their writings is the divine righteousness revealed from faith to faith. The inexhaustible treasure is here, from which all succeeding teachers of the church are to be perfected, and thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

"Hither as to their fountain other stars

Repair, and in their golden urns draw light."

In approaching the apostolical epistles we must each bring the spirit and disposition of the Christian disciple. We must read with prayer for divine illumination and the grace of faith, by the exercise of which the truth which is alone able to make us wise to salvation shall be substantiated in our own experience. Let me say, then, in the counsel-words of a pastor of another land: Consider, Christian, these holy epistles as if they were written to thee; and seek in them, as the first and purest sources, the instruction and edification which thou canst find no where else in so high a measure.

Here are

the epistles of the Lord; yea, much rather, here is the Holy Spirit himself thy Teacher, and he teaches the great reality of redeeming love, with all which can illumine thy understanding, and make thy heart great and worthy."

THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.

WRITTEN, probably from Corinth, about the fourth year of Nero, A. D. 58. The church in Rome, though at that time of recent formation, was thriving fast in numbers and religious excellence. Yet, composed of believing Jews and evangelized Gentiles, they needed to be confirmed in the great distinctive truths of the gospel, so as to be preserved from the incipient heresies of the age, and especially the error of the Judaizers, who wished to blend with the Christian system the observances of Mosaism. In the following review I have abstained from a too minute analysis, as this part of the volume would

be speedily enlarged into a disproportionate and unprofitable amplitude. The numbers denote the divisions of the Syrian church lessons as in the text throughout.

1. INSCRIPTION. The true apostle himself first obedient to the call of grace, then consecrated for the manifestation of that gospel, which, completing the truth partially made known in the Old Testament, unfolds to the world a full revelation of its Saviour. Peace and grace the inheritance of the church.

Christianity already conspicuous at Rome, though no apostle seems as yet to have visited the city. (Acts ii. 10; xviii. 2.) St. Paul's interest in the welfare of the disciples, and his earnest desire to be among them for their edification: (Acts xix. 21 :)

2, 3. And for the testimony of the gospel in the metropolis of the world: inasmuch as the gospel makes known the way of salvation to man, whether Jew or Gentile, and reveals the terms of a sinner's justification before God. Mankind at large, sinning against the internal convictions of truth, are under the condemnation of their divine Judge. This unfaithfulness to primitive truth followed and punished, in the case of the Gentiles, by judicial blindness, infatuation, and abandonment to every species of depravity.

4. Hence the knowledge, whether of the Gentile philosopher, or (especially of) the Jewish doctor, instead of exempting the possessor of it from the penalty due to unrepented sin, must increase the weight of vengeance when the long-suffering of the just Governor of the universe shall have given place to the era of retribution. Thus the Gentile, who, though destitute of a written revelation, has an interior law in his conscience which he habitually violates, and the Jew, who has received a record of the divine will and dares to disobey it, are equally liable to wrath; because it is not the mere knowledge of the law, but obe

dience to it, that can render us approvable at the supreme tribunal.

5. That the Gentiles were thus responsible, though not then endowed with the written law, shown from the manifest stirrings of a principle within them which prompted many of them to conduct conformable with the precepts of the law; by the sentiment of conscience, which has always reference to a rule, and by their mutual praise or condemnation of one another's manner of life.

[This interior law is here represented, not as having been ascertained by the unaided intellect of the Gentile world, proving their independence of the necessity of a direct communication of truth from God, but as having been "written upon their hearts," that is, divinely communicated; in itself a REVELATION, made originally to the patriarchs, (Genesis,) and perpetuated by the general operation of the blessed Spirit (Gen. vi. 3) through the virtual mediation of the all-redeeming Logos. (John i. 9, 10.)]

But if the Gentile, with his great disadvantages, is thus shut up to judgment, what shall the end be of the Jew who even boasts of his pre-eminent privileges, and lives in deliberate transgression? Religious privileges in themselves, instead of necessarily saving those invested with them, will only make the condemnation of the disobedient the more tremendous.

6. Not that the apostle would depreciate the true worth of Israel's privileges: for, though true religion invariably holds its throne within us, the externals of churchmanship, without an interior principle of spiritual life, hav ing nothing in them of the essence of religion; and though on this account the ecclesiastical prerogatives of Judaism could not of themselves insure salvation; still were they nevertheless of high and solemn value. For example the presence of the means of grace, and the

:

word which revealed the will of God, that word which remains inviolably true, not only in its promises fulfilled to the faithful, but in its threatenings, which cannot but be executed on the unbelieving, though he be a Jew. In this must every man concur, he excepted who would blasphemously deny the divine rectitude in the government of the world.

But, it is objected, this universal conclusion is too absolute; since there may be some kinds of sin which could subserve the divine glory; as when, for instance, the Jew made a proselyte of a Heathen by some " pious fraud;" thus causing the truth of God to be more extensively spread by means of a human lie:-In this case would the Jew be rightly punished? Undoubtedly, replies the apostle. Such conduct, when slanderously attributed to us Christians, is held up to the execration of all the good. The condemnation of sin, committed by whomsoever, and under whatever pretext, is just. Let the Jew therefore shake off the delusion, so common to his people, that natural descent from Abraham, and even investiture with the external privileges of the theocracy itself, can give him an impunity in sin, or an inde pendence of the mercy which he needs in common with the most abject outcast of Heathenism.

7. The conclusion rings the knell for all human hope of acceptance with God upon the ground of impunity by privilege, or even by the merit of personal righteousness. The former is a dream, the latter an impossibility. Fallen man cannot work out a righteousness by the deeds of the law, since the clearer his perceptions of its requirements, the more convinced must he be of his inability to fulfil them.

But in this dumb despair of conscious guilt and helplessness, the gospel is heard, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, and revealing "the righteousness of God" (the

plan of the Deity for restoring us to righteousness; or, the way in which he acts in making sinners righteous) "from faith to faith." This "righteousness of God," or this method by which he proceeds in constituting sinful man righteous, is here declared to be "without law;" that is, an arrangement distinct from law. The function of law is to acquit the innocent only, and to condemn the guilty. But the covenant of grace, witnessed by the prophets and proclaimed fully by the apostles, makes known a way by which God can be just, and yet be the justifier of the ungodly. This is by the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ, by whose propitiatory and vicarious death eternal redemption has been wrought out for us, and free justification become the privilege of all who believe in

him.

This economy of faith, while it magnifies the grace of God, casts down the pride of man; brings Jew and Gentile to the same level of grateful dependence on the same mercy, and establishes the authority of the law itself by the divine recognition of its claims in that ineffable Atonement which is the procuring cause of our pardon; and from the invariable fact, that with forgiveness there is imparted a principle of spiritual life, by which a man thus reconciled to God, spontaneously aims at obedience to his commandments.

The existence of a provision for our justification being thus shown, St. Paul next proceeds to exhibit the simple condition on which it is suspended; namely, FAITH in Christ. A man partially instructed in gospel truth would naturally conclude, that a basis being laid in the atonement for the pardon of the sins which are past, the terms of our acceptance with the Divine Being would require, not indeed a perfect obedience to the law, which in our fallen state is impossible; but such an obedience, sincere, though defective, as man can give by agonizing