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if any conviction have mingled with the exercise, let him betake himself to the great fountainhead of inspiration; and if he have found no rest in all his former unceasing attempts after happiness, let him try the new enterprise of becoming wise unto salvation. Should this Bible be his guide; and prayer his habitual employment; and the great sacrifice, with the intimation of which Paul follows up his humiliating exposure of the wickedness of man, be his firm dependence-with these new elements of thought, and this new region of anticipation before him, he will reach a peace that the world knoweth not; and he will attain in Christ a comfort that he never yet has gotten in any quarter of contemplation to which he has turned himself; and this kind Saviour, touched with a fellow-feeling for his sorrows, both knows and is willing to succour him, so as to replace even in this world all the deductions that he now mourns over, and at length to bear him in triumph to that unfading country where there is no sorrow and no separation.*

* Our more copious illustration of this passage, is to be found in the 15th of the 'Commercial Discourses' already referred to; and which, therefore, we have not repeated in this place.

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LECTURE XI.

ROMANS iii, 20—26.

"Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Christ Jesus unto all and upon all them that believe ;-for there is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;— being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;-to declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness; that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."

THERE is perhaps no single passage in the book of inspiration, which reveals in a way so formal and authoritative as the one before us, the path of transition by which a sinner passes from a state of wrath to a state of acceptance. There is no passage, to which if we would only bring the docility and the compliance of childhood, that is more fitted to guide and to turn an enquiring sinner into the way of peace. Let the light which makes apparent to the soul, only shine upon these verses; and there is laid before the man who questions what it is that he must do to be saved, the great link of communication on which he may be led along from the ground of fearful

exposure that nature occupies, to the ground of a secure and lasting reconciliation. Let him lay aside his own wisdom, and submit himself to the word of the testimony that is here presented to his notice; and, taught in the true wisdom of God, he will indeed become wise unto salvation. It is an overture of God's own making, and directly applicable to the question of dispute, that there is between Him and the men who have offended Him. It is one setting forth of the way in which He would have the difference to be adjusted-nor can we conceive how defenceless creatures, standing on the brink of an eternity for which they have no provision, and which nevertheless all of them must enter and abide upon for ever, ought to have their attention more arrested and their feelings more engrossed and solemnized, than by the communication of the apostle in this verse, and by the unfoldings of that embassy of peace that is here so simply and so truly set before us.

The apostle has by this time well nigh finished his demonstration of human sinfulness; and he makes use of such terms as go to fasten the charge of guilt, not in that way of vague and inapplicable generality from which it is so easy for each man to escape the sense of his own personal danger, and the remorse of his own individual conscience; but as go to fasten the charge on every single member or descendant of the great human family. There is a method of blunting the edge of conviction, by interpreting, in a kind of corporate and collective

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way, all that is said by the apostle about the sinfulness of Jews on the one hand and of Gentiles on the other. But let each of us only review his past life, or enter with the light of self-examination into the chambers of his own heart; and he will feel himself to be addressed by the phrase of whosoever thou art, O man ;' and he will feel that in the clause of every mouth being stopped,' his own mouth should be stopped also; and he will consent that he, a native of our world, has a part in the apostle's asseveration about all the world being guilty before God; and he will readily accord with the Bible in that, whereas he is a partaker of flesh and blood, he offers no exception to the averment, that, in the sight of God and by the deeds of the law, no flesh shall be justified.

it.

It is through want of faith that we are blind to the reality of the gospel; and it is also through want of faith that we are blind to the reality of the law. The generality of readers see not any significancy in the apostle's words, because they feel not any sense of the things that are expressed by They are just as dead to the terrors of the law, as they are to the offers and invitations of the gospel. The sense of God pursuing them with the exactions of an authority that He will not let down, is just as much away from their feelings, as the sense of God in Christ beseeching them to flee for refuge to the hope set before them. The man who is surrounded with an opake partition, which limits his view to the matters that lie within the

region of carnality, and hides from him alike the place of condemnation and the place of deliverance that lie beyond it-he may enjoy a peace that is without disturbance, because, though he have no positive hope from the gospel, he has no positive apprehension from the law. He is alike insensible to both; and not till, through an opening in that screen, which hides from nature the dread and important certainties that are lying in reserve for all her children, he is made to perceive that God's truth and righteousness are out against him -will he appreciate the revelation of that great mystery, by which it is made known how truth and mercy have met together, and how righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Let us now proceed to the exposition of this passage.

Mark in the 20th verse how this question is treated as one between God and man. It is not that one man may not be justified in the sight of another may not have fulfilled all that the other has a right to expect; but the question is about justification in the sight of God. It is a judicial proceeding before God.

V. 21. A 'righteousness without the law,' is simply a righteousness which we obtain without having fulfilled that law in our own persons. Paul never loses the advantage of any testimony that is given to the doctrine of Christ out of the Jewish Scriptures; and while he therefore raises against himself the opposition of the great majority of his

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