shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and soul and strength." Here at once is required, not merely a profession of love to God-a profession made by many whose practice belies it--but such a cordial surrender of the heart to God as shall manifest itself by the unreserved dedication of the whole man to his service, constraining him to make the glory of God the object for which he desires to live and die. Now what resemblance does such love as this bear to the cold and heartless feelings shall I call them?-the cold and heartless regards of the natural man to God? If he acknowledge God at all, he seldom does it till he is forced by want and suffering; and then he acknowledges him only to fret and murmur againt his appointments: he does not take delight in or seek communion with him, but rather shuns it; he dislikes prayer -the appointed means of communion with him. He even turns away from information concerning God: when he hears his name mentioned, except it be in levity, he is silent, as if he heard the name of an enemy. He says in his heart to God-" Depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge of thy ways.' Is not this the feeling of man's heart towards God-(I appeal to your own consciences) except so far as he is influenced by principles or considerations which counteract or restrain his natural feelings? When a man thus compares his natural feelings and conduct towards God with the cordial love and unreserved obedience to the divine commands which are required of him, he is convicted in his conscience of numberless offences, and sees the impossibility of establishing any claim of righteousness before God on the ground of his having kept even the first and great commandment. Again, let us suppose the same man to proceed to inquire into the duties which the law of God requires of him to his fellow-creatures. We will not suppose him to have committed any of the heinous offences which would exclude him from reputable society-murder, or adultery, or open theft, or perjury. Being free from these and other gross crimes, he once, probably, thought well of himself, as upon the whole a good and meritorious man, especially as he could number many acts of kindness to his fellow-creatures. But when he learns from the Scriptures, that the commandment which forbids murder may be broken by an angry word; that which forbids adultery, by a lustful look; and others, by many acts, desires, and words, which no human laws can punish;-when he perceives this, and learns, moreover, that every offence against his fellow-creatures is an offence against God, who has required of us, as a duty to himself, that we should love our neighbour as ourselves; he will then feel how utterly vain must be the attempt to justify himself before God on the ground of his obedience to any one of the commandments. "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord," he will then say with the Psalmist; "for in thy sight shall no man living be justified:" and seeing how grievously he has already deceived himself, he will moreover fear lest he should still form too favourable an estimate of his own goodness, and will cordially join in the prayer-" Search me, O Lord, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts;" for he considers, that if his own heart condemn him, God is greater than his heart, and knoweth all things, and that from his judgment there will be no appeal. Surely, my brethren, if you have ever compared yourselves with the perfect law of God, which reaches even to the purposes and thoughts of the heart, you must have trembled under that sentence-"Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." And if you have never so compared yourselves, you have yet to learn that the scanty performances, on which you ground your hope of acceptance before God, will not endure the scrutiny to which they will be subjected. You will not abide the day of his coming; you will not stand when he appeareth. Say, ye who are trusting to yourselves that you are righteous; say, any one who is trusting to himself that he is righteous, what if the day of judgment were actually come, and you were weighed in those awful and impartial scales, which will then ascertain the quality of your righteousness? Are you sure that it would not be pronounced concerning you"Thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting?" And if you are then found wanting-should the scale in which you are placed fly upwards,-what is to supply the deficiency? Justice, impartial justice holds the balancethe balance of the sanctuary, for that you did choose to be weighed in. Dare you stand the trial? Surely you dare not. You have only to realise now the estimates which you will one day form of the extent of the law of God, and of your own sins both of omission and of commission, to be utterly confounded at the thought of appearing before God on the ground of your obedience to that law. Are you trusting to such obedience as the ground of your acceptance? Then, if only one transgression of the law were recorded against you in the book of God's remembrance, you would be under a sentence of condemnation; but, instead of one offence, there are ten thousand registered against - you, and not one of them will be overlooked | comparison of ourselves with the law of God in the day when God will reckon with you. You cannot tear out that dreaded leaf! As an illustration of the effect produced by a man's comparison of himself with the requirements of the law of God, we may refer to the case of the apostle Paul. “I was alive," says