THE 
 
 WAT OF SALVATION 
 
 ILLUSTRATED IN 
 
 A SERIES OF DISCOURSES. 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT BAKNES, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 PUBLISHED BY PAEEY AND M'MILLAN, 
 
 (SUCCESSOBS TO A. HAET, LATE CAEEY AND HABT.) 
 
 LONDON: KNIGHT AND SON. 
 
 1858. 
 
.BT-7S7 
 S3 3 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 
 
 ALBERT BARNES, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and 
 for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 
 
 COLLINS, PRINTER. 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 THERE are two classes of Sermons. One is composed of 
 those which enter into the permanent literature of a nation, 
 and which take their rank with its most pure and elevated 
 writings, as enduring monuments of argument and of style. 
 The English language is, perhaps, more rich in this species 
 of literature than any other. Tor lucid statement ; for pro- 
 found argument; for richness of imagination; for copious- 
 ness of illustration ; for beauty of style ; for just views of 
 morals, the sermons of Barrow, and Tillotson, and Jeremy 
 Taylor, and South, have taken their place with the best 
 classical writings in our language. 
 
 The other class is composed of those which are of a less 
 exalted and permanent character, and which are adapted to 
 meet only a local or a temporary, though it may be a very 
 important purpose. They are addressed mainly to the pass- 
 ing age. They are adapted to meet some peculiar state of 
 public opinion, or some prevailing phase of error. They are 
 designed to illustrate the doctrines and duties of religion 
 in the language and style of that age. They, perhaps, 
 have some temporary and local advantage from the name of 
 the author, or from the relations which he sustains to a 
 particular congregation. They accomplish an important 
 purpose on a limited scale, and then pass away, with much 
 of the literature of past ages, to be recalled and remembered 
 no more. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 The volume of Sermons now submitted to the public does 
 not aspire to the dignity of the former class, nor is there 
 any hope or expectation that it will occupy that elevated 
 rank. All the hopes cherished in respect to it will be 
 accomplished, if it has a place of temporary usefulness among 
 the other class of sermons referred to, and if it may be made 
 a means, to any extent, of meeting the wants of any portion 
 of the passing generation. 
 
 This work has been prepared at the suggestion and the 
 request of the English publishers. As it seemed desirable 
 that there should be some unity of design which might be 
 expressed by an appropriate title," THE WAY or SALTATION" 
 has been selected as indicating, in the main, the purpose 
 and character of the volume; and though not properly a 
 treatise on that subject, yet it will be found, I trust, that all 
 the Sermons have a bearing more or less direct upon the 
 theme, and that each one will help to remove some obstacle, 
 to explain some difficulty, or to throw some light on the 
 points on which one inquiring how man can be saved, might 
 desire information. 
 
 The volume is not an argument for the truth of revela- 
 tion, nor is it designed formally to meet the objections of 
 infidels, the difficulties of honest sceptics, or the sneers of 
 cavillers. The man whom I have had in my eye in the 
 preparation of the discourses as I have usually had in my 
 preaching on these and kindred topics is not he who 
 disbelieves because he chooses to do so ; nor he who prefers 
 to be a sceptic; nor the mere caviller, who, because he 
 can laugh at death and the judgment, seeks to satisfy his 
 conscience that it is right to do so ; nor he who desires 
 to find difficulties in religion because he is unwilling to 
 submit to its claims and its restraints: but I have had 
 in my eye a class of minds, much larger than is generally 
 
PHEFACE. Vli 
 
 supposed to exist, which see real difficulties in religion 
 which they would not be unwilling to have explained. 
 They are minds so constituted that they see the difficulties in 
 believing as well as the facilities for it the things which tend 
 to hinder it, as well as those which tend to promote it. In all 
 communities there are probably many of this class of minds. 
 They should not be regarded as confirmed in infidelity, and 
 still less as disposed to cavil ; but they see real difficulties 
 in Christianity and in the plan of salvation, and they 
 would be gratified, not offended, to find a rational solution 
 of them. It is in vain to deny that there are such diffi- 
 culties ; and though he who has a mind so constituted as 
 never to have seen them may be regarded as in some re- 
 spects in a very enviable situation, yet he greatly errs in 
 regard to human nature, and greatly underrates the magni- 
 tude of the subject of religion, who supposes that to all con- 
 templative minds, even to candid minds, the subject appears 
 to be free from perplexity and doubt. A perceived difficulty 
 in the doctrines of religion a difficulty so great as to lead 
 to weighty and perplexing doubts is not always proof of a 
 depraved heart. 
 
 I may be permitted to remark, perhaps, as explaining the 
 general character of the Sermons in this volume, that from 
 the native tendencies of my own mind, from my early 
 cherished habits of thought, and from my early reading, I 
 have had this class of minds more frequently in my eye, in 
 preaching, than any other. It has not been by avowedly 
 meeting the arguments and difficulties of such minds; it 
 has not been by a formal defence of the doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity against the objections of infidels ; it has not been by 
 an open reply to the objections of sceptics or cavillers, lut 
 as a secret guide to my line of argument and thought, that I 
 have had such minds almost constantly before me. My 
 
VUl PREFACE. 
 
 own mind has suggested what I have supposed they would 
 suggest ; and in meeting difficulties which have occurred to 
 me, I have supposed that I have also met those which would 
 occur to them. I cannot here repress the acknowledgment of 
 the debt which, in this respect, I owe to " Butler's Analogy" 
 a work which has met more difficulties in my own mind, 
 and aided me more in preaching, than any other work of 
 uninspired composition. A careful reader of these Sermons 
 will perceive that, in their preparation, I owe to that great 
 work even much more than can be expressed by such a 
 general acknowledgment. 
 
 These remarks may suffice to explain the pervading cha- 
 racter of this volume of Sermons. In their general arrange- 
 ment, they begin with a consideration of the claims of the 
 Bible as a guide on the subject of religion (Sermon I.), and 
 with an effort to show (Sermon n.) that the acknowledged 
 obscurities in that book should not deter us from accrediting 
 its claims ; with a statement (Sermon in.) of the claims of 
 Christianity, and an attempt to show (Sermon IT.) that the 
 condition of man could not be benefited by the rejection of 
 Christianity, and that the same difficulties precisely would 
 remain, with no known method whatever of relief. The 
 next object (Sermon v.) is to show that Christianity reveals 
 the true ground of the importance attributed to man 
 in the plan of salvation; that the earth is fitted to be 
 a place of probation (Sermon vi.), and that man is actually 
 on probation (Sermon TII.) ; and that in religion, as in 
 other things, he should accommodate himself to what 
 are the actual arrangements of the Divine government 
 (Sermon vin.) The next object is to explain the condition 
 in which the Grospel FINDS man as an actual state which 
 Christianity did not originate, for which it is not respon- 
 sible, and which is a simple matter of fact in which all men 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 are equally interested, whatever system of religion may be 
 true or false (Sermon ix.) ; a state which naturally prompts 
 to the inquiry what must be done in order to be saved an 
 inquiry which springs up in the heart of man everywhere, 
 and in reference to which man pants for an answer (Ser- 
 mon x.) This is followed (Sermons xi. xrv.) by a descrip- 
 tion of the struggles of a convicted sinner and by an 
 attempt to show what is necessary, in the nature of things, 
 to give peace to a mind in that condition. To meet the 
 case, the mind thus anxious is directed to the mercy of God 
 (Sermon XY.), and the effort is made to show that it is only 
 an atonement for sin that can give permanent peace to the 
 soul conscious of guilt (Sermons xvi., xvii.) The doctrine 
 of Eegeneration, or the new birth, is then considered (Ser- 
 mons xvni. xx.); an attempt is made to vindicate and 
 explain the conditions repentance and faith which are 
 made necessary to salvation, and to show not only their 
 place in a revealed system of religion, but their relation to 
 the human mind and the circumstances in which man is 
 placed (Sermons xxi. xxvni.); and the whole series is 
 closed (Sermons xxix. xxxvi.) by a consideration of the 
 nature of justification, or the method by which a sinner may 
 be just with Grod. 
 
 It will be seen that these topics embrace the most material 
 and important inquiries which come before the mind on the 
 question "how man may be saved; and if a correct representa- 
 tion is given of them, they will furnish to an inquirer after 
 truth a just view of the way of salvation. 
 
 I commit this volume to the public with the hope that it 
 may be found to be a safe guide on the most momentous 
 inquiry which can come before the human mind. I have 
 abundant occasion for gratitude for the manner in which 
 the volumes that I have published heretofore have been 
 
x PREFACE!. 
 
 received by the British public, as well as by my own country- 
 men ; and I would hope that this volume may contribute 
 something to the diffusion of the knowledge of the great 
 principles of religious duty and doctrine which it has been 
 the labour of my life to illustrate and defend. 
 
 ALBEET BAKNES. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, 
 May 19, 1855. 
 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 swzaji OT <rKAKKG3 &JIT so fcomaxruo'* am:.-/ 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE BIBLE . . . 'K>* Ji ^ ST JKI^CTyjt^ ^ .4 
 
 II. : THE OBSCURITIES OF DIVINE REVELATION .... 17 
 
 III. THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION H^T^.' 33 
 IV. THE CONDITION OF MAN NOT BENEFITED BY THE 
 
 REJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY . . . ^H'*~7' . 45 
 
 V.^-THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN 58 
 
 VI. THE EARTH A PLACE OF PROBATION 72 
 
 VII. MAN ON PROBATION 85 
 
 VIII. THE NECESSITY OF ACCOMMODATING OURSELVES TO 
 
 THE ARRANGEMENTS OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 96 
 
 IX. THE STATE IN WHICH THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN . . 108 
 
 X. THE INQUIRY, WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED ? . .122 
 
 XI. CONVICTION OF SIN 135 
 
 XII. THE STRUGGLES OF A CONVICTED SINNER .... 149 
 
 XIII. A WOUNDED SPIRIT 163 
 
 XIV. WHAT WILL GIVE PERMANENT PEACE TO A SOCJL CON- 
 VICTED OF SIN 177 
 
 XV. THE MERCY OF GOD > ; 'tMi . . 191 
 
 XVI. THE ATONEMENT AS FITTED TO GIVE PEACE TO A 
 
 CONVICTED SINNER *-,* ;<;:*, 206 
 
 XVII. THE ATONEMENT AS IT REMOVES THE OBSTACLES IN 
 
 THE WAY OF PARDON . . ,. * 219 
 
 XVIII. THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION 233 
 
 XIX. THE NATURE OF REGENERATION .246 
 
xil CONTENTS. 
 
 MM 
 
 XX. THE AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN REGENERA- 
 TION 259 
 
 XXI. THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE 273 
 
 XXII. THE RELATION OF REPENTANCE TO PARDON IN THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN SYSTEM 286 
 
 XXIII. THE PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE . 298 
 XXIV. THE FOUNDATION OF THE COMMAND TO REPENT 
 
 LAID IN THE CHARACTER OF MAN . . . * . 311 
 
 XXV. THE EVIDENCES OF TRUE REPENTANCE ^ *.,.,, . 323 
 
 XXVI. FAITH A CONDITION OF SALVATION 337 
 
 XXVII. THE VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF FAITH .... 349 
 
 XXVIII. FAITH AS AN ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 362 
 XXIX. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INQUIRY, HOW SHALL 
 
 MAN BE JUST WITH GOD? 374 
 
 XXX. MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF BY DENYING OR 
 
 DISPROVING THE CHARGE OF GUILT .... 386 
 XXXI. MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF BY SHOWING THAT 
 
 HIS CONDUCT IS RIGHT 397 
 
 XXXII. MAN CANNOT MERIT SALVATION 409 
 
 XXXIII. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST . . 422 
 XXXIV. IN WHAT SENSE WE ARE JUSTIFIED BY THE MERITS 
 
 OF CHRIST 434 
 
 XXXV. THE INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION . . 447 
 XXXVI. THE BEARING AND IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE 
 
 OF JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 461 
 
THE 
 
 WAY OE SALTATION. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 PSALM cxix. 105." Thy word is a lamp unto ray feet, and a light unto 
 my path." 
 
 MY wish, in illustration of this text, is to call your attention to 
 the BIBLE. It is not to pronounce an eulogy on it, or to enter 
 into an argument for its Divine origin, or to state and defend 
 its doctrines ; but it is to urge its claims to attention, particu- 
 larly as laying the foundation for the only true knowledge of the 
 Way of Salvation. 
 
 When a man, especially one who has cherished sceptical views 
 and feelings, sits down to read the Bible, there is a class of 
 thoughts that bear upon his mind wholly different from such as 
 exist when he peruses any other book. When he sits down to 
 the study of the Iliad, he is conscious that he is perusing the most 
 celebrated poem of the world. It has come down from a very 
 remote antiquity ; it has been read by millions, and always with 
 increasing pleasure ; it has commanded the admiration of the 
 most eminent scholars of all ages. He feels, therefore, that his 
 perusal of it will be attended with no discredit anywhere ; and 
 it will excite no feeling of shame in his bosom should it be 
 known by all his friends that he is engaged in that employment. 
 Substantially the same feeling exists when he reads the Paradise 
 Lost. To admire it, is an evidence of good taste ; and an inti- 
 mate acquaintance with it will be a passport of some value to 
 the good esteem of others, and will never suffuse his cheek with 
 a blush. The same remarks might be made of Herodotus and 
 Xenophon ; of Hume and Gibbon ; of Seneca and Bacon ; of the 
 Spectator and the Rambler. No young man could be found 
 who would think it necessary to practise any concealment in 
 
2 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 reading them ; no one would close them if surprised in their 
 perusal ; no one would feel the blood mounting to his cheek as 
 if he were engaged in an occupation which he would rather 
 should be .unknown. On the contrary, he knows that he will 
 rise in the estimation of others in proportion to his familiarity 
 w T ith such productions of genius and taste, and is furnishing 
 evidence that he is worthy of esteem. 
 
 But when he sits down to read the Bible, he is surrounded by 
 a new set of influences, and is conscious of a new train of 
 emotions. Unless he is a Christian, he enters upon it as if it 
 were some deed that is to be done when alone. He would feel 
 some revulsion at being surprised in the employment. He 
 would expect that it would excite remark perhaps a playful 
 remark if he were to select this book for perusal from a collec- 
 tion of annuals and poems on a centre table. He would be apt 
 to close it if he was found reading it when he had laid down 
 his Homer or his Virgil, his Addison or Shakspeare or Byron, 
 for this purpose. His first feeling is, that it is a book of 
 RELIGION, and that to read it will be understood to be indicative 
 of seriousness, and, a purpose to become a Christian. He is 
 intimidated also by a somewhat antiquated style, and by what 
 seems to him an uncouth phraseology ; and, perhaps, he would 
 be also by its denunciation of some passion that reigns in his 
 heart ; by its frequent reference to death and the judgment ; and 
 by the serious and solemn tone which everywhere pervades it. 
 It is a book which he does not mean wholly to neglect, but its 
 perusal he intends to defer until that somewhat remote period 
 when it will be necessary to prepare for the future state, and 
 when he purposes, as preliminary to that, to become religious. 
 
 The consequence of such feelings is, that the Bible is a book 
 greatly neglected. Many are quite familiar with a considerable 
 part of the range of ancient classic learning, who have almost 
 no acquaintance with the sacred Scriptures. Many are familiar 
 with the whole range of fictitious literature to which this age 
 has given birth, who are strangers almost wholly to the Book of 
 God, except in name. Many see exquisite beauty in the poets 
 of modern times, who see none in the " sweet psalmist of Israel ;" 
 and many find pleasure in copious draughts from the fountains 
 of Helicon, who have no relish for the " gently flowing" waters 
 of Siloam. I may add, too, that the people in a nominally 
 Christian community are distinguished pre-eminently for the 
 neglect of the oracles of the religion which prevails in their 
 own country. The Mussulman reads the Koran with profound 
 attention, and without any consciousness of doing anything 
 
THE BIBLE. 3 
 
 
 
 that should excite a blush ; the Shasters and Vedas of the Hindoos 
 are read by the worshippers of the gods with anxious care ; but 
 how few are there, except professed Christians, who are in the 
 regular habit of reading the Bible ! How few young men are 
 there who could be seen reading it without some consciousness 
 that they were doing that which they would rather not have 
 known ! 
 
 I will, therefore, proceed to suggest some considerations 
 designed to urge upon you the study of the Bible ; arid shall 
 deem it a sufficient reward for my labour if I can induce but 
 one to commence and continue the practice through life. 
 
 I. In the first place, it is the oldest book in the world. Of 
 course you will not understand me as saying that the entire Bible 
 is more ancient than any other book. I know that some parts 
 of it were written since the time of Hesiod and Homer ; of 
 Xenophon and Herodotus ; of Demosthenes and Plato. But what 
 I mean is, that some portions of it stretch far back beyond the 
 records of classic literature, and before the dawn of well- 
 authenticated profane history. He who sits down to read the 
 book of Job may do it with the moral certainty that he is 
 perusing the most ancient written poem in the world ; and he 
 who reads the book of Genesis is certain that he is perusing a 
 history that was penned long before any Grecian writer collected 
 and recorded the deeds of ancient times. Take away the 
 history of the past which we have in the Bible, and there are at 
 least some two thousand years of the existence of our race of 
 which we know nothing and that too the forming period, and 
 in many respects the most interesting part of the history of 
 the world. Begin, in your investigation of past events, where 
 ancient profane history begins, and you are plunged into the 
 midst of a state of affairs of whose origin you know nothing, 
 and where the mind wanders in perfect night, and can find no 
 rest. Kingdoms are seen, but no one can tell when or how 
 they were founded ; cities appear, whose origin no one knows ; 
 heroes are playing their part in the great and mysterious drama, 
 but no one knows whence they came, and what are their 
 designs ; a race of beings is seen whose origin is unknown, and 
 the past periods of whose existence on the earth no one can 
 determine a race formed no one can tell for what purpose, or 
 by what hand. Vast multitudes of beings are suffering and 
 dying for causes which no one can explain ; a generation in 
 their own journey to the grave tread over the monuments of 
 extinct generations, and with the memorials of fearful changes 
 and convulsions in the past all around them, of which no one 
 
4 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 can give an account. Begin your knowledge of the past at the 
 remotest period to which profane history would conduct you, 
 and you are in the midst of chaos, and you cannot advance a 
 step without going into deeper night a night strikingly re- 
 sembling that which the oldest poet in the world describes as 
 the abode of the dead : " The land of darkness and the shadow 
 of death; a land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the 
 shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as 
 darkness." Job x. 21, 22. And thus in reference to the darkness 
 of the past the history of our race in its by-gone periods 
 beyond the reach of all other guides the Bible is " a lamp 
 unto our feet, and a light unto our path." 
 
 Now there is some interest, at least, in the fact that we have 
 in our possession the most ancient book which was ever written. 
 We should feel some interest in seeing and conversing with a 
 man who had lived on earth during all that time, and had looked 
 on the sun, and stars, and earth before the time of Hesiod and 
 Homer ; who had lived amidst all the revolutions of past king- 
 doms and empires while proud Assyria spread its conquests 
 and fell ; while Babylon rose and declined ; while Rome carried 
 its arms around the world and sank : if he had lived on while 
 seasons walked their rounds, and had seen fifty generations 
 buried, and had come to us now with the ancient costume arid 
 manners, to tell us what was in the days of Noah or Abraham. 
 We contemplate with deep interest an "ancient river;" and no 
 one ever looked on the Mississippi or the Ganges for the first 
 time without emotion. So of a venerable elm or oak that has 
 stood while many a winter storm has howled through its branches, 
 and while the trees that grew up with it have long since decayed. 
 So with an ancient bulwark or castle ; an ancient monument, 
 or work of art. Whatever stands alone, and has lived on while 
 others have decayed, excites our admiration. The pyramids of 
 Egypt, and the tombs of the kings of Thebes, and the pillar of 
 Pompey, thus attract attention. Any lonely memento of the 
 past has a claim to our regard, and excites an interest, which 
 we feel for nothing when surrounded by the objects amidst which 
 it rose. In the wastes of Arabia, between the Nile and Mount 
 Sinai, there stand some half a dozen or more headstones in an 
 ancient burying-place. There is not a town, or city, or house, 
 or tent, or fertile field near. They are the lonely memorials of 
 a far-distant generation. All else is gone, the men that placed 
 tneni there ; the towns where they dwelt ; the mouldering 
 ashes, and the names of those whose last place of sleep they 
 mark. So the Bible stands in the past. ' All is desolation 
 
THE BIBLE. 5 
 
 around it. The books that were written when that was, if 
 there were any, are gone. The generations that lived then 
 are gone. The cities where they dwelt are gone. Their tombs 
 and monuments are gone ; and the Bible is all that we have to 
 tell us who they were, why they lived, and what occurred in 
 their times. Had the Bible to this day been unknown, or were 
 it suddenly discovered in some venerable ruin and authenticated, 
 who would not hail such a monument of what occurred in the 
 past periods of the world ? 
 
 The circumstance here referred to of the antiquity of the 
 Bible derives additional interest from the attempts which have 
 been made to destroy it. No book has excited so much opposi- 
 tion as this; but it has survived every attack which power, 
 talent, and eloquence have ever made on it. Now, we do and 
 we should feel an interest in anything which has survived 
 repeated attempts to destroy it. The remnant of an army that 
 has survived a battle, and that has successfully resisted great 
 numbers in the conflicts of war ; the tree that has stood firm 
 when all others in its neighbourhood have been prostrated ; the 
 ancient castle that has sustained many a siege, and that remains 
 impregnable ; the solid rock that has been washed by floods 
 for centuries, and that has not been swept away all excite a 
 deep interest. We love to contemplate these, and we should 
 deem ourselves destitute of all right feeling if we should pass 
 them by without attention. But no army ever survived so 
 many battles as the Bible ; no tree has stood so long, and 
 weathered so many storms ; no ancient bulwark has endured so 
 many sieges, and stood so firm amid the thunders of war and 
 the ravages of time ; and no rock has been swept by so many 
 currents, and has still stood unmoved. It has outlived all 
 conflicts, survived all the changes in empires, and come down 
 to us notwithstanding all the efforts made to destroy it ; and 
 while the stream of time has rolled on, and thousands of other 
 books have been engulphed, this book has been borne triumph- 
 antly on the wave. It has shown that it is destined to be 
 borne onward to the end of time, while millions of others shall 
 sink degradedly to the bottom. 
 
 II. The second consideration which I suggest is, that the 
 JSible contains the religion of your country. Chillingworth uttered 
 a sentiment which contains as much meaning as can be well 
 condensed into a few words, when he said, that " The Bible is 
 the religion of Protestants." In a similar sense, we may say 
 that the Bible is the religion of our country. The ancient 
 religion of Persia is in the Zendavestaj the religion of India 
 
6 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 is in the Shasters ; the religion of Turkey is in the Koran ; the 
 religion of our country is in the Bible. We have no religion 
 in this land, and can have none, which is not in the Bible. 
 Throughout the length and breadth of this great nation there 
 is not an altar erected to an idol-god ; nor in all our history 
 has a molten image been cast, or a carved block received the 
 homage of an American citizen. Not a temple has been reared 
 in honour of a pagan divinity, nor is the knee bent anywhere 
 to adore the hosts of heaven. It is a remarkable, but indisputable 
 fact, that they who reject the Bible in our country have no 
 altar; no temple; no worship; no religion. They offer no 
 sacrifice ; they have no incense ; they have no books of praise 
 or of prayer no hymn-book, and no liturgy ; they are emphati- 
 cally living without God in the world. No religion will be 
 sustained in this land which does not appeal to the Bible ; and 
 if that is driven away, we shall be a people without any religion. 
 The religion of this nation is to be the Christian religion or 
 none ; and when an American is asked what is his religion, he 
 can only refer to the Bible. 
 
 We have, indeed, our different opinions. We are divided into 
 sects and denominations, with peculiar views and modes of 
 worship, yet with a good degree of common sympathy and of 
 fraternal feeling ; and we all harmonize in the sentiment, that 
 whatever religion there is in this land is in the Bible, and that 
 that is the rule of faith and practice. Our religion is not in 
 creeds and confessions ; in catechisms and symbols ; in tradition 
 and the decrees of synods and councils; it is IN THE BIBLE. 
 To that, as a common standard, we all appeal ; and around that 
 we all rally. Much as Christians differ from each other, all 
 would rush to the defence of that Book when attacked, and all 
 regard it as the fountain of their opinions and the source of 
 their hopes. 
 
 There is, moreover, among Christians in this country a growing 
 conviction that the standard of all religion is the Bible. There 
 is less and less confidence in the deductions of reason ; less 
 reliance on creeds and confessions and tradition ; less dependence 
 on the judgment of man, and a more simple dependence on the 
 word of God. It is, and it is to be, a great principle in this 
 nation, that the Bible contains our religion. 
 
 Now, if this be so, then the reasons why the Bible should be 
 studied are very obvious. One is, that any man must be desti- 
 tute of a very essential part of valuable knowledge if he is 
 ignorant of the foundation of the religion of his own country. 
 Its institutions he can never understand, nor can he ever be fully 
 
THE BIBLE. 7 
 
 prepared to discharge his duty in any calling in this country 
 witliout an acquaintance with the sacred Scriptures. As con- 
 nected with the history and institutions of his country, and as 
 here destined to exert a controlling influence over millions of the 
 most free minds on the earth, it demands his profound attention. 
 I confess I feel a deep interest in the Koran, though I never 
 expect to he subject in any way to the laws of that hook ; and 
 though I have never heen able to read it though, often as I have 
 resolved I would read it, and have attempted to do it. But I feel 
 an interest in any book that has power to hold one hundred and 
 twenty millions of the human race in subjection, and to mould the 
 institutions and laws of so large a portion of mankind. I feel far 
 more interest in that than I can in the power of Alexander, who 
 subdued the world by arms ; or of the Autocrat of the Kussias, who 
 rules a vast empire by hereditary might ; or even of Napoleon, 
 who held nations in subjection by a most potent and active will. 
 For in such cases there is living power, and there are vast 
 armies, and frowning bulwarks, and long lines of open-mouthed 
 cannon prepared to pour sheets of flame on all who dare oppose. 
 But the dominion of the Koran is THE DOMINION OF A BOOK 
 a silent, still, speechless thing, that has no will, no armies, no 
 living energies, no chain-shot, no cannons ; and yet it exerts a 
 power which the monarch and the conqueror never wields. It 
 lives, too, when monarchs and conquerors have died. It meets 
 advancing generations, and subdues their wills too. It moulds 
 their opinions, leads them to the temples of worship, and con- 
 trols their passions with a power which monarchs never knew. 
 So it is with the BIBLE. That, too, is a book a silent, speech- 
 less book. But in our own land, twenty millions acl^now- 
 ledge its right to give laws ; and in other lands, one hundred 
 millions confess its power ; and in past times, many thousand 
 millions have been moulded by its precepts, and I would not be 
 ignorant of that which exerts a control so near Omnipotence 
 over so many human minds. 
 
 Again : No man should be a stranger to the religion of his 
 country. At some future period of life, and that not far distant, 
 these questions may be asked of some young man here, for aught 
 you know, on the shores of India, or in the islands of the Pacific, 
 or in the heart of the Celestial Empire : ' What is the religion of 
 the United States ? On what is it based ? What are the doctrines 
 of the Book which is the acknowledged authority there ? i>y 
 whom, and when, and where was it written ? And why is it 
 there received as of Divine origin ?' How many a young Ame- 
 rican may have been asked these questions, who was as unable 
 
 2 
 
8 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 to answer them as he would be similar inquiries respecting the 
 Koran or the Shasters ! How strange to an intelligent foreigner 
 would it seem that one from a land like this could give no 
 account of the religion of his own country ! 
 
 There is another thought here, which I wish to express with 
 as much deference for the elevated classes in our land as possible. 
 Some who read these pages may possibly yet occupy places of 
 influence and power in the councils of the nation, or be called 
 as professional men to appear in conspicuous stations before 
 their countrymen. Now the idea which I wish to express is, 
 that the uses which are made of the Bible, and the allusions to 
 it, by men in public life, are sometimes such as may admonish 
 those who are coming on to the stage of action to become fami- 
 liar with it, and such as are anything but commendatory of the 
 knowledge which they have of the one Book which, more than 
 any other, controls this nation. Shakspeare shall not be inaccu- 
 rately quoted; and Byron and Burns, and Homer and Virgil 
 shall be referred to with classic elegance ; but a quotation from 
 the Bible shall show that with whatever other learning the 
 orator may be endowed, his familiarity has not been with the 
 inspired records of the religion of his country ; and the words of 
 David, Isaiah, and Paul, and even of the Redeemer, shall be 
 miserably mangled, and made almost unintelligible. Many a 
 young man now entering on life will yet be placed in circum- 
 stances where it will be discreditable to him not to be acquainted 
 with the Bible. No one can be placed in circumstances where 
 that knowledge would be disreputable or injurious. 
 
 There is one other thought under this head. It is this : The 
 Bible has gone deeply into our institutions, customs, and laws, 
 and no one can understand the history of this country who does 
 not understand the Bible. It has made us, directly or indirectly, 
 what we are. Our own ancestors, in our father-land, once were 
 wild barbarians, and sacrificed human beings to idols. The 
 oaken groves of England witnessed many a Druid superstition ; 
 many a now well-cultivated spot in that land was a place where 
 men, woven in wicker-work, were consumed as an offering to the 
 gods! I need not say that the change in that country from 
 what it was to what it is, was brought about by the influence 
 of the religion which is taught in the Bible. That religion 
 banished superstition and idolatry j raised Christian temples 
 in the places where stood the groves of the Druids ; introduced 
 civilization, intelligence, and social order ; made immortal Alfred 
 what he was ; laid the foundations of Cambridge and of Oxford j 
 and moulded the literature and the laws of our ancestors. 
 
THE BIBLE. 9 
 
 Still more directly has it gone into our own institutions. 
 We have derived our origin in great part from the Puritans, a 
 people to whom Hume said was- to be traced whatever of civil 
 liberty there was in England. I need not recall any of the 
 events of our early history. I need only remind you that with 
 the Puritan , the axe was not a more needful or inseparable 
 companion than the Bible. It went with him into the deep 
 forest ; comforted him when the war-whoop of the .savage 
 sounded in his ears ; prompted him to build the church, the 
 school-house, and the college ; entered into his literature, and 
 constituted his laws ; was the foundation of his civil rights, and 
 the platform of his views of government. It contained the 
 lessons which he taught to his children ; and his parting counsel 
 to them, when he lay on a bed of death, was, that they should 
 always love it. Phidias so wrought his own name into the 
 shield of the statue of Minerva at Athens, that it could not be 
 removed without destroying the statue. So the precepts and 
 truths of the Bible have been inwrought into all our institutions. 
 They are not interwoven as if they were separate warp and 
 woof. They are not laid on as plates of gold may be on a 
 carved image. They are fused in intermingled and run 
 together as the gold and silver and brass of Corinth were in 
 the great fire which burnt down its statues of silver and gold 
 and brass forming the much-valued compound of antiquity, 
 the Corinthian brass. They cannot be separated ; and it is too 
 late to trace their independent proportions and influence. We 
 have no institutions, no laws, no social habits, that are worth 
 anything, and no learning, no literature of any kind, no liberty, 
 which have not been moulded and modified by the Bible. No 
 man can write our history who is a stranger to the Bible ; and 
 you will NEVER understand it, if you are ignorant of that Book. 
 The man who enters on public life ignorant of the influence of 
 this book in our history, is liable to perpetual mistakes and 
 blunders in regard to the institutions of his own country. He 
 will perpetually come in contact with opinions and habits which 
 he cannot understand. He will never be acquainted with the 
 public mind in this nation. He will be mistaken in regard 'to 
 the course which the popular feeling will take on any subject. 
 He will run counter to what he will esteem mere prejudice, but 
 what in fact is conscience ; and he will suppose that he meets 
 mere popular feeling, when he encounters that which enters 
 into every principle of our liberty. There is nothing on which 
 foreigners who come among us are more liable to misunderstand 
 us than on this point ; and nothing which to them appears more 
 
10 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 inexplicable than that religion is propagated and maintained by 
 voluntary efforts, and without an alliance with the State. The 
 secret of the whole is, the hold which the Bible has on the 
 public mind, and the fact that that Book is allowed to influence 
 so extensively the opinions, the laws, and the customs of the 
 land. It is now in almost every family, and we intend it shall 
 be in every family. It is read every day by millions ; and 
 hundreds of thousands of children and youth are taught every 
 week in the Sabbath-school to reverence it. A great National 
 Society is in existence whose business it is to see that that Book 
 is placed and kept in every family in the land ; and though the 
 press teems with novels, and romances, and poems, and books of 
 science, yet the book that is most frequently printed, and on 
 which the art of the printer and the binder is most abundantly 
 lavished still, as a private enterprise, is the Bible. And in 
 reference to our own most interesting history as a people, and 
 to the nature of our institutions, civil and religious, as well as in 
 reference to all the past, the Bible is the only certain " lamp 
 unto our feet, and light unto our path." 
 
 III. A third consideration is, that the Bible has such evidences 
 of Divine origin as to claim your attention. I do not assume 
 that it is given by inspiration for my purpose now does not 
 require this, nor am I about to detain you with any proofs on 
 that point. But I would show you that there are such presump- 
 tive proofs of its being a revelation from God, as to demand study 
 and inquiry ; such that it is ill-becoming the young man, or any 
 man, to neglect it ; and such that to reject it without examina- 
 tion's no mark of an elevated understanding, or of true manliness 
 of sentiment. The considerations which I would suggest under 
 this head are these : 
 
 (1.) The friends of the Bible have been among the most sober, 
 calm, and thoughtful of mankind. They have been such men as 
 are accustomed to look at evidence, and to weigh arguments 
 before they embrace them. That some of its neglectors and 
 adversaries have had this character I have no occasion to deny ; 
 but that the mass of them have been of this stamp no one will 
 venture to affirm. But a book which has commended itself to 
 the faith of millions of thinking and intelligent men as of Divine 
 origin, is not to be treated with contempt, or rejected without a 
 hearing. No man recommends his own intelligence or wisdom 
 by a contemptuous rejection of such a book. 
 
 (2.) Again, a considerable part of those who have embraced 
 the Bible as of Divine origin, have done it as the result of 
 examination. I admit that all have not done it from this cause. 
 
THE BIBLE. 11 
 
 Many have been trained up in its belief, and have never doubted 
 of its Divine origin ; but a considerable portion even of this class, 
 when they have arrived at mature age, have instituted an 
 examination on the subject, and have satisfied their own minds 
 that it is from God. But many an hereditary infidel has yielded 
 his opposition to the Bible by the force of evidence, and em- 
 braced it as true ; many a scoffer has become a believer by the 
 force of the argument, and admitted that it was from God. 
 Meantime all its friends, whether hereditary friends if I may so 
 call them or the friends made such by argument, have been 
 willing to submit the evidence of the Divine origin of the Scrip- 
 tures to the sober reason of mankind. They have asked them to 
 examine the question. They hold themselves ready at any moment 
 to give the book to any man who will examine it. They invite 
 discussion, and they always consider it a point gained, and a 
 very probable indication of the conversion of an infidel, if he can 
 from any motive be induced to examine the Divine origin of the 
 Scriptures. And so scoffers and infidels feel when one of their 
 own number is induced, from any cause, to read the Bible. From 
 the moment when he takes the book in his hands, they regard 
 his conversion to Christianity as more than half certain. They 
 anticipate, almost as a matter of course, that if he is led to 
 investigate this question he is lost to their cause. And so all feel. 
 Many a man is deterred from reading the Bible, and from 
 examining its claims, under a belief that, if he does it, he will 
 become a Christian. Yet what a state of mind is this ! And 
 what a tribute is thus unwittingly paid to the Bible ! And how 
 clear is it, that, if this be the case, the Bible has such evidence 
 of a Divine origin as to demand your attention ! 
 
 (3.) Again, its effects on the world are such as to show that 
 it has sufficient claims to a Divine origin to demand attention. 
 As a mere matter of curiosity, if there were no better motive, 
 one would suppose that an interest would be felt in the Book 
 which displaced the ancient systems of philosophy ; which changed 
 the whole form of religion in the Roman empire overturning 
 altars, closing temples, disrobing priests, and revolutionizing 
 laws ; which abolished slavery in all the ancient world ; which 
 has elevated the female sex from the deepest degradation ; 
 which has everywhere been the promoter of good morals ; which 
 banished the barbarous sports of the amphitheatre ; which has 
 led to the foundation of colleges, and the erection of hospitals, 
 and the diffusion of universal education ; which has curbed the 
 tiger-passions of many a man, and made him like a lamb ; and 
 which has transformed the intemperate, the licentious, and the 
 
12 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 profane, in millions of instances, and made them pure and holy- 
 men. Now a book which can do this has such claims of a Divine 
 origin as to demand attention, and to he worthy of perusal. 
 
 (4.) And again, the class of men -whom it has satisfied of its 
 Divine origin is such as to show the same thing. They have 
 been, in many instances, men most eminent in all departments 
 of science and learning, and who stand, by common consent, at 
 the head of the race. I need not tell you who they are. In our 
 most rich English literature there is scarcely a man of eminence 
 who has not bowed to the authority of the sacred Scriptures. 
 Who, in teaching the laws of morals, was superior to Johnson ? 
 "Who better understood the beauties of the English tongue than 
 Addison ? Who was a sweeter poet than Cowper ? Who more 
 majestic and grand than Milton ? Who has controlled more 
 human minds by stating its laws than Locke ? Who has seen 
 farther into the distant heavens than Newton ? What individual 
 of our race is by common consent at the head of any department 
 of learning, who has not acknowledged the Divine authority of 
 the Bible ? I by no means say that this proves that it is of 
 Divine origin. I say only, that it demonstrates that there are 
 claims to such an origin which demand examination. I add one 
 other thought under this head 
 
 (5.) That the same thing is shown by the fact that the Bible 
 has outlived all the attacks which have been made on it, and 
 has nearly or quite weathered out the storm of conflict. It was 
 penned in a remote age ; in a little corner of the world ; among 
 a people without science, and without any other literature ; 
 when the rules of poetry and history were unwritten, and when 
 the human mind was comparatively in its infancy. That a book 
 so written, and with such pretensions, should be attacked was 
 not wonderful. Accordingly, every science, I believe, has been 
 made the occasion of an assault on the Bible. Astronomy, and 
 history, and antiquities, and geology, and chemistry, all have 
 had their turn ; and all have in their turn alarmed the friends 
 of revelation. But the war from these quarters has nearly 
 ceased to rage. Every gun has been spiked, or turned on the 
 foe except in the matter of geology and the friends of reve- 
 lation may safely leave that until the geologist will tell us 
 precisely what his own settled opinion is. In the year 1806 the 
 French Institute counted more than eighty theories in geology 
 hostile to the Scripture history, not one of which has lived to 
 the present time (Lyell). The argument from astronomy was 
 demolished by Chalmers. The argument from the high antiquity 
 of the sacred books, and the history of India, has been abandoned 
 
THE BIBLE. ;Ui 13 
 
 by infidels themselves. Point after point has been yielded, and 
 the Bible still lives; and it advances in its power over the human 
 mind just as science advances, and at the moment when I am 
 writing has a control over the intellect of the world which it 
 never had before. It will have a greater control to-morrow ; 
 and will continue to extend its empire to the end of time. It is 
 speaking now in an hundred and fifty languages more than it 
 was fifty years ago, and there is nothing more fixed pertaining 
 to the future than that the period is not distant when it will 
 speak in all the languages of the world. It is destined to be 
 the book which shall ultimately model the laws, and direct the 
 worship of the race ; the book which is to displace the Koran, 
 the Zendavesta, and the Vedas ; and the book which is to be 
 found in every living language when the great globe shall dis- 
 solve. Now I do not say that this proves that the Bible has a 
 Divine origin. I say only, that it demonstrates that such a 
 book is not to be treated with contempt, that it has sufficient claims 
 to a Divine origin to demand perusal and study. He gives no 
 evidence of extraordinary talent or independence who can 
 neglect or despise such a book ; he who studies it is at least 
 associated in one thing with the minds that have done the most 
 to honour our race, and who have secured the widest respect 
 among mankind. And in reference to the whole range of 
 investigations that come before the human mind, to the actual 
 developments of the human powers, and to the changes that 
 have occurred on earth, and to all our inquiries respecting the 
 future, as well as in reference to the past history of nations, and 
 to our own history as a people, it may be found to be true that 
 the Bible is the only certain " lamp unto our feet, and light unto 
 our path." 
 
 IV. The fourth consideration which I urge is, that the Bible 
 reveals a way of salvation a method by which a sinner may 
 be conducted to happiness and to heaven. I here mean only to 
 state this not to attempt to prove it. Nor is it necessary for 
 my purpose now to prove it. All that my purpose demands is 
 to bring the fact to your notice, and to state that such a plan is 
 revealed, and in such circumstances as to demand your attention. 
 That it professes to reveal a way by which a man may be saved, 
 no one can doubt ; for this is the leading design of the book. 
 That it is a simple and intelligible way, is demonstrated by the 
 fact that it has been embraced by millions of our race who 
 had no special claims to superior intellectual endowments, and 
 no superior attainments in science. That it is a safe way has 
 been demonstrated, as far as such a fact could be, by its sustaining 
 
14 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 power in those circumstances which most certainly test the 
 truth and value of our principles the circumstances which attend 
 our departure from the world. But while commending itself to 
 minds in humhle walks, and in the lowly condition of life, it has 
 also so commended itself to minds most elevated and cultivated ; 
 has so met their wants, and so imparted peace, and so sustained 
 them in the day of trial, as to show that it has a claim on the 
 attention of all mankind. To such minds it has commended 
 itself as simple, satisfactory, and rational ; as adapted to the 
 condition of fallen man, and as imparting the true peace, for 
 which a soul conscious of guilt seeks. It claims, too, to reveal 
 the only way hy which a sinner can he saved, and urges this on 
 the attention of the race hy all its proofs of its being a com- 
 munication from heaven hy its miracles, and its prophecies, and 
 its purity of doctrine, and its elevated rules of morality, and its 
 influence on mankind. He is not, he cannot he wise, who 
 turns away from a book that comes with such evidence of a 
 heavenly origin as the Bible has, and that has satisfied so many 
 minds of its truth. He is not, he cannot be wise, who in 
 such circumstances refuses to examine the claims of a book 
 that professes to disclose the only method by which man can 
 be saved. 
 
 V. The fifth and last consideration which I shall suggest is, 
 that the Bible is a book whose consolations and counsels you 
 will need on a bed of death. Instead of detaining you with an 
 argument on this point, I will just advert to one fact which will 
 have more weight with many whom I address than anything 
 which I can say ; and with this I shall close this discourse. A 
 few days before the death of Sir Walter Scott, there was a lucid 
 interval of that distressing malady which had for some time 
 afflicted him, and to remove which he had travelled in vain to 
 London, to Italy, and to Malta. He was again in his own 
 home. In one of these calm moments of reason, " gentle as an 
 infant," says his biographer, when the distressing aberrations of 
 his mind had for a time ceased, he desired to be drawn into his 
 library, and placed by the window, that he might look down 
 upon the Tweed. To his son-in-law he expressed a wish that 
 he should read to him. "From what book shall I read?" said 
 he. "Can you ask?" Scott replied ; "THERE is BUT ONE." 
 " I chose," says his biographer, " the fourteenth chapter of St. 
 John's Gospel. He listened with mild devotion, and said when 
 I had done, Well, this is a great comfort ; I have followed you 
 distinctly, and I feel as if I were yet to be myself again" (Life 
 of Scott, vi. 288). I need not enlarge on the dying testimony of 
 
THE BIBLE. 15 
 
 this eminent man in favour of the Bible. On the bed of death, 
 "there is but one" book that can meet the case. Not his own 
 beautiful poems ; not his own enchanting works of fiction, were 
 his comforters there, He had come to a point where fiction 
 gave way to reality ; and we can conceive of scarcely any scene 
 of higher sublimity than was thus evinced, when a mind that 
 had charmed so many other minds, the most popular writer of 
 his age, if not of any age, in the solemn hour when life was 
 about to close, gave this voluntary tribute to the solitary 
 eminence of the Bible above all other books. Would that his 
 dying declaration could be imprinted on the title-page of all his 
 works that wherever they shall be read, his solemn testimony 
 might go with them, that a time is coming when BUT ONE BOOK 
 can have claims on the attention of men, and BUT ONE BOOK 
 will be adapted to guide their steps and to comfort their hearts! 
 May I suggest to the readers of novels and romances that the 
 time is coming when, one after another, these books will be laid 
 aside ; when the romance of life will be exchanged for the sober 
 reality of death ; and when the most gorgeous and splendid 
 illusions of this world will give place to the contemplation of 
 the realities of that everlasting scene which opens beyond the 
 grave. Then you will need, not fiction, but truth ; not gorgeous 
 description, not the enchanting narrative, not the wizard illusions 
 of the master mind that can play upon the feelings and entrance 
 the heart ; but the word the eternal word of that God who can- 
 not lie, and the sweet consolations of that "ONE BOOK" whose 
 beauties, after all, as much transcend the highest creations of 
 genius as its truths are more valuable than fiction. We may 
 live amidst gorgeous scenes ; amidst splendid illusions ; amidst 
 changing clouds ; amidst vapours that float on the air, and then, 
 vanish ; but when we die we shall wish to plant our feet, not 
 on evanescent vapours and changing though brilliant clouds, but 
 on the Eternal Rock ; a position which shall be firm when the 
 rains descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow (Matt, 
 vii. 25). And in reference to that dark valley which we must all 
 soon tread that valley that appears so chilly and dismal to 
 man along which no one has returned to be our conductor and 
 guide, whatever may be said of the value of the Bible in regard 
 to the past history of our race, or our own history in particular, 
 or the various inquiries which have come before the human 
 mind it is indubitably then to be the only certain " lamp unto 
 our feet, and light unto our path." 
 
 Let me, in conclusion, ask of each one individually, Is there 
 force enough in my argument to induce you to read the Bible ? 
 
16 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 If there is, let it be done. I ask you not to lay aside your 
 Homer, your Cowper, your Dryden, your Milton. I ask you not 
 to burn your Addison, your Johnson, or your Burke. I ask you 
 not to throw away your Galen, or your Davy your Coke, or 
 your Hale ; but I ask you to give THE SUPREME PLACE in your 
 life to that ONE BOOK which the greatest of all writers of fiction 
 gave on the approach of death to THE BIBLE. 
 

 SERMON II, 
 
 THE OBSCURITIES OF DIVINE REVELATION. 
 
 PSALM xliii. 3." send out thy light and thy truth : let them lead me ; 
 let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles." 
 
 PSALM xxxvi. 9. ** For with thee is the fountain of life : in thy light 
 Bhall we see light." 
 
 PERHAPS no one ever studied the Bible as a professed revelation 
 from God who has not had such questions cross his mind as the 
 following : Why is there so much in this book that is obscure 
 and unintelligible? Why is not more information given on 
 great and important questions about which the human mind 
 has always been perplexed? Why is no more light thrown 
 on the subject of moral government ; on the question why sin 
 and misery were allowed to enter the world ; on the nature of 
 the happiness of heaven ; on the reasons why the wicked are 
 to suffer for ever ? Why are so many subjects left in total 
 darkness in a professed revelation, and others left with only 
 such a feeble glimmering of light as almost to make us wish 
 that there had been none ? 
 
 These questions produce increased perplexity and embarrass- 
 ment when such thoughts as the following occur, as they will 
 be very likely to do, in connexion with them : First, it 
 seems that it would have been so easy for God to have removed 
 all difficulty on many or all of these subjects. There can be 
 no darkness or obscurity with Him in relation to them, and he 
 could readily have taken away all our perplexity by a simple 
 explanation, almost by a single " stroke of the pen." Secondly, 
 such an explanation seems to have been demanded in order to clear 
 up his own character and dealings. There are many dark things 
 about his government ; many things which give occasion to hard 
 thoughts, to aspersions, and to reflections on his character, which 
 his friends cannot meet, and to difficulties which they cannot 
 solve ; and, instead of removing all these, he has so left the 
 matter as to perplex the good, and to give occasion for the 
 unanswered reproaches of the evil, when a simple explanation 
 
18 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 might have saved the whole difficulty. Thirdly, such an ex- 
 planation seemed to he demanded as an act of benevolence on 
 his part, in order to remove perplexity and distress from the 
 human mind, even if he was willing- that his own character 
 and the principles of his government should rest under a cloud. 
 Man hy nature is in darkness. He is perplexed and embarrassed 
 with his condition and prospects. He struggles in vain to 
 obtain relief by the unassisted efforts of his own mind. A 
 revelation is proposed ; but on the most important and perplexing 
 of his difficulties it seems only to tantalize him, and to leave 
 him as much in the dark as he was before. And, fourthly, 
 all this difficulty is increased when he reflects how much of 
 this same book is occupied with histories which have lost their 
 interest ; with names and genealogical tables now of little or 
 HO value ; with laws pertaining to rites and ceremonies long 
 since obsolete, and always apparently pertaining to trifling 
 subjects ; and with narratives often of apparently little dignity, 
 and of slight importance. The thought will cross the mind, 
 Why were not those portions of the book occupied with state- 
 ments which would have been of permanent value to man ? 
 AVhy, instead of these, did not God cause to be inserted there 
 important explanations respecting his own character and govern- 
 ment ; the condition of the heavenly world ; the reasons why 
 sin and woe came into the system ; and why the wicked must 
 be punished for ever? Disappointed, and troubled, and half 
 feeling that he is trifled with, many an inquirer after truth is 
 tempted to throw the book aside, and never to open it again 
 with the hope of finding an answer to the questions which most 
 deeply agitate his soul. 
 
 These are bold questions which man asks, but they will come 
 into the mind, and it is important to meet them, and to calm 
 down the spirit which would ask them, if we can. To obtain 
 a rational view of this matter, there are two inquiries : 
 
 I. What is the measure of light actually imparted in the 
 Bible? and, 
 
 II. Why is there no more ? 
 
 In the answer which may be given to these two inquiries, we 
 may find something, perhaps, to soothe the feelings and calm 
 the mind, in reference to the perplexities referred to. 
 
 I. The first inquiry is, What is the measure of light actually 
 imparted in the Bible? I do not, of course, intend to go into 
 detail here for this would involve an enumeration of all the 
 points embraced in the system of Christian theology, but I 
 purpose only to suggest the principles, if I may be allowed the 
 
OBSCURITIES OF DIVINE REVELATION. 19 
 
 expression, which guided the Divine Mind in giving a revelation 
 to man, It is evident that in giving such a revelation, the 
 question must have occurred, whether light should he imparted 
 on these points referred to ; whether all should be communi- 
 cated that could he ; whether care should be taken to explain 
 every question that might ever arise in the human mind ; 
 whether the whole subject of moral government should be 
 unfolded, or whether some other rule should be adopted, and 
 some other object should be aimed at. Now, the principles 
 which seem to have guided the Divine Mind, admitting for the 
 time that the Bible is a revelation from God, so far as we can 
 judge from the manner in which the revelation was actually 
 given, are the following : 
 
 (1.) First, to leave many subjects, and among them some of 
 those on which the mind is most inquisitive, perfectly in the 
 dark. It was intended that not a ray of light should be shed 
 on them ; that there**should be nothing which could constitute 
 a basis of even a plausible conjecture. It was clearly the design 
 of God to fix an outer limit to human knowledge so far as this 
 world is concerned, in reference to those points, and to leave 
 the race totally and designedly in the dark. This principle is 
 involved in the declaration, " Secret things belong to the Lord 
 your God, but things that are revealed to you and your 
 children." 
 
 A few remarks in relation to this outer limit, or this boundary, 
 will apply equally to reason and revelation ; and while they 
 may do something as an explanation of the general principles 
 of the Divine proceedings, they may, at the same time, do 
 something to reconcile us to the fact that it is found in a book 
 of professed revelation. 
 
 ( a ) There is a limit to the human faculties a point 
 beyond which man, in this world, cannot go in inquiring into 
 the various questions which may occur. That point may not 
 yet have been reached on any one subject ; but clearly there is 
 such a point, beyond which all is dark. Occasionally a bright 
 genius arises some one endowed with almost superhuman 
 powers who seems to secure, almost by intuition, all that 
 man had before discovered, and who is prepared, at the begin- 
 ning of his own career, to start where others left off, and to 
 penetrate the deep profound where mortals never before have 
 trod to open the eyes on new regions of thought, and new 
 worlds of matter ; but even he soon comes to the outer limit 
 of the human powers, and will always feel, as Newton did at 
 the close of his life, that the great ocean of truth is still unex- 
 
20 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 plored. " I do not know," said he, " what I may appear to the 
 world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy play- 
 ing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then 
 finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, 
 while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." * 
 Whatever may be the attainments which man may make in 
 the general progress of society, and whatever light may be shed 
 on objects before obscure by the few men of transcendant genius 
 whom God raises up from age to age, there is an outer limit to 
 all such progress a point beyond which all is involved in 
 Cimmerian darkness. The ancients, in their ignorance of the 
 true structure of the world, supposed that the earth was sur- 
 rounded by interminable seas, and that whosoever should venture 
 out in a right line from the land would soon enter regions 
 deepening in darkness, till not a ray of light should be visible ; 
 and they feigned one such voyage, in which the mariner stood 
 boldly for the west, until, terrified and affrighted by the in- 
 creasing darkness, he turned the prow of his vessel, and sought 
 again his native shores. What to them pertaining to the 
 structure of the earth was fable, is true on the point before us 
 in regard to higher subjects. There is an outer limit beyond 
 which there is no light. We cannot penetrate it. We have no 
 faculties, as men ordinarily are made, to penetrate it ; and no 
 genius arises so superior to the ordinary human endowments 
 as to be able to carry the torch of discovery into those unex- 
 plored regions. 
 
 (b) In like manner, as in regard to our natural faculties, so 
 it was clearly the design of God that there should be many 
 subjects on which not a ray of light should be thrown by 
 revelation. There are many points on which no statement is 
 made ; on which no hint is given that would relieve the anxiety 
 of a troubled mirfd. Far on the hither side of what we w r ould 
 like to know, the line is drawn, and the whole book is closed 
 at what may, without irreverence, be called or which, whether 
 irreverent or not, expresses our natural feelings a provoking 
 point, just at the point where we would be glad to ask questions, 
 and where we by no means feel our minds satisfied with what 
 we possess. 
 
 (c) As a matter of fact, therefore, whatever conclusions may 
 be drawn from it, there is a great variety of subjects, many of 
 them of great interest to the human mind, which are left totally 
 in the dark, and on which the utmost efforts of ingenuity, 
 
 * Brewster's Life of Newton, pp. 300, 301. 
 
OBSCURITIES OF DIVINE REVELATION. 21 
 
 employed in endeavouring to make the Bible speak out, have 
 been utterly ineffectual. The silence of the Bible is, in this 
 respect, somewhat like the silence of the dead about their condi- 
 tion, and about the future world. If they live, why do they 
 not return ? Why do they not come and tell us what it is to 
 die ? whither man goes when he dies ? and whether they are 
 happy or not, and how we may be ? "Why do they keep their 
 countenances so fixed and grave ; and why do the lips once so 
 ready to impart knowledge now keep themselves so close on 
 the very points on which we would be glad to have them speak ? 
 
 As a believer in revelation, and a friend of it, I am constrained, 
 therefore, to admit that there are many important points 'on 
 which not a ray of light is shed. I am, for one, willing to 
 concede that among these points are the questions why moral 
 evil was admitted into the system ; why misery ever found its 
 way into the empire of an infinitely benevolent and almighty 
 Creator and moral Governor ; and why the period will never 
 arrive when sin and woe shall everywhere come to an end. 
 On these, and on many kindred topics of great interest to man, 
 I confess I have never seen a ray of light cast by any human 
 speculation ; and that though I have been silenced, I have not 
 been convinced. Other men think they see light here ; I see none. 
 
 Just here, however, one remark should be made, to guard 
 this observation from abuse. It is, that as we cannot allow the 
 darkness attending the subject of moral evil to disprove the fact 
 that it exists for no one can dispute the fact- we should not 
 allow the darkness in relation to future punishment, even though 
 it should be eternal, to lead us to doubt or deny that fact. Our 
 ignorance in the one case does not disprove the fact how can 
 it in the other ? 
 
 (2.) A second principle on which revelation seems to have 
 been given, similar to the one just mentioned, is, to state nothing 
 merely to gratify curiosity. In the large book which constitutes 
 what we call the Bible, embracing as it does a vast variety of 
 histories, of apophthegms, of laws, of parables, of proverbs, of 
 poetry, of eloquent appeals, it would be difficult, if not impos- 
 sible, to fix the attention on a single thing that seems to have 
 been revealed merely to gratify curiosity, or which would not 
 have been recorded in the absence of such design. It was 
 remarkable, in particular, how steadily the Saviour refused to 
 gratify this spirit, or to answer questions based on this, when 
 it would have been so easy to have responded to the questions 
 proposed. I say " so easy to have responded to them," for, on 
 the supposition that hb was what he claimed to be, and had 
 
Zi THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 actually come down from heaven, the information which was 
 asked could have been readily given; and on the supposition 
 of the infidel that he was an impostor, nothing would have 
 been more easy than to give some answer since no one could 
 prove that it was wrong ; and I may add, that nothing would 
 have been more unnatural than that, with that assumed charac- 
 ter, he should have attempted no answer. But he never at- 
 tempted it never gratified such an inquiry. Thus, when he was 
 asked, " Lord, are there few that be saved ?" he gave no hint 
 to gratify the spirit of curiosity, but directed those who pro- 
 pounded the question to " strive to enter in at the strait gate." 
 When the mother of James and John came to him requesting 
 that her two sons might sit the one on his right hand and the 
 other on his left hand in his kingdom, he said " it was not his 
 to give, except for those for whom it had been prepared by his 
 Father." When, after his resurrection, he was asked by his 
 disciples whether he " would at that time restore the kingdom 
 to Israel ?" he said it was " not for them to know the times 
 or the seasons, which the Father had put in his own power." 
 Thus Paul also, in the most explicit manner (Col. ii. 18), condemns 
 those deceivers, one of the characteristics of whose teaching was, 
 that they " intruded into those things which they had not seen." 
 And so throughout the Bible, nothing seems to be done merely 
 to gratify curiosity. If we go to it to learn what is duty ; to 
 obtain principles of conduct to guide us ; to discover some 
 promise that shall support us in temptation and trouble ; to 
 learn in what way we may acceptably worship our Maker ; to 
 know what we should do in the relations of husbands and wives, 
 of parents and children, and of masters and servants ; to ascer- 
 tain what we should do for the poor, the ignorant, the prisoner, 
 the oppressed ; to learn what we must do to be saved, we never 
 consult the oracle in vain. If we go with a question of mere 
 curiosity ; with a desire to obtain some response that shall be 
 of no practical advantage, that shall flatter our self-esteem, or 
 inflate us with a vain conceit of knowledge, we are sure to 
 return with not even the respect that would be involved in the 
 most ambiguous and unmeaning response that was ever uttered 
 at Delphi. 
 
 (3.) The third and vital principle, therefore, that seems to 
 have directed the Divine Mind in giving a revelation was, to 
 furnish knowledge enough to be a safe guide to heaven. The 
 principle seems to have been to give us so much information 
 that we may learn the way of life if we will, and so as to keep 
 the mind in a healthful exercise in investigating truth. It is 
 
OBSCURITIES OF DIVINE REVELATION. 23 
 
 never forgotten that we are moral agents ; that we have powers 
 to be disciplined and cultivated ; and that our grand business 
 here is not to gratify our curiosity, but to secure our salvation. 
 Would not all the essential purposes of a revelation be answered 
 if it would enable us to secure the salvation of our souls? 
 Should it be a serious objection to it, if, while it did this, it did 
 not also cast light on a thousand other points, however interest- 
 ing and important they might be ? And should we reject it 
 and spurn it because there are many things which it leaves in 
 the dark many questions which are unanswered? Revelation 
 to us is not like the broad and clear sun that sheds down its 
 rays on the spread-out landscape covered with smiling fields, 
 and flocks, and hamlets ; disclosing each tree, and hill, and 
 house, and the winding course of each rivulet : it is, to use 
 an illustration suggested by another, like the lighthouse that 
 gleams on a dark and stormy coast to reveal the haven to the 
 ocean-tossed mariner. " It shines afar over the stormy ocean, 
 only penetrating a darkness which it never was intended to 
 expel." The mariner can see that light clearly. It guides him. 
 It cheers- him when the tempest beats around him, and when 
 the waves roll high. It shows him where the port is. It 
 assures him that if he reaches that spot he is safe. It is all 
 that he wants from that shore now, amid the darkness of the 
 night, to guide him. True, it is not a sun ; it does not dissipate 
 all the darkness ; " it is a mere star, showing nothing but itself 
 perhaps not even its own reflection on the water.'* But it 
 is enough. There it stands, despite the storm and the darkness, 
 to tell the mariner just what he wishes to know, and no more. 
 It has saved many a richly-freighted bark, and all that he needs 
 is that it will save his own. It tells him there is a haven there, 
 though it leaves him all uninformed about everything else. 
 Beyond the distance where it throws its beams, all is midnight. 
 On a thousand questions, on which curiosity might be excited, 
 it casts no light whatever. " The cities, the towns, the green 
 fields, the thousand happy homes which spread along the shore 
 to which it invites him, it does not reveal." On a calmer sea 
 curiosity would be glad to know all about the land on which 
 that light stands, and to anticipate the time when, safe from 
 danger, the feet might range over those fields " beyond the 
 swelling flood." And so, too, " all is dark in reference to that 
 stormy expanse over which the mariner has sailed," and all 
 around him, as well as on the land to which he goes ; but shall 
 he therefore reject the aid of that light because it discloses no 
 more ? Shall he refuse its assistance in guiding his vessel into 
 
24 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 port because it does not disclose to him all that there is in that 
 land, or shed a flood of day on the heavens above him, and on 
 all that stormy ocean on which he is embarked ? 
 
 So it is in respect to the Gospel. Man, too, is on a stormy 
 ocean the ocean of life, and the night is very dark. There are 
 tempests that beat around us ; under-currents that would drift 
 us into unknown seas ; rocks that make our voyage perilous. 
 The Gospel is a light " standing on the dark shore of eternity, 
 just simply guiding us there." It reveals to us almost nothing 
 of the land to which we go, but only the way to reach it. It 
 does nothing to answer the thousand questions which we would 
 ask about that world, but it tells how we may see it with our 
 own eyes. It does not tell us all about the past the vast 
 ocean of eternity that rolled on countless ages before we had a 
 beginning ; about the government of God ; about our own 
 mysterious being ; but it would guide us to God's " holy hill 
 and tabernacle," where in his " light we may see light ;" and 
 where what is now obscure may become as clear as noonday. 
 
 If these are correct views, then it follows that the Bible, as 
 a revelation from God, was not designed to give us all the 
 information which we might desire, nor to solve all the questions 
 about which the human mind is perplexed, but to impart enough 
 to be a safe guide to the haven of eternal rest. 
 
 II. Our second inquiry is, Why was no more light given ? 
 Why was no more done to dissipate the darkness on those 
 points on which we are now so much perplexed ; to answer the 
 questions which we are so ready to ask, and which we feel it is 
 proper for us to ask ? 
 
 It would be presumptuous to attempt to assign with certainty 
 the reasons which influenced the Divine Mind in adopting the 
 principles which have been suggested in making a revelation, 
 and all that is proper for man to attempt to do in the case is 
 to show that revelation is not liable to any well-founded objec- 
 tion on that account, and that, grateful for the light which has 
 been given us, we should not murmur because we have no more 
 as the appropriate feeling of our mariner would be gratitude 
 that that bright and clear, though little light is kept burning 
 on that stormy coast to guide every vessel that may chance to 
 come into those waters, not of complaint that it does not reveal 
 the hills, and vales, and cities, and hamlets of that land. 
 
 In endeavouring, therefore, to show you that this is the 
 appropriate state in which the mind should be, or to calm down 
 the murmurs that rise in our souls because God has told us no 
 more, I would submit the following remarks : 
 
OBSCURITIES OF DIVINE REVELATION. 25 
 
 (1.) First, our essential condition on earth is one of discipline 
 and probation. But this supposes that, while there shall he 
 light and truth enough to make our condition safe, if we choose 
 to have it so that is, that it shall be a practicable thing to 
 secure our salvation there shall be enough also to exercise our 
 powers in the best manner ; to secure their most healthful 
 development ; to determine whether we are disposed to exert 
 ourselves and to make inquiry ; while there shall be enough in 
 reserve to furnish occupation for the mind ever onward. Now 
 it is certain that while many of the points suggested may 
 furnish material for inquiry and thought, and while in advancing 
 years in our own lives, or in the progress of society, light may 
 be thrown on many subjects which are now dark, yet their 
 solution is not necessary to our salvation, and perhaps would 
 in no manner promote it. To recur once more to our illustra- 
 tion. Desirable as it might be, on many accounts, to know all 
 that there is in that land on which the light stands that is to 
 direct the mariner, yet the knowledge of that would not aid 
 him in guiding his vessel into port. That it was a land of 
 peace and plenty ; that it was the place of his fathers' sepulchres ; 
 that it was the home of his wife and children ; that it opened 
 rich fields for commerce or scientific research, might indeed 
 stimulate and animate him amidst the billows, as our hope of 
 heaven does in the storms that beat around us, but the most 
 minute acquaintance with that country would not materially 
 aid him in guiding his vessel into port. 
 
 Now, if we would search our own minds we should probably 
 find that the questions in reference to which we are most disposed 
 to complain because they are not solved, are not those which 
 really embarrass us in the matter of salvation, or which, being 
 solved, would aid us, but those in reference to which our salva- 
 tion may be equally safe and easy whether they are solved or 
 not. When a man finds himself struggling in a stream, it does 
 nothing to facilitate his escape to know how he came there ; nor 
 would it aid the matter if he could determine beyond a doubt 
 why God made streams so that men could ever fall into them, 
 and did not make every bank so that it would not crumble 
 beneath the feet. 
 
 In the condition of man, therefore, regarded as in a state of 
 discipline and probation, all that seems really to be demanded 
 is, first, to furnish so much light in regard to the future that 
 the salvation of the soul shall not necessarily be endangered 
 as in the case of our lighthouse ; and, secondly, to bring before 
 it so many unsolved, but important questions, as to furnish a 
 
26 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 healthful exercise of its powers : to place the mind in such a 
 state that there may be progress, but not exhaustion ; to leave 
 to the soul the stimulus derived from the fact that there are 
 boundless fields of thought and inquiry before it, not to leave 
 it to the imbecility and inaction resulting from the fact that 
 all has been explored, and that there are no new discoveries to 
 be made, as Alexander is said to have sat down and wept 
 because there were no other worlds to be conquered. 
 
 Accordingly, this is the way in which God everywhere deals 
 with the human powers. Youth is stimulated to make attain- 
 ments in literature and science because there are vast fields 
 yet unexplored, and to a noble mind it is all the better if not a 
 ray of light has ever been shed upon them ; nor would a generous- 
 minded youth thank even his Maker to stop the career of noble 
 thought and the path of discovery by pouring down a flood of 
 light on all those regions, so that no more was left for the efforts 
 of honourable ambition. The explorer of unknown lands is 
 cheered because a vast and inviting field is before him which 
 the foot of man has never trod ; and as he passes on in his 
 obstructed way through fields of flowers new to the eye of man, 
 and ascends streams on which man has never glided, and climbs 
 the mountain top on which a human being ever before stood, 
 and looks abroad on rich valleys that still invite him, he is 
 cheered and excited by the fact that all this has been unknown ; 
 nor would he thank even his Maker to disclose all this at once 
 to the world, and bid him sink down to supineness and inaction. 
 It was this which animated Columbus when his prow first 
 crossed the line beyond which no ship had ever sailed, and 
 plunged into unknown seas. Every wave that w r as thrown up 
 had a new interest and beauty from the fact that its repose 
 had never been disturbed before by the keel of a vessel ; and 
 when his eyes first saw the land, and he prostrated himself and 
 kissed the earth, his glory was at the highest, for he saw what 
 in all ages was unknown before. So we are everywhere stimu- 
 lated and animated by the unknown ; by what is before us and 
 may be gained; by the fields of new thought which man has 
 never explored. But for this, which arises from the very 
 nature of discipline, how flaccid and supine would be all our 
 powers ! * 
 
 * " Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante 
 Trita solo; juvat integros accedere fonteis; 
 Atque haurire " 
 
 LUCRETIUS. 
 
OBSCURITir.S OF DIVINE REVELATION. 27 
 
 And here, I will just say in this connexion, to those whose 
 minds are perplexed because God has revealed no more ; to those 
 who find a thousand questions crowding- upon them which they 
 cannot solve ; and especially to those who are in the beginning 
 of their Christian way, in whose minds there rise sceptical, or 
 murmuring, or even blasphemous thoughts against God, and 
 around whom, on the most important subjects, there seem to 
 be the shades of the deepest midnight, that in a few years, as 
 the result of calm examination and of maturer reflection and 
 observation, most of these difficulties will disappear. Light 
 steals in gradually but certainly on a man's soul when he 
 " watches daily at the gates of wisdom, and waits at the posts 
 of her doors" (Prov. viii. 34), and not many years will elapse 
 when either these questions which are started in connexion with 
 revelation will be solved, or will take their place with those that 
 pertain not to the Bible peculiarly, but to the government of the 
 world as actually administered, and, therefore, are questions with 
 which the Christian is not peculiarly concerned. 
 
 " In the early part of my biblical studies, some thirty to thirty- 
 five years ago," says the most distinguished professor of biblical 
 learning in this country, " when I first began the critical investi- 
 gation of the Scriptures, doubts and difficulties started up on every 
 side, like the armed men whom Cadmus is fabled to have raised 
 up. Time, patience, continued study, a better acquaintance with 
 the original scriptural languages, and the countries where the 
 sacred books were written, have scattered to the winds nearly 
 all those doubts. I meet, indeed," says he, " with difficulties 
 still, which I cannot solve at once, with some where even re- 
 peated efforts have not solved them. But I quiet myself by 
 calling to mind that hosts of other difficulties, once apparently to 
 me as formidable as these, have been removed, and have dis- 
 appeared from the circle of my troubled vision. Why may I 
 not hope, then, as to the difficulties that remain?"* 
 
 (2.) The second thought which I suggest as a reason why no 
 more was imparted to man on these great questions is, that it is 
 not absolutely certain, it is not even probable, that we could 
 comprehend any statements which could be made on those points 
 which now perplex us. " If I have told you earthly things," 
 said the Saviour to Nicodemus, " and ye believe not, how shall 
 ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" (John iii. 12). If 
 one should undertake to explain to an ordinary child of four 
 years of age the views which governed Canning in some great 
 
 * Prof. Stuart on the Canon of the Old Testament, p. 18. 
 
28 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 act of diplomacy, or all the bearings of the positions assumed by 
 the different contracting powers at the peace of Tilsit, the diffi- 
 culty would not be so much in the explanation, or in the thing 
 itself, as in the immature powers, the want of knowledge, the 
 feeble grasp of comprehension of the boy that he should seek 
 thus to instruct. A few years may do wonders for that boy. 
 He may then possibly grasp these principles more clearly than 
 even Canning could, or might perhaps conduct a negotiation for 
 peace with more talent than either of the great powers of Russia, 
 France, or Prussia. The following specifications under this head 
 may do something further to explain this, and to relieve the 
 difficulty : 
 
 (a) One is, that though up to a certain point a point which 
 depends on the measure of our faculties, our age, and our attain- 
 ments, a thing may be clear to us as the sunbeam, yet beyond 
 that it is impossible to convey any idea. The mind is confused 
 and overpowered. It falters under the great and incomprehensible 
 subject, and no matter how much you may say with a view to 
 imparting instruction, not a new idea is conveyed to the soul. 
 Thus, for example, up to a certain extent, we comprehend what 
 is meant by distances. We know the length of the journey that 
 we have made ; we have an idea of distances as measured on 
 the surface of the earth ; we form a conception of what is the 
 distance from Philadelphia to London, or to Canton ; we have a 
 faint conception of the distance of some of the planets from the 
 earth. But beyond that, though you may use figures and lan- 
 guage, you convey no distinct idea. When you speak of the 
 planet Herschel as one thousand eight hundred millions of miles 
 from the sun, and, still more, when you speak of the nearest 
 fixed star as certainly more than twenty billions of miles from 
 the earth, though you use words, and are capable of conducting 
 an investigation by the figures before you, you form no distinct 
 idea of so amazing a distance. So it is of magnitude. Up to a 
 certain point, all may be clear. The magnitude of a mountain, 
 or of the earth, or even of the planet Jupiter, you may form 
 some conception of; but what distinct conception have you of 
 the magnitude of the sun ? And what idea is conveyed when 
 you are told of one of the fixed stars, that it is fourteen millions 
 of times as large as our sun ? Still more, what conception have 
 you of the extent of the visible universe ? After a short dis- 
 tance in the description, you are lost, and there is no power that 
 could convey the great idea to a finite mind. So it is of velocity. 
 The fleet horse, the wind, the fast-sailing ship, the railroad car, 
 the bird, perhaps the earth in its orbit, we may conceive of in 
 
OBSCURITIES OF DIVINE REVELATION. 29 
 
 regard to velocity ; but what idea have you of the velocity of a 
 substance that flies at the rate of twelve millions of miles every 
 minute, like light ? So of heat. Of melted iron, or burning 
 lava, you may form some conception ; but what idea is conveyed 
 to the mind, when you are told of the comet that approaches so 
 near to the sun, that it is several thousand times hotter than 
 red-hot iron ? Men may indeed use words on such subjects, and 
 they may be founded in truth, but they convey no idea to the 
 human soul. 
 
 Now, how do you know but that it may be so on those great 
 subjects which pertain to the moral government of God that 
 give you so much trouble? You understand something but 
 after all how little of the government of a family or a school ; 
 you may have a clear idea of the principles w^hich regulate civil 
 government in its ordinary administration ; perhaps you might 
 embrace some of the views that would influence such a mind as 
 that of Metternich ; but are you certain that you could com- 
 prehend the high principles of the Divine administration, even 
 if they were stated to you ? Do you believe that the views of 
 Metternich could be understood ordinarily by a boy of four 
 years old ; or that any statements on the subject w r ould convey 
 any clear conceptions to his mind, or that the perplexities which 
 might arise in contemplating those complicated views of govern- 
 ment and diplomacy could be made clear to such a mind ? And, 
 " Canst thou by searching find out God ? canst thou find out the 
 Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as heaven ; what canst 
 thou do ? deeper than hell ; what canst thou know ? The 
 measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the 
 sea," Job xi. 79. 
 
 (6) Again, reflect how little of the future and the unseen can 
 be known by description; how faint and imperfect a view you 
 can get of anything by a mere statement ; how little you know 
 of a landscape, a waterfall, a picture, by any description that 
 can be given. Especially must this be so of objects which have no 
 resemblance to anything that we have seen. Who ever obtained 
 any idea of Niagara by a description ? Who, say to the most 
 polished Greek and Roman mind, could have conveyed by mere 
 description any idea of the printing-press, of a locomotive engine, 
 of the magnetic telegraph ? Who could convey to one born, 
 blind an idea of the prismatic colours ; or to the deaf an idea of 
 sounds ? And when you think how meagre in the Bible is the 
 description of heaven ; when you think how easy it would have 
 been to furnish a more minute explanation, are you certain that 
 human language could have communicated to you the great and 
 
30 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 bright conception ; or that, if words could have been found, they 
 would have conveyed to you any exact idea of a state so different 
 from what is our condition here ? If the comparison is not too 
 low, may we not for a moment suppose the gay and gilded 
 butterfly that plays in the sunbeam, endued with the power of 
 imparting ideas ; but to its companions of yesterday low and 
 grovelling worms could any adequate idea be furnished of that 
 new condition of being into which the chrysalis had emerged ? 
 
 I have spoken of what grows necessarily out of the fact that 
 we are in a state of discipline as regulating revelation, and of 
 the difficulty of conveying any ideas to the human mind beyond 
 a certain point. I add 
 
 (3.) A third thought. It is, that we are in the very infancy 
 of our being ; that we have but just opened our eyes upon this 
 wonderful universe, which in its structure demanded all the 
 wisdom, and goodness, and power of an infinite God ! Very few 
 of us have lived through the period of seventy revolving suns ; 
 a majority of us not fifty; many not twenty. We have but just 
 learned to speak, to handle things, to talk, to walk. But yester- 
 day we were at our mothers' breasts. We knew not anything. 
 We knew not that a candle would burn our finger if we put it 
 there. We knew not how to distinguish one sound from another", 
 nor whence any sound came. We knew not the use of the eye, 
 or ear, or hand, or foot. We knew not the name of one rock, 
 or plant, or human being not even what is meant by father 
 and mother. We could neither walk, nor stand, nor creep. By 
 slow degrees we first learned to creep. Then, sustained by the 
 hand of a parent, we began to stand. Then, assuming boldness, 
 to the delight of father and mother, we ventured off half a dozen 
 steps alone. We began to utter sounds that were kindly con- 
 strued into language. We lisped, and hesitated, and then achieved 
 a great victory in mastering a few simple monosyllables. And 
 now, forsooth, we wonder that we do not know all about God, 
 and these worlds, and the moral government of the Most High. 
 We sit in judgment on what our Maker has told us. We com- 
 plain that anything is left dark. We murmur that we do not 
 know why he permitted sin to come into his system ; why he 
 allowed misery to enter his universe ; why he does not check 
 and remove it altogether. We complain that he has not told us 
 all about heaven, and that there is even one subject to which 
 the human mind can apply itself that is not as clear as noonday. 
 We are sullen and silent ; we repress our gratitude ; we throw 
 back his Bible in his face ; we have no songs and no thanks- 
 givings, because we are not told all about this earth, and these 
 
OBSCURITIES OF DIVINE REVELATION. 31 
 
 skies about heaven, and about hell, and about the God that 
 made, and that rules over all ! 
 
 Hoping that these views may do something to calm the 
 murmurs that rise up in our souls ; to reconcile us to the manner 
 in \vhich the book of revealed truth has been given ; to make us 
 grateful for the measure of light which we have ; to bear 
 without complaining the trials involved in mystery that are 
 brought upon us ; and to lead us to look forward to the develop- 
 ments of the Divine government in future times and worlds, I 
 will now close the consideration of the subject with two 
 additional remarks. 
 
 (1.) First, in the view of our subject, we may be prepared to 
 see the beauty of the passages of Scripture which speak of 
 heaven as a world of light. Standing in the midst of our dark- 
 ness, in a world where there is so much mystery, where we see 
 so few things with any degree of clearness, we may learn to 
 prize more the descriptions of that world to which we go the 
 declarations respecting heaven with which the sacred volume so 
 appropriately closes : " And the city had no need of the sun, 
 neither of the moon, to shine in it : for the glory of God did 
 lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations 
 of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and there 
 shall be no night there. And there shall be no more curse : but 
 the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it ; and his 
 servants shall serve him. And they need no candle, neither 
 light of the sun ; for the Lord God giveth them light : and they 
 shall reign for ever and ever," Rev. xxi. 23 25 ; xxii. 3 5. 
 
 In view, too, of such future light and glory, and in view of our 
 darkness now on a thousand subjects on which we pant to be 
 informed, how appropriate for man is the language of our text 
 " O send out thy light and thy truth : let them lead me ; let 
 them bring me unto thy holy hill and to thy tabernacles. For 
 with thee is the fountain of life : in thy light shall we see light." 
 
 (2.) The second and last remark is, what a glorious career is 
 before the Christian. All this darkness shall yet be dissipated ; 
 all that is now obscure shall be made light. Destined to live 
 for ever and ever ; capable of an eternal progression in know- 
 ledge ; advancing to a world where all is light ; soon to be 
 ushered into the splendours of that eternal abode where there is 
 no need of the light of the sun or the moon, and where there is 
 no night, we may well submit for a little time to the mysteries 
 which hang over the Divine dealings, and with exulting feelings 
 look onward. In a little time a few week or days- by removal 
 to a higher sphere of being, we shall doubtless have made a 
 
32 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 progress in true knowledge, compared with which all that we 
 have gained since we left our cradles is a nameless trifle ; and 
 then all that there is to he known in those worlds that shine 
 upon our path hy day and night ; all that is to he known in the 
 character of our Maker and the principles of his moral govern- 
 ment ; all that is to be enjoyed in a world of glory without a 
 cloud and without a tear ; all that is beatific in the friendship of 
 God the Father, of the ascencjed Redeemer, of the Sacred Spirit, 
 and of the angels ; all that is blessed and pure in the goodly 
 fellowship of the apostles and martyrs ; and all that is rapturous 
 in reunion with the spirits of those we loved on earth, and the 
 friendship of the "just made perfect," is before us. Let it be 
 dark, then, a little longer ; let the storm a little longer beat 
 around me, and the waves arise ; let even the heavens be over- 
 cast so that I can see neither sun nor star, I will neither 
 murmur nor complain for I see the light burn clearly that 
 stands on the shores of Eternity, and that invites and guides 
 me there. 
 
SEEMON III. 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 1 PETER iii. 15. "And be ready always to give an answer to every 
 man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness 
 and fear." 
 
 EVERY man has a moral right to ask me what reason I have to 
 hope for eternal life for salvation is a matter of common 
 interest. He has as much concern in the question about future 
 happiness as I have, and if I have a well-founded hope of 
 heaven, he may also have such a hope. As he has a right to 
 ask this question, I am hound to give him an answer. As one 
 cherishing such a hope, I ought to he able to state the grounds 
 of it ; and as I may be presumed to have a benevolent regard 
 for the welfare of others, I ought to be willing to impart to 
 him whatever knowledge I have on the subject : for if I have 
 knowledge of so great a truth as that there is a way by which 
 man may be happy for ever, I am not at liberty to withhold from 
 another what may be to him of so much value. 
 
 The inquiry which one might make of another respecting the 
 hope that is in him, might relate to two points. It might be 
 either in regard to the hope w T hich Christianity as a system 
 holds out to man ; or to the hope which in particular he enter- 
 tains of reaching heaven. This latter inquiry would involve so 
 much reference to personal feeling and experience that there 
 might be some delicacy and hesitancy in replying to it ; and yet, 
 if proposed in a serious and candid manner, and with a sincere 
 desire to know what true religion is, a Christian would not feel 
 himself at liberty to withhold the information. Such an answer 
 would be appropriate to a serious and anxious inquirer on the 
 subject of religion ; the reply to the question in the other form 
 \vould be appropriate at all times. The one is that which would 
 properly be stated in the free, confidential intercourse of friend- 
 ship ; the other is that which is appropriate to the public instruc- 
 tions of the pulpit or the press. 
 
 Whenever we come before you in any public manner, it is 
 in some way to set forth the claims of the Christian religioi). 
 
THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 Either by illustrating- detached portions of its doctrines and 
 duties, or by a formal argument in its defence, we seek to show 
 you that it has a claim upon each one of your hearts, and that 
 it furnishes a ground of hope for the life to come. It is not 
 improper, on some occasions, to consider ourselves as giving 
 a distinct answer to one who should make an inquiry of the 
 reason of the hope that is in us, or what there is in Christianity 
 which satisfies the mind that it is proper to cherish that hope. 
 Such a position I desire to regard myself as occupying at this 
 time, and I propose, therefore, to set forth the claims of the 
 gospel in this way. 
 
 This religion has been in the world, inspiring these hopes, 
 eighteen hundred years. At this period of the world, and after 
 it has exbted so long upon the earth, what is there to be seen 
 in the system which makes it proper to cherish the hope of 
 eternal life based on its promises ? What is there, in the view 
 of an intelligent Christian, on which the system rests as justify- 
 ing hope in his own case, and as furnishing an argument to be 
 used in addressing others to induce them to repose on it with 
 the same measure of confidence ? 
 
 I suppose that a man who is not a Christian, if called upon 
 to give reasons why he is not, in the public manner in which I 
 am to show why I am, would arrange his thoughts under some 
 such heads as the following: the deficiency of the evidence 
 of the Divine authority of the Bible ; the ambiguity and uncer- 
 tainty of the alleged prophecies, and the intrinsic difficulty in 
 believing in miracles ; the difficulties in the Scriptures, and in 
 the doctrines which they have revealed ; the fact that in the 
 pretended book of revealed truth there are many questions which 
 are unsolved ; the bigotry, wars, persecutions, and wrongs to 
 which it would be said Christianity has given rise; the little 
 influence which it has on the lives of its professors, and the 
 general character of the church. Whether these would be the 
 true reasons, or whether there are reasons lying back of these in 
 the state of the heart, is not of importance now to be considered. 
 All that I wish to say just here is, that it is not to be assumed 
 by the friends of Christianity that these reasons, as they might 
 be drawn out, have no force ; and as little is it to be assumed 
 by its enemies that they who embrace the Christian system do 
 not see their force, and are not capable of appreciating it. It 
 is a circumstance of some importance that not a few who are 
 Christians were once infidels themselves ; and it is not fair to 
 assume that they have never looked at these arguments as atten- 
 tively as other men. 
 
CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 35 
 
 Cecil, once himself an infidel of a most decided character, 
 after his conversion made this striking remark : " I have read," 
 said he, " all the most acute, and learned, and serious infidel 
 writers, and have heen really surprised at their poverty. The 
 process of my mind has heen such on the suhject of revelation, 
 that I have often thought Satan has done more for me than for 
 the best of them ; for I have had, and could have produced, argu- 
 ments that appeared to me far more weighty than any I ever 
 found in them against revelation" (Life and Remains, p. Ixxxix.) 
 " It is the registered saying of a man, eminent alike for talent 
 and piety, that he never found such strong arguments against the 
 Bible, in all writings of infidels, as had suggested themselves to 
 his own mind" (Melville, Sermons, vol. i. p. 276). 
 
 Without impropriety I may be permitted to say, that in my 
 investigations I have found things that have seemed to me to 
 have much greater strength against the truth of the Bible, and 
 that have given me much more perplexity than anything which 
 I have found in the books of infidel writers ; and that now, if I 
 were to assume the position of an advocate of infidelity, I could 
 draw out an argument that would seem to me to have more 
 force than is found in any book that I could recommend to you. 
 If you will suffer these remarks to pass without an imputation 
 of vanity, I will proceed to state why, notwithstanding these 
 facts, a man may see reasons w r hy he should be a Christian. 
 I will suggest several considerations, which together may perhaps 
 furnish an answer to both the aspects of the question referred 
 to in the beginning of this discourse. 
 
 I. The first is, because the Christian religion has such claims 
 of a Divine origin that they MAY convince and satisfy the mind. 
 I do not mean here such as to compel the assent of the mind ; 
 nor would I say such as to satisfy every mind in every state. 
 I mean such as may satisfy a mind in a healthful state ; a mind 
 in the best condition for looking at evidence ; a mind that shall 
 reason on the subject of religion as men reason on other things. 
 There is but one kind of evidence that compels assent that 
 which is found in the pure mathematics, and that embraces but 
 a small part of the subjects that come before mankind. In 
 morals ; in law ; in medicine ; in mental philosophy ; in political 
 economy ; in the mechanic arts ; in history, we are content with 
 another kind of evidence that which convinces, not compels. 
 The word convinces expresses the idea exactly that which over- 
 comes, or which gets a victory over difficulties and objections ; 
 which subdues the opposition of the mind to the truth ; which 
 furnishes evidence to remove the pre-existing reasons for doubt, 
 
36 THE WAY OF SALTATION. 
 
 and which, as by a victory, secures the assent of the understand- 
 ing. Now religion, from the nature of the case, belongs to this 
 class of subjects ; that is, it rests on the same basis on which 
 are placed most of the other great interests of mankind. 
 
 I suppose that it can hardly be deemed necessary for me to 
 attempt elaborately to prove the truth of my proposition that 
 the Christian religion has such evidences of a Divine origin that 
 they may convince and satisfy the mind. If there is no inherent 
 impossibility in that, it would be fair to suppose, unless the 
 contrary can be shown, that this does occur, and that a man is 
 a Christian because his mind is thus satisfied, and that this is 
 the first reason which he would allege why he is a Christian. 
 
 Yet I have a few remarks to make in regard to this attitude 
 of the mind, viewed in its relation to the evidence of the Divine 
 origin of the Christian religion now after a period of one thou- 
 sand eight hundred years. They may be numbered in their 
 order, though it must be without illustration : (a) First, then, 
 as already shown, the mind may become convinced and satisfied. 
 This has been done in many millions of instances ; this is now 
 constantly occurring in the world. There are now great numbers 
 of believers who have embraced Christianity only because they 
 are convinced of its truth for there is no other motive to 
 explain this ; and the arguments which have convinced them are 
 the same which have convinced the millions that have gone 
 before them. (6) Secondly, the evidence in the case has stood 
 through the severest tests which could be applied ; and Chris- 
 tianity exists now simply because the world cannot be convinced 
 that its claims are delusive and false. Whatever may be inferred 
 from this one way or the other, no one can doubt that it lives, 
 and is carrying on its great movements among the nations, 
 because the attempts which have been made to satisfy man- 
 kind that it is an imposture have not been such as to convince 
 the world. The severest tests have been applied to it that can 
 be those derived from reason, ridicule, contempt, power, perse- 
 cution ; and whatever else may befall it, he who is a Christian 
 rests in this certainty that his religion will never be removed 
 from the world by reasoning, by ridicule, by contempt, by 
 power, by persecution. If it is to lose its hold on the minds of 
 men, it is to be by some agency which has not yet been em- 
 ployed ; yet what that is to be, the mind finds it difficult to 
 imagine, (c) Thirdly, it has passed, it may be supposed, what 
 it had really to apprehend as the great crisis of its fate. For 
 the great crisis was not, as is commonly supposed, in the time 
 of persecution ; it was to meet the developments of science. 
 
CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 37 
 
 Itself originated in a rude age and land, its great encounter was 
 to be not so much with power as with knowledge ; not so much 
 with princes as with philosophers ; not so much w T ith Nero and 
 Diocletian as with Bacon, Cuvier, and Davy ; not so much with 
 the powers of darkness as with the floods of light that would be 
 poured upon the world, when the danger was that it might be 
 found in error as all false religions are, and might, by excess 
 of light, become eclipsed. That danger may be regarded as 
 now passed. If it can retain its hold on the intellect of the 
 world at the present hour, it may be presumed to have little to 
 fear in the future, (c?) Fourthly, it has shown that it has 
 power to control the intellect of men, and to maintain its 
 dominion there. That dominion it has set up now over the 
 best, and the most highly cultivated intellect of this age, and 
 it loses none of its hold by the progress which society makes in 
 science and in the arts. It is undoubtedly a fact that the 
 period has never been when Christianity had such a hold on the 
 intellect of the world as it has at the present time, or when so 
 many cultivated minds would come forth to its defence ; and it 
 has shown its power by securing that ascendency just in propor- 
 tion as the mind of the world is developed and cultivated, and 
 just in proportion as the best type of intellect becomes upper- 
 most in the control of human affairs. For not only has it main- 
 tained its ascendency as the sciences have advanced, but, if I 
 may be allowed the expression, it has shown a singular affinity 
 for the mind that appears to be destined to be the ruling mind 
 of the world, and that is more closely identified than any other 
 with all that tends to promote the progress of human affairs 
 the Anglo-Saxon mind, (c) Fifthly; just one other thought 
 under this head : it is, that the claims of the Christian religion 
 are such as to command the assent of the conscience and the 
 heart of men. After all, it makes its practical way in the 
 world rather by appeals to the conscience and the heart than 
 by appeals to the understanding. When men become Christians, 
 they feel that they are doing right, and the conscience and the 
 heart acquiesce in what is done, and they have no misgivings 
 about it. Not so if they are not Christians. They feel that they 
 are resisting claims which may be urged upon them at least 
 with a considerable show of reason. They feel that it requires 
 no little ingenuity to evade the arguments which are advanced 
 for the claims of religion, and no little ingenuity to invent 
 excuses for not becoming Christians. To become a Chris- 
 tian is a straightforward work, where a man is following 
 the leadings of his own judgment, and conscience, and interest, 
 
38 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 and duty, and which requires no ingenuity to apologize for; 
 to refuse to become one is a ta^k, where a man has to meet 
 the claims of argument, and conscience, and interest, and duty, 
 and to reconcile his refusal with these claims in the best way 
 he can. 
 
 II. In the second place, I embrace this hope because, if I 
 reject it, I do not get rid of the difficulties which press upon my 
 mind on the subject of religion, I will frankly state to you 
 that I see great difficulties on the whole subject of religion, 
 whether the Bible be embraced or not. Far beyond what ought 
 to be the state of a man's mind who undertakes to defend a 
 system with earnestness, and which cannot be supposed often to 
 exist when a man pleads a cause at the bar, or in the Senate 
 House when his country is in danger, a minister of the gospel 
 may be conscious of obscurities and difficulties in the high 
 subjects of the Divine nature ; the introduction of moral evil ; 
 the actual government of the world ; the apparent contradictions 
 in the Bible ; the mode of the Divine revelation ; the obscurity 
 of the whole system of doctrines, and the nature and duration 
 of future punishment ; and, however others may feel, / can 
 easily conceive of a man's being in such a state of mind on these 
 matters that he is in no condition to preach properly at all. 
 The state of mind to which I refer cannot be more strongly 
 expressed than in the language of Dr. Payson. Said he in a 
 letter to a friend long after he began to preach, " My difficulties 
 increase every year. There is one trial which you cannot know 
 experimentally. It is that of being obliged to preach to others 
 when one doubts of everything, and can scarcely believe that 
 there is a God. All the atheistical, deistical, and heretical 
 objections which I meet with in books are childish babblings 
 compared with those which Satan suggests, and which he urges 
 upon the mind with a force which seems irresistible. Yet I am 
 often obliged to write sermons and to preach when these objec- 
 tions beat upon me like a whirlwind, and almost distract me". 
 Works, i., 379, 380. 
 
 But, on the other hand, looking at the subject as a candid 
 man, I do not see that I am relieved, or that I get rid of these 
 difficulties by rejecting the Bible. The main difficulties on the 
 whole subject lie back of the Bible and of Christianity, and have 
 nothing to do with the one or the other, and I am in no manner 
 relieved if I reject the Old and the New Testaments. I rather 
 fall back on the difficulties with no explanation and no relief, 
 and then I am prepared to appreciate the perplexities of Socrates, 
 and the trouble of Cicero, and the difficulties of Zoroaster and 
 
CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 39 
 
 of Mani, and the anguish of Augustine before he became con- 
 verted. For I find the same difficulties press upon me, and 
 that without light or relief. They are difficulties growing out 
 of the Divine character ; and the principles of the Divine admi- 
 nistration ; and the introduction of moral evil ; and the treat- 
 ment which men receive at the hand of God ; and the fearful 
 impending prospects hereafter. I get rid of no one of them by 
 rejecting the Bible, and I am not only not relieved, but I deprive 
 myself of all the explanation which I can now find in the Bible 
 on these subjects, and at the same time of the bright light 
 which shines on a thousand topics which otherwise would be 
 as dark to me as they are the light which would guide me 
 safely to a better world. 
 
 III. In the third place, I embrace this hope because it meets 
 the wants of my nature, and furnishes me such a relit/ion as I 
 need. On the subject of religion there are certain things which 
 my nature and my circumstances demand ; and a religion to be 
 such as religion should be, must meet those demands. The 
 Christian system, though it does not yet answer all the ques- 
 tions which I would ask, does substantially meet those demands, 
 and does set the mind at rest. It is, of course, impossible in a 
 single head of a discourse to do anything more than to give 
 some hints of what I here refer to, and which must appear bald 
 and dry because there is no time to illustrate them. But I will 
 just refer to some of them: (1.) Man wants a God, and has 
 always been looking out for the Infinite One, to discern him 
 amidst his works, or to obtain by revelation some knowledge 
 of his existence and perfections. The Bible reveals such a God, 
 clothed with every glorious attribute, and infinite in his perfec- 
 tions, and spiritual in his nature, and pure in his government, 
 and benignant in his character, and so vast, and great, and 
 glorious that he is seen to be w r orthy of universal adoration and 
 praise. (2.) Man wants faith. He wants some being in whom, 
 he may confide, and who has all power ; some one on whom he 
 can rely : some one to whom he can go in trouble ; some one on 
 whom he can repose in the hour of death. A state of scepticism 
 is an unnatural state, and therefore a miserable state. The 
 mind never finds rest till it finds a God in whom it can confide, 
 and- it is constantly going out in restlessness and anxiety and 
 discomfort till it finds such a God. (3.) Man needs a knowledge 
 of the way by which sin can be forgiven, and no system of 
 religion can meet our condition which does not reveal such a 
 method. That man is a fallen being is perfectly plain, and no 
 one can deny it; and that a system of religion that does not 
 
 4 
 
40 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 recognise that fact and provide for it, is false and defective, is 
 apparent at a glance. Indeed, the consciousness of sin has been 
 the principal source of trouble in this world, and the profoundest 
 and most anxious inquiries of men have been to find out some 
 way by which sin can be pardoned. One thing is certain, that 
 man cannot look calmly forward to eternity, as a sinner, without 
 some knowledge of a way of pardon ; some evidence that his 
 sins are forgiven. Somehow, conscience has a power which man 
 dreads, and sin, after being long committed and apparently 
 forgotten, has a way of reviving in its power by the aid of 
 memory w r hich he would not meet beyond the grave. The 
 world needs the knowledge of a way by which sin may be 
 forgiven, and individual man needs the knowledge of such a 
 way, or he cannot find peace. The gospel has revealed such a 
 method. It has done two things in this respect one of which 
 was necessary to be done, and the other of which was not 
 necessary, and which is, therefore, a matter of mere favour : it 
 has proclaimed the fact that sin may be pardoned ; and it has 
 disclosed the method by which it is done; and in both these 
 the mind fully and joyfully acquiesces. Man finds in the 
 gospel, in this respect, that which quite meets the case, and 
 which puts the mind to rest. He finds a method of pardon 
 revealed which displays the character of God in a most lovely 
 manner ; which does all that can be done, and all that is needful 
 to be done, to maintain the honour of the law of God; and 
 which is adapted to give entire peace to a troubled conscience. 
 (4.) Man needs a knowledge of a way by which the soul may 
 be made holy; by which he may be defended in the day of 
 temptation ; by which he may be supported in the time of 
 trial ; by which he may find peace in the hour of death and 
 he finds all this amply in the gospel. And (5) he needs a 
 revelation of a future state some assurance about the immor- 
 tality of the soul something more than vague conjecture, and 
 loose and uncertain analogies, to assure him that his soul is 
 immortal. I need not say that men have sought this every- 
 where and at all times, nor need I remind you how loose and 
 unsatisfactory have been all their reasonings on this subject. 
 To the classic scholar I need not say that if I should here 
 adduce the reasonings of Plato in the Phaedo on the immortality 
 of the soul, those reasonings which Addison makes Cato pro- 
 nounce to be so well founded, there is not a man here present who 
 would feel himself convinced by them, or who would not feel, 
 if this were all, that the subject was left in utter and most 
 distressing doubt : perhaps no one who would not feel that I 
 
CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 41 
 
 was insulting his understanding by insisting on these arguments 
 certainly no infidel who would not ask me if I had no letter 
 reasons than those for believing in the immortality of the soul. 
 Of this work, and of Plato's reasonings in it, Cicero, in his 
 Tusculan Questions, most feelingly and strikingly remarks : " I 
 do not know how it is, but when I read I assent ; but when I 
 lay down the book and begin to reflect by myself on the immor- 
 tality of the soul, all my assent glides away."[ Nescio quo modo, 
 dum lego, assentior ; cum posui librum, et mecum ipse de im- 
 mortalitate animorum coepi cogitare, assentio omnis illaelabitur.] 
 But, as a matter of simple fact, this result does not follow from 
 the faith reposed in the New Testament. The hope of immor- 
 tality becomes a fixed and ruling principle of the nature, just as 
 certain and determinate in its influence on the life as the belief 
 that the sun will continue to rise, and that the laws of nature 
 will remain unchanged. On the whole, and in a word, I look 
 at my nature in reference to its capabilities and wants, and to 
 the question whether the gospel meets those capabilities and 
 wants, and I can see no deficiency nothing which it has not 
 provided for. Man is endowed with reason ; it meets his reason 
 in the evidence of its truth, and in the nature of its revelations. 
 Man has a conscience ; it discloses the way in which it may 
 have peace. Man has sinned ; it reveals a way of pardon. 
 Man pants to live for ever ; it tells him he will. He is made to 
 be influenced by hope ; it has set the highest conceivable hopes 
 before him. He has duties to perform ; it has told him what 
 they are, and how to perform them. He is to be governed by 
 motives ; it has told him what they should be. He is in a 
 world of trials ; it tells him how to bear them. He has an 
 imagination ; it sets before him objects most brilliant com- 
 pared with which the most splendid descriptions of genius die 
 away. He sees in himself some evidences that he has an im- 
 mortal soul; it confirms them, and raises this beginning of 
 hope from a state of uncertainty and doubt when it produced no 
 influence on his life, to most certain assurance, and makes it the 
 most influential of all the principles of action. 
 
 IV. In the fourth place, I cherish this hope, and embrace this 
 system, because of its undeniably happy injtucnce on all the in- 
 terests of man. I am aware of the objection which some may 
 start here, and do not forget that I might be referred to the 
 wars, and crusades, and persecutions, and horrors of the inquisi- 
 tion, and the miserable superstition in pilgrimages and the rules 
 of the monastic life, which it would be said have grown out of 
 Christianity. But I trust I need not argue this point. I am 
 
42 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 speaking of pure Christianity; not of Christianity perverted and 
 abused. I am speaking of what every man knows will be its 
 influence if an individual, or a family, or a larger community, 
 comes under its power. These things to which I have just referred 
 are no part of the proper effect of true religion, and I presume 
 that they who would urge the objection know that as well as I 
 do. Every man knows what the effect of pure Christianity is ; 
 and when its professed friends evince any of these things, its 
 enemies are not slow to remark that they do not "live up" to 
 the requirements and the spirit of their religion. But let a few 
 simple facts be submitted under this head in the form in which 
 I am conducting this argument that is, stating reasons why I 
 cherish the hope that is in me. We who are professed Christians, 
 then, look (a) at the influence of that gospel on our own character. 
 None of us who are Christians have anything of which to boast, 
 and there is not one of us that is not sensible of serious detects 
 in his character, and of errors and follies over which he mourns 
 in secret. But, as far as we can trace the influence of that 
 gospel on our minds and hearts, it has not been a bad influence, 
 or an influence of which we should be ashamed. We have found 
 it giving us the victory over low and debasing propensities and 
 passions ; furnishing a check, in numerous cases wholly effectual, 
 on what were before unbridled appetites ; elevating our views, 
 and expanding our conceptions, of the dignity of our nature, 
 and of the objects for which we should live ; raising us in the 
 scale of being, and teaching us to aspire to fellowship with the 
 more exalted intellects before the " throne ;" removing the 
 acerbities, and destroying the un evenness of our temper ; making 
 us willing to forgive our " enemies, persecutors, and slanderers," 
 and to pray that God would " change their hearts ;" giving us 
 cheerfulness, peace, and " minds contented with our present con- 
 dition ;" purifying our hearts, subduing the stubbornness of our 
 will, and making us submissive in trial ; disposing us to kind- 
 ness and affection in the various relations of life, and inclining 
 us to look with an eye of tenderness and pity on the oppressed, 
 the fatherless, and the sad. (6) We look again at the effects of 
 the gospel on the minds of our friends living and dead and 
 we find there, too, only the same purifying and happy influence. 
 It has given the chief virtues to our living friends ; it has done 
 more than all things else to hallow the memory of those who 
 are dead. A father, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, has 
 none the less claim to affection by becoming a Christian ; and 
 we feel that whatever may be their native amiableness, there is 
 not a virtue which will not be brightened, not a lovely trait 
 
CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 43 
 
 which will not be rendered more lovely, and not a defect which 
 will not be lessened or removed, by the influence of the gospel. 
 No man believes that his wife will be made less pure, kind, 
 virtuous, chaste, faithful, by being- a true Christian ; no man 
 supposes that his son or daughter would become a more ready 
 prey to corrupt influences and evil passions by being brought 
 wholly under the influence of the gospel of Christ. As far as 
 we can trace that influence on the character of any of our friends 
 now living, or on the character of those who have departed, it 
 has been a happy influence. We fear not that it will injure the 
 cherished memory on earth of those who have left the world, or 
 hinder their salvation in the future state ; nor do we fear its 
 proper influence on the life and heart of any living friend. 
 When the sailor-boy leaves his home for a seafaring life ; when 
 a son embarks on a vessel to go to a distant land for scientific 
 purposes, to perfect himself in some liberal art, or for commerce, 
 we do not feel that he will be injured by any fair influence of 
 religion on his soul. We sleep not the less calmly at night 
 when the storm howls and we feel that he is danger ; nor are 
 we the less serene when we think of the temptations to which he 
 is exposed in a distant land, nor when the thought crosses our 
 minds that perhaps we may never see him again. It is not a 
 record which we are unwilling to have made on the stone which 
 marks the grave of a friend that he lived and died with the 
 Christian hope ; it is not one which would dishonour us if it 
 should be at last cut on our own. (c) The same remarks, ex- 
 panded, might be made respecting a neighbourhood or a nation ; 
 respecting the relation of Christianity to the progress of society, 
 to civilization, to learning, to the arts, to schools, to social 
 customs, to human liberty. Look around you, and ask what 
 injury the Christian religion has done in the institutions of our 
 own land ; or rather ask what we have here which has not been 
 originated or improved by the influence of the Christian religion. 
 What is there in this land now that is valuable that it does not 
 preserve ; what is there that has cost so much blood and treasure, 
 and that now so much excites the hopes of humanity every- 
 where, that would not soon become corrupt and worthless if it 
 were not for the influence of the gospel of Christ? I confess 
 that I feel that it elevates my nature to cherish a hope derived 
 from a religion that has scattered blessings in every age and every 
 land j that has been connected with human progress everywhere ; 
 that has been identified with the best notions of liberty and 
 civil government with the progress of learning with institu- 
 tions of charity with the sweetest virtues and enjoyments of 
 
44 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 domestic life with all that gives support in trial and with the 
 only real consolation that is ever felt on the bed of death. 
 
 V. I had intended to have dwelt at some length on a fifth 
 point as a reason for cherishing this hope, but perhaps all that 
 I could say might be condensed into a sentence or two, and, at 
 any rate, must be now : it is this, because I feel assured that 
 I shall most prize this religion when I come to lie upon the bed 
 of death. You will not understand me to imply that I think 
 the dying moment the most favourable time to form a correct 
 judgment on any subject, but that the judgment which will then 
 be formed will be in accordance with the views which I have 
 been endeavouring to set forth. I am certain that when I come 
 to die, my sense of the truth and the value of this religion will 
 not be diminished, and that I shall not then regret my having 
 cherished this Christian hope. I am not accustomed to see men 
 die sorrowing that they are Christians, nor have I found, in the 
 books which make record of the last thoughts of the dying, 
 expressions of regret from the lips of saints and martyrs that 
 they had too early in life embraced the hope inspired by the gospel 
 of Christ. I think we cannot be more firmly assured of any- 
 thing than that when we come to die, we shall not find the 
 Christian hope valueless, or wish that we could recall and change 
 that hour in our lives when we gave ourselves to the Saviour. 
 I give this, then, as a reason last, but not least why we cherish 
 this hope, that when the final hour of our lives shall come, and 
 " our eyes shall be turned for the last time to behold the sun in 
 the heavens," when all the plans and hopes which we have ever 
 cherished shall be ended, and we shall give the parting hand to 
 the friends, few or many, that affection shall summon around 
 our beds, we shall prize the hopes of the gospel of Christ more 
 than we do now more, infinitely more, than we shall all other 
 things. "We shall see the whole subject rise with a dignity and 
 value which we cannot now estimate, and the brightest earthly 
 crowns will be baubles then, compared with the crown of righte- 
 ousness laid up for us in heaven. I would that you all could 
 see in these considerations reasons why you should embrace and 
 cherish this hope also, but, whatever may be the effect on you, 
 they are the " answer" which we are required to " give to any 
 man that asketh us a reason of the hope that is in us." 
 
SEEMON IT. 
 
 THE CONDITION OF MAN NOT BENEFITTED BY THE REJEC- 
 TION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 JOHN vi. 68. " Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? 
 thou hast the words of eternal life." 
 
 ANY system of religion which has had a wide and permanent 
 influence in the world, must be founded on some principles of 
 plausible or solid philosophy. There must be something in 
 human nature, or in the relations of things, which furnishes a 
 basis for it on which to rest, and by which it may be made to 
 appear to the human mind to be true. It may be doubted 
 whether the mind can long cherish error, knowing it to be such, 
 and whether the arguments from supposed interest can be so 
 magnified, and rendered so plausible, that the race would long 
 adhere to what is known to be false. It may be presumed, then, 
 that the great mass of those who have embraced an erroneous 
 system are the victims of delusion ; and yet, that the delusion is 
 kept up by something which deserves the name of philosophy. 
 There is as real philosophy at the basis of the views of the heathens 
 now, as there was in the speculations of the Greeks ; there is 
 much adaptation to certain wants and laws of human nature in 
 the religion of Mohammed ; there are at the basis of the Roman 
 Catholic system those profound views of man, of his wants, and 
 of his passions, which have been ascertained by the keen inves- 
 tigations of more than a thousand years ; and neither of these 
 systems is to be overthrown by declamation, or denunciation, or 
 by arguments drawn from superficial views of the nature of man. 
 I would not despise any system of belief which has held on its 
 way amidst fierce discussions and in the face of violent opposi- 
 tion for ages ; which has lived while empires have arisen and 
 decayed ; and which draws to itself with mighty power the 
 minds of succeeding millions of the race. 
 
 It is supposed by many persons now, as it was by those who 
 turned away from the Saviour, that by not embracing Chris- 
 tianity, certain difficulties are avoided which are regarded as 
 inseparable from that system, and that thus dissociated from it 
 
46 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 they will have nothing more to do with those things which are 
 considered as most perplexing and repulsive. It is supposed 
 that the religion of Christ is encompassed with difficulties from 
 which it is desirable that the human mind should escape, and 
 from which it will escape if the system he rejected. 
 
 It is important to institute an examination in regard to this, 
 and to see whether it is so. It cannot be denied that there are 
 certain embarrassments in Christianity, or in things usually 
 associated with it, from which it would be desirable to escape. 
 Can they be avoided by rejecting this system, and embracing 
 any other ? This question I propose to examine, by showing, 
 that there are common evils under which the race labours, and 
 which were not originated by Christianity; that there are common 
 principles which lie at the basis of all systems of religion, and 
 on which all the race must act ; and that the rejection of Chris- 
 tianity does not relieve us of those evils, or enable us to act 
 better in accordance with those principles ; or, in other words, 
 that we cannot improve our condition by rejecting the Christian 
 system. " Lord, to whom shall we go ? thou hast the words of 
 eternal life." 
 
 I. There are common evils under which the race labours, and 
 which were not originated by Christianity. I mean, that they 
 are simple matters of fact which are in no way affected, so far 
 as their existence is concerned, by the solution of the question 
 whether Christianity be true or false. They as much pertain to 
 the system of the Mussulman or the Pagan as to that of the 
 Christian, and the deist and the infidel are as much concerned 
 to explain them as we are. Christianity did not originate those 
 evils, nor has it so modified them, or incorporated them into its 
 system, as to make it particularly incumbent on its friends to 
 explain them. Those evils are no part of religion of any kind, 
 nor can any form of religion be held responsible for them. 
 
 Great injustice is often done to religion, and to the Christian 
 religion in particular, by reasoning as if it were responsible for 
 all the evil that there is in the world, and especially as if it had 
 originated sin, and woe, and death. Men seem to feel that these 
 things are indissolubly connected with Christianity, and that 
 that system is to be held answerable for the whole doctrine 
 respecting the foil of man, and the depravity of the race, for 
 the introduction of moral evil, and for the exposure of the race 
 to final ruin. There is a disposition often manifested to throw 
 whatever is odious in these doctrines on the Bible, and to group 
 them and the doctrines of redemption together, as if they were 
 parts of one system, and to regard them as having no claim to 
 
REJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 
 
 the attention of any who may choose to reject the Christian 
 system. 
 
 Now, I will not say that there is always designed injustice in 
 this, though I shall endeavour to show you that the injustice is 
 real. There is an illusion about it which I do not doubt affects 
 the minds of many persons who would by no means do injustice 
 to any system of religion, or its friends. The illusion arises 
 from this fact, that aft religion, in our world, has much to do 
 with these painful things the fall, sickness, death, the grave. 
 In other worlds religion may be a materially different thing 
 the pure and delightful service of a holy God without one 
 gloomy association, for there is no sin there, no sick-bed, no 
 grave. But here, religion must be essentially a remedial system. 
 It % will answer no purpose if it is not. It must propose some 
 way for the pardon of sin ; some relief in calamity ; some con- 
 solation in bereavement and death ; and it must shed some light 
 on the grave. It seems to be demanded that it should do some- 
 thing to tell us how it was that man came into his present con- 
 dition ; what, in fact, the condition is, and how it bears on his 
 prospects for the future world. It of necessity, therefore, has 
 much to da with the doctrine of depravity, and with the subject 
 of death just as the practice of medicine has much to do with 
 diseases and sick-beds. Now, by a very obvious law of mind, 
 we fall into a delusion, and unconsciously do injustice to the 
 system. We group all these things together ; regard them as 
 part and parcel of the same system, and think that they must 
 stand or fall together. But nothing can be more obviously un- 
 just than such a course. It is as if we should associate the 
 science of medicine and the diseases which it proposes to remedy 
 together, and hold that science responsible for having introduced 
 pleurisies and consumptions into the world, and for all the evils 
 connected with them. It is as if you should suppose that by 
 banishing the science of medicine from the earth, you would at 
 the same time deliver yourselves from pain and death. The 
 truth is, though we seldom fall into the delusion there to which I 
 am adverting in religion, that the healing art is solely a remedial 
 system, and is to be judged as such a system alone. It finds 
 disease already existing ; it does not create it : and whether the 
 proposed remedial system turns out to be of value or not, the 
 great original fact on which it is based remains the same. It is 
 altogether isolated ; a fact with which every other man is as 
 much concerned as the disciple of Galen. 
 
 Or to use another illustration. It is as if the statesman were 
 held responsible for all the original evils of the social system 
 
4 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 vrhich he proposes to remedy; and as if, instead of judging of 
 the constitution which he proposes merely as a remedial system, 
 we group that and all the evils which he proposes to correct 
 together, and by rejecting his system suppose that we get rid of 
 all concern about those evils. Or, still further, it is as if we were 
 to hold the historian responsible for the crimes and calamities 
 of which he makes a record, and to suppose that by denying the 
 credibility of his statements, the facts winch he has recorded 
 cease to be true. A large part of the Bible, in introducing the 
 account of the remedial system, is occupied in a mere statement 
 of facts about the fall and depravity of man. But the sacred 
 historian did not originate the fall or the depravity of man, any 
 more than Livy or Hume did the wars with the Sabines, or the 
 contests between the red and white roses ; nor should the Bible, 
 or the system of religion which it reveals, be held responsible 
 for those facts any more than Gibbon should be for the character 
 of Nero and Caligula, or than the Father of history should for 
 the plague at Athens. A history should be held answerable 
 only as a record of facts. The facts are independent things, and 
 remain the same, whether recorded or not. A remedial system 
 should be held answerable only as such, and not at all for the 
 evils which it proposes to remedy. Those evils are independent 
 things, having no immediate connexion with that system, and 
 are evils in which others are as much concerned as its friends. 
 It should be held answerable, not for the introduction or the 
 existence of the evil, but only for what it proposes to do, and 
 for the fair inferences which, follow from its influence on a 
 system already existing. 
 
 With these indisputable principles before us, I now remark, 
 that Christianity did not originate the evils of our race, and is 
 no more responsible for them than infidelity is. They are 
 matters of simple FACT, whether Christianity be true or false 
 as it is a fact that there is disease in the world, and that men 
 suffer and die, whether the remedies proposed answer the pur- 
 pose or not. The atheist, the deist, the man of the world, the 
 man of science, the historian, the moralist, the epicurean, and 
 the stoic, have as much to do with them as the Christian, and 
 are as much bound to explain them. We meet on common 
 ground here, and in the development of our different systems 
 we start together. 
 
 Let us look a moment at some of those facts : 
 (1.) Man is a fallen being; a sinner. Can there be any dif- 
 ference of opinion on this point ? The Bible records the fact ; 
 and do not Livy, and Sallust, and Hume, and Gibbon, and 
 
REJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 
 
 Baronius, and Alison do the same thing ? Is there any historical, 
 record which describes man as any otherwise than as a sinner ? 
 The accounts of the perfection or perfectability of man are in 
 philosophical speculations, not in historical records. The Bible 
 describes man as prone to evil. And does not every man so 
 regard the race ? What mean the laws made to restrain men ? 
 What mean prisons, and padlocks, and securities against fraud 
 and dishonesty ? Is there a merchant who would repose quietly 
 on his pillow if there were not a strong and skilfully constructed 
 lock on his store? Is there a vault of a bank that could be 
 safely left open for a single night ? Is there a man who does 
 not make it his business to guard against the fraud, duplicity, 
 cunning, and violence of every other man as if he would do 
 wrong ? 
 
 Now, about the fact of the depravity of man there surely can be 
 no manner of doubt. The fact exists, whatever remedy is pro- 
 posed ; w r hatever statement is made of its origin ; or however 
 you may account for it. It no more pertains to the Christian, 
 or to his theory of religion, than it does to the theory or religion 
 of any other man. Men do not get rid of it by denying Chris- 
 tianity; they do not make it any worse by embracing it. It 
 belongs to the race as such, and we must make the best of it. 
 Whether Christianity be true or false, the evil is the same, and 
 all men will continue to act as if the doctrine were true. We 
 may differ in our explanations about the way in which man 
 became a sinner ; we may speculate in a different manner in 
 regard to the time when he begins to go astray; we may have 
 different views about the condition of the infant mind ; and we 
 might not agree as to the exact connexion between facts which 
 now exist, and the act of the progenitor of the race, but the 
 material facts pertain to one system as much as to another, 
 llevealed religion is in no way peculiarly concerned about it, 
 except that it has offered an explanation of the manner in which 
 sin has come into the world, and it is responsible only for that 
 explanation. 
 
 (2.) The same is true in regard to sickness and suffering. 
 Man is a sufferer, whatever system of religion be embraced or 
 rejected. The earth is a vale of tears, and no art of man can 
 drive sickness, care, bereavement, or pain from it. That the 
 race suffers is a great fact which is in no way affected by the 
 question whether this or that form of religion be true or false, 
 except as religion may in some way mitigate sorrow. We 
 may differ as to the cause of suffering. We may have our 
 different theories in explanation of the question how it is con- 
 
50 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 sistent with the government of God. "VVe may inquire whether 
 sin is the cause, proximate or remote, or whether it is to be 
 traced wholly to some physical laws ; but the fact remains the 
 same, and it pertains no more to the Christian system than 
 to any other. Christianity has originated no disease. It has not 
 generated the malaria of the Pontine marshes ; it does not give 
 birth to the plague in Cairo or Constantinople, nor has it caused 
 the cholera which sweeps over the plains of India. There is 
 not a disease to which the human frame is subject that has been 
 either increased or aggravated by the Christian religion, or for 
 which the Christian religion, or any other religion, is respon- 
 sible. There is not one of them that would be healed by burning 
 the last Bible on the earth, or by driving the last vestige of 
 religion from the world. 
 
 (3.) Thus, too, it is with the mental sorrows to w r hich the race 
 is subject. The illusion to which I have adverted operates with 
 more power here than it does in regard to the point just referred 
 to. There is no one who would directly charge Christianity 
 with being the cause of a cancer or of consumption ; but there 
 is many a one who would suffer the illusion to play around the 
 mind that it is the cause of the mental sorrows to which we are 
 subject, and that those sorrows are parts of this system of re- 
 ligion. There has been a steady effort, though not always open 
 and avowed, to connect these sorrows and Christianity together, 
 and to lead men to suppose that by casting off the restraints of 
 religion they free themselves from mental griefs. The reason 
 of this illusion I have already adverted to, and the injustice of 
 the feeling may be seen at a glance. An effort has been made 
 to make it appear to a world that seeks to be gay, that some- 
 how the alarms of conscience, the dread of death, and the appre- 
 hension of the world to come, are the creation of Christianity, 
 and that religion is responsible for their existence in the soul. 
 But is this so ? Can it be so ? Do these things exist nowhere 
 else ? Are they found under no other system of religion ? Are 
 they never found where there is no religion of any kind ? And 
 is it true that by casting off the Christian religion a man obtains 
 a guarantee that he will never be troubled by the remembrance 
 of guilt ; that he will escape from remorse of conscience ; that 
 he will not he overborne by the fear of death ? He must have 
 studied the w r orld very imperfectly who can suppose that these 
 things are the creation of religion, or that they have any peculiar 
 relation to religion of any kind whatever. The truth is, they 
 belong to us as men. They are the operation of great laws of 
 our nature. They lie back of all religion, and would not be 
 
REJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 
 
 affected, except by being deepened, if you were to sweep every 
 Bible and every Christian church from every land. 
 
 (4.) The same thing is true in regard to death. Here, too, the 
 illusion to which I have adverted constantly operates. There is 
 a feeling somehow that death, always a painful subject of reflec- 
 tion, peculiarly pertains to religion, and a serious contemplation 
 of death, or a remark made about it as a personal matter, is 
 somehow regarded as an omen that one is becoming religious. 
 But what has religion particularly to do with the subject of 
 death ? Did it introduce it into the world ? Has it aggravated 
 its pangs ? Do religious people only die ? Can a man, by be- 
 coming an infidel or an universal sceptic, avoid dying ? Will it 
 drive death from the world to laugh at religion ; or would it if 
 it could be proved that all religion is imposture ? The truth is 
 and it is a truth so obvious that it would hardly be proper 
 formally to state it if it were not for the illusion already referred 
 to that death pertains to our race, whether Christianity be true 
 or false. Religion did not introduce it, and is in no way respon- 
 sible for it ; nor is death in any way modified, whatever opinions 
 may be entertained of Christianity, or of any other system of 
 religion. We may differ in our explanations of it. I may have 
 my theory about the cause, and you may have yours, and still 
 the fact remains the same. Death approaches with the same 
 steady pace, and with the same repulsive aspect, whatever may 
 be the nature of our speculations. Religion does not quicken 
 his pace, nor does infidelity retard it ; and he is just as likely to 
 come into the ball-room, or among a company of savans specu- 
 lating on its cause, or among a company of revellers blaspheming 
 all religion, as into the church of the living God. We are all 
 brothers here, and we all have an equal interest in this matter. 
 The entrance of death into our world was prior to the entrance 
 of Christianity, and if Christianity should take its everlasting 
 flight from the earth, the angel of death would linger here, glad 
 of her departure, for he could make the pains of death more 
 terrific than they are now. 
 
 If these things are so, then all men have the same interest in 
 them. They lie apart from all religion as indisputable FACTS, and 
 they pertain as much to the infidel as the Christian ; as much 
 really to the scientific lecture-room as to the pulpit. Religion 
 Jinds these things in existence ; it does not create them, and is in 
 no manner responsible for them. Christianity found them upon 
 the earth, as Galen and Hippocrates found disease, and for their 
 existence there is no more responsibility in the one case than in 
 the other. Here we begin, our investigations together, having 
 
52 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 the same facts to deal with, and with the certainty that the 
 adoption or rejection of any particular form of religion does not 
 materially alter them. The point now illustrated is, that the 
 Christian, the infidel, and the scoffer, are equally concerned in 
 these facts, for they pertain to man whatever form of religion 
 he has, or whether he has any religion or none. This leads me, 
 
 II. In the second place, to observe, that as there are evils 
 pertaining to our race which lie back of religion, and in which 
 all men have a common interest, so there are certain principles 
 which pertain to all men ; principles supposed to be true by the 
 Christian religion, but which are in no way affected by the 
 question whether Christianity be true or false ; principles which 
 are better met by that system than by any other. My limits 
 will not allow me to illustrate them at length ; and all that I 
 can do is to advert to them in the most summary manner. 
 Among those principles are the following : 
 
 (1.) That man is a moral agent, and in this respect differs 
 from the whole brute creation beneath him. I say that this 
 pertains to man as such, for it cannot be pretended that the 
 Bible, or the Christian system, has so altered the nature of man 
 as to make him a moral agent. He is so under every system of 
 religion, and is equally so whether Christianity be true or false. 
 It would be easy to show that the Bible recognises this, and 
 adapts itself to it better than any other system of religion. 
 
 (2.) That he is under a moral government. I mean that there 
 are marks of a moral government over the world entirely inde- 
 pendent of Christianity, or that there is a course of events which 
 tends to the punishment of vice and the reward of virtue. It 
 is possible to make out the great principles of this government 
 without the aid of revelation, for it was seen and understood 
 when there was no revelation. The course of events in the 
 world is such that, as a great law, one course of conduct will be 
 followed by life, health, happiness, and a good name ; another 
 by disease, poverty, wretchedness, disgrace; and a dishonoured 
 grave. Innumerable facts in the world, and long observation, 
 show what is the course which will tend to the one or the other, 
 and so clearly that it may be the basis of counsel to those who 
 are entering on the career of life. These principles accord with 
 those in the Bible, and have received an additional sanction from 
 the Bible, but they exist independently of any particular form 
 of religion, and are those on which men must act. They are 
 met and carried out better by Christianity than by any other 
 system, for the whole arrangement is one that is designed to 
 exhibit ultimately the perfection of moral government. 
 
KEJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 53 
 
 (3.) Man's future condition will in some way be determined 
 by his present conduct. This, too, is a principle on which all 
 men act by nature, whether they have, or have not, any religion, 
 or whether any particular form of religion be true or false. 
 Every young man admits it as one of the things which spur 
 him on to great or noble efforts, and which encourage him in 
 study, in resisting temptation, or in laying his plans of life ; 
 and every man who has reached mature life or old age, sees that 
 it has been so in regard to himself. He can trace the esteem in 
 which he is held, or the health which he enjoys, or the property 
 which he has accumulated, to his conduct and plans far back in 
 life, and can see how the one is but the development of the 
 other. This principle is indeed an essential one in Christianity; 
 but it is not peculiar to it, nor has it been originated by it. It 
 is in the world everywhere, and the man who rejects religion 
 acts on it as certainly as he who embraces it. 
 
 (4.) It is a principle which is held in common by all, that the 
 conduct of the present life may affect that which is to come. 
 This is but carrying out the principle just stated, for why should 
 the operation of this law terminate at death ? What is there in 
 death to check it? Why should the act of dying arrest this 
 course of things any more than the slumbers of a night ? For, 
 as the conduct of yesterday travels over the interval of the night- 
 watches, and meets us in its results to-day, why shall not the 
 same law operate in reference to the shorter night the sleep of 
 death ? Here is a uniform system of things, that our conduct at 
 present affects our future destiny ; uniform as far as the eye can 
 run it backward into past generations ; uniform, so as to become 
 the foundation of laws, and of the entire government of the 
 world ; and uniform so far as the eye can trace the results of 
 conduct forward in all the landmarks set up along our future 
 course. Why should it be arrested by so unimportant a circum- 
 stance as death death that less suspends human consciousness 
 and action than a night's sleep ; death that no more interrupts 
 identity, and arrests the course of events in regard to an indivi- 
 dual, than a passage from one land to another, or than the cross- 
 ing of the conventional boundary of a kingdom ? And as crime 
 here meets its results after we have crossed oceans, and snows, 
 and sands ; as punishment, in remorse of conscience, in the storm, 
 in the siroc, in the ocean, may follow us when far from country 
 and home, in lands of strangers, where no eye may recognise us 
 but that of the unseen Witness of our actions, why shall not 
 the results of our conduct meet us beyond the little rivulet of 
 death ? That the conduct of this life is to be followed by results 
 
54 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 appropriate to it in the world to come is not a peculiar principle 
 of Christianity; it pertains to the almost universal faith of man, 
 and enters into all the religions of man. It is one of those great 
 principles on which man must act whether Christianity or any 
 other particular form of religion be regarded as true or false. 
 And yet there is 110 provision made to meet this principle fully 
 in any other system of religion but the Christian. 
 
 (5.) It is an original principle pertaining to man as such that 
 a future state of existence is desirable. The language of Addison, 
 which we so much admire, is not mere poetry. He utters the 
 feelings of all men, when he says 
 
 Whence this secret dread and inward horror 
 Of falling into nought ? Why shrinks the soul 
 Back on herself, and startles at destruction ? 
 "Pis the divinity that stirs within us ; 
 'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 
 And intimates eternity to man. CATO, Act v. 
 
 Man has this desire everywhere, and a large portion of his 
 reasonings from the earliest days downward has been designed 
 to show that it was proper for him to cherish it. It is not 
 created by the Christian religion. It lies beyond that, and exists 
 in the soul, with all its intensity, whether Christianity or any 
 other particular form of religion be true: but what other system 
 of religion so fully meets it as this ? 
 
 (6.) It is somehow a great law of our nature that we need an 
 atonement for our transgressions that some sacrifice or oblation 
 should be made that will appease the wrath of God, and do 
 honour to a violated law, and open a way of pardon to the 
 guilty. This is not originated by Christianity, nor is it peculiar 
 to it. It is found in every land, among all people, and in every 
 age. The evidence of it is seen on every bloody altar, and in 
 the creeds of nearly all forms of religion. But where is this so 
 fully met ; where is there any form of atonement by which its 
 demands are so fully accomplished, as in the sacrifice made by 
 Christ ? That meets all that we think the law demands ; does 
 all that can be done to repair the evils of the apostasy ; and 
 leaves the mind wholly at rest as to the necessity of any other 
 sacrifice for the sins of the world. 
 
 (7.) And a well-founded, or seventh principle is equally universal. 
 It is, that this world does not furnish all the happiness of which 
 we are capable. Our nature pants for something more ; it looks 
 on to something still future. We partake of the happiness 
 which this world can give, but there is still a " void " iu the 
 
/ 
 
 /O ,y ' 
 
 REJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 55 
 
 I - <, 
 
 soul which is not filled. We look into the future. "We try to 
 lift the veil which hides the invisible world. We believe, in 
 spite of ourselves, that if the soul is ever satisfied it must be by 
 something there. This desire, too, is not the creation of the 
 Christian religion. It lies back of that religion in the soul of 
 man, and exists in the human bosom whether that religion be 
 true or false. 
 
 Such are some of the evils under which the race groans, and 
 such some of the principles on which the race must act. They 
 are evils and principles which exist independently of any system 
 of religion, and yet which demand some arrangement to meet 
 them, and in reference to which every scheme of religion has 
 been originated. We are led here to our 
 
 III. Third general inquiry to what system can we go where 
 there are fewer perplexities ; where these evils are better met ; 
 and where these principles are better consulted, than in the 
 Christian system ? " Will ye also go away ?" said the Saviour 
 to his disciples. " Lord, to whom shall we go ?" asked Peter ; 
 " thou hast the words of eternal life ?" To what teacher should 
 they repair who would be better qualified to instruct them ? To 
 what Jewish party should they apply, that they might better 
 learn the way to heaven ? To what sect of philosophers should 
 they go, that they might find more consolation in the ills of life, 
 be better supported in its trials, and find a more satisfactory 
 answer to those questions which their very nature prompted 
 them to ask ? Diificulties there might be in the Christian 
 religion, but where would they find fewer ? Mysteries there 
 might be, but where could they go where there were none ? 
 
 And where will a man go now to find a system that is better 
 fitted to meet the evils of the present world, or to carry out and 
 satisfy the great original principles on which he must act ? For 
 you will remember that the question is not, whether by rejecting 
 Christianity he may avoid these evils, or whether the race will 
 cease to act on these principles. Those points are settled ; and 
 whether Christianity be embraced or rejected, they pertain to 
 the race. The question is, whether he can improve his condition 
 in regard to these things by rejecting this revelation, and 
 turning to some other system ? This is a fair question, and one 
 which it becomes every man to answer for himself. It should be 
 answered. Christianity proposes a remedy for these evils, and a 
 way by which these great principles of our nature may be met 
 and carried out. It does not originate these things, and should 
 not be held answerable for them. It is in all respects, and in 
 every aspect of it, a remedial system, and should be examined 
 
 5 
 
56 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 and judged only as such. Man by nature, sunk under sin, and 
 exposed to pain and death, seeks some system which shall meet 
 his sad condition, and alleviate his sorrows. He looks around 
 for some way by which his sin may be forgiven ; by which a 
 propitiation may be made for his offences ; by which he may 
 obtain consolation in the prospect of dying. The gospel comes, 
 and proposes a method of meeting his case, and declares that 
 sin may be forgiven through the atonement made by the Son of 
 God, and opens upon him the prospect of a resurrection and a 
 glorious immortality. Now is not this just what he wants, and 
 can he find a system that will better answer the end than this ? 
 For you will remember, I repeat it, that the question is not 
 whether by rejecting this system you can avoid sin and pain 
 and death. That point is so settled as not to admit of debate. 
 But do not these things which Christianity has revealed meet 
 the case ? Can sinful, suffering, and dying man find a system 
 that will better meet his condition ? Where will he turn to 
 find a better system ? Will he go to heathenism ? But would 
 he find any sacrifice there for sin which for purity, and dignity, 
 and efficacy would compare with that of the Son of God ? Will 
 he, then, consent to blot out all that Christianity has done for 
 society, and place the race again in the condition of the Caffra- 
 rian or the Bushman ? Does he suppose that the evils of the 
 world would be mitigated by a return to that condition in which 
 man was before the light of Christianity dawned on it ? Will 
 he turn to the ancient philosophers ? And does he suppose that 
 they can explain the mysteries of his being, and provide a better 
 deliverance, than has been done by Him whom the Father has 
 sent into the world ? Let him become an Epicurean or a Stoic. 
 Docs he escape from the perplexities which he has been accus- 
 tomed to associate with Christianity ? Do not the Epicurean 
 and the Stoic sin and suffer and die ; and do not men sin and 
 suffer and die all around them ? Will he turn to the modern 
 philosopher, or the modern infidel? Do they propose a better 
 way by which a guilty conscience may become calm ; by which 
 life's sorrows may be borne, and by which the pangs of death 
 may be more patiently or triumphantly endured ? Or does he 
 escape from any of the mysteries and perplexities which encom- 
 pass this subject when associated with Christianity ? Do no 
 other men but Christians die ? Do they have no trouble of con- 
 science ? Are they never sick ? Did not Paine, and Volney, and 
 Hume die? And have they left any recipe by which death can 
 be more calmly met and better borne than it was by Stephen, 
 and Paul, and Halyburton, and Baxter, and Payson ? 
 

 KEJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 
 
 Oh, what is this world when we have turned away from the 
 cross of Christ, and from the instruction which God has given 
 us in his word ? Man is seen upon the earth a strange being, 
 playing a strange part, and encircled by mysteries. He has 
 been created he knows not by whom, or when, or for what 
 purpose. He begins to sin as soon as he begins to act, but he 
 knows not why. He finds himself prone to evil by some 
 mysterious law for which there is no explanation. He suffers, 
 he knows not why. He lives, he knows not for what end ; and 
 when he dies he goes into another world, he knows not whither 
 or why. He can do nothing to stay the progress of the plague 
 which sweeps away the race, and he can only stand and weep 
 over the grave which he digs for his pale brother, and which 
 he himself must soon enter. He stretches out his hands to 
 heaven as if there might be help there, but none appears. 
 " His eye poureth out tears" as it is lifted toward the skies ; it 
 gazes intensely for light, but not a ray is seen. His nature 
 pants to live for ever, but no response is given to the aspirings 
 of his soul ; nothing tells him that he may live. He is a poor, 
 ignorant, degraded, and dying being, seeking for a guide, and 
 panting for a system of religion that will meet the wants of his 
 nature, and raise him up to God. Revealed region comes and 
 tells him who made him, and why ; explains the way in which 
 the race sank into this melancholy condition, and how it may bo 
 recovered ; proposes promises adapted to him as an immortal 
 being ; reveals a brighter world, and explains to him how it may 
 be his own. It originates no new form of disease ; dips the 
 arrow of death in no new poison ; creates no new darkness 
 around the grave ; robs the sufferer of no consolation, and creates 
 no new danger. Then why, oh why should he go away f 
 
SEEMON V. 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN. 
 
 PSALM viii. 3, 4." When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
 the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, that thou 
 art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that thou visitest him ?" 
 
 THIS language is such as would have been prompted at any- 
 period of the world by a contemplation of the starry heavens. 
 Even to the naked eye, they are so vast and grand that man 
 dwindles into insignificance in comparison with them, and it 
 seems wonderful that God should stoop from the contemplation 
 of works so sublime to notice the affairs of a creature like man. 
 
 The language of the Bible is adapted by the Spirit of inspira- 
 tion to express the emotions of piety in all ages ; and though in 
 the time of the^psalmist the language of the text was fitted to 
 express the feelings of deep devotion, yet two circumstances 
 have contributed to give it in our times increased force and 
 significance. One is, the greatly enlarged views which have 
 been obtained of those "heavens" contemplated by the psalmist, 
 by the discoveries of modern astronomy. The other is, the 
 almost equal enlargement of conception of what God has done 
 for man, and of the importance attached to him in his estima- 
 tion, in the disclosures of the plan of redemption. These have 
 not indeed entirely kept pace with each other, but together 
 they give a greatly increased significance to the language of my 
 text. With all the disclosures of modern astronomy before 
 us, and in full view of what God has done for man in the work 
 of redemption, one may well say, " When I consider thy heavens, 
 the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast 
 ordained ; what is man, that thou art mindful of him ?" 
 
 There are two somewhat opposite methods of estimating man, 
 both of them having much that is erroneous. One is, so to speak 
 of his godlike nature, his achievements in council, in arts, and 
 in science, his susceptibilities for progress, and the progress 
 which he has actually made, as to conceal the degradation of 
 his nature, and to fill him with pride and self-elation. This has 
 beon much the manner of poets and philosophers j of the writers 
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN. 59 
 
 of fiction, and of those systems of religion in which it is for- 
 gotten or denied that the race is in ruins. The other is, so to 
 dwell on the circumstances of his wretchedness and sinfulness, 
 on his foibles and crimes, and on the brevity of his life, and his 
 comparative insignificance among the sublime works of God, as 
 to make us feel that the race is wholly beneath the Divine 
 notice. This is the view of the disappointed, of the sour, of the 
 morose, of the haters of the species ; and it is as far from the 
 truth as the former. 
 
 Is there any way in which what is true in these views may 
 be united ? Is there anything fitted to give us elevated concep- 
 tions of the dignity of man, and yet to clothe us with humility ; 
 anything that makes man a proper object of special Divine 
 notice, and yet anything that makes us wonder that he has 
 attracted so much attention? In answering these questions, I 
 may direct your attention to two points : 
 
 I. In what way God has magnified man, or shown that he 
 regards him as of special importance ; and, 
 
 II. Why he has done it. 
 
 I. In what way has God magnified man, or how has he shown 
 a special interest in him f My purpose, under this head, de- 
 mands only a very brief statement my main design being to 
 show why man has attracted so much attention in the universe, 
 as it is said in the Scriptures that he has. 
 
 What God has done for other portions of the universe we 
 have only slight means of knowing ; and it is not important for 
 us to understand. Probably if we were admitted to a knowledge 
 of what he has done for intelligent beings in other worlds, we 
 should find proofs of his care and attention not less striking 
 than those which are exhibited in our own. But, for obvious 
 reasons, revelation is silent in regard to them. 
 
 The peculiar interest which has been shown in man the 
 interest apart from that which he has shown in creation and 
 providence towards all intelligent creatures according to the 
 sacred Scriptures, consists in the following things : 
 
 (1.) A plan of redemption has been formed for him. This 
 was laid far back in eternity, and was contemplated from far 
 distant ages. This plan, according to the sacred Scriptures, was 
 one of special interest to the Divine Mind, and in accom- 
 plishing it, God was willing to institute a train of measures 
 elsewhere unknown, and submit to sacrifices which to us would 
 have been deemed impossible. According to that plan, he de- 
 signed to make on the earth one of the most sublime mani- 
 festations of his glory, and to perform a work here that should 
 
% . 
 60 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 interest in a peculiar manner the inhabitants of all other worlds, 
 " to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in 
 heavenly places might be known, by the church, the manifold 
 wisdom of God," Ephes. iii. 10. 
 
 (2.) For man, in the execution of that purpose, he sent his 
 Son to become incarnate, and to die. Such was the interest 
 which he felt in our race ; so much has he magnified man, that 
 a work has been performed which requires the highest measure 
 of our faith to believe it true now that it has been done, and 
 which we should have deemed incredible or impossible, could it 
 have been submitted beforehand to our sense of probability. It 
 resulted in the formation of a perfect union between the Divine 
 and human nature in the person of the Son of God, and in his 
 sacrifice as an offering for the sin of the world on a cross. This 
 event stands by itself. There is no reason to suppose that a 
 transaction of this nature has occurred in any other part of the 
 universe. The more we contemplate it, the more we are amazed ; 
 and the more impressively does the question come home to us, 
 " What is man" that such a plan should be formed for his re- 
 demption ? It overpowers us. The mind sinks under the burden 
 of the great conception that there should have been an incarna- 
 tion of the Deity; that that incarnate Being should submit to be 
 reviled and treated with scorn ; and that he should, by his own 
 sufferings and death, make expiation for human guilt. What is 
 there in man that should lead such a being down to earth to 
 suffer, to bleed, to die ? Even in all our vain glorying ; in all 
 that has been said of the godlike dignity of the human powers ; 
 in all the dreams of philosophy and poetry about what man is, 
 or is to be, what is there that would seem to make it proper 
 that God should be thus "manifest in the flesh?" I wonder 
 not that men pause with amazement, and hesitate before they 
 admit the great idea to be true ; nor that they feel tasked, and 
 burdened, and overpowered by the claim which Christianity 
 makes on their faith in the announcement of this truth. 
 
 (3.) For man the Spirit of God is sent down to the earth. He 
 comes to enlighten, to arouse, to awaken, to renew, to sanctify. 
 Of so much importance is man, that this Great Agent begins a 
 special work in the heart of each one that is to be saved, and 
 performs the distinct and definite achievement of changing the 
 current of feeling, and the principles of the soul. He is the chief 
 and the crown of all those agencies and influences intended to 
 bring man back to God, and win him to heaven. A train of 
 means has been employed designed to arrest his attention ; to 
 convict him of sin j to convert his soul j to open his eyes on the 
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN. 61 
 
 fields of heavenly glory ; to send the current of spiritual life 
 through the heart dead in transgression ; to awaken the con- 
 sciousness of an immortal nature in the lost soul ; to make of 
 the alien a friend of the apostate an heir of heaven. As if 
 there were some special importance in recovering man ; as if his 
 restoration would be worth all which it would cost in the institution 
 of the most numerous and expensive measures, a train of operations 
 has heen commenced, all expressive of the intensest interest in 
 the Divine Mind, for the accomplishment of this result. Why 
 is this ? Why does He who made and who rules these vast 
 heavens feel so deep an interest in the recovery of a creature 
 like man ? 
 
 (4.) For man, we are told, there is intense interest felt among 
 the inhabitants of heaven. There is joy among the angels over 
 one sinner that repenteth. They, we are told, desire to look 
 into the things connected with redemption ; and the entire sacred 
 history leads us to believe that celestial beings have been ready 
 at all times to wing their way to the earth to watch the pro- 
 gress made in redemption ; to relieve the wretched, and to com- 
 fort the dying ; and that they hail with fresh rapture the coming 
 of each ransomed spirit to the skies. Though man is insigni- 
 ficant in himself, yet there is somehow such an importance 
 attached to him that angelic beings are willing for a season to 
 vacate their happy seats if they can be helpers of his salvation. 
 
 (5.) God manifestly attaches great importance to each indivi- 
 dual of the species. No matter how ignorant, or poor, or down- 
 trodden he may be, the Divine dealings have an individuality 
 in relation to him as if he were the only dweller upon earth. 
 God never overlooks him. He sends his messengers of mercy to 
 him his prophets, apostles, and ministers of religion ; he repeats 
 the message when rejected, and urges it upon his attention with 
 all the arguments which can be adduced as though it were a 
 matter of immense moment that he should repent, believe, and 
 be saved. When we look upon enfeebled age, or upon a child ; 
 when we contemplate the downtrodden and ignorant tribes that 
 dwell upon the earth many of them but little above the brutes; 
 when we see how frail and helpless man is at the best, arid 
 how soon he will vanish away, and his name be forgotten ; and 
 then, when we look up at these heavens in the light of modern 
 astronomy, we can hardly help asking, as the psalmist did, 
 " What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" Why does God 
 treat him as if he were of so much consequence? Of what 
 importance can it be to God where his location shall be ? Why 
 does he follow him so constantly, and why does he so earnestly 
 
62 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 press upon him compliance with the terms of his favour? In 
 one word, why is this vast array of plan and motive, and eternal 
 decree, and celestial influences, and heavenly interest, and solemn 
 man date, and fearful threatening, brought to bear on a frail, erring, 
 dying, evanescent creature like man ? 
 
 II. These questions it is my design, in the second place, to 
 answer. I shall suggest four considerations in answer to the 
 inquiry. They will show the importance of man, but they will 
 be such as will be adapted to humble us. They will be fitted to 
 avoid the self-glorifying of the philosopher showing that the 
 importance of man arises, in the main, from causes which should 
 have any effect rather than to inflate us with pride ; and they 
 will be such as to avoid the other extreme of regarding man as 
 so degraded and so unworthy of notice, as to leave on the 
 mind, in the contemplation of him, the feeling of contempt or 
 misanthropy. 
 
 (1.) I observe, first, that the attention which God bestows on 
 man is in strict accordance with his universal providential care. 
 In his empire, nothing is overlooked ; nothing is forgotten. The 
 Redeemer has told us that not a sparrow falls to the ground 
 without his notice, and that even the hairs of the head are all 
 numbered. Everything is treated as if it were of consequence ; 
 everything shares in the superintendence of the Most High. 
 There is not an insect or a blade of grass whose structure does 
 not appear as perfect as though the whole of the Divine wisdom 
 had been exhausted to form it; there is not a rose that is not 
 made with as nice a degree of attention and skill as though God 
 had nothing else to do ; there is not an emerald or an amethyst 
 that does not seem to have combined all there is in infinite 
 wisdom in its formation. The leaf; the flower; the particle of 
 blood ; the dewdrop ; the forming crystal of the snow all, taken 
 singly, appear to be objects of special Divine attention, as if each 
 were the solitary production of the infinitely wise and powerful 
 God. We know not, we cannot conceive how this is. We 
 become soon distracted with the very few objects that pass under 
 our notice. We narrow down those that demand our attention ; 
 and from necessity pass over the infinitude of objects that are 
 around us. We cannot conceive how it is that any one Being 
 can direct his attention to countless millions of things at the 
 same time : at the same instant holding worlds and systems in 
 their place ; restraining the raging floods of the deep ; directing 
 the lightning ; controlling armies engaged in the conflict of 
 battle ; and with gentle hand in the summer morning opening 
 the rosebud, and at silent evening letting down the dewdrop on 
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN. 63 
 
 the spire of grass. Yet so it is ; and such is God. And when 
 we speak of the importance of man as evinced by the Divine 
 care and attention, you are to remember the care that is bestowed 
 on the poor worm on which you tread, as well as yourself; the 
 care bestowed on the shaking leaf, as well as on the rolling 
 world. 
 
 (2.) The second reason to which I refer is, that man, in his 
 immortal nature, is a being who has all the importance which 
 has ever been attributed to him. He has an intrinsic worth 
 that renders proper all the care that God has shown for him ; 
 all the interest manifested for him in the eternal councils of 
 heaven ; all the value implied in the incarnation and atonement 
 of the Redeemer for his salvation. Great as has been the sacrifice 
 made for him on the cross ; inconceivable as were the sufferings 
 of the Son of God in his behalf, his salvation is worth all which 
 it has cost, and will be an adequate and ample return to the 
 Redeemer for all his pangs, and toils, and blood : for " he shall 
 see of the fruit of his wearisome toil, and shall be satisfied" 
 Isa. liii. 11.* The Redeemer estimated man as of unspeakable 
 value. He regarded his recovery as worth all which he would 
 endure in becoming incarnate, and dying on the cross. The 
 glory which the ransomed sinner would have in heaven, and the 
 honour thence resulting to the Saviour, he deemed of sufficient 
 worth to induce him to leave the heavens and to die. It is for 
 the honour of Christ that we should feel and know that redemp- 
 tion is worth all which it has cost; and that the scheme of 
 recovery is one that is based on a just view of the relative im- 
 portance of things. The price, indeed, was infinite. Silver, 
 gold, diamonds, pearls, all the treasures of kings, do not 
 furnish us with the means of estimating its value. The blood 
 of patriots, of prophets, of martyrs, of confessors, scarcely fur- 
 nishes us with the means of comparison by which to measure 
 the worth of the blood shed by the Redeemer. Still we hold 
 that the Redeemer sought a prize in the redemption of man 
 worth all which it cost him, and which will "satisfy" him for 
 all his humiliation and toils. 
 
 Do you ask what was that prize ? I reply, It was the immortal 
 soul. Its value is estimated by the fact that man, so degraded, 
 so sinful, so blind, so lost to his own interests, is IMMORTAL. 
 Men see not this, nor feel it, for they will not be convinced that 
 they are immortal, or that the soul is to have an infinite dura- 
 tion beyond the grave. Were you to be thrown into a dungeon 
 
 * Lowth's translation. 
 
64 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 on earth, to live and linger on for ever in darkness, you would 
 realize something of what constitutes immortality. If in that 
 gloomy dungeon, nor father, nor mother, nor sister were to see 
 you more ; if the light of heaven were to greet you no more ; if 
 sleep were to visit your eyes no more ; if harsh sounds and 
 groans were to grate for ever and ever on your ears ; if neither 
 cord, nor pistol, nor assassin's hand, nor murderous phial could 
 close your conscious being, you might form some idea of what 
 it is to live for ever and ever. 
 
 To be immortal ! The very moment you attach the idea of 
 immortality to a thing, no matter how insignificant it may be 
 otherwise, that moment you invest it with unspeakable import- 
 ance. Nothing can be mean and unworthy of notice which is 
 to exist for ever. An eternal rock, an eternal tree, plant, river, 
 would impress our minds with the idea of vast sublimity, and 
 make us feel that we were contemplating an object of unspeak- 
 able moment. Affix, then, to it the idea of eternal consciousness, 
 though of the lowest order, and the mind is overwhelmed. The 
 little humming-bird that in a May morning poises itself over the 
 opening honeysuckle in your garden, and which is fixed a 
 moment and then is gone, is lovely to the eye, but we do not 
 attach to it the idea of great importance in the scale of being. 
 But attach to that now short-lived beautiful visitant of the 
 garden the word IMMORTALITY and you invest it at once with 
 an unspeakable dignity. Let it be confined for ever in a cage 
 or let it start off on rapid wing never to tire or faint beyond 
 the orbit of Neptune, or where the comet flies, or where Sinus 
 is fixed in the heavens, to continue its flight when the heavens 
 shall vanish away, and though with most diminutive conscious- 
 ness of being, you make it an object of the deepest interest. 
 The little, lonely, fluttering, eternal wanderer ! The beautiful 
 little bird on an undying wing, among the stars! Who can 
 track its way? What shall we think of its solitariness and 
 eternal homelessness? What, then, shall we think of an immortal 
 soul ? A soul to endure for ever ! A soul to which is attached 
 all that is meant by the word ETEENITY ! A soul capable of 
 immortal happiness or pain ! My careless, thoughtless reader, 
 that soul, immortal and eternal, is yours. You feel it not. 
 I was about to say you know it not. But Christ knew it, and 
 felt it; and hence he came and died. The stamp, the seal of 
 eternity is on you and you must live for ever. And is your 
 redemption not worth his death not worth more than all these 
 material suns and stars ? Christ felt this when he said, " What 
 shall it profit a man, though he gain the whole world, and lose his 
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN 65 
 
 own soul?" And when we think of its immortality, and attempt to 
 track its wondrous way on its eternal journey, we find an answer to 
 that which so much perplexed the psalmist : " When I consider 
 thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, 
 which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful 
 of him ?" 
 
 (3.) Man is of peculiar importance as a guilty being. He has 
 sinned ; and has thus exalted himself into a melancholy notoriety 
 such as he might never otherwise have had. A transgressor of 
 law, no matter where, becomes at once a being of importance. 
 A thousand questions are at once asked in reference to him 
 which it would not have occurred to have asked if he had not 
 sinned, and which would have been impertinent and improper if 
 he had remained upright. A man who commits murder, becomes 
 at once one who attracts attention. Before he did this, he may 
 have been unknown ; he may have been a stranger ; he may 
 have been a down-trodden slave ; but the moment he imbrues 
 his hands in the blood of his fellow, that moment the eyes of 
 the community are turned towards him with the deepest interest. 
 His name is gazetted and blazoned abroad ; his person is 
 described ; his former course of life becomes a subject of interest- 
 ing history ; his feelings, views, destiny, all become a matter of 
 consequence. A mark on his person is exalted into a thing of 
 importance, and his death will attract the attention of thousands. 
 His melancholy conspicuity he owes to his guilt ; and but for 
 that, he might have lived and died unknown. This would be 
 more especially true, if the crime were one committed against a 
 prince, a nobleman, a benefactor of his. species, or the saviour of 
 his country. To what a degree of importance would the lowest 
 man in our country have exalted himself if he had assassinated 
 La Fayette or Washington ! A vessel may cross and recross 
 oceans, and attract almost no attention. Her coming and going 
 shall be recorded only among the numbers that are alike 
 undistinguished. But let it be rumoured that she was fitted out 
 with knives, and dirks, and pistols, and guns, and that she has 
 hoisted a false flag, and all at once she rises into conspicuity. 
 The world begins to feel an interest in her as she roams on 
 the ocean, and in all that pertains to her. Everything relating 
 to her course, her colour, her form, her complement of men, 
 becomes a matter of the deepest concern, and a nation feels 
 that her capture is worthy of its attention. Her importance 
 arises from the criminal intention, and the purpose to make war 
 on the peaceful commerce of the world. A child in a family 
 that has done wrong at once attracts peculiar attention, and 
 
66 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 many a question is asked in the little community of which he is 
 a member. Every eye is turned toward him. What will be the 
 consequence of his offence ? is the immediate inquiry. Will he be 
 punished ? Will his father forgive ? A train of deeply interest- 
 ing emotions also at once passes through the bosom of the 
 distressed and afflicted parent. His attention is diverted from 
 his other children to the offender. Can he safely pardon him ? 
 If not, what is the kind and measure of punishment which will 
 be necessary ? How can he so dispose of the painful occurrence 
 as to secure the observance of his laws hereafter, and to turn 
 the affair to good account in the government of his other 
 children ? The guilt of the offender has given him temporary 
 and painful consequence in that circle, and has attracted towards 
 him a degree of attention which but for that would never have 
 been excited. 
 
 Such is man one of the apostate children of the great family 
 of God. Not having any peculiar claims to the Divine notice 
 and attention from his original dignity and importance ; not 
 being of rank superior to other intelligences, he has raised him- 
 self into notice among immortal beings, as Kichard III., and 
 Cesar Borgia, and the Duke of Alva did among mortals, by guilt 
 more than by talent ; by eminence in crime, more than by 
 exalted rank. He has, by his apostasy, given occasion to many a 
 question of deep interest in regard to him which could never 
 have been asked had he not revolted, and is raised to this bad 
 eminence by his rebellion against the Most High. And though 
 man is but the creature of a day, and crushed before the moth, 
 yet when we look upon the numbers of the guilty upon the 
 aggravated nature of their crimes the apostasy of a world as 
 such one entire province of the mighty empire, we are not to 
 wonder that they have attracted attention in heaven, and that 
 great questions are pending there about the disposition which 
 shall be made of the rebel race. The importance of man now 
 arises in no small degree from the fact that he is a sinner. We 
 do not excite notice in heaven by our talent or learning ; by our 
 skill or accomplishments; by our beauty or strength. We can never 
 make our names known there by our eloquence, our valour, our 
 wealth. We are known as guilty men ; as wanderers ; as criminals; 
 as having foolishly and wickedly gone away from God, and as 
 being in rebellion against the Most High. It is the eminence 
 of guilt, the fame of depravity, the notoriety of rebellion that 
 distinguishes us in other worlds ; and though we have become 
 of so much importance as to attract attention there, yet the fact 
 is one fitted not to fill us with pride, but to sink us low in the 
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN. 67 
 
 dust. It is true that the remark now made might be made of 
 rebel angels, and would be correct in regard to them, and that 
 this would SEEM to be a reason as strong in their case why they 
 should be objects of special Divine notice as in ours and so 
 they may be in their own way, or in some method that shall as 
 clearly show that the Divine attention is directed to them as if 
 a plan of redemption had been provided for them : but there 
 may have been reasons unknown to us, why the Divine notice 
 of them as guilty was not manifested in the same way as 
 towards us that is, why they should not be redeemed. 
 
 (4.) Man is of importance as a sufferer ; as actually now a 
 sufferer ; and as being exposed to deep and prolonged sorrows 
 in the future world. A sufferer is always a being of importance, 
 no matter what may be the cause of his woes. That interest is 
 in proportion to the tenderness of the ties which bind him to 
 others, or to the benevolence of those by whom he is surrounded. 
 Who is the object of deepest interest in the family? Who is 
 the one around whom most anxieties cluster ? Look on that 
 little afflicted daughter. All are ready to do anything for her ; 
 to carry her, to fan her, to bathe her temples, to watch with 
 her during the long night. The reason is, simply, that she is a 
 sufferer. She has now an importance, and attracts a degree of 
 attention, which she could never have done had she lived in the 
 enjoyment of health. Her pains, her sighs, her fading cheek, 
 her sunken eye, exalt her into importance ; and when she dies, 
 you regard her as the most lovely of your children, and feel for 
 the moment that you have laid your pride and your hopes in the 
 grave. 
 
 It matters little though I admit it does something what is 
 the cause of suffering, whether it.be misfortune or guilt. The 
 son that has been dissipated, and that lies on a bed of death as 
 the result of his folly, is not cut off from our sympathy by his 
 crimes. And especially if he has been led into temptation by 
 others ; if by their arts he has been seduced from virtue, our 
 interest is excited in his behalf, perhaps not less than if he were 
 innocent. Rare is it, if it ever happens, that a mother's heart is 
 cold and repellant towards a suffering daughter, though she has 
 been frail, and led away by a seducer. 
 
 If suffering is long, or is likely to be long, the importance of 
 the sufferer is proportionally increased. Attach the idea of 
 eternal suffering to anything, and you at once exalt it into 
 unspeakable magnitude. It matters not how insignificant the 
 sufferer may be, the idea of its suffering for ever gives it a 
 magnitude which words can never express. Allow me to advert 
 
68 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 to my former simple illustration the case of the little beauti- 
 ful humming-bird. Suppose it small as it is transfixed with 
 a tiny dart, and yet deathless ; suppose the little arrow to pierce 
 its heart, and the death struggle to continue on till the heavens 
 shall waste away and the earth be no more, and then that it be 
 removed to a place where it would struggle on with the quiver- 
 ing dart fixed there for ever what would you not do to rescue 
 such a sufferer ? Tell me, ye rich and benevolent men, would 
 you not give the last cent of your property to extract that tiny 
 dart, and make that little beautiful being happy ? What then 
 is man, immortal man, if he is destined to eternal suffering 
 unless redeemed ? Why should we wonder that such a being 
 becomes an object of interest in heaven ; w r hy that the angels 
 regard him with emotion ; why that the Redeemer came to die 
 for him ; why that God looks upon him with intensest feeling ? 
 No words can estimate the importance of man exposed to infinite 
 suffering in the future world ; and nothing but the fact that he 
 is a sufferer here, and that he is in danger of eternal suffering 
 in the world to come, is necessary to solve the question in the 
 text : " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
 the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, 
 that thou art mindful of him ?" How could a benevolent God 
 but be mindful of one who might suffer for ever? 
 
 In view of our subject, I may suggest the following remarks: 
 1. We may see the propriety and fitness of the plan of salva- 
 tion by the incarnation and death of the Son of God. It was 
 indeed amazing. It seems almost to surpass the limits of possi- 
 bility that it should have occurred. Yet when we think of what 
 man is ; of his own immortal nature ; of his magnitude of guilt ; 
 of the severity and duration of suffering due to him as a sinner ; 
 and of the numbers of the guilty and the dying, it is impossible 
 to over-estimate his importance among the creatures of God. 
 All about our subject is great. God is great ; and the human 
 soul is great. The plans of God are great ; and the interests of 
 man are great. The incarnation of the Son of God was great; 
 and the object for which it took place was great. His sufferings 
 and his agony for sin were great ; and the sorrows of hell from 
 which he came to redeem us were great. There is a fitness 
 between the one and the other ; and great as were the pangs of 
 Jesus Christ, I see in the whole plan that beautiful harmony 
 which I delight to trace in all the ways and works of God. 
 " The redemption of the soul is precious." It is worth all which 
 it has cost. The gain to the universe is to be an ample compensa- 
 tion for all those sufferings ; and when the Redeemer shall see 
 
THE -IMPORTANCE OF MAN. 69 
 
 all the purchased of his hlood around his throne, he will not feel 
 that in the garden of Gethsemane, or on Calvary, he endured 
 one pang too much. 
 
 2. Our suhject should teach us humility. Insignificant as 
 creatures when compared with angelic beings, and infinitely so 
 when compared with the great God, we have exalted ourselves 
 into melancholy conspicuity by our guilt, and by our exposure 
 to suffering as the result of our guilt. Distinguished though 
 we are, and though we attract notice and attention from the 
 heavenly hosts, yet the effect on us should be anything but to 
 make us proud. Our crimes magnify us ; but it is not a matter 
 of self-exaltation when guilt attracts attention, and when the 
 principal claim to notice is criminality. Though the gospel, 
 therefore, reveals the interest which is felt in us by distant 
 beings, it does it in such a way as not to fill us with pride ; it 
 does it so that the cardinal virtue in our bosoms which it pro- 
 duces is humility. And when you are in danger of being 
 proud that God and Christ and holy angels feel a deep interest 
 in you, and that for you an eternal plan has been formed, and 
 for you the Son of God has become incarnate, remember that it 
 was your crimes that attracted this attention, and that your 
 peril on account of sin moved heaven to notice you. Go and see 
 the crowd gather towards the cell of the pirate, or the throng 
 that accompanies the man on the way to the block, and forget 
 your pride. 
 
 3. If so much interest is manifested for man ; if heaven is 
 moved with compassion on his behalf ; if angels look down with 
 deep anxiety, solicitous to aid and save him, we cannot but be 
 struck with the indifference of man himself to these great truths. 
 Of all beings he is usually most unconcerned in the great events 
 that contemplate his salvation, or that hasten his ruin. His eye 
 is not attracted by the glories of the incarnation ; nor does he 
 feel alarmed at the preparations for his final woe. Much I have 
 meditated on this ; and much I have wondered at it, and still 
 wonder. I have sought out arguments and words to rouse those 
 whom I am called to address ; but usually in vain. I can 
 scarcely get the ear, or the eye much less the heart to con- 
 template the amazing interest felt in heaven based on man's 
 guilt ; those wonders of compassion in the cross that was reared 
 that man might be saved. I see a parallel to it sometimes on 
 earth but where my philosophy equally fails me in the guilty 
 wretch about to die for his crimes, himself the most thoughtless 
 of the throng, and with the utmost coolness walking up to the 
 instrument of death, while every other heart shudders. Why it 
 
70 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 is, I know not, I cannot explain it. But our subject makes 
 yet another appeal to you. There is interest felt for you in 
 heaven in God's bosom in the Redeemer's heart. There was 
 interest felt for you in the eternal plan which contemplated 
 redemption. There was interest felt for you on the plains of 
 Bethlehem, when the angelic host sang " Glory to God in the 
 highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." There was 
 interest felt for you in the garden of Gethsemane, and on the 
 cross. There is interest felt for you still. Your God desires 
 your salvation. Your Redeemer desires it. Your pious wife 
 desires it. Your Christian daughter desires it. Your child that 
 is a Christian desires it. All feel your danger but yourself. 
 All pray for your salvation but yourself. All eyes but your own 
 weep when they survey your eternal doom. 
 
 (4.) Finally, our subject shows us that the sinner cannot 
 escape the notice of God. His sins have given him a bad 
 eminence, and he will not be forgotten. " There is no darkness 
 nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity can hide 
 themselves." He that has sought the redemption of the guilty 
 by giving his Son to die, will not suffer him to escape if he 
 neglects it. Sin makes the rebel of too much importance in a 
 government like that of God ; and the offender cannot escape. 
 Human penalty you may escape. You may have never deserved 
 it. But the penalty of the Divine law cannot be evaded ; nor 
 can the sinner plead his own insignificance when he stands 
 before his Maker. Insignificant a man may have been till he 
 became a murderer but not then, nor ever onwards. Insigni- 
 ficant you may be as a creature, bat never henceforward as a 
 sinner. 
 
 I know, my hearer, that you and I shall die and moulder back 
 to dust. I know that your name and mine will soon be forgotten 
 among men. The traces of our existence on earth will be like 
 the marks in the sand on the sea-shore which the next wave 
 washes away. Yet we shall not be altogether forgotten. One 
 Eye will be upon us; and we cannot escape it. There is One 
 who will remember us, and who will never forget us. Dying 
 deathless man ! What is to be your doom beyond the grave? 
 Oh, think one moment, I beseech you, what it will be to live for 
 ever; to suffer for ever ; to be driven away for ever from God, 
 and from heaven! And then think what it would be to live 
 for ever in heaven for ever, for ever, oh, for ever, amid the 
 songs of redeeming love to have to all eternity the importance 
 attached to you of being among the redeemed, and of being 
 admitted nearer the throne than you might have been had you 
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN. 
 
 71 
 
 never fallen. Then, when you shall see these heavens rolled 
 together as a scroll,' and the stars fall from their places, and the 
 light of this sun fade away ; then, when you see a bright and 
 glorious eternity before you, you will understand in its fulness 
 the subject which so much perplexed the psalmist, why such 
 importance was attached to man. Redeemed in those heavens, 
 and for ever blessed, what will be the fading and dying 
 splendours of all those material worlds compared with the bliss 
 of your own ransomed soul ? \ 
 
SEKMON YI, 
 
 THE EARTH A PLACE OF PROBATION. 
 
 ACTS xvii. 26, 27. "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for 
 to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before 
 appointed, and the bounds of their habitation ; that they should seek the 
 Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him." 
 
 THIS passage teaches the following things : First, that men 
 have a common origin, being made of one blood or family, and 
 having the same Creator; and, therefore, that notwithstanding 
 their diversity of language, of complexion, and condition, they 
 are essentially equal, and have equal rights. Secondly, that 
 God is a sovereign, and has fixed the various habitations of men 
 according to his own pleasure, and as he saw would he best 
 fitted to subserve the ends which he had in view in the creation 
 of the race. And, thirdly, that the grand design for which they 
 were made, and for which they have heen distributed as they 
 have been over the earth, was, that they might seek after the 
 knowledge of their Creator ; trace the evidence of his existence, 
 and learn the character of his attributes in his works. He 
 designed that the earth should be occupied by moral and re- 
 sponsible agents ; and to the different branches of the one great 
 family he has fixed the bounds of their dwelling ; ordained the 
 periods and the circumstances of their changes, and so arranged 
 all things in regard to them as best to determine the question 
 whether they are disposed to seek after him, and to serve him. 
 This is equivalent to saying that they have been placed here on 
 probation with reference to the knowledge, the service, and the 
 favour of God; and that the circumstances of their probation 
 have been intentionally arranged by the Creator with reference 
 to that end. The general sentiment of the text then is, that the 
 earth is fitted to be a place of probation. This sentiment I 
 propose to illustrate. 
 
 The conjecture for it can be little more than conjecture is 
 not improbable that all the intelligent creatures of God pass 
 through a period of probation. It is in this world, as far as our 
 eye can trace events, a universal law in regard to all advance- 
 ment to a higher degree of existence ; and the analogy would 
 
THE EARTH A PLACE OF PROBATION. 73 
 
 lead us to suppose that it is so in regard to all moral agents. 
 Yet the mode of this may be different in different worlds. It 
 must be adapted to the rank, the intellectual endowments, and 
 the degree of light of the individual, or of the race that is to 
 be tried. It may have been one thing for the angels ; another 
 for the inhabitants of distant worlds ; and another still for man. 
 In all, however, the grand purpose is the same to furnish evi- 
 dence, by proper trial, of a disposition to obey the will of God. 
 In man at first the trial was made with reference to his willing- 
 ness, in obedience to the command of his Maker, to abstain from 
 a specified kind of fruit; in man now the same trial is made 
 with reference to a law, or test, adapted to his fallen condition. 
 
 Probation on earth is a common thing. Every child is on proba- 
 tion in respect to what he will be in subsequent life ; every youth 
 in respect to the rewards of health, property, office, or honour, 
 which the world may have to bestow ; every student of divinity, 
 law, or medicine ; every clerk, or apprentice ; every aspirant for 
 office, in regard to the degree of esteem which he may have in 
 the pulpit, of reputation at the bar, or in the practice of medicine, 
 or of glory which may encircle his name when death comes. 
 The world does not bestow its rewards except when there has 
 been a trial. It does not commonly withhold them when the 
 result of the trial has shown that the rewards were deserved. 
 In a college, it is contemplated that he who shall receive the 
 first appointment in his class, shall obtain it as the result of a 
 fair trial or probation ; in the learned professions, that he who 
 shall bear the palm shall have shown that he was entitled to it ; 
 in respect to subsequent life, that he shall be most honoured 
 who in the trying junctures that test the character shall have 
 shown that he resisted temptation, and adhered to the laws of 
 virtue ; in the bestowinent of the offices in a commonwealth, 
 that no one shall receive them but he who has shown in appro- 
 priate situations that he has an established character for ability, 
 patriotism, and virtue. If there are departures in any case from, 
 these principles, they are departures from what is admitted to 
 be the true theory of the system. 
 
 It is essential to probation, in all cases, that there shall be 
 freedom to act as we please ; that the test applied shall be 
 adapted to our capacity ; that the conditions on which it depends 
 shall be known, or such as may be easily ascertained ; that the 
 inducements to virtue shall be sufficiently strong to excite us to 
 an effort to secure the reward ; and yet that there shall be suffi- 
 cient exposures to a contrary course to show that we are disposed 
 to resist evil. He who has never resisted the temptations to 
 
74 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 indolence, vice, ambition, avarice, or sensuality, cannot be said 
 yet to have a tried character for virtue. He who has never 
 been in circumstances where he was called to decide whether he 
 would be temperate or intemperate ; industrious or indolent ; 
 pure or impure ; a patriot or a traitor ; a companion of the good 
 or the evil if there could be such a case could not be said to 
 be tried. He knows not what he is. He knows not what he 
 might be in some new situation. He cannot be said to be in a 
 state where it would be appropriate to reward him. 
 
 The question now is, if these are the conditions of probation, 
 what arrangements are there in this world to adapt it to be a 
 suitable place of trial for eternity ? Are there things here which 
 contemplate this, and which can be accounted for on no other 
 supposition ? Are they wisely arranged ? Can we find in them 
 the hand of a Father contemplating our own welfare, and adapting 
 us to the world, and the world to us, in such a way as best to 
 promote the grand object of a probation for a future state ? We 
 repine and murmur much at our lot ; we wonder often at the 
 mingling of light and shade, and good and evil, in our condi- 
 tion. Let us inquire whether, with reference to the great pur- 
 poses of our being, we cannot find matter for hope, contentment, 
 adoration, and praise. 
 
 I. The first thing that occurs to us as suggesting the idea of 
 probation is, the unsettled state of things in this world. Nothing 
 seems fixed, determined, ended. Everything looks forward. 
 Light struggles with darkness ; truth with error ; good with 
 evil ; happiness with misery. There is no place of sunshine 
 which may not be soon overshadowed with a cloud ; no smooth 
 sea where there may not be a hidden rock, or a whirlpool near; 
 no highway that man travels where there are not paths branching 
 off that lead astray ; no plan in the " full tide of successful ex- 
 periment" which may not be blighted; no reward that man can 
 gain that seems fixed and abiding. 
 
 This is a remarkable world, and is probably unlike all the 
 others that God has made. It is a most beautiful world, which, 
 after all that sin has done, has still many of the features of 
 the Eden where man first dwelt. The sun, for anything that 
 appears to the contrary, shines as bright as it did then ; the 
 moon and the stars are as beautiful; the stream purls as gently; 
 the ocean is as grand, and the rose and the magnolia are as 
 fragrant. Man, if he were himself to select a place of probation, 
 could not well imagine a world more full of beauty than this 
 for most of his ideas of beauty are drawn from this very earth. 
 It is a world replete with proofs of the wisdom and the goodness 
 
THE EARTH A PLACE OF PROBATION. 75 
 
 of God ; and whatever there may be in other worlds, here are 
 depths of skill and benevolence which none have been able to 
 fathom, and which seem as inexhaustible now as they did when 
 the first created being bent with admiration over the beauty of 
 a flower, examined the structure of the insect's wing, or looked 
 upon the stars at night. 
 
 Yet how is all this intermingled with evil! There is dark- 
 ness ; there is sin ; there is temptation ; there are things that 
 fill the mind with perplexity and doubt ; there are evil beings 
 as well as good abroad upon the earth, " both when we wake 
 and when we sleep ;" there are enticements to wrong as well as 
 allurements to right; there are mighty means and influences to 
 draw the mind to virtue, and there are mighty means and in- 
 fluences to draw it to vice. 
 
 Everything is unsettled, just as it must be in a state of pro- 
 bation. There is as yet no certain or fixed reward. There is no 
 crown which is unfading. There are no title-deeds which can 
 make property sure. There is no happiness of whose continuance 
 there can be certainty. Everything seems to partake much of 
 the nature of experiment or trial. The whole subject of medicine, 
 and finance, and agriculture, and mechanics, and even morals, 
 seems to have partaken much of this character. Man is on 
 trial, and he is constantly making trial for the future. Youth 
 is on trial for manhood, and manhood for old age, and one gene- 
 ration for the next ; and all for eternity. In all conditions there 
 is a looking out of the human mind for the future. At any one 
 stage of being there is an impatient longing for the next. There 
 is an instinctive feeling that the destiny of the next stage is to 
 be determined by the character of the present. And there is, in 
 all and above all this, an instinctive feeling that all these stages 
 on earth are preliminary to a higher, fixed stage beyond. Man 
 is so made that he must look onward and upward, and must 
 feel that the eternal condition is to be determined by the character 
 formed in this life. 
 
 Then there is here a mingling together of influences from 
 other worlds designed for the trial of man. There are seductive 
 influences to evil. There are fallen spirits that have access to 
 man. There are powerful appeals which they are able to make 
 through our senses ; by the objects of light, and taste, and touch ; 
 by suggestions made to our desire of knowledge, our pride, our 
 vanity, our ambition ; by the arts acquired by long experience 
 in temptation, and by the aids which they can derive from the 
 advocates of error, and the panders to guilt which they have 
 already enlisted under their banners. And on the other hand, 
 
6 THE WAY OF SALTATION. 
 
 there are holy influences from above. There is the ministry and 
 the solicitude of angels. There is the fact that the Son of God 
 became incarnate and died in our world to win and save us. 
 There is the ministration of the Holy Ghost to encourage those 
 who wish to be confirmed in goodness, and to reach the rewards 
 of heaven. There are the counsels and entreaties of the friends 
 of virtue ; the instructions and pleadings of the ministers of a 
 holy religion ; the admonitions of parents ; the lessons of history 
 -*-all leading the mind to virtue and to God. Such mingled 
 things show that this is a world of probation, or is designed to 
 try men with reference to what is to be their lot in the future 
 stage of their existence ; and they at the same time show the 
 wisdom and goodness of God in the arrangement. It is the 
 kind of a world which it should be, if it is designed as a place 
 of trial. For what characteristics could it have as a world of 
 probation, if the sun were withdrawn, and the moon and the 
 stars shone no more, and no flower bloomed, and no Saviour had 
 died,- and no sacred Spirit came to aid men, and there were no 
 living friends to help the weak and the ignorant on to God ? What 
 if all the comforts which we have were withdrawn, and the earth 
 were converted into a dark prison, or were made a lurid meteor, 
 bearing its wretched inhabitants through chilly regions of night 
 farther and farther from the sun? It would then answer no 
 purpose as a world of probation. See what the great prison- 
 house of the universe, hell, is. Who has been reformed there ? 
 Who has been prepared there for a higher stage of being ? See 
 what a prison is. Man shuts his fellow out from the light of 
 the sun, and the moon, and the stars. He closes dark, massive 
 doors upon him. He takes him away from wife, and children, 
 and friends. He clothes him in coarse raiment; feeds him on 
 coarse fare ; spreads for him a couch of straw ; forbids him to 
 look upon the face of man ; deprives him of the balmy air ; 
 guards him with unslumbering vigilance when he wakes, or 
 when he sleeps, perchance, binds his quivering limbs in fetters 
 of iron. Who is made the better by this ? Who is reformed ? 
 Who supposes that that would be an appropriate place of proba- 
 tion for a youth? None are reformed there unless you can 
 introduce an independent influence of goodness aud mercy the 
 light of the glorious gospel the voice of a friend of virtue 
 the offer of salvation the hope of heaven. And if God had 
 made this world as man makes his prisons, vain would have been 
 the hope of securing a fair trial of what man is or might be, or 
 of preparing him for a higher stage of existence. But he has 
 not made it so. He has not attempted to drive man to the pursuit 
 
THE EARTH A PLACE OF PROBATION. 77 
 
 of virtue or the performance of duty, by the clanking of fetters, 
 the sound of the lash, or the gloom of a dungeon. He has 
 another method. He places man, though a sinner, in a world 
 apparently as beautiful as it can be made ; surrounds him with 
 all that can appeal to his gratitude and his sense of right ; tells 
 him of eternal love, and of infinite sacrifices in his behalf; sends 
 divine ministering spirits to aid him in his efforts to secure 
 salvation ; gives him a Saviour ; comes and dwells with him ; 
 raises him up when he is bowed down ; and, amidst his sorrows, 
 as he struggles with darkness and sin, points him to a world 
 where these struggles shall cease, and where there shall be no 
 intermingling of light and shade, but where all shall be a sea of 
 glory. How different this from the clanking of fetters, and the 
 chilliness of a dungeon ! A prison, as man makes it, is a dif- 
 ferent thing from this world as God has made, and as he pre- 
 serves it. The one is designed primarily as a place of punish- 
 ment, and all the arrangements for reformation are things super- 
 induced ; the other is primarily a place of probation, and all that 
 looks like punishment here is designed to contribute to the great 
 plan of preparing for the retributions of another state. 
 
 II. A second feature illustrating the condition of the world 
 as a state of probation is, that the offered reward the induce- 
 ment to good is commensurate with such an object. Here we 
 need not be detained long. The rewards proposed should always 
 be such as to constitute a fair probation. They should be suffi- 
 cient to a life of virtue. The rewards of industry, soberness, 
 integrity, scholarship, proposed to a youth should be sufficient 
 to be a reasonable stimulus, or to make them worth striving for. 
 They are so in the present life even if there were no bearing 
 of these things on the life to come. Apart from every considera- 
 tion drawn from another world real or imaginary the rewards 
 which may be secured in this world by early vfchie and industry 
 are worth all which they cost. Take one instance as an illustra- 
 tion of the whole. The influence of diligence in the acquisition 
 of knowledge by a student on his future happiness, if his life is 
 spared, is worth all which it will cost him to make the highest 
 attainments possible. The effect in giving him a desirable repu- 
 tation, to which no virtuous and sensible man will he indifferent ; 
 the effect in gratifying his friends ; #ie effect in introducing him 
 into successful and prospero.us business ; and the effect in opening 
 before him rich sources, of enjoyment in the hours of leisure, and 
 in old age an effect so often and so beautifully described by 
 Cicero when speaking of philosophy are ample rewards for 
 all the sacrifice which is required in order to be a good scholar. 
 
