tinually with him. But in heaven it will be perfect, because there we shall be like him, and also because we shall be with him, for we shall see him as he is. But how can these things enter into the prospects of those who deny this doctrine? Hence those who believe it, and those who deny it, have two different religions! The latter maintain that we shall be saved by our own actions, without any substitute, through the divine mercy. The former think his atonement the only ground of hope. They think that we are guilty of idolatry-we think they are guilty of injustice to Christ. Then surely our prospects must be greatly affected by a rejection, or a reception, of this doctrine. Deny it, and, alas! how they are narrowed. Receive it, and they expand and gather brightness; for Christ becomes the light of heaven-the pattern which his people are to resemble-and the fountain of everlasting glory and joy. But what attraction can there be in the future prospects of those who deny this doctrine?

In maintaining these principles, we cannot fairly be charged with a want of charity. If charity consists in offering up impor tunate prayer for our fellow-creatures-if it consists in seeking to promote their welfare-God forbid we should fall short of it, or be deficient in its exercise. But if it be to think with men, ît must have its limits. If duty be a fundamental matter if certain principles be essential to Christianity, then it is a compliment to men, and a trifling with their immortal souls, to say they are safe while they deny this doctrine. But we must not compliment Christianity away in this manner; and we are fully justified ín separating from the communion of all those who hold this great error. They may be virtuous and honourable, but with discrepancies in religion we dare not unite. Light must not have fellowship with darkness, nor must we combine truth with error. How can we unite at the table of the Lord, when one commemorates a martyr or a hero, and the other a Saviour dying in his room, as a sacrifice for sin? In inquiring whether Christ be divine, you inquire what is to be the nature of your hope, your refuge, your foundation. They will either be bright, and safe, and strong, according as you believe him to be divine; or dark, and weak, and dangerous, as you believe him to be merely huA mistake here is fatal, for it uproots the foundations of faith and hope, for there is no other name given under heaven whereby we can be saved.

man.

III.

THE TRUTH AS IN JESUS.*

EPHESIANS, iv., 20, 21: But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.

[Preached in Broadmead, Bristol, Sept. 14, 1828.]

In the commission given by Christ to his apostles, we behold him sending them forth as heralds of mercy to ruined man. Their object plainly was, to rescue the perishing from their danger, by preaching to them the words of salvation, and setting forth the awful consequences of sin. He gave them a pledge of his presence, in order to animate them amid the difficulties of their enterprise. They went forth under the most solemn sanctions: Whoso receiveth you receiveth me. When they entered into a house, they were to salute it. If a city refused to hear them, they were to depart, and shake its dust from off their feet. Though they were sent forth as sheep among wolves, that they might not be cast down in the prospect of so much peril, he gave them his final promise-Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.

The words of the text are grounded upon the same principles. Re. ferring to the corruptions of the heathen world, the apostle says to the Ephesians, Ye have not so learned CHRIST. They had not heard Christ personally, but they had believed his word. They were among those to whom our Lord had reference in his memorable rebuke to Thomas, Blessed are they which have not seen, and yet have believed. The apostles were invested with such authority that they whom they pronounced blessed were blessed indeed. By virtue of this, the Ephesians had believed as though they had heard Christ for themselves, and had been enlightened by him as the true light.

Our text presents us with a representation of truth; but the truth as it is in Jesus; whether taught by the Spirit of prophecy, by his apostles, or his ministers, it is ever the truth as it is in Jesus.

I. The word of God, in every part, has an obvious and constant tendency to Christ.

The Scriptures contain a revelation of the Divine nature and attributes, will and perfections. They would have little or no attraction without Christ. It is by Him that we know God, and come to God. The Scriptures unfold the Divine purposes of grace; but Christ is the pledge of their fulfilment. They reveal the goodness of God, and inform us that HE is love: but in order to be beneficial to us, it is necessary that we should know how it is manifested, and have an example to enable us to comprehend its nature.

They contain rules for the conduct, and a clear exposition of the

* From the notes of the Rev. F. Trestrail.

law; but what avail would these be without Christ? Just as much as reading to a criminal the statutes at large which condemned him., We see the rules of life exemplified in Christ. He magnified the law, and made it honourable. He submitted to it, suffered its penalty, and bore its curse! We can rejoice, therefore, in this bright example of conduct, combining in itself the most perfect submission to justice, and the most perfect display of purity.

The Scriptures reveal the great doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. We are enabled to believe this doctrine, which confirms the truth of the Christian religion, and is the foundation of our hopes of a better life, because Christ hath risen from the dead, and overturned the dominion of the grave. Death hath, therefore, no more dominion over us: Jesus has spoiled his power and extracted his sting, and delivered us, who, through death, had been all our lifetime subject to bondage.

They speak of the judgment both of quick and dead. The righteous and the wicked, all who have existed in every age, or shall exist in coming times, are to stand before the great tribunal, to give an account of the deeds done in the body: but Christ is to be judge of all: He is the final adjudicator of all to their everlasting states. We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; and the account we have of this transaction is a part of the truth as it is in Jesus.

They make known the existence of a future state, as a state of felicity for the righteous, and of misery for the wicked; but what would heaven be without Christ? Its happiness consists in being like him: We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. When a good man thinks of heaven, he always associates the Saviour with it. He desires to depart and to be with Christ; for in heaven he is to behold his glory. In whatever light the Scriptures are viewed, whatever may be the precepts, doctrines, or promises they contain, the language of the text becomes more and more evident, that it is the truth as it is in Jesus.

