnest and punity-could we thoroughly impress you the preparation for their inheritance herewith the principle that God is not to be after. He does something more than work mocked, and that the sanctions of that out their deliverance from the place of moral government which He wields over torment, and thus bring them to the neuthe universe He has thrown around Him tral and intermediate state of those who are not to be treated as things of no sig- are merely forgiven. He pours upon nificancy-could we reveal to you your them spiritual blessings; and, by stamptrue situation as the subjects of a law, ing upon them a celestial character, does that still pursues you with its exactions, He usher them even now into celestial while it demands reparation for all the joy-so as that, with their affections set indignities it has gotten at your hands-upon things above, they may already be Then would the topics which we are now [said to dwell in heavenly places with

Christ Jesus our Lord: And thus while it was by His death, that He delivered them from the guilt of their offences-it is by His rising again, that He obtained for them the rewards of righteousness, the privileges of a completed justification.

marked by a violent separation fron. al the habits and attachments of nature, the outset of ours is marked by a separation from our old tastes and our old tenden cies in every way as violent-that if in the progress of his he had to obey the reAnd here we may remark, that by the quirement which laid upon the sacrifice simple bestowment of holiness upon His of his dearest possessions upon earth, in people, does He in fact infuse into their the progress of ours we may be called spirits the great and essential element of upon to cut off a right hand or to pluck heaven's blessedness. It is a mistake to out a right eye-that if he was bidden to think, that it is either the splendour or the wander afar from the scenes of his inmusic of paradise, which makes it a place fancy, and to abandon all the endearments of rejoicing. It is because righteousness of his wonted society; so also we, without will flourish there, that rapture will be felt having to describe one mile of locomothere. It is because heaven is the abode tion, are bidden to enter upon a new of purity, that it is also an abode of peace spiritual region, and by so doing, to be and pleasantness. It is because every deserted by the congeniality and approheart thrills with benevolence, that in bation of all our ungodly friends and all every heart there is beatitude unspeaka- our worldly companionships. In a word, ble. It is love to God that calls forth the faith of Christianity, like the faith of halleluiahs of ecstacy which ring eter- the patriarch, is not a mere metaphysical nally in heaven. In a word, it is not an notion-neither are the blessings of Chrisanimal but a spiritual festival, which is tianity a reward for the soundness of it preparing for us in the mansions above; The faith both of the one and of the other and in these mansions below, a foretaste is just such a practical sense of the reality is felt by those, who, through patient con- of unseen and eternal things, as leads us tinuance in well-doing, seek for glory and to go in actual quest of them according immortality and honour. The real disci-to à prescribed course; and, in so doing, ples of the Saviour on earth, can testify, that if they had holiness enough they would have happiness enough; and a still more affecting testimony to the truth, that the atmosphere of goodness is of itself an atmosphere of gladness and of light, may be seen in the mental wretchedness of those who mourn some deadly overthrow from that purity of heart which at one time guarded and adorned them-who have fallen from peace, and that simply because they have fallen from principleand feel in their bosoms the agonies of hell, and that without another instrument of vengeance to pursue them than a sense of their own native and inherent worthlessness.

The following is the paraphrase of this short passage.

to renounce present things whatever be the force and whatever be the urgency of their allurements. The faith that was in the patriarch's heart, originated such doings in the history of his life, as declared plainly that he sought a country. And our faith is nothing, it is but the breath of an empty profession, but the utterance of a worthless orthodoxy, if it be not followed up by such measures and such movements as plainly declare that immortality is the goal to which we are tending

that the world is but the narrow foreground of that perspective which is lying at our feet-and, with the eye stretching forward to the magnificent region beyond it, that we are actually keeping on the strait but single path which conducts to this distant heaven, though set at every footstep with thorns, and hemmed on the right and on the left with difficulties innumerable.

