Here, sinner, self-ruined, and self-condemned; even you that are tempted to execrate the day of your birth, on account of your multiplied provocations and utter unworthiness; here is a complete righteousness revealed for your full relief, and immediate comfort. In this righteousness you may read the divine character-JUST, YET THE JUSTIFIER OF THE UNGODLY. True it is, if nothing but equity had appeared in Jehovah's name, nothing but misery could have been expected by the guilty. But when we behold the idea of a compassionate Saviour, connected with that of a righteous Judge; such a character, though supremely venerable, is greatly inviting. For it speaks deliverance, and administers consolation. Yes, disconsolate soul, though you have no righteousness, nor any recommendation, yet the wisdom of God has appointed a way, and the infinite riches of sovereign grace have provided effectual means for your full discharge before the great tribunal; and for attaining that honour and joy, which are commensurate to your utmost wishes, which exceed your highest conceptions, and shall render you happy to all eternity.— Is my reader oppressed with guilt, and harassed with tumultuous fears of deserved ruin? wearied with going about to establish his own righteousness, and sensible that he is possessed of no worth, nor any thing that might be a probable mean of recommending him to the Redeemer? Remember, distressed fellow-mortal, that no such recommendation is needful. Nothing is required at your hand for any such purpose. Come and take freely, is the language of Jesus. He has all that you want, however impoverished; and he gives all with the most liberal hand. Grace reigns; and let that be your encouragement, when thinking about acceptance with Christ, and of your justification in him before the Almighty. If my reader, notwithstanding all that has been said, should yet think it prudent and safe to depend on his own obedience, let me remind him, before I dismiss this subject, of the absolute purity and infinite holiness, the transcendent majesty and awful glories of that GOD with whom he has to do, and before whom he must soon appear. Consider, presumptuous mortal! that with your supreme Judge is terrible majesty That he is of purer eyes than to look upon evil, and cannot behold iniquity; will by no means clear the guilty, and is a consuming fire. His righteous judgment is, that those who commit sin are worthy of death; and therefore his law denounces an awful curse on every offender.-Remember that he, whose divine prerogative it is to justify, is a jealous God; jealous of his honour, as a righteous governor, and determined to support the rights of his throne. So terrible his indignation that, when once his wrath is kindled, it will consume every refuge of lies, and burn to the lowest hell. So awfully majestic is Jehovah, that before him the everlasting mountains quake, the pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at his reproof. As his condecending smile irradiates the countenances of angels, and crowns them with unutterable bliss: so his righteous frown is nothing less than absolute destruction. So flaming his purity, and so dazzling his glory, that he looketh to the moon and it shineth not, and the stars are not pure in his sight In his pressnce the seraphim, those HOLY ! most exalted of mere creatures, veil their faces and cover their feet, in token of profound humiliation, while they cry, in loud responsive strains, HOLY ! HOLY! IS THE LORD OF HOSTS! How, then, to use the language of Bildad to Job; how, then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean, before his Maker, that is born of woman? When he whose eyes are as a flame of fire, whose peculiar province it is to search the human heart, and to explore its latent evils; when he shall sift your conduct and mark your offences, laying judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet, you will not be able to answer him one of a thousand; and to what refuge will you then flee? Trusting in your own duties, you slight the great atonement, you despise the revealed righteousness, and Christ shall profit you nothing--You may talk in lofty strains, about man's moral exellence, and the dignity of human nature; the worth of personal obedience, and the efficacy of penitential tears: you may declaim upon the necessity of good works, and reject with disdain the doctrine of imputed righteousness, while your conscience is unimpressed with a sight of divine purity, and with a sense of the divine presence. But when you come to consider yourself as before the MOST HIGH, and that the important question is, How shall I be just before the MOST HOLY? when you form your ideas of the God of heaven, not from the character, you have drawn of him in your own imagination, but agreeably to that which is given in the inspired volume; then your pretensions to personal worthiness must subside, and your mouth must be stopped. Or, if not entirely silent, you must exclaim with the men of Betshemesh, when Jehovah's hand was heavy upon them, Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? Then, if the atonement be not presented for your immediate relief, you will be ready to add, Who shall dwell with devouring fire? who shall dwell with everlasting burnings? The Holy Spirit, speaking in the scripture, directs us to conceive of justification as before God, and in his sight. Intimating, that when final acceptance is the subject of our inquiry, we should look upon ourselves as in the immediate presence of Him who will soon ascend the great white throne, to pass the irreversible sentence; that we should consider on what ground we shall be able to stand, when heaven and earth shall flee away from the face of our eternal Judge, and no place shall be found for him. Yes, reader, if you would not deceive yourself in a matter of the last importance; if you would come to a satisfactory persuasion, in what righteousness you may venture to trust; you should consider yourself as at the bar of God, and as having a cause depending which is pregnant with your everlasting fate; a cause which must inevitably issue, either in your eternal happiness, or infinite misery. You should anticipate, in your own meditations, that great decisive day, and then ask your own conscience, "On what shall I then depend! or what shall I dare to plead, when my astonished eyes behold my Judge?" Because it would be superlative folly for you to rely on any obedience now, or to dispute for it as necessary to justification, of which your own conscience cannot approve as a plea that will then be admitted as valid. Consider the ingenuous acknowledgments, and deep confessions, which the greatest saints and holiest men that ever lived have made of their impurity and sinfulness, when their acceptance with that sublime Being, who is glorious in holiness, came under consideration.-Job was an eminent saint: he had not his equal on earth, according to the testimony of God himself. Conscious of his integrity, he avowed it before men, and vindicated his exemplary conduct against the accusations of censorious friends. But when the Almighty addresses him, and when he considers himself as standing before the divine tribunal, he says not a word about his inherent rectitude, or his pious performances. Then, in language of the deepest selfabasement, he exclaims, Behold, I am vile! I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Yea, he declares, If I justify myself, my own mouth shall condemn me. If I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse. Though I were perfect, in my own apprehensions, yet, before him that is infinitely holy, I would be so far from pleading my own extraordinary attainments, that I would not know my soul, nay, I would despise my life, with all its most shining accomplishments. For if I wash myself with snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou, O righteous and eternal Judge, plunge me in the ditch; manifest me, notwithstanding all my endeavours to obtain purity and find acceptance, to be a polluted creature and a guilty criminal. So abominable filthy and highly criminal, that my own clothes, were they sensible of my pollution and guilt, would abhor me. For He, to whom I am accountable, is not a man as I am; but a Being of |