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and daring excesses.

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It will describe the whole range of human character; and we challenge you to put ligible line to separate the exercise of the your finger on that point where it is to ter- justice of God from the exercise of his minate, or to find out the place where a placability, every individual will fix this barrier is to be raised against the pro-line for himself; and he will make these gress of this mischievous security. It will two attributes to be yea and nay, or fast go downwards and downwards, till it come and loose with each other; and he will to the very verge of the malefactor's dungeon. stretch out the placability, and he will press Nay, it will enter there; and we doubt not, upon the justice, just as much as to acthat an enlightened discerner may witness, commodate the standard of his religious even in this receptacle of outcasts, the ope- principles to the state of his religious pracration of the very sentiment which gives tice; and he will make every thing to such peace and such buoyancy to him whose square with his own existing taste, and moral accomplishments throw around him wishes, and convenience; and his mind the lustre of a superior estimation. But will soon work its own way to a system this lustre will not impose on the eye of of religious opinions which gives him no God. The Discerner of the heart sees that disturbance; and the spirit of a deep slumone and all of us are alienated from him, ber will lay hold of his deluded conscience; and strangers to the obligation of his high and thus, from the want of a settled line,and spiritual acquirements. He declares from the vague, ambiguous, and indefinite the name of Christ to be the only one given way in which this matter is taken up, and under heaven, whereby men can be saved; brought to a very loose and general conand after this, every act of confidence, dis- clusion,-or, in other words, from that very owning his name, is an expression of the way in which natural religion, whether most insulting impiety. On the system of among deists, or our more slender profesgeneral confidence, every man is left to sin sors of Christianity, leaves the whole quesjust as much as he likes, and to take com- tion, about the limit of the attributes, unenfort just as much as his powers of delu- tered upon,-will every man take comfort sion can administer to him. At this rate, in the imagined tenderness of God, just as the government of God is unhinged,-the much as he stands in need of it, and expewhole earth is broken loose from the sys-riment on the patience of God just as far as tem of his administration, he is deposed his natural desires may carry him,-so that from his supremacy altogether,-peace, when there is no peace, spreads its deadly poison over the face of society, and one sentiment, of deep and fatal tranquillity about the things of God, takes up its firm residence in a world, which, from one end to the other of it, sends up the cry of rebellion against him.

when we look to the men of the world, as they pass smoothly onward, from the cradle to the grave, do we see each of them in a state of profound security as to his interest with God; each of them solacing himself with his own conception about the slenderness of his guilt, and the kindness of an indulgent Deity; each of them in a This is a sore evil. The want of a fixed state of false and fancied peace with Heaand clearly perceptible line between the ven, while every affection of the inner man, justice and placability of the divine nature, and many of the doings of the outer man, not only buries in utter darkness the ques- bear upon them the stamp of rebellion tion of our acceptance with God; but, by against Heaven's law; each of them walkthrowing every thing loose and undeter- ing without uneasiness, and without terror, mined, it opens up the range of a most while, at the same time, each and all of lawless and uncontrolled impunity for the them do in fact walk in the counsel of their disobedience of man, up from its gentler own hearts, and after the sight of their own deviations, and down to its most profligate eyes.

SERMON XVI.

The Union of Truth and Mercy in the Gospel.

"Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”—Psalm lxxxv. 10.

Ir was not by a simple deed of amnesty, free and a full discharge from the penalties that man was invited to return and be at he had incurred by breaking it. It was by peace with God. It was by a deed of ex- executing these sanctions on another, who piation. It was not by nullifying the sanc- voluntarily took them upon himself, and tions of the law, that man was offered a who, in so doing, magnified the law, and