8 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 The same remarks may be made of everything good in regard 
 to which a young man may be considered to be on probation. 
 
 Is this so in regard to the rewards proposed to man con- 
 sidered as on probation for eternity ? Open your Bibles ; or cast 
 the eye upward and onward, and see whether the rewards pro- 
 posed are not commensurate with the highest measure of sacrifice, 
 and self-denial, and holiness on earth. What could be beyond 
 these ? What higher offering of reward could stimulate man to 
 pursue that course which will be connected with the eternal 
 crown ? It may be doubted by some, but with those who have 
 made the trial it will not be a matter of doubt, whether virtue 
 and religion do not carry their own rewards with them ; and 
 whether if there were no future state whatever, there would not 
 be an ample recompense for all that religion costs a man on 
 earth. This can hardly be questioned in regard to the peace, 
 and happiness, and joy, of a self-approving conscience when 
 virtue is subjected to no extraordinary trial. Many a man finds 
 within his own bosom an ample recompense for what a deed of 
 charity costs him ; and it is not to be doubted that Howard felt 
 himself abundantly repaid for all the property which he ex- 
 pended, and all the time which he devoted, to alleviate the 
 condition of the prisoners ; and that Wilberforce and Clarkson, 
 when it could be said that the moment any person trod the 
 soil of England he was free, found an ample recompense for 
 their extraordinary toils, in securing this result. But the asser- 
 tion, though it may be deemed extravagant by many, may be 
 nevertheless true, that even Paul and Silas in the prison at 
 Philippi, and Bunyan in a British dungeon, and Latimer and 
 Ridley at the stake, MAY have enjoyed even there a degree of 
 hly j v which they would have regarded as an ample com- 
 pensation for all that they had been called to endure in the cause 
 of religion. 
 
 But not to dwell on this. The question which our subject 
 demands to be answered is this : Are the rewards proffered to 
 men in heaven such as it is proper should be offered to those in 
 a state of probation to induce them to walk in the ways of 
 religion ? Are they such as fairly to put man on his trial, and 
 to be all the inducement of this kind which can be reasonably 
 asked to lead him to be what he should be ? The only answer 
 that is needful here is, that the rewards offered to man as the 
 result of a successful probation are the highest that man can 
 himself conceive. They are the crown incorruptible ; immortality ; 
 a resurrection to glory; perfect freedom from sin, pain, and tears ; 
 the highest happiness, and the purest friendship, and the most 
 
THE EARTH A PLACE OF PROBATION. 79 
 
 exalted intelligence and moral worth of which our nature is 
 capable, and all this continued for ever. When you have 
 affixed the idea of immortality or eternity to anything which 
 is regarded as a good, you have gone to the utmost limit w r hich 
 the human mind is capable of conceiving. If man will not be 
 won by that to a life of virtue, what is there to influence him ? 
 Beyond this, it is not possible to conceive that even God himself 
 can go. What can even He offer more ? 
 
 III. It is equally true that there are sufficient exposures or 
 solicitations to evil to determine what the character is, and in 
 all respects to fit this to be a world of probation. No confidence 
 is to be placed in untried character. We want some evidence 
 which will enable us to judge how a young man will act before 
 we admit him to form a matrimonial connexion with a daughter ; 
 before we entrust him with our keys ; before we make him a 
 cashier in a bank, or a treasurer of the county or the common- 
 wealth. We wish to know how he has acted in circumstances 
 where men are liable to go astray, and where we know that the 
 integrity of many has shown itself too feeble to resist evil. We 
 would not lead him into temptation, nor would we place allure- 
 ments to evil before him ; but we wish him to have had some 
 experience in a world which we know to abound with tempta- 
 tions, and to see in what manner he meets them. We judge of 
 his virtue by the evidence that he has come unscathed from 
 scenes where many have fallen. If never tried, we know not 
 what he would be ; if tried, and if the result has been successful, 
 we take him as a partner in our business, or admit him to our 
 friendship. 
 
 It will not be denied that this world has all the character- 
 istics in this respect which can be considered proper in order to 
 a just probation. No one is compelled to do wrong ; but there 
 are abundant exposures to evil to show whether man is disposed 
 to do right. It is a world sufficiently full of the allurements of 
 ambition, and gain, and sensuality, and vanity; sufficiently filled 
 with attractive crimes, and false opinions, and " evil men and 
 seducers" that wax worse and worse, to bring out everything 
 that there is in man, and show what his true character is, and 
 what he would be in other worlds. It in fact answers the pur- 
 pose. The disposition of every man becomes tested before he 
 reaches the grave, .nor does one who acts on this theatre of 
 being enter eternity in such a way that there can be any 
 reasonable doubt about his character. Under the operation of 
 this principle of the Divine administration, Satan fell ; Adam 
 fell; and millions have since fallen. Youths, trained to other 
 
80 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 things, fall to rise no more ; men whose character was supposed 
 to be matured by long and steady virtue, under the influence of 
 some new form of temptation, fall, and reveal what was the 
 secret character of the heart ; clergymen supposed to be of tried 
 virtue are suffered to fall, disclosing, perhaps, a long career of 
 secret iniquity. But it is not wrong that the test should be 
 applied. It was not wrong that it should be applied to Adam. 
 It is not wrong that it should be applied to a youth ; an officer 
 of a bank ; a candidate for a high office of the state ; a minister 
 of the gospel, or man at large considered as a probationer for 
 eternity. If there is secret iniquity in the heart it is well that 
 it should be developed ; and I do not see how we can conceive 
 of a world better fitted to show what man is, and yet furnishing 
 more helps to a virtuous life, than this. If so, it is adapted to 
 be a state of probation. 
 
 IV. The conditions of trial are sufficiently plain and easy. 
 The conditions of trial should be adapted to the capacity. You 
 would not apply the same test to man and to angels ; nor to a 
 child and to an aged and experienced statesman or financier. To 
 Adam a simple test was applied, perfectly easy to be complied 
 with ; adapted to the condition of one who had just opened his 
 eyes upon a world of which as yet he knew nothing. Compare 
 that simple prohibition with the form in which temptation 
 approached the Son of God (Matt, iv.), and the way in which 
 the virtue of the prospective Redeemer of the world was assailed. 
 The test was adapted to each. The one fell ; the other was 
 incorruptible, and there, after success in a greater or less degree 
 everywhere else, Satan was foiled. 
 
 It is essential to the trial that the test be adapted to the 
 capacity ; that it be practicable to be complied with ; that it 
 shall be such as to bring out the character. It would be no 
 proper condition of probation for man to make his salvation 
 depend on his creating a world, or guiding the chariot of the 
 sun in the heavens, or directing the comet's flight, or converting 
 the sea into dry land ; for all these are beyond any power with 
 which he is endowed. 
 
 What, then, is the point of probation for man now ? The true 
 issue always is obedience to the will of God; the question is, 
 whether man is disposed to obey. This may be modified according 
 to circumstances. In Adam it related to the forbidden fruit. 
 Among the angels it may have been quite a different thing. In 
 man now it might have been perfect and uninterrupted com- 
 pliance with the holy law of God through life ; but who then 
 would be saved? Or it might have been a pilgrimage to a 
 
THE EARTH A PLACE OF PROBATION. 81 
 
 distant tomb ; or the maceration of the body by fasts and vigils ; 
 or a certain number of genuflexions; or the wearing of a garment 
 of a peculiar form or colour. Any one of these would have 
 answered some purpose as a test, and however senseless or 
 stupid they might be in other respects, they would have illus- 
 trated the question whether man was disposed to obey. But 
 none of these things are chosen ; and it would be easy to show 
 that none of them would be adapted to the condition of man as 
 he is on trial for eternity. 
 
 What, then, is man to do in order that his probation may be 
 successful ? He is perpetually doing something, and every man 
 has his own views as to what constitutes the real nature of the 
 trial. One makes it to consist in a form of religion ; another in 
 a pilgrimage ; another in fastings ; another in honesty ; another 
 in kindness to the poor ; another in the upright discharge of his 
 duties as a merchant, a bank officer, a father, or a friend. He 
 stakes his eternal destiny on the manner in which these duties 
 are discharged. What is the truth about it ? 
 
 Our text says that the substantial point of trial is, whether 
 men will " feel after God and find him ;" that is, whether they 
 will seek to know him, and to become practically acquainted 
 with him ; for " this is life eternal, to know thee the true God, and 
 Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent," John xvii. 3. In the Bible, 
 the true issue is always put on such a ground as this. It is to 
 know whether man will seek for, and return to his Maker ; 
 whether he will embrace the instruction which God gives, and 
 accept that Great Teacher as his guide who alone can lead back 
 to God ; whether man, regarded as an apostate being, will cease 
 from his wanderings, give up his opposition, and return to his 
 Creator; whether he will surrender his heart to the claims of 
 him who made him ; lay down the weapons of his rebellion ; 
 accept of the pardon proffered through the merits of the Re- 
 deemer, and thenceforward yield obedience to the holy law of 
 his God. You will perceive, then, that this makes the issue of 
 a peculiar character, and is fitted to be such a trial as is required 
 in probation. It makes the true test of probation, not the 
 acquisition of property, or learning, or accomplishment ; not 
 external morality, grace, beauty, or strength ; not a pilgrimage, 
 or a sacrifice ; but the surrender of the heart to God, a return 
 from sin, a willingness to be saved, an acceptance of the Lord 
 Jesus as a Saviour. 
 
 A subject of a government say a baron under the feudal 
 system rebels against his sovereign. He is in possession of a 
 strong castle, and has entrenched himself there. Guilty of 
 
 a 
 
82 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 treason, he is liable to the penalty of death in its most fearful 
 form. If now that castle is besieged and its outworks are taken ; 
 if he is closely pressed, and a demand is made on him to return 
 to his allegiance, and if there is a disposition on the part of the 
 sovereign to show him clemency, what would be the terms of 
 the surrender, or what .would be the true point of trial in the 
 case ? It would not be any impracticable thing, such as ascend- 
 ing the heights of an inaccessible mountain, or making himself 
 wings to fly. It would not be that he should lacerate his body, 
 or emaciate himself by fasting. It would not be primarily that 
 he should honestly pay off those in his employ, and do justice 
 to those under him whom he might have wronged. All these 
 things might or might not be proper in their place, but they 
 would not be the real pojnt at issue. That would be, whether 
 he would yive up that fortress ; whether he would lay down his 
 arms and pull down his flag ; whether he would return to 
 allegiance to his lawful sovereign ; whether he would give 
 hostages as pledges or promises that would be satisfactory for 
 his future good behaviour. So the true matter in issue with 
 man is, whether he will yield the citadel of his heart to his 
 lawful sovereign ; whether he will lay down the weapons of his 
 rebellion ; whether he will leave the service of the enemy ; 
 whether he will accept of pardon for the past on the conditions 
 proposed, and whether by oath and covenant made over the 
 blood of the Great Sacrifice, he will solemnly pledge himself to 
 rebel no more. This issue is to be tried in the present life ; and 
 to determine this, man lives in this world of probation, and the 
 terms are 'constantly submitted to him. These terms are easy. 
 They have been embraced by millions of all classes and ages. 
 They are no more difficult to be complied with than it is for the 
 rebel baron to lay down his arms and open the gates of his 
 castle ; and they are such that God must insist on them in regard 
 to every one found in this position ; that is, to every human 
 being. It is &fair test ; and it must be apiilied. 
 
 V. The time allotted to man is long enough as a season of 
 probation. In the case just referred to, the time need not be 
 long for the rebel baron to determine whether he would sur- 
 render. His character, his disposition, his views would be fully 
 tested even if the time allowed him were but a single day. If 
 he surrendered, that would settle the matter ; if he refused, that 
 would determine it with equal certainty. The very position in 
 which he was found in arms, with the flag of rebellion floating 
 on his ramparts, leagued, perhaps, with a more powerful foe, and 
 barring his gates against the approach of His lawful sovereign, 
 
THE EARTH A PLACE OF PROBATION. 83 
 
 would determine what he -was then; the terms of surrender now 
 proposed, even if respite were given but a day, would furnish 
 sufficient trial of what he was disposed to he. 
 
 Our life is very short. It is a vapour ; a breath ; a summer 
 cloud; a morning mist. But it is long enough to answer all 
 the purposes of probation for eternity. Let a proposal of sur- 
 render be sent to this rebellious baron, and if he pays no atten- 
 tion to it, it shows what he is. If sent again, and he is still 
 sullen and indifferent ; or if he coolly and with outward respect 
 sends it back ; or if he scourges the messenger and then sends 
 him back ; or if he hurls back defiance ; or if he crucifies the 
 messenger, and suspends him on the walls in the sight of him 
 who sent him, can there be any doubt about his character? 
 Would it be wrong to proceed to a sentence on the ground of 
 this ? To man short-lived, and found in rebellion against God 
 an offer of mercy is sent. If he is indifferent ; if he turns away ; 
 if he closes his ear ; if he meets it with contempt, mockery, and 
 reproaches ; if he seizes the messenger and incarcerates him or 
 crucifies him, is there any doubt about his character ? Is it 
 necessary to a fair and equal probation that our supposed baron 
 should have an opportunity of doing this repeatedly? Would 
 you say that equity required that his sovereign should patiently 
 wait, " rising up early" and sending his messengers to be de- 
 spised, rejected, or crucified, until the moss of years should 
 overspread the walls of that castle, and the keeper should become 
 grey with age? I tell you, my friends, as you would say in 
 that case, that this is not necessary; that if God makes you an 
 offer of salvation so that you fairly understand it ; if he sets life 
 and death before you, and life be despised, there is a fair trial. 
 Justice and judgment might then proceed apace ; and though 
 you be cut down at twenty years of age, the character is de- 
 termined. Life even in such a case is long enough for this 
 purpose, and the probation is a fair one. 
 
 There are several other thoughts which might be suggested in 
 order fully to illustrate my subject ; but I may not trespass on 
 your attention by dwelling on them. I have stated some views 
 which seem to me important to give us just conceptions of what 
 life is, and to reconcile us to our condition. There is one other 
 thought, however, which cannot be omitted without leaving the 
 subject incomplete. I can do little more than name it. 
 
 VI. It is this : that there is just uncertainty enough about 
 all the objects of life, and about its close, to make this a proper 
 world of probation. All things are uncertain life, health, pro- 
 perty, friends, office, honour. When these things are gained, 
 
84 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 they satisfy no one. The mind is uneasy, restless, discontented. 
 The thoughts stretch onward still; nor, in our weary journey, 
 do we all find a resting-place. A palace or a cottage, a city or 
 a village, a feudal castle or an Arab's tent, are alike unfit to 
 be the permanent abode of man. He wants another home 
 one more fixed, one more adapted to his nature the " house 
 not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
 
 And amidst this general instability, the close of life itself is 
 just so uncertain as to show that this is a proper world of pro- 
 bation. If human life were fixed uniformly at fifty years with- 
 out the variation of a day, and if the manner of death were in 
 all circumstances the same, it is not difficult to see what would 
 be the effect in regard to a preparation for eternity. Who can 
 be ignorant of the disposition in man to defer preparation for 
 a future state as long as possible ? And who can be ignorant 
 how prone men are, even with all the uncertainty about the 
 manner of death, still to defer preparation to the very hour of 
 departure ? What, then, in reference to a preparation for a 
 future state, would be the condition of things if all men knew 
 the day, the hour, the moment, the circumstances of death? 
 God has ordered this better. You may live on yet many years, 
 or this day's sun may be the last that you will ever behold. 
 What is better fitted to lead man, if he would be wise, to think 
 of another world, and to make a timely preparation for it, than 
 this uncertainty when his probation will close? What could 
 there be that would be more adapted to crown all the other 
 arrangements of probation, and to bring the mind to make pre- 
 paration for heaven ? Probably in all other worlds there has 
 been no arrangement better fitted to secure the end in view than 
 this ; and the fact the sad and mournful fact that a candidate 
 for eternity remains unconcerned in these circumstances, shows 
 the inexpressible wickedness and folly of man. 
 
SERMON TIL 
 
 MAN ON PKOBATION. 
 
 GAL. vi. 7, 8, " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a 
 man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall 
 of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the 
 Spirit reap life everlasting." 
 
 THE literal truth, of what is here affirmed no one can doubt. He 
 that sows wheat shall reap the same ; he that sows rye, or 
 barley, or cockle, or tares, shall reap the same. Wheat that is 
 sown will not produce tares ; nor will tares produce wheat. So 
 in morals. He that sows to the flesh, or cultivates the depraved 
 and corrupt appetites of his nature, will reap only what those 
 depraved and corrupt appetites can produce wretchedness, cor- 
 ruption, and woe. He that cultivates the affections produced by 
 the Spirit of God, shall inherit life everlasting. God is not 
 mocked. He is no more imposed upon by any art of man, so 
 that happiness is the result of sin, than he is in respect to grain 
 that is sown. Eternal life can no more be made the fruit of 
 fleshly appetites than a harvest of wheat can be made to grow 
 in a field sown only with tares. 
 
 The doctrine then is, that man is on trial or probation with 
 reference to his future state ; and that the destiny in the eternal 
 world will depend on the character formed in this life. This 
 truth I propose to explain and to defend. 
 
 In the explanation of the doctrine, I would observe, that I do 
 not use the word probation as implying that man is not fallen, 
 or that he is on trial in the same sense in which Adam was 
 when created. Considerable exception has been taken to the 
 use of that word, as if it implied that in all respects the condi- 
 tion of man now is the same as before the fall. But this idea 
 is not necessarily conveyed by the use of the word. Nor is it 
 meant that man does not come into the world with a strong 
 and universal tendency to sin a tendency uniform in its nature 
 and effects, except when arrested by the grace of God. 
 
 The essential idea in the term is, that future happiness and 
 reward are dependent on present conduct and character. Adam 
 
86 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 was in the strictest sense of the word on probation. He wa& 
 created, indeed, holy. But it was important, for purposes which 
 need not now be referred to, that his holiness should be tested. 
 A single act would do that as well as many acts just as a 
 man's character now may be fully tried if placed in some extra- 
 ordinary circumstances of temptation. God, therefore, forbade 
 a specific act on pain of death ; with, it is commonly supposed, 
 an implied promise that if he obeyed, he should be confirmed in 
 obedience, and be rewarded with eternal life. He acted ; fell ; 
 involved his posterity in ruin ; and died. The probation was 
 complete ; the trial was passed. His virtue was not proof to 
 the temptation. As the head and father of the race, he sinned 
 and fell ; as his children, we inherit the consequences of the 
 unsuccessful probation. 
 
 Man is not now on probation in the same sense in which 
 Adam was ; nor will he ever be again. He is not in the same 
 circumstances ; he has not the same character ; he does not begin 
 life as he did. No man can now secure immortal temporal life, 
 as Adam might have done, as the fruit of obedience ; none can 
 stretch out his hand and take hold of the crown of glory, as he 
 might have done, as the reward of personal obedience. The 
 affairs of the race are placed on a different footing; and this 
 idea is never to be lost sight of when we speak of the probation 
 of fallen men. 
 
 The following remarks will explain what is meant when we 
 make use of this word : 
 
 (1.) The essential thing in all probation or trial is, that the 
 happiness or misery of the future is determined by the conduct 
 of the present. Man acts with reference to that which is to 
 come ; and his conduct draws on a train of consequences in that 
 future period. His actions do not terminate in the immediate 
 pleasure or pain in committing them, but they constitute that 
 by which his happiness is to be determined hereafter. 
 
 (2.) The great thing contemplated always by probation is 
 still set before the human family. The same heaven is to be 
 secured, and the same hell avoided, as when man was made in 
 the image of God. If man succeeds in reaching the rewards of 
 heaven, they will be the same rewards which would have been 
 obtained had Adam not sinned; if he sinks to hell, it will be the 
 same hell to which he sunk for his sin, unless he repented 
 and was pardoned. 
 
 3. The same character is demanded of man as that which 
 would be required if man had never sinned. Heaven will be 
 made up of holy beings possessing holiness of the same kind 
 
MAN ON PROBATION. 87 
 
 whether it be by those who never fell, or those who are recovered 
 by redemption. There will not be two kinds of holiness in 
 heaven ; and it is as necessary now that man should be holy in 
 order to enter it, as it was that Adam should be, or any one of 
 the angels. 
 
 (4.) While the main thing before man now is the same, and 
 the holiness required is of the same nature, the mode by which 
 heaven is to be reached now is different, and the question now 
 before man, and on which he is to be tried, is changed. Man 
 is not now to obtain eternal life, as Adam might have done, by 
 personal obedience and by unsullied holiness. That is now out 
 of the question in a world where all are born prone to sin, and 
 are certain to sin. The question now is, not whether you will 
 obey perfectly a pure and holy law for no man could be saved 
 if that were the question but whether you will repent of your 
 sins, embrace the offer of pardon through a Redeemer, and sub- 
 mit to a process of sanctification under the Spirit of God, de- 
 signed to fit you for heaven. In regard to this, I would observe 
 further, that it is as simple a question as can be submitted to 
 man, or ever was. The question solemnly proposed to each suc- 
 cessive mortal as he comes on to the stage of being, whether he 
 will repent and believe in the name of the Saviour, is as intel- 
 ligible, and as plain, as was the question proposed to Adam 
 whether he would abstain from the forbidden fruit. It is a 
 question adapted in all respects to his powers, and one the 
 answer to which may as reasonably affect and determine his 
 destiny hereafter. Bear in remembrance, therefore, that the 
 question on which man is tried, and is to be tried ; the question 
 which is to be determined by your living on earth, and the only 
 very material question is, whether you will embrace the Lord 
 Jesus and depend on his atonement for salvation. It is not 
 whether you are beautiful for heaven cannot be made to depend 
 on that ; it is not whether you are rich, or learned, or accom- 
 plished for it would obviously be absurd to make the bliss of a 
 holy heaven depend on that ; it is not whether you deserve to 
 be praised, flattered, or caressed, or whether you can clothe 
 yourself in fine linen and fare sumptuously every day ; it is not 
 whether you are externally moral, and a man of truth and 
 honesty ; it is, whether you comply with God's commands in 
 embracing the gospel of his Son, and are willing to be pardoned 
 and saved through him. " For he that believeth and is baptized 
 shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned." If 
 you sow to the flesh, you show that you are not willing to be 
 saved in that manner; if you sow to the Spirit, you show 
 
88 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 that you are disposed to embrace him, and shall reap ever- 
 lasting life. 
 
 (5.) The theatre of probation is this narrow world where we 
 are placed. The time of probation is the present life that 
 narrow, pent-up, short and shortening period in which we are to 
 dwell on earth ; hat life which the Bible calls a vapour ; 
 those days which the Scriptures say are like a handbreadth, 
 and a weaver's shuttle. It is all confined to that unknown 
 portion of existence which constitutes our life ; or rather to 
 that uncertain period lying between the present moment and 
 death. We can fix the outer limits and then draw them 
 gradually nearer to us. We can say it is not a thousand years ; 
 it is not five hundred years ; it is not one hundred years ; with 
 many it is certainly not fifty, with some not half that ; with 
 some here it is morally certain it is not one year ; with any one 
 of you, it may not be a week ! Yet there lies the question of 
 probation. There the character is to be determined. How much 
 like sowing seed on the margin of an ocean all along whose 
 borders a thick mist lies which no eye can penetrate ; and where, 
 for aught you know, the next wave may break over you and 
 sweep all away ! 
 
 (6.) One other remark respecting probation. It is, that God 
 holds in his hand the prerogative of closing it when he pleases. 
 Of the particular period when it is to cease he has given no 
 indication in the book of nature or of grace. The question of 
 probation, like that proposed to Adam, does not require much 
 time to settle it. It may be done in an instant, as well as in a 
 hundred years. It may as certainly be determined of a young 
 man at fifteen or twenty, whether he is willing to embrace 
 the gospel and to sow to the Spirit, as at eighty or a hundred 
 years. It may be determined by the simple offer of the gospel 
 to-day, as well as by repeated offers for many years. No man can 
 control God in this, or prescribe to him how long the probation 
 is to continue; no man can determine'by any act when it shall 
 close ; no man can tell in what circumstances it will end. TS T o 
 one can ascertain, in reference to himself, whether it would be 
 agreeable to God that he should plead for pardon on a death-bed, 
 when he has a thousand times rejected it in health ; no one can 
 ascertain whether God will not visit him with delirium or stupor 
 on a bed of death ; no one whether he will not cut him down so 
 instantaneously that he may not utter the short cry, " Lord, have 
 mercy on me," when he comes to die. The end of life to all is 
 hidden. The death of each one comes up in its proper place 
 unknown to him till his turn arrives. The wheels of nature roll 
 
MAN ON PROBATION. 89 
 
 on ; and as God advances his vast plans, the individual whose 
 turn is next, dies. Not a moment is given him if he is unpre- 
 pared. To us it seems to be irregular but an invisible finger 
 touches the springs of life : like the skilful finger that runs 
 apparently so irregularly over the piano, yet the proper key is 
 touched and to G'od all is harmony. Probationers die when 
 according to his views they ought to die ; and when that time 
 comes, no created being can for a moment put back the gentle 
 touch which reaches the heart strings. You cannot know, if 
 you would, where is the outer limit of your life ; you need not 
 be deceived by supposing that it is far off. If your eyes were 
 open, you might see the hideous gulph yawn even now at your 
 feet. 
 
 With these explanations, I proceed to show that the present 
 is a state of probation. I desire to show you that your eternal 
 destiny is to be determined by your character in this life, and 
 particularly by the question whether you will or will not embrace 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 (1.) I begin, in the first place, with that which is most 
 obvious, and which settles the general principle. It is, that our 
 conduct at one period of our lives determine the destiny of 
 the future. With this truth all are familiar ; and it is not 
 necessary to dwell on it. As a general law, industry, sobriety, 
 and honesty in youth are the pledge of health, competence, and 
 esteem in old age. On the other hand, vice in youth conducts, 
 as a general law, to poverty, shame, the penitentiary, and the 
 gaJlows. On this principle the world acts, and must act. Every 
 young man is on trial with reference to the future. Every 
 apprentice, or student, is thus a probationer. No one presumes 
 that a young man is worthy of unlimited confidence until he 
 gives proof of it ; no one is disposed to withhold it when he has 
 furnished that proof. Thus it is everywhere. The man that 
 sows, reaps. The man that labours has a competence ; the idle 
 and dissipated have not. The young man that has moral prin- 
 ciple enough to pass a gaming-rooni when it allures or to pass a 
 tavern when it tempts him or to refuse to go near either when 
 invited, which is the probation that fixes the doom, temporal 
 and eternal, of many a young man, may have a tried virtue 
 which will ultimately secure the confidence of the world. The 
 professional man that is attentive to his business is appro- 
 priately rewarded. He that toils not, that wastes his youth in 
 idleness or dissipation, or that is a mere hanger-on in his profes- 
 sion, will ultimately drop into deserved insignificance and con- 
 tempt. 
 
90 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 So well settled is this law, that were a man certain that he 
 would live through a period of eighty years, and be favoured 
 with, ordinary health, he could almost draw out a chart of his 
 course, and determine the measure of his wealth and honour in 
 that distant period. And were my object at this time to con- 
 vince those whom I now address that their future lives here 
 would be determined by their present character and conduct, I 
 might now close, for my work would be done. Indeed, I should 
 do no more than state to you the principle on which you your- 
 selves act every day, and repeat the lesson which you have 
 heard from the very cradle. We can easily convince any young 
 man that his prospect of eminence in his profession, or of wealth in 
 future years, depends on his character and conduct now. Nay, I 
 should not despair of being able to convince a young man in 
 danger of falling into habits of dissipation, that he is dependent 
 on his good conduct now for esteem, and health, and property, 
 and even life, in future years. Were this the only object of my 
 preaching, I should in every discourse carry my readers with me, 
 and satisfy every mind. 
 
 Yet when I attempt to carry the mind across that very narrow 
 but most cold and turbid stream which divides the present from 
 the unseen world death ; when I attempt to carry the argu- 
 ment though but the smallest distance into eternity, and to 
 survey the landmarks set up along our future being there, and 
 to show that men are en probation for that state as well as for 
 old age, I part with, alas ! the most of my hearers. They seem 
 to suppose that at death their interest in all things stops ; that 
 there is a final pause of being ; and they feel no concern in 
 inquiring whether the probation for future years on earth may 
 not run on into the higher probation for an eternity beyond. 
 There they stand near the brink, interested in all that is this side 
 the Jordan ; wholly uninterested in all that is beyond. My 
 hearer! I ask you for once to forget that you are to die a thing 
 which I need not commonly ask you to do. It is not commonly 
 remembered too much but I ask you to FORGET IT for a moment, 
 and to look just at one point THE CONTINUANCE OF EXISTENCE 
 as if there were no death ; no grave. I ask you to remember 
 that death suspends not your existence ; changes not your 
 nature ; affects not your character ; that your souls will live on 
 IN death, and will live on BEYOND for ever. 
 
 You are now a probationer for future health, reputation, 
 property, office. This you know ; this you will not deny. Your 
 character and conduct now is to affect all your course ever 
 onward in this world. Young man, you are on trial every day 
 

 MAN ON PROBATION. 91 
 
 with reference to future years, and you expect that your destiny 
 in this life will be determined by the character you form now. 
 I have now to ask you, why should this state of things stop at 
 death ? Why should the course of events be arrested then ? 
 Why should affairs beyond be carried on on a new and indepen- 
 dent principle ? Tell me, what is death ? Is it annihilation ? 
 Is it the destruction of any mental power ? Is it the loss of 
 consciousness ? Is it a change in the nature of the soul ? Oh 
 no. Not so much as one night's sleep. For in sleep our senses 
 are locked up ; we become unconscious, and sink into forgetful- 
 ness ; and the intercourse with the living world is suspended ; 
 and to us it is as if it were not. Yet, when we wake, we find 
 the actions of yesterday determine our destiny to-day. We 
 walk amidst the results of the plans and deeds of the past ; and 
 we have brought over with us the character which we formed 
 then nor can we separate it from us. The man who toiled 
 yesterday sees his fields to-day ripening and waving in the sun ; 
 the professional man of industry and skill yesterday finds to-day 
 his way thronged by those attracted by the character he has 
 formed ; the man of temperance rises strong as in the dew of 
 youth from healthful repose ; and each one meets the rewards 
 of the probation of yesterday. So the man of idleness, and 
 intemperance, and vice, and crime, meets to-day the consequences 
 which have travelled with him through the disturbed slumbers 
 of the night ; and he reaps the recompense of the conduct of the 
 preceding day. Why should not the same thing go through the 
 sleep of death that sleep which we speak of as long, and quiet, 
 and undisturbed but which may not be, and which is not pro- 
 bably a moment ? Why not rather ? Death is not even sleep. It 
 suspends nothing; arrests nothing. The unslumbering soul, in the 
 fulness of its immortal energies, breaks from its clay tenement, 
 and wings its way to God, Not one of its powers is annihilated ; 
 not one of its faculties sleeps. It goes a complete moral agent, 
 with the character formed here, up to the bar of God ; and 
 while the living convey the body to the grave, and speak of the 
 sleep of death, that immortal spirit has soared to higher regions, 
 and is fully awake to sleep no more. 
 
 (2.) A second consideration showing that this is a state of 
 probation is derived from the fact, that rewards and punishments 
 here are not equally distributed. This fact is well known, and 
 needs scarcely more than a passing remark. The force of the 
 argument, I admit, proceeds on the supposition that God is a 
 just Being a fact which must here be taken for granted. If he 
 is, nothing can be clearer than that there must be a future state, 
 
92 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 where virtue will be rewarded, and vice punished. The fact in 
 regard to the point now before us is this : The affairs of men 
 are arrested in the midst of their way. The righteous are not 
 always rewarded with health and happiness ; nor are the wicked 
 always punished. It may be true, that if men were to live long 
 enough on earth, things would come near to adjusting themselves 
 to what is right ; but they are arrested. Had Paul, for example, 
 lived to the present time, his name would have been clothed with 
 all the honour which he could desire. Had the early martyrs 
 lived, or had they been raised from their ashes to life again, 
 all the honour which has clustered around their names and it 
 is all that any man could wish might have gathered around 
 them. But as it was, they died amidst contempt and scorn. 
 So the world over. Virtue is often despised, persecuted, and 
 neglected ; vice triumphs, and riots, and revels, unrebuked and 
 unpunished. Profaneness occupies a splendid dwelling ; profli- 
 gacy is elevated to office ; perfidy and meanness and sensuality 
 lie on a bed of down. Now all this looks to something future, 
 and must be adjusted in some future world. No man can 
 believe that under the government of a just God this state of 
 things is to continue always ; nor that those various characters 
 either are to be, or should be, treated alike in the future world. 
 The state of things on earth is just such as to keep before us as 
 impressively as possible the truth that this is a world of proba- 
 tion, and it must be such, or the government of God is incapable 
 of vindication. 
 
 (3.) The whole arrangement in the Bible, and in the plan 
 of salvation, regards man as in a state of probation. It is 
 but varying the mode while the same great object is kept 
 steadily in view. Our first father, indeed, by a most rash and 
 wicked deed, for ever prevented the possibility of reaching 
 heaven by works. On that plan, we have reason to suppose, the 
 angels stood, and were confirmed in bliss. But that single deed 
 for ever prevented our race from obtaining heaven in that way. 
 Still, the object was too great to be abandoned ; and another 
 mode is proposed in the gospel. The same object is in view 
 heaven ; the same holiness is demanded ; the same conformity to 
 the will of God is required. The plan is varied not abandoned. 
 God plucked no jewel from the crown of glory ; he abridged 
 none of the joys of heaven ; he dried up none of the fountains of 
 life. He did not offer to man a tarnished crown, or diminished 
 and faded joys. It is the same heaven still, in the fulness of its 
 glory ; the same crown ; the same light ; the same river of life ; 
 the same freedom from pain and woe. The way of reaching it 
 
MAN ON PROBATION. 93 
 
 only is changed. He proposes a new question adapted to the 
 new circumstances of man; but still as simple, and as easy of 
 compliance as possible. It is, whether men will repent and 
 accept of heaven now as a gift ; whether they will believe the 
 record which God has given of his Son, and embrace life without 
 money and without price. 
 
 This is the question which is now before men. And this is 
 the question which God is constantly pressing on their attention. 
 By the preaching of the gospel ; by his Spirit ; by his providence ; 
 by all the means that can be devised, he is bringing this question 
 home to the minds of men, and demanding a reply. 
 
 But is this state of things to continue always ? Is this pro- 
 bation to be lengthened out and varied in some future world, or 
 is it finally to close when the sinner leaves this state of being ? 
 An essential idea in the notion of probation is, that it is not to 
 continue always ; that it is to give place to retribution, and that 
 present conduct is to determine the future destiny. Now, is the 
 arrangement of the plan of redemption made on this supposition, 
 or is it on the supposition that the state of things in which we 
 now are, or a state of things similar to that, is to continue for 
 ever ? Is God again to send his Son to the lost and ruined, after 
 the lapse of many ages, to be crucifk'd again, and to make 
 another atonement for sin ? Is he to fill up eternity by ineffec- 
 tual appeals and remonstrances, and by repeating invitations to 
 be for ever rejected ? Is he to send down his Spirit to strive 
 always with men in this world and the next, and to be grieved 
 and resisted for ever ? No. This strange state of things must 
 cease. There is to be no other sacrifice for sin. There is to be 
 no other world where the Spirit of God will strive with men. 
 There is not to be an eternal preaching of the Gospel an 
 eternal succession of appeals and remonstrances on the part of 
 God. The period must, in the nature of things, come when this 
 will cease, and the affairs of the world will be wound up. 
 There is but one Great Sacrifice for sin ; and when that has been 
 fairly and fully presented to the mind according to the Divine 
 purpose and arrangement, and has been rejected, the probation 
 must then end. All the arrangements of the plan of redemption 
 contemplate such a close ; and the affairs of earth are moving on 
 to such a consummation. 
 
 (4.) The doom of man may, with evident propriety, be fixed 
 at the close of this life. What better world of probation 
 could there be than this ? What stronger inducements to 
 holiness could be presented than are here set before man P 
 What more simple and easy tests could be furnished than are 
 
94 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 furnished in the gospel ? And though life is short, yet that 
 " life is long which answers life's great end ;" and the great end 
 is to prepare for heaven. Though it is short, yet it is long 
 enough to repent of sin, to embrace the gospel, and to secure 
 an interest in the world of glory. Not the age of Methuselah 
 is needful for that ; for the child may embrace it, and the 
 man of years might have embraced it a thousand times. His 
 life has been long enough to reject the plan ; and a life which 
 is long enough to reject it, is long enough to embrace it. In 
 regard to the reception or the rejection of the gospel, and in 
 regard to the whole character of man, the question is fully tested 
 by this life. "What further trial is necessary for a man who has 
 lived for eighty, or sixty, or fifty, or forty years ; who has a 
 thousand times been offered salvation ; and who has as often 
 rejected it ? Why should it be necessary for him to live another 
 eighty years to know what he is? What would be gained, 
 either in justice or propriety, if that period were doubled or 
 quadrupled ? What would be gained if the same thing were to 
 be rejected till time itself shall end ? Is there any doubt about 
 his character ? 
 
 Here bear in mind one truth which all men are prone to 
 forget. It does not require many years, or many deeds, to test 
 the character, and show what man is. The prisoner in the 
 cold dungeon condemned to die, that would treat the offer of 
 pardon with scorn, if you can suppose such a case, does he 
 not by that single act show what he is ? Is it needful to go 
 again and again, to submit to repeated neglect or insult in 
 order to ascertain what he is ? So of man. If pardon and 
 heaven are fairly offered and are rejected, it is enough. It 
 settles the question, and determines what the man is. And 
 when the character is thus settled, why should not man die, and 
 his eternal doom be fixed according to the deeds done in the body ? 
 
 (5.) Lastly, I observe, that God regards men as on probation, 
 and treats them accordingly. He offers them salvation ; he 
 treats them as moral agents ; he sets life and death before them ; 
 he places them in circumstances where they must dcvelope their 
 character, and then he removes them to another world. What 
 the nature of that world is, he has told us. As the tree falls, so 
 it lies. He that is holy shall be holy still, and he that is filthy 
 shall be filthy still. The one part shall go away into everlasting 
 punishment, the other into life eternal. In ail the volume of 
 revelation, there is not the slightest hint on which ingenuity 
 has ever fastened that intimates that there will be any other 
 world of probation j not a hint that the Redeemer will again 
 
MAN ON PROBATION. 95 
 
 bleed, or that pardon will be offered there in virtue of his atone- 
 ment made on earth ; not an intimation that the sacred Spirit 
 will ever be again sent to purify a polluted heart. As man dies, 
 he is to continue for ever ; and as his character is formed in this 
 life, so must be his final doom. 
 
 My point I regard as established. It remains only, before I 
 conclude, to entreat those whom I now address not to be deceived. 
 God is not mocked, and he cannot be under any delusion in 
 regard to what you are. He will judge you according to your 
 true character ; a character which is to be ascertained by the 
 manner in which you treat his offer of mercy through Jesus 
 Christ. No man need deceive himself on this point ; .no man 
 need be lost. Nothing is plainer than the gospel of Christ ; 
 nothing more clear than what God requires you to do. It is, to 
 repent and believe the gospel ; to embrace the terms of mercy, 
 and lead a holy life. To do that is to sow to the Spirit ; not to 
 do that is to sow to the flesh. And if instead of doing that, my 
 fellow-sinner, you choose to pursue the ways of licentious and 
 sensual pleasure ; to give the reins to corrupt and corrupting 
 passions ; to make provision only for this life, I forewarn you 
 that God will not be mocked in this thing ; nor will he suppose 
 that such a course can entitle you to reap everlasting life. 
 You will reap corruption. You will gather the appropriate 
 harvest of such a course. You are here for a little time yet 
 time long enough with reference to a future world ; and you are 
 every day, and hour, and moment, forming a character for that 
 future world. Soon you will be there. Soon you will give up 
 your account for all the deeds done in the body. To apprize 
 you of that fact I now address you, with one more message 
 announcing to you that you must soon give up your account, 
 and assuring you once more that the great question which your 
 Creator designs shall be settled, is not whether you are accom- 
 plished, or learned, or beautiful, or rich, or honoured ; but whether 
 you have embraced the offer of mercy through a Redeemer, and 
 have truly repented of your sins. On the grave's brink you 
 stand, and soon this question will be settled for ever ; and I 
 conjure you to act for eternity. For soon the harvest will be 
 passed, and the summer ended whether you are or are not 
 saved. 
 
SEEMON Till. 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF ACCOMMODATING OURSELVES TO THE 
 ARRANGEMENTS OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 MATT. xxv. 26, 27. "Thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and 
 gather where I have not strawed : thou oughtest therefore to have put my 
 money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received 
 mine own with usury." 
 
 THIS is a part of a parable ; and its design is to illustrate the 
 views which, men who neglect religion have of the government 
 and plans of God. The man who had failed to improve his one 
 talent alleged as a reason that he who had committed it to him 
 was unjust and severe in his exactions ; and not being satisfied 
 with the arrangements, he had buried it in the earth. The illus- 
 tration evidently refers to those who fail to improve the talents 
 committed to them ; and who, when the Judge shall come to 
 reckon with, them, will be found to be unprepared. 
 
 The reason why they do this is some secret dissatisfaction 
 with the government of God. They are not pleased with his 
 law, his plan of salvation, or his requirements, and they make 
 no effort to be prepared to meet him, and to give up their 
 account. God's administration they regard as one where he 
 reaps what he has not sown a government severe, harsh, tyran- 
 nical. The answer of the man who had committed the talent 
 to him who made the complaint was, that knowing what were 
 the principles on which his affairs were administered, he OUGHT 
 TO HAVE accommodated himself to them, and then he would 
 have been rewarded like the others. We are not to suppose 
 that the Saviour meant to admit that the charge which men 
 bring against God is just, or that God is severe, harsh, or 
 capricious in his requirements ; but the idea is, that since men 
 understand what are the principles of his government, and on 
 what terms he will bestow favours, it is wise to comply with 
 those terms, and not neglect their salvation : " Thou knewest 
 that I reap where I sowed not, thou oughtest THEREFORE to 
 have put my money to the exchangers ! " You know what are 
 the principles of the Divine government; you know on what 
 terms God bestows salvation j you know that he is inflexible in 
 
THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 97 
 
 those terms, even so much so as to seem stern and severe ; you 
 ought, therefore, with so much more anxiety to endeavour to 
 comply with those terms, and to be prepared for your strict and 
 solemn account. 
 
 In illustrating this sentiment, I shall, 
 
 I. In the first place, show what are the grounds of complain, 
 among men about the government and plans of God ; and, 
 
 II. That it is wise to comply with the actual state of things, 
 and to seek his favour in the way which he has prescribed. 
 
 I. What are the grounds of complaint among men about the 
 government and plans of God? 
 
 There are men who think the government of God, as described 
 in the Bible, to be harsh and severe, who yet do not mean to 
 regard God himself as a tyrant. They have no belief of the 
 truth of the Bible, but suppose they have a view of the Divine 
 government much more conformable to truth than that which is 
 there represented. Yet these men do not mean to be regarded 
 as infidels. They are known externally as respecters of religion ; 
 but the religion which they respect is not the religion of the Bible, 
 but the semi-deistical system which they have formed in their 
 minds ; that sentimental religion which floats before the fancy ; 
 the religion of nature which they think to be the true, the 
 beautiful, and the reasonable, rather than that severe and harsh 
 religion which denounces punishment, and which sternly requires 
 repentance and faith on the penalty of being lost for ever. Yet 
 even such men are not altogether free from regarding the govern- 
 ment of God, contemplated under any view, as harsh and severe. 
 There are some facts in the world which are about as diificult 
 to manage as any of the doctrines of revelation ; and even when 
 man has rejected revelation, he is sometimes as much embarrassed 
 in grappling with those facts as he would be with the doctrines 
 of the Divine administration as developed in the Bible. Men 
 do not get away from difficulty by rejecting Christianity. 
 
 The mass of men, whether they are among the speculative 
 believers in the truth of the Bible or not, at heart are complainers 
 in regard to the principles of the Divine administration. They 
 are not satisfied with the government of God. They regard it 
 as harsh and severe. And instead of accommodating themselves 
 to what are undeniable facts, or to what is revealed as certainly 
 true, they suffer the mind to accumulate complaints against 
 God ; to be chafed and soured by the operations of his govern- 
 ment ; and to cherish such views of him that it is impossible for 
 them to love him. Before they can be reconciled to God it is 
 necessary to remove those accumulated complaints and dissatis- 
 
98 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 factions ; to show them that God is worthy of their confidence, 
 and that he is qualified for universal empire ; and this is often 
 a more difficult task than it would he to clear away the rubbish 
 from Babylon or Nineveh to find a place to lay a foundation on 
 which to rear a wall or a dwelling. 
 
 Now the views which men actually cherish of the plans and 
 government of God are something like the following : 
 
 (1.) That his law is needlessly severe and stern. " I knew 
 thee that thou art an hard man" was the language of the com- 
 plainer in the text. A law of some kind they would not object 
 to j but the law that condemns all sin ; that attempts to control 
 the feelings ; that takes cognizance of the motives ; that frowns 
 on the most trivial offences ; that makes no apology for the in- 
 firmities of men, and for the strength of passion, and for an 
 original propensity to a certain course of thought or life, they 
 feel is needlessly severe. That God should hold them answer- 
 able for each idle word, and for the roving of a wanton eye, and 
 for the least stain of pollution on the heart, and for the slightest 
 wandering of the fancy from pure objects, they hold to be un- 
 reasonably hard and stern. 
 
 (2.) That the law of God should have such a penalty as it has. 
 To some penalty they would not object ; for they see it appended 
 to all laws. But the penalty which denounces eternal death for 
 every offence ; which dooms a sinner to infinite and unending 
 pain without respite and without hope ; which never speaks of 
 mitigation or end, seems to them to be horrible, and they do 
 not scruple to cherish the feeling in their hearts, though they 
 for various reasons would not choose to express it openly, that a 
 being who can deliberately affix such a penalty to his law is 
 wholly unworthy of the confidence of the universe. 
 
 (3.) Men suppose that his government is arbitrary. That he 
 governs by will, not by reason ; that he has formed an eternal 
 plan and ordained an unchangeable decree, and then attempts to 
 treat men and to punish them as though they were free 
 though he knew that they could not do otherwise if they would. 
 
 (4.) That he requires much more of them than they can per- 
 form ; that he requires them to love him and serve him with a 
 perfect heart, when he does not give them the grace to enablb 
 them to do it. This, perhaps, is the leading thought in the text : 
 " Thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and 
 gathering where thou hast not strawed." The idea is, that God 
 does not give grace, and yet exacts as pure and perfect love as 
 that of the angels; that "the tale of bricks is not diminished 
 aught though no straw be given," Exod. v. 7, 8. Some service 
 

 THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 99 
 
 they would be willing- to render to God ; but to demand a ser- 
 vice of entire obedience where no grace is given a service of 
 perfect love, when God confers none of the influences needful 
 for it, which they regard as the nature of his government 
 they consider as a tyranny. 
 
 (5.) That he requires them to forsake pleasures which are 
 harmless, and to practise austerities which are needless ; that 
 he demands a separation from the common pursuits in which 
 men are engaged, which is required by no dictates of reason ; 
 that he insists on a devotion to religion of time, and property, 
 and influence, and feeling, which interferes with the real happi- 
 ness of men ; and that he claims from the heart and the life a 
 slavish devotion to his cause which would interfere much with 
 rational enjoyment and solid happiness. To the rendering of an 
 external service they would have little objection ; to the bowing 
 of the knee at stated times they would have no reluctance ; to 
 a devotion to the interests of religion which would be consistent 
 with the ordinary and accustomed pleasures of life, they would 
 not seriously demur ; but when the demand comes for the whole 
 body, soul, and spirit to be employed in his service ; for the 
 consecration to God of the " talent" though single, to him 
 only, they object as being needlessly unreasonable and severe, 
 and they say of him that they " know that his government is 
 hard he reaps where he has not sown, he gathers where he 
 has not strawed." 
 
 (6.) The same thing is felt in regard to the terms of salvation. 
 It is a " hard" administration, they feel, that they are not 
 permitted to rely on their own morality, and that even the 
 most amiable and upright life is to go for nothing in the matter 
 of justification before God. To some conditions of salvation they 
 would not object ; and any service which an amiable disposition, 
 or an honest life, or a fair character would confer, they would 
 not be unwilling to render. But why should repentance be 
 demanded of him who feels that he has nothing, or almost nothing, 
 of which to repent ? Why make this an indispensable condition 
 to him who has been upright and fair all his life? And why 
 require faith as the sole condition of salvation of him who feels 
 that he really deserves some other doom than that of inextin- 
 guishable fires ? Why must he come and be saved in the same 
 way with the most vile of the species, and confess his dependence 
 on the merits of the Redeemer in a manner as absolute and 
 entire as the most degraded son or daughter of Adam ? That 
 all his morals, his amiableness, his integrity, his self-culture, 
 his self-discipline, his temperance, his purity, his reputation 
 
100 rill] WAY OF SALVAJTluN. 
 
 his character acquired by a life of many years of steady virtue, 
 should go for nothing in the matter of salvation, seems to him 
 " hard," and he is ready to accuse the government of God as 
 being unreasonable and severe. 
 
 (7.) He has another difficulty still. The government of God, 
 he feels, is arbitrary in the dispensation of favours. To one he 
 gives five talents, to another two, to another one. On one he 
 bestows great endowments, and from others he withholds them. 
 To one he gives his Holy Spirit, from another he withholds 
 this gift. The mind of one he makes tender, and that of another 
 he leaves as hard as adamant. One is converted by his almighty 
 power, and another is left in his sins. One is chosen to life, 
 and another is passed over and doomed to death. To one he 
 gives grace to become a Christian, and to another not ; and yet 
 of all it is said he requires the same service, demands in all the 
 same faith, and condemns to woe in all cases where he affords 
 no help to avoid it. This, says he, is a " hard" government ; 
 this is a hard master to serve. It is " reaping where he has not 
 sown, and gathering where he has not strawed," and the talent 
 is hid in the earth. No effort is made to improve it ; no desire 
 is felt to comply with the requisition of such a government and 
 many secretly go back from this view to that to which I have 
 already adverted to what seems to them a more plausible and 
 rational system the system of semi-infidelity a system of 
 religion which every man forms for himself. 
 
 At this stage of the argument it is not improper to pause 
 and ask you, my friends, whether I have given an account of 
 any feelings which you will recognise as your own. I have 
 intended not to do injustice to the objection which is felt felt 
 raider than avowed. Can you not discover here some of the 
 operations of your own minds, as if some one had been reading 
 what you had supposed to be hidden thoughts in the chambers 
 of your own souls ? That there are such feelings there I have 
 no doubt ; that they are feelings which ought not to be cherished 
 you would show by your unwillingness to avow them. But if 
 there, they ore standing in the way of your salvation, and 
 you will noc become Christians, whatever else you may be, 
 till they are removed. I propose to meet these feelings in what 
 I have yet to say, and I shall do you an essential service if I 
 can contribute anything towards removing them. 
 
 There are two questions about the plans and government of 
 God. The one* is, whether his arrangement is a wise and good 
 one ; the other is, whether, being what it is, it is not wise and best 
 for us to accommodate ourselves to it, and avail ourselves of the 
 
THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 101 
 
 arrangements which actually exist, even though we cannot exactly 
 see that they are the best. The latter is the point now before us. 
 
 II. My second proposition is, that it is wise to fall in with the 
 actual state of things, and seek the favour of God in the way 
 ivhich he has prescribed. " Thou knewest that I reap where I 
 sowed not, -thou OUGHTEST THEREFORE to have put my money 
 to the exchangers." Let us paraphrase this : ' Thou knowest 
 that God has given a law which is holy, and strict in its require- 
 ments ; thou knowest that he has appointed the penalty of 
 eternal death on its violation ; thou knowest that he requires a 
 holy and obedient life ; thou knowest that he bestows salvation 
 only on the conditions of repentance and faith ; and thou knowest 
 that he dispenses his favours only according to his sovereign 
 will. Even if this seems severe and stern, yet, knowing that 
 these are the unchangeable laws of the Divine administration, 
 thou oughtest THEREFORE to comply with them, and be prepared 
 to meet him and render up thy account.' This sentiment I shall 
 illustrate by several considerations, which I trust will not only 
 close the mouth of the objector, but carry conviction to the 
 understanding and the heart. 
 
 (1.) The first is this: It is the way in which you act in 
 other things. In those things you act without complaint, and 
 yet complaint would be as reasonable there as here. The whole 
 of life indeed is little else than this: finding out what are 
 in fact the laws on which the affairs of the universe are admi- 
 nistered, and then complying with them. We find out what 
 will support life, and then we go to work and raise the fruit 
 and the breadstuffs needful for that support. Do men complain 
 that they have to do it even by the sweat of their brow ? We 
 ascertain what are the laws of health, and then we make use 
 of the means to preserve or restore it. Do men prefer to die 
 because they are not satisfied with those laws, or because they 
 do not understand them ? A company of men wish to construct 
 a railway or a canal. What do they do ? They estimate the 
 expense, and the difficulties, and the advantage. They take 
 the level and look out for the best route, and accommodate them- 
 selves to the condition of the country. If there is a hill, instead 
 of complaining, they level it ; if a valley, they fill it up ; if a 
 stream, they build a bridge ; if a fen or morass, they go across 
 or around it. But why not sit down and complain that God 
 did not make railroads and canals, and that he made hills and 
 vales and rivers and morasses ? A merchant needs the produce 
 of distant lands. What does he do ? He finds out the laws of 
 navigation, and seeks to understand the theory of currents and 
 
102 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 winds and storms, and accommodates himself to them. He builds 
 a ship fitted to the navigation of distant seas, and seeks to get 
 within the influence of favourable gales, and prepares for the 
 billows and tempests that he has reason to suppose he must 
 encounter. But why not complain that God made such wastes 
 of waters, and that he raises up a storm or makes the billows 
 roll ? A man purposes to become a farmer. The piece of land 
 which he buys is covered with the forest, where the sunbeams 
 have never looked down through the thick foliage on the soil. 
 What does he do ? He accommodates himself to the case, 
 shoulders his axe, and tree after tree is laid low ; and he ploughs 
 and fences his land and gathers out the stones, and ascertains 
 the nature of the soil and adapts the seed to it, and raises cotton 
 on that which will produce cotton, and wheat on that which 
 will produce wheat, and lentiles on that which will produce 
 lentiles. We dread the lightning. What do we do ? We find 
 out what its laws are, and accommodate ourselves to them, and 
 the rod conducts it harmless to the earth. So in lands where 
 earthquakes are feared, what do men do? They build their 
 houses low, they put them where they will be safe, and they 
 accommodate themselves to the laws of nature. Thus men act 
 in food and raiment, houses, commerce, agriculture, and the arts. 
 The man in Greenland, who builds his house of ice, and he in 
 Kamskatka, who makes his in the earth, and he at the Equator, 
 who seeks a shelter at noonday behind some cool projecting 
 rock, all accommodate themselves to the laws of nature. Our 
 whole life is little else. This is all our philosophy ; all our 
 practical wisdom in living ; all that distinguishes the refined 
 from the savage portions of the world. It is simply that, 
 knowing what are the laws of nature or of God, we accommo- 
 date ourselves to them and we have learned that it is as well 
 to do it without complaining. All that is asked now is, that the 
 same thing should be done in religion. Why should it not be ? 
 (2.) My second observation is this, that we cannot change 
 the arrangements of Providence, and that, knowing what they 
 are, it is the part of wisdom to accommodate ourselves to them. 
 A wise man will comply with what he cannot help, unless it 
 can be shown to be wrong to do so. To refuse to do this is to 
 make himself miserable to no benefit, and life will be spent in 
 the employment of " gnawing a file." If men by resistance could 
 change the actual order of things ; if they could reverse what 
 are now facts, and substitute what would meet their views in 
 place of what actually occurs, the case would be different. But 
 if they can do none of these things, what is the way of wisdom ? 
 
THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 103 
 
 A man is dissatisfied that there are tempests and head winds on 
 the ocean. Will his displeasure calm the billows or still the 
 storm ? He is dissatisfied that there are hills, and morasses, 
 and floods, and earthquakes on land. Will his displeasure 
 change any of these things ? What is the path of the wise in 
 such cases ? Is it not to act as if these things were so, and to 
 accommodate ourselves to them ; and since there are tempests 
 and storms on the deep, to act as if it were so, and build our 
 ships so as to be safe in them ; and on the land to act as if 
 there were hills and rocks and streams, and when they cannot 
 be removed make the best of actual circumstances ? So a man 
 grows old, and his head becomes white blossoming for the 
 grave. The course of events is onward, and he cannot make 
 one white hair black again, or roll back the w r heels of life a day 
 or an hour. What is the path of wisdom ? It is to act as if 
 he w r ere to be old, and to accommodate himself to this fact ? 
 Will his displeasure at it change the fact? So in regard to 
 the laws of property. They are settled laws. If a man wishes 
 to be prospered in the world, as a general thing the way is by 
 industry, and temperance, and honesty, and straightforward 
 dealing. This is so well understood that it may be regarded as 
 settled. What is the way of wisdom? Is it to brave this 
 settled law, and set himself against the course of events, and 
 attempt to be rich and happy, and at the same time idle, and 
 intemperate^ and dishonest, and crooked in his dealings ? Men 
 do not act thus ; and though it may require much self-denial 
 and many hardships, yet they submit to the settled course of 
 events, and are industrious and sober and upright in order to be 
 rich and happy. If they do not choose to accommodate them- 
 selves to the course of events, those events will move on still ; 
 man cannot change them. Seed time and harvest, summer and 
 winter, cold and heat succeed each other just as though the 
 complainer had no existence. 
 
 So in the case before us, there are settled principles in the 
 Divine administration. There are certain facts. There is a 
 course of events which we cannot change. There is a revealed 
 way of salvation. Are these things changed if men oppose 
 them, or refuse to act as if they were so ? Not one of them. 
 Men are dissatisfied that sin is in the world, and murmur that 
 God permitted it. Is the fact changed at all? Is it not just 
 as mighty and loathsome and ruinous in your soul as if it were 
 admitted that God was right in all that he had done? Men 
 think the law of God harsh and severe. Is the course of events 
 under the administration of that law changed ? You deny that 
 
 8 
 
104 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 there is a judgment. What effect has this on the fact of the 
 judgment? Is the judgment- seat likely to he swept away 
 because you do not choose to believe what is said of it ? You 
 think it hard that there is a hell. And what then ? Are its 
 fires extinguished because you choose to think so ? You doubt 
 the truth of the Bible. And what then? Is it any the less 
 true ? And suppose you could prove that it were false, what 
 would follow then ? Would it change the fact that man is a 
 sinner, and that he is miserable, and that he is to die, and that 
 eternity is to be dreaded, and that the apostasy has filled the 
 world with griefs and tears ? Not one of them. The Bible has 
 created none of these woes. They are sad, melancholy facts, 
 w.hether the Bible be true or false, and your destroying the 
 Bible would make no change in regard to these facts. Now 
 what is wise in such a case ? It is to accommodate ourselves 
 to these facts, and act as if they were so. The course of nature 
 must bend, or we must. But can we stand up against the course 
 of events and act as if they were not so ? 
 
 (3.) The third consideration is, that there is no reason to 
 believe man can be saved in any other way than by compliance 
 with the plan which God has prescribed, and it is wise, there- 
 fore, to conform to his terms. God has, for illustration, told the 
 farmer how he may have a harvest. It is by a proper cultiva- 
 tion of his soil, by seasonably ploughing, and sowing, and tilling 
 his fields. But if he choose to spend the time of plpughing and 
 sowing in bed, or in the place of dissipation, nothing prevents 
 his doing it ; but will God work a miracle to accommodate his 
 love of idleness or dissipation, and give him a harvest? God 
 has told a young man how he may become learned. It is by 
 patient and persevering study. But if he chooses to waste the 
 time of study in sleep, or with the idle, nothing prevents his 
 doing it; but will God work a miracle and make him by inspi- 
 ration a Parr or a Porson ? He has told us how we may, as a 
 great law, enjoy health. It is by temperance in eating and 
 drinking, by exercise, by a good conscience, by avoiding the 
 excesses of passion, and guarding from needless exposures. But 
 if we choose to neglect these salutary rules, and pursue a life 
 just the opposite, will God work a miracle for our accommoda- 
 tion ? So in all things, God has appointed certain conditions of 
 his favour in health, morals, reputation, property, salvation. 
 Man, a free agent, can neglect them all. But will God bend 
 the laws of the universe to us ? Will he work a succession of 
 miracles to accommodate our indolence, our selfishness, our 
 sensuality, our pride, our distrust of his wisdom and goodness ? 
 
THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 105 
 
 No. The fixed laws of nature and of grace move on, and if, by 
 our conforming ourselves to them, they do not bear us to affluence, 
 and virtue, and reputation, and heaven, they will sweep us on 
 to poverty, and rags, and disgrace, and the drunkard's grave, 
 and to hell. And knowing what they are, we ought THEREFORE 
 to accommodate ourselves to what we know is to be the result. 
 
 Now, in regard to the particular matter before us, many have 
 been dissatisfied with the Bible, and have rejected it. Have 
 they therefore been safe, and have they gone to heaven ? That 
 remains to be proved. Neither the heaven nor the earth ; neither 
 God nor angels ; neither their own lives nor their death-beds 
 have given any evidence of it. What is the proof that they 
 were saved ? Is it such that you and I can feel that our immortal 
 interests are safe if we do the same thing ? Many have refused 
 to repent and believe the gospel, and have lived and died thus. 
 What is the evidence that they have not been ' lost,' as the Saviour 
 said they would be ? Is it such that we can feel ourselves safe 
 in doing the same thing ? Many have been living in the neglect 
 of religion, and have died thus. They were opposed in heart to 
 the law of God and to its penalty. They doubted the wisdom 
 of his administration. They hardened themselves when the 
 gospel was preached and when salvation was proclaimed. What 
 is the proof that they were saved? Where, where shall we 
 look for it ? Is it such that it would be safe to risk the welfare 
 of our souls upon it ? What sign is there in the sky which says 
 that they are there ? Has a new star appeared, as it was said 
 there did when Csesar died, to show that they are gone to 
 heaven ? Has an angel come forth and written their names 
 among the constellations ? Think not this extravagant. If I 
 am to be safe if I am an infidel, an impenitent sinner, a wicked 
 man, a neglecter of prayer, and a despiser of the cross, I wish 
 to have some evidence that they who have done the same thing 
 before me were safe and are now happy. I look about for the 
 proofs. They are not in the sky. I see no sign there ; I hear 
 no voice. I go to their graves. I see no reason to credit the 
 flattering epitaph on their gravestones that they went to heaven. 
 I see them not coming back from the world of glory to tell me 
 they are blessed. I ask, where is the evidence, where on a dying 
 bed, at their graves, in all the universe, where is the evidence 
 that /may live thus and be safe ? I see none ; I hear none ; 
 I am told of none, even by those who are expecting to be 
 saved in the same way. And then you ask me what evidence / 
 have that the man who repents and believes will be saved. I 
 have evidence. It may not seem strong to you; it is clear to 
 
106 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 me ; and yourself being judge, it is better than none. It is in 
 the promises of the Bible ; in the voice of inspiration ; in the 
 resurrection of the Redeemer ; in his assurance that his people 
 shall be with him ; and nothing yet has occurred in regard to 
 the influence of his gospel, to the living virtues or the dying 
 peace of his friends, to shake my belief that it will be so. I see 
 them die just as if they were going to heaven so peaceful, so 
 calm, so happy, that I cannot doubt that they are safe. Know- 
 ing what are the terms on which God bestows eternal life, they 
 have conformed to those principles, and their lives and death 
 have been all that could be demanded on the supposition that 
 they were going to heaven. 
 
 (4.) My fourth consideration is, that the arrangements by 
 which God proposes to save men are not unreasonable, or such 
 as to throw any insuperable barrier in their way, and they 
 should therefore conform to them. It was no impracticable 
 thing that was required of the man with the one talent. Was 
 it beyond his power to put the money to the exchangers ? So 
 we say of the terms of salvation. Are they impossible to be 
 complied with ? Are they so stern, so severe, so much beyond 
 the human powers as to put eternal life beyond our reach ? I 
 could make a long argument on this point, but I shall not enter 
 now upon it. I will settle it by two or three questions : Who 
 are they that believe and are saved? Children; the ignorant; 
 slaves, as well as the learned and the great. Is that impossible 
 for you which may be done by your child ? that, beyond your 
 power, which has been done by many a poor, benighted heathen, 
 by the savage, by the man in bonds ? What does God require 
 of you ? Does he say, Go on a pilgrimage over oceans to visit 
 some far distant shore ? No. He says, " Come unto me !" Does 
 he ask money ? No. " Come without money and without 
 price." Does he ask painful penance ? Just as much as you do 
 of your child, when he has done wrong, that he will confess and 
 forsake it. Does he demand a hard service ? He asks confi- 
 dence in the great and glorious Saviour ; a pure heart and life ; 
 a meek, gentle, holy walk ; hands free from bribes, and a heart 
 without covetousness and sensuality ; a spirit of kindness, and 
 forbearance, and forgiveness ; love, pure, glowing, steady to him- 
 self and to all mankind. Is this hard ? Is it stern ? Is it severe ? 
 
 We are conducted to these conclusions : 
 
 (1.) Religion requires humility. It demands of us that the 
 intellect should be bowed and the will subdued. We must 
 bend, and not God ; our hearts must yield, and not his principles 
 of government j we must accommodate ourselves to the settled 
 
THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 107 
 
 
 
 course of events, and not require them to be accommodated to 
 us. As the first thing in religion, therefore, we may say that 
 humility is required, and we might go on to say of it, as 
 Demosthenes said of action, that it is the second thing and the 
 third thing. And yet it is no more than is required anywhere 
 else. It is the condition of our being the law of our nature. 
 We must yield to the settled course of events on our farms, in 
 commerce, and in our health, and why should we not in reli- 
 gion ? Why pause and hesitate only here ? 
 
 (2.) Yielding must be wholly on our side. God will not yield, 
 nor should he. His terms are settled and understood, and he 
 will not depart from them, nor should he. The universe would 
 not be safe should he depart from the great principles of his 
 administration, nor is there any reason why he should do it. If 
 we have any safety, it is in the assurance that he does not change, 
 and that the principles of his government are always the same. 
 
 (3.) Finally, the sum of the whole matter is this : We must 
 comply with the terms which he has provided for salvation, or 
 be lost. Those terms must be met exactly, and nothing can be 
 substituted in their place. He demands of us repentance, and 
 faith in the Lord Jesus. He solemnly assures us that " he that 
 believeth not shall be damned," and has said, " Except ye repent 
 ye shall all likewise perish/' There is, therefore, my friends, a 
 simple question before your minds at this time a question as I 
 believe of vital interest to your souls. It is, whether, knowing 
 the principles of the Divine government, and the terms on which 
 God will save men, you are willing to accommodate yourselves to 
 those terms and be saved, or whether you will, dissatisfied and mur- 
 muring, bury your talent in the earth. That question is now 
 before you for decision. That it is a momentous question I need 
 not say. Believing, as I do, that on it depends the eternal weal 
 or woe of every one -who hears me now ; that the decision 
 is to enter into all that there is of joy or woe beyond the grave ; 
 that we are sinners, lost, ruined, and condemned, and that these 
 are the terms of pardon, and these only, how can I neglect to 
 urge it upon you with affectionate entreaty? The great, the 
 momentous subject I leave with you. Above us is heaven and 
 immortal glory, to be obtained by us only on certain conditions, 
 which God has made known. Beneath us is the world of despair, 
 to be avoided only on certain terms, which God has prescribed. 
 Just before us is the grave, where there is no work, and in 
 which no offer of life and salvation is made on any terms, and 
 where the everlasting doom is sealed for ever. Dying friends, 
 oh how soon shall we be there ! 
 
SEKMON IX, 
 
 THE STATE IN WHICH THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN. 
 MATT, xviii. 11." The Son of man is come to save that which was lost." 
 
 ALL men, with exceptions too few to be taken into the gene- 
 ral account, have some scheme of salvation. The exceptions 
 relate to the very few cases where individuals are in a state of 
 despair ; or where, either from physical disease, or from some 
 perverted view of the truths of religion, they have abandoned 
 all hope of happiness in the world to come. With these very 
 few exceptions, there are none who do not expect to be happy 
 beyond the grave. The proof of this is plain. It is found in 
 the composure with which men look at eternity ; the indifference 
 which they manifest when warned of a coming judgment ; the 
 cool and unperturbed spirit with which they pursue the things 
 of this life, whether they are serious things or mere trifles ; the 
 unconcern which they evince when told of eternal sorrows. 
 It requires the utmost strength of human hardihood when a 
 criminal looks with no paleness of the features, and no trembling 
 of the limbs, on the gibbet where he is soon to be executed ; 
 and no man could look on eternal sorrow with a belief that it is 
 to be his own, and be unmoved. When we see men, therefore, 
 wholly unconcerned about their eternal state ; men, though 
 professing to believe that there is a place of future woe, wholly 
 unalarmed and unmoved, the fair inference is, that not one word 
 of the statements about future woe is believed, and that they 
 have some secret scheme by which they hope to be saved at 
 last. Either by works of righteousness which they have done ; 
 or in virtue of the native amiableness of their character ; or 
 because they have done no injury to others ; or because they 
 believe that it would be wrong for God to consign them to an 
 eternal hell ; or because they confide in what they regard as the 
 illimitable compassion of God, they expect to be saved, and, 
 therefore, give themselves no trouble about it. It is not, it 
 cannot be human nature to believe that eternal pain is to be our 
 portion, and still to sit unmoved. Still less can men believe 
 this and be cheerful and gay. Every man, therefore, must have 
 some secret scheme by which he hopes to be saved. 
 
HOW THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN. 109 
 
 Yet, there can be but one method of salvation that is true. 
 If the Christian plan is true, then all others are false ; if they 
 are true, then that is false. If there are other schemes by which 
 man can be saved, then there was no need of the Sacrifice on the 
 cross, and the scheme proposed in the gospel is an imposture. 
 The admission, then, that the Christian religion is true an 
 admission which sinners often so readily and so thoughtlessly 
 make is a condemnation of all other systems, and shuts out all 
 who are not interested in the plan of the gospel from ail hope 
 of heaven. 
 
 On this account, if on no other, therefore, it cannot but be a 
 matter of importance to know what the plan of salvation pro- 
 posed in the gospel is. The previous discourses have been de- 
 signed, in part, to prepare the way for this by considering certain 
 states of the mind in regard to religion ; by removing certain diffi- 
 culties felt by men on the subject, and by stating certain presump- 
 tive claims which Christianity has on the attention of men. It 
 seemed proper to do this before attempting to show specifically 
 what the plan of salvation revealed in the gospel is ; and having 
 done that, the way is now prepared for a more definite state- 
 ment of the scheme of salvation proposed in the gospel, or the 
 mental process through which a sinner passes when he embraces 
 the plan. In doing this, I wish to take out this scheme from all 
 others, and to show what it is, so that a man who asks what he 
 shall do to be saved, may understand what, according to this 
 scheme, is to be done ; what is required of him ; what hindrances 
 he will meet, and what encouragements will be held out to him : 
 what, in one word, according to this scheme, is the method by 
 which God proposes to bring a sinner to heaven. 
 
 I begin, of course, with a consideration of the state in which 
 the gospel finds man ; and the general statement which I make 
 on this point is, that God's plan of saving men is based on the 
 fact that the race is by nature destitute of holiness. If this were 
 not so, there w r ould have been no necessity for the scheme. 
 Men would have possessed full capability of saving themselves. 
 If men before or since the promulgation of this plan had any 
 elements of holiness in their character, or any traits which could 
 by their own skill be wrought into a texture of righteousness ; 
 or if there was remaining in the human soul any germ of good- 
 ness which could by culture be developed into holiness; or if 
 there was any slumbering spark of piety that needed only to be 
 uncovered and fanned into a flame, then the design of interposing 
 in the manner revealed in the gospel would have been unneces- 
 sary, and would not have occurred. For then all that would 
 
110 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 have been needful would have been to leave the race to them- 
 selves, with only such moral encouragement as would stimulate 
 them to effort, or with such aid as would enable them to unfold 
 the germ of piety in the soul, as they now cultivate the intellec- 
 tual powers, or as they cultivate a plant from a seed sown in a 
 garden. This is very far from being the gospel scheme. 
 
 But it is of the last importance that we should understand 
 what is meant when it is said that God's plan of saving men is 
 based on the fact that the race is destitute of holiness. There 
 are things which men try to do in religion which they cannot 
 do, and are, therefore, not required to do ; there are instructions 
 given to men seeking to be saved, which the nature of the 
 human mind forbids any one to follow, and which ought not to 
 be followed ; there are statements made on this point which no 
 man can believe to be true, hard as he may try to think them 
 true, and much as he may endeavour to blame himself because 
 he does not ; there are acts for which a man thinks he ought to 
 condemn himself, when after all his struggling he cannot work 
 himself up to feel one particle of guilt ; and there are doctrines 
 which men are sometimes taught that they ought to believe, 
 which are so obviously and palpably false, that in trying to 
 believe them they become disgusted with the entire system, and 
 renounce the whole together. After all the efforts which men 
 make to credit absurdities, there are things which the human 
 mind can believe, and those which it cannot ; there are things 
 which we can repent of, and those which we cannot. In a 
 certain state of mind, and under a certain kind of teaching, a 
 man often works himself up into a belief that he ought to feel 
 guilty, when he cannot ; and often blames himself in this respect, 
 when he ought to feel that he is acting perfectly right. And 
 so, on the other hand, there are cases where a man resists the 
 conviction of guilt when he ought to feel it, and does just as 
 much injustice to his own nature by refusing to be penitent, as 
 he did in the other case by trying to repent. How, then, is a 
 man who wishes to be saved to regard himself on this point ? 
 What is he held to be guilty of ? what not ? 
 
 In the answer to these questions, I shall, first, state to you 
 what you are not to regard yourselves as guilty of; and then, 
 secondly, what is to be regarded as the real state of the soul by 
 nature in respect to God and religion. I can most conveniently, 
 and with no want of respect for you, use the style of direct 
 address. 
 
 (1.) First, then, you are not held to be guilty of the sin of 
 Adam, nor is repentance for that, in any proper sense, to enter 
 
HOW THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN. Ill 
 
 into your repentance if you are saved according* to the way of 
 salvation provided in the gospel. I do not mean by this that you 
 are not involved seriously in the consequences of his apostacy-^- 
 for, except in the notion of personal guilt in the matter, I would 
 go as far as any man in holding that you are so ; but that you 
 are not to regard yourselves as personally blameworthy on account 
 of what he has done, and that you need not try to feel, and 
 that you are not to reflect on yourselves if you cannot feel that 
 you are. If a man ever does work himself up into the belief 
 that he is guilty, or blameworthy, or responsible for the sin of 
 Adam, it is simply a delusion of his mind : harmless in some 
 respects, but hurtful so far as he supposes that any piety grows 
 out of it for no true religion grows out of a falsehood, and so 
 far as it tends to modify his views of the character of God. In 
 a sound and healthy state of the mind, it is impossible that a 
 man should feel guilty or blameworthy for any sins but his own. 
 He may be affected in his person, character, happiness, or pro- 
 perty, and in some sense in his reputation, by the sin of another ; 
 he may greatly regret it, and may weep over it as a calamity, 
 and may feel himself humbled by it on account of his relation to 
 the offender ; but he can never feel in regard to it as he does in 
 regard to his own sins ; he can never weep for it as he does in 
 view of his own personal guilt. God, in the constitution of the 
 human mind, has fixed bounds on this subject more impassable 
 than are those which restrain the ocean. You feel guilty for 
 your own sins ; you do not, you cannot for the sin of another. 
 The feeling with which you regard your own sin, and the feeling 
 with which you regard the sin of another, are as distinct as any 
 two classes of feeling possible, and they can never be confounded, 
 and they are not to be intermingled in a plan of salvation. I 
 believe that the Bible does not hold you to be blameworthy, or 
 responsible, or in the proper sense of the term guilty, for the sin 
 of Adam, or of any other man. I am certain that your con- 
 science does not hold you thus guilty. It is a simple matter of 
 fact that you cannot make yourself feel guilty of that, however 
 much you may try to, and however often you may be told that 
 you must. The act was his act, not yours ; the disobedience was 
 his, not yours ; the responsibility was his, not yours. It took 
 place nearly six thousand years before you were born : you were 
 not there ; you had no agency in it whatever and you cannot 
 make yourself feel personally guilty for it, and are not to try to 
 do so in the matter of salvation. You may lament it may feel 
 its effects may weep over those effects ; but you are not to 
 lament this, to feel this, to weep over this, as a personal crime 
 
112 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 for you cannot do it. That is a separate feeling limited and 
 bounded as distinctly as any feeling which the mind ever has, 
 and never going outside of the consciousness of personal crimi- 
 nality. I shall endeavour to show you that you have enough to 
 lament and weep over, without attempting to burden yourself 
 with this. Settle it, then, as an elementary principle in the 
 way of salvation, that repentance must be limited to personal 
 guilt, and that you can feel condemned only for your own sins 
 not for the sin of another. 
 
 (2.) You are not to suppose that it is necessary in order to 
 salvation, that you should feel that you are as bad as you can 
 be. I am saying that the plan of salvation in the gospel is 
 based on the idea that the race is destitute of holiness : but I 
 am not saying that it is based on the idea that the sinner is as 
 bad as he can be, or that it is necessary to true repentance that 
 he should suppose that he is. I do not know that it could be 
 affirmed of any one of our race that has yet lived, that he was 
 in all respects, at all times, and in all his relations, as wicked a 
 man as he could have been, any more than it can be affirmed of 
 any one, the Saviour excepted, that he was in all respects, and 
 at all times, as good as he could be. I am sure that this is not 
 true of the great mass of those to whom the gospel is preached, 
 and who do exercise true repentance : and I do not mean to 
 say to you, therefore, that in order to be saved, it is necessary 
 that you should feel that you are as bad as you can be. It is 
 simply not true. You might be much worse. You might be 
 more profane, more sensual, more proud, more irritable, more 
 covetous. You might have deeper feelings of malignity against 
 God, and deeper hatred for man. You might be openly corrupt 
 as well as corrupt at heart ; and you might be more corrupt at 
 heart than you are. There are in the soul of the most abandoned 
 man some remains of decency I do not say of holiness that 
 might be obliterated, so that he would be worse than he is ; there 
 is in the most debased and wretched female, now an outcast, 
 some lingering of a generous and noble feeling I do not say of 
 love to God that might be quenched, so that she would be more 
 depraved than she is. It is true that under deep conviction 
 under very highly wrought feeling and when the floods of 
 remembered guilt come rolling over the soul, the sinner does 
 sometimes feel that he has been as bad as he could be, and that 
 all the past in his life has been the blackness of the deepest 
 criminality with nothing to relieve the picture. But this is the 
 prompting of feeling perhaps an unavoidable feeling in the 
 case ; it is not the conviction of the sober judgment. And it 
 
HOW THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN. 113 
 
 is true, perhaps, that convicted sinners try sometimes to make 
 themselves feel so, and suppose that they ought to feel so ; but 
 they should be told that it is not true, and that all real piety is 
 based on truth, not on pious falsehood. It is true, indeed, that 
 under the deepest conviction which an awakened sinner ordi- 
 narily feels, it may with propriety be told him that he is worse at 
 heart than he really supposes himself to be ; that there is a depth 
 of depravity in his soul which has not yet been seen or developed, 
 and that he might dread the revelation of the truth ; but it is not 
 true that it is necessary in order to be saved that he should work 
 himself up into the belief that he is as bad as he can be, or that he 
 should charge upon himself sins of which he has never been guilty. 
 
 Nor, for the same reason, is it necessary that you should regard 
 yourself as worse than all others. It is true that Paul felt that 
 he was " the chief of sinners," and it is true that a similar con- 
 viction may come over the minds of others. But this is not 
 necessary to genuine repentance, simply (a) because it is not true 
 in the case of the great mass of those who become really penitent ; 
 and (&) because it is not necessary to true repentance that we should 
 compare ourselves with others in any respect. Genuine repent- 
 ance, and a just view of ourselves, are not based in any degree on 
 such a comparison with other men, but must arise from the con- 
 templation of our own character as compared with the law of God. 
 
 (3.) When we say that the plan of salvation in the gospel is 
 based on the supposition that the race is destitute of holiness, it 
 is not meant that in any of its arrangements it is implied that 
 the sinner is guilty for not doing that which he had no power 
 to do. The sense of guilt is, by the constitution of the human 
 mind, as accurately limited in this respect as it is in the cases 
 already referred to. A man can no more feel guilty for not 
 doing that which he had no power to do, than he can for what 
 is done by another. In all cases where there is, in the common 
 sense of the term, a want of ability, there is no obligation, and 
 there can be no sense of guilt if the thing is not done : and no 
 method of reasoning can change this conviction of the human 
 soul. There is no way by which you could convince a man that 
 he is under obligation to create a world, or to remove a moun- 
 tain, or to raise the dead ; or by which you could convince him 
 that he is guilty if he does not do it. And so, for the same 
 reason, and to the same extent precisely, there is no method of 
 reasoning by which you can convince a man that he is under 
 obligation to believe if he cannot believe, or to love if he cannot 
 love, or to repent if he cannot repent, or to obey if he cannot 
 obey; or by which you can make him feel the genuine com- 
 
114 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 punctions of guilt if, under these circumstances, he does not 
 believe, repent, love, and obey.* He may profess to be convinced, 
 but he is not convinced ; he may fancy that he feels guilt, but 
 he does not feel it. The human mind was not so made as to be 
 approached in that manner, and religion makes its advances in 
 the world in accordance with the laws of the mind, and not 
 against them. Obligation is limited by ability ; and the con- 
 sciousness of criminality is always bounded by the feeling that 
 we have omitted to do what we might have done, or have done 
 what we had the power of abstaining from doing. 
 
 (4.) When we say that the gospel plan of salvation is based 
 on the fact that the race is destitute of holiness, we are not to 
 be understood as teaching that there are no amiable qualities in 
 the minds of sinners, or that there is nothing that can in any 
 sense be commended. Of the Saviour it is said respecting a 
 young man who came to him, and who afterwards showed that 
 he had no real piety, that " beholding him, he loved him" (Mark 
 x. 21) ; and with all the real, and genuine, and ardent piety of 
 John, there is no reason to believe that it was solely on this 
 account that the Saviour loved him. It is not improper to 
 suppose that Peter, and some of the other apostles, had as sincere 
 love to the Saviour as John had, and that they were willing to 
 make as many sacrifices for -him as the " beloved disciple" would, 
 and that they as cheerfully laid down their lives for the Master 
 as he would have done ; but it is not improper to suppose 
 indeed we cannot help believing that there was a native 
 modesty, gentleness, meekness, amiableness in the character of 
 John that bore a strong resemblance to these traits in the mind 
 of the Saviour himself, and that made him peculiarly the object 
 of endearment. So it may be, so it is, of others. It is not 
 asserted by the friends of the Christian religion, that there is no 
 morality, no parental or filial affection, no kindness or compassion, 
 no courteousness or urbanity, no love of truth, and no honest 
 dealing among unconverted men. The friends of religion cannot 
 be blind to the existence of these qualities in a high degree in 
 society, nor are they slow to value them, or to render them 
 appropriate honours. Yet they suppose that all these things 
 may exist, and may diffuse a charm over society, and promote 
 many of the ends of social life, and still that there may be an 
 utter destitution of all right feeling toward God. They suppose 
 that it is possible that a man may be very kind to the poor, and 
 
 * The reference here, perhaps it need hardly be said, is to natural and not to 
 what is called moral inability. My views on this subject are more fully given in a 
 subsequent discourse. 
 
HOW THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN. 115 
 
 very just in his dealings with others, and still have a heart of 
 pride, and selfishness, and envy, and be an entire neglecter of 
 God ; that a man may be upright in his intercourse with his 
 neighbours, and have no right feelings towards his Maker ; that 
 a youthful female may be very accomplished, and very gentle, and 
 very winning in her manners, and yet never pray, or in any proper 
 way acknowledge God. Yet, when the heart is under the deepest 
 convictions for sin when crushed and broken by the conscious- 
 ness of guilt, as that of the most amiable and gentle person may 
 be, whether male or female it is not necessary that the mind 
 should be blind to these qualities, or that the convicted sinner 
 should " write bitter things against himself" on account of them. 
 He is no worse for having possessed them, and if they will not 
 save him, they will at least not be charged against him as a fault. 
 
 With these necessary metes and bounds on the subject, which 
 it seemed proper to state, I proceed now to illustrate the general 
 statement that, in the plan of salvation, God regards men as 
 destitute of holiness. The remainder of this discourse will be 
 occupied with a statement showing in what respects this is true. 
 
 The foundation and the sum of all that I have to say is, that 
 you are destitute of true piety towards God. Whatever else you 
 may have, there is nothing that can be construed as holiness of 
 heart ; nothing that is properly the Divine image in the soul. 
 But, lest you should suppose that I am using a mere theological 
 technicality, I would explain this as meaning that there is in 
 your heart no real love to God ; no true desire to honour him ; 
 no just appreciation of his character ; no confidence in him as 
 your Creator ; no proper regard for his will ; no pleasure in the 
 principles of his government; no desire to please him. This 
 view does not deny to you the possession of much that is amiable 
 and kind in other respects ; it simply denies that there is in you 
 " any good thing towards the Lord God of Israel." 
 
 It is undeniable that it is on this view that the whole plan 
 of salvation is based, and that that plan has grown out of this 
 view, and is adjusted to it. If it had been supposed that man 
 were not fallen, no plan of salvation would have been provided, 
 for none would have been necessary any more than for the 
 angels of heaven ; if it had not been supposed that the race is 
 by nature entirely destitute of holiness, then the plan, if one 
 had been formed, would have been wholly different from what 
 it is now. If it had been presumed that there was any germ of 
 goodness in the soul, then the plan would have been to develop 
 that germ as we now seek to expand the intellectual powers 
 by education. If it had been supposed that the amiable qualities 
 
116 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 of the mind were in any sense of the word true piety, or could 
 be transmuted into piety, then the plan would have been to 
 attach these qualities to religion, or to embody them in some 
 form of religion. If it had been supposed that there were some 
 remains of piety dormant in the soul some slumbering and 
 almost smothered spark of goodness that needed only to be 
 brought out and fanned to a flame, then the scheme of salva- 
 tion would have been simply a device to accomplish that object. 
 But it is not so : it is impossible to explain the plan of salvation 
 on the supposition that it is so. The way of salvation in the 
 gospel does not contemplate that You may take the supposition 
 that man is destitute of holiness, and that he is so regarded by 
 the Author of the scheme, and you can explain every part of 
 the arrangement as having grown out of that supposition -just 
 as you can explain the science of the healing art on the supposi- 
 tion that man is liable to disease, and can explain it on no other. 
 If you do not admit that supposition in regard to the character 
 of man, you can explain nothing in the gospel ; you can see no 
 propriety in any of its arrangements. By a simple glance at 
 the subject, you can see what I shall more fully explain here- 
 after, that on this supposition all that is said in connexion with 
 that plan about the atonement the new birth the work of the 
 Holy Spirit the doctrine of justification by faith, has a place 
 and a meaning: what place what signification, have they on 
 any other supposition? The way of salvation, as revealed in 
 the gospel, is adjusted to the idea that the race is destitute of 
 holiness, and to no other view of the character of our race. I 
 lay this, therefore, at the foundation. If this is not so, the 
 whole plan is uncalled for and unmeaning, and, therefore, having 
 taken a wrong view of human nature in the starting point, is 
 false throughout. You can never make anything of Christianity 
 on any other supposition than that this is a fallen race, and 
 that the race is wholly destitute of holiness ; but on that suppo- 
 sition it has at least the merit of being an admirably adjusted 
 scheme, as it will be easy to show you hereafter. You can never 
 hope to see the beauty or the fitness of Christianity as a way of 
 salvation until you admit and feel that whatever else you have, 
 you have by nature no true love towards God. 
 
 In the expansion and application of this view there are several 
 things which follow, and which it is important to state in order 
 to put the mind into possession of the exact truth, and to con- 
 firm what has been just said. 
 
