of man.

vine aid. Even natural religion teaches us man's feebleness. Revelation opens that disease to the bottom. Revelation proceeds on the fall and corruption Revelation declares that faith must be a living principle, operating upon the whole soul. Revelation pronounces the Holy Ghost to be the divine agent who produces such a faith. And nothing can be so clear as the reasonableness of all this; the first step in the argument being granted, that the Revelation requiring this faith and promising this grace which produces it, has come from God.

But let us consider, as we proposed,

III. THE EXTENT TO WHICH, FROM THe nature OF THE CASE, FAITH Should be carried.

For the case is this. We receive a Revelation from Almighty God with a heartfelt repose and acquiescence in the divine testimony. We do this cheerfully as the most reasonable and becoming act of an accountable being to its Creator revealing his will. We seek the grace necessary for believing aright. Then surely the utmost care is necessary not to go beyond, nor stop short in a concern of such importance. We must be much on our guard not to add to, nor diminish from, the testimony on which our faith rests. We must be watchful not to impose our opinions or errors on the divine record. For in proportion as faith resigns us unreservedly to the directions of Christianity, we must see that it be indeed to Christianity that we thus yield up our whole understanding and heart. This is demanded by the very nature of the

case.

We travel an unknown road; dangers beset us on all hands; precipices, and morasses, and bye-paths present themselves. We have an unerring guide; but then we must follow sedulously his conduct. We must not overrun, not linger behind, not start on either side of the path wherein he leads us.

If the case were different; if we were on our own bottom, or treating a subject of human cognizance, or temporary interest, errors would be of less moment; but in a divine Revelation, where we know nothing but what we are taught-where much is new, mysterious, sublime, incomprehensible, we cannot act too warily.

The extent, then, to which faith must be carried, is such as to embrace all the parts of the Bible; to give to each its relative importance; to stop, with minute and watchful conscientiousness, where the Revelation stops; and to express ourselves as much as possible in the very words of the divinely-inspired volume.

1. We must extend our faith to EVERY PART OF THE REVELATION made to us by Almighty God, not excepting any, but considering the whole entire book as one complete communication made by God to man, for the most important purposes. We are to explore the Scriptures as a mine of precious ore, where the vein runs in every direction, and where a new source of riches opens continually on every side, and when we least expect it.

We are not merely to believe, with a general faith, in all that the Scripture reveals, without entering into detail, or understanding the particular truths of which it consists; but we are to pursue out the subject, and go into all its ramifications, and believe explicitly in each part of the matter of Revelation.

The Scriptures relate facts which God has confirmed; they contain doctrines which God has immediately inspired; they hold forth promises and assurances concerning the future, which God has engaged to accomplish; they lay down rules of conduct, which God has prescribed; they make discoveries of mysteries in the divine nature, and will, and purposes, and operations, which God has been pleased to attest.

They contain sanctions and threatenings, which God has seen fit to pronounce.

These various elements of truth, are partly involved in the history of the patriarchal age, in the lives of saints and prophets, in the rise and progress of the Jewish nation, and in the series of the history of the kings of Israel and Judah; and they are partly found in the divine poems and psalms, indited by inspired men. Many truths, again, are conveyed in the types and ceremonies of the law; and others in the discourses of the prophets. Then, the gospels contain large portions of truth; and the acts of the apostles, and the epistles, yet larger, being the final development of the Revelation. Now faith marches through the whole land, and sees what are the truths communicated in each part of the Revelation.

Faith regards the perfections of God, his righteousness, his law, his government, his decrees; the creation of the world, the entrance of sin and misery, the fall of man, the evil and desert of sin, the deceitfulness and wickedness of the human heart, the immortality of the soul, an eternal state of happiness and misery.

Faith especially regards the testimony of God concerning his Son. It respects the exceeding great and precious promises made in him; and the blessings of pardon, justification, adoption into God's family, the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the hope of everlasting life, which are bestowed as the purchase of his death.

Faith becomes also the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen;" 13 it penetrates the invisible world, lays heaven and hell open to our view, contemplates the hosts of good and evil spirits, with which we are surrounded, and looks forward to eternity and the day of judgment, as just at hand,

13 Heb. xi. 1.

These are merely some capital points; but faith receives every subordinate one also, and omits nothing that God has thought fit to communicate.

2. But not only so: this principle of faith gives to every part of Revelation THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE which it finds assigned to it. There is an analogy, a harmony, a proportion, in the divine truths. They compose a whole; they are united with each other; they spring one from another, as we have frequently observed; they are revealed for certain purposes, with certain limitations, and in connexion with certain preceding and following truths. Faith regards not only the doctrine, but the manner in which it is communicated, the frequency of its occurrence, the use to which it is applied, the proportion in which its several parts stand to each other.

you

The more we examine Scripture, the more we find that its instructions are not all of equal importance to us, though none are unimportant; and we must determine, from Scripture itself, what is important, and what less so. Some truths are more obvious, more elementary than others. Some are primary, if regard them as in God; but secondary and matters of inference, if you regard them as affecting man. Some are suited to one age of life, and one degree of progress, and some to another. Therefore all is to be reverenced, followed, obeyed, in proportion as it is more or less applicable to our own circumstances and duties.

The moment we gather any principle from Revelation, and find it recurring throughout the Scripturesfor example, the infinite evil of sin-we are to admit it as a principle in all our other studies of the divine book.

The moment we find any fact declared to be of a commanding nature, and to influence all the Revelation-for instance, the incarnation of the Son of God

-we are to give it its position in all our conceptions of truth.

The moment we find any doctrine explicitly declared in the last and concluding part of the Revelation, the apostolic epistles, to be the leading doctrine of the whole gospel-for example, the cross and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the justification which is by faith in his obedience unto death-we are to give it the like prominence, and let all other truths be ranged around it, and illustrate it.

The moment we find any state of mind and temper to be characteristic of the evangelical dispensationcharity, for instance-we are to give it that prominent

station.

Thus faith " rightly divides the word of truth ;” 14 places every thing in its place; not only follows Revelation in the detail, but in the disposition and relative importance of its contents.

3. But, more than this, faith STOPS, WITH MINUTE AND WATCHFUL CONSCIENTIOUSNESS, WHERE THE

REVELATION STOPS. Though it may think other truths follow from those revealed, yet it attributes not the same authority to those deductions, which it assigns to the revealed doctrines themselves. The Christian must draw inferences; he must bring out conclusions from premises, where the premises are strong and clear; but if the premises are in the Bible, and the inference not, he considers the one of divine, the other of human, authority. He treads with such awe on the unknown land, that he dares not venture beyond what God has explicitly revealed. He knows not what may be involved in a single step beyond the record.

Every thing is relative in the world and in the holy Scriptures, corresponding with our faculties, and

14 2 Tim. ii. 15.