made it honourable. To redeem us from no one feature, either of greatness or of the curse of the law, Christ became a curse beauty to admire in it-yet do angels adfor us. It was not by God lifting off our mire it; and to accomplish it, did the Son iniquities from our persons, and scattering of God move from the residence of his glory, them away into a region of forgetfulness, and all heaven appears to have laboured without one demonstration of his abhor- with the magnitude and the mystery of the rence, and without the fulfilment of his great undertaking; and along the whole threatenings against them; but lifting them tract of revelation, from the first age of the off from us, he laid them on another, who world, do we behold the notices of the bare, in his own person, the punishment coming atonement; and while man sits at that we should have borne. God laid upon his ease, and can see nothing to move him his own Son the iniquities of us all. The either to gratitude or to wonder, in the guilt of our sins is not done away by a evolution of that mighty scheme, by which mere act of forgiveness. It is washed away mercy and truth have been made to meet by the blood of the Lamb. God set him together, and righteousness and peace to forth a propitiation. He was smitten for kiss each other, it is striking to mark the our transgressions. He gave himself for place and the prominency which are given us an offering and a sacrifice to God. The to it, in the councils of the Eternal. And system of the gospel no more expunges it might serve to put us right, and to rethe attribute of mercy from the character buke the levities which are so currently of the Godhead, than it expunges the attri- afloat in this dead and darkened world, did butes of truth and righteousness. But all we only look at the stress that is laid on the mercy which it offers and proclaims to this great work, throughout the whole of a guilty world, is the mercy which flows its preparation and its performance,-and upon it through the channel of that Media-how, to bring it to its accomplishment, the torship, by which his truth and his justice Father had to send the Son into the world, have been asserted and vindicated; and, and to throw a veil over his glory, and to while it reveals to us the openness of this put the cup of our chastisement into his channel, it also reveals to us that every hand,—and to bid the sword of righteous other which the heart of man may con- vengeance awake against his fellow,-and, ceive, is shut, and intercepted, and utterly that he might clear a way of access to a impassable. There is none other name guilty world, had to do it through the given under heaven, whereby man can be blood of an everlasting covenant,—and to saved, but the name of him who poured lay the full burden of our atonement on the out his soul unto the death for us. With-head of the innocent sufferer,-and to enout the shedding of his blood, there could dure the spectacle of his bitterness, and his have been no remission. And he who hath agonies, and his tears, till he cried out that not the Son, hath the wrath of God abiding it was finished, and so bowed himself and on him. gave up the ghost.

Man is blind to the necessity, but God sees it. The prayer of Christ in his agony was, that the cup, if possible, might be removed from him. But it was not possible. He could have called twelve legions of angels, and they would have eagerly flown to rescue their beloved Lord from the hands of his persecutors. But he knew that the Scripture must be fulfilled, and they looked on in silent forbearance. It behooved him to undergo all this. And there was a need, and a propriety, why he should suffer all these things, ere he entered into his glory.

It is due to our want of moral sensibility, that sin looks so light and so trivial in our estimation. We have no adequate feeling of its malignity, of its exceeding sinfulness. And, liable as we are to think of God, that he is altogether like unto ourselves, do we think that he may cancel our guilt as easily from the book of his condemnation, by an act of forgiveness, as we cancel it from our own memory, by an act of forgetfulness. But God takes his own way, and most steadfastly asserts, throughout the whole process of our recovery, the prerogatives of his own truth, and his own righteousness. He so loved the world, as to send his Son to it, not to condemn, but to save. But he will not save us in such a way as to confirm our light estimation of sin, or to let down the worth and dignity of his own character. The method of our salvation is not left to the random caprices of human First, it maintains the entireness and thought, and human fancy. It is a method glory of all the attributes of the Godhead. devised for us by unsearchable wisdom, Secondly, it provides a solid foundation for and made known to us by fixed and unal- the peace of every sinner who concurs in terable truth, and prescribed to us by a suit. And, thirdly, it strengthens all the sepreme authority, which has debarred every curities for the cause of practical righteousother method; and though we may beholdness among men.

We shall offer three distinct remarks on this method of our redemption, in order to prove that it fulfils the whole assertion of our text, that it has made mercy and truth to meet together, and righteousness and peace to kiss each other.