he, "without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." Before his conversion he was a Pharisee-righteous in his own esteem -exceedingly zealous of the traditions of the fathers-ignorant of the spirituality of the law-attending only to the letter of it, and to the corrupt glosses of the scribes, which often served to explain away even that; and then, having an outward decency of character, without any acquaintance with his inward corruption, he concluded that he was " touching the righteousness which was by the law" -the only righteousness of which he made any account-"blameless." But when the commandments were applied to his conscience by the Holy Spirit, convincing him of sin when he saw how much more was required of him than he had done, or could do in his own strength-not only outward decency, but inward purity and holiness, then, his confidence in his own righteousness was overthrown; the justice of God, which he had supposed to be on his side, appeared armed for his destruction; he was struck with death by that very law from which he expected life; "sin revived, and he died." Such was the effect produced on the apostle Paul by a discovery of the extent and spirituality of the law of God; and such assuredly will be the effect produced upon any one of you who has not already experienced it, if he shall be brought, as I earnestly hope and pray that he may, to judge himself, before it be too late to profit from the discovery, by the standard of the perfect law of God. The law, then, i. e. the moral law, which sets before us the state of heart and conduct towards God and man which constitutes righteousness, shews the impossibility of our attaining, by obedience to it to any righteousness which can justify us before God. I do not say that this is the only use of the moral law; we shall presently have occasion to shew that it is not. But "for righteousness" -for justification before God, the moral law shews that the case of individual man would be hopeless, if he depended upon his own performances. Even if we could from the present moment yield a sinless obedience to all the commandments-which no man can do still the guilt of our past transgressions would remain in full force against us, and would ensure our condemnation. every This, then, is the conclusion to which a brings us, that we need a better righteousness than any which we have attained to, or can attain to, by any performances of our own; we need a righteousness commensurate with the demands of God's law, which is perfect. But where shall this be found? The moral lan does not supply it, but exposes our need of it. II. Let us then proceed to examine what the ceremonial law could do for us in respect of righteousness or justification. For particular sins against God, both of the nation and of individuals of the Israelites, the ceremonial law appointed special sacrifices to be offered in the way of expiation or atonement, i. e. to procure the pardon of God for the offender. The officiating priest, laying his hands upon the head of the animal brought to be offered as a sacrifice, confessed over him the sins of the nation or of the individual; the animal was then slain, being understood to suffer death in the stead of those in whose behalf he was offered, and thus to make satisfaction for the transgression. The guilt of the offerer was transferred to the victim, whose life being paid as the penalty, the offerer was set free. Besides the occasional sacrifices thus offered, there were stated ones every morning and evening, and at the recurrence of certain annual solemnities; by which there was a confession made continually of many transgressions of the law undefined and undefinable, which yet needed to be purged away, and for which reconciliation was thus made. Now it was not possible, as we read in the epistle to the Hebrews, that the blood of bulls and of goats should of itself take away sin. In the blood of the slaughtered animal the offerer saw indeed the justice of God, which denounced death against every transgression; but he saw there no adequate expiation made for his own iniquities. What then was the purpose of these sacrifices? It was to direct the view of the offerer to another and an adequate sacrifice for sin-to Christ the Son of God, the substance typified by those shadows-the Lamb of God, as he is called in reference to these emblems of his propitiatory sacrifice, who, by the one oblation of himself once offered, was to make a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. The union in his person of the two natures of God and man fitted him for the discharge of that office, which no other could have performed the making of a sufficient atonement for the sins of all mankind. As man, he was capable of suffering in behalf of his brethren; and his divine nature gave to his voluntary suffering, endured for them, infinite merit and efficacy. Through him God could be just and yet justify the sinner who by believing in him should thereby be interested in him. In him mercy and truth could meet together, righteousness and peace could embrace each other. Thus was Christ the end and object set forth by the sacrifices of the ceremonial law. These had in themselves no efficacy to the taking away of sin, and were made effectual to that end only as they prefigured and represented Him whom God had appointed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. Similar remarks will apply to all the purifications and ablutions and other rites of the ceremonial law. These too derived all their virtue from their reference to the same glorious Person, who, by his