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 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 ordinar 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 acquitted of all its penalties. It was not for His 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 redoemin 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 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 neu the 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 niticancy-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 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 Christ Jesus our Lord: And thus while it | marked by a violent separation fron. all 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. And here we may remark, that by the simple bestowment of holiness upon His people, does He in fact infuse into their spirits the great and essential element of heaven's blessedness. It is a mistake to think, that it is either the splendour or the music of paradise, which makes it a place of rejoicing. It is because righteousness will flourish there, that rapture will be felt there. It is because heaven is the abode of purity, that it is also an abode of peace and pleasantness. It is because every heart thrills with benevolence, that in every heart there is beatitude unspeakable. It is love to God that calls forth halleluiahs of ecstacy which ring eternally in heaven. In a word, it is not an animal but a spiritual festival, which is preparing for us in the mansions above; and in these mansions below, a foretaste is felt by those, who, through patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory and immortality and honour. The real disciples 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 worth lessness. 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 requirement which laid upon the sacrifice of his dearest possessions upon earth, in the progress of ours we may be called upon to cut off a right hand or to pluck out a right eye-that if he was bidden to wander afar from the scenes of his infancy, and to abandon all the endearments of his wonted society; so also we, without having to describe one mile of locomotion, are bidden to enter upon a new spiritual region, and by so doing, to be deserted by the congeniality and approbation of all our ungodly friends and all, our worldly companionships. In a word, the faith of Christianity, like the faith of the patriarch, is not a mere metaphysical notion-neither are the blessings of Christianity a reward for the soundness of it The faith both of the one and of the other is just such a practical sense of the reality of unseen and eternal things, as leads us to go in actual quest of them according to a prescribed course; and, in so doing, 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. Go forth with this text upon actual society, and make a survey of that mighty throng that move upon our streets, and frequent in thousands our market places -behold every individual in the busy and 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 engrosse every feeling, and that th a region of spirit which is distant is not in all his thoughts-then, if faith, instead of barren en 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 ?' and, instead of a painful banishment. he would have felt it as a refuge and a hiding place to have gone a solitary wanderer 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 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 rectitudethen the ties which bound him to the place of his nativity had been broken; 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 righteous-ness was devised, and executed, and offered ness is made ours. Faith is that act of to man as his plea both of acquittal and 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 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 two senses in which this expression may | no power of self-examination is required be understood. It may signify that peace to ascertain the existence of them. I which is brought about by a transition in could much more readily, for example, terrors that so recently had made him | hath shined in the hearts of those who beafraid; and the God that loured judgment leve, to give them the light of the knowupon his soul, now put on a face of be- ledge of the glory of God in the face of 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 signify 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, because 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 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 process of the intellect, is far more apt to 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 length wrought off to its final termination. The man may grope for ever among The 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 will 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 at nignity, and bid this unhappy outcast again look up to Him and rejoice-should the guilt which so agonised him be sprinkled over with the blood of atonement, and he again be translated into the sunshine of conscious acceptance with the Being whose chastening hand had well nigh overwhelmed him-We repeat it, that though faith in itself may elude the exploring eye of him, who finds the search that he is making through the recesses of his moral constitution to be not more fatiguing than it is fruitless-yet faith as the harbinger of peace may manifest at once its reality, by an effect so powerful and so precious. This may serve perhaps to illustrate the right attitude for a penitent in quest of comfort, under the burden of convictions which distress or terrify him. He may at length fetch it from without-but he never will fetch it primarily or directly from within. The children of Israel might have as soon been healed by looking downwardly upon their wounds, rather than upwardly to the brazen serpent, as the conscience-striken sinner will find relief from any one object that can meet his eye, in that abyss of darkness and distemper to which he has turned his own labouring bosom. He is where he ought to be, when lying low in the depths of humiliation; but never will he attain to rest or to recovery, till led to the psalmist's prayerOut of the depths do I cry unto thee, O Lord.' It is not from the trouble that is below, but from the truth that is above, that he will catch the sun-beam which is to gladden and to revive him. It is not by looking to himself, but by looking unto Jesus-and that peace with God which he never can arrive at through the medium of so dark a contemplation as his own character-that peace the tidings of which he never will read, among the lineaments of his own turpitude and deformity-the peace to which no exercise of penitential feeling, though prolonged in sorrow and bitterness to the end of his days, will ever of itself conduct him-the peace with God, which, through himself or through any penance of his own inflicting, he never will secure, can only come in sure and abundant visitation upon his heart, through the channel of our text, when it is peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 'Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved.' 'Like as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, Jesus Christ; and they who believe not and are lost, are blinded by the god of this world, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.' V. 2. The single word also may convince us, that the privilege spoken of in the second verse, is distinct from and additional to the privilege spoken of in the first. The grace wherein we stand is something more than peace with God. We understand it to signify God's positive kindness or favour to us. You may have no wrath against a man, whom at the same time you have no feeling of positive goodwill to. You are at peace with him, though not in friendship with him. It is a great deal that God ceases to be offended with us, and is now to inflict upon us no penalty. But it is still more that God should become pleased with us, and is now to pour blessings upon our heads. It is a mighty deliverance to our own feelings, when our apprehensions are quieted; and we have nothing to fear. But it is a still higher condition to be preferred to, when our hopes are awakened; and we rejoice in the sense of God's regard to us now, and in the prospect of His glory hereafter. It is additional to our peace in believing, that we also have joy in believing. There is something here that will remind you of what has been already said of negative and positive justification. It was in dying, that Christ pacified the Lawgiver. It was in rising again, that He obtained, as the reward of His obedience, the favour of God, in behalf of all those for whom He now liveth to make intercession, and from these two verses, the distinction to which we have already adverted receives another illustration. The following is a paraphrase of these two verses. Therefore having righteousness laid to our account because we have faith, we enjoy peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. By whom also it is that we have obtained admittance through our faith, into that state of favour with God wherein we stand here, and rejoice in the hope of His glory hereafter.' The only remaining topic that occurs to us from this short but comprehensive passage, is that glory of God which is hereafter to be revealed. The Apostle Peter speaks of believers being begotten again to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that passeth not away, and is reserved in heaven for those who are kept by the power of God through faith unto a salvation, |