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I. In darkness, as we are, about the glory | destroy it. When we think of his law, it is and character of the Supreme Being, it a law which must be made honourable, would offer a violence even to our habitual even though, by the enforcement of its conceptions of him, to admit of any limit, sanctions, it shall sweep into an abyss of or any deduction from the excellencies of misery all the generations of the rebellious. his nature. We should even think it a lessen- And yet this God, just, and righteous, and ing of the Deity, were the extent of his true, is a God of love, and of compassion, perfections such, as that we should be able infinite. He is slow to anger, and of great to grasp them within the comprehension mercy. He does not afflict willingly; and of our understandings. The property of as a father rejoices over his children, does chiefest admiration to his creatures is, that he long to rejoice in tenderness over us all; they know but a part, and are not aware and out of the store-house of a grace that is how small a part that is, to what is un-inexhaustible, does he deal out the offers known; and never is their obeisance more of pardon and reconciliation to every one lowly, than when, under the sense of a of us. Even in some way or other does the greatness that is undefined and unsearch-love of God for his creatures find its way able, they feel themselves baffled by the in- through the barrier of their sinfulness; and finitude of the Creator. It is not his power, he who is of purer eyes than to behold as attested by all that exists within the iniquity, he who hath spoken the word, limits of actual discovery; but his power, and shall he not perform it,-he of whose as conceived to form and uphold a uni- law it has been said, that not one jot or one verse, whose outskirts are unknown.-It is tittle of it, shall pass away, till all be fulnot his wisdom, as exhibited in what has filled, he holds out the overtures of friendbeen seen by human eye; but his wisdom, ship to the children of disobedience, and as pervading the unnumbered secresies of invites the guiltiest among them to the mechanism, which no eye can penetrate. light of his countenance, in time, and to the It is not his knowledge, as displayed in the enjoyment of his glory and presence, in greater and prophetic outlines of the his- eternity. tory of this world; but his knowledge, as There is no one device separate from the embracing all the mazes of creation, and gospel, by which the glory of any one of all the mighty periods of eternity.-It is these attributes can be exalted, but by the not his antiquity, as prior to all that is visi- surrender or the limitation of another attrible, and as reaching far above and beyond bute. It is in the gospel alone that we perthe remote infancy of nature; but his an-ceive how each of them may be heightened tiquity, as retiring upwards from the lof- to infinity, and yet each of them reflect a tiest ascent of our imaginations, and lost in lustre on the rest. When Christ died, justhe viewless depth of an existence, that tice was magnified. When he bore the was from everlasting.-These are what burden of our torment, the truth of God reserve to throne the Deity in grandeur inac-ceived its vindication. When the sins of cessible. It is the thought of what eye hath not seen, and ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, that places him on such a height of mystery before us. And should we ever be able to overtake, in thought, the dimensions of any attribute that belongs to him, -and far more should we ever be able to outstrip, in fancy, a single feature of that character which is realised by the living and reigning God,-should defect or impotency attach to him who dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto, would we feel as if all our most rooted and accustomed conceptions of the Godhead had sustained an overthrow, would we feel as if the sanctuary of him who is the King eternal and invisible had suffered violence. And this is just as true of the moral as of the natural attributes of the Godhead. When we think of his truth, it is a truth which, if heaven and earth stand committed to the fulfilment of its minutest article, heaven and earth must, for its vindication, pass away. When we think of his holiness, it is such that, if sin offer to draw nigh, a devouring fire goeth forth to burn up and to

the world brought him to the cross, the lesson taught by this impressive spectacle was, holiness unto the Lord. All the severer perfections of the Godhead, were, in fact, more powerfully illustrated by the deep and solemn propitiation that was made for sin, than they could have been by the direct punishment of sin itself.-Yet all redounding to the triumph of his mercy.— For mercy, in the exercise of a simple and spontaneous tenderness, does not make so high an exhibition, as mercy forcing its way through restraints and difficulties,-as mercy accomplishing its purposes by a plan of unsearchable wisdom,-as mercy surrendering what was most dear for the attainment of its object,-as the mercy of God, not simply loving the world, but so loving it as to send his only beloved Son, and to lay upon him the iniquities of us all,-as mercy, thus surmounting a barrier which, to created eye, appeared immoveable, and which both pours a glory on the other excellencies of the Godhead, and rejoices over them.

