ledge that that God, who can never lay aside either His truth or His righteousness, 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, which first looses the bond of despair, and gives a hope and an outlet for obedience. The subtile metaphysics of the question, about the order of succession with the two graces of faith and of repentance, may entertain or they may perplex you. But of this you may be very certain, that, where there is no repentance, all the dogmas of a contentious orthodoxy put together will never make out the reality 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 repent

ance.

Life is too short for controversy. Charged with all the urgency of a matter on hand, we tell you to turn and flee and make 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 last messenger is at the door. There is not time for cold criticisms, or laborious investigations, or splendid oratory, or profound argument-when death has broke loose amongst us, and is spreading his havoc amongst our earthly tabernacles-when he is wresting away from us the delights and the ornaments of our society upon earth-when he is letting us see, by examples the most affecting, of what frail and perishable materials human life is made upand is dealing out another and another reproof to that accursed delay, which leads man to trifle on the brink of the grave, and to smile and be secure, while the weapons of mortality are flying thick around him. When will we be brought to the beginning of wisdom-to the fear of God-to the desire of doing His will-to the accomplishment of that desire, by our believing in the name of His only-begotten Son, and loving one another even as He has given us commandment? Let us work while it is day-and, set in motion by the encouragements of the gospel, let us instantly become the followers of them who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.

You occasionally meet in the New Testament, with an express reference to a certain body of writings, which are designated by the term of Scripture. 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 co-ordinate rank with the inspired books of the former dispensation.

So that all which is said of the Scriptures in the New Testament, must be regarded as the testimony of its authors to the value and importance of those writings which compose the Old Testament. And it would therefore appear from Paul's epistle to Timothy, that they are able to make us wise unto salvation.

There can be no doubt, however, that one ingredient of this ability is, that they refer us in a way so distinct and so authoritative to the events of the New Dispensation. They give evidence to the commission of our Saviour, and through Him to the commission of all His apostles. The wisdom which they teach, is a wisdom 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 indices which abound in it, to the more illuminated region of the New Testament—and, by sending us forward to that region, 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 us wise unto salvation.

The quotation taken in all its completeness is in full harmony, with the statement that 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.'

But there is more in it than this. The same light from heaven by which the doctrine of the New Testament has been made visible, has also made more visible the same doctrine, which in the Old lay disguised under the veil of a still unfinished revelation. In the first blush of morning, there is much of the landscape that we cannot see at all—and much that we do see, but see imperfectly. The same ascending luminary which reveals to us those more distant tracts that were utterly unobserved, causes to start out into greater beauty and distinctness, the fields and the paths and the varied forms of nature or of art that are immediately around ustill we come to perceive an extended impress of the character and the goodness of the Divinity, over the whole range of our mid-day contemplation. 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 pro

phet 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 brighter sun have fallen in a flood of glory over the oldest and most distant of our recorded intimations; and a Christian can now read the very first promise in the book of Genesis, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent,' which only served to light up a vague and general expectation in the minds of our 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

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