of God to salvation, inasmuch as it is that doctrine alone which lays a firm and solid foundation for peace of conscience, for peace of conscience in a man awakened to a sense of his extreme danger. The great use of conviction of sin is to prepare the mind for the reception of mercy; it is the harrow that turns up the fallow ground, and alone fits it to receive the good seed. If it terminated merely in despondency, or any of those efforts which the anxiety of the human conscience might produce, and did not lead the man to depend on the promise of the Divine pardon, it would be all unavailing. But while the cross of Christ is the most calculated to produce serious alarm, and to excite men to flee from the wrath to come, it is the most adapted to give them true peace in believing. We are informed by St. Paul, that the blood of Christ has this effect in a far more perfect manner than the sacrifices of the law had in the removal of outward pol. lutions: "If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living and true God?" It is the blood of Christ that purges the conscience, and the design is that we may serve the living and true God; but we cannot serve God until the conscience is first purged; as the ceremonial disqualifications must be removed from the Jews before they could approach the Divine Being, so a hope of Divine favour and mercy must be felt before we can devote ourselves to the service of the great Supreme. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts us, "Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say, his flesh; and having a High-Priest over the house of God, let us draw near.' And the way in which we are to draw near is "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." It is the blood of Christ that takes away that condemning sense of the law, that horror arising from a sense of guilt, without the removal of which we can take no steady complacency in the character of God; for, however lovely the Divine Being may be in himself, we cannot take any steady complacency in a character which appears to be our inflexible and determined enemy. It is necessary that the conscience should be in some degree pacified, before a cheerful obedience is rendered, and this only the cross of Christ inspires. Men attempt, in the first instance, to seek peace in other quarters; they endeavour to reform what is amiss; they subject themselves to stricter regulations; they multiply the rules of watchfulness, and of temperance and sobriety; they subject themselves, particularly in certain countries, to great severities; but still the sense of guilt returns, and all with which they attempt to cover themselves, and all the shreds by which they endeavour to conceal themselves, will not avail: they have nothing

to shut out the surges of Divine wrath; the bed is too short for them to stretch themselves upon it. They then have recourse to resolutions of future time, hoping they shall be able to make some atonement by a more correct deportment; but, if the law comes, in its purity and extent, they find all this is vain; that it demands nothing short of perfect obedience; that the penalty has been incurred; that the wrath of God has been excited; that they are already in condemnation; that the sentence has already passed; that they are already condemned, and that they are only waiting, if the Divine proceedings go on in their usual course, for the season of retribution; that they are shut up, they cannot escape. But no sooner are they enabled, in consequence of the despair of any other remedy, and as they find no other resource, to look to the blood of Christ, as cleansing from all sin, than there they find a solid ground of hope; there the conflict is at an end; and they see that they have nothing to do but humbly to receive recon ciliation. Peace with God has been made, justice has been satisfied, and only waits to see the sinner confessing his sins over the head of that victim, and asking for mercy in that name.

This relief which the conscience receives is a sound and perfect cure; it has a healing effect upon the conscience, not slightly healing so as to break out again, but it goes to the root of the matter; for the sinner can fetch no reasons for sorrow from the law of God but what are sufficiently answered in the cross of Christ. He can look at death in all its solemnities; he can see himself weighed in the scales of Divine justice, and found wanting; he can see the balance turns against him; he can see his sins great, and ready to destroy him. But when he contemplates this, instead of his knees smiting against each other, like Belshazzar's, he can say, "Who is he that layeth any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." He is more than conqueror in his pleading against the accusations of Satan and all the legal consequences of his conduct; he is more than conqueror through Him that loved him. He is under no necessity, in order to maintain this peace, to have recourse to any sophistical representations or diminutions of the justice or purity of the Divine nature. He has no necessity to form an advantageous comparison of himself with others. Though he were emphatically a sinner, and laden with the iniquities of the whole human race, he perceives in the sacrifice of Christ more than an adequate compensation for all his offences; the law is dignified, and made eternally honourable. And nothing, my dear brethren, besides this, will suffice to give peace to a conscience which is affected with a sense of guilt; for persons under those circumstances conceive their sins have peculiar aggravations, that there is a peculiarity in their character with which no others have been acquainted. Every one under

these circumstances is induced to place himself on the lowest scale; and if the declarations of the mercy of God were not in the most general terms-if every one, however guilty, were not invited to come, a man under this sense of guilt must be the subject of eternal despair. It is here, my dear brethren, that the sinner is enabled to examine the claims of Divine justice, and the provisions of Divine mercy; and when he puts them by the side of each other, his sins, though they were as scarlet, appear all at once to lose their dye; his convictions are buried in the depth of the sea; and he can smite on his heart, while he applies that balm to his conscience, that no one who believes in Christ shall come into condemnation. He can condemn himself, while he knows he shall not be condemned; he appeals from the tribunal of justice to mercy, and a particular reliance on Jesus Christ is all that is demanded at his hand; and his feelings now subside into adoring love and delightful reliance on God. That which was before his terror now becomes his joy, and he can give thanks even at the remembrance of the holiness of God. This is a sure foundation; it is the foundation God himself has laid; He brought it forward from the counsels of eternity; it was announced by the prophets, but it is revealed more perfectly by Jesus Christ himself. "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste." Thus the penitent believer is erect, self-assured; he stands firm upon the foundation prepared for him; rests upon the merit and atonement of another; his weakness is made strong, but not by any strength of his own. Having the hand of faith, and, though weak in himself, and shaken with every wind, he feels himself to partake of its stability; he stands upon the rock of eternal ages.