It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has poured the light of day into all the intri

cacies of this contemplation. We there see | to paralyze him. In these circumstances, no compromise, and no surrender, of the there may be the conformity of the letter attributes to each other. We see no mutual extorted from him, in the spirit of bondage; encroachment on their respective provinces, but the animating soul is not there, which -no letting down of that entire and abso- turns obedience into a service of delight and lute perfection which belongs to every part a service of affection. In Heaven's account, in the character of the Godhead. The jus- such obedience as this is but the mockery tice of God has not been invaded; for by of a lifeless skeleton; and, even as a skelehim, who poured out his soul unto the ton, it is both wanting in its parts, and death for us, has the whole weight of this unshapely in its proportions. It is an obeaggrieved and offended attribute been borne; dience defective, even in the tale and meaand from that cross of agony, where he sure of its external duties. But what percried out that it was finished, does the di- vades the whole of it by the element of vine Justice send forth a brighter and a worthlessness is, that, destitute of love to nobler radiance of vindicated majesty, than God, it is utterly destitute of a celestial chaif the minister of vengeance had gone forth racter, and can never prepare an inhabitant and wreaked the whole sentence of con- of this world for the joys or the services of demnation on every son and daughter of the great celestial family. the species. And as the justice of God has suffered no encroachment, so, such is the admirable skilfulness of this expedient, that the mercy of God is restrained by no limitation. It is arrested in its offers by no questions about the shades, and the degrees, and the varieties of sinfulness. It stops at no point in the descending scale of human depravity. The blood of Christ cleansing from all sin, has spread such a field for its invitations, that in the full confidence of a warranted and universal commission, may the messengers of grace walk over the face of the world, and lay the free gift of acceptance at the door of every individual, and of every family. Such is the height, and depth, and breadth, and length, of the mercy of God in Christ Jesus; and yet it is a mercy so exercised, as to keep the whole council and character of God unbroken,and a mercy, from the display of which, there beams a brighter radiance than ever from. each lineament in the image of the Godhead.

And, on the other hand, if the man be satisfied, this very circumstance gives to the righteousness that he would establish for himself, the character of an insult upon God, instead of a reverential offering. It is a righteousness accompanied with a certain measure of confident feeling, that it is good enough for the acceptance of the Lawgiver. There is in it the audacity of a claim and a challenge upon his approbation. Short as it is, in respect of outward performance, and tainted within by the very spirit of earthliness, it is brought like a lame and diseased victim in sacrifice, and laid upon the altar before him. It is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God; but it is a still more direct outrage upon his attributes, to expect that he will look on sinfulness with complacency. It is an open defiance to the law, to trample upon its requirements; but it were a still deadlier overthrow of its authority, to reverse its sanctions, and make it turn its threatenings into rewards. The sinner who disobeys and trembles, renders at least the homage of his fears to the truth and power of the Eternal. But the sinner who makes a righteousness of his infirmities; and puts a gloss upon his disobedience, and brings the accursed thing to the gate of the sanctuary, and bids the piercing eye of Omniscience look upon it, and be satisfied,

forth will burn up the offering, that it may rise in sweetly smelling savour to him who sitteth on the throne; or will it seize on the presumptuous offerer, who could thus dare the inspection, and thrust his unprepared footstep within the precincts of unspotted holiness?

Now if the glory of God be so involved in this way of redemption, what shall we think of the disparagement, that is rendered to him, and to all his attributes, by the man who, without respect to the work and the righteousness of Christ, seeks to be justified by his own righteousness? It is quite possible for man to toil and to waste his strength-tell us whether the fire which cometh on the object of his salvation, and yet, by all he can make out, may be only widening his laborious deviation from the path which leads to it. Do his uttermost to establish a righteousness of his own, and what is the whole fruit of his exertion?-the mere semblance of righteousness, without the infusion of its essential quality,-labour without love, the drudgery of the hand, without the desire and devotedness of the heart, as its inspiring principle. If the man be dissatisfied, as he certainly ought to be, then a sense of unexpiated guilt will ever and anon intrude itself upon his fears; and a resistless conviction of the insufficiency of all his performances will never cease to haunt and

And how must it go to aggravate the of fence of such an approach, when it is made in the face of another righteousness which God himself hath provided, and in which alone he hath proclaimed that it is safe for a sinner to draw nigh. When the alternative is fairly proposed, to come on the merit of your own obedience and tried by it, or to come on the merit of the obedience of

II. We shall conclude, for the present, these brief and imperfect remarks, by adverting to the solidity of that foundation of peace, which the gospel scheme of mercy provides for every sinner who concurs in

