SERMON XLV.

CHRIST CONDUCTS TO HEAVEN A HOLY PEOPLE.

Titus ii. 14.

Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

MORE than eighteen hundred years since, we were visited by a stranger from a foreign world. Two questions were immediately agitated. Who is he? and What his errand? He settled them both; but they have come up, again and again, to the present day. A previous discourse had a bearing upon the first of these questions, and the text now before us will require us to attend to the second. It is selected, you will remember, from that very book which he left with us, on purpose to answer every inquiry that men would need to make respecting himself and his mission. We learn in the context, who it was that thus gave himself for us, "The great God, even our Saviour Jesus Christ." My readers are aware, that the same men, who deny that our Saviour Jesus Christ, is the great God, differ as widely from the apostle, relative to the part he acted for us. They would allow that he was commissioned to make known to us the will of God, especially the fact of a resurrection, which nature did not reveal, and establish Christian ordinances, and set us an example of virtue. That his death was vicarious, or a

substitute for our condemnation, they would generally, and I presume universally deny.

Now, if we need a Saviour to do more for us than this, then we need, not the one they offer, but whom the apostle exhibits to our view in the text. If my sins must be atoned for, if an evil heart of unbelief must be removed, and when sanctified, I must still be accepted through the merits and the righteousness of another; then I need a Saviour to do more for me than teach me truth, and give me ordinances, and be my pattern in virtue.

Had my ruin consisted merely in having lost a knowledge of God and duty, an angel might have become my instructer, and his example would have answered me the same purpose, as that of the Son of God. It would have seemed in that case wholly unnecessary, that God should be manifest in the flesh. But if the whole heart was faint, as well as the whole head sick; if there hung over us the curse of a broken law, and we were so alienated from God as to be content in perpetual exile from his service and his fellowship; then both instruction and example, if nothing more were done, would be wholly lost upon me.

What can it avail to present truth or exhibit purity, before a mind that disrelishes moral beauty, unless provision is made to subdue the aversion of the heart? And even then, how could I be happy with the curse of a broken commandment pendent over my head? O, give me such a Saviour as Paul describes, or when all is done, there is left undone the main thing requisite, to my obedience and my blessedness. If the Lord Jesus Christ came merely to instruct me, so did the prophets and the apostles; and their example, had their hearts been perfectly holy, would have been all I needed on

this point; and thus either of them might have been my Saviour as really as he who is now frequently exhibited as the only Redeemer.

If I must be content with a Saviour, who is merely my schoolmaster; I am led to ask, Why so much said of him previously to his advent? Did prophets anticipate his approach many thousand years; and martyrs hang their hopes on him so long; and angels announce his ingress, soon as the time was out; and spent the night by his manger; and a voice from heaven name him the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; and was this mighty personage, who so long held a world in agonized suspense, merely some teacher com ing to do for us what any man, if commissioned, could have done as well? Is Jehovah accustomed thus to pour honour upon a creature, sent on an errand no more grand than this?

"Is ocean into tempest wrought,

To waft a feather, or to drown a fly?"

No man can have a very deep sense of sin, and not feel his need of having done for him more than all this. He who owes ten thousand talents, and has nothing to pay, will need a Saviour who can take that debt upon him. He who has drawn upon himself the denunciations of his Maker's law, will need a Saviour to bear that burden for him. He who has a carnal mind, that is enmity against God, is not subject to his law nor can be, will wish a Saviour who can subdue that heart to loyalty and duty. And he who, after all this is done, dare not hope for heaven, unless taken by the hand, by some mighty Prince, and led every inch of the way till he is within its threshold, will inquire if no such Captain of his salvation is provided? And he will open his Bible,

and read a single sentence, and there, the great God, even our Saviour Jesus Christ, for whose appearing to judge the world his people are looking, is the very protector and friend he needs; "Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." The text furnishes a natural division of thought, and will need the aid of no numerical distinctions.

Who gave himself for us. His presentation at the altar of justice, as our victim, was his own act. He is not seized and bound, as the barbarous nations secure their victims, willing or unwilling; nor comes to the altar as Isaac did, not knowing where the lamb was for a burnt offering. He had power to lay down his life, and power to take it up again. Not merely was he given, although this was true, but he gave himself. And it was not merely his time, and strength, and patience, that he gave, as instructers do, but his life. How easily could he have blighted all our hopes in that dark hour. Had he sent Judas to his own place, or rendered him an honest man, when he came to steal the betraying kiss; or had he struck lifeless that midnight band, that came to apprehend him; or had he let down into hell that senate chamber, with its mass of hypocrisy; and paralized the sinews of that soldiery that crucified him; then had there been none to betray, arrest, or murder the Lamb of God. And he had all this power in himself, else he did not give himself. He who goes to death without his choice, by a power, human or divine, that he cannot control, cannot be said to lay down his life: his life is taken from him.

But the Sufferer of Calvary, when he left the bosom of the Father, had his eye fixed, and through his whole life kept it fixed upon the scene of the cross, as the

act that built it. Here each word has

finishing act of his humiliation, and felt not that his work was done till he yielded his life. Hence, while it is true that the Father gave his Son, it is equally true that the Son gave himself. He was as voluntary in redeeming the world, as in the Who gave himself for us. meaning. Who are we to understand by us? Not Paul himself and the good brother in the gospel to whom he wrote, merely. If another apostle may decide, the Lord Jesus Christ was "the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." I have no wish now to enter the list in that controversy, which never should have been among brethren who hold the Head, whether the atonement, as distinguished from redemption, is general or limited. Those who do not distinguish atonement from redemption, must limit it, or avow the salvation of all men; and those who do thus distinguish, may with propriety make atonement general, and still are not accountable for a consequence, which is made to follow, not on their principles, but that of their opponents.

Is there not a common ground, where those who love the truth can and must meet ? Neither of the parties, to whom I now refer, assert, that God has purposed or will accomplish the salvation of all men, through the atonement of Christ; nor on the other hand, will deny, that the atonement places the human family at large, in circumstances happily differing from that of devils. To men there go out overtures of mercy, to devils none. But does it not follow, that if mercy is offered, and the offer sincere, salvation is possible; that is, the obstructions are removed on the part of God, that would have kept men from heaven, even had they repented? and this is precisely what I understand