 First. In the way of salvation it is assumed that your morality 
 is not holiness. It was not in the case of the young ruler whom, 
 
HOW THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN. 117 
 
 on that account, Jesus loved ; it was not in the case of Saul of 
 Tarsus, who said of himself, referring to his character before his 
 conversion, " touching the righteousness which is in the law 
 blameless" Phil. iii. 6. It is not in your case. It is another 
 thing altogether than religion. Your morality relates to man ; 
 not to God. It has, in your own mind, even, no reference to 
 God. It leads you to no act of devotion to him ; to no prayer, 
 to no desire to learn his will, to no worship in your family or 
 in your closet. You do not yourself, even, pretend on this ac- 
 count to be a religious or pious man. You do not profess to be ; 
 you do not ally yourself to those who are pious ; you do not 
 expect to be ranked among their number ; you would be sur- 
 prised if you were either by man or God. You would either 
 receive it as a witticism if you were called a saint, or would 
 regard it as intended to be an insult. You have never pretended 
 to perform the proper act of a religious man ; and you would be 
 greatly surprised if a religious man should address you as a 
 brother believer. Your morality is very valuable in some respects, 
 but it has a very limited sphere considering all your relations ; 
 and, though amiable in itself, it may exist in connexion with 
 other things that are far from being amiable. Will you suffer 
 me to show you, by a very plain illustration, how this is ? A 
 company of boys are playing on a common. They are blithe, 
 merry, happy. They are kind to each other, and true to each 
 other, and faithful to each other. If one falls into danger, all 
 are ready to help him ; if one is unfortunate, all sympathize with 
 him ; if one is prospered, all rejoice. They do not steal from 
 each other ; they do not slander each other ; they do not cheat 
 each other. If one makes a promise to another it is faithfully 
 kept ; if a bargain is made, the most scrupulous rules of honesty 
 are observed. But they are all truants. They have broken 
 away from the restraints of home ; are there contrary to the 
 wishes of their parents, and in direct violation of their com- 
 mands. They refuse to return home at the time when they are 
 commanded to ; and if at home they manifest no regard for a 
 parent's will or comfort. What do you think of them ? Does 
 their system of morality among themselves prove that they love 
 their parents, or are entitled to the favour of their parents ? 
 Does it prove that they are not to be regarded as truant, and 
 treated accordingly ? Suppose that one of them is charged with 
 disobedience to his parents. ' Oh,' says he, * we are very kind, 
 and honest, and truthful among ourselves. I have injured n6 
 one of my playmates ; I am esteemed to be honourable and up- 
 right ; I am among them strictly moral.' Exactly so ; but how 
 
118 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 does this prove that he is not guilty of crime against a parent ? 
 Just as much, fellow-sinner, as your morality proves that you 
 are not a sinner in the sight of God and no more. 
 
 Second. In the way of salvation in the gospel, it is assumed 
 that your amiable traits of character are not holiness, and that 
 they cannot be construed as religion. Why should they be 
 any more than the innocence of the lamb, or the gentleness of 
 the dove ? They have no more reference to religion in your 
 own mind; they do nothing to make you religious. They do 
 not lead you to prayer, or to a religious life, or to the worship 
 of God, or to the love and imitation of the Saviour more 
 meek, and gentle, and amiable by far than you can pretend to be ; 
 nor do they lead you to prepare for the world to come. Besides, 
 you may not be as amiable as you think you are. Others may 
 see things in you which you do not see ; and God may see more 
 than all. Your real character may have been little tested, and 
 you may yet be in circumstances -where you yourself may be 
 surprised to find how much pride, and envy, and irritability, and 
 perverseness, and petulance, and selfishness, there was lurking 
 in your own soul. 
 
 Thirdly. In the way of salvation in the gospel, it is assumed 
 that your personal accomplishments are not religion ; and that 
 they do not prove that you have any holiness of heart. It 
 assuredly does not demonstrate that you are a child of God, 
 whatever praises it may elicit from men, if you can sing well, 
 or dance well, or play well on an instrument of music ; if you 
 are fitted to adorn the most polished circles, or if by the grace 
 of movement, or the charms of conversation, you attract the 
 admiration of all. Some of these things are well in their way, 
 and are desirable ; but why should any one deceive himself in 
 regard to them ? They are not religion ; they cannot be made 
 to be religion. 
 
 Fourthly. It is assumed in the way of salvation in the gospel, 
 that there is no native germ of goodness or holiness in your 
 heart ; that there is none implanted by baptism that can be so 
 developed or cultivated as to become religion. Holiness, if it 
 ever exists in the human soul, is to have a beginning there. It 
 is not there by nature. You may cultivate your intellectual 
 powers, but the result will not be religion ; you may cultivate 
 amiableness of temper, but it is not religion ; you may cultivate 
 gracefulness of manner or of person, but it is not religion ; you 
 may cultivate morality, but it is not religion. And so of baptism. 
 It has its advantages, and they who have been baptized should 
 bless God for it ; but it is not given to man, whether clothed in 
 
HOW THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN. 119 
 
 sacred vestments or not toman, though ministering at the altar, 
 and in the name of God, to implant a principle of grace, or a germ 
 of piety in the soul. God's Spirit alone creates life there ; and 
 it is done through the instrumentality of truth, and not hy an. 
 outward ordinance. Baptism has imparted nothing to you that 
 can be certainly cultivated into piety, or that will grow into the 
 love of God. 
 
 And, fifthly, then it is assumed in the way of salvation in the 
 gospel, that your heart is evil. It has by nature no religion. It 
 has nothing which can grow up into religion ; nothing which 
 can be a substitute for it. It is proud, selfish, vain, worldly, 
 polluted, wicked, unlike God. 
 
 This may seem to be a dark picture, but it lies at the 
 foundation of the way of salvation as revealed in the gospel ; 
 and on this sad fact the whole plan is based. All men, as is 
 supposed in this plan, have failed to yield obedience to the 
 reasonable requirements of the law of God. The violation of 
 that law is held to be the first act of a child when he becomes a 
 moral agent ; the continued act of his life, unless he is renewed ; 
 the last act on his dying pillow. His whole career is regarded 
 as one act of rebellion, because he is selfish, neglects God, is 
 proud, is cherishing enmity against his Maker, and is opposed 
 to all efforts to produce better feelings. In innumerable instances, 
 Jiis want of holiness, this destitution of love to God, goes forth 
 in acts of falsehood, impurity, blasphemy, theft, murder, adultery, 
 oppression, and implacable individual and national war. In 
 support of this view of the character of man, the sacred Scrip- 
 tures assert the naked fact, claiming to be the testimony of God. 
 The Bible has, moreover, recorded, under Divine guidance, the 
 history of the world for more than two-thirds of its continuance, 
 and presents no exception to this melancholy account of men. 
 Profane writers, with no reference to any theological debate, and 
 nine-tenths of them with no expectation that their testimony 
 would ever be adduced to settle questions of divinity, have pre- 
 sented the same fact. Not one solitary historian, though coming 
 from the midst of the people whose deeds are recorded, and 
 designing to give the most favourable representation of their 
 character, has exhibited a nation bearing any marks of holiness 
 an individual that is like God. The world, the wide world, is 
 apostate ; and he must be worse than blind that would at- 
 tempt to maintain that man by nature is fit for the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 On this broad fact, wide as the world, and prolonged as its 
 history, the Christian way of salvation is based. Here is an 
 
 9 
 
120 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 apostate province of God's empire. Rebellion has come upon 
 the earth, though not as it came among- the ranks of heaven. 
 There it cut off a fixed number, all mature in wisdom and in 
 strength. It would not spread ; it could not be extended to 
 successive tribes. Here it poisoned a fountain. It was amidst 
 God's works at first, but a little spring, pouring into a rill, but 
 soon swelling to creeks, to rivers, to lakes, to oceans. An in- 
 calculable number would descend froin the first pair of apostates, 
 and with prophetic certainty it could be foretold that not one 
 of their descendants would escape the contagion to the end of 
 time, however long the apostate world might stand. To all 
 ages if would be the same. On each mountain, in each valley, 
 in each cavern on each extended and fertile plain in all lands, 
 barbarous or civilized under every complexion in which man 
 would appear white, black, copper, olive, or mixed, it would 
 be the same. Crime would be heaped on crime ; whole nations 
 would bleed ; whole tribes would wail ; one generation of sin- 
 ners would tread on another generation, and then themselves 
 expire and all die as enemies of the God that made them. 
 
 We need not embarrass ourselves by inquiring how this 
 came upon us, or why this is so. It is the fact with which we 
 are concerned, not the mode. The grand question is not why 
 this is so ; or wliy this was permitted ; or how we can reconcile 
 it with the goodness of God, but how shall we escape f When 
 a man is struggling in a current of mighty waters, it does nothing 
 to facilitate his escape to be able to determine how he came 
 there ; nor would it help him if he could satisfy his own mind 
 on the question why God ever made streams so that men could 
 fall into them, and did not make every bank of granite or iron 
 so that it would not give way. 
 
 The grand question is, how shall we escape? You will not 
 escape if you remain in your present condition. Indifference is 
 not safety ; and unconcern is not salvation. It is not the way 
 to be saved to give one's self no concern about it, or to suffer 
 things to pass on as they are. If you remain as you are with a 
 sinful and depraved heart with no love to God what can 
 befall you but ruin? Without holiness you cannot be fit for 
 heaven. For what world are you preparing ? 
 
 It will not save you to murmur and complain at your lot, or 
 to find fault with the Divine arrangements, or even reverently 
 and devoutly to call these things mysterious. Scepticism saves 
 no one from danger ; murmuring saves no one ; a sneer saves no 
 one ; contempt saves no one ; nor does it save any one to call a 
 truth a mystery. None of these things make you a better man ; 
 
HOW THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN. 121 
 
 none do anything to fit you for heaven; none will make the 
 sorrows of perdition more easy to be borne. 
 
 It will not save you to cultivate the graces of manner, or the 
 accomplishments of life ; to become more learned in the sciences, 
 and a better critic of the productions of art ; to make yourself 
 more moral before men ; to break off your external sins, or to 
 put on the " form of godliness without its power." You may 
 cultivate a bramble, but it will not be a rose ; a rose, but it will 
 not be a bird of Paradise ; a bird of Paradise, but it will not be 
 a gazelle ; a gazelle, but it will not be a beautiful woman. You 
 may polish brass, but it is not gold ; and may set in gold a piece 
 of quartz, but it is not a diamond : and just as certain is it 
 that none of the graces of native character which you can culti- 
 vate will ever become true religion. The evil lies deeper than 
 this, and must be healed in another way. How this is may be 
 explained hereafter. My point now is gained if I have shown 
 you that the Christian way of salvation justly assumes as its 
 basis that our race is by nature destitute of holiness ; and if you 
 are convinced, as I would wish you to be convinced, that it is 
 not by works of righteousness which you have done that you 
 can be saved. 
 
SEBMON X, 
 
 THE INQUIRY, WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVEB? 
 ACTS xvi. 30. "What must I do to be saved ?" 
 
 IN the last discourse I endeavoured to show that God's plan of 
 saving men is based on the fact that the race is by nature 
 destitute of holiness. I illustrated this by showing that it is 
 not meant that the race is held to be guilty of the sin of Adam ; 
 or that it is necessary in order to salvation to suppose that the 
 sinner is as bad as he can be ; or that he is guilty for not doing 
 that which he has no power to do ; or that there are no amiable 
 qualities in the minds of men by nature, or that there is nothing 
 that may, in any way, be commended. I showed that it is 
 meant that there is in the heart by nature no real love to God ; 
 no just appreciation of his character ; no pleasure in the prin- 
 ciples of his government ; no desire to please him. 
 
 This is the condition, I suppose, in which the gospel finds 
 man ; this certainly is the assumption in regard to man in the 
 way of salvation revealed in the gospel. This being supposed, 
 the Scripture plan has, at least, consistency and meaning ; this 
 being denied, it has no consistency and no meaning. You can 
 make nothing out of the gospel except on the supposition that 
 " Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners ;" except, in 
 his own language, it be admitted that he " came to seek and to 
 save that which was lost" He is not, then, in the path of salva- 
 tion who does not feel and admit that he is a sinner, and who 
 is not prepared to receive salvation as it has been provided for 
 sinners. 
 
 We advance a step, then, at the present time, by considering 
 the state of mind which exists when one, impressed with these 
 truths, begins to feel that something must be done to save his 
 own soul ; the condition when one enters on the inquiry what 
 he must do to be saved. I may not be able to state all that will 
 be necessary on this part of the subject in this discourse, but I 
 would hope to be able to show you that this inquiry is at least 
 rational and proper, and that it starts questions not beneath the 
 attention of any. 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 123 
 
 To give some general order to the remarks which I propose to 
 make, I shall endeavour, in the first place, to describe the state 
 of mind to which I refer ; shall then state some of the causes 
 which produce it ; and then notice some of the perplexities and 
 embarrassments which the mind in that condition experiences. 
 
 That is an epoch in a man's life when, from a former condi- 
 tion of carelessness and unconcern, he is first led to ask the 
 question what he must do to be saved f A new inquiry has come 
 before him, evidently in every way worthy of his attention as a 
 man, and yet in some respects as difficult as it is momentous. 
 It is evidently a great subject, and may involve great changes 
 in his character and plans of life, and it lies far without the range 
 of the ordinary inquiries which come before the minds of men. 
 The word "saved" suggests thoughts which do not enter into 
 his ordinary investigations; the word "how" starts questions 
 which have not entered into other matters which have occupied 
 his attention. How a man may accumulate property ; how he 
 may gain honour ; how he may become learned, accomplished, 
 influential ; how he may ward off the attacks of disease, and how 
 he may defend himself if in danger, are points which he may 
 have often considered, and on which he may have definitely- 
 formed opinions. How he is to be saved is another inquiry 
 altogether. For this is a different question from that about 
 becoming rich, graceful, or honoured; and the knowledge 
 which he has gained on one of these points does not afford him 
 any clue in his inquiries on the former topic. For how shall 
 the knowledge of the best way of acquiring property aid a man 
 in answering the question how he shall be saved ? 
 
 The state of mind which I am describing is that which exists 
 when this inquiry first comes up for consideration. It may be 
 characterized by the single word seriousness ; or by the phrase 
 a disposition to thought and reflection. There may be as yet a 
 very slight sense of personal sinfulness, and almost or quite none 
 of danger ; but there is the feeling now that religion is of im- 
 portance, and that it is at least worthy of inquiry inquiry as 
 to its truth, and as to the method of salvation which it proposes. 
 There is a conviction hitherto unfelt of the worth of the soul, 
 and a feeling that that should have a degree of thought and 
 attention not before bestowed upon it. Religion somehow 
 occupies more of the attention ; it is suggested more frequently ; 
 it is not so easily disposed of; it is more likely to return after 
 the mind has by a slight effort been diverted from it to other 
 things ; it seems to come before the mind with more importunate 
 claims than it has done before. 
 
124 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 The power of reflecting on the past, the present, and the 
 future, is one of the highest endowments of man, and nowhere 
 is that power more appropriately exercised than on the subject 
 of religion. We think on the past, and derive valuable lessons 
 from what we have seen and experienced, and from what has 
 occurred to others, to guide us in that which is to come ; we 
 think on the present on what we are on our characters, duties, 
 and relations, and inquire what we should be in those relations ; 
 we think on that which is to come, and inquire what we are 
 yet to be. Thought has no limit. The past, the present, and 
 the future ; the distant, the vast, and the incomprehensible ; the 
 real and the imaginary ; time and eternity ; death and life ; 
 earth, hell, and heaven ; God, angels, devils, and men ; the living-, 
 and the dead ; nature and grace ; sin and redemption ; man 
 here and man hereafter, all are within the proper range of 
 thought, and all may suggest thoughts about our personal 
 salvation. 
 
 Thought gives birth to new plans, new hopes, new prospects 
 in the livei* of men. It leads to permanent revolutions of cha- 
 racter ; to the exchange of wild and visionary schemes for those 
 of soberness and reality; to corrections of follies, to enlarge- 
 ment of views, and to the formation of generous and noble pur- 
 poses. No man is likely to be injured by calm and serious 
 reflection; none can be by the questions which true religion 
 suggests. 
 
 There are inquiries pertaining to religion which are worthy 
 of thought, and which have been so regarded by the profoundest 
 thinkers of our race. Some of the most careful and laboured 
 investigations to which the human mind has given birth have 
 had reference to religion ; suggested by the single inquiry how 
 a man can be saved. Much of the profound reasoning of Socrates, 
 Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Bacon, and Locke, like all that we have 
 of Paul's writings, had reference to religion. More minds have 
 been employed on this inquiry than on any other one subject in 
 which men have been interested, and the inquiry has been pur- 
 sued with a zeal and ardour such as has been felt on no other. 
 The inquiries which religion suggests are sufficiently various, 
 dignified, and important, to be worthy of the most careful re- 
 flection of every man. Is there a God ? Is there an hereafter ? 
 Is the soul immortal ? Is there a way by which sin can be par- 
 doned, and by which a sinner can be saved ? Has God devised 
 a plan by which a sinner can be justified, and are there condi- 
 tions on which the benefits of that plan are proposed to men ? 
 Does the Bible contain the record of the way by which a sinner 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 125 
 
 may be saved ; or if not, where may such a record be found ? Is 
 the Christian religion true ? If so, what are its claims, hopes, 
 privileges? "What is the way of salvation which is revealed, 
 and how may one be assured that he is walking in that way ? 
 
 And there are personal questions which demand thought. 
 What has been the character of our lives ? What are our hopes 
 for the future? How are we regarded in the view of the holy 
 law of God ; how by the Author and Administrator of that law ? 
 Are we living in accordance with the purpose for which we were 
 made ? Are we prepared for our exit from this present life ? 
 Have we done all that we ought to do ; all that our consciences 
 require us to do ; all that we have ourselves deemed it desirable 
 to do, that we may be ready for our departure ? 
 
 The state of mind which I am endeavouring to describe is that 
 in which these inquiries begin to assume something of their 
 proper magnitude. This will not always, indeed, be manifested 
 by assuming the position of an avowed inquirer on the subject 
 of religion. It will be rather, perhaps, in some such ways as 
 these : conscious seriousness when the subject of religion is 
 alluded to, accompanied with a feeling of its importance such 
 as has not been usual in the mind; a willingness to examine 
 the arguments in favour of religion, and a growing interest in 
 them as addressed to the understanding ; an increasing convic- 
 tion that this world is not a satisfactory portion for the soul, and 
 a disposition to inquire whether the universe has not something 
 better in reserve ; a disposition to reflect on the past life more 
 now on its faults than on its virtues more on the neglect of duty 
 than on the performance of duty more on the internal feelings 
 than on the external conduct more on the thoughts and the 
 motives than on the outward deeds more on the treatment of 
 God than on the treatment of men and more on the now con- 
 scious want of holiness towards God than on personal amiable- 
 ness and morality. You seem to be far less perfect than you 
 supposed you were. You see more errors of judgment ; more 
 aberrations from what your conscience tells you you should be ; 
 more things in which the motives were doubtful or wrong ; more 
 cases in which there was an improper indulgence of passion and 
 criminal desire. Your temper has been less amiable ; your treat- 
 ment of your father less respectful, and of your mother less kind ; 
 your compassion for the suffering and the sad less tender ; your 
 charities less generous ; your principles of life less scrupulously 
 exact than you had supposed. You begin to feel, as you have 
 not heretofore done, that you are a sinner ; and the inquiry is 
 springing up in your mind as one that claims attention, What 
 
126 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 must I do to be saved? Religion begins to appear to your mind 
 to be the mqst important of all subjects ; and you feel that, 
 whatever may be the inclination of the heart in regard to it, it 
 ought to be attended to. It is beginning to be seen to be a 
 subject that pertains to you as a personal matter; and the inquiry, 
 "What must I do to be saved?" is one that begins to have a 
 place among those in which your own mind is deeply interested. 
 It may be, as yet, merely an awakened interest in religion ; or 
 it may be that there is deep and pungent " conviction" for sin 
 an overwhelming sense of past guilt such as the jailer in 
 the text seems to have had, when all the sins of a past life are 
 brought to the remembrance, and the intensest interest is thrown 
 into the question, " What must I do to be saved ?" 
 
 This state of mind is necessarily connected with the way of 
 salvation as revealed in the gospel, and, to a greater or less 
 degree, always exists before the fitness and the beauty of that 
 plan of salvation are perceived by the mind. Christ came to save 
 sinners; and the whole plan of salvation is adjusted to the 
 supposition that it is for sinners, and there is inwoven into the 
 scheme an arrangement for making men feel that they are 
 sinners as preliminary to, and indispensable to, a revelation of 
 mercy through the Saviour. It is supposed that men would 
 feel this, and ought to feel this sense of guilt, and there is a 
 special agency appointed in the gospel to secure this state of 
 mind in the case of all who become Christians and are saved. 
 No man, according to the plan of salvation in the gospel, can be 
 saved who has not a just view of himself as a sinner, and who 
 does not come, as such, to the cross of Christ. 
 
 It is very important, therefore, to inquire what is done, under 
 the Christian plan of salvation, to produce this state of mind. 
 This is the next point which I proposed to illustrate. 
 
 I do not design to say to you that the feeling of thoughtful- 
 ness or solicitude is in all cases the same in intensity or in 
 duration, or that it is always to be traced to the same causes. 
 From the nature of the case it must vary with the time of life ; 
 with the temperament of the individual ; with the general 
 character ; with the amount of education and the power of self- 
 government ; and with the causes which produce the serious 
 reflections. In some cases the seriousness may be the slow 
 growth of many years ; in others, the result of some visitation 
 of Providence, or some message of truth coming suddenly to the 
 soul. In some the mind may fasten on a single great sin that 
 shall occupy all the attention, and fill all the field of vision ; in 
 others it may be a calmer view of all the past life. Among 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 127 
 
 youths it may be calm, serious thought, apparently the result 
 of early training, and when the seed sown in childhood seems to 
 spring up and ripen as gently and as noiselessly as the grain in 
 the harvest field does under the gently falling dew and the 
 noiseless sunshine ; in the man of strong passions, and infidel 
 opinions, and great wickedness, it may be with the violence and 
 commotion of the winds when they sweep along the hills, and 
 when in their rage they twist off the gnarled oak, or tear it up 
 by the roots. In the educated and disciplined mind it may be 
 apparently mere calm contemplation and profound reflection ; 
 in the uneducated and undisciplined a genuine work of grace 
 may be going on, under all the outcries and outbreaks of what 
 seems the wildest fanaticism and disorder. Under the steady 
 preaching of the gospel it may be one thing, in the storm of 
 adversity and affliction it may be another; here the Spirit of 
 truth may seem to approach the conscience through the under- 
 standing, and there through the emotions. No one would expect 
 precisely the same feelings in John, the meek and gentle friend ; 
 Peter, the bold, the impetuous, and the rash ; and Saul of Tarsus, 
 the zealot and the bigot, when they passed through the stages 
 preliminary to conversion ; no one would expect precisely the 
 same feelings in the heathen jailer at Philippi, and in the con- 
 version of a youth trained now in the Sabbath school. In 
 certain great features we should expect indeed to find similarity 
 or identity; in the intensity of the feeling, the amount of 
 anxiety, the duration of this state of mind, or the causes which 
 produced it, we might expect to find every imaginable variety. 
 To show this I will now enumerate some of the causes which 
 tend to produce the state of mind referred to. 
 
 First, it is produced, in some cases, by a growing sense of the 
 unsatisfactory nature of worldly pursuits and enjoyments. With 
 all the love which there is in the human soul for these things, 
 there is a constant tendency to become dissatisfied with them, 
 and to feel that they are not what the soul needs. They pall 
 upon the senses, and there is need of new excitements and new 
 forms of attractiveness to make them interesting. It requires 
 much effort to keep up an interest in worldly things, and much 
 variety and novelty to prevent a growing distaste for them ; for 
 there are wants of the soul which no brilliancy, change, and 
 novelty in those pursuits can meet. Solomon made a designed 
 experiment on this subject, under all the advantages which any 
 human being can hope for, and reached results which all would 
 reach in similar circumstances : " I made me great works ; I 
 builded me houses ; I planted me vineyards : I made me gardens 
 
128 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits : 
 I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that 
 bringeth forth trees : I got me servants and maidens, and had 
 servants born in my house ; also I had great possessions of 
 great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before 
 me : I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure 
 of kings and of the provinces : I gat me men singers and women 
 singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instru- 
 ments, and that of all sorts. And whatsoever mine eyes desired 
 I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy ; 
 for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion 
 of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands 
 had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: 
 and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was 
 no profit under the sun," Eccles. ii. 4 11. And who, in similar 
 circumstances, has not had similar reflections ? How difficult is 
 it always to prevent such reflections from springing up in the 
 mind as the following : ' To what purpose is all this ? Is this 
 the end for which man should live ? Is this the way in which 
 God designs that rational creatures should be happy ? Will this 
 save me? "Will this prepare me to die? Will this fit me to 
 dwell in a holy heaven ? Is there, after all, no better portion 
 for man than costly viands, and gay apparel, and splendid 
 equipages, and music, and dancing ? Has man been formed for 
 no nobler end than to eat and drink and be merry, and can he 
 obtain nothing that shall be substantial and permanent ? Is 
 there nothing nothing in this world or in any other that can 
 meet the deep desires of our nature the aspirations of the 
 undying mind for substantial good ?' These reflections may 
 occur in a ball-room ; in a brilliant party of pleasure ; in a 
 palace ; on a bed of down ; and when the incense of the flattery 
 that we have long sought is wafted around us. And these 
 reflections are often aided much by the chagrin and mortification, 
 the neglect and the coldness, the jealousies and heart-burnings 
 experienced in the world ; and, chafed and oppressed by these, 
 the mind begins to inquire whether there is no world that will 
 furnish substantial good, to reflect soberly, and to ask, What 
 must be done to be saved ? 
 
 Secondly, there are, in other cases, or in these, the secret, 
 silent workings of the conscience, prompting to the inquiry, 
 What must be done to be saved ? Conscience is sometimes armed 
 with a terrific power a power that rives the soul as the light- 
 ning does the gnarled oak ; but it is not that to which I now 
 refer. It has also a comparatively milder and more humble 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 129 
 
 office ; a gentler power ; a stiller voice. It silently reminds the 
 soul of the obligations of religion, and gently and kindly awakens 
 it to reflection, and stimulates it to the performance of long- 
 neglected duty. It becomes a friendly counsellor, makes kind 
 suggestions, urges us to pray, keeps before us the remembrance 
 of some duty that is unperformed, or some sin which we strive 
 in vain to forget. It leads us to " think on our ways," to 
 " ponder the paths of our feet," and opens to us reflections of 
 the deepest interest in regard to that which is past and that 
 which is to come, and thus leads the mind along gently to the 
 inquiry, " What must I do to be saved ?" 
 
 Thirdly, there are in other cases the recollected instructions 
 of earlier years, now strangely and mysteriously brought to the 
 memory. The father, the mother, the pastor, the Sabbath school 
 teacher, the friend, may be dead, or may be far far away . But their 
 lessons of virtue and their counsels may come with freshness 
 and power to your minds as you stand in calm contemplation 
 near their graves. Or, roaming in a distant clime, far away 
 from the home of your childhood, in the land of strangers, where 
 no one seems to feel an interest in you, and you feel an interest 
 in no one of the multitudes around you, you may think of the 
 counsels of a parent, of the family Bible, of the morning and 
 evening sacrifice in your father's house ; and the question, which 
 may scarcely have occurred to you for years, may spring up 
 anew in your mind, " What shall I do to be saved ?" Or, even, 
 in the dense and crowded city, a stranger amidst the jostling 
 multitudes that care neither for you nor for one another ; where 
 you know no one, and no one knows you ; where no one of all 
 that crowd along the thronged avenue greets you with a kind 
 look, or would care if you should die ; where no one sympathizes 
 with your sorrows, or would miss you if you were never seen 
 there again, in the unutterable sense of loneliness which a 
 strange youth feels in such a city, your home, and your father, 
 and your mother, and the influence of religion there, and the 
 sweet and calm peace which religion produces there, or the calm 
 peace which it shed on the last hours of some loved one, may 
 come to your memory, and the involuntary question may arise, 
 " What shall I do to be saved ?" Or perhaps, having long 
 forgotten these lessons, now on the deep, or in a distant land, 
 or remote from the scenes of childhood in your own country, 
 you may take up the long-neglected Bible, and the first passage 
 which may greet you may be one that shall start the inquiry, 
 " What must I do to be saved ?" 
 
 Fourthly, there is another class in whose minds the inquiry 
 
130 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 may be started by some of the scenes of nature some of the 
 works of God, that may fix the roving thoughts, and lead the 
 mind upward and onward. Creation is full of God, and his 
 voice may be heard in everything round about us. When, weary 
 with the toils of the day, the merchant comes to his dwelling ; 
 when the " ploughman homeward plods his weary way ;" when 
 the seaman in a calm sees his sails hang loosely, and his " ship 
 like a painted thing upon a painted ocean ;" when in the still 
 evening the zephyr gently breathes, God speaks often in tones 
 as gentle to the soul. Then the mind is calm, and the passions 
 are hushed, and nature is still, and all in and around prompts 
 to serious thought, and leads the soul to the contemplation of 
 the world to come. And so when the thunder-peal breaks on 
 the hills, or over the dwelling in the silence of the night ; when 
 the tempest sweeps along, and the oak is prostrated on the 
 mountain, God often speaks to the soul and awakens solemn 
 thought. Luther was awakened to a sense of sin and danger, 
 and led to ask the question, " What must I do to be saved ?" 
 by the terrors of the tempest, and God made the lightning and 
 the storm the means of arousing his mind to do the great work 
 which he had for him to accomplish. He was then twenty-two 
 years of age. He was on his way from his home to the academy 
 at Erfurth. On his journey he was overtaken by a violent 
 storm. The thunder roared. He threw himself upon the ground 
 on his knees. His hour he apprehended had come. Death, 
 judgment, and eternity were before him in all their terrors, and 
 spoke with a voice which he could no longer resist. " Encom- 
 passed," as he said, " with the anguish and terror of death, he 
 made a vow that, if God would deliver him from this danger, 
 he would forsake the world and devote himself to his service."* 
 That event changed the course of his life changed the destiny 
 of nations. And who, in conscious danger, has not felt the 
 inquiry cross the mindj as Luther and the jailer did, " What 
 must I do to be saved ?" 
 
 Fifthly, there are others in whose minds the inquiry is started, by 
 the dispensations of Providence. The providence which embar- 
 rasses you in your business ; which throws unexpected obstacles 
 in your way when you are grasping the world, and living for 
 this world alone ; which strips away your property by causes 
 which you could not foresee and could not surmount, how 
 much adapted is it to show you that there is a Presiding Being 
 over the affairs of men ; to lead you to inquire why he placed 
 these obstacles in your path ; to lead you to ask the question 
 * D'Aubigne. 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 131 
 
 whether there are not higher ends for which you should live? 
 The providence which takes away your health, and lays you for 
 weeks on a bed of languishing, appears to be designed to lead 
 you to reflect on the feebleness of your frame ; on the uncertain 
 tenure of the hold on life ; on the higher scenes which await 
 man in the future world ; and to lead you to ask on that bed 
 of languishing, " What must I do to be saved ? " The provi- 
 dence which takes away a lovely child, how much fitted is it to 
 lead the mind to sober thought ! Yesterday it was blithe and 
 playful, and your home was happy ; to-day it lies pale and cold 
 in death, and you cannot but feel that God has designed that 
 you should pause in your career, and reflect on death and the 
 coming world. . 
 
 And, S'ixthly, there are those, in great numbers, who are led 
 to reflection and to inquiry by the warnings of his word. The 
 preaching of the gospel is God's great ordinance for awakening 
 the attention of men to the subject of religion, and arousing 
 them to thought and solicitude in regard to their immortal 
 welfare. To secure this is one of the great ends contemplated 
 by the institution of the ministry of reconciliation ; and it is 
 every way adapted to the end in view. Of those who become 
 Christians, by far the largest portion are awakened to a sense of 
 their sin and danger under the preaching of the gospel; and 
 more frequently the inquiry is started, " What must I do to be 
 saved," in this manner than in all other methods combined. 
 
 I might go on to speak of many other methods by which the 
 attention of the sinner is arrested, and by which he is brought 
 to serious reflection : his own solemn thoughts when alone ; the 
 conversation of a stranger ; the counsel of a friend ; the Bible 
 that he casually opens ; the tract that is laid in his way ; the 
 book that he has been induced by a friend to read ; the deep 
 feeling that sometimes pervades a community in a revival of 
 religion ; or some secret, silent influence of the Eternal Spirit on 
 his mind that he is never able to trace to any secondary cause. 
 One thing cannot but strike you in all this : it is the variety of 
 methods the numberless ways in which God makes his appeal 
 to men ; the countless modes of access which he has to the soul, 
 prompting to the great inquiry, " What must I do to be saved f" 
 And yet, in all cases, with all the endless variety of means 
 employed, and all the variety of emotions and feelings produced, 
 arising from age, and temperament, and diversity of education, 
 and the manner in which the appeal is brought to the mind 
 the general character of the feeling is the same : it is awakened 
 interest in religion j it is a growing conviction of its importance ; 
 
132 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 it is calm reflection ; it is a sense of danger and insecurity in 
 the present state ; it is a feeling that something ought to be done 
 in order to be saved. 
 
 At this stage, however, everything seems to be full of per- 
 plexity. Doubts arise on the whole subject of religion. What 
 is to be believed as true and what is to be done, are alike points 
 on which the mind is often in the utmost perplexity. Amidst 
 the thousand opinions entertained in the church, which is to be 
 believed ? Who shall tell us what is true ? Who shall guide 
 us into the path of peace ? And another thing is equally per- 
 plexing what is to be done. Something, it is clear, should be 
 done ; but what shall it be ? In this state of feeling, the jailer 
 came to Paul and Silas to know what should be done ; in a 
 similar state of feeling many would give worlds if some one 
 would tell them with certainty what they should do. 
 
 I desire now, in conclusion, to suggest a few thoughts, by 
 way of counsel, applicable to this state of mind. 
 
 (1.) The first is, Cherish the disposition to reflection. Be 
 wilting to think on your ways ; to ponder calmly and seriously 
 so important a subject as religion. Be willing to think it all 
 over the past, the present, the future ; your character, your 
 hopes, your dangers, your duties, your privileges, and your 
 destiny. Be willing to think on the question whether religion 
 is true ; what it is ; whether its hopes may be yours. He is not 
 far from the kingdom of God who is willing to think on the 
 subject of religion, and in all honesty to follow out the result of 
 his own reflections. Need I urge any more reasons for this 
 counsel ? It is a subject worthy of thought. Assuredly, if there 
 is anything that can properly claim the attention of the human 
 mind it is this. What are all things else in respect to us, com- 
 pared with the salvation of our own souls ? And who is injured 
 by calm and careful thought ? Who is made the poorer, or the 
 less worthy to be respected, by sober reflection ? What mer- 
 chant is more likely to fail by reflecting carefully on his business ; 
 what youth endangers his reputation by considerate reflection on 
 his character and plans ; what student is retarded in the attain- 
 ment of knowledge by attentive thoughtfulness on his studies ; 
 what physician is injured by a close application of his mind to 
 the symptoms of disease and the right methods of healing ; what 
 lawyer by close attention to the law and the evidence in the 
 case entrusted to him ? But again, what interests are there 
 which are not jeoparded by recklessness and want of thought ? 
 Ho\f often is fortune squandered ; is health ruined ; is the 
 opportunity of preparing for honour and usefulness lost ; is life 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 133 
 
 itself the forfeit of a want of reflection ! How many bankrupts 
 are there who might have heen saved by timely thought ; how 
 many drunkards who might have been happy and useful by 
 proper reflection ; how many are there now useless to the world, 
 who would have been ornaments to society if in early years they 
 had reflected calmly on their privileges, and thoughtfully 
 pursued the paths of learning or business ! I counsel you, there- 
 fore, to cherish every serious thought that passes through your 
 minds on the subject of religion, and to be willing to follow 
 where sober thought would lead you. 
 
 (2.) I counsel you to avoid the scenes which would be likely 
 to dissipate your serious reflections. You may be less ready to 
 follow me in this than in the former, and yet this is essential if 
 you would secure the salvation of the soul. But do not mis- 
 understand me. I do not counsel you to immure yourself in a 
 cloister. I advise not a useless and a gloomy asceticism. I ask 
 you not to be morose, sour, dissocial, melancholy. All these I 
 regard as infinitely far from religion, alike in its beginnings in 
 the soul, and in its highest progress towards perfection. 
 
 But there are scenes which are unfavourable to serious reflec- 
 tion, and which tend to dissipate serious thought, and which one 
 must consent to leave for ever if he would serve God and follow 
 the Saviour. The theatre, the ball-room, the circles of gaiety, 
 the places of revelry how can they be made to be favourable to 
 serious thought ; how are they consistent with an earnest desire 
 to be saved ? Between those scenes and the calm and serene 
 spirit of the gospel between the spirit which reigns there, and 
 that which reigned in the bosom of the Saviour, there is such 
 a contrast that the one cannot live where the other does ; and if 
 you make up your mind to have the one, you must make up 
 your mind not to have the other. 
 
 I am sensible that, even to a mind under the degree of 
 thoughtfulness which I have now been endeavouring to describe, 
 it is one of the most difficult things that I can exhort you to do, 
 to follow the counsel which I am now giving. So fascinating is 
 that gay and brilliant world ; so many of your friends find 
 pleasure there ; so entirely may you seem to be shut out from all 
 society if you withdraw from that ; so many ties bind you to it 
 by a network so interlaced and so strong ; and so much would 
 you dread to hare it whispered around to " lover and friend" 
 that you are becoming serious, that I do not wonder at the diffi- 
 culty of breaking away. Yet, there is no option. If you would 
 be a Christian, if you would find the way of salvation, you must 
 <nake up your mind, if need be, to bear the frowns, the sneers, 
 
134j THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 the ridicule of the world for the path to heaven and to glory 
 lies not through scenes of vanity and of sin. 
 
 (3.) I counsel you to pray. For what is more appropriate 
 than prayer in the state of mind which I have described ? 
 Where should one go who is asking what he shall do to be 
 saved, if not to God ? You are just beginning to grapple with 
 great questions that are too much for the unaided human mind. 
 You are beginning to think about themes on which the pro- 
 foundest human intellects have been employed, and which are 
 the subject of the contemplation of angels and seraphs. You are 
 beginning to reflect on the past, and the future ; the distant, the 
 grand, the infinite, when every thought takes hold on eternity. 
 You are commencing an inquiry which has never been continued 
 long, and which has never been conducted to a happy issue 
 without prayer. To your mind all is dark, and in this inquiry 
 you need above all things the guidance of the Father of lights, and 
 you will never find the path to heaven till " in his light you see 
 light." What, then, can be more appropriate for a human being 
 in these circumstances than prayer ? 
 
 Are there any of you whose minds are in the condition described 
 in this discourse serious, thoughtful, pondering the question, 
 What shall I do to be saved ? Go to your closets. Pray. Alone 
 with the God that made you with the Father of lights with 
 him who hears prayer ask him this great question, What 
 must I do to be saved ? If your Maker has never heard 
 the voice of prayer before come from your lips, this night, ere 
 you slumber, let him hear the humble, fervent cry for knowledge, 
 for mercy, for salvation. 
 
SEEMON XL ' 
 
 CONVICTION OF SIN. 
 
 PSA.LM li. 4. " Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil 
 in thy sight ; that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be 
 clear when thou judgest." 
 
 THE plan of salvation is designed for sinners. None are saved 
 by that plan who are not regarded as such. The gospel has 
 no significancy unless it be supposed that men are violators of 
 the law of God. It has no peculiar adaptation to men except 
 on that supposition. It seeks to excite the conviction that he 
 is a sinner in the bosom of every man whom it addresses, and 
 it is certain that no one will appreciate its provisions, or be 
 saved by it, who does not feel and admit that truth in regard to 
 himself. If there is, therefore, any one who is unwilling to 
 admit, in the proper sense of the term, that he is a sinner, he 
 should not entertain the hope of being saved by the gospel, and 
 should not feel himself specially addressed in any of its com- 
 munications. It is indispensable that a man, if he would be 
 saved, should be convinced of sin. The two preceding discourses 
 were, respectively, on the state of man as the gospel finds him, 
 and on the condition of the mind when it begins to reflect on 
 the subject of religion. We advance a step further in unfolding 
 the way of salvation by considering the state of the mind when 
 under conviction for sin. I shall explain what is meant by the 
 term ; consider the law of our nature in accordance with which 
 conviction for sin is produced ; and show what it is that the 
 sinner is convinced of in that state, or what constitutes genuine 
 conviction of sin. 
 
 I. What is meant by the term conviction of sin. The short 
 and perhaps the sufficient explanation of this is, being convinced 
 of sin so as to feel and acknowledge that we are sinners. The 
 term has, however, somewhat of a technical and theological 
 signification which makes it necessary to explain it somewhat 
 further ; and unfortunately, also, it is so associated in the minds 
 of many with what they would be pleased to regard as cant or 
 fanaticism with Calvinism, or Methodism, or Evangelism that 
 it seems necessary, if I can, to do something to remove thi 
 10 
 
136 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 impression, and to show you that it is possible that sensible 
 men may, without compromising their own dignity, become 
 convinced that they are sinners. I would, then, submit to you 
 the following remarks : 
 
 (a) There is a state of mind, very common, which results 
 from being convinced by argument. A course of reasoning may 
 be so conclusive that there can be no doubt on the subject. A 
 mathematical proposition may be so demonstrated ; an historical 
 fact may be so established ; a truth in morals may be so clearly 
 proved ; a jury may be so satisfied ; a point in theology may be 
 so defended, that no one can have any doubt on the truth of 
 the point under consideration. And thus a man may be so 
 thoroughly convinced that our race is fallen, and that he, as one 
 of the race, has come into the world with a corrupt nature, that 
 his mind may be as fully satisfied on this subject as he is of the 
 truth of a mathematical proposition. Yet it is clear that, though 
 thus convinced, this latter truth may be held in such a manner 
 as to make no more impression on his conscience and his heart 
 than the mathematical demonstration had done. Though per- 
 taining to itself, yet the mind has the power of looking at it 
 as a mere abstraction ; and nothing is more common than for a 
 man to be able to prove that he is himself a sinner, or to listen 
 to an argument clearly demonstrating it, without emotion. 
 
 (>) Again, a man may not only look at this as an abstract 
 argument, but he may have a very distinct recollection of wrong 
 doing, and yet have no compunction, no remorse. By knowing 
 or supposing that the fact is concealed ; or by a cultivated habit 
 of severe mental discipline ; or by the ' hardening effect of many 
 acts of guilt on his own soul ; or by some perverted views of 
 mental philosophy, morals, or theology, he may have succeeded 
 in keeping his mind calm and undisturbed, though he is conscious 
 that he has done wrong. The mind may be in such a state as 
 to contemplate its own past acts of depravity as calmly as it 
 does the depravity of others, and with as little compunction. 
 This is the state of mind which men commonly seek ; and in 
 this they are frequently, for a time at least, eminently successful. 
 
 (c) Again, there is a kind of conviction of guilt from the 
 lestimony of others, which may produce as little impression on 
 the soul There is a difference, in this respect, between the use 
 of the word in theology and in the courts. A man is convicted, 
 or found guilty, by a jury, and is so regarded and treated by 
 the court. But he may or may not be convinced of the crime 
 himself, or be sensible of guilt in the matter. He may be a 
 hardened wretch, so steeped in crime as to be apparently beyond 
 
CONVICTION OF SIN. 137 
 
 the possibility of feeling ; or he may be perfectly innocent of the 
 crime, though he has been adjudged to be guilty by the jury, 
 and is so held up to the public by the sentence of the court. 
 But, in either case, the verdict of the jury and the sentence of 
 the court have done nothing to convince him that he is guilty. 
 He is convicted not convinced. The verdict of the jury and 
 the judgment of the court may or may not tend to convince 
 him that he is guilty. That is a private, personal matter, with 
 which the jury and the court have nothing to do. Even if 
 guilty, the process in the court-room may have made no practical 
 impression of his own criminality on his mind. He may have 
 watched the evidence that has been adduced against him with 
 the utmost attention, and may have no doubt when the verdict 
 of the jury finding him guilty is rendered, that it is according to 
 the testimony, and according to truth, and yet neither the evi- 
 dence nor the verdict may have made any practical impression 
 of guilt on his own mind. 
 
 (d) Again, there is a state of mind in which one who has 
 been guilty of crime may, in the proper sense of the term, be 
 convinced of it, convinced neither as an abstract proposition, 
 nor by the finding of a jury, nor by the judgment of a court, 
 but as a personal matter and in the proper sense of the term, so 
 as to produce a sense of wrong doing distress in view of the 
 past, and apprehension in view of what is to come. This is 
 conviction of sin. 
 
 This, if not sufficiently plain already, can be made plain by a 
 reference to the case already adverted to. A man on trial for 
 his life has been convicted by a jury. We will suppose it to 
 be a case where he before knew that he had committed the 
 crime, but he was a hardened offender. For the crime when 
 committed, or subsequently before the trial, or during the trial, 
 he had had no compunction. He had so disciplined his moral 
 and his physical frame as to obliterate all the natural expressions 
 of criminality, and even so as to suppress all feeling of guilt. 
 He went through the whole process of the trial with an unper- 
 turbed spirit, scarcely feeling any emotion, and betraying none 
 His was such an intellectual, and, to a great degree, such an 
 abstract employment in watching the progress of the trial in 
 estimating the weight of the testimony and in contemplating 
 the skill of the counsel, that, in union with his former hardened 
 character, and with the hope of escape, he may scarcely have 
 had during the trial a single compunctious visitation of remorse. 
 When the trial is over, however, and he is remanded to his 
 lonely prison, and the darkness of the night in his cell draws 
 
138 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 on, and he has opportunity to reflect on the past, a kind of 
 conviction may occur very different from that which has been 
 found by the court and jury. Then it is of no use longer to 
 dissemble. Then there is no hope of concealment. Then the 
 mind is no longer diverted from its own criminality by watching 
 the evidence, or by observing the intellectual conflicts of the 
 counsel, or by indulging the hope of escape from conviction. Then 
 nature acts, and the proper effect of guilt is felt in the soul. 
 Then there comes to his soul the recollection of the nature and 
 claims of the law which he has violated ; the evil motives which 
 actuated him; the base passions which controlled him; the 
 wrong which has been done to an individual or to the com- 
 munity ; the sight of the suffering victim ; the dishonour which 
 he has brought upon himself or his family ; the shame of the 
 public death which he is to suffer ; the better instructions which 
 he had in his childhood, and of the better life which he might 
 have led : and all these topics now find their way to his heart 
 and conscience. This state of mind is quite different from what 
 is meant by the conviction implied in the verdict of a jury. 
 That is a declaration that he is guilty at the bar of his country ; 
 this, that he is guilty at the bar of conscience and of God. 
 
 This is what I mean by conviction of sin. It is not merely 
 that which is produced by argument ; it is not merely that 
 which arises from an intellectual process convincing one in 
 general that he, as a man, is a sinner, as all other men are ; it 
 is that which exists when he sees and feels personally that he is 
 guilty before God, and when the feeling is attended by the 
 distress, trouble, apprehension and alarm, which, by the laws 
 of our nature, are the proper concomitants of the consciousness 
 of guilt. 
 
 I have only to say further, under this head, that this convic- 
 tion of sin is, under the Divine government and in the plan of 
 salvation, preliminary to, and necessary to, pardon. In a human 
 government it may or it may not be. An executive in pardon- 
 ing a convict from the penitentiary may not require this ; or may 
 not act in view of it, if it does exist ; nor would he feel bound 
 to extend pardon in any case where it did exist for pardon, 
 under any human government, is not founded on this. The 
 pardoned man, there may be still a hardened offender, or he may 
 have been innocent all along, and in either case may have never 
 felt any of the compunctions of guilt. It might contribute 
 much, indeed, in a given case, to dispose an executive to pardon 
 an offender if he was satisfied that he was truly penitent, but 
 lie would not feel bound on that account to pardon him if it 
 
CONVICTION OF SIN. 139 
 
 were so, or to withhold pardon if it were not ; nor would pardon 
 ever be extended on that sole ground at all. Not so in the 
 Divine administration. There the genuine conviction the feel- 
 ing of personal guilt is an indispensable preliminary to pardon ; 
 and there, wherever and whenever it truly exists, by an arrange- 
 ment in the plan of salvation it secures forgiveness. 
 
 II. My second object was to consider the law of our nature in 
 accordance with which this conviction of sin is produced. 
 
 (a) That law, when nature acts freely, is simply this, that 
 when we have done wrong we feel guilty, or distressed on 
 account of it. The mind itself decides that wrong has been 
 done ; the conscience rebukes and troubles us for having done 
 it. This is an internal feeling ; it springs up in the mind 
 itself ; it is the result of its own mysterious mechanism ; it may 
 be conceived of as existing apart from any apprehension of what 
 is to come, and apart from any outward expression or manifesta- 
 tion whatever. It is simple self-condemnation of the act a 
 sense of wrong-doing a sense of ill-desert. In the actual 
 arrangements, however, it is connected with two things which 
 serve to characterize it : (1) one is, the apprehension of punish- 
 ment in the future for the soul is so made as to feel that, if 
 guilty, there is a Supreme Being whose wrath is to be feared ; 
 and (2) the other is, that, in our present bodily organization, it 
 has a proper outward expression or sign. When nature acts 
 freely, guilt is indicated by the blush of shame, the trembling 
 limbs, the averted or downcast eye, the suspicious and suspect- 
 ing look, the disposition to withdraw from the presence and the 
 gaze of men. The God of nature, as he made man, intended 
 that guilt should thus express itself, and it would always do it 
 if the laws of our being were acted out. 
 
 (b) The design of this law of nature is threefold, and it is as 
 beneficent as it is marvellous ; it could have been devised only 
 by a God who is at the same time just and good. It is (1), to 
 deter us from committing crime by this consciousness of wrong 
 by the fear of this terrible rebuke the dread of this self-con- 
 demnation ; (2), to induce us to repair a wrong that has been 
 done, since under the regular law of our being we can never 
 find peace unless confession is made and the wrong is repaired ; 
 and (3), to be a means of recovering us from an evil course, and 
 saving us from future suffering and sin, when we have done 
 wrong. It is thus a great moral means of governing the world, 
 and is thus also connected with a scheme of recovery from sin 
 inwrought into the whole plan of salvation. If man would 
 always regard this he would be deterred from sin ; were it not 
 
140 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 for this, he, having sinned, could never he redeemed and saved. 
 As it is, the plan of salvation will yet be seen to be based 
 on great laws of our nature, and to be in great measure their 
 development. 
 
 (c) But this great law of our nature, I need not remark, is 
 not always operative. The instances already referred to, and 
 thousands of well-known cases in the world, sufficiently illustrate 
 this. The reasons why it is not so are too numerous to be 
 specified here, and are not immediately necessary to the purpose 
 which I have in view. I have said that if nature were true to 
 herself, or rather if we were true to nature, the act of crime 
 would be always and immediately followed by the convictions 
 and by the indications of guilt, the blush of conscious crimi- 
 nality ; the trembling of the frame ; the apprehension of the 
 wrath of God. But crime is committed often under the influence 
 of strong passions, and the passion lingers . after the act is done, 
 and does not immediately leave the mind clear and free to act. 
 Or, we dread the convictions of guilt, and try to vindicate 
 ourselves, and by perverted reasoning ward off the consciousness 
 of criminality. Or, we fear the shame of the manifestation of 
 conscious guilt, and learn to discipline our frame so that it shall 
 not betray us. Or, we have a fancied interest in the evil course, 
 and by becoming absorbed in it turn the mind from the contem- 
 plation of the real guilt. Or, we bring ourselves under another 
 law of our being that by constantly practising iniquity we 
 become less sensible of the evil ; we acquire a confirmed habit ; 
 we make the conscience less susceptible and less quick in its 
 decisions ; we blind the mind to nice moral distinctions, and we 
 harden the heart to the enormity of evil. In this way we learn 
 to commit iniquity without blushing, without shame, and with- 
 out remorse. The eye becomes fixed, and the hand steady, and 
 the frame firm, even when doing conscious wrong. Men learn even 
 to command the blood so that it shall not mantle the cheek to 
 betray them, and learn to make the forehead smooth and cloudless. 
 They go coolly into the work of crime and steep their hands in 
 blood, or practise iniquity for years, with no sense of remorse, 
 no rebuke of conscience. The cheek of the harlot, where the last 
 blush of modesty has long since disappeared ; the steady hand 
 of the assassin ; the calm step of the midnight robber ; the cool 
 purpose of the seducer of innocence ; the " seared conscience" of 
 the impenitent sinner ; the unperturbed spirit of the man that 
 neglects his God and Saviour, show how effectual may be this 
 effort on the part of the guilty, and how the benevolent inten- 
 tions of this law of our nature may be frustrated. Thus the 
 
CONVICTION OF SIN. 141 
 
 brethren of Joseph., without compunction or remorse, pursued 
 coolly their purpose toward their younger brother a helpless, 
 inoffensive, and lovely boy first in proposing to kill him, then 
 in thrusting him into a deep pit, and then in selling him to be 
 exposed in a slave market in a distant land, and to be subjected 
 to all the unknown evils of perpetual bondage there. Thus 
 David, apparently with as little compunction or remorse at the 
 time, was guilty of an enormous wrong to a highly meritorious 
 officer in his army, and a devoted patriot, by first destroying his 
 domestic peace, and then seeking to kill him : having done him 
 one wrong, laying a plan to do him another by plotting his 
 death, and giving his instructions to that effect with a spirit as 
 cool and undisturbed as if he had been giving an ordinary order 
 about storming a fortress. Thus Judas Iscariot seems to have 
 made the bargain for the betrayal of his Lord with as cairn and 
 unperturbed a spirit as he would have made a contract in the 
 most common matters of trade, nor did the enormous guilt of the 
 act which he was doing seem even to occur to his mind. I need 
 not say that men often show that they have this power of 
 extinguishing all the natural marks of guilt, and stifling for 
 years all its convictions, in committing crime, or in the practices 
 of vice. The conscience is " seared as with a hot iron;" the soul 
 becomes lost to all the feelings of guilt, shame, modesty, decency, 
 self-respect. The great law of nature, so wise and so beneficent, 
 so essential to the good of society and to the individual himself, 
 is well nigh obliterated, and, for a time, may cease to act 
 altogether. 
 
 (d) But there are arrangements in the soul itself, in society, 
 under the Divine government, and in the plan of salvation, for 
 reviving that law, and giving it its true place, and it is under 
 that arrangement that men are convicted of sin. Those arrange- 
 ments need not be adverted to now at length. They embrace 
 all the devices for calling past sins to remembrance ; for quick- 
 ening the power and the decisions of conscience ; for bringing 
 the nature and the degree of guilt before the mind, and for 
 arousing the souls of the guilty with the apprehensions of the 
 wrath to come. There may be, from some cause, a mysterious 
 recalling of those long-forgotten sins to the memory in such a 
 way that their guilt may be deeply felt. The tumult of the 
 mind which existed when the crime was committed may have 
 subsided ; the passion which blinded the soul may have passed away ; 
 the companions and associates of guilt may have gone to other 
 lands or other worlds ; you may have leisure to think of the 
 past, and may be in circumstances strongly fitted to recall the 
 
142 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 past to your remembrance : in S9litude ; in the silence of the 
 night-watches ; in affliction and trouble ; under the admonition 
 of a friend, or under the preaching of the gospel, or by the 
 silent influences of the Divine Spirit on the soul, these forgotten 
 sins may rise to the remembrance, and the soul be overwhelmed 
 with the consciousness of criminality. A brief allusion to the 
 cases already referred to, will illustrate the operation of this 
 law, and at the same time do something to show the nature of 
 genuine conviction of sin. 
 
 Joseph's brethren had sold their innocent young brother to a 
 company of travelling merchants. They appear to have divided 
 the money, and to have supposed that that was an end of the 
 matter. They invented the most plausible falsehood they could 
 devise to deceive their aged father, and they gave themselves no 
 more concern about it. Years passed away. A sore famine 
 came upon their land. They were constrained to go to a distant 
 country to buy food. There they were accused and arrested as 
 spies. A strict inquiry was made of them respecting their 
 family, their father, their younger brother at home. Everything 
 was dark to them. A series of calamities had come upon them 
 which they could not account for. They began to think of their 
 former conduct and of God; and the wrong which they had 
 done to their brother, though long forgotten, flashed upon their 
 minds. " And they said one to another, We are verily guilty con- 
 cerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when 
 he besought us, and we would not hear ; therefore is this distress 
 come upon us," Gen. xlii. 21. David, little impressed, as it 
 would seem, at first, with the enormity of his crime, soon forgot 
 it altogether. The faithful officer, the patriot, the husband who 
 might have given him trouble, was out of the way having 
 fallen, as he intended, under the arrows of the Ammonites. The 
 beautiful wife of that officer, David's partner in crime, he had 
 taken to his home, and the crimes of adultery and murder appear 
 to have been forgotten. But a man whom the monarch was accus- 
 tomed to hear, and who spake in the name of God, came to the 
 palace, and by one of the most beautiful and touching parables 
 ever uttered, arrested the attention of the man of guilt, so that 
 in a moment all the blackness of his crime stood before him, 
 and broken-hearted he prostrated himself before his offended 
 God, and pleaded for pardon. Judas seems to have taken his 
 thirty pieces of silver, the price of treachery, and to have borne 
 them off calmly, if not exultingly having accomplished a leading 
 purpose of his whole life in obtaining money, and being little 
 troubled at the wrong that he had done. He expected, perhaps, 
 
CONVICTION OF SIN. 143 
 
 that he who had so often evaded his enemies, and who had 
 foiled their attempts to seize him, would do it again. But, con- 
 trary to these expectations, the Saviour had suffered himself to 
 he taken. He was hound, he was tried, he was condemned, he 
 was about to he crucified and in a moment all his own guilt 
 flashed in his face. He threw down the ignominious price of 
 blood at the feet of his employers, and, stung by remorse, he 
 went out and closed his life. 
 
 This, as I understand it, is the law of our nature under which 
 conviction of sin is produced, and all that is done when a sinner 
 is convicted is in accordance with this law, and is but carrying 
 out an arrangement designed to deter him from the commission 
 of crime, and to check and recover him to virtue, if it has been 
 committed. It is under this law that the arrangement is made 
 in the plan of salvation, that no man shall obtain pardon who 
 does not feel that he is a sinner, or who is not truly convicted 
 of sin. 
 
 Yet it is evident that there may be a false, as well as a 
 genuine conviction ; a conviction that shall arise from the mere 
 dread of punishment, as well as that which arises from the 
 intrinsic evil of sin; a conviction which will, as in the case of Judas, 
 lead a sinner to the act of self-murder, as well as that which will 
 lead, as in the case of the jailer at Philippi, or Saul of Tarsus, 
 to true repentance. 
 
 III. It remains, then, in the third place, to state what is 
 implied in genuine conviction of sin. Of what is the sinner 
 convinced or convicted in this state of mind ? This question I 
 answer by a few specifications. 
 
 (1.) It is his own sin of which he is convicted, and no other. 
 It must be limited to his own ; he cannot be convicted of the 
 sins of another. We are not carelessly made in this respect. We 
 are so formed that the sense of guilt or blame worthiness can 
 arise in the mind only in view of our own sins. We may have 
 many emotions in view of the sins of others, and be concerned 
 in them in most important ways, but we never have in regard 
 to them the feeling of guilt, and it is no part of the way of 
 salvation that we should have it. Over the sins of others we 
 may indeed weep on account of their folly ; as a consequence of 
 their faults we may suffer; for their sins we may be affected 
 with shame and confusion of face, if they are the sins of those 
 to whom we are united by the ties of blood or friendship, but 
 we never have the sense of guilt or blame worthiness on account 
 of them. You cannot have it. You can no more have this 
 feeling on account of the sin of a father than on account of the sin. 
 
144 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 of a stranger whom you have never seen before ; on account of 
 the sin of an erring son or daughter than on account of the folly 
 of the son or daughter of your neighbour or of a stranger ; on 
 account of the sin of Adam than on account of the sin of Judas 
 Iscariot. You may, indeed, be affected by the one in a way in 
 which you will not be by the other ; you may be made poor, and 
 begin life under disadvantages, in consequence of the sin of a 
 father, which you would not incur by the sin of a stranger ; you 
 may be clothed with shame, and filled with sorrow, by the sin 
 of your own son or daughter, as you would not be by the folly 
 of others ; you may have been and you have certainly been 
 affected by the sin of Adam as you have not been by the sin of 
 Judas for to him we trace the origin of all our woes the fact 
 that we are fallen, that we have a depraved nature, that we are 
 to die and by his sin we may be affected for ever ; but you no 
 more feel guilt in the one case than in the other. You cannot if 
 you try. You ought not if you could. It is not required of you 
 in order to be saved ; and if you imagine that you do feel guilty 
 for his sin, or the sin of any other man but yourself, it is simply 
 an hallucination of the mind. No man ever yet did feel it ; no 
 man ever can. The rocky shores of ocean are not fixed so 
 firmly as this barrier in regard to the consciousness of guilt ; the 
 stars will fly from their spheres, before this law is changed that 
 the consciousness of guilt is attached to personal criminality, and 
 to nothing else. You have no genuine conviction of sin but that 
 which arises from your own guilt. 
 
 (2.) Genuine conviction of sin is a sense of its evil considered 
 as committed against God. It is not a feeling produced by the 
 fact that it has exposed us to shame, to disadvantage, or to 
 punishment ; or that our fellow-men may have been wronged by 
 us ; or that it will blast our reputation, or will overwhelm those 
 who are dear to us with disgrace. That one or more or all of 
 these classes of feeling may be connected with genuine conviction 
 of sin, there can be no doubt ; but it is equally clear that there 
 may be genuine and deep conviction where not one of them may 
 exist, and that all these combined would not of themselves be 
 such conviction ; for a man may have a deep apprehension of 
 shame, of disgrace, and of punishment, and still never have felt 
 that he was blameworthy. This idea which I am now present- 
 ing is the prominent one in my text : " Against thee, thee only, 
 have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." It was true 
 that David had committed an enormous wrong against a fellow- 
 man ; it was true that he had been guilty of an atrocious evil 
 against society, and against good morals j but still, all this evil 
 
CONVICTION OF SIN. 145 
 
 terminated on God, and the evil considered as committed against 
 him was so vast and overwhelming that every other aspect of it 
 was absorbed and lost. Whoever else was wronged, he was 
 most wronged ; whoever was injured, the great evil in the case 
 consisted in the violation of his law ; and whatever wrong had 
 been done to an individual or to society, the grand evil in the case 
 consisted in the fact that God had been disobeyed, and his law 
 set at nought. So sin in all cases, whatever may be its form, 
 and whoever may be affected by it, is a violation of the law of 
 God, and its grand evil is to be found in that fact. Approved 
 by men or disapproved ; followed with honour or disgrace ; 
 punished or not punished ; known to the world or unknown, it 
 has an intrinsic evil in its nature as a violation of the Divine 
 law ; and it is that evil which is always contemplated, and which 
 is the source of the sorrow in genuine repentance. It is, then, 
 in the view of the mind, an evil and a bitter thing. If you con- 
 ceal it, it does not alter its nature ; if you could assure the peni- 
 tent that it would be for ever unknown to any human being, and 
 would never be followed by either shame or punishment, it 
 would not essentially change the nature of his feelings towards 
 it. He is sad at the remembrance of the fact that he has com- 
 mitted it ; he feels himself degraded, and mortified, and debased 
 that he has ever been guilty of violating the law of his God. 
 
 (3.) Though the fear of shame and punishment may not be 
 the leading idea in genuine repentance, and may not even enter 
 into it at all, yet there is a feeling always that it deserves punish- 
 ment. This is inseparable, in the constitution of our minds, 
 from the conviction of guilt. The guilty child feels that it 
 would be right in a parent to punish him ; the man who has 
 violated the laws of his country, and who has any proper sense 
 of the evil of his course, feels that a penalty affixed to the law 
 is right ; the man who is sensible that he has sinned against his 
 God feels that it is right that God should manifest his displea- 
 sure, and that the guilty should suffer. He may not be able to 
 determine the amount of punishment that is due to his act, nor 
 may he see clearly as yet that his sin deserves eternal punish- 
 ment, or that it should throw him beyond the reach of mercy 
 and hope, but it is of the nature of all true conviction of sin to 
 feel that punishment is deserved, and that he who inflicts it is 
 right and just. Thus David in the text says, " That thou 
 mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when 
 thou judgest." A man cannot feel genuine conviction of sin and 
 not feel that he ought to be punished. Hence men, under the 
 pressure of this conviction, come and confess an act of murder, 
 
146 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 and give themselves up to be punished. And hence sinners, 
 when under genuine conviction of sin, look forward to punish- 
 ment in the future world, and dread it, not so much because it 
 is said that they will be punished, as because guilt always 
 supposes that it will be so, and that it is right that it should 
 be so. 
 
 These three things, therefore, I think will always enter into 
 true conviction of sin, that it is our own sins, and not those 
 of another, on account of which we feel guilty ; that the primary 
 and principal reason of our conviction is the fact that sin is 
 itself an evil as committed against God ; and that there is 
 involved essentially the feeling that it deserves the expression 
 of displeasure on the part of Him whose law has been violated. 
 How deep these convictions may be ; how long they may be 
 continued ; how pungent and distressing our feelings under them ; 
 and how the distress is to be relieved, are other points of inquiry 
 which it is not necessary now to consider. There are two or 
 three remarks, however, which seem necessary to complete the 
 just view of the subject, and with these I shall close. 
 
 (1.) These laws of our nature, 011 which conviction of sin is 
 based, will be likely to operate in the future as well as in the 
 present ; in the world beyond the grave as well as in the land 
 of the living. Why should they not ? There is to be no change 
 in our essential constitution ; and far on in the most distant 
 portion of eternity to which we can now look forward, we shall 
 be under the administration of the same God, and the laws of 
 our being will be essentially the same. Past sin, though long 
 forgotten, may be called to remembrance. Time, distance, new 
 circumstances, do not change or diminish its power over the 
 soul. After the lapse of ten or twenty of a hundred or a 
 million of years, it may rise to the mind with all the freshness 
 which it had at the time of committing the deed, and inflict- 
 ing the same keen and fearful tortures, and exciting the same 
 deep and dreadful alarms in the prospect of the future, which it 
 ought to have caused then. He gains nothing, then, who succeeds 
 in stifling conviction now ; he has secured no permanent peace 
 who has, for the present, wholly forgotten his past crimes. 
 
 (2.) It accords with my general subject, and with this part 
 of my general plan, to say that in a way of salvation adapted 
 to man, it is necessary that there should be something that will 
 meet this law of our nature that will be founded on the fact 
 of its existence and that will prevent the effect to which I 
 have adverted in the future : that is, that shall recognise the 
 fact that man is a sinner, and that he is liable to be convicted 
 
CONVICTION OF SIN. 147 
 
 of sin ; and that will so dispose of sin that it shall not produce 
 distress and anguish in the future periods of our existence at 
 some time in our present life, on the bed of death, or beyond 
 the grave. This must be done, and done in a way that shall 
 accord with the proper method of dealing with sin and with the 
 conscience. It will not do this to teach men to forget it for 
 they cannot always forget it ; it will not do it to teach them 
 that sin is a trifle for God will not let them always feel that 
 it is a trifle ; it will not do this to introduce them into the circles 
 of vain amusements for men cannot always be engaged in vain 
 amusements ; it will not do it to teach them some false system 
 of religion that shall be a present opiate to the conscience- for 
 we are going to a world not of falsehood, but of truth. 
 
 (3.) It seems to follow from the view taken that the only way 
 by which this can be done is by some system of effectual pardon. 
 If sin is pardoned if it is freely and fully forgiven, all is done 
 that can be done to meet those laws of our being, and to place 
 the soul in the condition in which it would have been if it had 
 not sinned. If sin is pardoned, of course there is nothing to be 
 dreaded as to punishment in the future; if sin is pardoned, the 
 offender is placed essentially in the circumstances in which he 
 was before he had sinned. A scheme of salvation, then, that is 
 adapted to man, must embody and express some way by which 
 a sinner may be forgiven. 
 
 (4.) Peace in such a case can be found only in connexion with 
 confession of sin, confession made not to a third person, but to 
 the One whose law has been violated. All genuine conviction 
 of sin prompts to this, and David was but acting out the law 
 of our nature when he said, " I acknowledge my transgressions, 
 and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I 
 sinned ;" Job, when he said, " Behold, I am vile ; what shall I 
 answer thee ? I will lay my hand upon my mouth ;" the prodigal 
 son, when he said, " I have sinned against heaven and in thy 
 sight;" and the publican, when, not being able to lift up his 
 eyes to heaven, he said, " God be merciful to me a sinner." 
 " He that covereth his sins shall not prosper : but whoso con- 
 fesseth and forsaketh them shall find mercy." You cannot find 
 permanent peace by attempting to stifle the conviction of sin. 
 You cannot by endeavouring to cover and conceal your offences. 
 You cannot by suffering them to pass from your remembrance. 
 You cannot by confessing your sins against God to man though 
 robed in a priestly vestment and consecrated with holy oil. You 
 must go to God a poor penitent laden with the conviction of 
 guilt renouncing all attempts to justify yourself admitting 
 
148 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 the full truth that you are a sinner not attempting to cloak or 
 conceal one of your transgressions ; saying substantially, as David 
 did, " Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving- 
 kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies 
 blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine 
 iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my 
 transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, 
 thee only, have I sinned," Psa. li. 1 4. So pleading, by faith 
 in the blood that cleanseth from all sin the blood of the Re- 
 deemer your " sins will be blotted out as a cloud, and your 
 transgressions as a thick cloud," Isa. xliv. 22. So pleading, you 
 \\ill hear the voice which so often gave relief to the troubled 
 soul when the Redeemer walked on the earth, " Thy sins be 
 forgiven thee, go in peace ! " 
 
 ' 
 
SEKMON XII, 
 
 THE STRUGGLES OF A CONVICTED SINNER. 
 
 MARK x. 22, 23. "And he was sad at that saying, and went away 
 grieved ; for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked round about, and 
 saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into 
 the kingdom of God ! " 
 
 MATT. viii. 21, 22." And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, 
 suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow 
 me, and let the dead bury their dead." 
 
 LUKE ix. 61, 62." And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee ; but 
 let me first go bid them farewell which are at home at my house. And 
 Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and 
 looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." 
 
 EVERY one who has become a Christian has been conscious of a 
 struggle of greater or less intensity, and of longer or shorter 
 duration, before he found peace in believing. This struggle 
 arises from the conviction of duty and the sense of guilt and of 
 danger, on the one hand, and the love of the world and of sin, 
 in some form, on the other. The intensity and the duration of 
 this struggle will be varied much by the character of the indivi- 
 dual ; will be modified much by his time of life or by the kind 
 of instruction which he receives ; will be intense as his love of 
 sin may be intense and his conviction of its guilt may be intense, 
 and protracted as the love of sin and the world has been made 
 strong in his heart. 
 
 The cases to which I have referred in opening this discourse 
 are, each of them, an illustration of this thought : a few of 
 the many to be found in the New Testament, and all of them 
 having a counterpart in the application of the gospel to the 
 hearts of men in every age. The first is that of a rich young 
 man a man full of ardour, of many amiable qualities, and a 
 sincere inquirer on the subject of religion whom the Saviour 
 required to give up his wealth, and consecrate it to God if he 
 would follow him; and the struggle in his case was between 
 his conviction of the necessity of religion and his love of his 
 possessions. The second was that of a man whom the Saviour 
 called to follow him, but who asked that be might first go and 
 bury his father ; and the struggle in his case was between his 
 
150 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 conviction of a duty which he owed to Christ and a desire to 
 be saved, on the one hand, and a strong domestic tie one of 
 the strongest that can be conceived of and a supposed pressing 
 duty, growing out of that, on the other. The third was a similar 
 case that of a man who expressed a willingness to follow him, 
 but who merely asked a delay that he might go, before he gave 
 himself up to be a follower of Christ, and take a proper leave 
 of his own friends and family connexions : a parting struggle 
 between his love of those friends and the love of the Saviour. 
 In all these you will perceive essentially the same conflict of 
 mind: the command of Christ, his invitations and appeals, a 
 strong sense of duty, a conviction of the necessity of religion, 
 on the one hand ; and some form of earthly attachment, some 
 worldly engagement, some desire of respite and delay, some yet 
 un sundered tie binding to the world, on the other. This is the 
 subject to which, at the present time, I propose to ask your 
 attention : in other words, I wish to describe the struggles of a 
 sinner under conviction of sin before he yields to the claims of 
 the gospel. I shall endeavour to describe that struggle, and to 
 show the reasons why a sinner in that state is not converted. 
 In doing this, I shall seek to point out the nature of the 
 struggle ; the causes which produce it ; and some illustrations 
 of it as a mental operation, and as preventing the conversion 
 of the soul to God. 
 
 The struggle may be described, in general, in one word. It 
 is a conflict between a conviction of duty, and an unwillingness 
 to do it ; between a sense of what is right, and an inclination to 
 do wrong ; between a feeling that God ought to be obeyed, and 
 the love of sin and of the world which prevents obedience. It is a 
 conflict which shall have the mastery conscience or pleasure ; 
 benevolence or selfishness ; religion or the world. The person 
 referred to is sensible of the evil of the course which be is pur- 
 suing, but is not prepared to abandon it ; he is convinced that 
 he is a sinner, but is not willing to forsake his sins ; he is un- 
 happy in the pursuit of the world, but is not wholly ready to 
 become a Christian ; he feels in some degree the force and the 
 reasonableness of the commands of Christ, and has some desire 
 to be his follower, but he loves the world, as the rich young 
 man did his possessions, or he has some strong worldly tie which 
 he cannot yet sever, as he did who pleaded that he might go 
 and bury his father, or he who asked that he might be suffered 
 to bid farewell to those at his house. Two opposite things, both 
 very powerful in their nature, are brought into conflict, and pro- 
 duce an agitation of the soul, as when counter currents of air 
 
STRUGGLES OF A CONVICTED SINNER. 151 
 
 meet in the sky, driving the clouds on each other and causing 
 fierce tempests and storms, or as when a mighty river rolls down 
 into the ocean, and meets the ebbing tide when driven onward 
 by a mighty wind. Thus we have seen the clouds meet together 
 on the hills, driven from the east and the west, heaving in wild 
 commotion. And thus, too, it is at the mouth of some great river, 
 as navigators tell us of the river Oregon, where on the one 
 side a vast and rapid volume of waters is rolled toward the 
 ocean, and on the other the mighty sea rolls its waves in towards 
 the descending volume. They meet on the bar, and then occurs 
 the strife of contending currents. Rarely are the waters so 
 smooth that a vessel may enter the mouth of the river safely, 
 and often the mariner, unable to enter, is compelled to turn the 
 prow of his vessel and stand again out to sea. So often in the 
 soul of man. There are contending passions. There is in each 
 an unwillingness to yield. There is a long and fearful struggle 
 before either gives way, and the soul finds peace. 
 
 The causes of this struggle or conflict may all be resolved into 
 the one fact, that there is now a deeply-felt conviction of duty 
 and of danger coming into conflict with passion, pride, selfish- 
 ness, worldliness, and the conscious opposition of the heart to a 
 holy God. 
 
 On the one hand, there is the strong conviction of duty, and 
 a sense of sin and danger more or less deep. The nobler powers 
 of our nature, long torpid, are awakened into energy, and de- 
 mand that the world and sin shall be abandoned, and that God 
 shall be obeyed. Those powers of the soul that were designed 
 to prompt to duty, and to lead to the service of God, had been 
 long inactive. The conscience had become insensible to the 
 obligations of religion. Duty was neglected without exciting 
 compunction. The lessons of early piety were forgotten. The 
 Bible was disregarded ; the Sabbath was devoted to business, to 
 light reading, to amusement, to sin ; the sanctuary was entered 
 reluctantly, and only by constraint of parental authority, if at 
 all, or in accommodation to the wishes of a wife or mother, or 
 from respect to the decent proprieties of life ; the gospel was 
 heard without feeling and without interest ; its solemn warnings 
 were unheeded, and its invitations slighted ; and the great in- 
 terests of the soul were wholly neglected. The world was pur- 
 sued as the grand end of living ; plans of gain were formed and 
 pressed earnestly to their completion ; or the life was devoted 
 to gaiety, without any fear of death, any apprehension of the 
 coming judgment. In such a state, sin and the world had 
 gained a victory, and the soul was held in the chains of a ser- 
 
 11 
 
152 THE WAY OF SALVATION*. 
 
 vitude that was loved, and where the great powers of our nature 
 had even ceased to struggle. Sleep, like the sleep of death, had 
 crept silently over these faculties, and all was calm, and " Satan 
 led the sinner captive at his will." 
 
 But these slumberings are now broken. The eyes have been 
 opened on the reality of things. The spell has been dissolved. 
 The voice of God is heard addressing the soul, and the aroused 
 conscience now demands that attention shall be given to that 
 voice. A new class of thoughts are summoned before the mind, 
 and they come in such a way that the soul cannot but regard 
 them. The law of God, forbidding all sin, with its severe and 
 terrible sanctions ; the demands of conscience ; the evils of in- 
 gratitude ; the dreadful condition of a heart that is as hard as 
 adamant ; the fearful state of one living without God and with- 
 out hope ; the terribleness of a death without religion ; the guilt 
 of having disregarded God, and of having trampled on the blood 
 of his dying Son ; the crime of having grieved the Holy Spirit, 
 and of having slighted the means of grace ; the memory of 
 violated sabbaths and abused mercies ; the sins of the past life 
 pride, selfishness, envy, lust, sensuality ; the guilt of having dis- 
 obeyed a parent, or of having ridiculed his religion, these and 
 kindred topics now occupy the attention, and the mind can no 
 longer calm them down as it did in past years, for some myste- 
 rious, invisible agency is pressing them upon the soul. 
 
 But, on the other hand, there are antagonist feelings as 
 numerous, and, at present, as strong. There is the love of sin 
 and of the world. There is the reluctance to be known to be 
 serious. There is the dread of derision. There is the innate 
 distaste for religion, and the long-cherished contempt for the 
 gospel, and hatred of the name of Jesus. There is the pride 
 which makes one unwilling to be seen by others reading the 
 Bible, and the pride which makes one unwilling to pray, though 
 alone. There is some fondly cherished plan pertaining to the 
 world, which has been long in maturing, and which is now in 
 the process of speedy completion. There are habits of sin which 
 have been long indulged, from which it is now not easy to break 
 away. There are associations of friendship or business pertain- 
 ing to this world which it is difficult to sunder. There are 
 bonds which unite to the world of gaiety and vanity, which it 
 would require much moral courage, and much strength of reso- 
 lution, and, I will add, much of the grace of God, to dissolve. 
 
 Hence the struggle the warfare. The command of God ; the 
 sense of duty ; the conviction of guilt ; the apprehension of the 
 wrath to come j the pleadings of the gospel j the love of Christ j 
 
STRUGGLES OF A CONVICTED SINNER. 153 
 
 the dread of death ; the feeling that the heart ought to he given 
 to God, on the one hand : on the other, the love of sin, of the 
 world, of vanity the power of sinful passion long indulged, 
 the friendship of the gay and the worldly, the love of ease, the 
 pleadings for delay, and the dread of shame these coming into 
 conflict with the others, and keeping up the struggle in the 
 soul ; now one almost seeming to gain the ascendancy, and 
 now the other ; at one moment, and under the pressure of 
 truth, the soul " almost" ready to surrender and yield to God, 
 and, at another moment, the world and sin near to getting 
 the ascendancy, and the soul almost free from anxiety and from 
 serious thoughts ; now " almost persuaded to he a Christian," 
 and now about as near heing persuaded to give up the subject 
 altogether, and to become a thorough infidel or atheist. 
 
 This occurs when a sinner is pondering the question whether 
 he shall become a Christian or not. I speak of the great features 
 of the struggle, without meaning to say that the conflict is 
 always thus strongly marked, or that it is always fierce and 
 protracted. I am saying that with greater or less intensity, or 
 with greater or less duration, such a struggle must exist between 
 the claims of God and sin between the love of the world, and 
 the duty of giving the heart to God. 
 
 I may be speaking to some, however, who would call all this 
 the language of "cant" and mysticism, and who, not finding 
 this laid down in the books of mental philosophy that they have 
 studied, and not having experienced it in their own lives, may 
 be ready to say with a sneer, that such a conflict must be pecu- 
 liar to our holy religion; that is, as they in such a case would 
 use the phrase, that it evinces a disordered state of mind ; or a 
 mind not well balanced ; or a disturbed condition of the nervous 
 temperament ; or a process which no well-disciplined intellect 
 would go through with ; a state to which no soul that is manly, 
 independent, self-controlling, would submit. It may be useful, 
 therefore, to offer a few illustrations, to show that this is neither 
 the result of weakness nor disease ; and that a man, when he 
 becomes a Christian, is acting under mental laws in reference to 
 religion with which we are familiar everywhere. 
 
 In referring now, as was proposed, to some illustrations of 
 this struggle, I would observe 
 
 (1) It may occur, substantially, among the heathen. Where- 
 ever there is a human being, there may be a conflict between a 
 sense of duty on the one hand, and the love of sin on the other ; 
 between conscience and passion ; between the claims of religion, 
 and the love of the world. Araspes the Persian, as described 
 
154 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 by Xenophon, said, in order to excuse his treasonable designs, 
 " Certainly, I must have two souls ; for plainly it is not one and 
 the same which is both evil and good ; and at the same time 
 wishes to do a thing and not to do it. Plainly, then, there are 
 two souls ; and when the good one prevails, then it does good, 
 and when the evil one predominates, then it does evil." So also 
 Epictetus says, " He that sins, docs not do what he would ; but 
 what he would not, that he does." So Ovid, " Desire prompts 
 to one thing, but the mind persuades to another. I see the 
 good, and approve it, and yet pursue the wrong." These were 
 heathen minds. Araspes and Ovid certainly had never heard 
 of Christianity; and though Epictetus might have heard of it, 
 yet he was a heathen still, and there is no evidence that the 
 sentiment which he uttered was shaded or modified in the 
 slightest degree by any reflex influence of Christian truth. And 
 yet, can any one fail to see the same laws of mind working, and 
 the same developments of the state of the soul, as in the passages 
 from an eminent Christian which I will now copy ? " That 
 which I do, I allow not ; for what I would, that do I not ; but 
 what I hate, that do I." " It is no more I that do it, but sin 
 that dwelleth in me." " To will is present with me ; but how to 
 perform that which is good, I find not," Rom. vii. 15, 17, 18. 
 Had Araspes, Epictetus, Ovid, been seated as learners at the 
 feet of the apostle Paul ? No ; they had been seated as learners 
 at the feet of Nature, and had contemplated the human soul as 
 it is under all forms of religion, and experienced a conflict in 
 their own minds a struggle between sin and duty, which may 
 exist anywhere. That conflict is more common and more decided 
 under Christianity, only because the light of truth there is more 
 intense and more widely diffused. But can you fail in these 
 extracts to see the same laws working which exist where the 
 sinner is convicted of sin, and is struggling with the question 
 whether he shall yield to the claims of duty and of God ? 
 
 Under the influence of such conflicting feelings, I doubt not 
 that the struggle of mind which I am describing may exist at 
 all times extensively in the heathen world. It is the acting out 
 of human nature the development of man, a fallen being, yet a 
 moral agent, under the government of a holy God, and is an 
 important means everywhere of restraining him at least from sin, 
 if it does no more for him. We cannot doubt that, constituted 
 as man is, there was in many an ancient Grecian, Persian, or 
 Koman youth, and is now in the bosom of many a young man 
 in China, in Arabia, and even in the islands of the South Sea, 
 and in Caffraria, a long and arduous conflict between the 
 
STRUGGLES OF A CONVICTED SINNER. 155 
 
 low and gross passions of the soul, and the claims of morality, 
 justice, honour, and truth the claims of God still speaking to 
 the conscience and the heart. 
 
 (2) But this occurs not only among the heathen : it occurs in 
 Christian lands among those who never become truly converted, 
 and who, indeed, do not regard the struggle as having any con- 
 nexion with religion. There are few of the young in whose 
 bosoms there is not such a struggle. It occurs when the ques- 
 tion is asked by a young man whether he shall obey the nobler 
 powers of his nature, and be virtuous, respected, and honoured, 
 or whether he shall surrender himself to some base passion that 
 is gaining the ascendancy in his soul, and that threatens to 
 make him the miserable victim of vice. It occurs between every 
 virtue that can reign in the human bosom, and that can adorn 
 human nature, and every vice that can establish itself in our 
 nature, and render us debased, degraded, brutalized, besotted, 
 poor, and dishonoured. Take a single instance alas, how 
 common and how sad often the issue of the conflict ! It relates 
 to the way in which habits of intoxication are contracted. Can 
 any one ever become a victim of intemperance without going 
 through such a conflict often a long and fearful struggle 
 between his convictions of duty ; his self-respect ; his early anti- 
 cipations and hopes, and the fearful passion that is striving so 
 successfully to gain the mastery over him? There is a point 
 in the lives of those who become confirmed inebriates, in which 
 this question comes fairly before the mind, and in which the 
 struggle is fearful. The love of the intoxicating cup that 
 unnatural yet fascinating propensity has begun to be formed. 
 Habits have been commenced which it is difficult to abandon. 
 Friendships have been contracted for those who meet to indulge 
 in the social glass, which it would not now be easy to dissolve. 
 These habits and these friendships are now becoming stronger 
 and stronger, and the prospect of their being firmly rivetted on 
 the soul is daily becoming more and more certain. It may be 
 perfectly clear that a little further indulgence will be followed 
 with certain ruin. There is, on the other hand, the impending 
 ruin of reputation ; the dread of poverty and disgrace ; the appre- 
 hended loss of peace ; there are the rebukes of conscience ; the 
 solemn commands of God ; the counsels and entreaties of parents 
 and friends; there is the dread of the drunkard's death, and 
 the fear of the retribution beyond the tomb, all these, in the 
 sober moments, come with power to the soul, and often produce 
 a fearful struggle. I believe that no man, young or old, is per- 
 fectly safe from the danger and the horror of intemperance, but 
 
156 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 he who wholly and absolutely abstains from the intoxicating 
 bowl for there has been no class of human virtues hitherto 
 that has constituted a perfect security where there has been 
 indulgence ; but still, it is true, that just at the point of conflict 
 now under consideration any man might be, if he would, saved 
 from danger ; but if he yields here, he may be gone for ever. 
 On the great river that flows west of the Rocky Mountains to 
 the ocean the river already referred to there is a place where 
 the waters are compressed into a narrow channel, and where the 
 river suddenly falls many feet, pitching and tumbling over the 
 rocks. This passage, though not wholly free from danger, is, 
 however, not unfrequently made with safety in a small boat. 
 But then commences the danger. The boat, having shot down 
 that narrow passage, is often seen to stop suddenly, and to lie 
 without motion on the bosom of the waters. It neither goes 
 forward, nor backward, nor towards either shore. It seems for 
 the moment to be consciously deliberating whither it shall go. 
 Soon it begins to move, at first so gently that the motion is 
 scarcely perceptible, not forward, but in a circular direction so 
 gently, however, that one who knew not the perils of the place 
 would feel no alarm. But then commences the fearful struggle. 
 Every oar is plied ; every nerve of the oarsmen is stretched ; 
 every effort possible made at the bow and the stern to turn the 
 boat from that fatal current. But always in vain. It goes 
 round, and round, and round, in spite of death-like exertions, 
 increasing in rapidity as the circle grows smaller, until, having 
 reached the centre, in an instant it disappears for ever. Rarely 
 is it that a fragment of the boat is seen afterwards, or that 
 a body that is lost is recovered. So there is a point in a 
 man's life where there seems to be, and where there may be, 
 calm deliberation, and where safety is yet possible where the 
 man in danger may pause and reflect, and be saved. Though 
 there have been temptations, yet you would hardly say that 
 there was a tendency now in any direction of ruin ; you would 
 say that the man might be safe. But soon that point is past, 
 and there is a movement, slight at first, and then the current 
 sweeps on to ruin. Do not suppose that they who perish by 
 intemperance or by any other vice perish without a struggle. 
 It is after many a struggle, when too late ; it is after many a 
 conflict, when the power that sweeps them in is too great to be 
 resisted. Men perish by this vice, and by other vices, after 
 many anxious moments ; after many resolutions formed to 
 abandon the course ; after many tears ; after many wakeful 
 nights j for the enemy has laid hold on them with a strong 
 
STRUGGLES OF A CONVICTED SINNER. 157 
 
 grasp like the sweeping whirlpool and they cannot now 
 escape. 
 
 I refer to these cases to show that all mental struggles and 
 conflicts, all anxieties of soul, are not confined to the subject of 
 religion. It is in every portion of the world, in reference to 
 every vice and every temptation. There are more struggles in 
 respect to worldly matters more mental conflicts more dis- 
 tressing agitations of the soul, than occur on the subject of 
 religion; and rarely does any man perish under the control of 
 any vice, who has not at some period had a most fearful conflict 
 with his passions, and felt most deeply that he was in danger, 
 and cried most earnestly for help. 
 