Christ, and receive in your own person the farther provocation of a slighted and rereward which he hath purchased for you,--jected gospel. only think of the aspect it must bear in the eye of Heaven, when the offer of the perfect righteousness is contemptuously set aside, and the sinner chooses to appear in his own character before the presence of the Eternal. When the imputation of vanity and useless-it. It is altogether worthy of observation, ness is thus fastened on all that the Son hath done, and on all that the Father hath devised for the redemption of the guilty,--when that righteousness, to accomplish which, Christ had to travail in the greatness of his strength, is thus held to be nothing, by creatures whose every thought, and every performance, have the stain of corruption in them-when that doctrine of his death, on which, in the book of God's counsel, is made to turn the deliverance of our world, is counted to be foolishness,-when the sinner thus persists in obtruding his own virtue on the notice of the Lawgiver, and refuses to put on, as a covering of defence, the virtue of his Saviour,we have only to contrast the lean, shrivelled, paltry dimensions of the one, with the faultless, and sustained, and Godlike perfection of the other, to perceive how desperate is the folly, and how unescapable is the doom of him who hath neglected the great salvation.

It is thus that the refusal of Christ, as our righteousness, stamps a deeper and a more atrocious character of rebellion on the guilty than before, and it is thus that the word of his mouth, like a two-edged sword, performs one function on him who accepts, and an opposite function on him who despises it. If the gospel be not the savour of life unto life, it will be the savour of death unto death. If it be not a rock of confidence, it will be a rock of offence, and it will fall upon him who resists it, and grind him into powder. If we kiss not the Son, in the day of our peace, the day of his wrath is coming, and who shall be able to stand when his anger is kindled but a little? We have already offended God by the sinfulness of our practice, we may yet offend him still more by the haughtiness of our pretensions. The evil of our best works constitutes them an abomination in his sight; but nothing remains to avert the hostility of his truth and his holiness against us, if by those works we seek to be justified. It will indeed be the sealing up of our iniquity, if our obedience, impregnated as it is with the very spirit of that iniquity, shall be set up in rival ship to the obedience of his only and well beloved Son,-if, by viewing the defect of our righteousness, as a thing of indifference, and the fulness of his, as a thing of no value, we shall heap insult upon transgression, and if, after the provocation of a broken law, we shall maintain the boastful attitude of him who hath won the merit and the reward of victory, and in this attitude add the

how, under this exquisite contrivance, the very elements of disquietude in a sinner's bosom, are turned into the elements of comfort and confidence in the mind of a believer. It is the unswerving truth of God, which haunts the former by the thought of the certainty of his coming vengeance. But this very truth, committed to the fulfilment of all those promises, which are yea and amen in Christ Jesus, sustains the latter by the thought of the certainty of his coming salvation. It is justice, unbending justice, which sets such a seal on the condemnation of the disobedient, that every sinner who is out of Christ, feels it to be irrevocable. In Christ, this attribute, instead of a terror, becomes a security; for it is just in God to justify him who believes in Jesus. It is the sense of God's violated authority which fills the heart of an awakened sinner with the fear that he is undone. But this authority under the gospel proclamation, is leagued on the side of comfort, and not of fear; for this is the commandment of God, that we believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, as he has given us commandment. It is not by an act of mercy, triumphing over the other attributes, that pardon is extended to the sinful; for, under the economy of the gospel, these attributes are all engaged on the side of mercy; and God is not only merciful, but he is faithful and just in forgiving the sins of those who accept of Christ, as he is offered to them in the gospel. Those very perfections, then, which fix and necessitate the doom of the rebellious, form into a canopy of defence around the head of the believer. The guarantees of a sinner's punishment now become the guarantees of promise; and while, like the flaming sword at the gate of paradise, they turn every way, and shut him out of every access to the Deity but one,-let him take to that one, and they instantly become to him the sureties and the safe-guard of that hidingplace into which he has entered.

The foundation, then, of a believer's peace, is, in every way, as sure and as solid as is the foundation of a sinner's fears. The very truth which makes the one tremble, because staked to the execution of an unfulfilled threat, ministers to the other the strongest consolation. It is impossible for God to lie, says an awakened sinner, and this thought pursues him with the agony of an arrow sticking fast. It is impossible for God to lie, says a believer; and as he hath not only said but sworn, there are two immutable

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