West, which must soon control the whole nation, is rapidly forming now, and must take its permanent stamp for ages within the next thirty or forty years.

Men of this generation, from the pyramid top of opportunity on which God has set us we look down on forty centuries! We stretch our hand into the future with power to mould the destinies of unborn millions. We of this generation occupy the Gibraltar of the ages which commands the world's future.

"We are living, we are dwelling,

In a grand and awful time,
In an age on ages telling-

To be living is sublime!"

LECTURE XV.

SANCTIFICATION AND GOOD WORKS.-HIGHER LIFE.

It is a great blessing to be able to recognize the fact that all the great historical branches of the Christian Church are very much united in their faith as to the essentials of the gospel. As to who Christ was, as to what Christ did, as to his Person and as to his offices, as to his supreme lordship over the whole Church and over the whole universe as mediatorial King, Catholics and Protestants of every name agree. The differences chiefly relate to the application of Christ's redemption, to the method of its application and to the order in which the great benefits of salvation are communicated to us and realized in the experience and life of the believer.

In the first place, I would say that rationalists generally-and by this term I include all of a rationalizing ten lency, all who would be comprehended generally in theological language as of a Pelagianizing or Semi-Pelagianizing tendency-maintain the principle that God's favor depends directly and immediately upon man's moral character; that as long as man is good God is favorable to him; that as soon as man sins God comes into opposition to him; and that the only condition required for restoration to the divine favor is genuine repentance and reformation.

The principle universally recognized by this class of

thinkers is that becoming good is the necessary prerequisite of being received again into favor with God.

Romanists in general, of course, are free from this Pelagianizing and rationalistic spirit. The tendency of Romanism is to make everything supernatural. The tendency of Rationalism is to make everything natural.

The Romanists' doctrine in the first place differs from Pelagianizing and rationalistic notions by maintaining that salvation wrought by Jesus Christ our Lord is applied only by a supernatural operation of the Holy Ghost working through certain sacraments which he has appointed as means and instrumentalities. Their doctrine is, that without the sacrament there is no grace, and that all grace can be obtained through the sacrament without the knowledge of the truth, and very much without the co-operation of the subject.

The Society of Friends, as you know, go to the extreme, as we think it, of holding that grace may be adequately experienced without the use of this class of appointed means.

The position taken by the great historical churches since the Reformation is one intermediate between these two extremes.

We believe thoroughly that the grace may be given through the sovereign pleasure of God, and by an exercise of divine power experienced without the sacrament; but we believe the sacraments are also divine institutions of his appointment, and that they are therefore universally obligatory and necessary because of the obligation of precept, and that beyond this they are in their adaptation to our constitution and our condition very admirably fitted to be efficient means of grace when intelligently

received in connection with the truth and accompanied with the gracious power of the Holy Ghost.

On the other side, the Romanist agrees in certain respects with the rationalist. This comes out in the historical fact that they confound the ideas which we emphasize by the words justification and sanctification.

The Romanist word justificatio, which has come down in the literature of the Roman Catholic Church, combines in its meaning all these ideas—to wit, the forgiveness of sins, the establishment of a state of favor, the removal of indwelling sin and the communication of indwelling grace; that is, all that is embraced in our terms justification, regeneration and sanctification. In the nomenclature of the Roman Catholic Church all these are embraced under one word, justification; and this opinion coincides with that which I have stated to be the common opinion of rationalists in general, though they differ from rationalists so much on the other side in regard to the position that the making of a man good must precede as a condition his reception into divine favor.

There are two principles, then, in which the Roman Catholic doctrine as to the application of redemption stands in direct contrast and opposition to what we call the doctrine of the Reformers-what we now call the evangelical doctrine.

The Romanist holds that every individual must be first united to the Church, and through the Church to Christ. The evangelical believer holds that every individual must be spiritually united to Christ, and through union with Christ united to the Church. The Romanist holds that through the grace of God we are to be made good, and then, being made good, we are to seek divine

favor. Whereas the Protestant evangelical position is, that we must first be received into the divine favor, and in consequence of that reception be made good.

The Romanist doctrine of justification is that its final cause is the glory of God; its efficient cause is the powerful operation of the Holy Spirit; its formal cause, that in which it consists, the remission of sins and infusion of grace; its meritorious cause, the passion, death and merits of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that its instrumental cause is baptism.

The sacrament acts as an opus operatum―i. e. by the simple grace inherent in the sacramental act itself. In every case in which the subject does not consciously and intelligently oppose an obstacle to the grace-effecting power of the sacrament, all sin is removed and saving grace is infused. Only concupiscence remains, which they deny to be true sin, properly so called, and regard only as the ashes or cinders, the result of past sin and the cause of future sin. But in every instance and under all ordinary conditions they admit that men do sin after baptism, and then they provide for them what they call their second justification, which is accomplished always through the instrumentality of the sacrament of penance.

If any of you want intelligently to form an opinion in regard to the Roman Catholic theology, you must remember the very first necessity is to recognize the fact that words are used in a different sense in the two systems. You would do them great injustice and bring to yourself great confusion if you should take, for instance, justification and give the Protestant definition of it, and then the Roman Catholic definition of it, and put those in opposition one to the other.