 (3) But such a struggle does occur on the subject of religion ; 
 and to illustrate this was the design in referring to these cases. 
 It occurs, as I remarked in the outset of the discourse, in the 
 case of all those who become the children of God, and who find 
 ultimate peace in the gospel. The great question comes up for 
 final decision, whether the gay world, so fascinating and alluring, 
 shall be pursued or abandoned ; whether the desire of worldly 
 honour and ambition shall be exchanged for a good conscience 
 and the hope of heaven ; whether the paths of vice shall con- 
 tinue to be trod, or shall be forsaken for better paths ; whether 
 the voice of reason, of conscience, and of God, shall be obeyed, 
 or whether all the solemn dictates of truth shall be disregarded. 
 This is no slight struggle. It is often one of the most fearful 
 in which the soul ever engages, as it is the most important in its 
 issues of any in which man is ever concerned. Before the minds 
 of youthful females the question does come up, under the in- 
 fluences of the Spirit of God, not whether they shall abandon 
 the world in the sense of taking the veil, and immuring them- 
 selves in a nunnery for the gospel never asks a human being 
 to agitate that question ; but whether the gaieties of the world 
 shall be exchanged for the sober pursuits of piety j the love of 
 outward adorning, for the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit ; 
 a desire to be admired on earth, for a desire to appear in the 
 robes of salvation on the banks of the river of life ; a wish to 
 be loved by friends here as the great end of existence, for a wish 
 to be loved by the Saviour of the world. Before the minds of 
 young men the question does come up whether the pursuits of 
 gain, of pleasure, or ambition, shall be exchanged for the pur- 
 suits of religion ; whether the passions which have reigned in 
 the heart shall be sacrificed to the principles of the gospel ; 
 whether all that is attractive to the youthful eye and heart shall 
 be made subordinate to the self-denying duties of the cross, and 
 
158 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 whether this world shall be made subordinate to the world to 
 come. It is not a question whether this world shall be aban- 
 doned in the sense that life shall be spent in a monastery, or in 
 caves and solitudes for the gospel never proposes that question 
 to any class of men ; but it is a question whether the world shall 
 be abandoned as the great object of pursuit, and the soul be 
 devoted sincerely and wholly to God ; whether all forms of vice 
 shall be forsaken; whether all associations contrary to the 
 gospel shall be broken up ; whether the understanding and the 
 heart shall be subjected to the teachings of the Saviour ; whether 
 God shall be all in all. That is a question which does come 
 before the mind ; and that question must be decided in one way, 
 and one only, by all who become true Christians j it is decided 
 in another way by all who do not. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to describe the struggle or conflict in 
 the mind of the convicted sinner. The reasons why such a 
 sinner is not converted, or the obstacles which hinder his con- 
 version, are plain and apparent. All the facts in the case can 
 be explained by a reference to the love of sin ; to the power 
 which the world has on him ; to the strength of some mighty 
 passion ; to the influence of companions ; to the dread of shame ; 
 and to an unwillingness to renounce the world, with its vanity 
 and lusts. The sinner himself, in that state, might perhaps, in 
 certain moods of mind, be disposed to attribute the fact that he 
 is not converted to God himself ; to say that he could convert 
 him if he would ; to resolve the matter into the Divine sove- 
 reignty and decrees ; and to seek peace in the reflection that he 
 has nothing to do, and that, as the whole matter is in the hands 
 of God, if he is to be saved he will be ; or if not, no efforts of his 
 own can be of avail. It is not necessary now to consider the 
 points which arise out of such suppositions ; for, whatever may be 
 the truth in regard to them, it is needless to advert to these, for 
 there are other causes amply sufficient, as we have seen, to 
 explain the fact that the sinner in that state struggles long, and 
 is not converted. 
 
 A very interesting inquiry, on which there is no time now to 
 enter, presents itself here. It is, in what way can an agitated 
 and struggling mind, such as I have described, find peace ? 
 What do the laws of our mental constitution demand in order 
 that these agitations should be calmed down, so that there may 
 be permanent happiness ? Arid what has the gospel plan of 
 salvation devised and presented to men as adapted to meet these 
 laws of our being, and to give peace to the mind in such a state ? 
 This inquiry will open some very interesting views abouj^ the 
 
STRUGGLES OF A CONVICTED SINNER, 159 
 
 laws of our mental structure, and introduce us at once to the 
 provisions made in the gospel to give peace to a soul troubled 
 and agitated by the remembrance of sin, a soul struggling 
 between the conviction of duty on the one hand, and the linger- 
 ing and powerful love of the world on the other. The inquiry 
 cannot be entered on now. There are a few reflections which 
 follow from what I have said, which I desire to suggest in 
 conclusion. 
 
 (1) One is, that we may learn why it is that a sinner is ever 
 so long under conviction of sin before he is converted. The old 
 theologians, with little elegance of phrase I admit, but endea- 
 vouring to express what they regarded as a valuable thought 
 though it was, in fact, in some respects, a practical error and 
 illusion speak much of what they call a " law-work on the 
 soul :" by which they seem to have meant a protracted period of 
 painful and distressing conviction of sin a long season of gloom, 
 and sadness, and conflict before the heart is converted ; and they 
 appear to have supposed, not only that this was necessary from 
 the nature of the mind and of religion, but that the conversion 
 would have evidence of genuineness, and the religion of the soul 
 itself be valuable and thorough, just in proportion to the depth 
 of this gloom, and the severity and duration of the struggle. 
 But never was there a greater delusion. There is no occasion for 
 gloom at all in such a case, for the offer of pardon meets a 
 sinner the moment he is willing to accept of it ; and the only 
 occasion for the conflict and struggle which I have described 
 be it longer or shorter is, that the sinner will not surrender to 
 the convictions of duty, and yield himself to God. The struggle 
 arises from his pride, and selfishness, and obstinacy, and love of 
 the world; the gloom is only that which the mind must feel 
 when it will not submit to plain and manifest truth 'and duty. 
 There is no value or moral worth in any such conflict, any more 
 than there is in any other conflict with conscience and a sense 
 of duty ; and this struggle no more enters into religion, or gives 
 a value to religion, than the obstinacy of a child enters into the 
 character of obedience to a parent. There is no necessity for 
 such a protracted and gloomy struggle in becoming a Christian. 
 Yield at once, as the apostles on the banks of the sea of Galilee 
 did when the Saviour called them ; yield as the jailer at Philippi 
 did when told what he must do to be saved ; yield as Saul of 
 Tarsus did when the Saviour called him in the way to Damascus, 
 not " conferring with flesh and blood ;" yield as a frank and open- 
 hearted child who has done wrong submits to the authority of a 
 father, and this long and dreaded " law- work" on the soul, this 
 
160 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 season of deep melancholy and gloom, would be unknown. 
 But treat the commands of the Saviour as the rich young man 
 did who had great possessions, and who was unwilling to 
 abandon them ; or let your love for the world be so strong that 
 you cannot part with it, and beg to be permitted to return to it, 
 as he did who asked that he might go and bury his father before 
 he gave himself to the Saviour, or he who asked that he might 
 go first and bid them farewell at his house and, unless your 
 serious convictions of sin and duty pass away altogether, such a 
 conflict is inevitable, and it will be continued until there is a 
 surrender of the soul unconditionally to God. 
 
 (2) Another thought is this : that if the views which I have 
 submitted to you are correct, then undoubtedly not a few 
 would long since have been true Christians if they had offered 
 no resistance to the clear convictions of duty. Many a time 
 have your consciences checked and rebuked you. Many a 
 time have you had serious thoughts. Many a time have you 
 felt that you ought to be Christians. Many a time have you 
 felt that the world was vanity, and that sin was an " evil and 
 bitter thing." And many a time have you been on the very 
 borders of the kingdom of God in such a state that the Saviour 
 would have said of you, as he did of one in his own time, " Thou 
 art not far from the kingdom of heaven ;" and that you would 
 have said, as Agrippa did, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a 
 Christian." An influence has been setting in upon your souls, 
 which would long since have brought you into the kingdom of 
 God, if you had yielded to it, and had honestly done what you 
 felt to be right. God addressed you ; Christ appealed to you ; 
 your conscience summoned you to forsake your sins ; your 
 parents, your pastor, your wife, your child, your bosom-friend 
 tenderly admonished you ; darkness, solitude, morning, evening, 
 midnight memory, hope, fear the obligations of gratitude, the 
 desire of happiness, the dread of death, and the fear of the dark 
 unknown world, all, under the Divine Spirit, pressed the subject 
 of religion upon your attention, and summoned you to the service 
 of the Redeemer. Others were thronging into the kingdom 
 of God, and your conscience urged you to follow them, and as 
 they found peace by yielding, so might you have done also. 
 That you are not now a Christian is not to be traced to any such 
 fact as that there is no mercy for you, or that God is not willing 
 to save you, or that Christ did not die for you, but to the fact 
 that to all these things you have offered a steady resistance. 
 When perhaps eight years of age, you would have been a Chris- 
 tian, if you had yielded even to those childish convictions of duty, 
 
STRUGGLES OF A CONVICTED SINNER. 161 
 
 and had prayed to the Saviour ; when twelve, fifteen, or twenty, 
 there were considerations enough pressed upon your attention to 
 induce you to be a Christian, and you often struggled against 
 your convictions ; at thirty, at forty, perhaps up to seventy, 
 there have been times when your mind has been troubled, and 
 when your conscience has urged the claims of religion, and 
 when if you had simply yielded to what you knew and felt 
 to be right, you would have found the peace which the gospel 
 gives. 
 
 (3) Another thought is this : It is a hard and difficult thing, 
 in many respects, for a sinner to destroy his own soul. A great 
 work has to be done before a sinner can be sent down to eternal 
 ruin. The path which he treads to the world of woe is a path 
 of conflict, not a path of peace. The life of a sinner is a war- 
 fare. God means to throw obstacles in the way to his ruin. 
 He means to check, restrain, and rebuke* him ; he means to set 
 his duty and interest before him ; he means that the appeals of 
 reason and conscience, of heaven and earth, should ring loud, and 
 long, and constant in his ears. We speak much of the Christian 
 conflict, and of the struggle in the Christian's soul, and we 
 describe not a fictitious, but a real warfare. But there is a con- 
 flict as real and as fierce in the sinner's soul before he can be 
 lost. The Christian makes no war on himself, on his conscience, 
 on his parents, on his pastor, on his God and Saviour. The 
 sinner does on all. He fights his way down to hell. He wages 
 a warfare on his reason, on his conscience, on his God, on his 
 Saviour, on his pastor, on his father, mother, sister, wife, on his 
 own convictions of what is right and of what is for his interest, 
 and must achieve a dreadful victory over them all before he is 
 sent to hell. God will not suffer him to be lost without such a 
 conflict, and when he goes down to eternal woe it is as the 
 result of a most miserable triumph binding his brow not with 
 the laurel, but with the deadly nightshade a triumph over 
 conscience, and reason, and every noble principle of his nature. 
 How strange that men will engage in such a conflict, that 
 they will not yield at once to conscience and to God, and find 
 peace ! 
 
 (4) Another, the last thought, is this : If a sinner is finally 
 lost, he has but himself to blame. I assert that his own conduct 
 will account for it irrespective of anything else. I assert that 
 the reason why he will perish is not that no provision was made 
 for his salvation ; that no interest was felt for him in heaven ; 
 that he was never apprized of his duty or his danger ; that he 
 was never in a state in which he could have been saved, but that 
 
162 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 he resisted the conviction of duty ; that he struggled against 
 conscience and against God ; that he trampled on the precious 
 blood of the atonement, and that he " resisted the Holy Ghost." 
 Sinner, when you perish oh, may God avert that ! but when 
 you perish, if you do, nor God, nor men, nor angels, will bear 
 the blame. The dreadful responsibility will rest for ever on 
 your own soul, and the word that may yet give you the most 
 deep and lingering agony in the world of woe is the word 
 
 SELF-DESTROYED ! 
 
 .. ., . .V 
 
SEKMON XIII 
 
 A WOUNDED SPIBIT. 
 PROV. xviii. 14. A wounded spirit who can bear? 
 
 A WOUNDED SPIRIT: we inquire naturally what it is; what 
 causes produce it ; what makes it difficult to bear it ; and what, 
 if any, are the remedies for it. To these four points your atten- 
 tion will now be directed. 
 
 I. What is meant by a wounded spirit ? A few words only 
 will be necessary to explain this to those who have not ex- 
 perienced it, if there are any such ; to those who have, no expla- 
 nation is necessary. We are so made that we are capable of 
 experiencing two kinds of pain that of the body, and that of 
 the mind, the soul, the heart. With the former we are more 
 conversant, not perhaps because there are more sufferers, but 
 because the symptoms are more apparent ; the sufferer is more 
 willing that the disease should be known ; the remedy is more 
 easily applied. These sufferings lay the foundation for the skill 
 of the physician, who professes to have little to do with the 
 mind, and who in fact refers to this much less frequently than 
 the perfection of his own art would require. The pains of the 
 body and the soul are distinct in their origin and their nature ; 
 they differ in their symptoms, and they differ as much in their 
 remedies. It is true, such is the intimate connexion between the 
 body and the soul, that the one often travels over into the de- 
 partment of the other, and that the sorrows of the mind prostrate 
 the powers of the body, or that a diseased nervous system makes a 
 war of desolation on the healthful operations of the soul ; but 
 still these diseases and remedies pertain to different departments 
 of our nature, and are designed to be distinct expressions of the 
 Divine displeasure against the crime of the apostacy. 
 
 I am concerned now, as Christian ministers mainly are, with 
 the latter the diseases of the mind. I have no concern with 
 the former the diseases of the body except to suggest con- 
 siderations which will teach submission when they come upon 
 us ; to show why they are sent upon men ; and except so 
 far as the influence of the gospel may keep from the vices 
 that engender disease, and which lead to pain and death. 
 
164 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 When we speak of a wounded spirit, and especially as con- 
 trasted, as it is in our text, with " infirmity," " the spirit of a 
 man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can 
 bear?" we refer to the sickness of the heart; the disease of 
 the soul ; the anguish which mind can be made to suffer ; the 
 mental derangements, the sorrows resulting from disappoint- 
 ments, and losses, and chagrin, and remorse, and the numerous 
 kindred woes to which the soul is subject. 
 
 Between these sufferings and those of the body, we may re- 
 mark the following points of difference as more clearly illus- 
 trating their nature. (1.) Much of the suffering of u wounded 
 spirit is almost unavoidably concealed. It lies deep in the soul, 
 while a disease of the body may be so apparent in a prostrate 
 frame, in a sunken eye, in pallid features, or in the flush of 
 fever, that it cannot be hidden. God has given to the soul no 
 such certain indications of the existence of its diseases as he has 
 to the body. The body may be healthful, and everything may 
 indicate the appearance of a man sound in body and in soul, 
 even when the mind is in anguish. (2.) Much of the pain and 
 anguish of the soul is concealed of design. We would not have 
 all the world know what we suffer in the soul, or all the pain 
 that the heart feels. What we feel from disappointed affection 
 or ambition ; from abortive plans and frustrated hopes ; from 
 chagrin, neglect, and slander ; and especially what we feel from 
 recollected guilt, we would not have the world at large know, 
 and there is much of that which we suffer in regard to which 
 we do not choose to invite the sympathy of a friend. We should 
 have a strong reluctance, it may be, to let our most intimate 
 friends know how much we suffer by being slandered, and what 
 is the actual pain we experience when a rival has been more 
 successful than we have. We feel that our own self-respect is 
 involved in not appearing even to our friends to suffer, and in 
 bearing up under such trials as though they produced no effect 
 on us. It is not so with the pain of the body. We feel that 
 there is no disgrace in the headache, in the pain of pleurisy, or 
 in the hectic on the cheek, or in a raging fever ; but that such 
 sufferings rather have a claim to sympathy, and we are willing 
 that they should be known. (3.) A third remark is, that the 
 sufferings of the soul often force themselves upon the body, and 
 prostrate its powers, and reveal themselves when we have sought 
 to conceal them. The eye not sufficiently disciplined in guilt 
 will betray him who has done wrong. Or the bloom of beauty 
 leaves the cheek, and the youth pines away apparently without 
 disease, and dies as the result of a wounded spirit. Or the 
 
A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 165 
 
 anguish of disappointment, and chagrin, and guilt, become too 
 great to bear ; and the sanguinary deed of a moment shows that 
 the fires had long raged within, and that the wounded spirit 
 could no longer be endured, and the sufferer rushes to evil that 
 he " knows not of." 
 
 These remarks are, I trust, all that is needful to explain what 
 is meant by a wounded spirit, in order to prepare the way for 
 what I have yet to say. The amount of what I have said is, 
 that the sorrows of a wounded spirit are such as result from 
 disappointment, ingratitude, losses, slander, chagrin, and remorse ; 
 from things which go to make the mind sad and prostrate, or to 
 overwhelm it with the recollections of guilt. 
 
 II. I proceed, in the second place, to state more particularly the 
 causes of this the things which operate to produce a wounded spirit. 
 Probably the idea of wrong done to us, or of our having done wrong 
 to others, is always connected with the sorrow of a wounded spirit; 
 or the essential cause of it is wrong that has been in some way per- 
 petrated, and that is leaving its bitter results on the soul. But this 
 idea operates most subtilly, and we often allow ourselves to be in- 
 fluenced as if wrong had been done when none such existed, or 
 was intended. A rival outstrips us, and we feel as if he had 
 done us wrong ; or as if the community had, by bestowing 
 honours on him which we sought for ourselves. We are disap- 
 pointed in business ; we fail in our plans and expectations ; our 
 fields are blasted, or our vessel sinks in the deep, and we allow 
 ourselves almost to feel as if the floods and streams and waves 
 had conspired against us to do us wrong, and with a wounded 
 spirit we sink into sadness and complaining. With this general 
 explanatory remark we may observe, that the causes of a wounded 
 spirit are such as the following : 
 
 (1.) Long cherished, but ungratified desire; or deep, but dis- 
 appointed affection. We seek honour, but it is withheld ; we 
 desire the reciprocal affections of friendship or love, but they 
 are not bestowed ; we fix our hopes of happiness on the attain- 
 ment of some, to us, endeared object, and we cannot grasp it ; 
 there is some one whose friendship we deem to be essential 
 to our welfare, but it is a prize which we cannot make our 
 own. The smile that we sought gladdens the hearts of others, 
 but not ours ; the presence of the object diffuses happiness on 
 all else except on our desolate souls. To all others there are 
 warm beams of sunshine in the presence of the object ; to us 
 there is the coldness and darkness of an eclipse. Unrequited 
 and unreciprocated affection makes the heart sad. " Conceal- 
 ment, like a worm in the bud, feeds on the damask cheek." 
 
166 THE WAY OF SALVATION 
 
 The heart "pines in grief," and the wounded spirit sinks in 
 melancholy. There is a secret feeling that a wrong has been 
 done ; that such ardour of love should have met with a response, 
 and that there was a claim to reciprocal affection. 
 
 (2.) Disappointment in business, or in the pursuits of ambi- 
 tion. We enter on the career of life with many others. We 
 start together from the goal. They have no advantage in the 
 time of starting, or in the smoothness of the way, or in the 
 cheering plaudits of those who are lookers on at the race, or in 
 the favour of those who are to distribute the prizes. But soon we 
 begin to lag in the rear, and their success stimulates them to new 
 efforts, and our want of success depresses us. A rival outstrips us. 
 He has better health or better talents, or finds better friends ; or 
 facilities of success are open to him which are denied to us; or 
 the world seems partial to him, and we begin to feel that it is 
 disposed to do us injustice. We even feel almost that he has 
 done us some injustice, and we begin to envy him and to wish 
 him out of the way, as, disappointed and sad, we suffer under 
 the tortures of a wounded spirit. Disappointment thus meets 
 many an aspirant after fame, wealth, and pleasure. It occurs in 
 all professions and callings of life, and in every attempt to find 
 pleasure in objects that are not designed by the Great Author of 
 all things to produce it. No one can gather up and record the 
 disappointments that have been met in the career of ambition, 
 or in the social or in the festive circle. No one can record the 
 secret sighs that have been heaved when pleasure has been 
 sought in vain ; or write down the account of the tears that 
 envy, and chagrin, and mortification have caused the sons and 
 daughters of gaiety to shed when they have gone from their 
 places of amusement to sad and sleepless pillows. So we seek 
 more intimacy with a friend than we have a right to look for 
 or expect ; we calculate on attentions to which we have a very 
 slender claim ; we attempt to make our way into society where 
 our presence is not particularly sought, and are not successful, 
 and the spirit is wounded. There are the mingled feelings of 
 mortified pride, and chagrin, and disappointed ambition; the 
 feelings resulting from neglect, and from the rebuke which the 
 coldness of others has given us, and we feel that wrong has 
 been done us, and the soul pines in sadness. 
 
 (3.) The spirit is wounded by attempts to injure our name. 
 Our richest inheritance is a good name. To a man in private life 
 it is his comforter and joy; to a man in professional or public life 
 it is his capital, his all. To each one of us it is the best inherit- 
 ance which we expect to leave to our children an inheritance 
 
A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 167 
 
 which we believe will be to them of more value than if we could 
 leave them the gold of Ophir ; nay, we feel that it would be a 
 worthless inheritance could we bequeath to them the wealth 
 of Croesus, if it descended with a name covered with infamy. 
 There is no one of us but would wish to have some kind word 
 cut on the humblest stone that may mark the place where we 
 sleep, or that would not wish the stranger to hear that our 
 character was upright, if perchance he should walk where we 
 slumber in the dust. 
 
 Now there is nothing that pierces so deep into the soul as 
 slander, " whose breath outvenoms all the worms of Nile." The 
 robber may take my purse, but he has taken only " trash, which 
 was mine, is his, and has been the slave of thousands. But he 
 who takes away my good name, robs me of that which not 
 enriches him, but makes me poor indeed." When a man charges 
 me with a base and dishonourable action ; when he accuses me 
 of dishonesty or falsehood ; when he perseveres in the accusa- 
 tion even in the face of a life of undisputed integrity; when he 
 expresses no doubt about its truth, and he has the power of 
 making many others believe that what he says is true ; and 
 when as may happen I may lack just the kind and degree of 
 evidence which I need to make all clear, I need not say that 
 then a deeper wound will be made in the spirit than would be 
 made by the loss of property, or the death of a friend. If to all 
 this there should now be added the circumstance that he formerly 
 enjoyed my friendship ; that he ate at my table, slept under my 
 roof, was in my family, heard me speak in the openness of un- 
 reserved confidence, and was permitted to look into my very soul, 
 he does me a deeper wrong. He adds not only to cruelty the 
 sin of ingratitude a sin that pierces deeper than any other ; but 
 he adds the power of doing me a deeper injury for he speaks 
 as one who may be supposed to know. Such were the wounds 
 of the soul which David, and after him He who was " the root 
 and offspring of David," experienced. " Mine own familiar 
 friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted 
 up his heel against me," Psa. xli. 9. " It was not an enemy 
 that reproached me ; then I could have borne it : neither was it 
 he that hated me that did magnify himself against me ; then I 
 would have hid myself from him : but it was thou, a man mine 
 equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel 
 together, and walked unto the house of God in company," Psa. 
 Iv. 1214. 
 
 (4.) The spirit is wounded by the recollection of guilt of the 
 wrong which we have done in days that are past. Probably 
 12 
 
168 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 this is the main, as it is the most important idea in the text. 
 God has endowed us with a conscience ; and it is a part of his 
 arrangement that man shall be self-punished, and shall hear 
 ahout with him the means of self-correction and rehuke. The 
 severest of all the punishments, therefore, which visit the sinner, 
 are those which spring -up from the soul itself, and the torture 
 which man is constrained to inflict on his own heart. It consists 
 of sin brought to recollection, though long since forgotten; of 
 the pangs of remorse ; of the remembrance of injuries which we 
 have done, over which years have rolled away, and on which 
 many, many a sun has risen and set. I will not say that there 
 is anything like caprice in the manner in which these sins are 
 brought to the recollection; I will not say that it is by no 
 regular law that it is done for all the operations of the Spirit 
 of God on man are in accordance with settled law ; but there is 
 much in the manner in which it is done that strongly resembles 
 power exerted without rule, or acting by laws which we cannot 
 trace. Now you remember some word spoken, or deed done, 
 that injured one long since dead, and of which a voice from the 
 tomb almost seems to remind you. Now sins that seemed to 
 have faded from the memory, or whose lines were so obliterated 
 that you could hardly trace them, revive, and all the faded colours 
 are restored, and they stand out to view as if written in letters 
 of " living light." Now one single sin seems to stand before the 
 mind black as night. You see it everywhere. It meets you in 
 every pathway, and in every place of solitude. You go to your 
 counting-room, and it is there ; you awake at night, and it is 
 before you. The ghost of a murdered man is not apparently 
 more omnipresent; nor the stain of blood on the hand more 
 visible to a guilty eye, and you wonder what has given that 
 prominence to that single sin just now. And now sins come in 
 groups and clusters, and all the evils and errors and follies of 
 your whole life stand out to view, and face you every step you 
 take. Your spirit is wounded, you have the feelings of a 
 guilty man. It is not so much that you are in danger, it is 
 that you have done wrong that your life has been a life of 
 guilt. There is no effort then to cloak or conceal the offences of 
 the past life. They are seen and confessed to be wrong. There 
 is no attempt to ward off the appeals of truth, to palliate the 
 neglect of prayer or religion, to excuse unbelief or impeni- 
 tence, or to substitute the claims of external morality for what 
 God requires. In the most absolute and unqualified sense the 
 4oul confesses its guilt, and feels that dust and ashes become one 
 whose whole life has been wrong. This is that state of mind 
 
A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 169 
 
 which is characterized in the Bible as " a broken and a contrite 
 heart," or as a " bruised reed " the state of mind which David 
 experienced when there was brought to his remembrance his 
 great acts of guilt, when he said, " A broken and a contrite 
 heart, O God, thou wilt not despise," Psa. li. 17. It is this 
 sadness which is felt at the remembrance of guilt that the gospel 
 is designed to heal, and this wound of the soul to a greater or 
 less degree always precedes true conversion to God. 
 
 (5.) There is a wound of the spirit which only the children 
 of God feel ; or such as is found among those who give to others, 
 if not to themselves, every evidence that they are sincere Chris- 
 tians, and are heirs of eternal life. It may assume with them 
 the form of recollected guilt; or the form which exists when 
 they see no evidence that their sins are pardoned ; or the form 
 of the hiding of the Divine countenance ; or the form arising 
 from the feeling that they are forsaken both by God and man 
 a form which exists when everything seems to be against us, 
 and disappointment sits gloomily, like an ill-omened bird, on all 
 that we undertake. This is often charged on religion itself when 
 it should not be, for such cases often arise from the want of 
 religion, and because the soul fears that it has no religion ; and 
 in the seasons of deepest sadness which such persons feel, as in 
 the case of David Brainerd and Payson, religion, "instead of 
 being the cause of gloom, is the only refuge from its overwhelm- 
 ing effects." This is often made an objection to religion by 
 scoffers and revilers, and the sorrows of the soul in religion are 
 made the subject of unseemly merriment ; but with a heart of 
 true sensibility, no matter what the source of sorrow, it will not 
 be so for, 
 
 " With a soul that ever felt the sting 
 Of sorrow, sorrow is a sacred thing." 
 
 " There are minds so delicately strung that they cannot escape 
 the most distressing attacks of melancholy. Friendship, philo- 
 sophy, and even religion, as it exists in imperfect man, cannot 
 oppose a complete barrier to its influence." With those who 
 feel it most, as in the case of Cowper, there are united often 
 some of the most delicate and lovely traits of character ; a warm- 
 hearted philanthropy ; a humanity that would not needlessly 
 " set foot upon a worm ;" a general cheerfulness of manners ; an 
 exquisite humour ; a disposition to find pleasure anywhere and 
 everywhere, in a flower, with a pet rabbit, with children, in 
 the quiet walks of nature, and above all, in sweet communion 
 with God. But you cannot argue against nerves ; you cannot 
 
170 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 heal the maladies of the body by moral influences ; you cannot 
 guard the sufferer who has such a temperament from the sorrows 
 which may thus find their way to the soul. " The best of men 
 have occasionally groaned under this pressure. It made Job 
 ' weary of his life ;' and that pensive, tender-hearted prophet 
 who seems to have been made to weep says, ' When I would 
 comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint within me.' " 
 It is not fancy ; it is not imagination ; it is not that such persons 
 are worse than others ; it is not that they have no true piety 
 no amiable traits no cheerful hours : it is to be traced often, 
 perhaps always, to something else than moral causes, and the 
 blame of it should not be thrown upon religion, nor should they 
 who are thus afflicted suppose that they have no true piety. 
 
 " 'Tis not as heads that never ache suppose, 
 Forgery of fancy, and a dream of woes ; 
 Man is a harp whose chords elude the sight, 
 Each yielding harmony, disposed aright ; 
 The screws reversed (a task which, if he please, 
 God in a moment executes with ease), 
 Ten thousand thousand things at once go loose, 
 Lost, till He turn them, all their power and use. 
 No wounds like those a wounded spirit feels, , 
 No cure for such, till God, who makes them, heals." 
 
 If there is a soul that should meet with sympathy on earth, it 
 is such a soul ; if there is one that does meet with sympathy 
 in heaven in its sufferings, it may be presumed to be such an 
 one. Yet there is often sorrow without sympathy ; anguish of 
 spirit which no one understands but he who feels it ; a depth of 
 distress for which no balm is found in human things ; and an 
 exquisiteness of mental woe which, while it is looked upon with 
 indifference by men, or excites their smile, or provokes their 
 reproaches, as if the subject of this sorrow were cast off by God, 
 or as if religion were to bear all the blame for what human, 
 nature ever suffers, can be met only by the Great Healer of the 
 spirit by that Redeemer who sympathizes with all forms of 
 grief. How little sympathy is often felt for it ; how true to the 
 life is the manner in which it is met ; is described by one who 
 experienced it as keenly as man ever did : 
 
 " This, of all maladies that man infest, 
 Claims most compassion, and receives the least ; 
 Job felt it when he groan' d beneath the rod, 
 And the barb'd arrows of a frowning God ; 
 And such emollients as his friends could spare 
 Friends such as his for modern Jobs prepare. 
 
A WOUNDED SPIRIT. l7l 
 
 Blest rather curst with hearts that never feel, 
 
 Kept snug in caskets of close-hammer' d steel ; 
 
 With limbs of British oak and nerves of wire, 
 
 And wit that puppet prompters might inspire, 
 
 Their sovereign nostrum is a clumsy joke, 
 
 On pangs enforced with God's severest stroke." COWPEE. 
 
 That all these sorrows of the spirit are to be traced, in one 
 way or other, to sin, there can be no reason to doubt ; for how 
 can we conceive of suffering that is not somehow connected with 
 this ? But let not a man write " bitter things against himself" 
 on. account of these sorrows of the spirit ; let him not say in his 
 heart that " God has cast off for ever ; that he has forgotten to 
 be gracious ; that he has in anger shut up his tender mercies ; 
 that he will be favourable no more." Let him not say that 
 there is no " balm in Gilead, and no physician there." Let him 
 not say that no good can ever come out of this to his own soul. 
 What a bright day rises after the darkness of midnight ; what 
 a beauty there is in nature after a tempest ; what a charming 
 bow of the covenant there is bent on the departing cloud ; what 
 exquisite happiness there is after pain ; what a sense of the 
 value of redemption after the night of gloom passes away ; what 
 qualifications for usefulness are given to those who pass through 
 fiery trials ; what a bright home is that heaven where there 
 shall be no tears; and what comfort can that God impart of 
 whom it is said by Elihu in the book of Job, with so much 
 beauty, " He giveth songs in the night !" Job xxxv. 10. 
 
 III. The third general remark to which I proposed to direct 
 your attention was, that it is difficult to bear the afflictions of a 
 wounded spirit. The text is, " The spirit of a man will sustain 
 his infirmity : but a wounded spirit who can bear ?" The mean- 
 ing of this is, that when the body is pained, the mind, if sound 
 and pure and healthful, will enable us to sustain the sorrows of 
 bodily sufferings as a faithful ally. It can uphold the sinking 
 frame. It is a helper that may be relied on then. But if the 
 mind itself be wounded, all support is gone. What will sustain 
 that ? The body cannot be depended on to come to the rescue, 
 and the man sinks in despair. This is the point which is now 
 to be illustrated. 
 
 Of one fact here adverted to, that, if the mind be sound and 
 the heart whole, bodily pains can be borne, the world has fur- 
 nished abundant illustrations. We know that disease and pain 
 can be endured without murmuring ; and the history of the 
 church has furnished not a few beautiful illustrations of the fact 
 that the pains of the rack, the horrors of impalement, and the 
 
172 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 agony of flame at the stake, can be all endured with a calm and 
 tranquil spirit. A good conscience ; a belief that we are right ; 
 a conviction of duty ; unwavering confidence in God the Saviour, 
 and the aid of his Holy Spirit, enable the suffering martyr to 
 endure all that the malice of men can inflict on the human frame. 
 But when the mind is diseased when the spirit is wounded, 
 the case is changed. Then the prop is taken away, and the 
 anguish of such a spirit who can bear ? In illustrating this, I 
 may observe, (1.) That this anguish of spirit often occurs when 
 the body is feeble and prostrate. A disordered nervous tempera- 
 ment ; or a tendency to depression and sadness ; or a succession 
 of external calamities, may prepare the way for the inexpressible 
 tortures which the mind may be made to endure. Then a mental 
 sorrow ; an unkind remark of one who ought to be a friend ; an 
 unguarded and almost unmeaning word used by him who is 
 really your friend; an instance of neglect or the want of due 
 attention ; the detraction of a slanderer ; or ingratitude in a 
 child or in one who should be your friend, comes with a force 
 which would scarcely be felt if the body were sound, and the 
 nervous system braced to bear the rebuffs of life. (2.) It is 
 intolerable, because suffering from this quarter strikes at all a 
 man's comforts and hopes. A man has a reputation. It has 
 been to him the fruit of many a hard year's toil. It is worth 
 more to him than all the wealth of Ophir ; and there is not a 
 monarch so rich that the brightest gem in his diadem could 
 purchase it, or make him willing to part with it. It is all his 
 capital, his hope, his stay, and the only inheritance that he is 
 likely to leave to his family. The cold, unfeeling slanderer; 
 the false friend ; the rival ; the man that you have befriended, 
 and that you would befriend again, strikes the envenomed fang 
 into that character, calumniates your name, prostrates your 
 reputation as far as he can ; and who can bear it ? Far from 
 me and my friends be a spirit that would not feel on such an 
 occasion a neart which would not bleed. (3.) Again, a spirit 
 w r ounded by the remembrance of guilt, who can bear it ? Many 
 an illustration has the world furnished of this, and will still 
 furnish. The remembrance of wrong done, of duty neglected, 
 of privileges abused, of mercies disregarded ; the remembrance 
 of the days when the imagination gave loose to the reins 
 of impure conceptions, or the tongue to words of blasphemy ; 
 the remembrance of the times when the mercy of God was 
 disregarded, and the appeals of eternal love slighted, comes 
 with withering power over the soul, and rests like a horrid 
 incubus upon the crushed and tortured spirit; and who can 
 
A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 173 
 
 bear it ? All the wrong that the soul ever did ; all the forgotten 
 deeds of night; all the long - concealed transgressions of other 
 days ; all the visions of an impure and licentious imagination 
 that had seemed to have flown away for ever, seem now to come 
 back and arrange themselves before the eye of the soul, a dark 
 and horrid brood, and the eye can neither close itself on them, 
 nor can it turn away. This is conviction of sin, the anguish 
 which the wounded spirit feels at the remembrance of past deeds 
 of guilt. (4.) This agony of spirit has one of two issues. In 
 one case it leads to the true source of relief, the balm of 
 Gilead the blood of the Redeemer, and the soul is made 
 whole. The state of anguish becomes so intolerable that the soul 
 can bear it no longer, and it gladly flees to pardoning blood. 
 In the other case it leads to despair and to death. The anguish 
 of remembered guilt becomes insupportable, and the wounded 
 spirit, ignorant of a way by which peace can be found, or 
 unwilling to accept of the peace which the gospel furnishes, 
 seeks to fly from life as if to escape from the guilt that haunts 
 it by day arid by night. Under this heavy pressure the man 
 closes his own life, and the wounded spirit rushes uncalled into 
 the presence of God. 
 
 IV. It remains only, in the fourth place, to inquire whether 
 for the ivounded spirit there is no relief whether a merciful 
 God has appointed nothing which shall serve to relieve the 
 anguish. Medicine is provided by his hands for the pains of the 
 body ; is there no medicine thus provided for the deeper sorrows 
 of the soul ? Long since this question was asked with deep 
 solicitude by suffering man. Cicero, in the Tusculan Questions, * 
 inquires with earnestness " why it is that since so much care 
 has been shown to heal the body, a like care has not been 
 evinced to discover some remedy for the soul for the diseased, 
 the enfeebled, the troubled mind ?" He attempts to answer the 
 inquiry. " Philosophy" says he, " is the medicine for the soul." 
 This is, indeed, the best answer that the worl<J, unaided by 
 revelation, could furnish, but we know that it does not meet the 
 case. Philosophy may teach me to blunt my sensibilities, but 
 that is not to impart consolation, or to heal the " wounds which 
 sin has made" in the soul. I want some security that the 
 wound is healed ; I want something that shall make the 
 wounded part live, not that which shall consign it to the torpor 
 of death. 
 
 "What, then, are the remedies for a wounded spirit? How 
 shall we be taught to bear it ? With reference to the somewhat 
 * Lib. iii. $ 1. 
 
174 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 mixed causes of a wounded spirit, to which I have referred, I 
 shall suggest in conclusion, and by way of a practical application, 
 a few of those remedies, or a few considerations to those who 
 thus suffer. 
 
 (1.) I have spoken of the wounds which the spirit feels from 
 the envenomed tongue of slander, the efforts of others to injure 
 our character and blast our reputation. To meet this, I need 
 only suggest the following considerations : (a) God will ulti- 
 mately take care of a man's character, and give him the reputa- 
 tion which he ought to have, if he aims to do right, and to keep 
 a good conscience. (6) It is possible for a man to have such a 
 character that the calumniator cannot well injure it. A man 
 who has been known for a dozen or twenty years in a com- 
 munity as a man of truth, and honesty, and industry, and 
 straightforward dealing, and piety, is not likely to be per- 
 manently injured by the voice of detraction. The world does 
 not judge thus hastily of the character of a man ; and the 
 community regards his character as too valuable to be sacrificed 
 by the voice of a slanderer. I can tell you what man is likely 
 to be injured by a slanderer, or what character is likely per- 
 manently to suffer by evil reports. It is the man whose life is 
 one of crooked policy ; who is timeserving and changeable ; who 
 is inconsistent in his walk ; who makes a profession of religion, 
 but who gives slender evidence of sincerity and piety ; who is 
 never seen in connexion with religion but at the communion 
 table ; who indulges in double-meaning and inuendoes in his 
 conversation ; who stands aloof from the cause of temperance, 
 and speaks of the over-heated zeal of the friends of that cause ; 
 who can partake of a social glass with the world with as much 
 joyousness and hilarity as those who make no pretensions to 
 serious piety ; and who is unsettled, unsteady, and vacillating in 
 his plans. Such a man is just the one for the slanderer. The 
 community is half prepared to believe the first suggestion of a 
 departure from honesty and purity of life ; and there is no way 
 by which such a man can live down the calumny. But there 
 are men against whose character you would not believe a word 
 If an angel from heaven should proclaim it, and become the 
 accuser. Have such a character, and your spirit need not be 
 wounded by the voice of the slanderer. 
 
 (2.) I have spoken of those whose spirit is wounded by neglect 
 and disappointment ; by receiving a smaller measure of public 
 favour and regard than they supposed themselves entitled to ; by 
 not being elevated to offices which they wished ; by not receiving 
 praises and commendations and appointments which they desired ; 
 
A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 175 
 
 and by seeing laurels which they wished to entwine around 
 their own brows encircle the heads of others. I admit that 
 there is sometimes real cause of pain here, and that the world is 
 sometimes slow to bestow the due measure of reward on those 
 who deserve its smiles. But the remedy for a wounded spirit 
 here is easy and simple. It is to be found in the consciousness 
 of doing right ; in an effort to please God. I may add further, 
 it is to be found in a subdued frame of mind, and in moderated 
 desires. He that will be willing to occupy the place for which 
 he was designed by his Creator, content with the small measure 
 of notice which is due to an individual, and willing that all 
 others should occupy the place which God designed, will not 
 usually find the world inclined to do him injustice. "Water finds 
 its proper level, and so does man. To be willing to occupy the 
 place which God in his providence assigns us, however humble 
 or low that place may be, is one of the ways to heal a spirit 
 wounded by mortified pride. 
 
 (3.) I have spoken of the wounds which sin has made in the 
 soul ; of remembered guilt ; of a troubled conscience. Compared 
 with this, all other wounds are trifles ; and for this, and for all 
 other sorrows of the soul, arising from disappointment, and 
 chagrin, and envy, and slander, the gospel has provided a 
 remedy. I need not here state as a matter of information 
 what this remedy is ; it is alluded to only to persuade the 
 wounded in spirit to apply to it. It is the mercy of God in the 
 Redeemer ; the healing balm of the gospel of peace ; the forgive- 
 ness of sins, and the health and life that flow in upon the soul, 
 so beautifully expressed in the language of Jeremiah : "Is there 
 no balm in Gilead ? Is there no physician there ? Why then is 
 not the health of the daughter of my people recovered ?" Jer. 
 viii. 22. It is this of which the Saviour spake when he said, 
 " The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because the Lord 
 hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek ; he 
 hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty 
 to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are 
 bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the 
 day of vengeance of our God ; to comfort all that mourn ; to 
 appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty 
 for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for 
 the spirit of heaviness," Isa. Ixi. 1 3. It is this that is referred 
 to when it is said of him, " A bruised reed shall he not break, 
 and the smoking flax shall he not quench," Isa. xlii. 3. It is this 
 of which David sang when he said, " Bless the Lord, O my soul ; 
 and all that is within me, bless his holy name : who forgive to. 
 
176 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 all thine iniquities ; who healeth all thy diseases," Psa. ciii. 1, 3. 
 " He healeth the broken in heart ; he bindeth up their wounds," 
 Psa. cxlvii. 3. To many, perhaps very many of my hearers, I 
 need not say one word to describe the way by which healing 
 is thus imparted to a wounded spirit. They who are Christians 
 will recognise what they themselves have experienced in the 
 language of one who keenly felt the wounds which sin has made 
 in the soul : - 
 
 " I was a stricken deer, that left the herd 
 Long since. With many an arrow deep infix' d 
 My panting side was charged, when I withdrew 
 To seek a tranquil death in distant shades ; 
 There was I found by One who had himself 
 Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore, 
 And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars. 
 With gentle force soliciting the darts, 
 He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live." 
 
 COWPER, Task, b. iii. 
 
 Wounded spirit ! that same soft and gentle hand can remove 
 every poisoned arrow with which sin has smitten thy soul, and 
 that great Healer of mankind can make you also live. Nor 
 have I any other remedy to mention, nor do I believe you 
 would elsewhere find it. There are wounds in the soul made by 
 sin, by conscious guilt, by remembered ingratitude and evil 
 affections, which nothing earthly can heal, and which can be 
 remedied effectually and for ever only by the healing balm of 
 the gospel of Christ. 
 
 " Deep are the wounds which sin has made ; 
 Where shall the sinner find a cure ? 
 In vain, alas, is nature's aid 
 The work exceeds all nature's power. 
 And can no sovereign balm be found ? 
 And is no kind physician nigh, 
 To ease the pain and heal the wound 
 Ere life and hope for ever fly ? 
 There is a great Physician near, 
 Look up, fainting soul, and live ; 
 See in his heavenly smiles appear 
 Such ease as nature cannot give. 
 See in the Saviour's dying blood, 
 Life, health, and bliss, abundant flow ; 
 'Tis only this dear sacred blood 
 Can ease thy pain, and heal thy woe." STEELS. 
 
SERMON XIY. 
 
 WHAT WILL GIVE PERMANENT PEACE TO A SOUL CONVICTED 
 OF SIN. 
 
 JER. vi. 14." They have healed also the hurt of the (laughter of my 
 people slightly, saying, Peace, peace ; when there is no peace.*' 
 
 LUKE vii. 48 50. " And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. And 
 they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this 
 that forgiveth sins also ? And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved 
 thee ; go in peace." 
 
 WHAT will restore peace to a guilty conscience ? This is a 
 great and grave question in philosophy and in religion. It is a 
 question which there is abundant occasion to ask in our world ; 
 a question of interest to every man for every man is a sinner. 
 The answer to this question will introduce us to the provisions 
 made in the gospel, and to the harmony of those provisions with 
 the laws of our mental operations. 
 
 The immediate question before us now is, What will give 
 permanent peace to a soul convicted of sin ? That is, What is 
 demanded by the laws of mind in order that a soul disturbed 
 and agitated with the remembrance of guilt, and apprehensive 
 of punishment, should find peace ? This might be prosecuted 
 as a mere inquiry of mental philosophy. It is my business, 
 however, while I shall be compelled to regard it, in some 
 measure, in this light, to prosecute it mainly with reference to 
 the provisions made in the gospel to meet the case. 
 
 The natural division of the subject is this : I. On what do 
 men naturally rely in that state of mind to obtain peace ? And, 
 II. What is necessary in any true system of religion to furnish 
 permanent peace ? The consideration of the first will make it 
 necessary to show the inefficacy of the methods resorted to by 
 men without the gospel. The consideration of the second will 
 prepare us to show that the gospel has revealed a plan which 
 accords with the laws of our nature, and which is effectual. 
 The first of these points is suggested by the text from Jeremiah : 
 " They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people 
 slightly, saying, Peace, peace ; when there is no peace" The 
 second by the text in Luke the case of the penitent female 
 
178 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 who came to the Saviour, and washed his feet with her tears, 
 and to whom he said, " Thy sins are forgiven j thy faith hath 
 saved thee : go in peace." 
 
 The case which we are to consider is that of a convicted 
 sinner ; and the first inquiry relates to the methods which are 
 commonly employed to obtain peace, and the inefficacy of those 
 methods. In prosecuting this inquiry, we may lay out of view 
 the two following things, as matters which cannot be affected 
 by any plan : 
 
 (1.) The fact that the sin has been committed cannot be 
 changed. That is to remain historically true for ever. The 
 murder has been done ; the property has been stolen ; the act 
 of seduction has been perpetrated ; the words of blasphemy have 
 gone out of the mouth ; the feeling of pride, envy, malice, hatred, 
 lust, ambition, has been in the heart. Nothing now can change 
 the fact, whatever may be done in regard to it, or however it 
 may be disposed of. There it is in history, and there it will be 
 for ever. No plan of salvation, human or Divine, can change 
 that ; not even God can make it otherwise than it is. 
 
 (2.) The sin cannot be so forgotten as to make that a ground 
 of peace. It may indeed have never been known to many ; and 
 it may pass away from the recollection of many who do know 
 it. But by Him who is most interested in it the " Lord of 
 the conscience" it is not, and cannot be forgotten; and we 
 can never find permanent peace in any plan which proceeds on. 
 the presumption that he will not remember it, or that it is not 
 recorded in his book. And as little can we find permanent 
 peace in any plan which presumes that we ourselves shall forget 
 it. We cannot flatter ourselves with any such hope or assurance, 
 for it remains yet to be proved that any sin that man has ever 
 committed is permanently effaced from his own memory, or that 
 he may not be in circumstances in which it may be recalled 
 with all its original power. 
 
 Laying these, therefore, out of view, the inquiry returns as to 
 the methods to which men sometimes resort to give peace to the 
 mind when troubled with the recollection of guilt. 
 
 Those methods may be reduced to the following classes : 
 
 (1.) To regard the mind, when in such a state, as morbid or 
 diseased, and to apply remedies rather of a physical nature to 
 heal it, than of a moral nature to make it pure. The mind is 
 contemplated rather in its relation to the nervous system than 
 to the moral law, and the thing to- be done is to restore health 
 to the physical frame, and through that by sympathy to the 
 soul, rather than to adopt any measures to give peace to a 
 
WHAT WILL GIVE PERMANENT PEACE. 179 
 
 troubled conscience or to a guilty mind as such. The account 
 given of one in that state by himself would be, that he is low- 
 spirited, dejected, and sad, rather than that he is guilty ; and 
 the aim would be the restoration to health of the bodily func- 
 tions rather than the treatment of a guilty conscience. 
 
 (2.) To divert the mind to other than gloomy thoughts : 
 the thoughts of sin, of death, and of the judgment. The pleasant 
 scenes of nature, poetry, romance, travel, social enjoyments, 
 gaiety any or all of these would occur as adapted to calm the 
 troubled soul, and to turn the thoughts to objects of more 
 pleasant contemplation. 
 
 (3.) To conceal the convictions, with the hope that time, which 
 "does wonders," will restore the mind to peace. It is hoped 
 that these troublesome thoughts will gradually die away ; perhaps 
 that by assuming a cheerful external manner there will be a 
 reflex influence on the soul itself, and that it may be restored 
 to peace that thus by the cheerfulness of the countenance the 
 heart may be made less sad. 
 
 (4.) To suppress these convictions by a direct mental effort; 
 to assume the attitude of self-government, and to resolve to be 
 one's own master. A direct warfare is thus made on the sources 
 of trouble, and the mind summons to itself all the power of an 
 " iron will," and resolves not to be serious not to yield not to 
 be converted. 
 
 (5.) To these methods a fifth may be added which is, that of 
 embracing some views of religion which affirm that the soul need 
 not be alarmed ; which teach that sin is not so great an evil 
 as it is represented to be ; and which suppose that there is no 
 ground for apprehension in regard to the world to come : that 
 God is so merciful that he will not punish hereafter, or rather, 
 as the doctrine is embraced in the view of the mind, that he is 
 so just that he will not send any of his creatures to a world of 
 woe, and that, therefore, there need be no alarm. 
 
 I proceed now to consider these things with reference to the 
 inquiry whether they can give permanent peace to a soul agitated 
 with the conviction of guilt. I do not deny that they may give 
 temporary peace, and that often under their influence the agita- 
 tions of the soul subside, and that the mind becomes again for a 
 time calm, joyous, gay. But that is not the question which I 
 wish to consider; that is not a question which it is of much 
 importance to consider. The true inquiry is, What is the proper 
 and effectual way of meeting the convictions of guilt in the 
 mind ; what is the way to produce permanent peace ? Are these 
 the true methods ? 
 
180 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 Now, in reply to this question, I have the following remarks 
 to make : 
 
 (1.) This is not the high and honourable method which a man 
 should take in regard to his own sins. If a man is to be saved, 
 he should he saved in a manner consistent with a due self-respect, 
 and so that he can feel that he has met the great questions 
 which have come before him in an open, frank, manly, and 
 dignified manner. But it does not accord with this to attempt 
 to conceal his true character ; to regard the conviction of guilt 
 as the fruit of imbecility, or of a morbid state of mind; to 
 attempt to divert the mind to other subjects as if this were not 
 worthy of his attention ; to assume an aspect of gaiety in order 
 to conceal what is within ; or to embrace an opinion merely to 
 evade the necessity of a frank acknowledgment of what is true. 
 Sin should always be dealt with as a serious matter, and a man 
 one who is worthy the name of a man should always be 
 willing to look candidly at his own real character and condition. 
 Crime is not to be treated as a disease for it is not a disease ; 
 conviction of guilt is not to be regarded as a nervous excitement, 
 or as morbid melancholy for it is neither. When a man is 
 made to feel that he is a sinner before God, the fact is worthy 
 of his profound attention, for it may have higher bearings than 
 he can yet understand. There is nothing that is more likely to 
 be followed with important results than a conviction of guilt, 
 and no question can be more important for him to settle than 
 this : how can a man in that state find permanent and solid 
 peace ? 
 
 (2.) My next remark is, that none of these methods furnish 
 any security of permanent peace. I say "permanent peace," for 
 'hat is what we are inquiring after; that is what any true 
 system of religion must furnish. And by permanent peace I 
 mean such a disposal of guilt that it shall not rise up hereafter 
 to trouble or annoy us ; that we shall be free from all the 
 penalties which it incurs ; and that the mind can contemplate 
 that very act of guilt without the harrowing feeling of remorse, 
 and without the apprehension of the wrath of God. Now I say 
 that none of these methods give such peace to a troubled con- 
 science. The reasons for this affirmation I can present in such 
 a manner as to be applicable to each and all of them. 
 
 (a, One is, that this very method of meeting the case may be 
 itself a source of great misery to the mind. Nature, as we 
 shall see, demands that when a wrong is done, it should be con- 
 fessed ; that the burden should be thrown off by acknowledgment ; 
 and that relief should be sought by repairing the wrong done, 
 
WHAT WILL GIVE PERMANENT PEACE. 181 
 
 or by seeking forgiveness from the offended party. To conceal 
 guilt in the mind ; to attempt to evade these laws of our nature ; 
 to refuse to make these acknowledgments, is often a source of 
 the keenest torture, and the burden by that very means often 
 becomes intolerable. Who knows not how the concealed con- 
 sciousness of guilt may prey upon the soul a gangrene ever 
 eating destroying the health and spirits taking away the 
 fire from the eye, and the colour from the cheek, and filling the 
 whole soul with sadness ? And who knows not that, however 
 successful such an attempt may sometimes be, the pressure may 
 become so great as to make life a burden, and compel the guilty 
 man to go and make confession, whatever may be the result, 
 whether pardon or death ? We have a striking illustration of 
 this thought in the experience of the author of one of the Psalms. 
 It relates to an attempt which he made to suppress his convic- 
 tions of sin, and to the result of a long refusal to make acknow- 
 ledgment. " When I kept silence," says he, " my bones waxed 
 old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night 
 thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the 
 drought of summer. I said" that is, then I said "I will 
 confess my transgressions unto the Lord ; and thou forgavest 
 the iniquity of my sin. Thou art my hiding-place ; thou shalt 
 compass me about with songs of deliverance," Psa. xxxii. 3 7. 
 If a man wishes to make himself miserable he has only to make 
 war on his own conscience, and to repress his convictions of 
 guilt by a violation of the laws of his own nature. 
 
 (6) Another reason why this course will not secure permanent 
 peace is, that the things which trouble the mind when under 
 conviction for sin are of a permanent character, and the distress 
 may be revived at any moment. By the methods referred to 
 you may allay the distress for a time, and may give to the mind 
 temporary peace, but there is no security that all this anguish 
 may not in an instant revisit the soul. Conviction of sin grows 
 out of the laws of our nature when we have done wrong, and 
 all which contributes to produce that conviction is of a permanent 
 character. The law of God which condemns the sin is permanent, 
 and always sustains the same relation to sin. Conscience is a 
 permanent part of our moral nature, and though for a time it 
 may be silenced, yet it is never to die out, and its rebukes may 
 be as scathing and blasting at any future period as they are 
 now. The Spirit of God is always the same, and at any period 
 of your future being may call up the recollection of crime as 
 well as now. Memory in all the future is to do its work as well 
 as now, and it may as faithfully recall your sins at any period 
 
182 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 hereafter as it does now. You are at some time, and at no 
 distant period, to die ; and tvhen death approaches, the grave 
 may appear as gloomy, and the judgment-bar as formidable, as 
 they do now. The fires of hell are not extinguished because 
 men choose not now to think of that dreadful world, and in a 
 moment on a bed of death all the horizon may be lighted up 
 with lurid flames flashing from the lake of fire. To turn away 
 from these truths ; or to refuse to think of them ; or to render 
 the conscience callous to the appeals of truth, changes none of 
 these things, and can give no permanent peace to the soul. 
 Sooner or later all the questions which grow out of sin, and its 
 relations to God, are to be met, and it does not dispose of the 
 matter to attempt to forget it or to drive it from the mind. 
 
 (c) And another reason why this does not give permanent 
 peace, and should not be relied on, is, that these thoughts which 
 now give so much trouble to the sinner may revive in circum- 
 stances in which you will be much l^ss able to calm them down 
 than you may be at present. As you cannot prevent their 
 returning at some time hereafter, so you cannot prevent their 
 returning at any time, and at a season when you will be least 
 of all capable of grappling with them. They will be quite as 
 likely to return when you are lying on a sick bed, as when in 
 the enjoyment of vigorous health ; when standing on the verge 
 of the eternal world, and when the affairs of this life are over, 
 as when occupied with great questions of business or ambition. 
 The mind then when the body is prostrate with disease will 
 be in a condition less favourable to calm down these feelings 
 than it is now, and in that state all the pressure of this terrible 
 conviction of guilt may come back more heavily upon the soul. 
 Then, too, not improbably, all the attempts which you now make 
 to persuade yourself that conviction of sin is connected with a 
 nervous temperament ; or that sin is a trifle not worth regarding ; 
 or that the sinner has no reason for alarm under the administra- 
 tion of a benevolent God ; or that the mind may find permanent 
 peace in driving away its serious thoughts, will be seen to have 
 been " refuges of lies." If a man is to grapple with the convic- 
 tions of guilt ; if he is ever to take hold of the great question 
 how an immortal soul, conscious of depravity, may find peace, 
 it is better that it should be done when he is in health than 
 when he is enfeebled by disease ; in the days when he can take 
 up such a question calmly, and in the exercise of his best powers, 
 than in the hour when he feels that he has but a few moments 
 more to breathe, and when his soul is riven and agitated with 
 the thoughts of the coming judgment. 
 
WHAT WILL GIVE PERMANENT PEACE. 183 
 
 Such are some of the reasons why the methods resorted to by 
 men to give permanent peace to a conscience troubled by the 
 remembrance of guilt must be inefficacious. The sum of what 
 I have said is this : These methods do not dispose of the subject. 
 They do not meet it as so great and grave a question should be 
 met. They do not consult the laws of our nature. They do not 
 put the matter to rest. They do not give security that all the 
 anguish arising from conscious guilt may not, and will not revisit 
 the soul, and in circumstances in which it will be more difficult 
 to meet it than now. Guilt loses none of its power by distance, 
 or by age, or by circumstances ; and none of these methods tend 
 to diminish its permanent power, or to furnish permanent security 
 to the soul. 
 
 You may apply these remarks, if you wish an illustration, to 
 any case of guilt. You may see their force, for instance, in a 
 case of murder. The crime that has been committed is a fact 
 that cannot now be changed. Whatever disposal is made of it, 
 it is to remain true for ever that the guilty man did imbrue his 
 hands in the blood of a fellow-mortal, in violation of the law of 
 God. That fact can never be forgotten by him who preserves 
 the record of human deeds ; it is never to be forgotten by him 
 who has committed the crime. And it does not meet the case 
 to treat the trouble and anguish which the mind feels in view of 
 it as the effect of nervous excitement; or to attempt to divert the 
 mind from the subject by the business or the amusements of 
 life ; or to conceal the convictions of guilt with the hope that 
 they will die away ; or to attempt to discipline the soul so as 
 to banish serious thoughts ; or to adopt the opinion that the 
 murderer has nothing to fear under the government of a benevo- 
 lent God ; or to suppose that amends may be made by a correct 
 life afterwards ; or to flee to distant lands with the hope of 
 going out of the reach of these convictions ; or to hope that age 
 will calm down these troubles, and that time, that " does 
 wonders," will wipe the blood from the hand, and the memory of 
 the deed from the soul. None of these things meet the case. 
 No matter where the murderer wanders or rests no matter 
 what is his condition or employment, there is a record made on 
 high of the deed ; and though he flees over sea and land, and 
 crosses deserts or snows, and though he should live far on beyond 
 the age of the oldest man that has walked the earth, or become 
 like the fabled " wandering Jew," the crime would never be 
 forgotten or changed, but the hand of justice would be stretched 
 out to strike, and in the ends of the earth, and in the most distant 
 years, the act of guilt would have lost none of its freshness in its 
 13 
 
184 THE WAT OF SALVATION. 
 
 power to torture the soul. Guilt lives and lingers, and the 
 sinner can never go beyond its power. 
 
 These things which I have considered are the methods of 
 human wisdom and philosophy, and human wisdom cannot go heyond 
 these in calming down the convictions of guilt. 
 
 II. I proceed, then, in the second place, to consider the great 
 question, What is needful to he done to meet the case, and whether 
 the plan proposed in the gospel is such as the case demands ? 
 The first great inquiry is, what is necessary in the case and 
 this inquiry is large enough and important enough to occupy 
 the remainder of the present discourse. I shall state, in as 
 few words as possible, what the laws of our mental constitution 
 demand. 
 
 In securing permanent peace to a guilty conscience, then, it 
 seems clear to me that the following things are indispensable : 
 
 (1.) The laws of our nature must be understood and consulted 
 in that plan. No plan proposing peace can be effectual which is 
 not based on a sound mental philosophy, and which would not 
 be adapted to produce the effect in all ages, among all people, 
 and in all lands. It must be adapted to man as he is endowed 
 with reason, and conscience, arid memory, and the faculty of 
 anticipating the future. If those laws are not consulted, the 
 plan would be what one prophet so significantly calls " daubing 
 with un tempered mortar" (Ezek. xiii. 10, 15), or what another, 
 as in my text, calls crying " Peace, peace ; when there is no 
 peace." The great defect in all human schemes of salvation has 
 been that those laws have not been consulted, or that, if known, 
 it has been impossible for man to devise a method that should 
 meet what they demand. 
 
 It would detain us too long from points more immediately 
 bearing on the subject, if I should in this place enter on any 
 attempt to prove to you that what I have now laid down is 
 correct. These laws are permanent. They exist everywhere. 
 They are found in all men, in all lands, at all times. Amidst 
 all the variety of character, of language, of rank, of colour, of 
 condition on earth, men feel guilt in the same way, and the same 
 thing is necessary to restore peace, and any true system of reli- 
 gion must be adapted to the laws of our being, and must consult 
 them. Further : every true system must come from God ; and 
 he, the Maker of the soul, must consult the laws of the soul 
 which he has made. A true system of religion, therefore, must 
 be in accordance with correct views of mental philosophy ; and 
 although no mere system of philosophy can suggest what is 
 necessary in imparting peace to a guilty mind, yet a true system 
 
WHAT WILL GIVE PERMANENT PEACE. 185 
 
 when suggested will be seen to be in accordance with the laws 
 of our mental nature. They to whom a system of religion, 
 therefore, is proposed, have a right to demand that it shall meet 
 the real wants of their nature ; that it shall be in accordance 
 with their conscious mental structure ; and that it shall be such 
 that, in accordance with the laws of the soul, it shall be fitted 
 to impart permanent peace. On this principle any proposed 
 system of religion may be tested, and whatever might be supposed 
 to be its external evidence, it could not be from God, and 
 therefore not true, unless it accorded with the laws of our being. 
 Keeping this obvious remark in view, I observe, 
 
 (2.) That in order that a guilty conscience may find peace, 
 there must be a frank and open confession of sin, confession 
 made to the One who has been wronged, or whose law has been 
 violated. This is a law of our nature a law which cannot be 
 departed from in any true system of religion. The mind is so 
 made that it cannot find permanent peace by any device, unless 
 the wrong which has been done is acknowledged, or while there 
 is an attempt to " cloke or conceal our offences," or any effort to 
 excuse or palliate them. We feel instincti vely that we have not 
 done what we ought to do, when we have not made a full and 
 open acknowledgment of the wrong which we have done, whether 
 against God or against men. 
 
 It requires but little experience in the world, and but little 
 knowledge of human nature, to understand the relief which is 
 furnished when we have done wrong, if we make confession of 
 the wrong. All of us who have in childhood done wrong to 
 father, mother, brother, sister, playmate and who of us has 
 not ? or, who in riper years have done wrong in some way to 
 others, whether friends or foes and who of us has not ? have 
 known something of the anguish, and corrosion, and trouble of 
 heart which is produced by an attempt to conceal the offence ; 
 to gloss it over with a low and lame apology ; or to shelter 
 ourselves under a miserable refuge of prevarication and falsehood. 
 And all of us who have done wrong, and who have gone to him 
 whom we offended, and made a frank and full acknowledgment, 
 have known the peace which flows from such a confession. We 
 have felt, in the one case, that a law of our nature has been 
 violated ; in the other, that that law has been complied with : 
 and in the latter case, whatever may be the result of the confes- 
 sion whether we obtain forgiveness or not we feel that we 
 have done right, and we have relieved ourselves of an intolerable 
 burden. Even should nothing more be done ; should he whom 
 we have injured coldly turn away ; should he utterly refuse to 
 
186 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 forgive us, or even to speak to us again, yet in the very act of 
 confession we have found a relief which could never have heen 
 obtained by concealment, or by an attempt to apologize for the 
 offence. 
 
 This law of our nature demands that the confession should be 
 made to no third person, but to the one who has been offended. 
 When a child has sinned against his father, it will not do for 
 him to go and make confession to the son of a neighbour, or to 
 his own brother, or even to his own mother. It would not have 
 met the case for the prodigal son to resolve to go home and make 
 humble acknowledgment of his folly to his own brother, or even to 
 his mother. Nature prompted him to go as he did to his injured 
 father, and to say, " Father, 1 have sinned against heaven, and 
 in thy sight, and am no more \vorthy to be called thy son." So, 
 when we have sinned against God, it will not do to go and 
 make the confession to any man, whoever he may be, or what- 
 ever robes he may wear. I know that this great principle may 
 be perverted, as all the laws of our nature may be. I know 
 that if this strong prompting of a guilty soul to make confes- 
 sion can be put under the control of a priesthood ; if instead of 
 making the confession to that God whose law has been violated, 
 the right is claimed of having it made to men consecrated to 
 the sacred office, that no higher power can be wielded than that. 
 And I know that this power may be so seized upon, and that there 
 may be such confidence reposed in one invested with the priestly 
 office, that temporary peace may be imparted to the guilty ; but 
 this is not to comply with the laws of our nature. This does 
 not give permanent peace. The power of receiving a confession 
 of sins committed against God has never been delegated to any 
 one of his creatures, and all claim of such a right is a usurpa- 
 tion of the prerogative of the Almighty. The Being who has 
 been offended alone can pardon, and he only can receive the con- 
 fession on which pardon can be based. 
 
 It was necessary in any true system of religion, that provision 
 should be made for producing peace in the soul by such con- 
 fession made to God. Hence, in the Bible, we have such state- 
 ments as these : " He that covereth his sins shatl not prosper ; 
 but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy," Prov. 
 xxviii. 13. " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive our- 
 selves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is 
 faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from 
 all unrighteousness," 1 John i. 8, 9. " I will go and return to my 
 place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face," 
 Hos. v. 15. " While I kept silence, my bones waxed old through 
 
WHAT WILL GIVE PERMANENT PEACE. 187 
 
 my roaring all the day long. I said, I will confess my trans- 
 gressions to the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my 
 sin," Psa, xxxii. 3, 5. " Against thee, thee only have I sinned, 
 and done this evil in thy sight," Psa. li. 4. And in accordance 
 with this it is said, " With the mouth confession is made unto 
 salvation," Rom. x. 10. 
 
 (3.) The law of our nature demands that in order that peace 
 may be imparted to a guilty conscience, there should be forgive- 
 ness. A partial and temporary peace may, indeed, be found by 
 confession, as we have just seen ; but full and permanent peace 
 can never be found except by pardon. 
 
 We have seen that the fact of the guilt can never be changed. 
 That is always to remain historically true. We have seen that 
 it can never be forgotten : forgotten by the God whose law 
 has been violated ; forgotten by him who has violated it. But 
 though it cannot be historically changed, and cannot be for- 
 gotten, it may be forgiven ; and the inquiry now is, how that 
 can give peace. I do not now inquire how it may be known that 
 it is forgiven that may be a subject of inquiry hereafter ; but 
 how it is that pardon produces peace, and why it is indispensable 
 that there should be forgiveness in order to permanent peace; 
 
 What shall be done with sin when it is committed, is always 
 a great and grave question a question too great to enter on 
 now. What I wish now to say is, that pardon is essential to 
 the attainment of peace. 
 
 (a) The laws of our nature demand this ; and by the laws of 
 our nature, when an offence is forgiven, we have peace. The 
 feelings of a man who is pardoned will not, indeed, be precisely 
 the same which he would have if he had never done wrong. In 
 the one case there is a calm, approving conscience ; a steady 
 and undisturbed joy ; an habitual tranquillity ; in the other, it is 
 a peace which follows a troubled state of mind : the one, the 
 calmness of nature in a May morning, when the dew lies undis- 
 turbed on the grass the other, the beauty of nature after the 
 tempest has passed by and the sun breaks out from behind the 
 dark, retiring cloud. But in each instance there is the appro- 
 priate kind of peace ; and when a man has done wrong, the 
 ^peace which flows from pardon is all that he can hope for, and is 
 all that in fact he needs. It may be less calm, and steady, and 
 uniform, than that which results from the consciousness of having 
 always done right ; but it may be more intense, and rapturous, 
 and thrilling. The ocean is more sublime when its waves sub- 
 side after a storm, than it is when its placid waters have not 
 been disturbed by a tempest. 
 
188 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 (6) When an offence is pardoned, all is done in regard to it 
 which can be, and all which need to be, to give peace to the 
 mind. It is true that as an historical fact it cannot be changed ; 
 it is true that it may never be literally forgotten by him against 
 whom the offence was committed, or by him who committed it, 
 but all has been done that can be to dispose of it. He against 
 whom it was committed, and who pardoned it, is satisfied in 
 regard to it. He has no wish to retain the recollection of it. 
 The fact of our having sinned against him is not henceforward 
 to affect his feelings towards us. The offence is not to be re- 
 called for purposes of punishment, or to separate us from his 
 favour and friendship, or to mortify and humble us. The child 
 that is forgiven by a parent is to be treated in all respects as a 
 child ; the friend as a friend 5 the enemy as if he had not been 
 an enemy. We may be humbled, indeed, at the memory of the 
 sin which we have committed, but it will not be because he 
 against whom we sinned has a pleasure in reminding us of it ; 
 we may still feel the natural effects of a former evil course of 
 life, but they will not be the direct infliction of a penalty. Peace 
 results necessarily from the fact that the sin is forgiven ; and if 
 it is not forgiven, and forgiven by him against whom the offence 
 was committed for no one else can forgive it it is impossible 
 that the mind ever should find peace. 
 
 In the life of our Saviour, as is recorded in one of the passages 
 on which this discourse is founded, it is said that on one occasion he 
 went into the house of a Pharisee, at his invitation, to " eat with 
 him." As he reclined at the table, a female, whose life had been 
 eminently depraved, came near him weeping, and washed his 
 feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. 
 She poured out before him the strong expressions of penitence 
 and love, and the Saviour had compassion on her, and said, 
 " Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven. And they that sat 
 with him at the table began to say, Who is this that forgiveth 
 sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved 
 thee ; go in peace /" Go in peace she would when these gracious 
 words fell on her ear, for that was all that was wanted to give 
 peace to her troubled soul. Need we speak of the peace of the 
 man who has been sentenced to death for crime, and who, trem- 
 bling in view of his own guilt, and of the awful death before 
 him, sees the doors of his cell thrown open, and himself per- 
 mitted to go forth to life and freedom ? Need we speak of the 
 ioy of an offending child, whose father has frankly forgiven 
 him ? All over the world there is no more certain method of 
 imparting happiness, than to declare to an offender the fact that 
 
WHAT WILL GIVE PERMANENT PEACE. 189 
 
 he is forgiven ; to say to the guilty that his sins shall he re- 
 memhcred no more. When that is done, the soul that was 
 hefore like the troubled ocean, " whose waters cast up mire and 
 dirt," settles down into calm repose as the waves of the sea of 
 Tiberias did when the Saviour rose from his pillow in the storm, 
 and said, " Peace ; he still." 
 
 (4.) There is one other thing that is to he provided for in any 
 system that shall give peace to a conscience troubled by guilt. 
 It is, that the act of pardon shall be consistent with the honour, 
 and the truth, and the justice of him who grants it. It is not 
 to be obtained by a bribe ; it is not to be in any way connected 
 with dishonour. A man with any just views arid principles 
 would not wish to be pardoned, or could not find peace if he 
 were pardoned, if the act were to break up the government, or 
 weaken the authority of law. It may be said, indeed, that this 
 is not commonly an element taken into consideration by one 
 who is applying for pardon. This may be : and yet there are cases 
 in which it would be taken into consideration, and there are 
 cases where it must be ; and in all it would materially affect the 
 views which we have on being forgiven. The heart of a child, 
 though he were forgiven, would be deeply grieved, if in his case 
 the act of pardon should bring his father into disgrace : if, for 
 example, his father were a magistrate, and if pardon should be 
 extended at the expense of justice, and at the sacrifice of all the 
 claims of law. And still more true is this in the matter of sal- 
 vation. Much as we desire to be forgiven and to be saved, we 
 do not wish to enter heaven over a prostrated law, or over an 
 humbled government ; in any way in which law, and truth, 
 and justice will be disregarded ; in any way in which the 
 honour of God will not be promoted. Joy and peace there 
 would be in pardon ; but that joy and peace would be greatly 
 augmented if we could see that, in the very act of forgiveness, 
 all had been done that was needful to be done to maintain the 
 Divine truth and justice unimpaired, and if, while God forgave, 
 his justice and his truth only shone forth more gloriously by 
 the very act. 
 
 These things, it seems to me, are essential in any plan for 
 restoring peace to a conscience troubled by guilt. Whether 
 they are to be found provided for in the way of salvation revealed 
 in the gospel, will be a subject of future inquiry. 
 
 The sum of what I have said now, so far as it may be of 
 practical value to one in the state of mind which I have supposed 
 that of a sinner troubled with the remembrance of guilt can 
 be expressed in few words : 
 
190 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 (a) Peace is not to be found by an attempt to ctange the 
 historical fact that you have sinned, or by forgetting it. 
 
 (6) Peace is not to be found by driving serious impressions 
 from your minds. 
 
 (c) Peace is not to be found by mingling in gay scenes, and 
 by attempting to divert the mind from the contemplation of 
 such subjects as sin, death, the grave, eternity. 
 
 (d) Peace is not to be found by embracing any false views of 
 religion, or any doctrines which deny the fact of human guilt 
 and danger. 
 
 (e) Peace is to be found only by making a simple, honest, 
 frank, and full confession of sin to the God whose law has been 
 violated, and against whom the wrong has been done. 
 
 (f) Peace is to be found by obtaining from him a full and 
 free pardon : from Him not from any man pretending to speak 
 in his name. 
 
 (g) Peace is to be found in some way in which it can be seen 
 that pardon is not inconsistent with justice that mercy is not 
 at war with truth that compassion for the sinner is not incon- 
 sistent with hatred of his sin and that the forgiveness and sal- 
 vation of any number of offenders is not inconsistent with the 
 stability of just government, and the maintenance of the honour 
 of law. 
 
 All these conditions, we think, meet in that plan revealed in 
 the gospel by which " God can be just, and the justifier of him 
 that believeth in Jesus ;" and to him who is penitent, and who 
 believes in that gospel, the Saviour, not in mockery, but in sin- 
 cerity, says now as he did to the penitent female, " Thy sins are 
 forgiven j go in peace. 19 
 
SERMON XV, 
 
 THE MEECY OF GOD. 
 
 PSALM ciii. 8." The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and 
 plenteous in mercy." 
 
 THE subject which is brought before us in this text, is the mercy 
 of God ; and my object in considering it will be, I. To show 
 what is meant by the mercy of God ; and, II. To prove that God 
 is a merciful Being. 
 
 I. My first object is, to explain what is meant by the mercy of 
 God. In order to a correct understanding of this, and to show 
 the exact place which the doctrine of the Divine mercy occupies 
 in a system of revealed religion, there are several preliminary 
 remarks which it is proper to make. 
 
 Mercy is favour shown to the undeserving. It is benevolence, 
 tenderness, pity, compassion, clemency, evinced towards offenders. 
 It is an essential idea in mercy that he to whom a favour is 
 shown is guilty, and has no claim to it. If he has any claim 
 that is commensurate with the favour bestowed, the act is one 
 of justice and not of mercy. Grace is a more general term than 
 mercy, as it relates to the bestowment of favours without so 
 special a reference to the idea of criminality. Grace bestows 
 favours in general ; mercy pardons and forgives, and it is that 
 of which we particularly think when we speak of mercy. 
 
 Mercy has been spoken of as the " darling attribute of God ;" 
 a phrase which has no authority in the Bible, nor in any just 
 views of the Divine character ; for that character is to be re- 
 garded as a whole, and in every respect worthy of adoration and 
 praise. It has been the theme of eulogium by all classes of men, 
 and there is no attribute of the Almighty on which they speak 
 with more confidence, or to which they refer with more appa- 
 rent satisfaction. It has usually been regarded as so clear that 
 God is a merciful Being, that it might be taken for granted 
 without formal proof; and so clear, also, that it is supposed to 
 be a ground of confidence for all classes of men. Men of all 
 characters, and in all conditions of life, profess to rely on that 
 mercy ; and even when they profess to have no Christian hope 
 of heaven, they take refuge on a dying bed in what they flatter 
 
192 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 themselves is the illimitable compassion of God. It is the 
 favourite theme of the moral man, of the infidel, of the univer- 
 salist the favourite theme of the man destitute of virtue and 
 religion, as well as of the Christian ; and there is no one subject 
 on which men seem more disposed to mingle their congratula- 
 tions than on the fact that their Maker is a God of mercy. Yet 
 an analysis of their views and hopes would perhaps show that 
 the apprehensions of these different classes of men are often 
 very indefinite, and that in their professions they are not always 
 aware of their own real feelings. 
 
 When you ask an infidel what evidence he has that God is 
 merciful, you may wait in vain for a reply. He does not profess 
 to have any revelation to tell him so. He cannot be permitted 
 to use the Christian argument, for that he avowedly rejects. 
 He cannot refer with certainty to the course of events under the 
 Divine administration in this world, for there have been as clear 
 indications that God is just, and that he means to punish the 
 guilty, as there have been that he is merciful, and is disposed to 
 pardon them. He cannot refer to his own feelings on the sub- 
 ject, for how can mere feeling, or opinion, or hope, without a 
 promise, be regarded as an argument to demonstrate what God 
 intends to do ? If the real truth were reached in the case, it 
 would probably be found to be that he does not believe that his 
 sins deserve the punishment of hell, and that he w r ould regard 
 it as unjust in God to punish him for ever ; that is, that he is 
 to be saved by the justice, and not by the mercy of God ; and, 
 after all, he has no idea that there is occasion for the exercise 
 of mercy in his case, or that he is to be indebted to mercy for 
 salvation. When we put the same question to a man who is 
 expecting heaven on the ground of his morality, and ask him 
 definitely what are his conceptions of the mercy of God as 
 bearing on his own case, we shall in the same manner wait in 
 vain for a reply. If we question him about his views of himself 
 and his hopes, the reluctant truth will be at last arrived at, that 
 he does not believe that he deserves eternal death, and that in 
 his apprehension it would be wrong in God to punish him in 
 the future world ; and he also is depending on injustice of God for 
 salvation, and has no belief that there is in his case occasion for 
 the exercise of mercy. The universalist, too, is loud more loud 
 than any other man in his commendations of the mercy of God. 
 And yet he stoutly, and on principle, maintains that it would 
 be wrong for God to cast men into an eternal hell, and exhausts 
 all his powers of argument and eloquence to show how horrible 
 and unjust such a punishment would be: and thus he, also, is 
 
THE MERCY OF GOB. 193 
 
 depending on the justice of God ; and the idea of mercy, after 
 all that is said of it, does not enter into his scheme. Men are 
 saved, according to his view, because it would he a wrong- done 
 to them if they should not he saved ; because infinite injustice 
 would be done if they should be cast off for ever. So that it 
 happens, that although the attribute of mercy is the favourite 
 theme of men, and is often in the mouths of the impenitent and 
 the wicked, they have no real belief in its necessity, if in its 
 existence, after all, and their expectations of heaven would be the 
 same if God were possessed of no such attribute, but were only 
 severely and sternly just. Real dependence on the mercy of 
 God for salvation, is the characteristic only of the man who 
 feels and confesses that he is a sinner ; w r ho acknowledges that 
 no injustice would be done him if he should not be saved. True 
 dependence on that mercy will, in fact, be found only among 
 those who look for salvation as revealed through a Redeemer. 
 
 In all governments there are great difficulties in the exercise 
 of mercy. Some of those difficulties are the following. One 
 relates to the effect which would occur if pardon were never 
 exercised, and if no mercy were ever shown. It is easy to con- 
 ceive that this might be, and that the administration of the law 
 would be pure, and the government just. But it would be stern 
 and unfeeling in its character. It would become the object of 
 mere dread, not of love and confidence. Justice then would 
 drive its decisions over some of the finest feelings of our nature, 
 and over all the sympathies of society, for there are cases in 
 which we all know that it is desirable that pardon should be 
 extended to the guilty, and in which all the benevolent wishes 
 of a community are gratified by the extending of forgiveness. 
 So clear is this, that in all governments, except those of tyrants, 
 the power of pardon has been lodged in the hands of the execu- 
 tive and the judges. And yet there is another difficulty. Pardon, 
 in any case, does just so much to weaken the strong arm of the 
 law. It is a proclamation that the sentence of the law may be 
 too severe ; or that it is not certain that its penalty will be 
 inflicted ; or that it would be too stern if the penalty were in 
 all cases executed ; and is so far a proclamation, and will be so 
 interpreted, that crime may be committed in some cases with 
 impunity. If in one case, why may it not be in others ? And 
 this difficulty which exists when pardon is extended under the 
 best arranged safeguards, and with the wisest precautions, always 
 becomes greater in proportion as acts of forgiveness are granted 
 freely. If pardon is often exercised, law loses its terror. If it 
 were always extended to the guilty, the law and the penalty 
 
194 THE WAY OF SALVATION 
 
 would be a nullity. If all prisons were thrown open ; if in every 
 instance in which a jury should find a man guilty, an officer of 
 the executive should be present, entrusted with the pardoning 
 power, apd instructed to exercise it, what would be the use of 
 the trial by jury, of the organization of a court, of the effort t' 
 convict the offender ? The penalty of the law would be a bug- 
 bear, and the process of trial a farce. And why should not the 
 same difficulties exist in the Divine administration ? 
 
 When we say, therefore, that God is a merciful Being, we do 
 not mean to affirm that he will in fact bestow indiscriminate 
 mercy on all, that none in fact will be punished, or that all 
 the guilty will be saved. It is not true that he thus shows 
 mercy without any metes or bounds, or without any rules by 
 which he regulates its dispensation. It is a simple matter of 
 fact that men do suffer punishment in this life that there are 
 calamities which come upon the violators of the Divine laws 
 which cannot be regarded otherwise than as expressions of the 
 Divine displeasure against sin, and as proofs that God is just, 
 and will inflict punishment on the guilty. No one has been 
 able to explain these facts on any other supposition, or to resolve 
 them all into expressions of mercy. It is no less certainly a 
 fact, according to the Bible, and no one can show that that 
 contradicts the regular tendency of events, that many will 
 suffer in the world to come, and that large numbers will be 
 unpardoned for ever. I do not mean to maintain, therefore, 
 that the mercy of God will in fact be bestowed on all men. 
 
 Nor do I mean to say, or to admit, that man has any claim on 
 the mercy of God. If he had a claim it would not be mercy, but 
 justice ; for it is the nature of mercy that it is not a claim which 
 can be enforced. The moment when it begins to be urged as a 
 matter of claim or right it ceases to be mercy, and supposes that 
 some wrong would be done if it were not granted; in other 
 words, if man were saved in that way, it would be by justice 
 and not by mercy. Guilt has no claim to favour ; and if God 
 is merciful, it is only to those who are guilty, not to those who 
 have a claim to favour. 
 
 Nor can it be maintained that God will bestow mercy in any 
 other way than that which he has provided and proposed to 
 men. If he has revealed one plan, that method is in fact an 
 exclusion of all other methods ; for it cannot be supposed that 
 he would propose a new method, if there were already many 
 ways of obtaining his favour, or that he would, by revelation, 
 designate one when there were others equally good known 
 without a revelation. We reason thus about other things. If 
 
' THE MERCY OF GOD. 195 
 
 he has laid down rules and laws by which he dispenses his 
 favours, the business of men is to find out what those rules and 
 laws are, and to act accordingly. It is not our business to make 
 these laws, nor, if we are dissatisfied with them, can we suppose 
 that he will change them to accommodate our feelings, our 
 caprice, or our pride. If he has made wealth dependent on 
 industry, and health on temperance, and reputation on virtue, 
 those are the laws hy which we are to obtain these blessings ; 
 nor can we suppose that he will change them to accommodate 
 our indolence, our love of strong drink, or our philosophy. If 
 he has appointed, as a great law, that the industrious farmer 
 shall have a harvest, and the farmer chooses to spend the time 
 of sowing or of reaping in idleness or dissipation rather than in 
 his field, God will not accommodate his love of idleness or dissi- 
 pation by working a miracle, nor will he change the great laws 
 by which he bestows blessings on men. And so in regard to 
 pardon and salvation. If God has said that these may be 
 obtained by repentance and by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 the revelation of that method is an exclusion of all methods of 
 man's devising. The hope of man in obtaining salvation in that 
 way is the same, in principle, as the hope of obtaining property, 
 health, and reputation, by industry, temperance, and virtue ; and 
 we may expect that the rule will be as certainly adhered to in 
 the one case as in the other. If men dislike this method, and 
 choose to disregard it, it cannot be expected that God will work 
 a miracle to accommodate their self-righteousness, their pride, 
 their love of sin, any more than he will in the case of a man 
 who is seeking property or reputation. It will still be found to 
 be true that he bestows pardon only in the way which he has 
 revealed ; and whatever may be the consequences to men, his 
 great laws will be observed. And when we maintain that God 
 is a merciful Being, we mean to maintain that his mercy is 
 imparted to men only on the condition of repentance and faith in 
 the Lord Jesus, and that its exercise is limited to those who 
 repent and believe the gospel. 
 
 Nor do we hold that God shows mercy any otherwise than 
 as a Sovereign, bestowing it on whom he pleases, according to 
 the good pleasure of his will. We do not mean, indeed, that he 
 is arbitrary in the sense that he has no reason for what he does, 
 or that what he does is to be resolved into 1 mere will ; but that 
 the reasons which influence him are not always disclosed, and 
 that he must determine on whom, and in what circumstances, 
 and on what conditions, salvation shall be bestowed. In all 
 governments the pardoning power must have some such limitation j 
 
196 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 for as pardon is not a matter of claim, it must be left to him 
 whose law is violated, or to whom the wrong is done, whether 
 forgiveness shall be granted ; and in all cases there are circum- 
 stances bearing on the subject which can be known only to him 
 who makes and who administers the laws. There are great 
 interests to be looked at, which the guilty are little qualified to 
 understand. Whether any may or may not be pardoned ; 
 whether in particular cases they have such a character that it 
 will be safe and proper to pardon them ; whether they have or 
 have not complied with the conditions of pardon, if any are 
 proposed, are points which must be left to the discretion of the 
 executive. We cannot suppose that God will exercise mercy in 
 any other way than as a Sovereign, dispensing pardon as he 
 judges will be best for the interests of the immense empire over 
 which he presides. 
 
 With these necessary metes and limits, we suppose that the 
 character of God is essentially that of a merciful Being. We 
 suppose that he is benevolent not only towards the innocent, but 
 towards the guilty. We suppose that it is his nature to be 
 inclined to show compassion. We suppose that in order to show 
 this compassion he has "been willing to stoop to any sacrifice but 
 that of truth and justice. We suppose that he has made ample 
 provision by which he can consistently offer pardon to the guilty 
 children of men ; that none of our race, however guilty, are 
 excluded from the offers of salvation, and that he is ready to 
 bestow forgiveness to any extent on the members of the human 
 family, if they return to him by true repentance, and by faith in 
 the blood of his Son. We suppose that none who have applied 
 to him in this way have been rejected and cast off, or ever 
 will be. 
 
 II. It was my second object to prove that God is such a Being. 
 
 I have four classes of arguments to refer to under this head, 
 each one of which would be in itself ample proof. It is not so 
 much for the sake of the proof that I refer to them, however, as 
 it is to bring in varied forms and points of view before our 
 minds one of the most glorious and momentous truths that have 
 ever dawned on our world a truth of deepest interest to every 
 guilty heart. 
 
 (1.) The first argument is derived from the express declara- 
 tions of the Bible, God's own testimony about his character 
 and purposes. From a book whose leading design is to reveal 
 the doctrine which we are considering, it will not be possible 
 now to adduce all the passages that might be referred to ; from a 
 book where the declarations are so unambiguous in their meaning, 
 
THE MERCY OF GOD. 197 
 
 it will not be necessary to adduce many. Let the following 1 
 suffice. Exod. xxxiv. 6: "And the Lord passed by before him, 
 and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
 long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping 
 mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and 
 sin." So in Deut. vii. 9 : " Know therefore that the Lord thy 
 God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and 
 mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to 
 a thousand generations." So in the Psalms : " All the paths of 
 the Lord are mercy and truth." " The earth is full of the mercy 
 of the Lord." " Mercy and truth are met together ; righteous- 
 ness and peace have kissed each other." " The Lord is good ; 
 his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endureth to all genera- 
 tions," Psa. xxv. 10; xxxiii. 5; Ixxxv. 10; c. 5. So in Neh. 
 ix. 17 : " Thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, 
 slow to anger, and of great kindness." 
 
 Of the same nature, and still more to our purpose, are all 
 those passages scattered over the Bible, so bright and so numerous 
 as to cover all its pages with living light, which offer salvation 
 to men to all men with the assurance that all may come and 
 live. Thus Isaiah : " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to 
 the waters, and he that hath no money ; come ye, buy and eat ; 
 yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without 
 price." " Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white 
 as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
 wool." " Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous 
 man his thoughts : and let him return unto the Lord, and he will 
 have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly 
 pardon," Isa. Iv. 1 ; i. 18; Iv. 7. And so the Saviour: "Come 
 unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls." 
 " If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink," Matt. xi. 
 28, 29 ; John vii. 37. And so those gracious words with which 
 a volume designed to reveal the mercy of God to man so beau- 
 tifully and so appropriately closes : " And the Spirit and the 
 bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And 
 let him that is athirst come : and whosoever will, let him take 
 the water of life freely," Rev. xxii. 17. 
 
 If there were any doubts on this subject, these plain and 
 positive passages of the Bible would put those doubts to rest. 
 No language could be more clear. I need not add that the Bible 
 is full of passages of a similar character. Indeed, as already 
 hinted, the leading design of the Bible is to reveal this great 
 
198 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 truth, that God is a merciful Being, and to disclose the terms on 
 which he will impart mercy, and the way in which it may he 
 done consistently with the honour of his law and the good of 
 the universe : the way in which he may do it so as to avoid 
 the difficulties to which I adverted in the former part of this 
 discourse. If we were to attempt to characterize the Bible as 
 distinguished from all other books, I do not know that we 
 could give a better account of it than this. One other remark, 
 however, should be made here. It is, that the mercy offered in 
 the Bible to men is offered only on definite and carefully- 
 guarded conditions. It is mercy only through a Redeemer ; 
 mercy imparted where there is repentance toward God, and 
 faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Every offer of mercy is limited 
 to that method ; within that limit, it is freely and fully offered 
 to all mankind. 
 
 (2.) My second argument is, that this world is evidently 
 under a dispensation of mercy, or that the facts existing on the 
 earth can be accounted for only on the supposition that God is a 
 merciful Being. The facts to which I refer are these : that 
 while God is able to detect and punish all the guilty; while he 
 has nothing to fear though all the wicked should be cast into 
 hell ; while all sin is the object of his abhorrence ; and while he 
 might justly cut men down and consign them to woe, he spares 
 them, gives them opportunity for repentance, and encompasses 
 them with innumerable blessings. 
 