Now it was not for the mere sake of Abraham that righteousness was reckoned to him because of his faith-but for us also, to whom it shall be reckoned, if we Go forth with this text upon actual sobelieve on Him who raised up Jesus our ciety, and make a survey of that mighty Lord from the dead-who was delivered throng that move upon our streets, and up unto the death as an atonement for our frequent in thousands our market places offences; and was then raised that He-behold every individual in the busy and might confer upon us the fruits of His own achievement, the rewards of His own obedience.'

We have little more than time to remark, that the faith of Christians, is as little an inert or merely speculative principle, as the faith of Abraham-that it is followed up by a practical movement just as his was, and has its footsteps just as ais had that if the outset of his was

anxious pursuit of some object which lies in the distance away from him-meet him at any one hour of his history, and ascertain if possible whether the thing on which his heart is lavishing all its desirousness be placed on this or on the other side of death: And if, in every instance, the character of the occupation shall plainly declare that the region of sense which is near engrossex every feeling, and that th· ›

region of spirit which is distant is not in all his thoughts-then, if faith, instead of a barren dogma, be indeed the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen-on this very day might not the question and complaint of our Saviour be preferred, 'verily, when the Son of man cometh shall He find faith upon the earth?'

It just occurs to us before we are done, that we may gather from the history of Abraham, and that by no very circuitous process of inference, the efficacy of affliction in promoting the conversion of a soul to God. For any thing that appears, he, at the call of Heaven, left a happy home, and a smiling circle of relationship, and a prosperous establishment, and a neighbourhood that esteemed him. This added to the violence of the separation. But conceive that, previous to the call, his family had been wrested from him by death; or that his wealth had gone by misfortune into dissipation; or that that most grievous of all misfortunes had befallen him, he had incurred disgrace by some violent departure from rectitude then the ties which bound him to the place of his nativity had been broken;

and, instead of a painful banishment, h would have felt it as a refuge and & hiding place to have gone a solitary wan derer from the place of his nativity. And in like manner may affliction loosen even now the bonds that attach us to the world; and that love of it which is opposite to the love of the Father, may receive a death-blow from some great and unlooked-for calamity; and the heart, bereaved of all its wonted objects, may now gladly close with the solicitations of that voice which speaketh from heaven, and would woo us to the abiding glories of eternity; and we may now find it easier to give up our disengaged attachments unto God-seeing that it has pleased Him, by the infliction of His chastening hand, to sever away from them all those objects on which they wont so fondly to expatiate; and thus it is, that, from the awful visitations of death or poverty or any other dreadful overthrow from some eminence which at one time was occupied, there may at length, after a dark and brooding period of many agitations, emerge the light of new-born prospects; there may at length spring up the peaceable fruit of righteousness.

LECTURE XVII.

ROMANS V, 1, 2.

Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God."

To be justified here, is not to be made this epistle, we are said to be justified by righteous, but to be counted righteous. grace. It was in love to the world, that To be justified by faith, expresses to us the whole scheme of another righteousthe way in which an imputed righteousness was devised, and executed, and offered ness is made ours. Faith is that act of the recipient, by which he lays hold of this privilege. It contributes no more to the merit that is reckoned to us, than the hand of the beggar adds any portion to the alms that are conferred upon him. When we look to the righteousness that is made ours by faith, it is well to go altogether out of ourselves, and not to mix up any one personal ingredient whether of obeying or of believing with it. The imagination of a merit in faith, brings us back to legal ground again, and exposes us to legal distrust and disquietude. In the exercise of faith, the believer's eye looks out on a cheering and a comforting spectacle; and from the object of its external contemplation, does it fetch homeward all the encouragement which it is fitted to convey. In a former verse of

to man as his plea both of acquittal and of reward before the God whom he had offended. In another place of the New Testament, we read of being justified by Christ-even by Him who brought in that righteousness which is unto all, and upon all who believe. One should look out to that which forms the ground and the matter of our justification; and when we read here that we are justified by faith, one should understand that faith is simply the instrument by which we lay hold of this great privilege—not the light itself, but the window through which it passes-the channel of transmission upon our persons, by which there is attached to them the merit of the righteousness which another has wrought, and of the obedience which another has rendered.