II. It appeals to certain effects produced on the heart by its operation. The apostle, when speaking of the corruption of the heathen, says to one of the churches, And such were some of you, but ye are washed, ye are sanctified. Ye have been taught by a different preceptor; and have learned another and a better lesson.

The truth as it is in Jesus produces effects which nothing else can; and if this may be asserted of Christians, when the profession of religion exposed its adherents to persecution, how much more of us in the present day, when we can follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth?

Thus

1. When we receive the truth as it is in Jesus, we abandon all grounds of merit in relation to our own actions, and place our sole dependance upon the power and grace of the Redeemer. pride, that darling vice of our corrupted nature, is cut up by the roots, and humility becomes a distinguishing feature of the new man.

2. It will extinguish all notions of mere legal obedience to the law, and lead to the perfect obedience of faith. We shall retire from all

hope of salvation through the works of the law, and rejoice in the finished work of Jesus. We shall aspire after the friendship of God, and the possession of holiness, without which no man can see the Lord. In the glorious plan of salvation, and its glory is displayed in its effects on the heart and life, God has thrown into eternal shade all human glory. Such is the sanctity of the blood of Christ, that it can cleanse the foulest guilt; such are the transcendent merits of the blessed Saviour, that they constitute an ocean of pure element to drown all our pollution.

3. It produces an entire alteration in our habits and feelings. Every person manifests an obvious change after his conversion. However amiable, upright, and decorous he may be, he is more distinguished than ever for the highest virtue when he becomes a child of God. And if he have been profligate in life and character, darkness and light are not more contrary than his former manner of life and his present. If ancient habits of sin have not been destroyed; if the evil passions of our nature have not been subdued; if all tendencies to evil in thought and feeling have not been checked, we have not learned Christ, nor been taught the truth as it is in Jesus. Remember the words of the apostle, For the grace of God, which hath appeared unto all men, teacheth us to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and piously in this present evil world.

4. It is at once a source of anxiety and of consolation. It excites the greatest concern respecting the interests of the soul, and fills the mind with the consolatory and animating hope of endless blessedness in a future state. Like God, the author of it, the truth can kill, and make alive.

It excites the all-important inquiry, What must I do to be saved? But the wound it inflicts is cured by the same hand. Jesus Christ is the balm in Gilead, and the physician there. We cannot estimate this anxiety so as to express it in words, it is so absorbing. We cannot fully depict the power and excellence of the consolations which this hope imparts; it looks for eternal realities, and expects to rise to the fountain of all blessedness.

5. It produces the profoundest humility, and confers the highest dignity. It gives such a view of sin and of the expedient devised by infinite wisdom and love to render the exercise of forgiveness compatible with justice, that the soul is prostrated before God. This is the natural result of such views. It is no degrading position for a penitent sinner to occupy. The deepest prostration before the throne of mercy is the proper attitude for a returning prodigal, and a reconciled, pardoned rebel; and the living God looks with infinite complacency and satisfaction on such a penitent believer; for if Christ be the Son of God, he could have no other object in view, in his sufferings and death, than to redeem man from the curse of the law, and reconcile us to God through the blood of the cross.

Hence the Christian derives his dignity-he feels himself to be a son of God-he looks beyond the veil of mortality. The humblest Christian is dignified, even in suffering, by the hope of future bliss:

For these light afflictions are but for a moment, and work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

No doctrine unites all the elements of grandeur and humility like the truth as it is in Jesus. It produces the highest degree of happiness and joy. They are not only of the highest degree, but permanent in their duration. It passes all understanding; for the hope of it is more glorious than the splendours of the universe.

It should induce us to unite with the people of God, for this truth binds the hearts of Christians together: They are one in Christ. It brings them together at innumerable points of contact. They are thus made one body; they are one in condition and circumstances. When driven together by a common storm, they fly to the same refuge. Were it not for this uniting tendency in the truth, Christianity would never have subdued the world. Its adherents, however numerous, could only have been single lights; and they would soon have been extinguished by the gusts and storms of this tempestuous world.

IV.

THE WISDOM OF GOD AS DISPLAYED IN THE GOSPEL.* 1 CORINTHIANS, ii., 6, 7: Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to naught; but we speak the wisdom of GOD in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory.

[Preached at Denmark Place Chapel, Camberwell, June 24, 1827, on behalf of the Bristol Baptist College.]

THOUGH the apostle had planted the cross, with considerable success, among the Corinthians, they suffered themselves to be subverted from the truth, and were involved in a variety of dangerous errors. They gave way to many gross immoralities; they fomented the spirit of party, despoiling the harmony and disfiguring the beauty of the Church. The apostle applies himself to counteract these various evils; and his success appears to have been nearly equal to his desires. To accomplish his important purpose, he reminds them that the wisdom connected with the doctrine of the cross was greatly superior to the wisdom of this world. Corinth was one of the principal schools of science: it was the custom of her philosophers and orators to embellish their statements with all the subtleties of argument, and the ornaments and graces of speech. But the apostle well knew that the arts of human learning and the embellishments of human rhetoric would but ill suit the simplicity of the gospel, and would rather go to make it of none effect. "I came not unto you," says he, "with ex

* Reported in the Pulpit, vol. viii.