 It is clear that this is not a world of perfect and unmixed 
 justice. In such a world, under the government of an Omni- 
 scient and Almighty Being, guilt and punishment would never 
 be separated. The moment when crime was committed the 
 hand of justice would be raised to strike, nor would it be 
 possible for the offender to elude the blow. Hand in hand they 
 would travel over the earth ; nor should we ever see them 
 separated by long intervals of time, or by large tracts of land or 
 ocean. Such, we have reason to believe, was the case with the 
 apostate angels, sent at once to hell without interval, without 
 reprieve, and without hope. Such, too, was the letter of the 
 threatening addressed to man : " In the day thou eatest thereof 
 thou shalt surely die" a sentence that would in like manner 
 have been executed at once but for the interposition of mercy. 
 And such would be the infliction of all law, unless justice were 
 delayed by the intermingling of mercy. The convicted murderer 
 or traitor would be executed at once, unless the pleadings of 
 mercy were heard that the offender might have an opportunity 
 to obtain the Divine forgiveness when human law extends no hope. 
 
THE MERCY OF GOD. 199 
 
 This world bears all the marks of delayed justice and sus- 
 pended wrath, for the purpose of showing 1 the mercy of God, and 
 in order that the guilty man may have the opportunity of 
 obtaining that mercy. Crime and punishment are, by long 
 intervals of time or tracts of land or ocean, separated. The guilt 
 of childhood or of youth is often unpunished even in manhood 
 and old age. Long intervals of country may have intervened 
 between the places where the crime was committed, and where 
 the offender now lives. He may have crossed oceans. He may 
 have committed the crime in one part of the world, and be 
 roaming at large in another ; one who has committed an offence 
 in America may be now roaming on the plains of India ; an 
 offender in India may be living in affluence and splendour in a 
 gay capital of Europe. He may have been a licentious, a dis- 
 sipated young man, and in middle life, or in advanced age, all 
 the blessings which every clime can yield may have been 
 poured upon him. Guilt often treads flowery paths, and goes 
 up the heights of honour. It reclines on a couch of ease ; rests 
 on a bed of down ; puts on robes of adorning ; sits at a table 
 laden with the bounties of all climes ; is admired in the gay 
 circle ; is encompassed with children and friends ; is surrounded 
 with the blessings of civilization, liberty, and art ; is permitted 
 to live amidst the hallowed institutions of religion. And why 
 is this ? Why does the blasphemer live ? Why courses the 
 vital blood in the veins of the abandoned and the profligate ? 
 Why does the seducer walk the earth, and why does the scoffer 
 riot on the goodness of God ? Why does the sun shine on the 
 dwellings of the ungodly ; and the rains and the dews of heaven 
 descend on the fields of the prayerless ; and the winds bear into 
 port the rich cargo of the man that lives regardless of his 
 Maker ? Why is the sinner preserved from the pestilence that 
 Walketh in darkness, and the destruction that waste th at noon- 
 day ? Why is the sound of music and joy heard in his dwelling ? 
 Why hears he the sound of the viol rather than the sighings of 
 despair ; why the voice of mirth, rather than the groanings of 
 the world of woe ? It is not because he deserves these things. 
 It is not because it would be wrong to cut him off, and remove 
 him from them all. There is another reason why these things 
 are so. It is because " the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow 
 to anger, and plenteous in mercy." 
 
 And does not this whole world bear marks of being under a 
 dispensation of mercy? The sun is as bright as it was over 
 Eden; the moon and the stars keep their place as they did 
 before man sinned j the music is as sweet in the groves ; the air 
 
 14 
 
200 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 is as pure ; the stream purls as gently ; the mountain and the 
 ocean are as grand. Nature, in all her main movements, pur- 
 sues her steady course, as though the race had not sinned ; and 
 even those scenes where man suffers are tempered with mercy. 
 Man suffers, indeed, and dies for God is just, as well as good. 
 But how different the scene of sorrow now from what it would 
 be if there were no mercy ; how different from the pains of hell! 
 Around the sick bed, science and skill, and love and tenderness, 
 are doing all they can to alleviate suffering, and to mitigate 
 pain. Man lies indeed often long after he began to sin, often 
 after an aggravated life of guilt on a bed of death. But there 
 is the patient mother to wipe away the cold sweat of death ; 
 there is the tender wife ; there is the soft hand of a much-loved 
 daughter ; there is the consoling sympathy of a friend ; there is 
 the mild and sweet voice of religion religion that tells of a 
 world where there shall be pain and death no more, and where 
 all tears shall be wiped away from every eye. 
 
 We often can approximate to just views only by comparing 
 great things with small. Bear in remembrance that this is a 
 world of sin, and that God might have excluded us from hope, 
 and consigned us to woe. Then ask whether this world is such 
 an abode as man himself fits up for his guilty fellow, the offender 
 against his own laws. Go to the dungeon the dark, damp, 
 cold, sepulchral place, where man confines his guilty fellow-man. 
 He shuts him from the light of the sun ; binds his limbs in 
 chains; secludes him from society; drags him away from wife 
 and children and home ; feeds him on coarse fare ; lays him on 
 a cold bed of earth or straw ; and bids him there prepare to die. 
 I went into one of the best constructed and the best arranged 
 prisons in our land. There were confined within its walls more 
 than six hundred men. Those walls were high and massive, 
 and designed to prevent all return to the world. I went through 
 iron gates bolted and barred with all the skill that man can use. 
 I saw on the walls men stationed to shoot down any who should 
 attempt to escape. I saw the cells of those imprisoned criminals. 
 They were small, and dark, and chilly. I saw those men at 
 work. They were sad and sorrowful men. They had no com- 
 munication with each other; they had none with any human 
 being, save at distant intervals with their chaplain. I saw the 
 father there removed probably for ever from his children ; the 
 husband from his wife ; the brother from his sister ; the man 
 from his neighbour ; and though surrounded by hundreds, they 
 had become isolated beings, and the last cord which bound them 
 to the living world seemed to have been snapped asunder. They 
 
THE MERCY OF GOD. 201 
 
 were sullen, and sunken, and sad ; for they had no hope of 
 pardon ; and there was an eye of vigilance always upon them, 
 and there was the deep consciousness of disgrace among them, 
 and they were held up to the community as unworthy the enjoy- 
 ments of a home and of domestic comforts and liberty, and the 
 sight of green fields and of the light. Such is the prison that 
 man makes for man. Then I look on the offender against God, 
 and I see him roaming at large in a world beautiful as Eden, 
 breathing a pure air, enjoying the light of the sun, fanned by 
 the breezes ; surrounded with wife, and children, and Mends ; 
 in the midst of luxuries ; and crowned with the blessings which 
 every clime can furnish to minister to his wants, gratify his 
 appetites, and cheer him in his days of sickness and despondency. 
 (3.) My third illustration will be drawn from the fact that 
 God has sent his Son into our world to die. How ample would 
 this be as an argument if we had no other. What father would 
 give his own son to die for the guilty? What monarch has 
 there been who would give his only son to suffer a shameful 
 death in order to sustain the honour of his own law, and in 
 order to save even a whole province of rebels ? And where is 
 the man on a bench of justice in this land who, to save the 
 guilty, would give up to the same death a much-beloved, an 
 only son ? The man has not yet lived in this land, rich as it 
 has been in examples of virtue and benevolence, who would be 
 willing to do it. Yet " God so loved the world that he gave his 
 only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not 
 perish, but have everlasting life." And this gift was the proof 
 of mercy ; the mere expression of mercy ; the sacrifice which 
 mercy makes to save the guilty. For, it is not held, it cannot 
 be held, that the sufferings of the Redeemer made any change 
 in God. It is not held, and it is not true, that he was originally 
 stern, and inflexible, and unmerciful ; and that he has been made 
 mild and forgiving by the death of his Son. It is not meant, it 
 cannot be true, that those sorrows have made God different from 
 what he was, or made a stern and severe Being mild. He gave 
 his Son to die, not that he might be made merciful, but as the 
 expression of mercy ; not that his mercy might be bought, but 
 because he was originally so merciful that he was willing to 
 submit to anything, even the ignominy and death of his own 
 Son, that man might be saved. A father standing on the shore 
 of a deep and rapid river sees his child suddenly fall into the 
 waters. The child struggles with the current, but is borne 
 farther out into the stream, and is sinking to the bottom. The 
 father will instinctively plunge into that stream, at the peril of 
 
202 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 his own life, to save that of his drowning child. But neither 
 the danger of the child, nor his piercing cry, makes the father 
 compassionate and kind. No ; he loved his son so much that he 
 is willing to throw himself into the torrent to save his life. A 
 country is invaded. A father lays his hand on the head of his 
 only son, and sends him forth with his blessing to the field of 
 strife and of death. Does that invasion, that peril, make the 
 father love his country transform an enemy of its institutions 
 to a friend ? No. He so loved his country that to save it he 
 was willing to part with his only son, if need be, that he should 
 pour out his blood like water in its defence. So the Father of 
 mercies looked on men. So he loved the world ; so he pitied 
 the race ; so he desired its welfare, that, to save us, he was 
 willing to give up his Son to death. And such a death ! What 
 are all the strugglings of a drowning child ; what all the priva- 
 tions of a camp, or the perils of the field of battle ; what all the 
 pains of sickness, the tortures of the rack, the severities of flame, 
 compared with the sufferings of Jesus Christ ? They stand alone. 
 Nowhere has there been ignominy so great, torture so keen, 
 and pain so bitter as the Son of God endured. No other spectacle 
 has been witnessed like that when the Son of God was nailed 
 to a cross. And when he had been waylaid and persecuted; 
 when he had been rejected and spurned ; and when he had been 
 mocked, and reviled, and nailed to the tree ; when he had been 
 crowned with thorns, and a spear had reached his heart, mercy 
 still prevailed, and the murderers of the Son of God the per- 
 petrators of that great crime which outpeers every other deed 
 of human guilt were told that even they might be pardoned. 
 And from that cross the proclamation has gone forth that all, 
 no matter what their guilt, may be saved. Here flows blood so 
 rich, so pure, so precious in the sight of the eternal Father, that 
 it is sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world, and all 
 who are now penitent, and who believe on his name, may enter 
 heaven. 
 
 (4.) There is one other source of evidence which might be 
 insisted on at much greater length than can now be done ; 
 and that is, the fact that sinners of all classes, and ages, and 
 grades of guilt have found mercy. The proof is this: They 
 have gone to God confessing their sins ; they have gone borne 
 down with a deep sense of their guilt ; they have gone with a 
 troubled conscience ; with an agonized spirit ; with true repent- 
 ance, and have in fact found peace. In their lives they have 
 given all the evidence which could be given that their sins have 
 been pardoned by a gracious God j in the peace and the triumph 
 
THE MERCY OF GOD. 203 
 
 of their dying moments they have furnished all the proof which 
 could he furnished that they have heen restored to the Divine 
 favour. 
 
 The world has heen full of instances of this kind. Your own 
 minds will instantly advert to such cases as the following: 
 David, after a crime which for ever dimmed the lustre of his 
 name, and stained his memory, sought and obtained forgiveness. 
 Saul of Tarsus, an infuriated persecutor, and regarded hy himself 
 as the chief of sinners, received forgiveness. Peter, after a most 
 awful denial of his Lord, was pardoned. The thief on the cross 
 was forgiven in the hour of his death, for he pleaded that he 
 might he remembered by the Lord Jesus when he should come 
 in his kingdom. The poor publican who smote upon his breast 
 and said, " God be merciful to me a sinner," " went down to 
 his house justified." Every class of men finds its representative 
 in these and in other individuals who are described in the 
 Scriptures as having obtained mercy. These cases at once 
 furnish a proof that God is a merciful Being, and a warrant for 
 all of like character with them to go to him and plead for pardon. 
 
 To the long list of Scripture characters, how easy would it be 
 to add a catalogue of unlimited extent of others who have 
 obtained mercy. When Augustine, after an early life of wretched 
 dissipation, is reformed ; when the Earl of Rochester, after a life 
 of abandoned and gross sensuality, repents and obtains mercy ; 
 when Col. Gardiner in the very act of contemplated wickedness 
 is arrested, warned, and saved ; when John Newton, a slave- 
 dealer, is changed and becomes a herald of salvation ; when 
 John Bunyan, a very model of profaneness and a proverb for 
 blasphemy, is pardoned and made to instruct almost the whole 
 world by his " Pilgrim," why should any sinners despair of 
 mercy ? If such men obtained pardon, is not the proof clear 
 that God is a Being of compassion, and that he is ready to 
 forgive ? 
 
 Yet the proof does not stop here. Many thousands, nay, many 
 millions, not less guilty, have been pardoned, purified, admitted 
 to the favour of God, translated to heaven. Thousands, and ten 
 times ten thousand, in the dark hour of conscious guilt, when 
 despairing of being able to save themselves, and when an im- 
 penetrable gloom has settled on their souls, and when darkness 
 covered the present and the future with a funeral pall, have 
 come to the throne of mercy and found there forgiving love. 
 How many are there at the present moment who could bear 
 witness for God that he is merciful, and slow to anger, and 
 ready to forgive ! How many are there in all the churches in 
 
204 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 this land, and in other lands, now on their way to heaven, who 
 had profaned his name, his sabbaths, and his word; who had 
 been sunk in sensuality, or hardened in infidelity ; who had 
 been the companions of the dissipated and the vile ; who long 
 resisted the appeals of mercy, and slighted and despised the 
 blood of the Redeemer, but who are now " in their right mind," 
 and prepared to testify that he is merciful, and that his throne 
 is accessible to the broken-hearted, returning prodigal! The 
 earth blessed be his name! contains millions of living wit- 
 nesses that he is merciful, and the heavens are filled with those 
 who have been pardoned by his grace. Is God merciful ? Let 
 the ransomed saints on high speak that blood-washed throng, 
 now with harps in their hands in heaven. Is God merciful? 
 Let those now on earth, redeemed by the same blood, speak 
 the bands of Christian pilgrims, pardoned sinners on their way 
 to the skies. Is God merciful ? Let the Christian speak from 
 the bed of death now, with evidence of pardoned sin, and peace 
 in his soul, pluming himself for his eternal flight, and about to 
 join the ransomed hosts beyond the swelling flood. Is God 
 merciful ? The church below, and the church above ; the pardoned 
 penitent, exulting and rejoicing ; the dying saint, all proclaim 
 that he is compassionate and kind, and ready to forgive. Not 
 one has gone to him penitent and been rejected; no sinner, 
 however great his sins, has gone with a broken heart to the 
 throne of mercy and been sent empty away. 
 
 Such are some of the reasons why we deem it to be right to 
 come to the throne of our Maker with the feeling that he is a 
 merciful Being, and that, however great and aggravated may 
 have been our sins, it is right to hope for pardon and salvation. 
 In conclusion, let us learn that there is ground, then, for hope. 
 There is all the ground that, as sinners, we need all that we 
 could ask for. There is all that we could desire in the assurances 
 which God gives respecting his own character ; in his dealings 
 with our world ; in the sacrifices which he has made in order 
 that he might consistently pardon ; in his treatment of those 
 who have gone to him and confessed their sins. No one could 
 desire more plain assurances ; more earnest invitations ; more 
 encouragement from the success of those who have gone before 
 him and besought his favour. But let us learn, also, that there 
 is no room for presumption. Mercy is indeed bestowed on the 
 guilty, but it is only in an appointed way, and on carefully 
 specified conditions. They who trust in God's mercy are autho- 
 rized to do it to an unlimited extent in the manner which he has 
 revealed; to no extent in any other way. For he has other 
 
THE MERCY OF GOD. 205 
 
 attributes than that of mercy. He is true, he is holy, he is just, 
 he is righteous, as well as long-suffering- ; and our hope of his 
 favour is limited to the way which he has specified and revealed. 
 On his mercy in that way we may rely with the fullest assurance 
 to any extent ; apart from that we have no promise, nor has he 
 furnished evidence that he will save. 
 
 And let us learn, also, that even in this way his offer of mercy, 
 in regard to us, will soon close. Death is its outer limit. The 
 offer extends not beyond the grave ; the evidence that it is 
 granted lies wholly this side the tomb. Who can show us a 
 promise that a sinner will be pardoned in the eternal world ? 
 Who can furnish evidence that one has been there forgiven ? 
 No : the forbearance of God will soon be ended, and the sinner 
 will soon be in a merciless world. Here the sinner may be 
 forgiven. Here the Father invites, and the Saviour pleads, and 
 the Holy Spirit draws the heart. Soon all this will be ended. 
 To-day mercy may be found ; to-morrow it may be too late. 
 To-day heaven and earth, God and angels, pious parents, pastors, 
 and friends entreat ; to-morrow you may be in a world where 
 mercy never has been found, and where the assurance that it 
 could be found, now so much unheeded, will never fall on 
 the ear. 
 
SEKMON XYL 
 
 THE ATONEMENT AS FITTED TO GIVE PEACE TO A CON- 
 VICTED SINNER. 
 
 1 JOHN i. 7. " The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." 
 
 IN the previous discourses we have been conducted to the great 
 inquiry respecting the gospel, What are its provisions and 
 arrangements to save the guilty? The gospel is a system to 
 save sinners. This is its grand peculiarity ; with reference to 
 this all its arrangements are adjusted, and all other things that 
 are connected with it are subsidiary to this, or collateral to it. 
 The question, we are to suppose, which was before the Divine 
 Mind in originating this scheme was, How may arrangements be 
 made to save the guilty f This is the position which a speculative 
 inquirer ought to take when he examines the gospel ; this the 
 point from which a convicted sinner ought to look at the gospel ; 
 this the point from, which infidels and Christians should re- 
 gard it. 
 
 The inquiry relates now, not so much to the speculative philo- 
 sopher, the infidel, or the Christian, as to the convicted and 
 guilty sinner. When he looks into this revealed plan, what 
 does he see to meet his case ? He turns away from all other 
 things as furnishing a hope of salvation ; he despairs of every 
 other method ; he is condemned by the law of God and by his 
 own conscience ; he feels that he is to die, and that there is 
 a God of justice before whom he must soon appear ; he looks 
 out tremblingly on a dark and dreaded eternity ; and he comes 
 to the Bible, as a professed revelation from God, to find some- 
 thing that will meet his case. What is the way of salvation 
 which it reveals for a lost sinner ? 
 
 Foremost in all its revelations he sees Christ and his cross. 
 All the great statements in that book arrange themselves around 
 one truth that a Saviour has died ; that an atonement has 
 been made. Every promise of pardon is originated there ; all 
 the assurances of Divine mercy have their sources there ; all that 
 is said of justification and sanctification is founded on that work ; 
 all the invitations, encouragements, and assurances of favour in 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS FITTED TO GIVE PEACE. 207 
 
 the book are based on that. Everything that is said in the 
 book about the salvation of a sinner may be regarded as concen- 
 trated and embodied in my text : " The blood of Jesus Christ 
 his Son cleanseth us from all sin." 
 
 What can be more important for us sinners than to consider 
 this ? Yet I do not propose to discuss the doctrine of the 
 atonement, as such, as I should feel myself called upon to attempt 
 to do if I were addressing myself to infidels and philosophers. 
 I should then regard myself as bound to endeavour at least to 
 vindicate the doctrine from objections ; to demonstrate its con- 
 sistency with law ; to show why it is not found in a scheme of 
 human administration ; to exhibit the defects of all human 
 governments without it ; to prove that man has everywhere 
 shown that he has felt his need of it ; and to convince such men 
 that it, in fact, maintains the harmony of justice and mercy in a 
 moral government. But these, however great and important in 
 themselves, would be points foreign to the present position to 
 which we are brought in the progress of this discussion. We 
 are now to look at the atonement as a revealed arrangement to 
 meet the condition of a convicted sinner. The inquiry is, how 
 that meets his case ; how that will lay the foundation for restora- 
 tion to peace. 
 
 To see the real point of this inquiry, you are to recollect the 
 state of the sinner as it has been illustrated. The following 
 points, then, are to be borne in remembrance: (1.) He has 
 violated the law of God, and is in fact, and in feeling, a guilty 
 man. (2.) He cannot now change the fact that he has sinned, 
 for that is to remain historically true for ever, whatever may be 
 the consequences. (3.) He cannot repair the wrong done to a 
 violated law ; the wrong done to society ; the wrong done to 
 his own soul and to his Maker. (4.) He cannot, by any act 
 of his, now remove the penalty for that has a connexion with 
 the violation of the law which the offender cannot himself 
 dissolve. (5.) He cannot urge any claim to pardon for pardon 
 is never a matter of claim, and a violator of law is dependent on 
 sovereignty. 
 
 The inquiry then is, What does the death of Christ the 
 atonement do to meet this case ? It is my wish, as well as I 
 am able, and as simply and plainly as possible, to explain this. 
 There are substantially but two inquiries : I. What is meant by 
 the atonement? And, II. What is accomplished by it in the sal- 
 vation of a, sinner ? 
 
 I. The first inquiry is, What is meant by the atonement f What 
 is the idea when it is said that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth 
 
208 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 from all sin ? What in all those passages which speak of him 
 as " a propitiation " for sin ; as giving himself a " ransom for 
 many ;" as dying in the place of sinners ; as being " made a 
 curse for us ;" as " bearing our sins in his own body on the 
 tree ;" as being our " peace," and as " reconciling us to God ?" 
 What may we suppose Paul preached among the Corinthians 
 when he resolved to "know nothing among them but Jesus 
 Christ and him crucified ?" 
 
 It seems proper, in order to a clear understanding of this, to 
 state, first, what the atonement is not, or what we should not 
 expect to find in it, for the hope of heaven, so far as based on 
 the atonement, or on anything else, should not be founded on 
 falsehood, but on truth. No false view on any subject will be of 
 value to a man on his final trial. 
 
 We have seen, by an incidental remark already made, that 
 there are some things in regard to sin and the sinner which 
 cannot be done by the atonement or by any other arrangement. 
 They are, that the historical fact of the commission of sin cannot 
 now be changed ; that it will always remain true of the sinner 
 that he has violated the law of God, and is a guilty man ; that 
 the wrong cannot now be repaired, since there is a wrong done 
 by the very act of sin which nothing subsequent can entirely 
 remove, however it may be overruled; and that nothing can 
 now be done by which the offender can urge, in any proper 
 sense, a claim to pardon. 
 
 In addition, I wish now to state the following things as points 
 not contemplated by an atonement, and which the sinner is not 
 to expect to find in the atonement. I state them because they 
 are sometimes supposed by an inquirer to be a part of the atone- 
 ment; and because there are sometimes representations made by 
 the friends of Christianity as if they were ; and because the 
 enemies of the atonement sometimes evince a desire to represent 
 these things as constituting a part of it. 
 
 (a) The atonement, then, does not change God, or make him a 
 different Being from what he was. He is in nowise, now that 
 the atonement is made, a different Being from what he was 
 before, or from what he would have been if the atonement had 
 not been made ; he will never be a different Being from what 
 he now is, and always has been, whatever may be the destiny 
 of man. He is no more benevolent, no more disposed to show 
 mercy now, than he was before the atonement was made ; he 
 was no more disposed to do justice then, or to punish offenders, 
 than he is now, and always will be. It is a great principle in 
 all correct views of God that he is, in all respects, unchangeably 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS FITTED TO GIVE PEACE. 209 
 
 the same, " without variableness or shadow of turning ;" and 
 this principle is to he held in all its integrity in relation to 
 every doctrine of natural or revealed religion. 
 
 (b) Similar to this, and growing out of it, is a second thought, 
 that the atonement is not designed, so to speak, to buy God over 
 to mercy ; to make a Being before harsh and stern and severe, 
 mild ; or to melt a heart, naturally hard, to compassion. I do 
 not deny that there have been representations by even the 
 friends of Christianity which would bear the interpretation that 
 this is their belief ; and I do not deny that some of the language 
 of our sacred poetry is liable to this construction. Thus such 
 language is found in our own Watts, whose devotional poems 
 are in general so correct in sentiment, and so well adapted to 
 express the feelings of true piety : 
 
 "Bich were the drops of Jesus' blood, 
 
 That calm'd his frowning face ; 
 That sprinkled o'er the burning throne, 
 And turn'd the wrath to grace" 
 
 In this language the representation undoubtedly is, that God 
 was originally stern and unforgiving ; and that he has been 
 made mild and forgiving by that "blood" of atonement which 
 " calmed his frowning face." It cannot be denied that such 
 representations as this would be conveyed by the language used 
 sometimes in the pulpit ; or that there are views of the death of 
 Christ prevailing in the Christian church which would justify 
 such a construction. 
 
 But these views cannot be correct ; and those who use such 
 language must do it, as Watts seems to have done, under the 
 influence of warm poetic or devotional feeling, where the lan- 
 guage conveys more than it was possible in their soberer moments 
 to believe to be true ; or else they hold views of the atonement 
 which can in no way be vindicated. God cannot change. He 
 cannot be a different Being from what he always has been. He 
 cannot be bought over to mercy by blood. He never has been 
 a stern and inexorable Being, and then made mild and forgiving 
 by the death of his Son. The human mind is so made that it 
 cannot believe that doctrine ; and no man can be required to go 
 and proclaim such a doctrine to mankind. The true statement 
 on this point will be seen from another part of this discourse. 
 It is, in a word, that God was always merciful, benevolent, and 
 kind ; but that, in his government, as in all governments, there 
 existed obstacles to the pardon of the guilty lying in eternal 
 justice, and in the necessity of maintaining the authority of lawj 
 
210 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 that until these were removed he could not consistently make a 
 proclamation of mercy; that in order to remove them, he gave 
 his Son to die ; and that the gift of his Son, therefore, was just 
 an expression of the eternal benevolence of his character ; a 
 proof, not that he was originally stern and severe, and that 
 he was made mild and forgiving by the atonement, but that 
 he was so mild and benevolent that he was willing to stoop 
 to any sacrifice, but that of truth and justice, to save a lost 
 world. 
 
 (c) A third thought sometimes supposed to be a part of the 
 doctrine of the atonement, but not properly connected with it, 
 is, that Christ died to endure the strict and proper penalty of 
 the law. But it is equally plain that this cannot be, and that 
 men cannot be required to believe it, and that when they pro- 
 fess to believe it, they either have no clear ideas of what they 
 profess to believe, or use language without any definite significa- 
 tion. The penalty of the law in the case of transgression is 
 what the law appoints as an expression of the evil of the offence, 
 and as designed to give sanction to the law and to maintain it. 
 The proper penalty of the law can be borne by the offender only, 
 and cannot be transferred to another. A substitute may bear 
 something in the place of the penalty, or something which shall 
 answer the same end ; but when a man offends, the law threatens 
 him, and no other. It was not true, either, that the law which 
 man had violated ever threatened, as its specific penalty, a death 
 on a cross ; and it was not true that the Saviour endured on 
 that cross what properly enters into the notion of the penalty of 
 the law. It was not true that he suffered remorse of conscience ; 
 it was not true that he suffered eternal death; it cannot be 
 believed that, in those short hours, he endured as much pain as 
 all the wicked for whom he died would have endured in the 
 horrors of an eternal hell. And, moreover, if he had endured 
 the literal penalty of the law, no small part of the glory of the 
 atonement would have been taken away. If this had been so, 
 the short account of the whole transaction would be, that the 
 entireness of guilt and punishment was transferred from the 
 guilty to the innocent, and that there has been no gain to the 
 universe, since all the punishment originally threatened has 
 been rigidly inflicted, not indeed on those who deserved it, but 
 on One who did not deserve it. 
 
 Laying these things, therefore, out of view, as not necessary 
 in any just conceptions of the atonement, and as inconsistent 
 with any proper view of that great work, the simple statement 
 of it is, that it is an arrangement designed, by the substituted 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS FITTED TO GIVE PEACE. 211 
 
 sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, to make the 
 exercise of mercy towards the guilty consistent with justice and 
 the honour of law ; or an arrangement which will make it 
 proper for God to exercise the original mercy of his nature con- 
 sistently with a due regard to the stability of his government, 
 and a due expression of his hatred of sin. The origin of the 
 atonement is the benevolence, not the justice of God ; the object 
 aimed at is the manifestation of that benevolence consistently 
 with justice ; it would not have been resorted to, if benevo- 
 lence towards the guilty could have been properly exercised 
 without it. 
 
 II. We are led, then, in the second place, to inquire what it 
 in fact accomplishes in the plan of salvation. 
 
 I look upon it, so far as it comes before the mind of a sinner 
 convinced of guilt, and inquiring how peace and salvation may 
 be found, as having two great features. First, it is an expres- 
 sion of the willingness of God to pardon the guilty; and, se- 
 condly, it is a device for removing the obstacles to pardon, so 
 as to make the forgiveness of sin consistent with justice and 
 truth. 
 
 First. It is an expression of the willingness of God to pardon 
 the guilty. It is in this light that a sinner convicted of sin will 
 naturally look at it; it is with reference to this that he will 
 study it. The grand question which he wishes now to be solved, 
 and which must now be solved, if he ever finds peace, is this : 
 whether he may hope that God will be willing to forgive 
 offenders against his law. It is not whether he is benevolent 
 in general ; or whether he is just and true ; but it is specifically 
 whether he is willing to forgive the sin which now gives the 
 inquirer so much trouble, and to receive one conscious of guilt 
 to his favour. This is the question which the child asks re- 
 specting a parent whose law he has violated ; this is the ques- 
 tion which the offender against a human law asks when he 
 confesses his guilt, and throws himself upon the mercy of his 
 country ; this is the question which is asked all over the heathen 
 world, when the worshippers there, conscious of guilt, come with 
 bloody sacrifices to their altars ; and this is the question which 
 the sinner everywhere asks, when convicted of sin, and when 
 he feels that he deserves to be banished to the abodes of 
 despair. 
 
 Now a simple and single declaration on the part of God might 
 have settled that question for ever, and put the agitations of a 
 troubled soul at once to rest, even if nothing were said about 
 the way in which such a declaration could consistently be made. 
 
212 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 But that is not the method which has heen in fact adopted. 
 What I beg your particular attention to is the fact, that all the 
 offers of pardon in our world, and all the assurances of the 
 Divine mercy to the guilty, have come through the sufferings 
 and death of Jesus Christ through the atonement. 
 
 (a) If you go outside of that, or look anywhere else, where 
 will you see evidence, where will you find an assurance, that 
 God is willing to pardon the guilty ? If you go to the heathen 
 of ancient or modern times, none of their oracles give any assur- 
 ance that pardon can be obtained from an offended God ; from 
 not one of their priests could a response be obtained that would 
 give peace to a troubled conscience. If you go to an infidel, he 
 has no communication that will give peace to such a conscience. 
 All the assurances in the Bible he on principle rejects, and he 
 professes to have none that can be a substitute in their place. 
 If you open the Koran, the Shasters, the Vedas, the Zendavesta, 
 you meet no assurance on which you can rely as a communica- 
 tion from Heaven, that God is willing to forgive the violator of 
 his laws. If you ask the philosopher, he has nothing to say on 
 this point, but will rather endeavour to convince you that you 
 do not need pardon, that you should attempt to discipline your 
 own soul to meet the trials of this life, and to be ready for the 
 future, and not to trouble yourself about feelings that spring up 
 from the indulgence of the passions implanted in you by your 
 Maker. As to pardon, in the proper sense of the term, as to 
 
 forgiveness, such as a convicted sinner feels that he needs, all 
 these oracles, priests, and philosophers, are dumb. 
 
 (b) But how is this matter presented in the atonement made 
 by Christ ? The inquiry of the mind is, whether God is willing 
 to pardon him who has violated his law, and who is troubled 
 at the remembrance of the past, and in anticipation of the future. 
 
 There is much, it would be idle to deny, that is mysterious 
 in the incarnation of the Son of God, and in the atonement made 
 by Him : and what is there that comes before the minds of 
 mortals that is divested of mystery ? There are many questions 
 which the sinner, in the state of mind in which I am supposing 
 him to be, is not yet able to solve, if he ever will be in this life, 
 or ever afterwards. But, in reference to the main matter, to 
 the great inquiry which perplexes him to the question whether 
 God is willing to pardon a sinner to the disclosure of the 
 character of God with this view, made by the gift of a Saviour 
 and by his death on the cross, the following things are so 
 plain y in the Bible that there can be no doubt of them in his 
 mind, and they are of such a nature as just to meet his case : 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS FITTED TO GIVE PEACE. 213 
 
 (1.) The atonement is, on the part of God, an expression of 
 mere benevolence a gift of love : " God so loved the world that 
 he gave his only-begotten Son." He did not give him because 
 there was a claim on him ; he did not give him that he might 
 in some mysterious way be made merciful ; nor did the Saviour 
 come that he might change the character of his Father, and 
 make an inexorable being mild and kind ; or that he might buy 
 him over to mercy by his sacrifice ; but God gave him because 
 he loved the world, and as the expression of his original and 
 eternal benevolence. 
 
 (2.) It is the highest possible expression of benevolence. For, 
 to use human language, what higher expression of love can there 
 be than for a father to give an only, a much-beloved son ? And 
 when has there been in a human soul benevolence of so high 
 an order as to be willing to give up a son to die for such an 
 object ? What earthly monarch has ever occupied a throne who 
 would be willing to give up a much-beloved son to death, to 
 save his guilty subjects from deserved punishment ? In our 
 own land rich as it has been in examples of benevolence and 
 self-sacrifice what judge has ever been seated on the bench 
 who, to save the convicted murderer at his bar, much as there 
 might be in his youth, or beauty, or high connexions, or endow- 
 ments, to excite sympathy, would be willing to give an only 
 son to occupy his vacated place on the gallows? Who would 
 give up his child to save an enemy; who, even to save a friend ? 
 His own life he might give for his friend ; but who would give 
 himself for his foe $ " For scarcely for a righteous man will one 
 die ; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to 
 die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while 
 we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," Rom. v. 7, 8. And 
 when the trembling and anxious sinner looks upward toward 
 the eternal throne, and asks for a proof of love for some inti- 
 mation that God is willing to pardon for something that shall 
 soothe his feelings with the assurance that God is a God of 
 mercy, and is slow to anger, and is not willing that the sinner 
 should die, here he sees it sees all that the soul can ask sees 
 all that it can conceive of as a high expression of love. 
 
 (3.) Contemplating the death of Christ with reference to the 
 question of so much interest to him, whether God is willing to 
 pardon the guilty, he meets the assurance everywhere in the 
 Bible that the sacrifice of Christ was made for all men. " God 
 loved the world." " One died for all." " By the grace of God 
 he tasted death for every man." "If I be lifted up from the 
 earth, I will draw all men unto me." " He is the propitiation 
 
214 THE WAY OF SALVATION 
 
 for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the 
 iclwle world" He came that " whosoever believeth in him should 
 not perish, but have everlasting- life." 
 
 Nothing is plainer in the Bible than that the atonement was, 
 in some proper sense, made for all mankind. That it is so is 
 stated in language so plain that it would seem not possible to 
 mistake it ; in language as plain as any found in the creeds of 
 those churches which profess to believe the doctrine ; in language 
 as plain as any ever employed by those who wish to defend the 
 doctrine ; in words so plain that if it be admitted that it was 
 intended to teach it, it would not be possible to do it in human 
 language unless that actually employed in the Bible teaches it. 
 It was an offering made for the race. It was a gift for a fallen 
 world. It had respect not so much to individuals as to the law, 
 the perfections, and the government of God. It was an opening 
 of the way of pardon ; a method of making forgiveness con- 
 sistent ; a device for preserving truth ; a scheme for " magnifying 
 the law and making it honourable ;" an arrangement such as 
 has been wanted in all human governments, but which has been 
 found in none by which he who forgives can be at the same 
 time strictly just. It is, therefore, as applicable to one individual 
 as to another ; for, having made arrangements for securing these 
 great interests in the salvation of one soul, the arrangement is 
 necessarily one that may be extended to all. 
 
 The full benefit of this atonement, therefore, is offered to all 
 men to each and all of the human family. God makes the 
 offer ; and he makes it in sincerity and in good faith ; and he 
 expects that his views and feelings in this will be respected and 
 honoured by all who presume to speak in his name. He has 
 never commissioned any class of men to make a partial offer of 
 salvation ; to limit the invitation to any favoured class few or 
 many of mankind; to show any special respect in this matter 
 to any rank, to any complexion, to any kindred or tongue. He 
 has commissioned his servants to go and preach the gospel to 
 " every creature ;" that is, the good news that salvation is pro- 
 vided for them for in no other sense would it be the gospel to 
 them. He that does not do this ; that goes to offer the gospel 
 to a part only ; to elect persons only ; or that teaches that God 
 offers the gospel only to a certain portion of mankind, violates 
 his commission, practically charges God with insincerity, and 
 makes the language which God has used with such apparent 
 plainness, delusive, ambiguous, or unmeaning. It is never to be 
 forgotten that the offer of salvation is not made by ?nan, but by 
 God. The offer stands recorded in his own word ; the business 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS FITTED TO GIVE PEACE. 215 
 
 of the ambassador is to go and proclaim that, and that only. 
 It is the risen Saviour's commission his solemn, charge, when 
 he was about to ascend to heaven that the offer of salvation 
 should be made to every creature. It is not the fault of his 
 commission, or to be traced to any limitation in the merits of 
 the atonement, that all that dwell upo^the earth have not 
 heard it : that every Hindoo, African, and Islander has not 
 long since been told that he might be saved through a Saviour's 
 blood. 
 
 I assume the free and full offer of the gospel to all men to be 
 one of those cardinal points of the system by which all other 
 views of truth are to be determined. It is the corner-stone of 
 the whole edifice ; that which makes it so glorious to God, and 
 so full of good-will to men. For one, I hold no doctrines, and 
 never can hold any, which will seem to me inconsistent with 
 the free and full offer of salvation to every human being, or 
 which will bind my hands, or palsy my tongue, or freeze my 
 heart, when I stand before sinners to tell them of a dying 
 Saviour. I have no fellow-feeling for any other gospel ; I have 
 no "right hand of fellowship" to extend to any scheme that 
 does not teach that God sincerely offers all the bliss of heaven to 
 every child of Adam be he a Caffrarian, a Hindoo, a Laplander ; 
 a beggar, or a king ; a man of wealth, learning, and respect- 
 ability, or an abandoned wretch ; to the man that, by the grace 
 of God, will ultimately reach heaven, and to the man that by 
 his own fault will wander for ever as an outcast on the plains 
 of despair. 
 
 This scheme of salvation I regard as offered to the world, as 
 freely as the light of heaven, or the rains that burst on the 
 mountains, or the swellings of broad rivers and streams, or the 
 bubblings of fountains in the desert. And though millions to 
 whom it is offered do not receive it, and are not savingly 
 benefited by it; though in regard to them the provisions of the 
 plan may be said to be, in a certain sense, in vain, yet this 
 result does not stand alone in the arrangements of God. I see 
 in this the hand of the same God that pours the beams of noon- 
 day on barren sands, that sends showers on desert rocks, and 
 that gives bubbling springs where no man is to our eyes, but 
 not to his, in vain. It is the overflowing of benevolence; the 
 richness of the Divine mercy ; the profusion of the gifts of 
 the Creator; the fulness of compassion, that can afford thus to 
 flow over all the earth even on wastes and solitudes ; for 
 the ocean of love which supplies all can never be exhausted or 
 diminished. 
 
 15 
 
216 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to show that the atonement made hy 
 the Saviour meets the awakened and convicted sinner as a 
 practical expression of the willingness of God to pardon the 
 guilty ; as answering a question which the mind must ask in 
 that state, whether it is right for men to hope in the mercy of 
 God, or whether there is mercy for the lost. 
 
 Second. The other aspect, as I remarked, in which the atone- 
 ment is presented in the Bihle, is, that it is a device or scheme, 
 on the part of God, for removing the obstacles under a moral 
 government to the exercise of pardon, and for making the for- 
 giveness of a sinner consistent with the maintenance of the 
 honour of the law, and with justice and truth. This will open 
 before us these inquiries : What are the obstacles in a govern- 
 ment to the exercise of pardon ; what devices are resorted to in 
 human governments to meet these difficulties ; and how the 
 atonement removes the difficulties, and makes it consistent for 
 God to pardon the guilty ? 
 
 It was my intention to enter on this inquiry, and to complete 
 it in this discourse ; but I must reserve it for the ensuing. 
 
 In conclusion, and as a proper application of this part of the 
 t subject, I beg leave to ask your attention to one particular 
 point. It is this: that this view of the atonement meets an 
 anxious inquiry which has always been made by the human 
 mind, and which must continue to be one of the important 
 questions before our race. It is, whether God is willing to 
 pardon the guilty ; whether those who are conscious of having 
 violated his law may come to him with the hope that he will 
 forgive them. Now, taking the race at large embracing the 
 ancient Hebrew people, the ancient and modern heathen world, 
 and the multitudes who have resided, and do reside in Christian 
 lands I do not know that there is any one question that has 
 interested so many minds, or interested them so deeply, as this. 
 I admit that there have been many in all these lands who have 
 felt no immediate interest in it, and whose attention could not 
 be awakened to it ; I admit that there are many who profess to 
 look upon the inquiry as superfluous, and many who profess to 
 consider it a question which could not be answered ; I admit 
 that it is not a question which has been extensively considered 
 in the books of philosophy ; and I admit that there have been 
 other inquiries that have excited a more immediate, and, for the 
 time, a deeper interest in many minds than this. But I am 
 speaking of the race at large ; and what I am saying is, that 
 there is no one question that has, in one way or another, excited 
 so deep an interest as this. It was the origin of all the sacrifices 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS FITTED TO GIVE PEACE. 217 
 
 of the Hebrews. It lies at the foundation of all the bloody rites 
 of the heathen. It is the source of all the pilgrimages and 
 penances the fastings and scourgings the self-torture by un- 
 comfortable postures, by iron beds, and by hair-cloth, among the 
 Papists. It is the explanation of swinging on hooks, and hold- 
 ing the hand in one position till the muscles become immovably 
 rigid, and walking on sharp spikes, and sacrificing children, 
 among the heathen. And it is the cause of the anxious inquiry 
 of the man convinced of sin in Christian lands, and under the 
 full light of science and religion, how he may be saved. No 
 man can be convinced that he is himself a sinner, and not ask 
 this question : and there is no man who may not be convinced 
 that he is a sinner ; no one, I believe, who at some time ivill not 
 be. It is a question which men ask in solitude in the shades 
 of evening, in the gloom of midnight, when the remembrance of 
 long-forgotten guilt comes stealing over them ; it is a question 
 which men ask when in sudden danger, and when they feel that 
 they are soon probably to be called into the presence of an 
 offended God ; it is a question which men ask when, under the 
 preaching of the gospel, their sins are plainly set before them ; 
 it is a question which is asked with the deepest possible interest 
 when the Spirit of God descends with power on a community in 
 a revival of religion ; it is a question 'which a man who has been 
 careless, and worldly, and wicked in his life, asks with the 
 in tensest interest on the bed of death. Can the Maker of the world 
 show mercy f is the great inquiry the leading, prominent inquiry 
 that has stood before the minds of men. Will he pardon a trans- 
 gressor of his law ? Can a guilty being trust in his compassion ? 
 May one who is conscious of deep criminality, and who is soon to 
 stand before him in judgment, hope for his favour ? Can the 
 past be forgiven ? Can peace be restored to a soul, when con- 
 science is doing its fearful work ? Oh ! where shall an answer 
 be found to these questions ? From what hidden recesses ; from 
 what shrines, and oracles ; from what sacred groves ; from what 
 deeps of earth or of the- blue ether ; from what lips of the living, 
 and from what whisperings of the " pale and sheeted dead," 
 shall the answer come ? 
 
 I believe that the answer the sole and sufficient answer to 
 all these questions is found in the Cross of my Redeemer. I see 
 there in the gift of such a Saviour ; in the avowed design of 
 his coming ; in the wonderful work of the atonement which b* 
 performed an assurance that God loves a guilty race, and that 
 he is ready to pardon. What more do I need than the assur- 
 ance of the Son of God ? What other confirmation of it do I 
 
218 THE WATt OF SALVATION. 
 
 demand than what I have in his agony and bloody sweat, his 
 cross and passion ? Mystery still there may be on a thousand 
 questions pertaining to the Divine administration ; and a thousand 
 questions I might wish to ask even about this work, but the 
 main inquiry is answered. I am assured there that God loved 
 the world. I am assured that my Redeemer died, that God 
 might show his willingness to pardon. I am assured that he 
 tasted death for every man. I am assured that whosoever will 
 may take the water of life freely. The agitations of my soul 
 die away ; my mind settles down into peace ; my fears subside ; 
 I can look calmly up to God, calmly to the grave, calmly to the 
 eternal future ; for the great question in which I feel more 
 interest than in all others is answered whether I, a sinner, may 
 hope in the mercy of my God ! 
 
SEKMON XYII. 
 
 THE ATONEMENT AS IT REMOVES THE OBSTACLES IN THE 
 WAY OF PARDON. 
 
 COL. i. 20. " Having made peace through the blood of his cross." 
 
 IN the last discourse I entered on the consideration of the atone- 
 ment as an arrangement, under the Divine administration, for 
 giving to a mind troubled with the consciousness of guilt a 
 sound and permanent peace. I stated that the atonement is a 
 device in the Divine government by which God designs to 
 evince the benevolence of his nature in the pardon of the guilty, 
 while at the same time he manifests a due regard to law, to 
 truth, and to justice. The atonement, as then remarked, is 
 founded primarily on the benevolence, and not on the justice of 
 God ; or it is a way by which benevolence can be manifested 
 without impairing or endangering the interests of justice. As 
 viewed by one who is condemned by his own conscience, and by 
 the law of God, by one who feels that he is exposed to the 
 Divine displeasure, and who is conscious of the need of pardon, 
 which is the true point of view from which to contemplate the 
 sacrifice made by the Lord Jesus Christ, the atonement has two 
 aspects : one, as it shows a sinner that God is willing to 
 pardon ; the other, as it removes the obstacles in the way of 
 pardon. 
 
 The former of these points was then considered. I showed, (1,) 
 that it is the expression of mere benevolence guilty man having 
 no claim to any such interposition ; (2,) that it is the highest 
 proof of benevolence which God could furnish ; and, (3,) that it 
 is benevolence shown to the whole race, and that, therefore, any 
 and every sinner is free to avail himself of all the benefits of it. 
 
 I proceed now to consider the atonement in the other aspect 
 mentioned, as removing the obstacles to pardon. It is important 
 to our purpose to keep in remembrance this point, that we are 
 considering the case of a sinner conscious of guilt and danger, 
 and inquiring whether he may be pardoned and saved. Such a 
 man wishes the assurance that he may be forgiven ; he desires 
 to understand how it is that the atonement avails to secure his 
 pardon. He wishes to know that God is willing to forgive ; he 
 
220 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 wishes to see how it is consisted for a God of truth and justice 
 to do it. The former inquiry is answered by the fact of the gift 
 of a Saviour, and by the Divine invitations ; the latter is the 
 point that now presents itself for our consideration. 
 
 In this inquiry there are two points : I. What are the hin- 
 drances to the pardon of a sinner? and, II. How does the atone- 
 ment remove those hindrances, and give peace to the mind of the 
 guilty ? 
 
 I. The first inquiry is, TVTiat are the hindrances to the pardon 
 of a sinner f 
 
 I have already, in the former discourses, said enough to show 
 you that those hindrances, whatever they may be, do not con- 
 sist of any unwillingness on the part of God to pardon the 
 guilty ; and that, whatever may be the effect of an atonement, 
 it is not intended to change God ; or to make him a different 
 Being from what he was before ; or to buy him over to mercy ; 
 or to make a Being before stern, inexorable, and unforgiving 
 mild, gentle, merciful, and kind. If any such ideas were involved 
 in the atonement, I do not see how it would be possible for the 
 human mind to embrace it. 
 
 Laying all such ideas out of view in contemplating the atone- 
 ment, I will proceed, in as plain and simple a manner as is 
 possible, to state what are the real hindrances to the pardon of 
 a sinner. 
 
 They are such as arise from the nature of moral government, 
 and are found under all forms of administration. In all govern- 
 ments there are great difficulties in regard to pardon, and more 
 embarrasment is felt in adjusting it aright, than perhaps on 
 any other subject. It is supposed, indeed, in all governments 
 but those of tyrants, that there would be cases where pardon 
 would be desirable ; where the law, if suffered to take its course, 
 would seem to be severe ; where the real welfare of the commu- 
 nity would be promoted, as well as the promptings of humanity 
 obeyed, by extending forgiveness to the guilty; and where it 
 would be desirable to leave a discretionary power on this sub- 
 ject to the executive officer of the government to the sovereign 
 power whose law has been violated. But it has never been 
 found practicable to adjust this satisfactorily under any human 
 administration, or to free the subject from difficulties. 
 
 The difficulties in the case and in stating these, I am stating 
 what exist under all forms of government, parental, civil, and 
 Divine are such as I will now refer to. (1.) One is, where 
 pardon is never exercised ; where it is a settled and unchanging 
 maxim of the law, that no offender, under any circumstances, is 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS IT REMOVES OBSTACLES. 221 
 
 ever to be forgiven. This might be, although I am ignorant 
 that even under the darkest forms of tyranny any such principle 
 has been avowed as the settled maxim of the administration, 
 however it may have been practically acted on by some, as under 
 the government of Draco, or under some forms of Oriental despo- 
 tism, or by the Papal communion in the times of the Inquisition. 
 But still it is conceivable that it might be, and such a govern- 
 ment, without any mixture of the element of benevolence, 
 would be severely and sternly and wholly just. But almost any 
 form of tyranny would be less dreadful than this ; for justice 
 would establish its dominion at the expense of some of the finest 
 feelings of our nature, and violate some of the plainest dictates 
 of our moral being. There are cases, even cases of undoubted 
 violation of law, where pardon is desirable ; where all the bene- 
 volent feelings of a community would be gratified by forgive- 
 ness ; and where all the tender feelings of humanity would be 
 outraged if pardon were never extended. In the case of a single 
 individual offender in Great Britain, thirty thousand signatures 
 were easily obtained asking for the pardon of a man who had, 
 in a single case, committed an offence against the laws of the 
 land : in all communities there are cases in which the purest 
 and best citizens are willing to unite in such petitions. All com- 
 munities, as already remarked, entrust a pardoning power to 
 the executive or the judges. As human nature now is, no man 
 would wish to live under a government where it was an assumed 
 principle that pardon was never to be extended to the guilty ; 
 no man would contribute his influence to organize a government 
 under which no guilty person might ever , hope to be forgiven. 
 This difficulty is one that would arise under a government that 
 was severely and sternly just. (2.) A difficulty not less, but of 
 an opposite character, would exist if it were an admitted prin- 
 ciple that all the guilty were to be pardoned ; that every offender 
 against the laws was to be forgiven, and was to be permitted 
 to go at large. This too might be ; but all can imagine what 
 would be the effect of such an administration. This, not less 
 than the former, would violate deep principles of our nature ; 
 this, more than that, would endanger the welfare of a commu- 
 nity. For, if there are principles in our nature which would 
 make it desirable that some should be pardoned, there are prin- 
 ciples which demand that some shall be punished. If all were 
 pardoned, if all the guilty were suffered to go at large, what 
 man's property would be safe what man's reputation what 
 man's life ? What would be the condition of things in this or 
 in any community, if all jails and penitentiaries were thrown 
 
222 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 open, and if all convicted and unconvicted felons were sent forth 
 upon the community ? Who would lie down calmly at night ? 
 Who would not gather up his property and flee from such a 
 land ? Law would he a bugbear ; and every form of crime would 
 he committed under the sanction of a spurious and wretched 
 "benevolence. This difficulty would arise if justice were never 
 executed, and all the guilty were pardoned : and as a case has 
 never occurred where it was an assumed maxim that none were 
 to he pardoned, so in our world the case of a government has 
 never occurred where it was an assumed maxim that pardon is 
 to he extended indiscriminately to all. Yet, (3), there is another 
 difficulty still. It is this : pardon in all cases does so much, 
 even under the hest arrangements that governments can make, 
 to weaken the strong arm of the law. The influence in every 
 case where it can he exercised is to lessen the moral power of 
 the law ; to diminish the public respect for its sanctions ; to make 
 offenders cease to dread the punishment which it threatens ; and 
 in general to produce a want of respect for the law in a com- 
 munity. It is of the nature of a public proclamation that crime 
 way he committed in some cases with impunity; and as the cases 
 are not specified, and as no one is excluded, the practical effect 
 must he that each offender, whatever crime he may commit, will 
 feel that he may he among the numher of those who will escape 
 the infliction of the penalty. Two things operate widely in 
 every community to induce men to feel that the laws may be 
 violated, and that crimes may be committed without the danger 
 of punishment : one is, the hope that so generally prevails 
 among that class of men, that they will escape detection ; the 
 other, a feeling, perhaps, as effective in producing conscious 
 security, is the hope that, if the crime is Drought home to them, 
 they may be pardoned. 
 
 What is needed in the case is, some arrangement that shall 
 prevent this effect, and yet make pardon practicable and proper ; 
 that is, something that shall do honour to the decisions of the 
 law, and that shall at the same time meet the promptings of 
 "benevolence; in other words, that shall secure respect for the 
 law and the government, and yet shall make it consistent, prac- 
 ticable, and safe, to pardon an offender. This effect will be 
 secured if the sanctions of the law considered as designed to 
 express the views of the lawgiver as to the evil of the offence, 
 or as designed to restrain from sin, or as designed to reform 
 offenders, or as calculated to subserve any other purpose contem- 
 plated by the infliction of penalty can be secured, while at the 
 same time the government is free to indulge the promptings of 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS IT REMOVES OBSTACLES. 223 
 
 humanity, and to release an acknowledged offender from the 
 infliction of the penalty. These objects, so different in their 
 nature, have never been blended in a human administration. As 
 the one or the other has prevailed, government has manifested a 
 character either of severity or weakness ; of tyranny or feebleness ; 
 of blood, like that of Draco, or of imbecility, where there ia 
 neither respect for the law, dread of punishment, nor restraint on 
 ciime. 
 
 In all human governments hitherto and what has been true 
 heretofore in this respect will be true to the end of time there 
 have been substantially but two cases in W 7 hich the executive is 
 entrusted with the power of pardon. The one is, where the 
 sentence of the law may be regarded as too severe ; that is, 
 where, to use the words of Blackstone in reference to the pro- 
 visions of a court of equity " Since in laws all cases cannot 
 be foreseen or expressed, it is necessary that when the general 
 decrees of the law come to be applied to particular cases, there 
 should be somewhere a power vested of defining those circum- 
 stances, which, had they been foreseen, the legislator himself 
 would have expressed." Com. i. 62. Such cases occur under 
 all forms of human government, and under the best admi- 
 nistration of the laws, for there are mitigating circumstances 
 which could not have been foreseen in framing the laws ; and as 
 law is general in its nature, and not framed with reference to 
 particular cases, the well-known maxim of the law, Summum jus 
 summa injuria est, is often illustrated in the actual administra- 
 tion of justice. There is a propriety, therefore, that a power of 
 remitting the penalty improperly called a pardoning power 
 should be lodged in the hands of the executive in a state. And yet 
 it is to be observed that this is not, in any proper sense of the word, 
 pardon. It is simply a declaration, made under the authority 
 of law, that the sentence in the case was too severe ; that the 
 penalty appointed should not be inflicted ; that, in fact, no such 
 crime as that of which the alleged offender has been convicted 
 has been committed ; and that of right he ought to be discharged. 
 It might be true that some offence has been committed, and that 
 it would have been right to have inflicted a lighter penalty, but 
 the so-called act of pardon in this case is a proclamation that 
 this penalty has not been deserved, and therefore it is clear that 
 there has been no act of pardon as such. It is simply an acknow- 
 ledgment of the imperfection of the best forms of human admi- 
 nistration, and an act at the same time setting the government 
 right, and the alleged offender right, before the community. 
 Whatever honour is done to the law in the case is not in con- 
 
224 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 nexion with pardon, but it is a declaration that the law has 
 made arrangements, so far as practicable, by which undeserved 
 penalties shall not be inflicted. 
 
 The only other case of pardon in a human government occurs 
 where an undoubted crime has been committed ; where the 
 offender has been tried, convicted, and sentenced ; where it 
 would be right to inflict the penalty of the law, and where, 
 notwithstanding this, the law has entrusted the exercise of 
 pardon to the discretion of the executive. Such cases, it must 
 be admitted, often occur. Men of acknowledged guilt, after 
 conviction as the result of a full and fair trial, and long before 
 the term of sentence expires, are discharged from prison and 
 turned upon the community practically unpunished according 
 to the just notion of the law, and without the slightest evidence 
 that the punishment, as far as inflicted, has had any reforming 
 power. Nothing is done to prevent the effects of pardon noticed 
 before ; nothing is done, so far as the pardon is concerned, to 
 maintain the authority of law ; nothing is done to reform the 
 offender ; nothing is done to deter others from the commission 
 of a similar offence. It is simply a proclamation that crime 
 may be committed with impunity. To whatever it may be 
 traced, whether to the weakness of the executive, or to the 
 prevalent sentiments in a community demanding the frequent 
 exercise of pardon, or to what may be regarded as the prompt- 
 ings of humanity or benevolence, or to a weakened sense of 
 justice to a feeling that punishment is essential tyranny, and 
 that all punishment is a violation of the dictates of humanity 
 it is, in fact, a public proclamation that crime may be committed 
 without the dread of punishment a practical relaxation of all 
 laws, and a practical invitation to all men to commit the crimes 
 to which their passions or their supposed interests may prompt. 
 
 In all the devices of human wisdom ; in all the forms of 
 administration originated by man ; in all the history of the 
 world hitherto, it has never been found practicable to introduce 
 an arrangement like that which is contemplated by the atone- 
 ment. In no court of justice has such an arrangement ever been 
 attempted, and no legislator has introduced it into the adminis- 
 tration of the laws. Sensible as legislators and judges have 
 been of the defects in the administration of law just noticed, 
 they have never attempted, as a fixed and permanent arrange- 
 ment, to introduce a device like that of the atonement. A debt 
 may indeed be paid, and the obligation will be discharged ; but 
 no provision has been made by which respect may be shown to 
 the penalty of law, and yet pardon be extended to acknowledged 
 
225 
 
 offenders. Whether it has been that legislators have been 
 in-sensible to the evils now adverted to ; or whether they have 
 been disposed to make an experiment to see whether tho^e evils 
 might not be avoided ; or whether they have despaired of finding 
 any means by which due honour may be done to the law while 
 the guilty man is acquitted, it is not material now to inquire. 
 The fact is undoubted. No such arrangement has ever been 
 made. History furnishes no traces of such a provision, and no 
 court of justice has ever resorted to it in the administration of 
 law. No one has been appointed, as a permanent legal arrange- 
 ment, to suffer in the place of another ; nowhere does law con- 
 template the acceptance of substituted sufferings in the place of 
 those incurred by the guilty. The only things done by a human 
 government in the case are the two already referred to : to wit, 
 where an offender is pardoned, as it is termed, because the 
 sentence was too severe ; and where one guilty of undoubted 
 crime, and deserving the infliction of the penalty, is discharged 
 without any attempt to maintain the authority of law. 
 
 Now it is clear that in the Divine administration pardon can 
 never be extended in either of these forms. It cannot be sup- 
 posed that in an act of pardon the all-wise Legislator would 
 practically acknowledge that the sentence of the law was too 
 severe that is, that it was unjust, and that the offender 
 would be discharged on that ground ; nor can it be supposed 
 that an acknowledged offender would be acquitted without any 
 respect shown to the law, or any arrangement to prevent the 
 effects on the individual himself, or on the community, of 
 acquitting the offender. It cannot be supposed that God would 
 make either a practical proclamation that his own law was stern 
 and severe, and that its penalty ought not to be inflicted ; nor 
 can it be supposed that he would make a practical proclamation 
 that his law is to be disregarded in his own mode of adminis- 
 tering it, and that it may become an understood maxim that 
 crime may be committed under his administration with impunity. 
 To suppose this would be to charge on the Divine administration 
 all that has been found to be weak, defective, inefficient, if not 
 partial, in human governments. Whether we may be able or not 
 to see how this difficulty is met, and how these evils are pre- 
 vented, we may be certain that in a perfect government the 
 difficulties will be met, and that some arrangement will be 
 devised by which the evils may be prevented. This leads us, 
 
 II. In the second place, to inquire, How the atonement meets 
 the difficulties referred to or how it removes the hindrances to 
 the pardon of a sinner. 
 
226 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 This inquiry is practically whether the atonement so meets 
 the claims of justice, or so evinces respect to the law, that the 
 great ends of moral government can be secured when the penalty 
 is remitted, or when the sinner is pardoned. If these ends can 
 be secured, it is clear that the offender may with propriety bf 
 pardoned ; and clear also, that, if this is done, his agitated and 
 troubled mind may be at peace. If by the atonement God can 
 as certainly and as fully evince his hatred of sin, and his respect 
 for law, and prevent the evil effects of sin, as he could by the 
 punishment of the sinner himself, then it is plain that the great 
 purposes contemplated by the law and by the appointment of a 
 penalty are accomplished. There are, then, in connexion with 
 this, two subordinate inquiries : What is shown by punishment? 
 and, Can this be shown by the atonement ? 
 
 (a) What, then, is shown by punishment ? What is contem- 
 plated by the appointment of penalty ? What, in respect to moral 
 government, is secured when the penalty of law is inflicted ? In 
 what light does it represent the lawgiver, and what light does it 
 throw on his purpose in appointing the penalty ? To these 
 inquiries the brief and obvious answer is, that the penalty affixed 
 to a law expresses the mew of the lawgiver in respect to the evil of 
 the offence. So far as it is penalty, its design is to convey that 
 idea, and nothing else. It is simply the measure of his estimate 
 of the nature and desert of the crime. The penalty must be 
 appointed, moreover, by the lawgiver himself, and must express 
 his sense of the nature and desert of the act of transgression. 
 No one can control him in this ; no one can properly estimate 
 the justice of the penalty, unless he is able to comprehend the 
 nature and tendency of the offence as truly as the lawgiver 
 himself; and no creature therefore, in respect to the Divine 
 administration, can possess the qualifications which may be 
 requisite to judge of the propriety of the penalty affixed to law. 
 Mfich indeed of the design and the effect of punishment may be 
 seen, but there may be depths in regard to it which no created 
 intellect can as yet fathom, and there may be collateral purposes 
 to be accomplished by it which a creature cannot comprehend. 
 The main and central idea however is, that it shows the sense 
 of the lawgiver in respect to the evil of transgression. It is an 
 illustration and a declaration of the view which he takes of it 
 from the stand-point which he occupies as the head of the 
 government, or as presiding over the interests of those who are 
 subject to his administration. The security that the penalty 
 will be just and equal that it will not be severe or partial 
 that it will be commensurate merely with the desert of the 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS IT REMOVES OBSTACLES. 227 
 
 offence that it will not be too intense in degree, or too pro- 
 longed in duration is to be found, not in any control which the 
 subject of the law has over it, but solely in the wisdom, the 
 equity, and the benevolence of him. who appoints it. It is plain 
 that if the view thus entertained of the evil of transgression 
 can be evinced either by the sufferings of the offender himself, 
 or by anything substituted in the place of those sufferings 
 that shall convey the same practical impression, the great 
 ends of penalty will be accomplished, and the infliction of 
 the penalty on the offender himself may in the latter case be 
 remitted. 
 
 (b) This leads, then, to the only remaining inquiry, whether 
 the evil of sin as designed to be expressed by the penalty of the 
 law can be so evinced by the substituted sufferings of another, or 
 by the atonement, that in respect to the offender himself penalty 
 may be properly remitted ; and so remitted that he himself can 
 feel that the same testimony has been borne to the value of law, 
 and to the evil of sin, which would have been furnished by his 
 own personal sufferings. In other words, is it practicable or 
 possible for an offender troubled with the remembrance of 
 personal guilt, and realizing that he is justly exposed ta the 
 penalty of a broken law, to feel the same calmness and composure, 
 or the same freedom from apprehended punishment, which he 
 would have felt if it had been possible for him to bear the 
 penalty himself, or which he would if the offence had never 
 been committed ? If sin were a debt in the literal sense, it is 
 easy to see how this effect might follow ; for it is conceivable 
 that a debt might be so paid by another as to meet all the 
 claims of justice, or to discharge the entire pecuniary responsi- 
 bility, so that the debtor himself would feel that there was no 
 claim of the law upon him, and so that there would be created 
 in his bosom the highest sense of obligation to him who had 
 interposed to relieve him of a claim which he was unable to 
 meet. It is to be admitted, however, that sin is not precisely of 
 the nature of a debt ; and it is to be admitted that there must 
 be other elements in an atonement than those which are involved 
 in the payment of a debt, Can the great end contemplated by 
 the appointment of a penalty, or by the infliction of punishment 
 to wit, the expression of the Divine view of the evil of sin be 
 so accomplished by the substituted sufferings, that I, a guilty 
 man a helpless sinner an acknowledged violator of law one 
 feeling that he deserves the infliction of such a penalty as the 
 Lawgiver shall judge to be necessary for the maintenance of 
 moral government can feel that the great purpose of penalty in 
 
228 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 respect to me has been accomplished, and that I may now be 
 properly treated as if I had not offended ? 
 
 As this inquiry pertains to the very essence of the Christian 
 scheme; as it bears on the feelings of the guilty, and relates to a 
 question which must always occur to the mind of the guilty, it 
 is proper to refer to a few facts and principles which may tend 
 to illustrate and answer it. 
 
 (1.) As a matter of fact, under the Divine administration, the 
 evil of sin or crime is perhaps more frequently seen by the effects 
 produced on those who are innocent than by any direct and 
 immediate effect on the guilty themselves. It is somehow a 
 great principle under the Divine government, that the effects of 
 our conduct often pass over from the offender himself to those 
 who are associated with him ; and that when we undertake to 
 estimate the evil of the offence, or to obtain a just measure of 
 the crime, we more naturally look to those effects than to any- 
 thing which has as yet occurred to the offender himself. Nay, 
 the mind of the offender himself may be more deeply affected as 
 to the evil of the crime committed by the sufferings which he 
 perceives that his conduct has caused to others than by any pain 
 or privation which he himself has endured. Society is full of 
 instances of this kind, and perhaps in the case of a large portion 
 of the crimes committed in a community, the actual amount of 
 suffering endured by the offender himself is small, if it might 
 not even be said to be trifling, as compared with the sufferings 
 which the offence has brought on others. The man who suffers 
 in a penitentiary, solitary and alone, perhaps learns to bear the 
 punishment inflicted with patience, or sinks into insensibility or 
 stupidity, or invents some mitigation of his own sufferings ; but 
 while thus insensible comparatively to the effects of his own 
 crime, and to the evil of the offence, his conduct may have 
 brought the grey hairs of a father or a mother to the grave, or 
 the sorrows of a broken-hearted wife, sister, or daughter, may be 
 the public testimony to the evil of the offence, and may do more 
 to impress a sense of that evil on the community than all that 
 he endures in the loneliness and forgetfulness of his dungeon. 
 Now, if we suppose that it had been designed beforehand to 
 make an arrangement which would most deeply impress upon 
 the community the evil of the offence committed, we should say 
 that apparently the design was to show that evil to the largest 
 extent by the collateral and incidental sufferings that would 
 come on the innocent. The point now is not to inquire into the 
 reason of this arrangement, or to show its justice ; but simply to 
 advert to the fact that the evil of transgression may be seen in a 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS IT REMOVES OBSTACLES. 229 
 
 very high degree, and so as possibly to affect the mind of the 
 offender himself hy the sufferings which a certain course of 
 conduct would bring on the innocent. If we suppose that those 
 sufferings were in any sense voluntarily assumed, the principle 
 would not be varied ; for still the whole effect might be in some 
 way to illustrate the evil of the offence, or to divide with the 
 offender the sufferings produced by his crime. 
 
 (2.) The great doctrine of the Christian atonement is, not that 
 there was any natural connexion between the sinner and the 
 Redeemer ; not that, as in the case above supposed, the con- 
 sequences of the sinner's offence passed over by any natural law 
 to the Saviour, so as to involve him in poverty, pain, and death, 
 but that by a voluntary arrangement he was willing so to take 
 the place of the offender that, as in the case of natural relation- 
 ship, the evil effect of transgression should be illustrated, and 
 the Divine sense of the nature of sin should be manifested by 
 his sufferings as if they had been endured by the sinner himself. 
 In other words, such an amount of suffering was appointed, and 
 was submitted to, as would to the sinner himself, and to the 
 universe at large, be a just measure of the Divine sense of the 
 evil of transgression, and in this respect accomplish the same 
 effect as if the sinner had himself endured the penalty of 
 the law. 
 
 (3.) In the work of the atonement as viewed by the sinner 
 under conviction for sin, looking at the Redeemer as suffering 
 in his stead, the great idea which is presented to his mind is 
 still that which is manifest in the personal sufferings produced 
 by sins, and in the voluntary or involuntary sufferings endured 
 by others on our account to wit, the connexion between sin and 
 suffering. It is seen there, as elsewhere, that the only muse of 
 suffering is sin. The Redeemer suffered from no other cause. 
 There was no other conceivable reason why he should suffer. 
 There is no statement made no intimation whatever that he 
 did suffer from any other cause. No reason can be given, drawn 
 from any views of the Divine government which we can obtain, 
 why the sufferings of the garden and the cross came upon him, 
 unless it was from some connexion with sin. Without such a 
 connexion, and without some design of evincing the nature of 
 sin by his sufferings, it would be impossible to vindicate the 
 Divine character in permitting these sufferings to come upon 
 the only Being in our world who has been in all respects per- 
 fectly innocent. The Scripture statement, moreover, everywhere 
 is, that he did thus suffer on account of sin : that he " died the 
 just for the unjust ;" that he was the " propitiation for our sins;" 
 
230 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 that " the chastisement of our peace was upon him ;" that " the 
 Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all ;" that " by his stripes 
 we are healed ;" and that " he died for our offences, and was 
 raised for our justification." The point of the remark now made 
 is, that this may be so perceived hy the mind itself to be the 
 design of the Saviour's sufferings, that one who is conscious of 
 guilt may see that in those sufferings there has been a real ex- 
 pression of a Divine sense of the evil of sin, intentionally made, 
 an expression as real, though it may not be in the same form, 
 as if the sinner himself had endured the same sufferings as a 
 part of the penalty of the law. 
 
 (4.) One other remark only it seems necessary to make to 
 complete the statement of the effect produced by the atonement 
 in giving peace to a mind troubled with the consciousness of 
 sin : it is, that the sufferings endured by the Redeemer in the 
 place of the sinner are fitted to make a deeper impression on 
 the universe at large than would be produced by the punish- 
 ment of the sinner himself. If a sinner is lost, he is so in more 
 senses than one ; lost not only to hope and happiness, but also 
 in the sense that his individual sufferings may make little, if any, 
 impression on the universe at large. He has in himself no such 
 rank, or dignity, or exaltation, and he sustains no such relations, 
 as to attract attention beyond a very limited sphere. The aggregate 
 sufferings of the guilty may, indeed, make a deep and wide im- 
 pression ; but the sufferings of an individual must be limited in 
 the sphere of their influence, and the moral effect will be com- 
 paratively unfelt. Few of all the creatures that God has made 
 will be aware of his suffering, and even on those few the impres- 
 sion produced will be comparatively slight. None of these re- 
 marks, however, apply to the sufferings of the Redeemer, con- 
 sidered as endured in the place of sinners. His exalted dignity 
 as the Son of God ; the adoration paid him by the angelic hosts ; 
 his rank and office as Mediator ; the changes that may have 
 been produced in heaven by his incarnation ; his poverty and 
 lowliness of estate on earth ; his life of weariness and toil ; and 
 pre-eminently his sufferings on the cross, were all fitted to attract 
 the attention of the universe at large, and to produce a deep 
 impression on distant worlds. Far as those wonderful events 
 were known, and if he was, indeed, the incarnate Deity, they 
 would be known throughout all worlds, the inquiry must have 
 occurred, why he stooped to so low a condition ; why he endured 
 so many sufferings in his life ; and why, as a malefactor, and 
 between malefactors, he died on a cross. Whether the design 
 >f that death was known to other worlds at the time it occurred, 
 
THE ATONEMENT AS IT KEMOVES OBSTACLES. ^81 
 
 cannot indeed now be ascertained; but it will be ultimately 
 known that it was intended to express, to the utmost degree 
 possible, the Divine sense of the evil of sin the very object 
 which would be accomplished by the punishment of the sinner 
 himself. Throughout the universe, therefore, an impression would 
 be made by the atonement of the evil of sin, more deep and 
 lasting than would be produced by the natural course of the 
 administration of justice ; and if that impression is secured, it is 
 clear that every obstacle to the pardon of the sinner is removed, 
 and that he may be forgiven without any of the incidental evils 
 against which it has been impossible to guard in the exercise of 
 pardon by human governments. 
 
 If this is so, the troubled conscience may have peace. All has 
 been done that can be done to show the evil of transgression, 
 and to prevent the consequences which would flow from the exer- 
 cise of pardon were it granted without an atonement. All has 
 been done that needs to be done to express the Divine sense of 
 the value of law, of the ill-desert of transgression, and of the 
 magnitude of an offence against the government of God. God 
 has shown that while he pardons he is not indifferent to the 
 claims of his own law, and that while he " justifies the ungodly," 
 he has a supreme regard for truth and holiness, and will main- 
 tain the interests of justice at all times, and at every sacrifice. 
 The pardoned sinner, therefore, may have peace. He is not only ' 
 assured of pardon, but he is assured that it is extended in such 
 a way that the honour of God is maintained, and the great 
 interests of the universe secured. He can see that the obstacles 
 which existed to the exercise of pardon have been wholly re- 
 moved, and removed in such a way that every interest of justice 
 is safe. Sunken, degraded, and lost as he is ; conscious of deep 
 depravity and of ill-desert; feeling that his appropriate place 
 would be with the lost ; and feeling too for that can never be 
 forgotten that he will always retain the recollection of his 
 having been a violator of law, and that he can occupy only a 
 very humble place before the throne, yet he may feel also that 
 God is glorified by his salvation, and every attribute of the 
 Deity illustrated and magnified by his admission into heaven. 
 He enjoys the favour of God, not because God disregards law, 
 but even while he shows his respect for it, and magnifies it. 
 He becomes an heir of glory, not by any favouritism that is 
 regardless of justice and of the rights of others, but while the 
 rights of others are as much respected as his own, and while 
 they are rendered still more secure by the method of his own 
 salvation. He enters heaven over no prostrate law j he dwells 
 16 
 
232 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 there not in defiance of the claims of justice ; he wears a crown 
 of glory not tarnished by the conviction that it is bestowed 
 in violation of right; but while associated for ever with un- 
 fallen beings with the angels that have not left " their first 
 estate," he feels that he is there in virtue of a righteousness 
 not less glorious than theirs, for it is the righteousness of the 
 Son of God. The atonement has thus removed the obstacles 
 to the way of pardon ; the agitations of guilt in the soul die 
 away; light, hope, and joy break in upon the mind, and the 
 sinner finds peace. 
 
SERMON XYIII. 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF KEGENEKATION. 
 
 JOHN iii. 3. " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom 
 of God." 
 
 I PROPOSE, from this verse, to show the necessity of regenera- 
 tion, or the new birth. The only introductory remark which 
 it is necessary to make before we enter on the argument is, 
 that the Saviour in the text asserts, with great earnestness and 
 emphasis, that the new birth is indispensable for every one who 
 would enter into his kingdom : " Verily, verily, I say unto 
 thee, Except a man" in the Greek, any one " be born again, 
 he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." My argument will 
 be directed solely to this point, that it is necessary for every one 
 to be renewed, or regenerated, in order to be saved. 
 
 With reference to this argument, mankind may be conveniently 
 divided into two great classes. The line, perhaps, may not be 
 in all respects very definite, and there may be a middle region 
 of character of considerable extent such as to leave us in doubt 
 where to place many individuals ; but it is sufficiently definite 
 for our present purpose, and will not lead us into error in the 
 argument. The two classes are these: First. The openly 
 wicked, abandoned, sensual, scoffing, profane. Second. The 
 moral, the amiable, the upright, the sincere, the accomplished. 
 The former are commonly designated as vicious ; the latter as 
 virtuous. The former are destitute of virtue and religion to- 
 gether ; the latter lay claim to virtue without religion. The 
 former attempt no divorce between virtue and piety, but abjure 
 both together ; the latter attempt a divorce, and seek to hold 
 the one without the other. The former are willing to be excluded 
 from good society on earth as well as from heaven ; the latter 
 mean to retain their rank in the goodly fellowship of this world, 
 whatever may be the fact about their admission into heaven. 
 The former take a decided stand against religion and all its 
 appearances and pretensions ; the latter desire to occupy a posi- 
 tion somewhere on the confines of religion and if they have 
 not Christian piety, they intend to have something that they 
 hope will, on the whole, answer just as well in the future world. 
 
234 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 Now the difficulty in regard to the subject before us is not at 
 all in reference to the former of these classes. It will be con- 
 ceded on all hands that it is necessary that they should be renewed 
 in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Had the Saviour 
 so modified his declaration, affirming the necessity of the new birth, 
 as to have embraced only that portion of mankind, scarcely any 
 doctrine would have met with more favour. The only embarrass- 
 ment in the case has arisen from the fact that he so shaped his 
 remark as to include Nicodemus and all that class of men under 
 it, so as to make it just as necessary for them to be born again 
 as for the openly abandoned and profane. It is a difficulty 
 arising from the fact that in one respect not in all respects 
 he has put them on a level, and affirmed that, whatever else 
 might occur, they would be alike excluded from the kingdom 
 of God unless they were " born of water and of the Spirit." 
 Leaving the former of these classes, therefore, at present out of 
 view, as those about whom there can be no debate, and as not 
 probably among those who are now addressed. I shall direct 
 your thoughts entirely to the question about the latter class 
 the amiable, the moral, the upright. The subject will have 
 then this advantage at least, that it is one that pertains to your 
 own case, and is one in which you will feel yourselves personally 
 concerned. 
 
 It falls in with my design, and with my convictions also, to 
 concede to you all that you would claim on the score of morality, 
 amiableness, courtesy, and kindness. Of these virtues you could 
 mention none which my argument would not allow me to con- 
 cede ; of none who might set up the claim would I be disposed 
 to call it in question. I do not see that the Redeemer was 
 disposed to deny the existence of these virtues in Nicodemus ; 
 I am certain he did not in the young man who came to him and 
 told him that he had kept all the commandments from his youth 
 up, and whom the Saviour told that he lacked but one thing in 
 order to be perfect, and whom he " loved," Mark x. 21. Yet 
 here lies the solemn declaration of the Saviour in our path, 
 affecting alike the case of Nicodemus, and the amiable young 
 man, and all who are like them : " Except any one be born 
 again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Why did he make 
 such a declaration? On what was it based? What were the 
 views of man which lay in the Redeemer's soul that justified 
 this remark ? We may not be able exactly to answer these 
 questions, but we may state some considerations which show 
 that the declaration is true, or that there are reasons why it 
 was made. To that task I now proceed. 
 
THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. 235 
 
 I. The first consideration which I state is, that the heart by 
 nature, or when unrenewed, is not in a proper state for the employ- 
 ments and enjoyments of heaven. I speak now of the human 
 heart as such, without any special reference to the openly 
 wicked and profane. I speak of the unrenewed heart in its 
 best state, and under the best discipline and cultivation. I 
 speak of it where there may be all the charms of accomplish- 
 ment ; all the beauties of native amiableness ; all the courtesy 
 of refined breeding ; all that is attractive and valuable in un- 
 suspected virtue. 
 
 There are two sources of evidence in regard to this : the 
 Bible and your own consciousness. 
 
 The testimony of the Bible is so clear that no one, I presume, 
 will be disposed to doubt it, and this point need not detain us 
 long. That testimony bears directly on the point before us, that 
 the human -heart, as such, is evil, and must be renewed if man 
 would be saved. Thus it is said, " The heart is deceitful above 
 all things, and desperately wicked," Jer. xvii. 9. That is, the 
 heart of man, as such, without reference to any particular class 
 or condition of men. The fair meaning is, that wherever there 
 is a human heart it has this characteristic that it is a deceitful 
 heart more deceitful than all things else in a world full of 
 deceit, and that it has within it the elements of desperate 
 wickedness. The same account of the universal depravity of 
 the human heart is given in Gen. viii. 21 : " The imagination of 
 man's heart is evil from his youth." This appears also in the 
 form of an universal "declaration. It is not that the profligate 
 race which had been just swept away by the deluge was evil, 
 but it is that the heart of man, as such, is evil from his youth. 
 
 As these positive declarations settle the question so far as 
 the Bible is concerned, I turn to the other source of evidence in 
 the case the consciousness of the heart itself. And as the form 
 of direct address will better fall in with the nature of the' argu- 
 ment which I wish to urge, you will permit me with plainness 
 to use this form. The argument relates to the following points : 
 
 (1.) You are conscious that you have no vital religion; nothing 
 that can be properly called religion. You do not even pretend 
 or profess to have it. You would not consider it a reflection on 
 you at all to have it said that you make no profession of piety, 
 as you would to have it said that you do not profess to be 
 influenced by the laws of honour or honesty. And in your 
 life there is nothing that can be fairly interpreted as showing 
 that you have real religion. You do not truly pray ; you do 
 not habitually read the Bible ; you do not cherish love to God ; 
 
236 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 you do not depend on his mercy for salvation ; you do not 
 identify yourselves with religious persons. You claim to be 
 moral, upright, faithful to your engagements, kind, courteous ; 
 but in your own heart and wishes and intentions you do not 
 claim to be religious men. Possibly you may say that all 
 this is unkind and uncharitable. But I see not how it is so. 
 I will concede all that you claim. I will yield all that you 
 ask on the score of morality. I will even go farther than 
 you will. I will yield to a man the claim to be a religious 
 man when he professes to be, even when appearances are much 
 against him for I am not ignorant how much / must need the 
 exercise of that charity " which suffereth long and is kind ;" and 
 / believe that there may be true piety where there is much 
 imperfection, and if you make any profession of godliness I will 
 extend the same charity to you. But I have not so read the 
 New Testament, or so learned the character of Christ, or been, 
 so taught by any of the rules of urbanity, as to ascribe to a 
 man what he does not himself profess to have ; as to go with 
 kind-heartedness beyond what he habitually lays claim to, and 
 to attribute to him what never constituted a part of his own 
 profession. Every man has a right to choose and " define his 
 own position," and to make his own professions ; and for myself, 
 I ask no man, either from charity or justice, to attribute to me 
 opinions and sentiments which I do not profess to have. In 
 the same way I shall continue to judge of my neighbour, and 
 shall conclude that I am doing him no injustice in supposing 
 that he has no spiritual life when he asserts no claim to have 
 any, whatever I may think about those who profess to be influenced 
 by it. 
 
 (2.) Another consideration is, that every man is conscious that 
 there is much in his heart that is opposed to God and to religion. 
 The depths of depravity indeed in his soul may not have been 
 explored ; there may have been no outbreaking wickedness to 
 overwhelm his name and family in disgrace ; he may have been 
 neither a scoffer nor an open infidel ; and in fact he may never 
 have recorded one sentence in the most confidential letter to a 
 friend, or given utterance to one remark, in the most familiar 
 intercourse, opposed to religion ; yet no man can reach a mature 
 period of life without knowing that there is much in his heart 
 that is opposed to God and to religion. Many of the doctrines 
 of religion are unpalatable to the natural heart. Its more 
 spiritual duties are onerous and irksome. Its restraints seem 
 like a violation of freedom. The law of God is laid across the 
 path at times and in a manner that chafes the feelings, and 
 
THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. 237 
 
 disturbs the plans of life. The claims, rebukes, threatenings, 
 and penalties of both law and gospel are galling and unpleasant 
 to the soul. There is much in the character and government of 
 God that seems to such a man to be not only mysterious, but 
 wrong. In his afflictions, disappointments, and blighted hopes, 
 he has been conscious of murmuring thoughts, and has been 
 obliged to exercise restraint lest they should find their way to 
 his lips. He cannot but be conscious that when God has 
 directed him to love him supremely, he has not done it ; when 
 he has required him to form his plans with reference to his 
 glory, he has formed them with reference to ease, pleasure, gain, 
 or ambition ; when he has called on him to repent, he has 
 remained impenitent ; when he has commanded him to believe, 
 he has continued unbelieving ; and when he has counselled him 
 to pray, he has restrained prayer. He cannot but be conscious 
 that he has given indulgence to a roving imagination ; that he 
 has delighted to dwell, in his recollections of the past, on the 
 objects fitted to debase and corrupt him ; and that he has formed 
 many a plan, and cherished many a wish, on which a pure 
 Being could look only with a frown of indignation. And he 
 cannot but be conscious that he has never found that pleasure in 
 religion of which the Bible speaks, and which Christians declare 
 that they enjoy ; and that in the course of his life there has 
 never been one whole day, or one whole hour, in which the 
 mind would have found enjoyment in religion. His mind and 
 heart are not in the course of things which God wishes, and 
 which God is carrying forward. Hear what one says who 
 knew : 
 
 " Our life is a false nature 'tis not in 
 The harmony of things, this hard decree, 
 This uneradicable taint of sin, 
 This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, 
 Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be 
 The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew 
 Disease, death, bondage all the woes we see 
 And worse, the woes we see not which throb througn 
 The unmedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new." 
 
 Childe Harold, iv. 126. 
 
 (3.) The next remark is, that such a heart is not fitted for the 
 employments and enjoyments of heaven unless it is changed. 
 This is evident, unless the joys and employments of heaven con- 
 sist in the mere prolongation of the pleasures and business of 
 this life. If commerce, and manufactures, and merchandize, and 
 agriculture were to be the business there, I do not see but they 
 
238 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 might be happy. If men were to contend there, in the forum ; 
 if on their lips " listening senates" were to hang ; if the pursuits 
 of science were to give employment to the mind ; if under the 
 chisel the marble were to breathe, or under the brush the canvas 
 be filled with forms of life ; or if pleasure were to open new 
 parks and gardens and banqueting halls, I admit that the 
 unrenewed mind might find happiness in heaven. But we have 
 only one account of heaven that is worth regarding, that in 
 the Bible. And according to that, heaven is not the prolonga- 
 tion of the employments of this life, as dreamed of by the 
 Swedenborgian ; nor a Mohammedan Paradise, where Houries 
 are created to give infinity of duration to sensual joys ; nor the 
 Elysian fields of poets ; nor such abodes as the scientific and the 
 literary world look for. It is a place of religion ; a place of 
 adoration and holy love ; a place of pure and prolonged thanks- 
 giving and praise ; a place where the soul is expanded by the 
 contemplation of religious truth, and where, in his works, God 
 is adored as " first, and last, and midst, and without end." God is 
 there. Christ, the holy, incarnate Saviour, is there. Holy angels 
 are there. The redeemed of all ages and lands are there ; and it 
 is a world of religious beings, and not a world of mere sages, or 
 philosophers, or poets, or patriots, or of the winning and the 
 accomplished. And if these things are so, then nothing can be 
 plainer than the declaration of the Saviour in the text, that, 
 " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of 
 God." 
 
 II. The second general consideration which I urge'is, that no 
 change which man passes through in the present life will Jit for 
 heaven except that produced in regeneration. Men experience 
 many other changes, some of them sudden and remarkable, 
 and some of them extending their influence far into future years, 
 and even as far as we can follow the dying into the dark valley ; 
 but none of them are changes that fit for heaven. We change 
 in our habits, views, opinions, employments, hopes, anticipations, 
 temperament, passions ; in the transition from childhood to 
 youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to old age. At 
 one period, we are blithe, cheerful, merry, playful, thoughtless. 
 At another, we cherish the generous aspirations of youth, when 
 the blood is warm in our veins, and the world is full of allure- 
 ments. At that time we are generous, open, ardent ; full of 
 life, of energy, of promise ; laying large plans, and grasping at 
 wealth and honours. Then we settle down into the calmness of 
 sober life ; we give place to serious reflection ; we allow j udg- 
 ment to preside where passion did ; we become less lavish of 
 
THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. 239 
 
 expenditure, and husband our resources ; we feel ourselves pressed 
 down with the cares of the world, and we give ourselves to the 
 serious business of living. Then the "sear and yellow leaf" 
 comes on. The shades grow long, and are chilly. We become 
 fixed in our opinions ; staid in our judgments ; unchangeable in 
 our views. The fires of youth have all gone out. The business 
 of life has been passed through. We look upon a new genera- 
 tion that has come up with great energy, and is pressing hard 
 on us to elbow us out of our place, and already wishing us gone, 
 and coveting our houses and lands. We settle down into a 
 contented and honoured old age, and look with satisfaction on 
 our "children's children, the crown of old men" (Prov. xvii. 6); 
 or perchance we draw our purse-strings tighter, as we have less 
 use for what we have wasted life in acquiring, and become 
 peevish and fretful, and fancy that the world, since it lost our 
 counsel and influence, is all the while growing worse and worse. 
 
 Now one remark which I wish to make is, that in none of 
 these changes, great as they are, is there any one that of neces- 
 sity fits for heaven. The characteristics which come up in 
 youth no more fit us for heaven than did those of the child ; nor 
 in the transition from youth to manhood, or from manhood to 
 old age, is there of necessity a change that fits men for heaven. 
 Not all old men are prepared to enter into the kingdom of God, 
 any more than those in the days of their youth. In none of 
 these changes is there any permanency to reach beyond the 
 tomb ; and if there were, in none of them is there a change to 
 fit for heaven. The exchange of playfulness and thoughtlessness 
 for other habits, is not religion ; the subjugation of the raging 
 passions of youth, and the coming on of the settled habits of 
 manhood, is not of necessity the love of God ; nor is the kind of 
 feeling with which an old man regards the long path which he 
 has trod, filled with many rough places and hills and valleys, 
 the deadness to the world which prepares a man for heaven. 
 