humiliation and obedience unto death, was to purchase for those who should believe in him, not only the forgiveness of sins, but also deliverance from the pollution of sin,-a new creation unto holiness, to be wrought in them by the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, which they were to receive from him. The further prosecution of this part of the subject would carry me beyond the limits within which I must confine myself; and it is, perhaps, more important that I should press upon you the consideration, that the spirit of those Israelites, whose error the apostle exposes in the passage from which our text is taken, was not confined to their descendants, or to the time when the apostle wrote. It survived the overthrow of the Jewish polity, and soon re-appeared, and now often appears, under a somewhat different form, in Christian communities and individual Christians. As far as articles and creeds and formularies can exclude it, it is excluded from our own truly scriptural Church; but it is a spirit of error and antichrist, which finds so much in our corrupt nature that is congenial with it, that we have all need to watch and pray against its insidious approaches. It was the pervading spirit of the Church of Rome, against which our reformers mainly protested, as destructive of the faith of the gospel, and against which, in whomsoever found, we must maintain that "most wholesome doctrine" of Scripture set forth in our eleventh article, "that we are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not by our own works or deservings." This spirit exists at this day in all those persons who attend Christian ordinances, and perform moral duties, with a view to establish thereby their own righteousness-who trusting to the form of godliness deny, its power-who, because they were baptised in their infancy, and have attended with some regularity on the public services of religion, and have borne a reputable character for morality, expect the favour of God as a recompense for service performed, for work done. It is seen too in those who, holding fast the form of sound words, and therefore being, as they conceive, sound in the faith, do yet hold the truth in unrighteousness, substituting an evangelical profession for vital godliness founded on evangelical principles. We must remind such persons, that, as he was not a Jew who was one outwardly, neither was that circumcision which was outward in the flesh; so neither is he a Christian which is one outwardly, neither is that baptism or regeneration which is outward in the flesh but he is a Christian who is one inwardly, and baptism or regeneration is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God. Far be it from me to advance this or any other doctrine of the gospel in a controversial spirit;-such a spirit I disavow, and would guard against no less than against positive error; but I must testify to you, brethren, that if any of you are looking for justification, altogether, or in part, to any thing but that one sacrifice for sin which God has in infinite mercy provided for us in the sufferings and death of his Son Jesus Christ, you will share in the disappointment of that foolish man who built his house upon the sand, "and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house; and it fell, and great was the fall of it." God has laid in Zion, for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation; he that buildeth upon it shall never be confounded. O my dear friends, build upon it; renounce every other hope, and build upon this rock, which is Christ. Many have found, in the near prospect of death and judgment, that other confidences have failed-those especially in which human merit has had any share-and have earnestly exhorted others to beware of the error of self-righteousness, on which they had well nigh been cast away: for they have then had other views than they before had of the holiness of God, before whom they were about to appear, and of their own guilt and corruption; and have seen. that no righteousness but that which is perfect can stand before the heart-searching Judge. But none ever found in such cir cumstances that he had lain too low before God, or rated too highly the preciousness of Christ; no dying man ever warned survivors to beware of this rock. Judge yourselves, brethren, by that exposition of the moral law contained in our Saviour's sermon on the mount; for that is the standard of which you must not come short, if you would claim the reward of debt for work done; and if you can rise from the contem- as a rule of obedience. From subjection to plation of it with a disposition to stand before the ceremonial law he has set us free; but not God on the ground of your own righteous- from obedience to the moral law contained in ness, you must have forgotten numberless the ten commandments as explained by himoffences both of omission and commission, of self in the sermon on the mount. On the thought, word, and deed, which are not for- contrary, he has confirmed and greatly exgotten by the Searcher of hearts, and which tended its requirements; and moreover he will again pass in review before you, when you supplies to those who believe in him new will be least able to endure the sight. But motives and new assistances for the fulfilshould you be brought, by a comparison of ment of them. The man who, feeling himyourselves with that standard, to see that in self to be a sinner and deserving of the wrath yourselves you are poor, and miserable and of God, has fled for refuge to the hope set blind, and naked, destitute of any