his love, in whom he was ever well pleased-that he should reduce him to such a state of abasement in order to exalt us; that he should impoverish him, that we "through his poverty might "be made rich;" that he should permit him to be covered with reproach, that we might be clothed with glory; that he should wound him, that by his stripes we might be healed, and by his sorrow be made glad; and give him up to die upon a cross, that we might be recovered to eternal life? Now, know I," saith God to Abraham, “that thou fearest God, seeing thou "hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, "from me." But Abraham owed his son to God; God owed us nothing. Abraham had received his son from God by an extraordinary and supernatural effect of his power; God held his, only of himself. Abraham could not have retained his son, had it pleased the Almighty to take him away-but what power in heaven or in earth could have robbed the Father of his wellbeloved Son? Abraham, in offering up his son a sacrifice, performed an act of obedience as well as of love; but God, in giving his Son to death, performed a miracle purely of mercy and love: behold then again in this, the riches, "the ex"ceeding riches of the grace of God." And farther let us consider, in the

Third place, the state of those creatures to whom God gave his Son as a new subject of admiration, wherein we may discover more of the amazing riches of free grace. Had God sent his eternal Son into the world to be our head and king, while man remained in a state of innocence, had we retained the original purity and perfection of our nature, it would have been a great, a distinguishing favour; but to give him for sinful men, for criminal ungrateful creatures, for heaven-daring rebels, the objects of abhorrence and of indignation, is a dispensation of the riches of grace, which we can never sufficiently prize and esteem. "In this," says the apostle," in this, "above all things else, has God commended his "love to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, "Christ died for us." The more unworthy and hateful any object is, the more remarkable are the goodness and mercy which confer any favour upon it, and to love one's enemies is the last and highest effort of charity. To love our friends is but justice and gratitude; to love our parents or children, is only natural tenderness and affection; to love and do good to strangers is but the ordinary duty of humanity; to love and relieve the poor, and such as we expect nothing from in return, and from whom we have received no services, is at the best but kindness and generosity;

but to love our enemies, who hate us mortally, and who are insolently outrageous against us, is a pitch of goodness of which human nature is hardly capable, for" scarcely for a righteous man ❝ will one die." What thanks then are due to that God, who has loved us so much as to give his most precious gift to us while we stood in the character of guilty miserable offenders, who had rendered ourselves his declared enemies by our wicked apostacy from him. It was this which made the apostle John so much admire this boundless love of God: "God," says he," so loved "the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, "that whosoever believeth in him should not "perish, but have everlasting life;"-he beheld the cause, the spring of this amazing benefit, in the free love of God, and in that alone; for it was not that we loved God; no, our hearts were utterly estranged from him; by being under the influence of the carnal mind, which is enmity against God, we were become the slaves of sin, enemies by wicked works, and " without God in "the world." It was not then because we loved God, but that he loved us. Had he been given to be the prince and lord of angels, those pure spirits which stand continually before God, ready to execute his commands, they are holy and elevated, and might have served to reflect the bright

ness and splendour of his glory; but that he should be given for the guilty, miserable, sin-enslaved race of Adam, who had merited all his vengeance, is what confounds, at the same time that it should ravish our minds; for here we see the great God freely bestowing the most inestimably precious thing he could give, and bestowing it upon an object of all others the most unworthy of such a grace. And in the

Fourth and last place, what puts the finishing stroke to, what fills up the measure of this exceeding riches of the grace of God, which he has made known" in his kindness towards us through "Christ Jesus," is, that he has in him carried his mercy and love to us as far as they can possibly go.

What an infinite difference betwixt all his other gifts, and those which he bestows upon us in Christ Jesus! What gave he in a state of nature to those who lived simply under his government, that is, to the heathen world? Nothing but the good things, the fruits of the earth only, the riches of the world; and all that he did for those whom he inclined to distinguish and favour above others, was to give them the sceptres, the crowns, and the dignities of a mortal state, in a frail, transient, fading existence, which, after a few years of mixed pleasure and pain, vanished

away like a shadow, passed like a flash of lightning, which loses itself in eternal night. What gave he under the law to those who were the objects of that dispensation? The milk and honey of an earthly Canaan; the dainties, the blessings, and advantages of that delightful country, where death reigned as over the rest of the world, and whose happiness was of no longer duration than in the other parts of the earth. What did he give, even in a state of innocence, before the fall? A happiness indeed, which might have been immortal, by man's continuing in obedience to his Maker. But where and in what place? Upon this earth, among the flowers and rivers of a terrestrial paradise, the common habitation of other inferior animals, where life would have been still gross and sensual, and dependent upon animal functions, which would still have retained us somewhat upon a level with the lower part of the creation. This is all the length the goodness of God reached out of Jesus Christ. But of what glorious extent, quality, and degree does it appear in our great Redeemer! for in him he promises us, and gives us at the last, not earth but heaven, not time but eternity, not the happiness and pleasure of animals, but the bliss, the rapture of angels; not the sceptres, and crowns, and possessions of this world, but " a crown of glory, a scep