In the third place, the preaching of the cross is the power of God, because it is calculated in the highest degree to enforce all the motives to Christian virtue and obedience. It lends its aid and assistance to the performance of every duty, and tends to suggest motives peculiar to itself to the performance of every part of the preceptive will of God. Reconciliation to God is subservient to the sinner's approach to God, to the coming near to Him in religious exercises and obedience. We are redeemed to God; if we are purged from dead works, it is that we may serve the living and true God. Now the same doctrine which encourages our approach to God, strengthens us in the performance of duty; it strengthens us all our way till we reach to our Father and our God. With respect to those duties which have the Divine Being for their immediate object, it is obvious that, though it does not include those duties by any immediate authority; that though it does not make that our duty which was not our duty before; though it makes no difference in our duty to love God with all our heart and all our strength, every one must perceive how it is calculated to enforce that principle, what aid

Let us lay

and energy it gives to it in the breast of every one. hold of the cross of Christ. That entire devotedness to God which is a part of the Christian character, you are aware, is to be learned with the greatest advantage in the school of Christ. That person who has laid hold of the propitiation, and is justified by faith, is alone able to realize his peculiar obligations to love his Redeemer. He knows that he is bound by the ties of creation to serve God; but the ties of redemption are more felt now; they are more tender, they are softened by an unction of Divine love; and he is willing to be retained like a victim at the horns of the Divine altar; he feels the force of the appeal to this principle, where the Apostle Paul reminds us that we are not our own, but bought with a price, and adds, "therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." The service he renders is that of a person alive from the dead. All the men in Bethany would acknowledge their obligations to serve God, but Lazarus above all, when called from the grave. "Ye were dead, but now ye are alive in the Lord." And Christ "died for all, that they which live might not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again." Those who have been made alive from the dead, whose sentence of condemnation is repealed, and whose life is of a spiritual nature, they must be devoted to God in the first place, and ultimately to Him by whom this nature is communicated. The whole creation is in a manner forgotten, and what is said as to the general economy of God is said of the sacred economy of God. The heavens and the earth shall not be named in comparison with the new heavens and the new earth he shall form. The apostle tells us, in the Epistle to the Romans, "When we were in the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." The newness of the spirit is derived from the love of the Redeemer. The same duties are performed, but in a more perfect manner. The old service of God is succeeded by a service of a more perfect kind. The slave serves his master from necessity, the child from love; the slave considers that his service is to be compensated by God, but the child serves freely; the slave has no motive but the fear of the lash, or some slender recompense, and he serves out his duty to his master, but the child enjoys in serving a most perfect freedom: the penurious and reluctant service of the slave is exchanged for the free services of the affectionate child. Hence all the duties we owe to our fellow-creatures are invested with a new character, unknown to one who performs them from mere legal considerations; they are all influenced by love to God, and that arising out of a recollection of benefits received. Morality becomes dignified. There is not an abstract sense of mere cold morality lying at the basis of it;

not a remembrance of the relation he stands in to the Divine Lawgiver, but it comes accompanied with other considerations bearing a more immediate relation to the heart. Religion descends from the cross of Christ, and it lights upon morality; it finds the duties of life in a lower state, and it glorifies, it touches every feature of it.

LXVI.

FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN CHRIST AND BELIEVERS.* JOHN, XV., 15: Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto

you. [Preached at Broadmead, Bristol, Thursday evening, Nov. 11, 1830, preparatory to the Lord's Supper.]

THESE words form a part of the consolatory discourse which our Saviour addressed to his sorrowful disciples, while they partook of the last passover, on the eve of his crucifixion. Here He lets out his heart in a strain of tenderness and endearment, such as is nowhere else to be found in the New Testament. He was deeply affected by the sorrow of his disciples. Any person of an ordinary character would have been absorbed by the sense of personal distress; but He, who foreknew all his own sufferings, appears intent only on the relief of theirs.

66

There is something in these words appropriate to the apostles; they were present with Him in his most trying moments; they therefore needed and received peculiar supports and consolations : Ye are they that have continued with Me in my temptations; and I appoint unto you, in my kingdom, a place of pre-eminent honour at my right hand.” Let it be granted, then, that these words are not applicable to us to the same extent as they were to the apostles. Still, the reciprocal sentiments of Christ and his Church, such as belong to a spiritual friendship, such as distinguish believers, as not only servants of God, but children, not only servants of Christ, but friends; these sentiments remain the same; and, as Christians, we may, without presumption, consider ourselves as addressed in the text.

I. It may be interesting to spend a few moments on the illustration of this subject.

1. The love which Christ bears towards his people suits the rela tion of friends better than that which subsists between a master and his servants. Reverence is the appropriate sentiment of a servant towards his master; there is not, in the order of things, so much of affection in that relation. But Jesus Christ loves his people with an

From the notes of the Rev. T. Grinfield.