thing that before him in the gospel, and who, being juscan recommend you to a God of infinite pu- tified by faith, has peace with God,—such rity and holiness, and under a sentence of an one does not feel himself thereby set at condemnation to eternal misery; you will liberty to transgress that law from whose then be prepared to receive with thankfulness condemning power he has been delivered at that merciful provision which has been made such a price as the sacrifice of the death of for you in the gospel of Jesus Christ; you Christ. On the contrary, love to the Saviour, will then welcome the offer of free justifica- who has bought him with his blood, constrains. tion through his blood and righteousness, as him to love and obey that law which Christ the thing suited to your actual need; you so loved and honoured as to die for the transwill see and feel that it is the only way ingression of it by others, and to fulfil it which a guilty, polluted creature could hope to receive it: and then surely you will ask and receive; if you ask, you will receive justification as the free gift of God through Jesus Christ; and you will learn, with the apostle Paul, to account all other things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ; and will desire only to be found in him, not having your own righteousness, which is by the law, but the righteousness which is of God by faith. per fectly in his own person. He feels himself not without law to God, but under the law to Christ; for he knows that if it was the design of the law to lead him for righteousness to Christ, it was also the design of Christ to lead him back to the law to serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness. Let me not be misunderstood; I do not mean that Christ leads the believer back to seek righteousness or justification by the deeds of the law either in whole or in part: no; the Having been led by the nature of my sub-believer in Christ is dead to the law as a coject to caution you against trusting to the observance of the law of God as a ground of righteousness or justification before God, I feel it necessary to caution you also against the opposite error of some, who maintain that the sacrifice and obedience of Christ have absolved us from an obligation to keep the commandments. If, say they, no righteousness can be obtained by the observance of the law of God, why observe it? Let us sin on, that grace may abound. Such persons, being in love with sin, pervert to their heavier condemnation the only doctrine through which they can be saved. What, then, is Christ become the minister of sin? Did the Son of God bleed and die as a sacrifice for sin, in order that men might go on fearlessly in the practice of it? Can any man in his senses really believe this? No; the notion is as senseless as it is wicked. Jesus Christ did indeed die to deliver those who should believe in him from the guilt and punishment of past transgressions, and from the condemning power of the law for the time to come, so that in this sense it should not have dominion over them; but he did not die to deliver any from subjection to the law venant of works-in that view he has nothing to do with it; but Christ leads him back to the law as a rule of life, according to which he must walk as the disciple of Christ and the child of God; and he sets before him his own example while on earth, which was in perfect conformity to it. He brings him. back to the law, no longer as a slave driven only by fear to the performance of a task, but as a son, an adopted child of his heavenly Father, furnished with new motives to obedience, and new affections befitting the new relation into which he has been brought by his union with Christ. He now approaches the law not as an engine of terror charged only with destruction, but as a friendly guide to that conformity to the divine will which is now the object of his most earnest desires and prayers. What he now supremely desires is holiness; and as the guide thereto, he loves that perfect law which before he feared and hated; he would not have it at all less strict than it is, he only grieves that through the remains of in-dwelling sin he often fails in obedience to it. But failing, as he still does, in perfect obedience, he does not, therefore, return to seek justification from it, but rather learns to trust more simply and exclusively to the hope of righteousness by faith; and this hope again reciprocally and progressively purifies his heart, subduing his corruptions, and improving and strengthening his Christian graces, .till he is at last made meet for the inheritance of those who are sanctified. CONSTRAINING INFLUENCE IN HIS MINIS TERS OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST, THE love of Christ is to constrain his ministers to faithfulness and distinctness in preaching his Gospel. The love of Christ does not constrain to a mere cold statement of moral duties, or to the setting forth of a remedial law, or to vain speculations about things "that profit not those that are occupied therein." But if" we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead," the love of Christ must constrain us to testify, as to dead sinners, the Gospel of the grace of God. It constrained Paul, immediately after he was called to the work, to "preach Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God;" it constrained him to "determine to know nothing among the Corinthians but Jesus Christ, and him crucified." But let us enter more particularly into the nature of those doctrines which the love of Christ will constrain us to be diligent