'We have peace with God.' There are

to ascertain the existence of them. I could much more readily, for example find an answer to the question, what the emotions of my heart are, if there be any depth or tenderness in them at all, than 1 could answer the question what the notions of my understanding are; and whether they amount to a belief, or stop short at a mere imagination. A state or a pro

two senses in which this expression may | no power of self-examination is required be understood. It may signify that peace which is brought about by a transition in the mind of the Godhead, and in virtue of which He is appeased towards us. He ceases from that wrath against the sinner, which only abideth on those who believe not; and from an enemy, He, in consideration of a righteousness which He lays to our account after we have accepted it by faith, becometh a friend. Or it may sig-cess of the intellect, is far more apt to nify that state which is brought about by a transition in our minds; and in virtue of which we cease from our apprehension of God's wrath against us-not, we think, a dissolving of our enmity against Him, but a subsiding of our terrors because of Him-rest from the agitations of conscious guilt, now washed away-rest from the forebodings of anticipated vengeance, now borne by Him on whom the chastisement of our peace was laid. This we conceive to be the true meaning of peace with God in the verse before us. The whole passage, for several verses, looks to be a narrative of the personal experience of believers of their rejoicing, and of their hoping, and of their glorying. The subject of the peace that is spoken of in this verse is the mind of believers-a peace felt by them, no doubt, because they now judge that God is pacified towards them; but still a peace, the proper residence of which is in their own bosoms, that now have ceased from their fears of the Lawgiver, and are at rest.

Peace in this sense of it then, being the effect of faith, affords a test for the reality of this latter principle. Some perhaps may think that this could be still more directly ascertained, if, instead of looking at the test, we looked immediately to the principle itself. By casting an immediate regard upon one's own bosom, we may learn whether peace is there or not. But by casting the same inward regard, might not we directly learn whether faith is there or not? If it be as competent for the eye of consciousness to discern the faith that is in the mind, as to discern there the peace that is but the effect of faith-might not we, without having recourse to marks or evidences at all, just lay as it were our immediate finding upon the principle that we want to ascertain; and come at once to the assurance that faith is in me, be

cause I am conscious it is in me?

Now let it be remarked, that there are certain states and habitudes of the soul, which are far more palpable than others to the eye of conscience-certain affections, which give a far more powerful intimation of their presence, and can therefore be much more easily and immediately recognized-certain feelings of so fresh and sensible a character that almost

elude the inward discernment of man, than a state or a process of sensible impression, which announces its own reality to him in spite of himself. And thus it is, that it may be a very difficult thing to find whether faith be in me, by taking a direct look at the state of the understanding-while it may not be difficult to find, whether peace be in me, or love be in me, or a principle of zealous obedience be in me all of these making themselves known, as it were, by the touch of a distinct and vigorous sensation. And hence the test of the principle may be far more readily come at than the principle itself. The foliage and the blossoms may stand more obviously revealed to the eye of the inner man, than the germ from which they originate; and what our Saviour says of his followers is true of the faith by which they are actuated, that by its fruits ye shall know it.

And as to the peace of our text, which is stated there to be a consequence of faith-it surely cannot be denied, but by those who never felt what the remorse and the restlessness and the other raging elements of a sinner's bosom are, that the consequence is far more obvious than the cause. The mind that has been tost and tempest-driven by the pursuing sense of its own worthlessness, should ever these unhappy agitations sink into a calm, will surely feel the transition and instantly recognise it. When an outward storm has spent its fury, and the last breath of it has died away into silence, the ear cannot be more sensible of the difference—than the inner man is, when the wild war of turbulence and disorder in his own heart, is at length wrought off to its final termination. The man may grope for ever among the dark and brooding imagery of his own spirit, and never once be able to detect there that principle of faith, which may tell him that though he suffers now he wil be safe in eternity. But should this unseen visitor actually enter with him, and work the effect that is here ascribed to it, and put an end to that sore vengeance of discipline with which God had exercised him, and again restore the light of that countenance which either looked to him in wrath or was mantled in darknessshould he now feel at peace from those