that the creature is all his sufficiency; and that, grant him peace and health and abundance in this world, he would be satisfied to quit with God for ever, and to live in some secure and smiling region of atheism. This is the crying sin with every enlightened conscience. It is the iniquity of the heart, that survives every outer reformation, and lurks in its profound recesses under the guise and semblance of many outward plausibilities—it is this, for which in the whole compass of nature, no healing water can be found, either to wash away its guilt, or to wash away its pollution. It is a sense of this which festers in the stricken heart of a sinner, and often keeps by him and agonizes him for many a day, like an arrow sticking fast. And it is not enough that justification be brought into contact with the sin of all our social and all our relative violations. It must be made to reach the deadliest element in our controversy with God, and be brought into contact, as it is in our text, with the sin of ungodliness.

And, to complete the freeness of the gospel. There are many who keep at a distance from its overtures of mercy, till they think they have felt enough and mourned enough over their need of them. Now we have no such command over our sensibilities; and the most grievous part of our disease is, that we are not sufficiently touched with the impression of its soreness; and we ought not thus to wait the progress of our emotions, while God is standing before us with a deed of

justification, held out to the ungodliest of us all. To give us an interest in the saying, that God justifieth the ungodly, it is enough that we count it a faithful saying, and that we count it worthy of all acceptation. It is very true, that we will not count it a faithful saying, unless, from some cause or other, (and no cause more likely than a desire to escape from the consequences of sin) we have been induced to attend to it. And neither will we count it worthy of all acceptation, unless our convictions have led us to feel the need of a righteousness, and the value of an interest therein. But if your concern about your soul has been such, that you have been led to listen and that for your own personal behoof, to the offer of the gospelthat is warrant enough for us to explain to you the terms of it, and to crave your acceptance of them. Whatever your present alienation, whatever the present hardness of your heart under the sense of it, whatever there be within you to make out the charge of ungodliness, and whatever to aggravate that charge in your wretched apathy amid so much guilt and so much danger-here is God with a deed of righteousness, by the possession of which you will be accepted as righteous before Him; and which to obtain the possession of, you are not to work for as a reward, but to accept by a simple act of dependence. It becomes yours by believing; and while it is our office to deal out the doctrine of the gospel, we do it with the assurance, that, wherever the belief of its truth may light, it

Q

will not light wrong; but that, if the faith of this gospel be formed in the bosom of any individual who now hears us, it will be followed up by a fulfilment upon him of all its promises.

But thirdly, while the office of a righteousness before God is thus brought down, so to speak, to the lowest depth of human wickedness, and it is an offer by the acceptance of which all the past is forgiven-it is also an offer by the acceptance of which all the future is reformed. When Christ confers sight upon a blind man, he ceases to be in darkness; and when a rich individual confers wealth upon a poor, he ceases to be in poverty— and so, as surely, when justification is conferred upon the ungodly, his ungodliness is done away. His godliness is not the ground upon which the gift is awarded, any more than the sight of a blind man is the ground upon which it is communicated to him, or than the wealth of a poor man is the ground upon which wealth is bestowed. But just as sight and riches come out of the latter gifts, so godliness comes out of the gift of justification ; and while works form in no way the consideration upon which the righteousness that availeth is conferred upon a sinner, yet no sooner is this righteousness granted than it will set him a-working. So that while we hold it a high privilege, that we can say to the ungodliest of you all, Here is the free and unconditional grant of a justification for you, the validity of which you have simply to rely upon the privilege rises inconceivably higher in

our estimation, that we can also say, how the unfailing fruit of such a reliance will be a personal righteousness emerging out of the faith which worketh by love, and which transforms into a new creature the man who truly entertains it.

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LECTURE XIV.

ROMANS iv, 9—15.

"Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also: and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had being yet uncircumcised. For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect. Because the law worketh wrath; for where no law is, there is no transgression."

In the passage which stands immediately before Paul had asserted of Abraham, that it was his faith and not his obedience which was counted unto him for righteousness; and that it was through the former medium, and not through the latter, that he attained the blessedness of those to whom God did not reckon the guilt of their offences. And from this particular instance, does he proceed, in the verse before us, to a more general conclusion upon the subject.