in setting forth. They will be such as will most honour him. Now in the present day, when so much of truth is admitted in terms, often when it is neither felt nor understood, we have great cause to beware of mere general statements of doctrine; we have need to see clearly the difference between a mere acknowledgment, in word, of certain truths, and a full, uncompromising holding them forth, as the objects of faith and hope, to the believer's soul. Thus Paul preached. He shewed the sinner's salvation to be one altogether of grace, and that this grace belongs to believers, as theirs in Christ. Thus he speaks of their "election by God the Father in Jesus Christ," to the Ephesians," Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:" of their adoption in him, "having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace:" of their acceptance in Christ, "wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." Thus, again, he declares that "God has created all things by Jesus Christ: to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." If there be only one way for a sinner to be saved, and "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," then the love of Christ will constrain us, (because "we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead,") to set forth in its full length and depth the misery of all, as poor perishing sinners; to trace the moral diseases of men to their first source, the alienation of the heart from God; to bring this home to the conscience, by setting forth the obligations of the law which we have broken, and the awful danger we are in, as those From "The Love of Christ the constraining Principle to Ministerial Exertion:" a Sermon preached at Alton, at the visitation, August 1839. By the Rev. Edward Auriol, M.A., Vicar of Newton-Valence-with-Hawkley.-A truly scriptural and excellent sermon. upon whom the "wrath of God abideth," until we are brought to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ: to this the love of Christ will constrain us, in order that we sinners may be driven from all those false refuges to which we naturally look, to see that nothing but the righteousness and merits of that Saviour whom "we only can love, because he first loved us," can avail with a righteous and holy God for our salvation. Thus, in the chapter before us, Paul preaches the ministry of reconciliation,-and on what does he found his invitation, "be ye reconciled to God?" Upon this truth, "He hath made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." What statement can be more clear than this, as to the way of a sinner's justification? that in the same way as Christ, "who knew no sin," was made sin, which can only be by the imputation of our offences to him; so, in the same way we, by his righteousness reckoned to us, are made to stand as righteous before God," the righteousness of God in him." And the manner in which we become interested in Christ's work is most distinctly shewn in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians to be "by faith," "of faith, that it might be by grace:" not because faith produces holiness in us, though it does so; we are not justified by faith because by it Christ dwells in our hearts, though he does so dwell, but because, by faith, we are led to look out of every thing in ourselves, to the finished, and completed, and perfect work of Christ, when "he once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God." But here, again, the love of Christ will constrain us to a faithful setting forth the origin of this faith, and also the consequences of being partakers of this salvation; "he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose again." (If we be indeed dead, then we cannot quicken ourselves; the work of the Holy Spirit alone draws the sinner to him; "no man can come to me, except the Father, which hath draw him.") The faith which unites us to Christ is then the gift of God by his Holy Spirit; and it is therefore a sanctifying principle. We cannot too frequently maintain that, to produce "holiness unto the Lord," is the very end which we have in view in preaching Christ, that "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature" and whilst for this purpose we speak of the high privileges of believers in Christ, of their adoption into his family, to be his children, of their being made meet by his grace to be inheritors with the saints in light," we would call on them, in dependence on their great Head, we would beseech them, "by the mercy of God," "to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called;" we would point out also the utter inconsistency of all "dead works" with a professing of spiritual life: and thus, standing between the living and the dead, as the Lord's instruments to awaken the latter, and to confirm, establish, and edify the former; and the love of Christ constrains us, "in doctrine to shew incorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil to say of us," whilst we "rightly," because according to the Scriptures, " divide the word of truth." sent me, 66 The Cabinet. THE WONDERS OF REDEEMING LOVE.-Everlasting righteousness is an undoubted title to everlasting life; and such is the righteousness of Jehovah Jesus. Couldst thou unite all the righteousness of heaven and earth in thine own person, thou wouldst see, Christian, that the infinite righteousness of thy Redeemer so vastly transcends the splendid aggregate, that, with the apostle, thou mightest count them all but "dung and drogs" in the comparison, and seek thy justification and glory in his alone. Rejoice, then, |