spiritual blessings in heavenly places;-grace here, and glory hereafter; "fulness of joy, and pleasure for evermore." Other things there are which are accessories to happiness;-this is "the one thing needful." Other things perish in the using;-this, as its very designation imports, shall last as long as our being. O how worthless in the comparison will every thing pertaining to the present life be found and felt to be, when that most solemn of moments shall arrive, the moment that shall close time and open eternity! If then we have not a wellfounded and satisfactory hope of eternal life, how deplorable will be our condition!-When one world must be left, and another entered,-and when the one we leave has been our portion, and no provision has been made for the other!-when there is either no hope at all, or a hope that is self-flattering and delusive, founded in ignorance, in wilful and criminal ignorance, and only imbittering by disappointment the misery in which it terminates.-There is but one alternative,-eternal life and eternal death. O think, my readers, of an alternative so solemn and so irreversible ;-and, ere it be for ever too late,

"while it is called to-day,"-while life and death are still set before you,-choose the life, that you may live. You are sinners. We are all sinners. This is the generic character of our race. The members of it may be practically sinners in an endless variety of degrees. But all have sinned." Nor is the guilt of any individual, especially when regarded in its principle of ungodliness, of trivial amount. And surely, with respect to that first and most essential principle of the Gospel-that eternal life is a gift, the gift of free mercy to the undeserving, I might put to you, in all its emphasis, the question of our Lord to the Jews on another subject "Why, even of yourselves, judge ye not what is right?" Must it not be so? Is not the congruity

obvious between guilt and grace; and the incongruity not less so between sin and meritorious desert? Is it not right that the sinner should be. humbled, and that the God whom he has offended should be glorified? How harmonious the divine statement "The WAGES of sin is death; but the GIFT of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." And, whatever you may think of it, the declaration is plain and peremptory. If you are justified at all it must be " freely, by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." If you now have, or if you ever obtain, eternal life, it must be " IN HIS SON." There is but one way of it. Grace must reign. If you will not be debtors for it to grace, and to grace alone, (for the very nature of grace forbids a compromise,) yours it can never be. If you will not glorify God by accepting his free mercy, God must glorify himself by letting justice have its course. And then-who can intercede for you? who can save you? Do not, O do not, persist in rejecting the counsel of God against your own souls. Accept as a gift what you cannot, in the nature of things, without a dereliction on God's part of the principles of his moral government, ever obtain otherwise. Receive Christ; and in receiving Him, you receive eternal life. The spiritual principles of that life enter with him into the soul; the favour of God, with all its concomitant and promised blessings, becomes yours; and what is begun here shall be perfected hereafter. Hear, then, and obey the beseeching voice of Him who has said, and, while his word remains, continues to say-lifting up his hand to heaven, and, because he can swear by no greater, swearing by himself" As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live: Turn ye, turn ye-for why will ye die!"

PROPOSITION III,

IT IS BY FAITH, OR BY "BELIEVING ON THE NAME OF THE SON OF GOD,”—THAT ETERNAL LIFE IS OBTAINED.

SECTION I.

What is included in believing in or on the name of Christ?

This part of my subject I feel solicitous to place in as simple and scriptural a light as possible. The statements of the word of God respecting it have nothing in them but simplicity; it is to be lamented that the same thing cannot by any means be affirmed of human systems.

I begin with an observation suggested by the particular terms of the text. There are some writers who conceive that such phrases as " believing on" and "believing in," contain in them an evidence that saving faith is something more than simple belief. They have the idea of a difference between believing a person, and believing on or in a person; between believing a testimony, and believing on or in a testimony.-Now it may at once be granted, that between the two former phrases there is a difference; a difference very obvious, but one which does not at all affect our present inquiry. When we speak of believing a person, the person believed is the testifier :-when of believing on or in a person, the person is the subject of the testimony. We believe God, bearing testimony concerning his Son-we believe on or in Christ, to whom the testimony relates; whose person and whose work are the subject of it.-The testifier and the subject of the testimony may be the same. God may bear testimony of himself. Jesus Christ may bear testi

mony of himself. Each may thus be believed as the testifier, and believed on as the subject of testimony. For exemplification of the correctness of this distinction, we need not go further than the preceding context. In verse 10 it is said: "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he hath not believed (in or on, us,) the record which God gave of his Son." Here we have believing on the Son of God, who is the subject of the testimony;-believing God, who is the bearer of the testimony; and believing in or on the testimony itself which is borne,-the latter phrase amounting to the same thing with giving credit to it, or, if you will, putting confidence in it, as the word of God: just as we are accustomed to say, when we hear any report which we do not see sufficient reason for believing, I have no faith in it; meaning neither more nor less than-I don't at all believe it-or, I attach no credit to it. These phrases, then,-believing on the Son of God, believing God, believing in the record that God hath given of his Son, and (as in the text) believing on the name of the Son of God, are all phrases of equivalent import.-In chap. iv. 16. again, we have the object of faith stated in another form, without any preposition between it and the verb:-" And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us ;"-the love, namely, manifested in the mission and work of Christ mentioned in the preceding verse-" and we have seen, and do testify, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." The case becomes still more simple, upon comparing with these expressions the phraseology of chap. iv. 15. chap. v. 1. and in the Gospel of John, chap. xx. 31. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God;"-" Whosoever believeth that Jesus

is the Christ is born of God:"-" And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, ye might have life through his name." In the first of these three passages, the high privilege of dwelling in God, and having God dwelling in us, that is-the enjoyment of the closest and most intimate fellowship of mutual love and union of spirit with God, which it is possible for a created soul to realize,-is attached to "confessing" (which is just the utterance of believing, and in such a connexion may be regarded as much the same)" that Jesus is the Son of God:"-in the second, being a child of God is associated in the same way with" believing that Jesus is the Christ:"-and in the third, both titles are combined in expressing the object of faith (each, when they occur separately, implying the other) and eternal life is connected with believing "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," precisely as it is in the text with believing" on the name of the Son of God." The two phrases, therefore, in the style of this writer, may be considered as of the same amount. Than the passage in the Gospel, indeed, it is impossible to conceive any thing more simple. The "signs" spoken of are evidences of the truth"that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God:"-these signs are wrought for the express purpose, that, on the ground of the evidence afforded by them, this truth might be believed:-and with the believing of it eternal life is connected;-the life being obtained in believing; not, however, on account of the sinner's faith, but " through his name" in whom he believes.

What, then, is included, do you ask me, in "believing on the name of the Son of God?" I answer --the same as in believing "the record that God