 Another remark which I make in view of these changes is, 
 that so far from their fitting for heaven, there may be in fact 
 less inclination for religion in the succeeding change than there 
 was in the one that went before. The young man often has less 
 tenderness of feeling on the subject of religion, than he had 
 when a child ; the man in middle life, than he had when a 
 youth ; the old man, least of all. The child put his little hands 
 together every morning and evening, and uttered the language. 
 " Our Father who art in heaven," and wept freely when his 
 mother told him of the woes of that kind-hearted Saviour who 
 died for all. The same child, when he becomes a youth, may be 
 
240 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 a sceptic at heart ; in middle life, an avowed infidel ; in old age, 
 a hard-hearted atheist and a scoffer. His advance on the suc- 
 cessive stages of life has not been an advance in religion, hut a 
 departure from it ; and the hright-eyed and lovely boy, who 
 commenced life gladdening a father's heart with the hope that 
 he would be a Christian, ends it with no respect for religion, 
 and no belief in its Divine authority and claims. 
 
 Another remark may be made here respecting the changes 
 which occur in men's lives. They often change from vice to 
 virtue ; from gross intemperance to soberness of living ; from 
 profaneness to outward respect for the name of God ; from the 
 love of idle and dissolute companionship to a love for the fellow- 
 ship of the virtuous and the refined ; but there is of necessity no 
 change here that fits men for heaven. The reformed inebriate 
 is not necessarily a man who loves God ; nor does one who 
 abandons habits of profligacy of course become a man of prayer. 
 A man may change his business, his profession, his country, his 
 dwelling, his friends ; but it does not follow that he has passed 
 through any change that will fit him to dwell with God. He 
 may subdue many of his evil propensities ; may humble much of 
 his pride ; may cease to be a scoffer or a philosophical foe of the 
 gospel ; may forsake his wicked companions, and may become a 
 supporter of the gospel, and a regular and respectful attendant 
 in the house of God on the sabbath, and still be as decidedly 
 irreligious at heart as he was before. The most decided period 
 of irreligion in his life may be when all these changes have been 
 gone through ; the most determined hatred to religion ever 
 expressed in the eye may be in that unnatural and frightful 
 brilliancy with which it is lighted up when told to believe in 
 Christ, just before its light is to be extinguished for ever. All 
 these things are too plain, and too much a matter of common 
 observation, to make it proper to lengthen out the argument 
 which they furnish : and if these things are so, then there is but 
 one change that fits men for heaven ; and then nothing can be 
 more true than the declaration of the Saviour, that " Except a 
 man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
 
 III. The third general consideration which I urge to show 
 the necessity of regeneration is the fact, that nothing can be 
 substituted in its place nothing can be made to answer the same 
 purpose. If this be so if it be true that men by nature are not 
 fitted for heaven, and that none of the numerous changes which 
 they undergo in the ordinary transitions of life fit them for it, 
 and that they can substitute nothing in the place of the new 
 birth that will answer the same purpose, then it will follow 
 
THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. 241 
 
 clearly that there is a necessity that man should he horn again. 
 Now, that it is so will he apparent on the slightest reflection. 
 There is one doctrine of substitution, or putting one thing in the 
 place of another, that is set forth as a true principle in the 
 government of God, and is that on which the redemption of the 
 whole world is made to turn : it is the doctrine of the substi- 
 tuted sufferings of the Redeemer in the place of sinners, and the 
 fact that our hope of salvation depends on that. But in the 
 Scriptures the doctrine of substitution is limited to that, nor is 
 there an intimation that the principle can ever he extended. It 
 was only the extraordinary necessity of the case that justified 
 the admission of that one instance into the system ; and it was 
 only the fact that immense and eternal good would accrue from 
 that one case to unnumbered millions that made it proper. But 
 the necessity extends no farther. There is no intimation that 
 one man can take the place of another ; or that a lack of any 
 one thing required can be compensated by something else which 
 shall be offered in its stead. And the scriptural doctrine on 
 this point is one of common sense. You demand a specific act of 
 obedience from a child. There is no general virtue, and no 
 other act of obedience which will supply the place of that, if it 
 is not rendered. You demand love from a friend. If that is 
 withheld, there is no offering of gold or silver, of wine or oil, 
 that will supply its place. A wife demands constancy and 
 fidelity in a husband. If these are not rendered, there is no 
 diamond-ring no string of orient pearls no richly-set brace- 
 lets no winning smile of professed affection, that can supply 
 their place. They are all insult and mockery an infinite 
 aggravation of the offence, when tendered by an unfaithful 
 man ; and what might in other circumstances be tokens of 
 affection of inestimable value, are now spurned with disdain and 
 loathing. 
 
 God demands the heart the love, the friendship, the con- 
 fidence of his creature, man ; such love, and friendship, and 
 affection as are the fruit of a renovated heart. With such a 
 renovated heart, what you could render to him would be an 
 acceptable and a valuable offering. Your moral life and integrity, 
 based on holy principles, would be acceptable ; the homage of 
 the bended knee, and the song of praise in appropriate forms of 
 devotion, would be lovely in his view ; your acts of fidelity in 
 the transactions of business and in the relations of life, as the 
 expression of love to him, would be pleasing in his signt ; your 
 money, offered in charity to the cause of humanity, would be 
 received as a grateful tribute at your hands. But suppose you 
 
242 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 go and offer these things without a renovated heart without 
 love to him without having obeyed his first commandment, can 
 they be a substitute for such a renovated heart ? Can a moral 
 life, and faithfulness in your dealings with mankind, answer the 
 same purpose as the love which he requires you to render to 
 himself? Can the homage of the bended knee, and the song of 
 praise on the lips, answer the purpose of the offering of the 
 heart before One who looks through all the chambers of the 
 soul ? Can wealth hoarded and prized, or scattered among the 
 needy ; can beauty or accomplishment ; can a graceful exterior, 
 a lively wit, a cultivated intellect, and propriety of manners, be 
 of value to him without the heart, or answer the purpose which 
 he contemplates by its change ? Just as much as diamond rings, 
 and strings of pearls, answer the place of fidelity and affection 
 to an outraged and injured wife and no more. Go and plead 
 your moral character before God, as a reason why you should be 
 saved. What would be its reception ? ' All this would be well,' 
 might be the response, ' but the heart was required ; the rege- 
 nerated affections of the soul were demanded. Where are the 
 affections of that heart ?' Go plead your fidelity to your family; 
 your kindness as a husband, and father, and neighbour ; your 
 honesty to men. c All this is well. But where is the heart for 
 me f the Saviour might reply ; * where is the evidence of love to 
 your God?' Go plead accomplishment, w r it, learning, talent, 
 beauty : are these what are required to fit men for heaven ? 
 Are these proposed to be substituted in the place of what is 
 required ? Be not deceived. Nor rank, nor wealth, nor talent, 
 nor learning, nor gracefulness of manners, nor eminence in your 
 profession, nor oratory, nor the crown of victory won on the 
 battle-field, nor any other thing, can be a substitute for a reno- 
 vated heart. They will not answer the same purpose while 
 men live here ; they will not extend their influence to a future 
 world when they die. A splendid steamer leaves the wharf to 
 cross the ocean. Youth, and beauty, and rank, crowd on board; 
 age, and middle age, are there ; the high, the low, the rich, the 
 poor, the bond, the free, the peasant, the prince, are there. She 
 moves majestically on. Suddenly she strikes an iceberg, and 
 in a moment goes down. There is a tremendous plunge ; a 
 heaving of the waves ; a boiling, rolling sea for a few moments 
 where she sank. But it is soon over. The sea is again smooth. 
 The deep, dark, blue ocean rolls on ; and the ruffled deep be- 
 comes calm 
 
 " A glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
 Glasses itself." 
 
THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. 243 
 
 But those distinctions of age, and beauty, and rank where are 
 they ? Have they attended those who sank, as they went up to 
 the bar of God ? Vanished all vanished before the sea was 
 made calm where they sank ; and alike the prince and the 
 peasant, the master and his slave, make their bed amidst the 
 corals of the ocean. There was but one distinction that lived 
 on. If there was piety in one heart and wickedness in another, 
 they lived on. The distinction that survived the -catastrophe, 
 and the only one, was that which was made when the penitent 
 heart yielded itself to God, and was born again. 
 
 IV. I suggest one other thought, which will require no time 
 to prove or illustrate it : it is, that there will be of necessity no 
 such change in death as to Jit the soul for heaven. And if this 
 is so ; if man by nature is unfit for heaven ; if no change which 
 he ordinarily undergoes fits him for it ; if he can substitute 
 nothing in the place of a renovated heart to fit him for heaven ; 
 and if death will make no such change as will adapt him to the 
 employments of the skies, then it follows that there is a neces- 
 sity for man to be born again. And that it is so, assuredly 
 I need not now attempt to prove. What is the change at death ? 
 The rose of health fades from the cheek ; the brow is " chill, and 
 changeless ;" the eye is closed, and in that lifeless form there is 
 " a mild angelic air," 
 
 " Before decay's effacing fingers 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers," 
 
 but there is no religion in that change. At death, we are borne 
 away indeed from the world where we were tempted ; the objects 
 that with idolatrous affection we loved ; the allurements of 
 wicked companionship ; the assembly-room, where, in festive 
 mirth, we forgot God and provoked his wrath ; but there is no 
 religion in that. All that is solemn, tender, affecting on the 
 dying bed may be gone through, and still there be not a particle 
 of religious emotion there. And is there some magic power- 
 some potent charm in the grave in the long slumberings there 
 in the solemn stillness in the withdrawment from scenes of 
 gaiety and temptation to change the heart, to wean the soul 
 from the world to prep ire even the body there for the resurrec- 
 tion of the just? Or is there something in the solemn, lonely 
 journey of the departed spirit up to God some new efficacy of 
 the blood of the atonement to be applied to the soul on its 
 upward way to fit it for the skies ? Surely none of these things 
 can be pretended : and if none of these things are so, then there 
 is a necessity that the sinner should be born again before he dies. 
 
244 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 The argument which I proposed to submit to you is now 
 before you. It is not an argument addressed to you as if there 
 were any doubt about the meaning of what the Saviour says in 
 the text, or as if his authority were not a sufficient ground for 
 the truth of a doctrine ; or as if the truth of what he says could 
 be confirmed by any reasonings of mine ; but an argument 
 designed simply to show that what he says commends itself to 
 every man's conscience and sober judgment. 
 
 The only ^thought which I wbuld seek to hold before your 
 minds in the application of this subject is, the indispensable 
 necessity of this change for every one of you if you would be 
 saved. Whether it is to be produced by a Divine or human 
 agency; whether you can effect it yourselves or not; whether 
 you can by your own efforts contribute to it, or whether those 
 efforts would be fruitless, are not points which we shall now 
 discuss ; nor is their solution necessary in order that the force 
 of the considerations suggested should be properly felt. The 
 single point which is before us now is, that this change is 
 indispensable if you would enter into heaven. Every one ; every 
 son and daughter of Adam ; every prince and every peasant ; 
 every master and every slave ; every profligate and every moral 
 man; every one who outrages all the laws of decency and 
 urbanity, and every one who is the charm and glory of the 
 social circle, must experience this change, or he cannot enter 
 into the kingdom of God. He must experience it, unless the 
 Saviour was wrong in his estimate of the human character, and 
 has uttered what is not based on truth. He must experience it, 
 unless he can show that his heart is such by nature that he is 
 fitted for the enjoyments and employments of heaven ; or unless 
 some of the transitions through which he passes in life will 
 answer the purpose ; or unless he can substitute something else 
 for it at the bar of God ; or unless there will be some mysterious 
 process in the grave, or beyond it, by which the body and the 
 spirit shall be fitted for the skies. The language of the Saviour 
 to all is, " Ye must be born again." Reason gives her sanction 
 to that declaration ; conscience echoes it in your ears ; and pious 
 kindred and friends seek to bear it to the heart. Every man 
 feels and knows it to be true, when he will let conscience speak 
 out; when he has any just view of his own heart; or when from 
 a bed of death he looks out on eternity. The solemn declaration 
 of God our Saviour on this subject, thus seconded by reason and 
 conscience, is laid across the path of every aged man, of every 
 one in middle life, of every youth, and of every child. Of the 
 crowd that you meet in the thronged pathways of a great city, 
 
THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. 245 
 
 it is true that no one reaches heaven unless he is born again ; 
 and of the solitary stroller in a summer's eve on the verge of a 
 purling stream, or the lonely traveller on the mighty prairie, 
 it is no less true that unless he be born again he cannot see the 
 kingdom of God. It is equally true of each and every one of 
 you that without this change you will never enter heaven. The 
 heart must be changed. The impenitent soul must become con- 
 trite ; the proud man must be humbled ; the unbelieving must 
 put his trust in the Son of God. And if the course of argument 
 now pursued is sound, the subject is one that demands your 
 immediate attention. Few days remain in which this change 
 can occur, and then all will be fixed for ever. Soon the time 
 will come in which it will be said of each and all, " He that is 
 unjust, let him be unjust still ; and he that is holy, let him be 
 holy still." God grant that before that time not far distant - 
 shall have arrived, each heart may be so changed that it may 
 convey gladness to the bosom to hear it said that all hereafter 
 is to be fixed and unchanging. The line once crossed which 
 divides time from eternity, all is over for ever j for in the world 
 of despair no one is ever born again.. 
 
SEEMON XIX. 
 
 THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 
 
 2 COR. v. 17. " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature : old things 
 are passed away ; behold, all things are become new." 
 
 THE point which I propose, from these words, to illustrate is, 
 the nature of regeneration, or of the new birth. The apostle 
 evidently refers to this in the text. He is adverting to the 
 great change which had occurred in his own mind on a parti- 
 cular subject, and then advances the general sentiment, that 
 when one becomes a Christian all his views are changed, or 
 become " new." " We have," says he, " known Christ after the 
 flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." That is, 
 * I formerly had carnal and worldly views of the Messiah. In 
 common with my countrymen, I looked for a temporal prince 
 and deliverer. But I entertain these views no longer, and 
 regard him no more as such. My views of him are essentially 
 changed, and I now regard him as a spiritual Saviour, dying to 
 make an atonement for sin/ A change resembling this, he 
 says, occurs in the case of all who are converted. If any man 
 is in Christ, or becomes a true Christian, his views are in a 
 similar manner changed ; changed to such an extent that it 
 may be said he is a new creature, for the change of view does 
 not pertain merely to his apprehensions about the Saviour, but 
 extends to everything. In reference to all matters, " old things 
 are passed away ; behold, all things are become new." 
 
 This statement expresses, with perfect accuracy, the change 
 which occurs in regeneration. It is a change of view not merely 
 with reference to one particular point, but to the whole subject of 
 religion ; a change so great that it may be properly called a new 
 creation, or of such a nature that all things may be said in the 
 view of the mind to be new. 
 
 It is my object now to illustrate the nature of this change ; 
 and, in order to this, it is important that we have clear views 
 on two points. The first is, that we separate from the work 
 certain things which are not essential to it, or in reference to 
 
THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 247 
 
 which there may be considerable variety; and the second is, 
 that we understand what is essential to it. These are the two 
 points which I propose now to examine. 
 
 I. There are some things which frequently accompany a change 
 of heart, which are not essential to it. That is, in the circum- 
 stances and feelings attending it, there may be considerable 
 variety in different individuals. This diversity relates to such 
 points as the following, which it is important particularly to 
 specify, because erroneous views have often given great occasion 
 of distress : 
 
 (1.) In regard to the duration of the seriousness, or the con- 
 viction for sin, which usually precedes a change of heart, or is 
 experienced before evidence is obtained of conversion. Some 
 duration of time, as a season of serious reflection, or of deep 
 and pungent conviction for sin, usually precedes conversion, and 
 seems to be inevitable. The change is a rational change, and 
 occurs in connexion with a serious consideration of our condition 
 as sinners, our danger, and our need of the mercy of God ; and 
 indeed the change does not usually occur except as the result of 
 a careful and earnest inquiry into the character of our past 
 lives, and of much solicitude about our final welfare. But no 
 particular duration of time is specified in the Scriptures as 
 necessary to reflect on our condition preparatory to conversion, 
 and in fact there is great diversity. In some instances conver- 
 sion is preceded by anxiety that has continued without much 
 intermission for months or years ; in others, there has been a 
 succession of deep convictions for sin, like successive shocks of 
 an earthquake, each followed by calmness and unconcern ; and 
 in others the whole work seems to be accomplished in a few 
 hours or a few moments, and to all appearance it may be as 
 genuine in the one case as in the other. Many causes contribute 
 to this variety. The temperament of the individual as phleg- 
 matic or sanguine ; the kind of instruction imparted to him then 
 or before ; the circumstances in which he is placed, binding him 
 with greater or less tenacity to the world ; the state of religion 
 in the church as a time of general coldness, or a time of revival ; 
 or the want of proper counsel from his friends, or of proper 
 sympathy from those who should help him on to God, all tend 
 to modify the time during which this work is taking place on 
 the soul. Some have been taught, or have somehow imbibed 
 the opinion, that a protracted " law- work " is necessary before 
 they can be converted, and they expect this of course, and would 
 be alarmed at any speedy evidence of a change of heart ; and 
 (gome, better taught, feel that the moment there is genuine 
 
 17 
 
248 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 conviction for sin, the penitent may go to God for pardon, and 
 they go at once and find peace. 
 
 (2.) There is great variety in regard to the intensity of feeling 
 that precedes or attends the new birth. There is always feeling 
 or emotion of some kind, and to some extent. So great a change 
 in a man's opinions, relations, prospects, hopes, plans of life, as 
 occurs in conversion to God, cannot take place without some 
 degree of feeling. No similar change in a man's character and 
 prospects occurs without emotion. But men pass through im- 
 portant changes in life with a great variety of feeling ; and the 
 sacred writers have shown their accurate knowledge of man by 
 not attempting to describe any definite amount of feeling as neces- 
 sary in ^he work of conversion. This matter is regulated by a 
 great variety of causes, and so regulated that no specific rule 
 could be given. Two brothers lose a much-loved sister. In the 
 bosoms of both there will be a deep sense of the loss ; but the 
 amount of the emotion, in its manifestation at the grave, may 
 be very different. In one, it shall be seen in gushing tears ; in 
 the other, the emotion is too big for utterance, and not a tear 
 shall moisten the cheek. The one turns away relieved in his 
 anguish by outbreaking sorrow ; the other, with a mountain on 
 his heart, and with a universal deadness of sensibility to all 
 that he once loved. A father and mother stand by the grave 
 of a child. They both feel as they never before felt, and as 
 mortals never feel in any other situation. But nature has made 
 a difference between the emotions of the mother and the father, 
 and the difference will find expression at that grave. So when 
 the soul mourns over sin; when it is about to give up the world; 
 when the great question pertaining to the eternal welfare is to 
 be settled for ever, there will be, there must be emotion. But it 
 will be differently manifested. If accompanied with strong crying 
 and tears, in view of past guilt and present danger, nothing should 
 lead us to say that such feeling is inappropriate ; or if, in a 
 mind differently moulded, it should be mere calm, settled, and 
 uniform conviction, let us not say that it cannot be genuine. 
 The sorrow of that mother who never weeps may be as intense 
 and deep as that of her whom the slightest sickness of a child 
 bathes in tears. 
 
 (3.) There is great variety in regard to the degree of happi- 
 ness attendant on the new birth. That there is joy in the 
 change of heart, or on becoming a true Christian, is often affirmed 
 in the sacred Scriptures, and results from the nature of the case. 
 Conversion is usually preceded by distress of mind in view of 
 past guilt ; by a sense of danger ; by solicitude about the final 
 
THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 249 
 
 destiny of the soul. It results from the nature of the mind, that 
 when this is removed, it should be followed by peace, calmness, 
 joy. But the degree of happiness will be modified by a great 
 variety of causes. It must depend much on the depth of the 
 previous distress ; on the degree of clearness attending the evi- 
 dence of conversion ; on the habitual temperament of the mind. 
 Some minds are full of distrust and caution, and scarcely allow 
 themselves to contemplate the real grounds of hope which may 
 exist ; some are sanguine in their temperament, and embrace 
 the slightest indications of safety, and often rejoice when there 
 is little occasion for joy. As a matter of fact, therefore, there is 
 in this respect the greatest variety in the minds of those who 
 are truly converted ; nor can any certain rule be laid down in 
 regard to the degree of happiness which would be a clear token 
 of a change of heart. 
 
 (4.) The same thing is true in regard to the evidence of con- 
 version. In some instances the change is so sudden and decided 
 that the convert understands clearly the force of the expressions, 
 " being brought out of darkness into marvellous light," and 
 " being translated from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom 
 of God's dear Son." So sudden is the transition, so deep was 
 the former conviction of sin, and so undoubted are the evidences 
 of a change, that the day and the hour can be designated with 
 an accuracy little liable to error. In many such cases the whole 
 of the subsequent life shows that the hope thus cherished was 
 well-founded ; and that a change of heart did occur that was as 
 decided as was supposed. But I need not say that this does not 
 universally characterize the work of conversion, nor is it usually 
 the case. In most instances, the evidence is of a much less 
 decisive character. Light seems to struggle with darkness ; 
 doubt is mingled with hope ; clouds hang about the horizon, or 
 even shut in the heavens, with only an occasional lighting up 
 of the sky. Instead of a transition like that which would occur 
 if the sun should rise suddenly at midnight, and appear at once 
 on the meridian, and stand there ever onward without eclipse, 
 and without a cloud, conversion is rather like the dawning of 
 the light in the east, where you can scarcely mark the change 
 from deep night to commencing day, and where it is so gradual 
 that you <;an select no fixed points, no sudden transitions, till 
 the sun appears. And if the figure thus suggested by the Scrip- 
 tures themselves (Prov. iv. 18) may be carried a little farther, 
 when the sun is up, it is not always clear and unclouded day. 
 He may rise bright and glorious, and send his rays across the 
 'andscape, lighting up all with beauty, and then be suddenly 
 
250 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 buried behind a dark pile of clouds ; or he may meet a tempest 
 in his way, and the lightnings may play beneath him ; or the 
 moon may cross his path and cover his disk, and a gloom and 
 dullness the best illustration which nature affords of what the 
 Christian experiences when the light of God's countenance is 
 withdrawn may come over the world. 
 
 (5.) A fifth variety is observable in the different views of truth 
 that may be presented to the mind at the time of conversion. 
 This will be determined much by the previous habits of reading, 
 thought, or education; by the things that have occupied the 
 mind most during conviction for sin; or by some casual direc- 
 tion which may have been given to the mind at the time of the 
 change. With one, the attention may be occupied almost entirely 
 with a sense of the great evil of sin, and the depravity of the 
 heart; another shall have the thoughts directed almost exclu- 
 sively to the Saviour to the beauty of his character, to the 
 purity of his precepts, or to the glory of his atonement ; another 
 shall see a new beauty stealing over the works of God, and to 
 him they shall seem to have come fresh from his hand, stamped 
 with all the proofs of creative power and goodness ; while the 
 heart of another shall be charmed with beauties in the Bible 
 which have never met the eye before. Or, perchance, some 
 single truth, or some single duty, shall enchain the affections 
 and the attention ; and at the first moment of conversion the 
 mind may be fixed on some duty or Christian enterprise that is 
 to give character to all the subsequent life. A man converted 
 in old age will be likely to have his thoughts turned to the 
 mercy of that God who has so long preserved him in his sins, 
 and to find his heart overflowing with gratitude as the leading 
 emotion; an ingenuous and ardent youth will most likely look 
 onward, and the eye will fix on some plan of benevolence, and 
 he will be likely to hear with singular distinctness the com- 
 mand, " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every 
 creature." An ardent fancy will dwell on the bright scenes in 
 heaven ; a heart of tenderness will melt at the remembrance of 
 the scenes of Calvary. " All these worketh that one and the 
 selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will," 
 1 Cor. xii. 11. 
 
 It would be easy to extend these remarks much farther, and 
 to suggest many other differences which occur in the circum- 
 stances of the new birth. But what has been said will illustrate 
 the general thought, that there is great variety in the feelings 
 and views attending regeneration. There are two observations 
 which it is proper to make here by way of inference from what 
 
THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 251 
 
 has been said, before we proceed to consider the second point 
 proposed. One is, that in examining our own evidences of piety, 
 we should not compare ourselves much with others. Nothing is 
 more common for young converts than to do this ; and yet, if 
 the remarks now made are well-founded, nothing is more im- 
 proper. With the same amount of religion, and with evidences 
 of piety no better or brighter than your own, another person 
 may have had views and feelings to which you may have been 
 almost wholly a stranger. He has a different temperament ; he 
 has been differently educated ; his past life has been different ; 
 the things that arrested his attention were different ; and the 
 subjects that have particularly interested his mind at conversion 
 have been different. There can be no certain standard of judging 
 tu the case, if you attempt to determine the nature of your own 
 feelings by a comparison with those of others ; and there can be 
 no propriety in setting up such a standard. The true question is, 
 whether you have the characteristics of real piety laid down in 
 the Bible ; not whether you have experienced all that your 
 neighbour has. 
 
 The other remark is, that if these views are correct, there is 
 room for the exercise of large charity on the subject of religion. 
 We should not judge others. We should not infer that because 
 their experience does not accord wholly with ours that because 
 they have not precisely the same views of sin, or have not been 
 pressed down so long with the anguish of conviction, or have 
 not had the same clearness of evidence on their conversion, or 
 are not able to mark with the same accuracy the moment when 
 the change occurred that therefore they are not Christians. 
 All this may be true ; and yet there may have been a work of 
 conversion in their hearts, genuine and thorough, that shall abide 
 the test of all the trials of this life, and the severer investigations 
 of the final day. We are prepared now to consider, 
 
 II. The second point proposed for illustration : it is, What is 
 essential to a change of heart or, What uniformly occurs to 
 distinguish this change from the other revolutions to which the 
 mind is subject ? 
 
 The short answer to this inquiry is, that it is the commence- 
 ment of true religion in the soul. It is the moment when real 
 piety commences, and the sinner begins to live to God. 
 Whether that point of time is actually perceived or not, or 
 whether the convert can or cannot fix on the precise moment 
 when the heart is changed, yet there is a time a moment 
 when religion first begins to be exercised in the soul ; and that 
 is the moment of the new birth or regeneration. This single 
 
252 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 thought that regeneration is the commencement of true reli- 
 gion in the soul will aid much in the inquiry whether we have 
 ever been born again, and would save much of the perplexity 
 which is usually felt on the subject. I have said that it is this 
 which distinguishes this change from all other changes. Men 
 experience other changes of feeling and character sometimes as 
 sudden, as marked, and as permanent, as the change in regenera- 
 tion ; but there is no true religion in them. A dissipated young 
 man becomes sober and temperate ; a bitter foe becomes your 
 friend ; a man of a wild and impetuous temper settles down into 
 the staidness and gravity of sober life ; economy succeeds to ex- 
 travagance ; the love of the theatre and the ball-room give way 
 to more rational enjoyments ; frivolity and vanity are sometimes 
 succeeded by sober attention to the duties of a family or a pro- 
 fession ; or a youth spent without promise is sometimes followed 
 by a middle life diligent in an honourable calling, and an old 
 age of respectability; but in any or all of these changes there 
 may be no religion. So we change at the different periods of 
 life. We change, of course, from youth to manhood, and from 
 manhood to age ; we exchange that which characterizes the 
 young man for that which becomes the man sustaining the re- 
 sponsibilities of life ; and then we put on the peculiar character- 
 istics in temper, and opinions, and prejudices of age ; but none 
 of these changes amount to regeneration ; for in none of them 
 is there of necessity the commencement of religion in the soul. 
 All may be passed through, and yet there may be no love of 
 God, no preparation for heaven. 
 
 Keeping the main thought in view, that the new birth is 
 the beginning of religion in the heart, I propose now briefly 
 to specify a few things which are always manifested in this 
 change. 
 
 (1.) The first which I mention is, that there is a new view of 
 the beauty of religion. Religion appears lovely ; it has charms 
 which were not before felt or perceived. I do not mean, of 
 course, that there is any new intellectual power, or faculty of 
 perceiving truth, created. I do not mean that the " new man in 
 Christ" becomes different as an intellectual being from what he 
 was before, or that he becomes of necessity intellectually superior 
 to his fellow-men. I know well that it is not so. But while 
 the mental faculties remain unchanged, the mind may acquire a 
 wholly new view of the value of an object, and see a beauty in 
 it unperceived before. This often occurs in other things than in 
 religion, implying a change that may be a good illustration of 
 the nature of regeneration. "We are often sensible of some such 
 
THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 253 
 
 change of view in regard to the value of objects, and in regard 
 to their beauty also. A young man may have no deep sense of 
 the value of temperance. Driven on by youthful passion, or led 
 on by the solicitation of so-called friends; thrown into circum- 
 stances where he may have little time and less opportunity for 
 reflection, he will see no particular beauty in this virtue, and a 
 temperate life will have no charms for him. But his views 
 may be suddenly changed, and so changed that a temperate 
 life shall appear lovely in his view, and that no consideration 
 would induce him to return to his former sentiments and prac- 
 tice. So virtue of all kinds may be made to appear lovely to 
 those for whom it had no charms ; and a change from vice to 
 virtue may occur that shall characterize the whole of the 
 subsequent life. 
 
 A change, of which this is but the feeble illustration, occurs in 
 regard to religion, when a sinner is born again. Religion 
 assumes a different aspect from what it had ever before -in the 
 view of the mind. Before, the attention given to it was of a 
 very limited or a very undesirable character. In some cases, it 
 excited positive disgust and hatred ; it roused violent opposition ; 
 it was made the subject of ridicule and scorn. In other instances, 
 where this violence of opposition was not felt or expressed, the 
 utmost interest that was felt in religion was such as this: it 
 was an interest arising from the belief that it was of value to 
 the community, or because preaching had some intellectual or 
 literary attractions, or because one's friends were members of a 
 particular church, or because there was a general belief that 
 religion was necessary for the salvation of the soul. But when 
 the heart is changed, the interest in religion is of a wholly 
 different kind. It is the interest arising from love ; an interest 
 in that which is seen to be beautiful, and where it assumes an 
 importance superior to all other things combined. That new 
 beauty, perceived in religion, leads to a corresponding interest 
 in all that pertains to it. There is an interest in the duties and 
 doctrines of religion ; in the welfare of the church ; in the 
 spread of the gospel ; in prayer and praise, that now seems to 
 find a place in the soul as a matter of course, which nothing 
 before could rouse or create. And this leads me to observe, 
 
 (2.) That happiness is now found in the things that were 
 formerly disregarded, and that afforded no pleasure. Particularly 
 there is a new pleasure in the following things : (a) In the 
 character of God. He is now seen to be just such a Being as 
 should be adored and loved. Before this change, the views of 
 God in the minds of men are very various. In many cases, 
 
254 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 there is felt a decided opposition to his character ; in others, his 
 laws are regarded as severe ; in others, there is entire indiffer- 
 ence to his claims ; in others, there are strong douhts ahout 
 the rectitude of his administration : in none, is there any perr 
 ceived beauty in his character. But when the heart is changed 
 there is a new view of God, and a happiness felt in him 
 unknown before. The heart is reconciled to him, and acquiesces 
 in his claims. The character of God is such as meets the 
 entire approbation of the soul ; and the renewed man feels 
 that it is just such as it is desirable it should be. Were there 
 power to make any change in that character, the Christian 
 would not do it, for God's character in the view of his mind is 
 perfect. The language of the renewed man is, " Whom have I 
 in heaven but thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire 
 besides thee." (b) The same thing is true in regard to the plan 
 of salvation through the Redeemer. It is impossible for an 
 unconverted sinner to find happiness in the contemplation of 
 that plan, or perhaps to see much beauty in it, or to feel any- 
 thing attractive in the idea of depending wholly on the merits 
 of Christ for salvation. The most, perhaps, that can be felt is a 
 cold admiration of the character of the Redeemer ; but as to any 
 beauty in the scheme of the atonement, or any happiness in its 
 contemplation, it is unknown to the sinner. But the converted 
 man finds pleasure in the contemplation of that plan of salvation. 
 It meets his case. It provides a way of pardon. It has brought 
 him back to God. It has done for him what he cannot do, and 
 has saved him from errors from which otherwise he could not 
 have been saved ; and his happiness now is identified with that 
 scheme of salvation by the Redeemer. Christ becpmes " all in 
 all ;" and the language of the soul is, " I count all things but 
 loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my 
 Lord." (c) Thus, too, there is pleasure in the Bible. There is 
 a beauty now seen in its pages which man never sees until he is 
 converted ; and nothing is more common for the young convert, 
 in speaking of the Bible, than to say that it is to him " a new 
 book ;" and his wonder is excited that the same things may 
 have been read, and perhaps from very childhood, with no per- 
 ception of their beauty. There is no miracle in this ; no exertion 
 of any new intellectual faculty or power of mind. The simple 
 fact is, thai: the statements in the Bible now meet a new con- 
 dition of his heart, and those beauties are perceived because they 
 correspond with the state of the soul. The same thing will 
 continue to occur through life. New circumstances arise ; new 
 forms of temptation and trial occur when new beauty is seen in 
 
THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 255 
 
 the word of God, and it seems to have been penned just for such 
 an occasion. A closer acquaintance with it only shows more 
 and more with what profound skill it is adapted to the wants of 
 the human soul; and the impression of its heauty and value 
 increases to the end of life. I need not remind you how often 
 the heauty of the sacred Scriptures is commended by the saints 
 of old, nor what exquisite happiness the psalmist represents 
 himself as finding in the volume of revealed truth : " O how 
 love I thy law ! it is my meditation all the day." " More to be 
 desired," said he, speaking of the statutes of the Lord, " are they 
 than gold, yea, than much fine gold ; sweeter also than honey 
 and the honeycomb." This is language that would express only 
 the feelings of a heart that is renewed, (d) The same thing is 
 true of the happiness found in the worship of God of the 
 privilege of drawing near to him in the closet and in the 
 sanctuary. " It is good for me to draw near to God." " How 
 amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts ! My soul longeth, 
 yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord ; my heart and my 
 flesh crieth out for the living God." " I had rather be a door- 
 keeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of 
 wickedness." This, too, is language which expresses the feelings 
 of a new-born soul. It is not language which expresses any 
 feelings which they have who are not renewed. There is no 
 interest which such persons can have, in the pomp of gorgeous 
 religious rites ; or in the music of the sanctuary, executed with 
 the utmost power and skill ; or in the most eloquent exhibition 
 of truth in the pulpit, that meets the fulness of such declarations 
 about the happiness felt in the worship of God. It is a happiness 
 peculiar to the renovated man ; where the heart finds pleasure 
 in communion with God ; where the regenerated spirit finds 
 pleasure in those pure services that raise it above the world. 
 And though I do not design to insist on it that these elevated 
 joys are essential to the evidence of a change of heart, yet I do 
 mean to advance the sentiment, that where such a change exists 
 there will be experienced a happiness in God ; in the plan of 
 salvation ; in the Bible ; in public and private worship, such as 
 was not experienced before, and such as is produced only by the 
 love of religion. 
 
 (3.) A third essential feature in this change is, a readiness to 
 forsake all sin, and all pursuits that are inconsistent with a holy 
 life. This enters of course into the change, for it is a change 
 from sin to holiness. The past life is now seen to have been 
 unholy, and it becomes the purpose of the soul to abandon all 
 that is offensive to God. And this love of sin, and of sinful 
 
256 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 pursuits, is not abandoned now merely because it is commanded 
 to be ; it is the preference of the heart to do it. The renewed 
 heart renounces these things as a matter of course, and at any 
 sacrifice. Paul gave up at once his career of ambition, though 
 it required the sacrifice of all his earthly prospects ; and the 
 Ephesian converts abandoned a dishonest calling at once, though 
 requiring the sacrifice of their "books" and the destruction of a 
 large amount of property. No proposition can be clearer than 
 that a man who is not willing to forsake his sinful pursuits can 
 have no evidence that he is born again. 
 
 The same remarks are applicable to the world, to its pleasures, 
 its gaieties, its vanities. In the case of a true convert to Christ, 
 the theatre is forsaken, not because it is a matter of express 
 injunction in the Bible, but because it ceases to interest the 
 mind. The changed heart becomes interested in other things, 
 and in the superior relish for the pleasures and hopes of religion : 
 the pleasure once found in such amusements is extinguished of 
 course. So to a mind truly converted and made to taste the 
 happiness of communion with God, the pleasures of the ball-room 
 and the brilliant party cease to allure and charm. To such a 
 mind it is not mere command which requires the forsaking of 
 " the pride, pomp, and vanity of the world ;" it is not mere con- 
 science which keeps from an indulgence in such pleasures ; it is 
 not the mere apprehension that pain will be given to the friends 
 of piety, and dishonour reflected on the church though all of 
 these things will influence the mind ; it is, that the relish, 
 the love for such things is lost. The heart has become attached 
 to nobler and more elevated pursuits, and has learned to find 
 pleasure in that which now satisfies the soul. " Old things 
 have passed away, and all things have become new ;" and plea- 
 sures which a few months since the individual would not have 
 been induced to forsake for any price in gold or diamonds, are 
 now abandoned as a matter of course. The heart has become 
 dead to such pleasures ; and to mingle in them now with relish 
 and satisfaction would be far more difficult than it would have 
 been before to forsake them nay, would be impossible. 
 
 (4.) I need only advert to one other essential characteristic 
 of this change : it is, that there is a readiness to devote all to 
 God, and to do his will. The question asked by Paul at his 
 conversion was, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" and 
 the same question substantially is asked by every one who 
 becomes a Christian. Before the heart is renewed, far different 
 principles rule the conduct. Men act with reference to honour, 
 to gain, to office, to amusement, to sensual indulgence. Their 
 
THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 257 
 
 time they regard as their own ; their talents as their own ; their 
 houses, lands, honds, stocks, books as their own, to be held and 
 disposed of without reference to the will of another. The young- 
 man feels at perfect liberty to choose any calling that may 
 gratify his taste, or that holds out alluring prospects of gain, 
 without reference to the will of his Maker, or to the good of 
 men. The plan is laid for a profession which shall give the 
 greatest scope for the display of genius, or which shall conduct 
 most speedily to the temple of fame, or which shall soonest 
 enable him to look round on his possessions with the con- 
 sciousness of independence. In all these things conversion to 
 God makes a decided, a thorough change. Talent, learning, 
 strength, vigour of body, is felt to belong to God. Though 
 educated for different purposes, as Paul was, the young man 
 feels now that his talents and learning are to be devoted to his 
 Maker ; though wealth has been gained for different objects, yet 
 the convert now feels that it all belongs to Him who has 
 redeemed him ; and though the young female may have been 
 trained to adorn the social circle, yet it is now felt that these ac- 
 complishments should be made tributary to the purpose of doing 
 good in those circles which it was designed only to please, and 
 should be subordinate to the grand purpose of preparation for 
 the society of the skies. " Old things are passed away, and all 
 things are become new ;" and talent, and influence, and learning, 
 and wealth, and accomplishments are converted to the new and 
 holy purpose of living to God. 
 
 There are, perhaps, other things which might be adduced here, 
 but you will gather, I trust, from what has been said, what is 
 essential to this change. The grand thing, you will understand, 
 is, that it is the commencement of pure religion in the soul. 
 "Whether attended with more protracted or briefer preparation ; 
 with higher or lower degrees of joy ; with more decided or 
 with fainter evidences of conversion ; with the contemplation of 
 identical or different truths, it is the same. It is the beginning 
 of real piety in the heart. Whether it be in the thrilling scenes 
 of a revival of religion, or under the calmer operations of truth 
 where few are converted ; whether the change take place in the 
 ardour of youth, or when age has chilled the sensibilities and 
 awakened the intellect; whether under a ministry holding to 
 Calvinistic or Arminian views, or a ministry of " three orders " 
 or " one ;" or whether in a church with multitudinous forms, and 
 with a great zeal for the " apostolic succession," and with great 
 regard for the office of baptism, or where there is no ministry, 
 and no form, and no belief in baptism at all, there is but one 
 
258 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 work that is the work of conversion ; there is but one baptism of 
 the Spirit ; there is everywhere essentially the same thing in the 
 change of the heart. It is the beginning of true religion in the 
 soul. It leads to simple dependence on Christ for salvation. II 
 is attended with a new interest in religion ; a new pleasure in its 
 services ; a new relish for the Bible and for prayer ; new love for 
 Christians, and new plans of life: with a readiness to forsake all 
 that God hates, and to devote the life to his service in any sphere to 
 which, by his Spirit and his providence, he shall direct. 
 
SERMON XX, 
 
 THE AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN REGENERATION. 
 
 TITUS iii. 5. " Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but 
 according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and 
 renewing of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 IN the two last discourses I have considered the necessity and 
 the nature of regeneration or the new birth. If the remarks 
 there made are correct, there are various important questions in 
 regard to the subject which at once occur to the mind. The 
 main inquiry is, By what agency is this change produced ? Is 
 it by our own ? Is it by the unassisted effect of truth on the 
 heart? Or is it by a Divine power? It is evident that our 
 \ iews of the agency by which the heart is changed will materially 
 aixbct our sense of duty and obligation in regard to the change. 
 If the work be accomplished by a Divine Agent, it is clear also 
 that our views of duty and obligation in regard to it will be 
 materially affected by the opinions which we cherish respecting 
 the nature of his agency on the soul. I propose, then, at this 
 time, to arrange my remarks under the following heads : I. I 
 propose to show that the heart is renewed by the agency of the 
 Holy Ghost ; and, II. To explain, as far as I may be able, the 
 nature of that agency. 
 
 I. The Holy Spirit is the Agent by whom the work of regenera- 
 tion is produced. I mean by this, that it is by his efficient 
 operation that the heart is changed ; that without that agency 
 the change would never occur ; and that whatever subordinate 
 agencies may be employed, or whatever means used, the fact 
 that the heart is renewed is to be as distinctly traced to him as 
 the creation of the world is to be traced to the power of God. 
 The power of the Holy Ghost on the heart is always indispensable 
 in securing the result ; and no heart ever has been changed, or 
 ever will be, except by his power so exerted on the soul. Of 
 all the myriads now in glory redeemed from our world, and of 
 all yet to be redeemed and saved, no one will ever have been 
 bi ought to heaven in reference to whom there has not been a 
 distinct and special exertion of his power in changing the heart. 
 
260 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 "What may be the nature of the agency of man himself or of 
 the truth in this change, is a distinct and important subject of 
 inquiry ; but whatever may be that agency, it is not such as to 
 exclude the efficient operation of the Holy Ghost in the change, 
 or such of itself as ever to bring one soul to heaven. I am thus 
 particular in the statement of the doctrine because of its import- 
 ance ; because Christians have often vague views in regard to it ; 
 and because it is desirable that impenitent sinners should under- 
 stand it. 
 
 There are two sources of evidence in regard to the truth of 
 this doctrine the Scriptures, and experience. A few remarks 
 on each of these points will show the nature of this evidence. 
 First, the Scriptures. The text furnishes the first proof : " Not 
 by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to 
 his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renew- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost" ^ Whatever controversy there may have 
 been at any time in the church about the relation of baptism to 
 this change, or whatever support a false interpretation of this 
 passage may have been supposed to give to the doctrine of 
 baptismal regeneration, the main point is abundantly clear. 
 Salvation is accomplished by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. 
 No application of water can answer the purpose of his agency, 
 or can effect the work without it. And even if the doctrine of 
 "baptismal regeneration" be held, and it be maintained that 
 the Holy Spirit is certainly given on the proper administration 
 of that ordinance, still the necessity of that agency is affirmed, 
 and the efficacy in the change is to be traced to him. You will 
 not understand me as conceding even the possibility that the 
 doctrine of "baptismal regeneration" is true, or that there is a 
 reference to it in the text. So far from that, I hold that there 
 is no doctrine whatever that more certainly saps the foundation 
 of all true piety in the church, and tends to destroy the souls of 
 men ; and, compared with that, all the errors that may be sup- 
 posed to be held, or not held, in the controversies about the 
 shibboleths of party, and forms in religion, and the apostolical 
 succession, are trifles not worthy to be named. But I am show- 
 ing that even on the supposition that there is in our text an 
 allusion to such a doctrine, still the main thing is indisputably 
 taught there, that men are saved, if saved at all, by the renew- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost. The same thing is taught by the Saviour 
 in John iii. o : " Except a man be born of water, and of the 
 Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The 'same 
 remarks might be made in regard to this passage which have 
 been made of the text. Even on the supposition that there is 
 
AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 261 
 
 reference here to the necessity of baptism, still it is explicitly 
 affirmed that the agency of the Holy Spirit is indispensable to 
 salvation. The affirmation is distinct and unequivocal, that 
 unless a man be born or ' begotten ' of the Spirit, he cannot 
 enter into the kingdom of God. In further confirmation of this 
 doctrine, we might appeal to all those passages of Scripture 
 which affirm that a Divine power is exerted in renewing-, the 
 heart ; that God hath begotten us to a lively hope ; that of his 
 own will he hath begotten us through the truth ; to the assurance 
 of the Saviour that the Comforter would come to convince the 
 world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment ; and to the 
 account of the transactions on the day of Pentecost. All the 
 affirmations in the sacred Scriptures of a Divine agency in 
 renewing the heart are to be understood of the Holy Ghost, 
 because, although general where they occur, in other places it is 
 distinctly affirmed that the Holy Ghost is the agent by whom 
 this work is effected. As the texts adduced settle the question 
 about the teachings of the Scripture on the subject, let us look at 
 the other source of evidence that derived from experience. 
 This is not referred to because it would demonstrate it without 
 the teachings of the Scripture, but to show how plain the account 
 of the matter is in the Bible, and how effectually the belief of 
 this truth is secured among the friends of God. 
 
 The nature and strength of this evidence will be perceptible 
 from the following facts, which no one who is acquainted with 
 the subject can deny : 
 
 (1.) Every man who becomes a Christian believes that the 
 change in his heart has been effected by a Divine agency. There 
 is something about the change in his soul which satisfies his 
 mind that it is not by any agency of his own. Whatever may 
 have been his personal efforts in the case ; whatever struggles 
 he may have gone through ; and whatever views of Christian 
 doctrine he may subsequently embrace, yet he has no doubt that 
 the change is to be traced to a power from above. Such is his 
 view of his own depravity ; of the downward, earthly, corrupt 
 tendency of his soul, that he is certain that, if he had been left 
 to himself, he would have been a wretched wanderer still on the 
 dark mountains of sin, and would never have been disposed to 
 turn to God. It becomes his habitual and settled conviction 
 that if he had been left to his own ways he would have continued 
 to walk in the broad road that leads down to death. 
 
 (2.) So universal and settled is the belief of the Divine agency 
 in the conversion of men to God, that it has been incorporated 
 into the creed and confession of faith of every Christian charch. 
 
262 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 on earth. No exception to this has ever occurred ; not a church 
 has ever existed, it is helieved, of any denomination, which has 
 not, in its symbols, attributed this change to the power of the 
 Holy Ghost. There is not one that attributes the change to 
 man ; not one where it is intimated that man is of himself 
 competent to effect it. 
 
 (3.) The same thing is expressed in the writings of theolo- 
 gians. No doctrine of the Scriptures has been more constantly 
 and firmly asserted by writers on theology ; and it may be 
 confidently affirmed that there never has been an evangelical 
 writer of respectability who has denied the necessity of a Divine 
 influence in renewing the heart. This sentiment is found in 
 writers of every age and of every form of evangelical theological 
 sentiment ; of men who have entertained different opinions on 
 the will and the ability of man ; of men who have held different 
 sentiments on the nature of Divine and human agency, the 
 forms of worship, the ordinances of religion, and the constitution 
 of the church. All " schools" old and new ; all classes of theo- 
 logians Calvinistic and Arminian ; all denominations Presby- 
 terian, Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran ; and all evan- 
 gelical theologians of all countries and ages, maintain it. I 
 have never found the doctrine denied in any theological writings 
 of this kind with which I am acquainted ; I have never heard a 
 doubt expressed of its truth among those ministers with whom 
 I am particularly associated, and with whom I am accustomed 
 to act ; I am morally certain there is not a Presbyterian minister 
 in this land that would express a doubt about its truth and its 
 vital importance. 
 
 (4.) The truth of the same doctrine is expressed in the prayers 
 and thanksgivings of all sincere Christians. They pray as if 
 they believed it ; as if it were their hope and stay ; as if they 
 relied on it as the only ground of encouragement in doing good 
 to others, and as the only basis of calculation in regard to the 
 salvation of men. They pray for themselves, their friends, their 
 families, their country, and the world, as if they believed that 
 it is only by the exertion of Divine power that the obstacles to 
 salvation can be overcome in the human heart ; and, in forming 
 their plans for doing good to others, they expect success only on 
 the supposition that the Spirit of all grace will attend those 
 efforts, and will crown them with his blessing. And when 
 they think of the foundation of their own hopes of heaven, they 
 attribute it wholly to the agency of the Spirit of God on their 
 hearts. Their thanks are rendered to the God of grace because 
 he was pleased to arrest them when they were in the way to 
 
AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 263 
 
 death ; to awaken them to see their guilt and danger ; to con- 
 vince them of their sins, and to lead them to God. Whatever 
 effort they themselves have made ; whatever profound and -patient 
 thought they have bestowed on the subject ; and whatever help 
 they have received from ministers and others, yet they feel that 
 their thanks are primarily and chiefly due to God for his mercy ; 
 and the language of my text expresses precisely the sentiment 
 of their hearts : " Not by works of righteousness which we 
 have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the 
 washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost ; 
 which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our 
 Saviour." 
 
 I have been thus particular in this statement for two reasons : 
 first, to show that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit's agency in 
 renewing the heart is so clearly taught in the Scriptures, and 
 is so incorporated in the experience of all true Christians, as to 
 secure its permanent belief in the Church ; and, secondly, to 
 repel the charge which is often brought against what are called 
 "New School" Presbyterians of denying it. It is not often 
 that I allude to any such charges. But this has been so wholly 
 gratuitous, and so deeply injurious, that in a discussion of the 
 subject a very distinct avowal of its belief seemed to be de- 
 manded. I have had, from my position and relations to the 
 church, an opportunity of a somewhat extensive observation of 
 the kind of doctrines which are held up before men in preaching ; 
 and I venture the declaration, that there is no class of ministers 
 in this land that dwell so much on the necessity of the agency 
 of the Holy Spirit to renew the hearts of men as what are called 
 " New School" Presbyterians, and those who sympathize with 
 them. I venture still farther the remark, that the doctrines of 
 "grace" the stern and rigid doctrines of Calvinism, as they 
 are supposed to be, the doctrine of decrees, of Divine sove- 
 reignty, of election, and kindred doctrines, are nowhere so steadily 
 and so firmly maintained in preaching, and in the affections of 
 the heart, as in the " New School" churches. It is true that 
 our preachers attempt to show how these things are ; that they 
 endeavour to prove that these doctrines are not inconsistent 
 with human freedom, and the unlimited offer of the gospel, and 
 the willingness of God to save all, and the ability of man to do 
 his duty, and the doctrine of accountability; but it is also true 
 that there is no shrinking from the avowal, the defence, and the 
 thorough discussion of these doctrines, and from a desire that 
 our congregations should feel and acknowledge their full force 
 in the matter of salvation. 
 
 18 
 
264 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 II. Our second inquiry relates to the nature of the agency of 
 the Holy Spirit in conversion. Our Saviour has explicitly for- 
 bidden us to hope to be able fully to explain the nature of this 
 agency. He says (John iii. 8), " The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth [pleaseth], and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
 not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every one 
 that is born of the Spirit." The meaning is, that his agency is 
 invisible, and is to be known by its effects. We see not the 
 wind ; but on a calm summer's eve we see the harvest-field 
 gently wave, or the bosom of the lake gently ruffled ; or we see 
 the leaf of the aspen tremble when we feel our own cheeks 
 scarcely fanned ; or in a tempest we see the forest bend, and 
 the ocean lashed into foam, and cloud rolling on cloud, and fences, 
 and trees, and houses, swept along in the tornado ; and we 
 judge that there is some efficient agent to do all this, though in 
 both cases invisible. So we see certain effects on the mind and 
 life of man. He is changed. Sometimes the influence that pro- 
 duces the change is gentle as the zephyr that bends the osier on 
 the bank of the rivulet, or that moves over the harvest-field ; 
 and sometimes it is as mighty as the tempest that prostrates the 
 oak on the hills. In each case it secures the result. It converts 
 the soul. It inclines the understanding to contemplate Divine 
 truth, personal duty, and obligation ; the conscience, to decide in 
 favour of God and his claims ; the will, to yield to the motives 
 which prompt to obedience ; the soul, to devote itself with all its 
 powers to the service of its Maker. It leads men before of 
 various sentiments, opinions, habits, prejudices, and philosophical 
 views, to harmony in the great matter of salvation, and unites 
 them in love to the same object, and in the hope of the same 
 heaven. 
 
 Our Saviour has told us, that the agency which does this is 
 unseen ; and by a simple illustration, such as he was in the 
 habit of using, he has told us that when we see certain effects 
 produced, we ought to infer that there is an adequate cause. 
 The remark implies, indeed, that there is much in regard to it 
 which is unknown to man, and which he cannot explain. But 
 his observation does not forbid us to look at facts, as far as we 
 may be able to observe them just as we would in regard to the 
 effects of the wind. There are many things, in both instances, 
 which may be known ; and nothing forbids us, in either case, to 
 make the observation as extensive as we can, and to record the 
 facts just as they occur. I invite your attention, therefore, to a 
 few statements of facts which have been observed, in respect to the 
 nature of the Holy Spirit's agency in renewing the heart. 
 
AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 265 
 
 (1.) The first which I mention is, that his agency on the mind 
 ATI conversion is not that of compulsion. It is not such as to 
 destroy the freedom of man, or in any way such as to interfere 
 with the proper exercise of his powers as a moral agent. When 
 a man becomes a Christian he acts as a freeman ; and whatever 
 power has been exerted over him, no violation has been done to 
 his liberty, nor has he done anything which has not been to him 
 a matter of preference or choice. This will be made clear by a few 
 remarks. One is, that the agency of God is always according to 
 the nature of the thing on which it is exerted. He created the 
 world by the mere exertion of power without means, or apart 
 from any existing organization or laws. He will raise the dead 
 by the same power. He originally fixed the stars, and preserves 
 their positions by the same power. But when he moves the 
 planets, raises the tides, excites the tempests, causes the seasons 
 to return, congeals the waters in the winter, or dissolves them 
 in the warmth of returning spring, it is by the same power 
 indeed, yet it is in accordance with fixed laws ; and he does not, 
 except in miracle, exert his power in a mode that is a departure 
 from those laws. So it is his power that produces the effects 
 we see in the vegetable creation ; but it is in accordance with 
 the laws of the vegetable kingdom. He governs the lion of the 
 forest, and controls the whole animal creation ; but it is in 
 accordance with the instincts of their nature. And in like 
 manner he governs man, and produces important changes in his 
 views and feelings ; yet it is not by miracle, but in accordance 
 with the laws of mind. He does not govern the stars by the 
 teii commandments ; nor does he control the lion or the 
 leopard by influences such as he would use to form the lily or 
 the rose ; nor does he control man by such power as he would 
 use to subdue the lion or the panther. Everything is controlled 
 in accordance with the laws of its own nature ; and as man is 
 made a freeman, with the appropriate powers of moral agency, 
 it is certain that the laws of his nature will be consulted and 
 respected in any control that God exerts over him, just as it is 
 that the laws of crystallization will be in forming ice and snow ; 
 that the orange and the lemon will be made to grow in accord- 
 ance with the laws of the vegetable kingdom ; and that the lion 
 will "roar and seek his meat at the hand of God" by the 
 instinct of his nature. 
 
 We find uniform statements in the sacred Scriptures in accord- 
 ance with this. When the worlds were made, it is said to have 
 been by the " word of God " (Heb. xi. 3), without any instru- 
 mentality. When the dead were raised by the Saviour, it was 
 
266 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 in the same way. But when man is referred to as converted, 
 though there is a uniform assertion that it is by the Divine 
 power, yet it is said to be by the use of means ; by the word of 
 truth ; by the preaching of the gospel ; by the presentation of 
 motives to induce him to turn to God. Throughout the whole 
 work, he is treated not as stones, or trees, or planets, or the 
 tribes of animals that roam the forest are treated, but as a man 
 as endued with conscience, and reason, and moral powers, and as 
 capable of judging of right and wrong. No power is spoken of ex- 
 cept in connexion with the presentation of truth, and of the proper 
 means for acting on a free moral agent, and no effect is described 
 but such as could be exerted on the powers of such an agent. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it is undeniable that all the changes which 
 occur in regeneration are those connected with conscious freedom. 
 The converted sinner acknowledges the power of God in his 
 change. He is sensible that he has become what he is by an 
 influence from on high. It was some such mysterious power 
 that arrested his attention ; that alarmed his conscience ; that 
 induced him to give his heart to God. But he has been sensible 
 of no violation of his freedom. He has done nothing which he 
 has not done freely. He was not converted by bringing a deep 
 sleep upon him, as Eve was formed from the side of Adam; nor 
 was an unnatural stupor diffused over his frame benumbing all 
 his faculties, and leaving him to be moulded as the clay ; but he 
 was converted in the full exercise of his faculties, and with the 
 entire consciousness of acting as a freeman. He has done 
 nothing which he did not prefer to do ; he has abandoned no 
 sin which he did not choose to abandon ; he has formed no new 
 plan of living by becoming a Christian which he did not choose 
 to form. One of the most free and unfettered acts of his life was 
 that when he gave himself to God ; and he became a Christian with 
 as much conscious freedom, and often with as much of the spirit 
 of rejoicing, as the imprisoned father leaves the gloomy cell 
 where he has been long immured, to visit his children when his 
 prison doors are thrown open, or as the galley-slave exults when 
 the chains fall from his hands. There is no act that man ever 
 performs more freely than that of becoming a Christian. His 
 whole heart is in it; and no matter what sinful course he 
 abandons, what sacrifices he makes, and what friends he is con- 
 strained to leave, or what amusements he is required to abjure, 
 he does it most freely. And no matter what trials he may see 
 before him ; no matter though his embracing religion may 
 require him to forsake his country and home to preach the 
 gospel in a heathen land, it is all cheerfully done. It is the act 
 
AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 267 
 
 of a freeman. He prefers it. He would not, for all the gold 
 and diamonds and coronets and crowns of the earth, have it 
 otherwise. And though he is conscious for who could not but 
 be so in such a change ? that this has been brought about by 
 the power of God, and will always ascribe it to the agency of 
 the Holy Ghost, yet he feels that no law of his nature has been 
 violated, and that one of the most free acts of his life was then 
 when he gave his heart to God. 
 
 The doctrine which I here state is precisely that which is so 
 well expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith: "Effectual 
 calling is the work of God's almighty power and grace, whereby 
 he doth in his accepted time invite and draw them [his elect] to 
 Jesus Christ, by his word and Spirit ; savingly enlightening 
 their minds, renewing and powerfully determining their wills, so 
 that they, although in themselves dead in sin, are hereby willing 
 and able FREELY to answer his call, and to accept and embrace 
 the grace offered and conveyed therein." " All those whom God 
 hath predestinated unto life, he is pleased in his appointed time 
 effectually to call renewing their wills, and by his Almighty 
 power determining them to that which is good ; yet so as they 
 come MOST FREELY, being made willing by his grace." " God 
 hath endued the will of man with natural liberty, so that it is 
 neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined 
 to good or evil." " When God converts a sinner, and translates 
 him into a state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage 
 under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and 
 to do that which is spiritually good." These passages from the 
 standard of Presbyterian doctrine state the simple truth in 
 regard to the conversion of the sinner. Whatever power is used, 
 the sinner acts freely ; he chooses life ; he prefers to be a 
 Christian; he is conscious that there is no compulsion, and no 
 violation of the laws of his moral nature. And all this is in 
 exact harmony with the promise made to the Messiah : " Thy 
 people shall be willing in the day of thy power," Psa. ex. 3.* 
 
 (2.) The agency of the Holy Spirit in regeneration is in entire 
 accordance with the truth that is brought tq bear on the mind. 
 What may be the exact power of the truth itself in producing this 
 change, whether it may or may not have a power of its own, or 
 an adaptedness to the soul which acts by itself or by " moral 
 suasion," is not material in order to understand the remark which 
 
 * This promise possibly may have reference not to conversion, but to 
 the voluntary efforts put forth hy the Saviour's people to promote the 
 triumphs of his kingdom. The general principle, however, is such as war- 
 rants the above reference to it. 
 
268 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 I now make. The idea is, that there is no change produced on 
 the soul in regeneration which the truth is not fitted to make, or 
 which the truth, if it secures its proper result, will not make. 
 In repentance, for example, there is no sorrow of the heart in 
 reference to guilt which the truth about ourselves is not of itself 
 fitted to excite. In the love of God experienced by a converted 
 man, there is no effect produced which the truth about the Divine 
 nature and character is not fitted to secure. There is no love 
 experienced towards God which ought not to be exercised, or 
 of which he is not worthy. In the exercise of faith in the 
 Redeemer, there is no effect produced on the mind which is not 
 in strict accordance with the truth. All the confidence reposed 
 in him ought to be reposed in him, from the excellence of his 
 own character ; from what he has done for us ; from his claims 
 on us. And so when the heart glows with joy in the contempla- 
 tion of the truths of the Bible ; when the mind is filled with 
 peace resulting from reconciliation with God ; when the hope of 
 heaven is strongly cherished producing delightful anticipations 
 of future glory, there is no effect produced which the truth is 
 not calculated to work. All the emotions and feelings, the hopes, 
 the joys, the penitent sorrows, the believing acts of trust in 
 Christ, secured in regeneration, are just such as the truth is 
 fitted to produce on the mind. There is no evidence that the 
 Holy Spirit goes beyond this, or that he secures one effect on 
 the soul which the truth, as brought to bear on the mind, is not 
 adapted to induce. That man is a sinner, is a simple arid affect- 
 ing matter of fact. Commonly he does not feel this, or care 
 about it. In regeneration he does ; and the proper view of this 
 constitutes repentance. That there is a God who ought to be 
 loved with all the heart and mind and strength, is a simple 
 matter of verity. The sinner does not feel this. At regenera- 
 tion this is felt ; and to secure this, is one of the great effects 
 produced by the change. That Christ died for man as the only 
 Saviour, and is every way fitted to be a Saviour, is a simple truth. 
 Before regeneration, men do not feel this, or believe it. At rege- 
 neration, they do ; and the effect on their minds is to lead them to 
 exercise that confidence in the Redeemer which they ought to 
 exercise. That there is a heaven is simple truth, whether men 
 believe it or not. Before conversion, they do not believe it. 
 When the heart is changed, they do ; and the effect on the mind 
 is simply that which the truth about heaven is adapted to pro- 
 duce. If these are just views, then they are of great importance 
 in understanding the subject. For thus it will follow, that there 
 is encouragement to present the truth to the mind of a sinner ; . 
 
AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 269 
 
 that it is proper to use means for his conversion ; that there is 
 encouragement to appeal to men to love God, to repent of sin, 
 and to believe the gospel. And thus it will follow also, that that 
 mode of preaching which counsels men to " wait" for the agency 
 of the Holy Spirit to convert the heart, is presumption of the 
 most offensive character. It is the same kind of trusting in God 
 which a sick man would exercise who should lie passively on 
 his bed, and use no means for his restoration ; or as a farmer 
 manifests who "observes the clouds" without sowing, and who 
 passively and indolently looks to God for a harvest without even 
 ploughing his fields. It will follow, also, that it is no more 
 rational for us to wait for the interposition of God to save us 
 without effort of our own, than it would be for such a farmer to 
 wait for God himself to create a waving harvest on the un- 
 ploughed and unsown field, and to expect that the harvest would 
 spring up before him without any effort on his part. The idea 
 which I wish you to receive is, that you can have no basis of 
 calculation or of hope about your salvation beyond the means 
 which you use, and the efforts which you put forth. What hope 
 there would be if you should put forth your highest efforts, is 
 another question. It is true of the farmer that his hopes may be 
 disappointed after all his efforts. Blight and mildew, or drought, 
 or a tornado, may frustrate all his expectations. But he can 
 have no ground of anticipation or of hope whatever, unless he 
 ploughs and sows his field. And so it is with you in regard to 
 salvation. You can have no warrant whatever for hope or 
 expectation, unless you will make an effort ; unless you will pray ; 
 unless you will attend to the truth; unless you will use all 
 proper means to secure its due effect on the mind. Look at a 
 farmer. See him go to work, and pull down all his fences around 
 his field ; see him then draw on logs and brush, and pile them 
 up everywhere. See him cart on vast masses of stone, and cover 
 up the parts of the field that are most fertile. Then see him go 
 and sow, on the few spots that may remain uncovered, the seed 
 of cockle, and nettles, and thistles, and devoutly stand and wait for 
 God to give him a harvest of wheat. And what think you would 
 be his prospect of such a harvest? I will tell you. Just as 
 much exactly as your prospect of salvation in the way in which 
 you deal with your mind and heart. You take down all the 
 defences of truth, and all the guards against error around your 
 soul, and allow the soul to be like an open common. Then you 
 over up all the mind, and crush it down, by cares and pleasures 
 of this world ; by ambition and unholy indulgences. Then you 
 make the heart hard like piling vast masses of stone on a 
 
270 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 fertile soil. And then you fill the mind, not with truth, hut 
 -with all sorts of error, that take root and grow just as fireweed 
 and thistles do on the farm ; and then you pretend to wait on 
 God for his power to clear away all this rubbish, and root up all 
 these thorns and thistles, and to convert the soul ; and there is 
 no wonder that the soul is not converted. 
 
 (3.) The agency of the Holy Spirit in conversion is in accord- 
 ance with all the laws of our nature ; or is such as to secure the 
 proper action of our mental and moral powers. Man has an 
 understanding. But before regeneration it is darkened by sin; 
 it takes perverted views of the proportionate value of things ; 
 its decisions are blinded by prejudice, by passion, and by selfish- 
 ness, so that it has no just and proper view of things as they 
 are. The Holy Spirit at conversion secures the right action of 
 the understanding, and it looks at things as they are in reality, 
 and the mind acts as if those things were so. Man, before con- 
 version, has a conscience. But its decisions are often perverted, 
 dimmed, or resisted. It prompts man to love and obey God, but 
 he does not yield to it ; it urges him to pray, and prepare to die, 
 but he resists its promptings ; it admonishes him of past guilt, 
 and urges him to repentance, but he refuses to yield ; it warns 
 him against passion, and worldliness, and vanity, but he pursues 
 these things in spite of its rebukes. When he is converted, the 
 Holy Spirit secures this effect. He leads the man to honour the 
 dictates of conscience to cease to oppose it to act in accord- 
 ance with its verdicts. He no longer attempts to silence its 
 rebukes ; to turn a deaf ear to its warnings ; to pervert its deci- 
 sions ; or to act in violation of its promptings. Man, before con- 
 version, has a will. But it is perverse, obstinate, selfish, blind. 
 Its actings on religious subjects are more likely "to be wrong 
 than right ; are always wrong. The unconverted sinner never 
 wills anything because his Maker wills it, or in accordance with 
 his Maker's will. The Holy Spirit in conversion secures the 
 right action of the will. He leads the man to a readiness to 
 determine his own deeds, plans, and purposes, in accordance with 
 the will of God. There is no new faculty, and no old faculty 
 with new powers ; there is simply such an influence exerted over 
 it as to secure its decisions in accordance with the will of God. 
 And the same is true of all the faculties and powers of the mind. 
 The agency of the Holy Ghost is just such as to secure their 
 proper and healthful action. No new power of mind is created, 
 none is directly expanded. Nothing is created as an independent 
 substance and put into the soul at conversion ; nor has the man 
 any constitutional powers or propensities after conversion which 
 
AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 271 
 
 he had not "before. The effect, to use a figure often employed 
 in the sacred Scriptures to describe the influences of the Holy 
 Spirit, is like that of the rains and dews of heaven. A land is 
 desolate by drought. Its streams are dried up ; its harvests 
 have failed ; its fields seem to be burned over, and here and 
 there stand but a few stunted shrubs covered with dust, only 
 heightening the desolation. Trees are planted, and seeds of flowers, 
 and fruits, and corn are sown in vain. The trees wither, and 
 the seeds remain in the ground, and not a germ unfolds itself. 
 The sun, small and piercing, rides up a " hot and copper sky," 
 and pours down his scorching beams on panting animals and 
 enfeebled men. A rock, far-projecting, is a most grateful shelter, 
 and night furnishes the only respite and comfort for the smitten 
 inhabitants of the parched land. Clouds then gather ; the rain 
 descends, and the whole aspect of the land is changed. Streams 
 and water-falls pour down the valleys ; the fields rejoice and 
 smile ; the stunted shrub is green again ; the seed, long buried, 
 springs up, and the earth is covered with a carpet of beautiful 
 green, and the air is filled with fragrance. In the East, where 
 such things are common, they succeed each other with a rapidity 
 to us unknown, and hence the illustration is so often used in the 
 Scriptures. Such a change comes over a sinner's soul, over a 
 community and a congregation, when the Holy Spirit of God 
 descends with renovating power. Nothing can effect it but the 
 power of God, as nothing can effect the change in the land of 
 drought but the rain and dews that God shall send down ; but, 
 like that, it is not a change produced by miracle. It calls forth 
 the inactive and slumbering powers of the soul as the rain docs 
 the sleeping powers of nature. It vivifies and quickens all the 
 faculties of man. It illuminates his understanding ; prompts 
 him to just decisions of conscience ; leads his will to determine 
 right, and disposes him to devote himself to God. And it diffuses 
 over the soul of the individual, and over the church and people 
 thus blessed, a moral loveliness of which the beauty of the landscape 
 after the fertilizing rain is but the faint and imperfect emblem. 
 
 Such, I apprehend, is the truth, as far as it goes, in the ex- 
 planation of the Holy Spirit's agency in the conversion of the 
 soul. That there is much about that agency which is unex- 
 plained, and which it is beyond our power to explain, i& not 
 denied, but the same thing is true in regard to every case in which 
 we attempt an elucidation. In the action of the wind, the dew, 
 the rain, the sunbeam in vegetation, there is much beyond any 
 explanation which has been yet suggested ; but this throws no 
 obscurity on a multitude of things which are clear and Intel- 
 
272 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 ligible. So it is in regard to the conversion of the soul. That 
 it is by the agency of the Spirit of God is clear beyond dispute ; 
 and it is equally clear that it is done in perfect accordance with 
 the freedom of man ; that no effect is produced which the truth 
 is not fitted to work out ; and that it is in entire accordance with 
 all the powers of our rational nature. 
 
 If these things are so, then two conclusions follow from what 
 has been said, of more importance to us than any other which 
 can have relation to this subject; and with a bare allusion to 
 these I shall conclude this discourse. The first is, that of en- 
 couragement. There is one Agent who can accomplish all that is 
 needful to be accomplished in our salvation ; and if the sinner 
 perishes, it will not be because he who is entrusted with the 
 work of changing the heart is deficient in power. There is no 
 heart so hard, that it may not be subdued ; none so proud, that 
 it may not be humbled ; none so wicked, that the Holy Spirit 
 cannot make it holy. What man cannot do, he can accomplish ; 
 and in our conscious weakness and sinfulness, therefore, we may 
 feel that he has power to effect in our souls all that need be 
 effected to secure our salvation. The other conclusion which 
 follows from the view that has been taken is, that there is an 
 obligation resting on man in regard to this change. If it were 
 in all respects like creating a world, or like raising the dead; 
 or if, in any sense, the work of the Spirit were of the nature of 
 miracle, there would not be any such obligation. Man could be 
 under no more obligation to love God and repent of sin than he 
 is to create a new star or sun, or to lift up the tides of the ocean. 
 But conversion is wholly a different thing. In the whole change 
 man is a freeman. He acts in view of truth, and the effect is in 
 accordance with truth. His own active powers are concerned, 
 for all the change is on those powers, securing their proper 
 action. Hence, there is an ample field for our agency; for our 
 use of means ; for our putting forth our efforts in the work. 
 And hence there is true philosophy, as well as an incentive to 
 exertion, to work, and to trust in God, in the remark so often 
 made, that man should make the effort for his own salvation 
 as if it were to be secured wholly by his own power ; and yet 
 depend on the grace and Spirit of the Lord as if he could do 
 nothing. Or to express the same thing, and to express all, in 
 the better language of an inspired apostle, man should "work 
 out his own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that 
 worketh in him both to will and to do of his good pleasure." 
 May God give us all grace to do it, for Christ's sake, and to him 
 be all the praise. Amen. 
 
SERMON XXL 
 
 THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 ACTS xx. 21. " Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repent- 
 ance toward God." 
 
 PAUL, in the passage before us, refers to the main things on which 
 he insisted in his preaching. As a leading point he " testified " 
 or bore witness to the necessity of exercising repentance toward 
 God. The necessity of this he urged on all of the two great 
 divisions of the human family to whom he had access the Jews 
 and the Greeks : that is, he urged it on all classes alike ; on 
 every human being. He in reference to whom repentance was to 
 be exercised was God : " repentance toward God." It was his 
 law which had been violated. Transgressions in their most 
 important bearings always terminated on him. He had aright to 
 take cognizance of them. He only could pardon those who had 
 committed them. Paul, therefore, in all places laid it down as one 
 of the primary doctrines of religion, and one of the things essential 
 to salvation, that every human being should exercise repentance 
 toward God. 
 
 I propose, at this time, to enter on the consideration of the 
 subject of repentance a subject occupying a primary place in all 
 systems of religion which regard man as in any sense a sinner. It 
 was a primary doctrine in the system of Lord Herbert, the first 
 and the best of British Deists ; it was the leading doctrine of John 
 the Baptist of the Saviour himself of Paul. " In those days 
 came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and 
 saying, Repent ye : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," Matt, 
 iii. 1, 2. "From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, 
 Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," Matt. iv. 17. 
 So Paul here says that he had taught the Ephesians publicly, 
 and from house to house, *' testifying repentance towards God." 
 
 There are many interesting and important inquiries in regard to 
 repentance which a minister of religion ought to be able to answer. 
 What is repentance? What is the reason of its appointment as a 
 condition of salvation ? Why could not men be saved without it ? 
 What is its efficacy in a system of revealed religion ? How is true 
 
274 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 repentance distinguished from false ? Why will not that regret 
 which every man feels when he has done wrong be sufficient for sal- 
 vation, even though he should not emhrace the gospel ? These and 
 kindred inquiries always occur to thinking minds when the subject 
 of repentance is suggested ; and on these I propose to submit some 
 views which I trust will show the reason of the place assigned to 
 I it in a system of revealed religion. 
 
 The first question which presents itself is, What is repentance ? 
 To that inquiry I intend at present to confine my remarks. The 
 views which I entertain of the nature of repentance, I will express 
 in a few propositions, which I trust will make it plain to all. 
 
 I. Repentance, in general, is a state of mind which springs up in 
 view of perceived personal guilt. I say l in general/ because I 
 wish under this head to describe it as a mere mental operation 
 experienced by all men, or as it exists in the mind of every one 
 when he is made sensible of wrong-doing. Every man experiences 
 repentance of some kind. If he did not, you could not define it 
 so that he could understand it, any more than you can define 
 colours to a blind man, or harmony to the deaf. The peculiar nature 
 of evangelical repentance will be the subject of a distinct proposi- 
 tion. The inquiry now before us is, What is repentance as a 
 mental operation, distinguished from other mental operations ? 
 
 The proposition which I have laid down is, that it is a state of 
 mind which springs up in view of perceived personal guilt. Let 
 us analyze this, and see whether we cannot find here all the 
 essential elements of which the mind is conscious when it exercises 
 repentance. 
 
 (1.) It is in view of perceived guilt. I mean that the mind 
 must perceive or see that it has done wrong. You must see that 
 something has been done or omitted for which you are blame- 
 worthy. The mind cannot repent without this. It never does. 
 You cannot make a man repent for the colour of his hair, or for 
 having a deformed limb, or for a natural impediment in his speech, 
 however much he may regret its existence, or seriously feel its 
 disadvantage. In relation to an action which a man performs, you 
 cannot make him repent unless he perceives that it is wrong, and 
 that he deserves blame for it. If he esteems what he has done to 
 be right, all arguments are vain to induce him to exercise 
 repentance. Your appeals are powerless as long as he does not 
 see that he is blameworthy for what he has done. If he things 
 that circumstances justified what he has done, though others may 
 think that it was wrong ; if his mind is so little enlightened that 
 he does not know what was right or wrong in the case; if he is 
 so debased by vice, or superstition, or ignorance, that his moral 
 
THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. 275 
 
 perceptions are blunted and paralyzed, you will labour in vain to 
 awaken in his bosom the feelings which constitute repentance. 
 If, for instance, he has killed a man, and is conscious that he did 
 it in self-defence, however much he may regret the necessity of 
 the act, while he retains the belief that it was justifiable and right, 
 you can never excite in his bosom the feelings of repentance. 
 
 (2.) The second thing in my statement of what constitutes 
 repentance in general is, that it must be in view of personal guilt. 
 I mean by this, that a man cannot repent for the act of another. 
 Eepentance always has metes and bounds, and is always limited 
 by what we ourselves deserve. There is no other guilt but that 
 which is personal ; and you can never make a man feel any other. 
 Tne human mind has been so created that it can repent for no 
 other : and every theory formed on the supposition that one man 
 can repent for the sin of another, and every instance in which a 
 man has attempted to persuade himself that he has done it, must 
 be false. The soul of man has not been made in a manner so 
 loose, and so regardless of laws, that either of these things is 
 possible. You may regret what another man has done ; you may 
 suffer on account of it in person, in property, in health, or in your 
 family ; you may weep over it all your life, but you do not repent 
 of it. The son of an intemperate father has abundant occasion to 
 regret the career which his father has pursued. It may have 
 deprived him of property which he would otherwise have in- 
 herited ; it may have made him the early victim of disease ; it 
 may have subjected him to the passionate outbreaks of one who 
 has been made a madman by intoxication ; it may have separated 
 him from the respectable society which he might otherwise have 
 enjoyed ; it may have prevented his acquiring an education, and 
 preparing himself for honourable usefulness ; it may have compelled 
 him to enter on life every way under disadvantage, and many a 
 time he may have wept over it, but it is an abuse of language to 
 say that he has ever repented of it. Between his feelings, deep 
 and pungent as they may be, and what they would have been if 
 he had been himself the drunkard, there is a line which is never 
 crossed ; and God has so made the human soul that it never can 
 be crossed. So of the shame which an erring daughter may bring 
 on a family ; so of the deep sorrow which invades the soul when 
 a son is reckless and abandoned. The blood which mantles your 
 cheek then, is made to mount there by a different law from that 
 which diffuses the shame and sorrow of repentance when you 
 yourself have done the wrong. The principle which I am here 
 laying down is universal. Your own mind can never exercise 
 repentance for what another has done, nor can repentance with you 
 
276 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 be connected with any of his acts, except so far as he is your 
 agent, or you have authorized him to act in your place, and then 
 the repentance is not for what he does, but for what you did in 
 appointing him. That class of theologians who suppose that it is 
 the duty of men to repent of the sin of Adam, advance a dogma 
 which is against all the laws of the human mind ; and they who 
 work themselves up into a belief that they do repent for what 
 he did thousands of years before they had any being, however 
 amiable their tears may be, and however their sorrows may assume 
 the semblance of piety, must be ignorant of the nature of their 
 own mental operations. That they may regret what he did ; that 
 they may mourn over the ravages of sin introduced by his guilty 
 act, no one can doubt ; that they should repent of what he or any 
 other man ever did, the laws of our nature render impossible. A 
 man can as properly take to himself credit for the virtuous 
 deeds performed by another, and claim a reward for them, as 
 exercise repentance for his vices and his follies. 
 
 (3.) The third thing which is implied in my statement is, that 
 repentance is a state of mind which springs up by a law of our 
 nature when our personal guilt is perceived. What I mean is, 
 that when it exists at all, it is originated by this law. I will not 
 say that repentance always in fact exists when guilt is perceived, 
 for I know that it is possible for a man by an effort of will, or 
 under the influence of some strong perverted purpose, to oppose 
 the regular operations of the laws of his own mind, and to resist 
 conclusions which the fair exercise of reason would reach if there 
 were no perversion and no opposition. Such may be the stubborn- 
 ness of his will, such the determination not to see a certain result 
 in a process of reasoning, that he may set aside the clearest 
 testimony ; and evidence, which according to the laws of his nature 
 ought to make a deep impression on him, may in fact make none, 
 while evidence which may in fact have no real force, may seem to 
 him " strong as proof of holy writ." So, I admit, it may be in 
 regard to repentance. It is possible that a man may perceive his 
 guilt, and yet may hold his mind in stern resistance to the laws 
 which would lead him to repentance. He may resolve not to 
 feel ; not to weep ; not to make confession ; not to allow the usual 
 marks of guilt to be depicted in the eye, the cheek, the frame. 
 He may even tremble under the consciousness of guilt, and yet 
 resolve not to abandon his course, though to persevere in it may 
 require him to drive his purposes over all the finer feelings of his 
 nature. 
 
 What I mean is, that where repentance does exist, it springs up 
 in accordance with one of the regular laws of our nature. It is 
 
THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. 277 
 
 not the object of creative power. It is not brought about by the 
 agency of God irrespective of the laws of the mind. It is not the 
 operation of the Divine Mind. It is our own mind that repents ; 
 our own eyes that shed forth tears ; our own hearts that feel ; 
 our own souls that resolve to do wrong no more. God cannot 
 repent for us ; nor can he produce repentance in us in any other 
 way than by causing our own minds to perceive their personal 
 guilt, and by some agency securing the proper action of the mental 
 laws which he has ordained. 
 
 As this is a point of great importance on the question whether 
 men are bound to exercise repentance, and whether they are able 
 to do it, it is desirable that it should be made as clear as possible. 
 I would observe, then, that this is a matter of plain common sense, 
 arid would be clear to all men if it had never been mystified by 
 theologians. All men understand the nature of repentance. All 
 understand how it springs up in the mind. All have experienced 
 it a thousand times. You cannot find a person who at some time 
 has not exercised repentance. You cannot find a child, who, if he 
 should look into his own mind, would need to be told what is 
 meant when he is required to repent for having done a wrong 
 thing ; and in the emotions of a child when he feels sorrow that he 
 has done wrong, and resolves to make confession of it and to do so 
 no more, you have the elements of all that God requires of man in 
 repentance as a condition of salvation. You recollect your own 
 feelings when a child. You broke the commands of a father. His 
 law was plain ; his will was clear. When the deed was performed, 
 you reflected on what you had done. You saw that his command 
 was right ; that you had done wrong by breaking his law, and had 
 incurred his displeasure. He had always treated you kindly ; his 
 precepts had never been unreasonable , and you could not justify 
 yourself in what you had done. By a law of your nature a law 
 which you did not originate, though its operations you might have 
 checked and controlled you felt pain and distress that you had 
 done the wrong. That feeling of distress sprang up in the mind 
 as a matter of course, and without any perceived foreign agency, and 
 you resolved that you would go and confess the fault, and would 
 be guilty of the wrong no more. This is repentance ; and this is 
 the whole of it. You have a friend. He has a thousand times, and in 
 a thousand ways, laid you under obligation. He has helped you in 
 pecuniary distress ; shared your losses ; attended you in sickness ; 
 defended your reputation when attacked. He himself in turn 
 suffers. Wicked men defame his character, and in an evil hour 
 your mind is poisoned, and you join in the prevalent suspicion 
 and error in regard to him, and give increased currency to the 
 
278 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 slanderous reports. Subsequently you reflect that all this was 
 wrong ; that you acted an ungrateful part ; that you suffered your 
 mind to be too easily influenced in forgetting your benefactor, and 
 that you have done him great and lasting injury. You are pained 
 at the heart. Then spring up in the soul, by a law of your nature, 
 bitter feelings of regret for what you have done ; and you resolve 
 that you will go to him and relieve your own mind, and do him 
 justice, by making confession; that you will implore forgiveness ; 
 that you will endeavour as far as possible to undo the evil, and 
 that you will never repeat the wrong again. This is repentance ; 
 and this is the whole of it. Let these simple elements be trans- 
 ferred to God and to religion, and you have all that is included 
 in repentance. Be as honest toward God as you have been many 
 a time toward a parent or a friend ; suffer the laws of your nature 
 to act as freely and with as little obstruction towards your Maker, 
 as you have done in your treatment of your fellow-beings, and 
 you will have no difficulty on the subject. You will see that 
 repentance, as a leading doctrine of all religion, is neither arbitrary 
 nor unreasonable. The difficulty is, that when you approach 
 religion you are determined to find something unintelligible, 
 severe, and harsh, and you at once suppose that God in his 
 arrangement there is arbitrary and unkind. 
 
 (4.) If the views thus far exhibited are well-founded, then they 
 will do much in explaining the nature of the Divine agency in 
 producing repentance. It is true that there is an important sense 
 in which God is the Author of it. It was true, as the disciples said 
 when Peter visited Cornelius, and saw the effects of the gospel on 
 his mind, that " God had granted to the Gentiles repentance unto 
 life," Acts xi. 18. It is true that the Lord Jesus was exalted "to be 
 a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgive- 
 ness of sins," Acts v. 31. But it is also true that the Divine Mind 
 does not repent for us. It is true that repentance is not created 
 by mere physical power. It is true that the nature of the Divine 
 agency is not to produce it independently of the laws of the mind 
 itself, and of the efforts of the soul. It is your own mind that is 
 to repent ; your own heart that is to feel ; your own tongue that 
 is to make confession ; your own soul that is to resolve that you 
 will do wrong no more. The effect of the Divine agency, if I 
 understand it, and if the views already suggested are correct, is 
 to bring truth before the mind ; to make the mental vision clear, 
 BO that the truth shall be perceived ; to remove the obstructions to 
 the fair operations of the mental laws, and repentance follows as a 
 matter of course. And in like manner when he commands men to 
 repent, it is not a command to create emotions in their souls by an 
 
THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. 279 
 
 act of their own will ; to originate feeling by merely resolving to 
 do it : it is, to allow their minds to act according to their nature ; 
 to permit guilt, when perceived, to produce its legitimate effect 
 on the soul ; to be as honest towards him, as they expect their 
 children to be towards themselves. He presumes that every man 
 understands the nature of repentance ; and that all that is required 
 is, to secure the fair operation of the mental laws which he has 
 ordained. 
 
 II. In the second place, evangelical repentance, or repentance as 
 connected with true religion in the soul, is a state of mind which 
 arises from the perception that all sin is committed against God. 
 My meaning is, that when true repentance exists, the primary and 
 main ground of the sorrow is, that the crime has been committed 
 against him ; that his law has been violated ; that he has been 
 offended. It is not that it is disgraceful in the view of the 
 community ; it is not that it will be attended with the loss of 
 favour or popularity among men ; it is not that a father, or a child, 
 or a neighbour has been wronged ; nor is it that it will be followed 
 by punishment in this world or the next; but it is that God 
 regards it as an evil thing, and that its chief evil is in the fact that 
 it is a violation of his law. In cases when wrong has been done 
 to a human being to a neighbour, a relative, or a stranger the 
 chief evil in it, as viewed by a true penitent, is not the injury that 
 has been done to man, but the wrong that has been done to God. In 
 true repentance, the wrong that has been done to man may be com- 
 paratively forgotten, and the attention fixed with absorbing and over- 
 powering interest on the crime regarded as an offence against God. 
 
 As this is a point of much importance, and one which is not 
 very clear to most persons, I propose to show that it is so, and 
 why it is so. 
 
 (a) In my text, repentance is spoken of particularly in its 
 relation to God : " testifying repentance toward God." In the 
 parable of the prodigal son, the penitent is represented as saying, 
 " I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, 
 I have sinned against heaven, and before thee," Luke xv. 18. 
 When he came to his father, he said, " Father, I have sinned 
 against heaven, and in thy sight." The errors and follies of his 
 life appeared to have been primarily against heaven ; the sins which 
 he had committed against his father were, in his view, secondary 
 in the magnitude of their evil to the same offences regarded as 
 committed against God. So David, in the fifty-first Psalm, says, 
 " Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy 
 sight," ver. 4. And so in 2 Sam. xii. 13, where he refers to the 
 same offence, he says, "I have sinned against the Lord" We 
 
 19 
 
280 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 are not to suppose that the prodigal son was not sensible that he 
 had been guilty of a great wrong towards his father; but that it was 
 secondary in the magnitude of the evil as compared with the sin 
 against God. We are not to suppose that David was not sensible 
 of the wrong that he had done to Uriah, or to the laws of the 
 land, or of the injury which his example would do to men. Of 
 all this, he might have had, and probably did have, the deepest 
 conviction ; but all this, when compared with the magnitude of 
 the sin as committed against God, was so comparatively trifling, 
 that he said, " Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this 
 evil in thy sight." The mind was turned away from everything 
 else, and fixed on the amazing offence regarded as committed 
 against God. In that, the thoughts were absorbed and lost ; and 
 it was that which overwhelmed the soul of the penitent monarch. 
 
 These instances are evidently set forth in the Bible as examples 
 of true repentance ; and the design is to show that in genuine 
 repentance sin is contemplated primarily as committed against 
 God, and as an evil in his sight. It derives its chief aggrava- 
 tion from that fact, and the principal sorrow of the soul is, that 
 he has been offended. 
 
 (J) I proposed to explain to you why this is so, and to show that 
 it is reasonable that it should be so. * When we attempt to 
 show that this is the nature of repentance, and when we urge 
 you to regard all your sins as deriving their main aggrava- 
 tion from the fact that they are committed against God, there 
 is often a feeling which arises in the mind that this is unjust. 
 You have wronged a neighbour. You see the evil ; confess it ; 
 ask his forgiveness ; obtain it : and why is not that the end 
 of it? The injury was done to him; it has been repaired: 
 why is not that -all ? Why should it be carried up before God ? 
 Above all, why should your main distress of mind be not that 
 your neighbour was wronged, but that God was offended ? You 
 violate the command of a parent. You reflect on it ; regret it ; 
 confess it ; are forgiven. Why is not that all ? It was in the 
 domestic circle ; it was known nowhere else ; the wrong has been 
 repaired ; the breach has been healed. Why is not that an end of 
 it? Why should you be required to make another "issue" in 
 regard to it, and go over it again, with all the sorrows of repentance, 
 and the humiliation of a confession, before another being making 
 a double confession necessary for a single offence, and leaving 
 nothing done till he is pacified ? What if in childhood you had a 
 quarrel with another boy, and had "made it up," and then another 
 person should come in and should demand that you should make it 
 up with him also ? 
 
THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. 281 
 
 To explain this, I will submit to you a few remarks : 
 (1.) There is a kind of repentance which arises from the con- 
 templation of a wrong regarded as committed against man. That 
 is the common form in which it exists in the world, and that we 
 have all experienced. A neighbour has been wronged by you. 
 You see it, confess it, and obtain his pardon, and the matter 
 between you and him is settled. You have done all that you. 
 could to repair the evil ; he professes to be satisfied, and it would 
 now be wrong for him to insist on anything further, or to allow 
 this to affect his future treatment of you. But does this do any- 
 thing towards settling the matter between you and God ? That 
 is wholly another thing, and should be made the most important 
 thing. Your neighbour is not in the place of God ; nor is he 
 authorized to act for him ; nor can he take upon himself to forgive 
 the offence as committed against him. Two boys have a quarrel. 
 One is greatly in the wrong, and greatly injures the other. When 
 the deed is committed, he sees the wrong, regrets his passion, 
 goes and makes humble confession, and is forgiven. That settles 
 the matter so far as they are concerned, and perhaps so far as the 
 entire group of boys are concerned among whom it happened. 
 But there is another view of the case much more important, it 
 may be, than this ; and this hushing up of the quarrel does 
 nothing in regard to that. The boy that did the wrong has a 
 father, and the law of that father has been violated. He told him 
 not to go to that place. He commanded him to have nothing to 
 do with that boy. He trained him to be gentle, and kind, and 
 inoffensive ; to restrain his passions ; to avoid all occasions of 
 brawls ; to honour him ; to fear God. His law now has been 
 violated; his counsels disregarded; his government despised; 
 himself, as a father, dishonoured. The offence which the boy 
 committed against the other was the act of a moment, produced 
 under the excitement of passion ; it was a single act of wrong : 
 the offence as committed against a father was a sin against long 
 and careful training ; it involved the whole question whether 
 the father is to be obeyed or disobeyed, and had a direct bearing 
 on the whole subject of paternal government. Now it is clear 
 that the son, when he has settled the matter with the injured 
 boy, has done nothing to settle it with his own injured father; 
 and that the act, as viewed against him, is a much more serious 
 evil than as viewed against the boy who was directly wronged, 
 If that son now has true repentance, he will not only be affected 
 by the offence viewed as committed against his playmate, but he 
 will feel that there is a much more important matter than this 
 to be adjusted in his own father's house. 
 
282 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 (2.) This leads me to observe, that on a similar principle the 
 offences which we commit are to be regarded in their direct 
 relation to those who are immediately wronged, and to their much 
 higher bearing on God. You do wrong to a neighbour, or brother, 
 in the church ; a wife, a lover, a stranger. You become sensible 
 of the wrong, confess it, repair it as far as possible, receive forgive- 
 ness, and the matter between you and the offended party is settled. 
 You give each other the hand, and are friends again. But that does 
 not affect another and a more important point the relation of the 
 offence to God. For illustration of this, there has been no better 
 case than that of David. That he had done a great and grievous 
 wrong to Uriah and his family there can be no doubt. But could 
 all that wrong have been repaired, there was another and a much 
 more important light in which it was to be viewed. He had violated 
 two of the positive commands of God. A professor of religion ; a 
 prince ; the head of the covenant-people ; a man signally favoured 
 by God ; occupying a most prominent position in the world, he 
 had disregarded the law of his Maker, and trampled his statutes 
 in the dust. His sin had been public, and of a most aggravated 
 character ; and contemplating all its relations, the offence as com- 
 mitted against Uriah, in comparison with the same sin regarded 
 as committed against God, was a trifle ; and he, therefore, under 
 the feeling of genuine repentance, cried out, " Against thee, thee 
 only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." 
 
 (3.) This suggests, then, another thought in regard to true 
 repentance. It may have been often exercised towards your 
 fellow-creatures whom you have offended, and you may have 
 obtained their forgiveness ; and still the great matter pertaining 
 to true repentance may be yet unsettled. You may have violated 
 the commands of a parent, and may have repented of it and obtained 
 his forgiveness ; you may have wronged a neighbour, and may 
 have confessed the wrong and obtained pardon; you may have 
 been unfaithful in a public trust, and may then have done all 
 you could to repair the evil considered as an offence against the 
 laws of society ; you may have led the innocent into error or sin, 
 and then may have done all you could to repair the wrong so far 
 as they are concerned; and still the most important questions 
 pertaining to those offences are unaffected. They all have a rela- 
 tion to God and his government. They are all to be considered 
 as violations of his law ; as so many wrongs done to him. Nothing 
 has been done in regard to. that matter, nor do you meet either 
 the primary or the full requirements of repentance until you go 
 and say, "I have sinned against heaven;" " against thee, thee 
 only, have I sinned, and done this evil iu thy sight." 
 
THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. 283 
 
 III. In the third place, true repentance, as a part of religion, 
 involves not only regret for past sin as an evil in the sight of 
 God, but a purpose to abandon it and to do it no more. This point 
 is so obvious that it will be necessary to dwell on it only for a 
 moment. It is clear that if there be no such purpose to abandon 
 the sin, there can be no genuine repentance. If David had intended 
 to repeat the sin, over which he mourned, as soon as that was for- 
 given, nothing would be more plain than that all his sorrow for the 
 crime would have been hollow and insincere. His sorrow in that 
 case could have arisen only from an apprehension of punishment, 
 and not from any genuine hatred of transgression. Had the prodigal 
 son made his confession solely with a view to obtain the favour of 
 his father, and acquire another portion of the estate, intending 
 then to repeat his acts of ingratitude and profligacy, it is clear 
 that there could have been no genuine repentance ; no regret for 
 his sin as such. In all cases of genuine repentance there must be 
 a purpose to abandon the sin, and not to repeat the wrong. This 
 principle, so familiar to us in our treatment of each other, is not 
 less true in our relations to God. There, also, it is true in its 
 largest, broadest sense for all sin is regarded as committed 
 against him. When one man has done wrong to another, all that 
 he who has been injured can require in order to his extending 
 forgiveness is, that the offender should make acknowledgment 
 and restitution for that particular offence. He could not demand 
 that there should be an acknowledgment to him of all his sins, 
 nor even that he should change his conduct in regard to others. 
 But in reference to repentance toward God, it is required that 
 there should be sorrow for every sin, and an universal purpose to 
 forsake the ways of transgression. He that comes before God 
 professing to exercise repentance, with a purpose to indulge in 
 any one sin of any kind, shows that his repentance is as really 
 false and hollow, as he does who intends to make a confession to 
 his neighbour for any one act of wrong, and yet purposes to repeat 
 the offence as soon as he has an opportunity. No man, therefore, 
 can be a true penitent who does not intend to abandon all sin. 
 No one becomes a true Christian who does not purpose to break 
 away from every form of transgression, and to lead a holy life. 
 Men who become Christians are indeed imperfect. They are 
 liable to fall into sin. They do many things over which they 
 have occasion to mourn. But he who professes to become a Chris- 
 tian, intending that this shall be so, purposing to repeat any sin 
 and then to repent of it, manifestly knows nothing of true repent- 
 ance, and can have no evidence of piety. " If I regard iniquity 
 in my heart, the Lord will not hear me, 7 ' Psa. Ixvi. 18. 
 
2S4 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 In view of the thoughts suggested in this discourse, we may 
 remark, in conclusion, 
 
 (1.) That as a mere mental operation repentance in religion 
 does not differ from repentance exercised on other subjects. As 
 a mere act of mind, repentance toward God does not differ from 
 repentance as exercised toward an injured parent or friend. How 
 can it? The difference is in the object towards which repentance 
 is exercised, not in the act of repenting, as a mere exercise of 
 mind. Yet repentance, as a mental operation, is easily- under- 
 stood, and all are familiar with it. Who is there that has never 
 repented of anything that he has done ? Who that has not con- 
 fessed a wrong ? Who that does not now feel that he has much 
 to regret in the past, and that there is much which he ought to 
 confess ? Be as honest toward God as you have been toward a 
 parent, lover, or friend, and you would have no difficulty on the 
 subject of repentance. It would be easy to be understood, and 
 all your difficulties would soon vanish. Religion, if this be so, 
 is not unreal, arbitrary, and impossible ; it is a practicable thing, 
 and it accords with all the laws of the human mind. 
 
 (2.) It follows from the views presented, that repentance is not 
 beyond the proper exercise of the power of man. Every man 
 practises it. Every child repents. Every one has at different 
 times felt regret for something that he has done ; has made con- 
 fession ; has resolved to transgress no more ; has turned from the 
 evil course. This is repentance ; and no one in such a case has 
 resorted to any plea that it was impossible, or that it was un- 
 reasonable. Is T o one who has injured a friend ; no child who has 
 violated the command of his father, when he is convinced of the 
 wrong, and when the duty of proper acknowledgment is pressed 
 upon him, ever thinks of taking shelter under the plea that 
 repentance is beyond his power, and that he cannot exercise it. 
 It is only in religion that we ever hear any difficulty suggested 
 on the subject ; there only that we are told that it is beyond a man's 
 power, and that we must wait for a Divine influence before it can 
 be exercised. But why should it be beyond a man's power in 
 reference to religion more than anywhere else ? Why easy else- 
 where ; why impossible here ? The answer is plain. Men wish 
 to find an excuse for not repenting ; and regardless of any reflec- 
 tions on the character of their Maker, rather than forsake their 
 -sins they charge him with requiring that which is impossible, 
 ind coolly attempt to satisfy themselves by saying that they have 
 -do power to obey his commands. 
 
 (3.) It follows, from what has been said, that it is the sinner 
 who is to repent. It is not God who is to repent for him for 
 
THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. 285 
 
 God has done no wrong. It is not the Saviour who is to repent 
 for him for it is not he who has violated the law. It is not the 
 Holy Spirit who is to repent for him for how can that blessed 
 Agent feel such sorrow, or why should he ? My impenitent friend, 
 it is your own mind that is to repent ; your own heart that is to 
 feel sorrow ; your own feet that are to turn from the evil way ; 
 your own mouth that is to make confession. I know and am 
 persuaded that, if it is ever done, it will be by the aid of the 
 Holy Ghost ; but I know equally well that you yourself are to be 
 the penitent, and that this is a work that cannot be done for you by 
 another. The mind that has done the wrong must repent. That 
 very heart that has sinned must feel all the sorrows of repentance 
 that are ever felt in the case ; those very eyes that have looked 
 with desire on forbidden objects must weep, and must do all the 
 weeping in the case ; and those very lips that have been profane, 
 or false, or impure, must make confession, and the confession can 
 be made by them alone. 
 
 (4.) Finally, it is right and proper to call on men to repent of 
 their sins. If they repent when they have wronged a friend, or 
 violated the law of a parent ; if repentance is an operation of the 
 mind, with which all are familiar ; if it is not beyond the proper 
 reach of the human faculties ; and if the sinner himself is actually 
 to feel sorrow, and to make confession, then it is right to call 
 on men to repent of their sins committed against God. The 
 gospel, in approaching men, commends itself to their common 
 sense, and requires of them only that which they themselves see 
 to be reasonable and proper. It comes to them, and says that they 
 have sinned against God ; that all sin may be regarded as termi- 
 nating on him, and as a violation of his law ; that for that sin 
 there should be sorrow felt in the heart ; that there should be 
 willingness to go to him and make penitent acknowledgment, and 
 implore forgiveness ; and that there should be a solemn purpose 
 to repeat the wrong no more. This is what the gospel demands 
 of every sinner as a primary and essential condition of salvation. 
 Is it wrong in its demands ? Is it unreasonable in its claims ? 
 What less could it ask ? And how could it meet the convictions 
 of your own minds in regard to what may be reasonably required, 
 if it did not demand this ? When we summon you, therefore, to 
 repentance, we urge the appeal no less by the conviction in your 
 own minds of what is right, than by the authority of God, and while 
 the appeal is based primarily on the authority of God, it commends 
 itself to you as a demand that is in accordance with tl& laws of your 
 own nature, and in neglecting to obey it you sin alike against God 
 and yourselves. The claims of your Maker, and the Jaws of your 
 own nature, therefore, combine to urge you to exercise repentance 
 toward God. 
 
SEKMON XXII, 
 
 THE RELATION OF REPENTANCE TO PARDON IN THE CHRIS- 
 TIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 ACTS iii. 19. " Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may 
 be blotted out." 
 
 IN the prosecution of the subject of repentance, I proceed now 
 to consider the question how repentance is of avail in the pro- 
 curing of pardon ; or the relation of repentance to pardon in the 
 Christian system. 
 
 It seems to be admitted on all hands, that repentance under 
 the Divine administration is connected with the pardon of sin. 
 Lord Herbert, the leading British Deist, laid down the necessity 
 of repentance as one of the ten fundamental truths taught by 
 natural religion ; and held it to be indisputable that repentance 
 would be effectual in securing forgiveness. This is probably the 
 sentiment of the great mass of mankind, whether they embrace 
 the Christian system or not. As every child feels that if he has 
 done wrong towards a father he ought to repent of it, and 
 argues, and in general argues justly, that if he truly repents his 
 father will forgive him, so men seem to reason about their 
 Great Father in heaven. This opinion is held by the Christian 
 in connexion with his belief in the merits of the sacrifice of the 
 Redeemer ; in what sense I will endeavour to explain in the 
 sequel of this discourse. By others, by avowed Deists, and by 
 infidels in every form, and by the mass of men, the reference 
 to that sacrifice is excluded ; and it is held that mere repentance 
 without respect to that will be accepted by God, and will secure 
 the pardon of sin. 
 
 The form in which the doctrine is held by those who do not 
 practically embrace Christianity, probably comprises the two 
 following particulars: first, that repentance for a wrong done 
 is, under the Divine administration, enough; that is, that the 
 Divine government is equitable and mild ; that God is disposed 
 to pardon ; that when one becomes sensible of a wrong done, it 
 is all that the Universal Parent will or can require ; and that 
 repentance, therefore, will secure the restoration to Divine favour ; 
 and, secondly, that in fact they themselves do exercise re- 
 pentance all the repentance that can reasonably be demanded. 
 
RELATION OF REPENTANCE TO PARDON. 287 
 
 When they have done wrong, they say, they always regret it. 
 They are pained at heart. They are ready to make confession 
 and restitution as far as is in their power for the wrong done 
 even though it was unintentional. They do not recollect an in- 
 stance, perhaps, in which this has not been done ; and if such 
 an instance could he referred to in their past lives, they would 
 lay down their hook or their pen, or leave their plough standing 
 in the furrow, and go at once and repair the evil. Thus, they 
 trust, the account between them and justice is kept substantially 
 balanced, and they entertain the hope that the Divine mercy 
 will not be withheld from them in the great day. 
 
 These are the principles which prevail where the Christian 
 doctrine of seeking forgiveness through the merits of Christ is 
 laid out of view ; and the question now is, whether these are 
 sound principles or in other words, what is the true relation of 
 repentance to pardon ? Let us examine the system now referred 
 to, in which there is undoubtedly some mixture of truth, and see 
 what is the correct doctrine on the subject. The inquiry will be 
 conducted by laying down a few connected propositions. 
 
 I. It will be agreed on all hands, that under the Divine 
 administration there is no pardon, in the proper sense of the 
 term, where there is no repentance. Indeed, if the term pardon, 
 or its equivalent forgiveness, is ever used, without the correlative 
 repentance, it is probably employed in a somewhat lax significa- 
 tion ; not in its strict and proper sense. When a man who is 
 in the penitentiary, or who is under sentence of death for murder, 
 is pardoned by the executive, the term means merely that the 
 penalty is remitted, or is not executed. There has been in the 
 bosom of the executive no such feeling exactly as is implied in 
 the word forgiveness. His feeling in the case is distinct from 
 that which he would have had if he had been personally wronged, 
 and he who had wronged him had come and made penitent con- 
 fession, and he had forgiven him. So when in your heart you 
 exercise forgiveness towards those who have injured you when 
 they manifest no repentance as the Saviour prayed for his 
 murderers, " Father, forgive them," the feeling is distinct from 
 what it is when you see them truly penitent, and when in view 
 of their repentance you declare them forgiven. You use the 
 term in a somewhat lax and indefinite sense, as meaning that 
 you do not harbour malice against them ; that you will take no 
 revenge for what they have done ; that you will be ready actually 
 to pardon them if they will apply to you for forgiveness. 
 
 Repentance and forgiveness, in the proper sense of the terms, 
 have, in the common apprehensions of men, a very close con- 
 
288 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 nexion. It is a point on which, we will all start together in our 
 inquiry, that there can be no pardon under the Divine govern- 
 ment where there is no true repentance. There is no one point 
 probably about which men would be better agreed than this. 
 The Deist supposes this ; all men suppose it. The hardened man ; 
 the man who never felt one pang of regret that he has done 
 wrong ; the man who wholly justifies his own course ; the man 
 who knows that he has done evil, and who intends to persevere 
 in it, cannot obtain forgiveness in any proper sense of that term. 
 He may remain for a long time unpunished ; the sentence of the 
 law may be suspended over him; he may have many comforts 
 and blessings, and his life may be filled with hilarity and joy ; 
 but it would be an abuse of language to say that he was for- 
 given or pardoned. If he ever obtains pardon, in the proper sense 
 of that term, it must be somehow in connexion with his exer- 
 cising sorrow for what he has done. This, then, is a fundamental 
 principle in all religions. It is a point on which Christians and 
 all other men must agree. Wherever it leads us, we here start 
 together. 
 
 II. My second proposition is, that mere repentance of itself 
 will not repair an evil which you have done, and on account of 
 which you feel compunction. Sin, or wrong done, produces evils 
 which no mere regret on the part of him who has done it can 
 repair. It is not an universal truth that regret or compunction 
 on the part of the offender will put away the evil, and restore 
 matters to the condition in which they were before the wrong 
 was done. 
 
 This truth is perhaps sufficiently plain in itself without any 
 further illustration ; but as it is the dividing point between 
 Christianity and other systems ; as it is very material in under- 
 standing the relation of repentance to pardon ; and as it is an 
 important fact in the character of the Divine administration, 
 it is of moment that it should be further illustrated. 
 
 It is an essential position in the view which one takes who 
 rejects the doctrine of the atonement, and who denies its neces- 
 sity in order that repentance can be of avail, that " when men 
 have transgressed the Divine commands, repentance and amend- 
 ment of life will place them in the same situation as if they had 
 never offended."* 
 
 Now, is this so ? Is it a correct principle in regard to the 
 
 Divine administration ? Is it one that is sustained by the course 
 
 of events ? Will repentance and reformation of themselves arrest 
 
 the course of things consequent on transgression, and prevent 
 
 * Magee on the Atonement, p. 19. 
 
DELATION OF REPENTANCE TO PARDON. 289 
 
 any further suffering or punishment on account of it ? Let us 
 look a moment at facts in the case, and see what repentance 
 will and will not do. 
 
 (a) In the common occurrences of life, does the man who by 
 intemperance and voluptuousness has injured his character, his 
 fortune, and his health, find himself instantly restored to the 
 enjoyment of those blessings, on repenting of his past conduct, 
 and resolving on future amendment ? The answer plainly is, he 
 does not. Repentance, even the bitterest remorse, will not do it. 
 It will not at once bring back the fortune that has been lost by 
 gambling ; nor will it at once restore the bloated and diseased 
 frame of the voluptuary to " the freshness of a child's." Nor 
 will it arrest at once the pain and anguish of body and mind, 
 and the disgrace which may have been engendered by the evil 
 course. These travel on beyond the moments of repentance, and 
 meet a man perhaps far on his way beyond the period when he 
 penitently forsook the path of transgression. It is true, indeed, 
 that repentance is one of the indispensable ways by which these 
 evils are to be arrested, and that, as a consequence of that, a man 
 may be restored to prosperity, to the possession of property, and 
 to honour. But this does not occur at once. It is to be a gradual 
 process. It will be by slow and toilsome steps. Not one cent 
 of lost property will repentance at once bring back ; not one 
 pang of disease produced by voluptuous living will it at once 
 arrest. By sober and persevering toil, the man of wrecked and 
 ruined fortune may become rich again ; by the proper care of 
 his health, the ravages of disease may be arrested, and he may 
 yet be blessed with length of days, but not by any miraculous 
 or sudden effect of repentance. 
 
 (b) Will repentance repair the wrong that you have done to 
 others, and place things in the same situation in which they 
 were before? In some respects it may. The property which 
 you stole, you may restore ; the trespass which you committed 
 may be paid for by a full equivalent. But will it recall a 
 murdered man from the grave ? Will it restore innocence to 
 the ruined victim of hellish arts ? Will it undo the wrongs 
 which you have done to a mother and her children by making 
 their father an inebriate ? 
 
 (c) Will repentance at once arrest the evils of a youth wasted 
 in folly and vice? It may indeed make you industrious and 
 plodding and virtuous at twenty-one, and ever onward. But 
 will it recall the hours which you have wasted at the card-table, 
 or in the company of the idle and the worthless, or in absolute 
 indolence, or in building castles in the air, or in following after 
 
290 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 -wild and illusive vagaries of the mind ? It may enable you to do 
 something hereafter ; but it will not repair the past, and through 
 the longest life you will suffer disadvantage from the want of 
 what you might have acquired in the wasted days of your youth. 
 
 (d) Will repentance obliterate the pain which you have caused 
 others by your misconduct ? It may do much in many cases to 
 effect this ; perhaps in some cases it may remove it all. A frank 
 and full confession, the expression of deep and genuine sorrow, 
 may in some instances wholly arrest and remove the anguish of 
 heart felt by a father or a mother in view of your ingratitude and 
 disobedience. But will it always do this ? Is it the universal 
 law ? Alas, that father's locks may have been turned prema- 
 turely grey by your misconduct ; and no penitence of yours can 
 make one hair black again. Or the broken-hearted parent may 
 be now in the grave, crushed to the earth and consigned to the 
 tomb by the ingratitude and follies of a son ; and no penitence 
 of yours can bring him up again to the cheerful light of the 
 living. Look over the past. How small a part of those to 
 whom you have done wrong, who have been injured or pained 
 by you, are now w r ithin your reach ! To how few of them could 
 you make confession and reparation if you should try ! Part are 
 in their graves. Part are in distant lands. Part scattered over 
 your own country. Here, the wrong struck a parent's heart ; 
 there, the heart of a sister ; there, the heart of a wife all now 
 dead. Here, it planted a poisoned arrow in the bosom of a 
 friend, and he is now far away. There, it reached a benefactor, 
 and he is gone, you know not where. And there, the memorial 
 of it is seen in the bowed form of a father, and how can you 
 make his frame erect again, and restore to him the vigor of his 
 earlier years ? 
 
 These are plain principles ; and they show us that repentance, 
 however genuine and bitter, will not at once arrest the conse- 
 quences of an evil course, and restore things to the condition in 
 which they were before. There are things which remain to be 
 adjusted under the operation of God's moral government, which 
 are not affected by the mere fact of repentance. The relation of 
 repentance to pardon, therefore, is not that it necessarily arrests 
 the evil, and prevents all future suffering on the account of sin 
 in this world. And how can he who rejects revelation, and the 
 evidence there furnished of pardon, prove that it will arrest all 
 these evils at any period of his existence ? What will it do 
 to repair the evils done to a murdered man ; to an injured father, 
 mother, or sister ; to those inveigled into error or crime who 
 may now be in their graves ? The grand principle which I seek 
 
RELATION OF REPENTANCE TO PARDON. 291 
 
 to lay down here is, that repentance does not of itself repair the 
 wrong done ; and that " indemnity is not a consequence of 
 repentance here." * Can a rejector of revelation prove that it 
 will be hereafter ? What would be the basis of such an argu- 
 ment? What "counter-facts" to those which have been stated 
 are there to show that it is probable it will be so ? 
 
 III. My third proposition is, that when wrong has T)een done, 
 repentance will not do anything to restore to favour, without some 
 act on the part of him who is offended and injured. The whole 
 matter lies in his bosom, in his will ; in that which no power, or 
 wealth, or influence, or tears, can of necessity control. 
 
 Repentance is always in view of a wrong done. But a wrong 
 necessarily contemplates two or more persons ; for even when 
 there seems to be but one, by a species of fiction of language we 
 show that it is essentially supposed there are two. We some- 
 times, indeed, speak of a man's wronging himself; doing injus- 
 tice to himself, as if there were two persons concerned, the one 
 acting against the other the man's baser passions acting against 
 his higher nature : as when it is often remarked of a man that 
 " the only enemy he has is himself." And so we retain the 
 same fiction of language when we speak of our own follies and 
 faults, and say that " we cannot forgive ourselves for what we 
 have done." Even here we keep up the notion, that as a wrong 
 it pertains to two. There must be an act of penitence in the 
 one, and of pardon in the other, before it can be adjusted. 
 
 In all other instances, it is clear that wrong pertains to two 
 or more parties. A wrong is something done to another to his 
 feelings, character, property, government, family, health, limb, 
 life, or soul. There are two parties the injurer and the injured ; 
 the wrong-doer, and the individual, or the corporation, or the 
 government that has suffered. When a wrong is done, therefore, 
 it becomes at once an affair pertaining to two or more parties. 
 
 It follows, therefore, that when a wrong is done, it is not the 
 mere act of the one party that will heal it. There must be a 
 common or joint action in the case. The friend who has been 
 injured must act, as well as he who has injured him ; the parent 
 as well as the child ; the government as well as the subject. 
 
 It is clear, also, that whatever may be the feelings or the 
 action of the one who has done the wrong, there must be some 
 action or expression on the part of the injured before the 
 difficulty is removed. The sacrifice must not only be brought, it 
 must be accepted ; the recompense must not only be tendered, it 
 must be received ; the confession must not only be made, it must 
 * Magce. 
 
292 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 be admitted to be satisfactory. On the part of the injured and 
 the wronged, there must be some arrangement made in the case; 
 some promise ; some expression of a readiness to pardon, and to 
 have the difficulty healed, and, if he be a moral governor, to 
 have the penalty remitted, before he who has done the wrong 
 can have evidence that his own arrangement for removing the 
 difficulty will avail. It would not do for a child to disobey a 
 parent, and then to make such an acknowledgment in the case 
 as he himself should please, and demand that that should be 
 accepted ; and as little would it do for him to do wrong pre- 
 suming on what he supposed to be the clemency of his father in 
 such a case. Such an arrangement on his own part, and such a 
 presumption, would do nothing to heal the breach, or to relieve 
 the difficulty in the case. It will not do to presume on the 
 character of any one too far. A child is making a most 
 hazardous experiment, when he presumes on the forbearance of 
 even a parent. Any man is making a most hazardous as well as 
 wicked experiment, who presumes on the kindness and forbear- 
 ance of a friend, when he provokes or neglects him. A husband 
 is making a most hazardous, as well as wicked experiment, who 
 presumes on the patience and forbearance of the most kind and 
 affectionate wife, by treating her with neglect and want of love. 
 There is a point beyond which, even if it were right at all, it 
 will not be safe to presume on the kindness and forbearance of 
 any one, however kind, or generous, or noble. How far, then, 
 may a man presume on the kindness and forbearance of God, 
 about whom he knows so little ? How may he know that he 
 would accept an offering for transgression; that he would receive 
 the confessions of the lips for having done wrong ; that he would 
 regard with favour even the tears and sighs that would be the 
 expression of a broken and a contrite heart ? 
 
 The real question, then, in all cases where wrong has been 
 done is, whether there is a*iy act or declaration on the part of 
 him to whom the wrong has been done, to which he who has 
 done it could trust for the certainty of pardon. If you know 
 enough about his character in any case, that might furnish you 
 with some, perhaps with a certain ground of hope. But you 
 want something more even than that. You want some act on 
 his part ; some arrangement ; some promise. 
 
 Now what does the rejector of revelation pretend to here ? 
 According to him, what arrangement has there been on the part 
 of God to show that repentance will be connected with pardon ? 
 .Rejecting -as he does, systematically and on principle, all revela- 
 tion, what does he pretend to rely on that will furnish such 
 
RELATION OF REPENTANCE TO PARDON. 293 
 
 assurance ? That it may be so may be true ; but does he know it ? 
 How can he know it ? How can he know anything about it ? 
 The -mere fact of repentance is certainly no evidence of pardon; 
 for millions have repented of a wrong who never have been 
 forgiven ; and the mere fact that a wrong-doer experiences 
 remorse is no evidence that he who has been wronged will be 
 disposed to forgive. 
 
 Here then, again, we part with the rejector of revelation. 
 We, who profess to believe in the Christian system, suppose that 
 God has made an arrangement on this very subject, and has 
 made it known to us in his word. We not only profess to know 
 what repentance is, and to presume that the injured and the 
 wronged in the case will be disposed to accept of the expressions 
 of penitence, but we profess to have, what the case demands, a 
 statement from him on this very point, which relieves the whole 
 difficulty, and which assures us that in connexion with repentance 
 our sins will be blotted out. We have, then, what is requisite 
 when two parties are concerned, as there always are when 
 wrong is done ; we have the statement of the one who is injured, 
 that repentance on the part of the other will be followed by 
 forgiveness. There is but one question which remains to be 
 asked on the subject to fill up the argument, and to give us 
 information of all which it is needful for us to know. It is, in 
 what way it is consistent for God to do this ; or what is the 
 arrangement by which it is done. This is not indeed absolutely 
 necessary for us to know, since if we offend another it is 
 sufficient to be assured that he regards it as consistent for him 
 to forgive, and the fact that he will do it is really all we need ; 
 but still there would be an advantage in being made acquainted 
 with the method by which it is done if we could. It might 
 give us some enlarged views of his character ; it might enable 
 us more to admire the plan. 
 
 IV. This leads me, then, to the statement of a fourth proposi- 
 tion, that the exercise of repentance is made available and effica- 
 cious in the case, through the atonement made by the Saviour 
 or in virtue of his death regarded as a sacrifice for sin. The 
 exercise of repentance in connexion with the atonement meets 
 all the necessary conditions of pardon, and is the only plan 
 which does. The meaning is, that the death of Christ as a 
 sacrifice has done so much to repair the wrong done by sin, that 
 pardon may now consistently follow repentance. Two or three 
 remarks, I trust, will make this clear. 
 
 First, as already observed, in all cases where repentance is 
 proper, a wrong has been done an injury has been the result of 
 
294 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 that which, causes repentance ; since if there is no wrong, no 
 injury, there is no occasion of repentance in any case. But 
 mere sorrow or regret on your part, however urgent or pro- 
 tracted, does nothing to remove that wrong, or repair that 
 injury ; and the wrong must be in some way repaired before 
 repentance can be satisfactory. A simple case will make this 
 clear. A father, in moderate circumstances, sends his son to 
 college, away from home. The father has just the means of 
 maintaining him there by meeting the ordinary and necessary 
 expenses and no more. He gives his son repeated and solemn 
 charges on the subject of economy in his expenditure, assuring 
 him that he can only meet term-bills and the expenses of living 
 on a prudent scale. In particular, he charges him not to enter 
 a certain house of entertainment, though entirely respectable, 
 and though kept by a man every way respectable. Solely on 
 the score of necessary economy, he enjoins this duty on him, 
 and makes it a point of absolute command. At the end of the 
 year a large bill, wholly beyond his power to meet, is sent to 
 him from that prohibited house. The son confesses the wrong, 
 expresses regret, and asks for pardon. Is there nothing to be 
 done in the case but simply to forgive him on. that confession ? 
 True, it may be that the worthy man who sent the bill had no 
 authority to trust a minor, and that the father might not be 
 legally bound in the matter; but there is the sentiment of honour 
 strong in the father, and equally strong in this respect in the 
 son ; and what is to be done ? It is out of the question for the 
 father to pay; and the existence of that very debt operates to 
 prevent any arrangement between the father and the son on the 
 question what is to be done for his wilful disobedience. Unless 
 the worthy creditor will forgive the debt, which he cannot 
 afford to do, and cannot well be asked to do, it seems to be a 
 barrier in the way of reconciliation between the father and the 
 son, which cannot be overcome. If, however, some friend of 
 ample means, seeing the difficulty, and hoping that a generous 
 act on his part might have a good effect on the young man 
 himself obviously in danger of being a spendthrift, and ruining 
 himself by dissipation should volunteer to pay the bill, that 
 part of the difficulty would be removed, and the way would be 
 entirely open for the negotiation to proceed between the father 
 and the son. If the evidence of repentance were satisfactory, 
 there would then be no other obstacle to his being forgiven 
 and it might even be hoped that good would come out of the 
 whole affair perhaps even more good in the end, than if it had 
 not happened at all. At all events, it would be felt and owned 
 
RELATION OF REPENTANCE TO PARDON. 295 
 
 by all parties, that the complete reconciliation consequent on 
 repentance was made effective by the interposition of the friend, 
 and that but for this, there was no way in which it could have 
 occurred so well, if at all. Now it is conceivable that the act of 
 the friend might be known only to the father, and that all that 
 the son might know about it might be the mere declaration of 
 the father that he would forgive him, and that in some way he 
 had arranged the debt. Still, it would have a better moral 
 influence on his mind that he should know all about it especially 
 if the friend had been himself at some considerable self-denial in 
 doing what he had done. 
 
 Secondly, repentance is connected with pardon, because it is in 
 close connexion with that which is designed to be an expression 
 of the evil of the sin ; with that which is done to repair the evil 
 and the wrong. My regret and sorrow show my conviction 
 that the price that was paid, or the suffering that was endured, 
 to repair the wrong, was deserved by me. I express my regret 
 mainly in view of that, and regard that as an exponent of the 
 measure of my ill-desert. The ancient penitent led his victim to 
 the altar, laid his hands on his head, confessed his sin, and 
 the victim was slain the penitent acknowledging that he 
 deserved to die. We approach by faith the Great Victim that 
 was slain for sin ; confess our transgressions before him ; lay our 
 hands on his head ; and confess that the stroke that descended 
 on him was deserved by us ; that his sufferings were an exponent 
 of our guilt. 
 
 Thirdly, in such cases, repentance is connected with a promise, 
 an assurance on the part of God, that he will forgive. We have 
 seen in the former part of this discourse, that a wrong pertains to 
 two parties, and that the action of each is necessary in order to 
 forgiveness. The action of the offended and injured party in 
 this case God consists in the arrangement which he has made 
 in order that pardon may be consistent with his justice, and in 
 the assurance that it may be obtained by repentance. The 
 Christian religion is the only one that is characterized by a 
 promise or pledge on the part of the Deity ; and there is no 
 promise of pardon made to men except in connexion with 
 repentance, and none even then except in view of the great 
 Sacrifice made on the cross. Every other kind of religion is 
 conjecture fancy poetry or, if it will be more agreeable to 
 have it dignified with a higher term, the deduction of reason. 
 No other system, however, makes pretensions to a promise of the 
 forgiveness of sins. In the Christian scheme, repentance avails 
 to procure pardon because God has himself made all the arrange- 
 
 20 
 
296 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 merits on his part to make pardon consistent and proper ; and 
 because, in view of these arrangements, he has expressed a 
 willingness to receive the penitent again to his arms. 
 
 The conclusions to which we have been conducted by the 
 arguments in this discourse are these : 
 
 (1.) That there is no certainty in regard to the forgiveness of 
 sins in Deism, in Infidelity, in Heathenism. There is no evidence 
 that any promise is made in either of them that sins may be 
 forgiven even on the bitterest repentance ; there is no evidence 
 that they are so pardoned. No voice from heaven announces 
 the fact that they may be forgiven ; no voice declares that they 
 are. The weeping and broken-hearted penitent is greeted with 
 no assurance that his sins are blotted out ; nor can he prove 
 that the paternal arms of the Deity are extended to embrace 
 him. All is conjecture ; all is uncertainty ; all is destitute of 
 that which we need when we feel that we have done wrong 
 for then our crushed and suffering hearts cry out for evidence 
 that we may be pardoned ; for some kind, consoling word that 
 we may be, that we are forgiven. 
 
 (2.) The hopes of Infidelity arc a violation of the principles 
 which the infidel himself is oblige 1 U hold. He must hold, he 
 does hold, that repentance does not ienaV <he evils which sin 
 makes in the actual course of events ; that it does not restore 
 the property of the drunkard, or the gambler, or the spend- 
 thrift ; that it does not give vigour and length of days to the 
 frame enervated by dissipation ; that it does not recall the 
 murdered from the grave ; that it does not bring back the hopes 
 of youth wasted in folly ; that it does not necessarily secure 
 forgiveness from an injured parent or friend. And yet, in the 
 very face of all these things, he holds that repentance, without 
 anything else, is all that is necessary to turn away the wrath of 
 God, and to arrest the evils caused by the violation of his law. 
 He holds that a sigh, a groan though on the death-bed is all 
 that is needful to make it certain that the long, black catalogue 
 will be blotted out, and that his soul will be landed safe in 
 heaven. Why does he hold this ? What promise has he ? 
 Where does the analogy of nature sustain him ? Where where 
 are the facts on which he builds such a hope ? 
 
 (3.) Christianity is the only form of religion that addresses 
 words of consolation to the broken-hearted penitent. It is the 
 only religion that approaches man with a promise from heaven. 
 It accords with the analogy of nature so far as to teach that 
 man must be penitent if he would hope for pardon ; and then, when 
 nature leaves us as a guide, it takes up the matter and shows us 
 
RELATION OF REPENTANCE TO PARDON. 297 
 
 how and why it may be done. It comes to man with an assurance 
 that God now will accept the confessions and tears of the contrite 
 in heart, and that the offender may he restored to favour. 
 
 It meets us just where we want to he met ; just at the point 
 where our embarrassment is greatest. We are weeping, suppose, 
 over our sins. We have been led to reflect on them, and to see 
 their evil, and to desire pardon ; we are in that state of mind in 
 which the Heathen are, and which the system of the Deist con- 
 templates. But just here is the point of our greatest perplexity. 
 We stand and weep. We have no doubt of the evil of our 
 wrong-doing of our ill-desert. We cast our eyes around to see 
 what is the effect of repentance ; to see what it does to repair 
 evils done, or to arrest the effects of depravity. It does nothing 
 such as we want it to do. It restores no wasted property or 
 health ; recalls none from the grave ; heals no heart that is 
 broken and crushed ; raises up no form that has been bowed 
 down by the ingratitude of a child ; makes no hair black and 
 glossy that has been whitened by grief. We stand perplexed, 
 and ask, what evidence is there that repentance will arrest the 
 progress of evil at all, and that it will stay the woes that we 
 fear are coming upon us for our crimes ? Just there where we 
 want it Christianity approaches us. It tells us that it is true 
 that in the ordinary course of events repentance does not 
 immediately arrest the progress of evil, and repair the ravages 
 which it has made ; but that an arrangement has been effected 
 by which this shall be ultimately done, and that the arrange- 
 ment shall commence at once in regard to us, by the assurance of 
 forgiveness, and by the imparting of peace to the soul a pledge 
 of the truth of its message. Now this is what we want. It 
 meets us at the very point where we need it. It is a beam of 
 light coming down where all is dark ; it sheds peace on a soul 
 where all was perplexity and trouble. 
 
 It is in accordance, then, with what he needs, when we exhort 
 the penitent to go to God ; to confess his sins ; to look up to 
 him through the Great Sacrifice made on the cross for man, for 
 pardon. Such an exhortation meets the obvious wants of our 
 nature, and should lead every guilty man at once up to God ; and 
 in executing my commission in addressing the guilty and tne dying, 
 I would earnestly entreat each one of you,in view of what has been 
 said, to go to the God against whom he has sinned, and confess 
 his transgressions, and plead for mercy. " Kepent, and be con- 
 verted, that your sins may be blotted out" 
 
SEEMON XXIII. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE. 
 LUKE xiii. 3, 5. "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." 
 
 THE reference in this declaration, twice repeated by the Saviour, 
 is to those Galileans who were put to death by Pilate while 
 offering their sacrifices, and to those persons in Jerusalem on 
 whom the tower of Siloam fell. They were supposed, by those 
 who brought their case before the Saviour, to have been punished 
 in this way for their uncommon guilt. He corrects that mis- 
 apprehension, and takes occasion to state to those who had 
 addressed him, that unless they repented, they should all likewise 
 perish. The meaning is, not that they would perish in the 
 same manner, but that they would as certainly perish. There 
 was no way of avoiding that which was fairly implied in the 
 word perish, but by repentance. The Saviour has, therefore, in 
 this passage, strongly affirmed the necessity of repentance in 
 order that men may be saved from destruction. 
 
 In the two previous discourses I have considered the nature 
 of repentance, and its relation to pardon in the Christian system. 
 I enter now on a consideration of its necessity as a condition of 
 salvation. 
 
 In the Scriptures there are two indispensable conditions of 
 salvation prescribed repentance and faith. The inquiry is at 
 once suggested to a reflecting mind, why these two things are 
 selected as the essential conditions of salvation, or why the 
 question of eternal life and death is made to turn on the fact 
 that they do or do not exist in the mind. Why has God selected 
 these two states of mind, rather than any other two, as consti- 
 tuting the basis on which we are permitted to hope for his 
 favour ? The inquiry has more difficulty, perhaps, in reference 
 to faith than to repentance ; but still, no one can help asking 
 why God has made repentance indispensable to salvation ? Is 
 the appointment arbitrary, or is it demanded by some law of 
 our nature ? Is it because he chose to specify some condition, 
 though in a manner immaterial what, like the selection of one 
 tree out of many trees in Paradise, as a test of man's obedience ; 
 or will repentance so meet the evils that are in the soul as to 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE. 299 
 
 make it proper to demand this as a condition of salvation ? Is 
 it the mere appointment of will on the part of God, or is there 
 something existing in our own hearts and lives to be affected by it, 
 which makes it impossible that we should be saved, in any proper 
 sense, without it ? 
 
 In connexion with these questions of a philosophical character, 
 there is another class of a somewhat more practical kind. Why, 
 in reference to salvation, and as a condition of it, has God re- 
 quired us to exercise sorrow of heart, rather than insisted on a 
 correct moral character as a condition ? Would it not be more 
 worthy of God to make eternal life depend on virtue and bene- 
 volence ; on honesty and truth ; on the faithful discharge of our 
 duties in the family and in public life, than on any mere state of 
 the feelings ? And why is it that he requires the man of many 
 years and many virtues, and the youth of great amiableness 
 and purity, to renounce all confidence in these virtues, and all 
 dependence on them, and to approach his throne weeping over 
 the errors of a life ? Can he require feigned sorrow ? Can there 
 be virtue in forced and affected tears ? Can there be that which 
 will commend us to Him when a man of uprightness, a man of 
 honour, a man of truth, shall " bow down his head like a bul- 
 rush," and weep like the vilest sinner ? Why has he made the 
 path to heaven a path of sorrow at all ? Why must we go there 
 with the head bowed down with grief? Why has he made the 
 road a thorn-hedge, and not planted it with roses? Are there 
 no joyous emotions that might have been made the conditions 
 of salvation ? Is there nothing that would make the eye bright, 
 and the heart cheerful, and the soul glad, that might have been 
 selected, of at least equal value with pensiveness and a heavy 
 heart, with melancholy and tears ? 
 
 Such are some of the feelings which spring up in the minds 
 of men when we come to urge on them the duty of repentance. 
 My desire is, if possible, to meet those feelings, and to show that 
 they are not well-founded. I shall aim to prove that the re- 
 quisition of repentance is not arbitrary, but is based on the 
 nature of things, and that a man MUST REPENT, or PERISH. I 
 shall endeavour to vindicate the character of God, alike from his 
 right as a Sovereign to make this a condition, and from the neces- 
 sity which there is in the nature of things that we should exer- 
 cise repentance if we would obtain his favour, or enjoy peace. 
 
 I. In the first place, God has a right to appoint the terms on which 
 he will bestow his favours on his creatures. I will endeavour to 
 show you that he has this right. 
 
 (1.) It is a common right which all exercise when they have 
 
300 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 favours to confer on others. A charter for a college or a hank 
 is thus conferred. A grant of land to an institution of learning 
 is thus bestowed. A copyright of a hook, or a patent for an 
 invention in the arts, is thus secured. A right of way; a 
 privilege to construct a bridge or a draw ; a " permit " to build 
 a house or a factory, is thus secured. The right of citizenship, 
 or the freedom of a city, is thus conferred. All such favours are 
 connefcted with conditions expressed or implied ; and no one 
 doubts that a government has the right to specify the conditions 
 on which the favour may be enjoyed. It is inherent in the very 
 fact that we have that to confer which will be regarded as a 
 favour or loon by others. The only thing to guard this, or to 
 prevent its being oppressive, is to be found in the character of 
 the government or of the individual who has the power of con- 
 ferring the favour ; and in the fact that the corporation or 
 individual, on whom it is proposed to confer it, is under no 
 obligation to accept it, if it is regarded as unjust ; that is, if it is 
 considered that there would be no advantage in accepting it on 
 these terms. 
 
 (2.) God has actually dealt thus with his creatures in the 
 bestowment of his favours. He has never relinquished the right 
 to prescribe to men in everything on what terms his favours may 
 be enjoyed. He has actually appointed conditions, by compliance 
 with which alone his favour can be hoped for conditions as 
 clear as were ever prescribed in a charter for a college or a bank, 
 or in a patent of nobility made out by a sovereign to a feudal 
 baron. Life, health, reputation, success in business, are all his 
 gifts ; and he has proffered them to men only on certain con- 
 ditions, and those conditions are clearly specified. Heatlh, for 
 illustration, is in all cases his bestowment ; and he has an 
 absolute right a right which he is constantly exercising to 
 state to man on what conditions of temperance, prudence, care, 
 and cleanliness it may be enjoyed ; and if the man does not 
 choose to comply with those terms, the blessing will be withheld. 
 There is no way in which man can originate any other conditions 
 on which the blessing may be secured, or by which he can 
 induce God to depart from these terms in his case by special 
 favour, and confer the gift by miracle. Life is his gift, and he 
 has a right to say on what terms it may be possessed and 
 enjoyed. Property is thus also his gift, and he has a right to say 
 how it may be procured and retained. Heaven is his home, and 
 he has a right to say on what terms man may be permitted to 
 dwell there. It is his to bestow a harvest on the husbandman, 
 and equally his to prescribe the condition on which it may be 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE. 301 
 
 done, and to specify as the condition that it shall be by industry, 
 and by the cultivation of the earth, in the proper season, and in 
 the proper manner. It is true that man has the power to reject 
 the conditions just as a company has power to reject a bank- 
 charter ; but it is equally true that if it is done, and the man 
 prefers to spend the time of sowing and ingathering in idleness, 
 the favour will be conferred in no other manner. The only 
 appropriate question to be asked in the case is, whether God has 
 in fact appointed anything as indispensable conditions of his 
 favour. That settled, every question on the subject may be 
 regarded as at rest. 
 
 (3.) These remarks are especially true in regard to an offender. 
 He who violates a law, cuts himself off from any claim to favour 
 under that law ; and if he obtains any favour, it must be on 
 such conditions as the one who is injured or wronged shall 
 choose to prescribe. You have wronged a friend or a neighbour. 
 It is clearly not yours now to prescribe the conditions on which 
 he shall forgive the offence, and receive you to his favour, but 
 his. A child violates your commands. Do you not feel that 
 you have a right to prescribe the terms on which he may obtain 
 forgiveness? Do you not feel that it is yours to bestow or 
 withhold pardon as you please ? You have a professed friend 
 who has wronged you. The offence is undeniable ; it is admitted. 
 Do you not feel that you have a right to prescribe the terms on 
 which he may enjoy your friendship again ? And if you should 
 require that he should express regret, and confess the wrong, 
 and repair the evil as far as is in his power, would you think 
 that he had a right to complain of you ? And would you think 
 it a sufficient answer to such a demand should he say that such 
 a requirement is arbitrary, and that you might have selected 
 some easier conditions, and that you might have planted the 
 path of return with flowers rather than with thorns ? How 
 obvious would be the answer, that it is as easy to make the 
 confession as it was to do the wrong; that the one who has done injury 
 is himself, and not you; and that as to the thorns in the case, he 
 planted them in the path, and not you. 
 
 The whole question, therefore, in regard to the necessity of 
 repentance as a condition of salvation, might be left on this 
 ground. We might come and say to men, that God has great 
 favours to bestow on his creatures, but reserves the right to 
 prescribe the conditions on which they may be received ; or that 
 as one whose law has been violated, he retains the right which 
 all who are wronged claim, of specifying the conditions on 
 which pardon may be obtained. But the object which I had 
 
302 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 particularly in view was not to show that he has a right to 
 prescribe some condition of his favour, but to show why repentance 
 is one of those conditions. Is there anything in the nature of 
 the case which made it proper that this should be selected? 
 This leads me to remark, 
 
 II. In the second place, that repentance is in fact an indispens- 
 able condition to restoration to favour when one has done wrong. 
 It cannot be otherwise. When an offence is committed, when 
 wrong is done, when a law has been violated, there is no way 
 by which the forfeited favour can be regained in any case but 
 by that which is implied in true repentance ; by a process 
 involving all the elements of grief, regret, confession, confusion 
 of face, and purpose to abandon the evil course, which are 
 included in repentance toward God. The place from which the 
 offender fell is never regained but by contrition ; the path by 
 which he must ascend to that lost height is a pathway of tears. 
 If this be so, it will be seen that God, by requiring repentance 
 as a condition of his returning favour, is acting in accordance 
 with the great principles on which the world is in fact governed. 
 That it is so, will, I trust, be made plain by a few simple 
 illustrations. I shall vary the illustrations, though with some 
 hazard of repetition, because I wish to show you that this is the 
 way in which the affairs of this world are conducted. 
 
 Let us return again to the case of a father. Your child 
 violates your law ; offends you ; is guilty of palpable disobedience. 
 He is so old that he can be treated as a moral agent, and is 
 capable of acting under a moral government. He has done 
 much to forfeit your favour, and to incur your displeasure. He 
 has become the companion of the dissipated and the vile ; and 
 with such associates has wasted the fruit of your toil. Towards 
 that son you will cherish still the feelings of a father ; but I may 
 appeal to any such unhappy parent to say, whether he could 
 admit him to the same degree of confidence and favour as before, 
 without some evidence of repentance. You demand that he 
 should express regret for his errors and follies ; you require 
 evidence, that will be satisfactory to you, that he does not intend 
 to do the same thing again ; you expect proof that he will be 
 disposed by a virtuous life to repair, as far as possible, the injury 
 that he has done your name and your honour as a father ; and 
 the moment you hear him sincerely say, " Father, I have sinned 
 against heaven, and before thee, and am not worthy to be 
 called thy son," that moment you are ready to go out, and to 
 throw your arms round his neck, and to forgive him AND NOT 
 TILL THEN. You could not do it consistently with self-respect ; 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE. 303 
 
 with the good of your own family ; with the character which 
 you mean to maintain as a father, until then. There is nothing 1 
 else that can be a substitute for this. He may come back laden 
 with " pearls and barbaric gold ;" he may have become eminent 
 in learning ; he may have encircled his brow with laurels won 
 in the field of battle, but these cannot be a substitute for the 
 confession and repentance which you demand as a father. If still 
 proud, and insolent, and disrespectful to you, how can you lay 
 your hand on his head and bestow on him a father's blessing ? 
 
 Let us recur to another illustration. You had a friend. You 
 thought him sincere. But he betrayed you ; and in feeling, in 
 property, and in character, you have been made to suffer by him. 
 I ask any man, whether he can receive such a friend again to his 
 bosom, and press him to his heart, without some evidence of 
 regret for what he has done, and some proof that he will not do 
 it again. You cannot do it. You cannot force your nature to 
 do it. The sea might as well break over the iron-bound shore, 
 or the river flow back and again climb up the mountain side 
 down which it had leaped in cascades, as for you to do it. You 
 will satisfy yourself in some way that he regrets what he has 
 done, and that he intends not to do it again, or you can NEVER 
 receive him with the confidence of a friend. Your nature, 
 though in other respects you may be gentle and pliant as the 
 osier, is as firm or; this point as the everlasting hills, and is, in 
 this respect, but the counterpart and the image of God, who 
 does the same thing. Mind can never do otherwise. You 
 cannot make it do otherwise. It would be worth nothing if it 
 could do otherwise. 
 
 Let us take another illustration. It may be drawn from the 
 case of one who has committed an offence against the community 
 the case of a man who has been guilty of theft, burglary, arson, 
 or forgery. The whole community demands evidence that he 
 has repented of his crime, and that he purposes to do so no 
 more, before it will admit him again to its favour. If you go 
 into his cell and find him alone on his knees before God confess- 
 ing the sin ; if you see evidence in him of regret and sorro\V 
 that the deed was done ; if you believe that the reformation is 
 entire and sincere, the community will receive him again to its 
 bosom, and will forget and forgive the past, and he may rise 
 again to public confidence, and to affluence and honour. But if 
 none of these things are seen ; if he spends the years of his 
 sentence sullen, and hardened, and profane, and without one 
 sigh or tear, he is never forgiven. He may have paid the penalty 
 of the law, but he is not forgiven, and the community is not 
 
304 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 disposed to receive him to favour ; and he goes forth to meet 
 still the suspicions and frowns of an indignant world ; to be 
 watched with an eagle eye, and to he excluded all his life from 
 the affections and confidence of mankind. 
 
 We will take another instance of the operation of this law. 
 It is that of a man who has wasted his health and property by 
 intemperance. He was once in prosperous circumstances ; saw 
 around him a happy family ; was respected and beloved ; enjoyed 
 health, and was rising 'to honour and affluence. He yielded to 
 temptation, and all was swept away. Peace fled from his dwell- 
 ing, and his wife sits in poverty and tears, and his children are 
 growing up in idleness and vice, and he himself is fast hasten- 
 ing to a drunkard's grave. Is there any way now by which 
 health, and domestic peace, and property, and respectability can 
 be regained ? There is, if he has not gone too far if he has not 
 come too near the end of life. But how ? By this course : 
 He will reflect on his sin and folly. He will feel deeply pained 
 in view of the evil that he has done. He will lament the course 
 of life which has driven comfort and peace from his dwelling. 
 He will resolve to forsake the ways of sin, and will abandon for 
 ever the intoxicating bowl. He will reform his life, and will 
 become sober, industrious, and kind, will labour to pay his debts, 
 and to establish his credit again ; and, if he does these things, 
 health will again revisit his frame, and peace his family, and 
 his farm will again be fenced, and ploughed, and sown, and the 
 rich harvest will again wave in his fields. But this is the very 
 way in which God requires the sinner to come back to himself 
 the path of repentance. He requires him to reflect on the past ; 
 to feel that he has pursued a guilty course ; to break off his trans- 
 gressions, and to lead a different life. Why should it be thought 
 more strange in religion than in the actual course of events ? 
 
 The same is true, to take one more instance, in the case of a 
 gambler. He has been led on by the arts of temptation till he 
 has lost his all. He had received an inheritance from a wealthy 
 father. Now it is entirely gone. From one step to another he has 
 been drawn into temptation, till he is stripped of all, and is 
 penniless, and is ready to give himself up to despair. Is there 
 now any way by which he can emerge from this depth of woes, 
 and become a man of respectability and of property again ? 
 There is one, and but one. It is a strait and a narrow path, like 
 that which leads to heaven. He will reflect on the sin and folly 
 of his course. He will feel pain and sorrow at the remembrance 
 of that hour when he yielded to temptation. He will mourn in 
 the bitterness of his soul over that gad day. He will resolve 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE. 305 
 
 that he will never enter a gambling-room again ; that he will 
 seek to repair his fortune, not in that way, hut in a better way ; 
 that he will devote his life to a course of steady industry and 
 virtue ; and if he will do all these things, he may regain the 
 confidence of his fellow-men, and God will bestow on him wealth 
 and respectability. But this is substantially the way in which 
 a sinner is to return to God. This is repentance. 
 
 So in respect to indolence, vice, dissipation, crime in all forms. 
 If men ever turn back the evils which result from these sins 
 and follies ; if they ever escape from the withering and blighting 
 curse which pursues the wicked, it must be in connexion with 
 repentance. If there is no evidence of repentance and reform, 
 that withering and blighting influence will pursue the trans- 
 gressor over sea and land, to the end of the world, and to the 
 end of life. He can never escape the curse of violating the laws 
 of heaven until he gives evidence of sincere sorrow for his 
 offence. But the moment that is done, the avenger ceases to 
 pursue him ; his friends come again around him ; he finds peace 
 again in his own bosom ; and the winds and the waves, the 
 sunshine and the dew, the sky, the clouds, and the earth, man 
 and his Maker, join to bless him. 
 
 III. My third general argument is, that from the nature of the 
 mind itself, when one has done ivrong, there can be no security for 
 permanent peace but by repentance and forgiveness. I say per- 
 manent peace. I do not deny that temporary peace may be 
 obtained. I do not deny that men may seem to be happy when 
 wrong has been done. But the question now before us is, 
 whether the guilty can find permanent and substantial happi- 
 ness, happiness that may be relied on, and that may be made 
 the basis of calculation in regard to the future, without all that 
 is essentially involved in true repentance ? Is not this the way 
 which the God of nature has appointed by which the guilty 
 mind is to obtain relief? Is not the certainty of this fact one 
 of the means by which he designs to lead the sinner to the 
 exercise of true repentance ? 
 
 When a man has done wrong, one of the questions which must 
 occupy his attention is, in what way he can be happy though he 
 has done the wrong. How can he avoid the usual effects of 
 guilt in the soul in producing trouble ? He has wronged another 
 in dealing with him ; he has concealed the defects of an article 
 in trade ; he has made a false representation ; he has made a 
 wrong entry on his books ; he has robbed his employer ; he has 
 forged his name to a check ; he has left his father's house at 
 night, and visited a scene of revelry and sin. One of the ques- 
 
306 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 tions which the mind cannot practically evade in such cases is, 
 how can this wrong be done, and yet the wrong-doer be calm 
 and happy ? And here is the question which is now before us. 
 Can the mind find permanent happiness without repentance? 
 Or is that the way which nature lias provided in order to obtain 
 permanent peace ? 
 
 5? Now, I need not pause to detail the ways which men adopt in 
 these cases. They are almost as numerous as the individuals 
 concerned, and as the offences which they commit. There is, of 
 course, in all cases, an attempt to conceal the offence, and this 
 calls into requisition all the varied talent and skill with which 
 the guilty may be endowed, and is often done with consummate 
 art. In other cases, there is an effort made to turn away the 
 mind from the recollection of the offence ; and thousands of our 
 sins of word, and thought, and deed, are in fact forgotten. In 
 other cases there is an attempt to satisfy the mind, by a pro- 
 cess of reasoning, of the correctness of what has been done ; and 
 in some sophistical and Jesuitical maxim the mind finds tem- 
 porary peace. In some cases the conscience becomes gradually 
 insensible, until it is "seared as with a hot iron." In other 
 cases there is an attempt to obliterate the natural marks of guilt 
 in the frame, until the brow is made brass, and a deed of de- 
 pravity may be performed with an eye and a hand as steady as 
 when one performs the noblest deed of virtue. 
 
 Yet there is defect in all this. It does not answer the pur- 
 pose. It does not meet the demands of the human mind in the 
 case. It does not secure permanent peace. For it furnishes no 
 security in those respects in which security is desirable, (a) It 
 furnishes no guarantee that the mind will remain in this condition 
 in which you succeed in putting it. What is your security that 
 the offence will always be forgotten by yourself? What is your 
 security that your conscience will always remain untroubled? 
 What is your security that the false and pernicious reasoning 
 will always appear as plausible as it does now ? What is your 
 security that some secret power may not undertake a work with 
 your soul ; that your memory may not do its office better than 
 you intend ; that in the dark night, or when far away, or when 
 on a bed of sickness, you will not think of what you will wish 
 not to think of ? (b) But again : this furnishes no assurance that 
 the sin will not be detected, and that all your attempts to con- 
 ceal it may not be brushed away by some invisible hand, like 
 cobwebs. What are bolts, and locks, and false entries, and all 
 the arts of concealment, when God means that a thing shall be 
 revealed ? What murderer was ever safe when He meant that 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE 307 
 
 he should be known? What act of fraud in a bank; what 
 scheme of iniquity in robbing poor pensioners of their due ; what 
 well-executed forgery; what crime of any kind, was ever con- 
 cealed when He meant that it should be " proclaimed on the 
 house-tops ?" In how many ways may an offence be divulged ? 
 What a trifle may be a clue to the whole development? No 
 man ever does a wrong thing, however artful may be his attempts 
 to conceal it, who is not apprehensive that it may be revealed. 
 Some eye may have witnessed it, of which he knew nothing ; 
 some combination of circumstances may disclose it which he 
 cannot control; some accomplice may prove faithless, though 
 sworn to secrecy; some "bird of the air" may tell a tale that 
 you would not have told in the ear of another for worlds : and 
 the way to make the mind peaceful, when wrong has been done, 
 is not by concealment* 
 
 The way which God and nature prescribes is by repentance 
 and confession. For, (1,) there is relief in repentance itself. 
 Sorrow for the wrong is that which nature seeks and struggles 
 for; and you do wrong to your own soul when you refuse to 
 indulge it. Every one knows that there is relief in repentance 
 that the mind throws off a burden when the eyes run down 
 with tears on account of wrong which has been done ; that that 
 is what nature demands, and must have, before the soul is happy. 
 We have all been children. Now, when we had done wrong to 
 a parent or a playmate, did not all the better feelings of our 
 nature urge us to go and confess the wrong ? And what violence 
 did we do to all our gentle and pure sensibilities when under 
 the influence of pride and false notions of boyish honour we 
 refused to do it, and braced ourselves in an effort to find happi- 
 ness without it ! But, (2,) there is relief in the act of confession, 
 and in forgiveness. The very act of confession furnishes relief 
 to a guilty mind ; and when we hear the word forgiveness, it 
 diffuses peace through the soul. It was with a knowledge of 
 the deepest principles of our Mature that the Saviour said to the 
 weeping, guilty female, who washed his feet with her tears, 
 " Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace" Go in peace she 
 would for in the tears she poured forth on the feet of the 
 Saviour, and in the words of forgiveness which fell from his 
 lips, she had found relief for her guilty conscience a peace 
 which nothing thenceforward could disturb. 
 
 IV. My fourth general argument is, that in a return to God 
 from a course of sin, repentance would follow as a matter of 
 course, even if it were not prescribed and demanded as a condi- 
 tion of favour. It would be impossible to come back from a 
 
308 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 course of depravity to the ways of virtue, to form and express 
 the intention to lead a virtuous and holy life, without expe- 
 riencing in fact all that is essentially involved in repentance. 
 If this be so, then the requirement of repentance as a condition 
 of salvation is not an arbitrary demand, but is in fact a mere 
 statement of what must occur in all cases in order that a sinner 
 may be saved. 
 
 A return to God is a restoration to love to obedience to a 
 purpose to serve him. When one has sinned, can this return 
 occur without the exercise of sorrow for the errors and follies of 
 the past? Can it occur without regret more or less poignant 
 that God was forsaken ? Can it occur without the formation of 
 a purpose to do so no more ? To ask these questions is to answer 
 them for the answer is at hand in every mind. "When an 
 alienated being comes back to God, it will be only by repentance. 
 He will, he must feel regret Hiat his past life has been spent in 
 estrangement from his Maker. He will look with deep feeling 
 on the many mercies his Maker has conferred on him ; and with 
 amazement on the fact that to this moment he has abused them 
 all. No man ever yet passed from hatred to love ; from aliena- 
 tion to friendship ; from disobedience to obedience ; from dis- 
 honesty to uprightness ; from intemperance to temperance ; from 
 dissipation to soberness of life, without experiencing regret, re- 
 morse, and sorrow at his former course of life, and without 
 passing through a process similar to that which God requires of 
 the returning sinner. No man ever did or can return to that 
 God from whom he has been alienated, without feeling and ex- 
 pressing regret that he has wandered, and without a purpose to 
 do so no more. At the remembrance of his abused mercies ; at 
 a view of the goodness which has kept him in all his wander- 
 ings, and especially of the mercy which sought him by the gift 
 of a Saviour, he must feel and he must weep ; and he cannot 
 return without bitter regrets that he has abused so much love, 
 and slighted so much mercy, and wasted so large a part of his 
 season of probation. Keturning love, and a sense of God's good- 
 ness, must be attended with sorrow of heart that he ever trans- 
 gressed, and with a resolution to do so no more : and this is 
 repentance. This must have occurred in the case of every one 
 who returns to God and virtue ; and the demand for repent- 
 ance, therefore, is not arbitrary, but is laid deep in the laws 
 of the human mind. 
 
 If this train of remarks be well-founded, we are conducted to 
 the conclusion which we sought the philosophical reason why 
 repentance is required in order to salvation. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE. 309 
 
 PL.) It follows from the view which has been taken, that iff 
 its primary demand the Christian religion has consulted tho 
 laws of our nature, and shown respect to those laws. Its Author 
 has shown that the laws of the mind are understood, and has 
 based his demands on a knowledge of those laws. A system 
 of religion adapted to the condition of sinners could not have 
 been originated which did not demand repentance, nor is it 
 possible for man now to conceive of any plan by which a sinner 
 could be brought to obedience, and raised up to heaven, with- 
 out passing substantially through the process demanded by re- 
 pentance. 
 
 (2.) It follows that if men refuse to repent, they are sinning 
 against a great law of their nature, as well as against a positive 
 law of religion. They are constantly making war on them- 
 selves on all the finer feelings of their souls on all that is 
 noble and generous in the human heart when they refuse 
 ingenuously to acknowledge the wrong ; when they attempt to 
 cloak it ; when they resolve to persevere in a career of de- 
 pravity ; when they are unwilling to go and make confession 
 to their Father in heaven. Their whole nature prompts them 
 to do this. It is a course whose propriety is engraven as with 
 the pen of a diamond on their own souls. It is the way 
 which nature prescribes for our relief when we have done wrong. 
 We are to seek it by confession, by tears, and by imploring 
 pardon ; and until this is done, there is a want in our soul which 
 is never met an unchangeable law of our nature which is never 
 gratified. The only solid and permanent peace which a sinner 
 can ever find is when weeping over his transgressions at the 
 feet of his offended God and Saviour, and when He smiles benig- 
 nantly on him, and says, " Son, be of good cheer : thy sins are 
 forgiven thee." 
 
 (3.) It follows from the train of thought which we have been 
 considering, that if the sinner will not repent HE MUST PEKISH. 
 This is the thought which is suggested in the text : " Except 
 ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." It cannot be otherwise. 
 There is no way conceivable by which a sinner can be saved but 
 by repentance. It is a law of our nature that it must be so 
 for there are elements in our souls, which, if we have sinned 
 and are impenitent, must sooner or later produce misery, and 
 must work out our ruin. No man can have any security of 
 happiness who has done wrong, but has done nothing, and will 
 do nothing, to confess and to repair the wrong. No child is 
 happy in these circumstances ; no man is ; no creature of a 
 moral government can be. God holds a mysterious but absolute 
 
310 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 power over the soul ; and he has only to arrange matters so 
 as to drag your secret sins from their hiding-places, and array 
 them before your minds, to create within you all the elements 
 of hell. There is enough in every man's heart and life to make 
 him miserable for ever and ever, if it be allowed to take its 
 course according to the laws of our nature, and to carry its full 
 desolations through the soul. When a sinner "perishes" it will 
 not be an arbitrary thing ; but it will be because, if he will not 
 repent, it cannot be avoided. Then, sinner, in connexion with 
 humble, penitent confession your soul may find permanent and 
 eternal peace ; if that is withheld, such peace can never visit 
 your bosom. May God teach you the way of happiness and 
 salvation. Amen 
 
SEKMON XXIY. 
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF THE COMMAND TO KEPENT LAID IN 
 THE CHARACTER OF MAN. 
 
 ACTS xvii. 30. " God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent." 
 
 A COMMAND addressed to all men requiring repentance, supposes 
 that all men are personally guilty, or that there is some wrong- 
 doing in the life of each individual, which makes it proper that 
 lie should be required to repent. God does not demand hypocri- 
 tical or affected sorrow. He does not require his creatures 
 to repent of that which is right; or which could in no sense 
 have been avoided ; or which has been done by another. There 
 can be no repentance where there has been no wrong no 
 guilt. 
 
 The inquiry before us now is, whether it is true that every 
 man is guilty in such a sense that it is proper to command him 
 to repent. This is everywhere assumed in the Bible ; it is 
 assumed in my text; it is assumed by every one who preaches 
 the gospel, whether in a Christian or a heathen land. Yet the 
 command is not extensively obeyed. It is addressed to thousands 
 who give themselves no trouble about it, and who do not feel 
 themselves particularly called upon to obey it. The reasons why 
 they do not may be many ; but among them it may be presumed 
 that one of the most prominent is that which I propose now to 
 notice that they do not suppose themselves to be guilty in any 
 such sense as to make the command in their case proper. 
 
 In prosecuting, therefore, the general subject of repentance, I 
 propose to call your attention to the simple inquiry, whether it is 
 true that every one is guilty in such a sense that it is needful to 
 call on him to repent ? In order to bring this fairly before you, 
 it is necessary to consider two points : I. The estimate which 
 men form of themselves on this question ; and, II. What there 
 is in their character and lives which makes it proper to call on 
 them to repent. 
 
 I. The estimate which men form on the question of their own 
 guilt. When we call on men to repent, we are at once met with 
 certain classes of feelings in regard to their own lives and conduct, 
 
312 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 it is necessary to remove or correct before the command 
 will be felt to hare any force. A few feel and admit that they are 
 sinners, such sinners as to make the command appropriate in regard 
 to themselves. But this is by no means the feeling of the mass of 
 those to whom the command of repentance comes ; and before that 
 command can be seen to have any weight, it is necessary that there 
 should be produced in their minds in some way the conviction 
 that they are guilty. In order to do as much justice as possible 
 at the same time to the character of my hearers and to my 
 subject, I shall, under this head, attempt to describe the views 
 which are commonly entertained on this point, and shall concede 
 what I deem to be correct in regard to those views. The gospel 
 of Christ does not require me to do injustice to any man. 
 
 The views, then, which are entertained may be described as 
 comprising the following particulars : 
 
 (1.) You allege that you are not gross and open sinners. You 
 are not idolaters. You are not profane. You are not scoffers. 
 You are not inebriates. You are not debased by sensuality. 
 Many of the heathen were ; many in every community now are ; 
 and you. would readily concede that it would in every way be 
 proper to call on them to repent. It was eminently so in the times 
 of the apostles ; it is so now in heathen lands ; it is so among the 
 debased ^and sunken portions of every community. But this, it 
 would be alleged, is not the character of the mass of those to 
 whom the gospel is preached. 
 
 This, I admit, is true. No one can deny it; no one should 
 desire to deny it. In declaring the gospel, I am not required or 
 expected to do injustice to any man, or class of men. I am to 
 withhold from none of them the fair praise for what they have 
 and are. I am not to attempt to group and blend all men 
 together, and to represent them as in all respects on the same 
 level. I am to do wrong to no man's amiableness, or integrity, or 
 purity of morals. If I meet a young man amiable and upright, 
 like him whom the Saviour met, I am to " love" him as he did, 
 and not to attempt to rank him with Judas Iscariot ; if I see 
 a pure and virtuous female, I am not to represent her as a Mary 
 Magdalene. I am neither to maintain that one man is as bad as 
 another ; nor that any man is as bad as he can be ; and if I 
 were required to do this, I should despair of bringing men to 
 repentance. 
 
 (2.) You allege that you are not habitually a vrTong-d-oer. You aim 
 to do right. You mean faithfully to discharge your duties. Your 
 purpose is to be honest, upright, true. You do not mean to do 
 wrong to your wife, or children, or neighbour, or client, or customer, 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE COMMAND TO REPENT. 313 
 
 or the stranger that comes into your dwelling, or that you may 
 meet in your travels. You mean to pay your debts ; you mean to 
 tell the truth ; you mean to be faithful to your promises. If you 
 fail in regard to any of these things, it is not by design, but it is 
 to be traced to infirmity, inadvertence, want of full information, or 
 circumstances wholly beyond your control. You are conscious to 
 yourself that in the main this has been your character. If, in the 
 course of a life, we will now suppose a life somewhat protracted, 
 you have ever been guilty of a falsehood, it has been perhaps 
 but in a single instance an instance which you have a thousand 
 times regretted while the characteristic by which you are best 
 known is that of a man of unimpeachable veracity. If in the 
 course of such a long life, you have ever done injustice to another 
 man in dealing with him ; have taken advantage of him by your 
 superior knowledge ; have wronged him out of what was due to 
 him ; have overreached him in a bargain, it has been in perhaps 
 not more than a single instance, when you were younger, and you 
 have a thousand times regretted it ; and your prevailing character 
 has been that of an honest man. If, at some time in your life, 
 you have done wrong to the character of another, it was when 
 you were misinformed, or were excited by passion, or were led to 
 suppose that he had injured you. Upon calmer reflection you 
 have a thousand times regretted it, and if he is dead you feel the 
 bitterest compunction that it was done ; if he is living, there is 
 nothing which you would not do for his welfare and your 
 prevailing character has not been that of a calumniator and 
 slanderer. If at times you have indulged in passion, under 
 sudden provocation, or a nervous temperament, or when off your 
 guard, you have as often regretted it, and you are conscious 
 that it is not your habitual aim to do so, and that your deliberate 
 purpose is not to wound the feelings or pain the heart of another. 
 You cherish the hope also that the world will do you justice in 
 this, and that in spite of these sudden and temporary ebullitions 
 you will be regarded as having a kind heart, and as ready to do 
 good to others. 
 
 Now I admit that there is much truth also in all this. I admit 
 it because it is undeniable, and because religion does not require 
 us to do injustice to the character of any human being. I think 
 that those of us who trust that we have exercised true repentance, 
 deep as may be our conviction of the depravity of the heart, 
 believe this to have been true in regard to ourselves. I think 
 that we can all look over our lives and see that the instances were 
 very few and far between in which we intentionally did a wrong 
 thing; in which we were guilty of falsehood, or fraud, or 
 
314 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 dishonesty. I habitually address many such, men men who 
 from day to day are not conscious of an intention to do a wrong 
 thing ; who are conscious that they would not cheat a man for the 
 brightest diadem that ever a monarch wore, and who go into their 
 office, into the bank, into their counting-rooms, intending to do 
 right to all men, and who, when Saturday night comes, whatever 
 sense of imperfection they may have, lie down on their pillows with 
 the reflection, that through the week they have not done intentional 
 wrong to any human being. 
 
 In what sense, then, you would ask me, are such men called 
 on to repent? Why is the command addressed to all human 
 beings? What is there in their character and life that makes 
 it proper in their case ? These are fair questions. They are 
 questions which men cannot help asking. They are questions 
 which the ministers of religion are bound to answer. 
 
 II. My second object was to show what there is in the character 
 and lives of such men which makes it proper to call on them to 
 repent. My aim will be to state that only of which you are 
 conscious, and to show that there is that in the case of every one 
 which makes it proper for his Maker, through the gospel, to 
 address him in the language of the text. 
 
 (1.) I begin with this thought, that with all your conscious 
 integrity and purity, there has not been a day of your life in which 
 you would be willing to have all your thoughts, and plans, and 
 desires, and imaginings for that day made known to the world, or 
 even to your best friends. I mean that you would not be willing 
 to have all these things written down by some attending amanu- 
 ensis, or by some invention resembling the magnetic telegraph, 
 and made known instantly to those who are around you. In the 
 purest day of your life, you would not be willing to have all these 
 thoughts written in letters of light in some conspicuous place, to 
 be read by every passer-by. The very thoughts which you have 
 had this day, you would not have thus permanently transcribed 
 for all the diamonds of the East. If you were certain that this 
 were to be done, if you should see the mysterious finger coming 
 forth and beginning to make the record, shame would begin at the 
 same time to cover you, and you would rush from the spot, or 
 cover your face with your hands, and hide it in confusion. 
 
 Now there are three reasons why a man would not wish such a 
 revelation of his secret thoughts and feelings. One is, because he 
 has plans which, though not wrong or improper in themselves, he 
 would not desire others to know. They are his plans of business, 
 of study, of inventions ; his views of a case in law entrusted to 
 him ; his methods of practising the healing art ; his tact in his 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE COMMAND TO REPENT. 315 
 
 calling, which lie would not desire to have every one know, for 
 his living may depend on it, though he may feel that if it were 
 known it would he in a high degree creditable to himself. But 
 every man has his own secrets ; and they constitute no incon- 
 siderable part of his capital in business. At any rate, many of his 
 prospects would be blasted if his views and plans were in the 
 possession of others. A second reason is, that many of our thoughts 
 and imaginings are merely foolish, and trifling, and unprofitable 
 and we could not desire others to know that our minds 
 could be employed on so barren subjects, and in a way so little 
 befitting our dignity and character. We allow the imagination to 
 roam quite at its ease ; we amuse ourselves in building up splendid 
 castles, and then in seeing them tumble into gorgeous fragments or 
 vanish: as children set up bricks, or build houses of blocks, to 
 see them fall over; or as the Arabian, in his tales, paints a gorgeous 
 vision, and sees it vanish away. Now we should not feel that in 
 this employment of the mind there was absolutely anything corrupt- 
 ing or wrong ; but we should not care to have the world suppose 
 that we are quite so unprofitably employed as we are. There is 
 yet a third reason, of a much more serious character, and extending 
 to many more things. We should be unwilling that our plans and 
 thoughts should be disclosed, because we feel that they are wrong. 
 They are the fruits of an evil, a proud, a vain, a sensual, an envious, 
 a corrupt heart. We are dwelling with delight on some sinful 
 pleasures in the past, and trying to live them over again, when 
 they should be forgotten : thus polluting the mind as much by the 
 memory as by the act. We are dwelling in imagination on some for- 
 bidden pleasures, and arranging them to our fancy : thus corrupt- 
 ing the soul as really as the act itself would do. We are indulging 
 in hateful pride of beauty, or dress, or attainments, or wealth ; 
 and suffering a whole deluge of evil thoughts to come in upon the 
 soul in regard to our superiority over others. We are looking on 
 the dress, or the person, or the house, or the equipage of another 
 with envious feelings, and allowing the mind to be filled with 
 hatred of them on account of their possessions, and with repining 
 and dissatisfaction at our own lot. We are coveting, it may be, 
 our " neighbour's house, or his wife, or his manservant, or his 
 maidservant, or his ox, or his ass," or something else that is our 
 neighbour's. We are 'remembering the injury that some one has 
 done us, and thinking how sweet revenge would be. We are 
 maturing some plan for the indulgence of a guilty passion, and are 
 increasingly impatient as it begins to ripen towards its accomplish- 
 ment. We are running over trains of thought which we know 
 are not pure, and which we feel are polluting for "the very 
 
316 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 passage of an impure thought through the mind leaves pollution 
 behind it :" and if a cherub should approach us in our reverie in 
 the most sylph-like form, and on wings as pure as the northern 
 snows, and with the gentlest whisper of the zephyr, should breathe 
 into our ears that it was known how would it startle us from 
 our reverie, and cover us with confusion! It is probable that 
 either in respect to the desires and plans of the present, or the 
 doings of the past, it would be in the power of such a messenger, 
 by the gentlest whisper in the ear, " That thing is known!" to 
 startle us from our seats in wild confusion and horror. 
 
 How, then, shall we be pure before God ? For, " if our heart 
 condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all 
 things," 1 John iii. 20. " Unto me," said an ancient sage, " an 
 oracle was secretly imparted, and mine ear caught a gentle whisper 
 of it. In distracted thoughts among the visions of the night, 
 when profound sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and 
 trembling, which made all my bones to quake. Then a spirit 
 glided along before my face ; the hair of my flesh stood on 
 end : it stood, but its form I could not discern ; a spectre was 
 before mine eyes : there was silence, and I heard a voice Shall 
 feeble man be more just than God ? Shall man be more purs than 
 liis Maker ? Behold, in his servants he putteth no confidence, and 
 his angels he chargeth with folly : how much more true is this of 
 those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the 
 dust, and who are crushed before the moth-worm?" Job iv. 1219. 
 
 But, if there are thoughts within us all that could not bear 
 guch a revelation, then for these thoughts it is proper to call on 
 the sinner to repent. Say, sinner, if you can conceive that 
 Gabriel should cherish for one day in heaven such thoughts as 
 are the habitual inmates of your bosom, would not all heaven 
 demand the expulsion of the archangel, or his lowly contrition 
 before the throne ? 
 
 (2.) I refer, secondly, to the sins of which you are conscious in 
 your past life. I have my eye on the concessions which I have 
 made, and shall not depart from them. But with these full in 
 view, it is right to look at the past life, and see whether sins have 
 not been committed which make the demand for repentance proper. 
 There are two classes of these sins to be taken into the account : 
 those which you have carried out and accomplished ; and those 
 which you would have committed but for the want of opportunity, 
 and by some providential restraint. 
 
 (a) The first class is made up of those which you have com- 
 mitted, or which have been accomplished by some open deed. 
 These may seem to be few in number, but in the aggregate they 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE COMMAND TO REPENT. 317 
 
 may not "be so few. The question is not how many times you have 
 done one wrong thing, hut how many times you have done all wrong 
 things. It is not exactly whether you have been guilty of one 
 falsehood or more ; of one act of dishonesty or more ; hut it is, how 
 many wrong things are fairly chargeahle on you when they are all 
 reckoned together when all your acts of dishonesty, and passion, 
 and deceit, and prevarication, and unkindness, and disobedience, 
 and improper words, and pride and vanity, and corrupt imaginings, 
 and envy, and jealousy, and every other evil thing remembered 
 and forgotten, are taken together. For many of your sins are 
 forgotten by you, though remembered by Him who has uttered 
 the command in the text. But if such an inventory were taken 
 of our lives, what a catalogue might be made out against us ! 
 Who would be willing to be summoned to the bar of his Maker 
 in a strict and impartial trial of all that he has done on all 
 subjects, and at all times, that he has known to be wrong? In 
 such an honest catalogue, if drawn out before our eyes, it may 
 be that we who think ourselves most virtuous, would be so over- 
 whelmed that we should see that shame and confusion of face 
 become us. 
 
 (#) But there is another aspect of the point before us. The sins 
 which we have designed or devised, and which we should have 
 committed if we had had the opportunity, or if we had not been 
 restrained by some invisible influence, or if we had not been 
 thwarted in the midst of what seemed to promise a successful 
 prosecution of our plans, ought to be taken into the account. For 
 we are answerable before God, not only for what we have actually 
 done, but for what we desired to do, and what we would have 
 done if we had not been prevented. When a man levels a rifle at 
 another with an intent to murder him, the act is not changed to 
 innocence if the weapon misses fire, or if some one strikes it from 
 his hand, or if God interposes and makes his arm unsteady by fear, 
 or powerless by paralysis. When you laid your plan to defraud a 
 creditor, the guilt is not washed away because the laws are so 
 made that you could not evade them. When you contemplated 
 and desired to lead the innocent astray, you are not rendered 
 guiltless because God in some way interposed and saved your 
 intended victim and a circle of friends from the agony of a broken 
 heart. The grand question is, what has been your desire, your 
 aim, your purpose, your wish. For these things you are to answer 
 before God ; and when a man looks honestly over his life, am 1 
 reflects on what he has wished to do, and would have done, but 
 for some restraint of Providence, who can say that he has no 
 occasion for repentance ? Grateful lie will be, if he has any just 
 
318 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 views, that God restrained him from the deep disgrace of the 
 outward act ; but he must settle with God yet for the internal 
 plan and desire from the execution of which God so mercifully 
 restrained him. 
 
 There is still another aspect of the point before us. Who 
 can tell what any of us would have been, but for some steady and 
 constant restraint ? Others have fallen into deep depravity ; 
 why have we not done it? They have wrecked character, and 
 hope, and happiness ; what is the lesson which this fact should 
 teach us about ourselves? Our eyes have seen distinguished 
 clergymen in different denominations fall into gross and open sin ; 
 officers in banks and custom-houses, and high public functionaries 
 abuse their trust, and ruin their character ; merchants yield to the 
 power of temptation, and ruin themselves and their families. 
 As we heard this, we became alarmed, and trembled for ourselves. 
 We asked, if such men fall, what confidence can we put in other 
 men ; what confidence in ourselves ? But why did we allow it to 
 come back upon our own souls, and fill us with self-distrust? 
 Because we knew and felt that there was that within us which, 
 placed in the same circumstances, would, for aught that we could 
 see, lead to the same result. Then we asked, to what we owed 
 our preservation, and what we should have been if we had been 
 left in a similar manner? Then we felt that there was a deep 
 foundation of evil in our souls in the souls of all ; and that all 
 that is needful for its development is to throw man into circum- 
 stances of temptation without restraint. I admit that the primary 
 effect of this, when others fall, should be to make us grateful to 
 God that we have been preserved, but it should also show us what 
 is in our own hearts. No virtuous man ever yet witnessed the 
 fall of another who did not feel humbled himself, and who did 
 not feel that there was in his own heart a deep foundation of evil. 
 The truth is, we owe much more of our virtues to external 
 circumstances to Providential restraints to secret checks from 
 an invisible cause than we are in our pride willing to acknowledge. 
 But how much credit should a man take to himself for these things ? 
 Who can tell what he would have been but for those restraints, 
 and if he had had his birth in another land, or in different 
 circumstances ? And why should not a man. in his estimate of his 
 own character before God, think of himself not merely as he is, 
 but as he would have been without restraint? Why, when he 
 contemplates his virtue and integrity, with the guards and checks 
 which are thrown around him, should he not think of what he 
 might have been, and would have been, but for these guards and 
 checks ? 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE COMMAND TO REPENT. 319 
 
 If these are just principles, we can see proper foundation for 
 the call to repentance and humiliation hefore God. Our open 
 deeds of evil scattered along through life, and many of them 
 forgotten ; our plans of evil which we formed and cherished, from 
 the accomplishment of which we were providentially prevented ; 
 our conscious weakness of principle, which would have made us 
 what others have heen if there had been no restraint on us, all 
 these things show us how we are estimated by Him who knows 
 all things, and who sees all the secrets of the heart, and show us 
 one of the reasons why it is that he has called on all men every- 
 where to repent. 
 
 (3.) I refer, thirdly, to your treatment of your Maker. You 
 have been careful in respect to your conduct towards your fellow- 
 men, but no one can deny that our deportment towards God is of 
 much more importance in estimating our own character than our 
 treatment of a fellow-creature. It is mainly, I need hardly remind 
 you, on account of our treatment of himself that he calls on us 
 to exercise repentance for all sin and wrong ultimately terminate 
 on him. 
 
 Now what has been your treatment of your God and Saviour ? 
 Has your deportment towards him been such as to satisfy your 
 own conscience ; such as to meet his approval ? Or has it been 
 such as to make it proper for him to call on you to exercise true 
 repentance ; to feel and express regret and sorrow ? 
 
 I by no means intend to say that the feelings of those whom I 
 address, and whom I would call to repentance, have been alike; or 
 that any general description would accurately represent them all. 
 But the following specifications, I apprehend, will find a counter- 
 part in the bosoms of most of those whom I thus address, and 
 will be recognised as an accurate account of the course of life of 
 which they are conscious : 
 
 (a) You have neglected God. You have not lived as if there 
 were a God ; you have not rendered to him the homage which is 
 his due. In many cases this neglect has been entire ; has been 
 long-continued perhaps has lasted through a long life. You 
 are not in the habit of praying to him of acknowledging him in 
 your closet, your family, your plans of life. There has been 
 nothing in your life which has been a proper recognition of his 
 existence and his claims ; of the fact that he is your Creator, and 
 that you are dependent on him, and that you sustain any relation 
 to him whatever. Suppose you had neglected a wife, a mother, 
 a father, a child in this manner ! What a wrong is often done by 
 mere neglect I Yet there is no one to whom men sustain important 
 relations who is so much neglected as God. 
 
320 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 (b) You have withheld your affections from Him, and transferred 
 them to others. You have loved the creature more than the 
 Creator. You have given that place in your affections, which was 
 due to him, to gold, or pleasure, or honour ; to your child, or to 
 your houses and lands. Your supreme love you have fixed not 
 on God, but on these objects ; and your strong attachment for 
 them has displaced Him from the heart. But is there no wrong 
 in thus transferring your affections ? Suppose you were to transfer 
 to another the affections due to a wife, is there no wrong 
 done? Is there less when the affections are all withheld from 
 God, and concentrated on some one other object, or distributed 
 among a thousand ? 
 
 (c) You have neglected the Bible. There may be among you some 
 who have never read it through in their lives ; some who never 
 read the half of it ; some who never read twenty chapters in it ; 
 some who are in no regular habit of reading it ; some who have 
 not looked into it for years. But suppose this Book to be a real 
 revelation from heaven ; to contain the true law of God ; to disclose 
 the true plan of salvation ; to have been given and preserved with 
 great care and interest on the part of God ; and to be full of the 
 wisdom in counsel which man needs, is there no wrong done to 
 him by neglecting it? Hear a parable. A young man embarked 
 for a distant land. He was an only son, greatly beloved by his 
 father. He was young, and inexperienced, and was going among 
 strangers, and was likely to be thrown into circumstances where 
 he would need a counsellor. The father had himself been over 
 all those lands ; had encountered all those dangers ; and he knew 
 well what kind of instructions would be most useful there. With 
 great pains he sat down and wrote out such counsels as became a 
 father in such circumstances, and gave them to his son. The son, 
 confident of his own wisdom, and regardless of his father, resolved 
 to throw himself on his own resources, and coolly folded up the 
 instructions and laid them away at the bottom of his trunk and 
 never read them. When out of his sight he threw them into the 
 deep, and saw them no more. Was no wrong done to that father ? 
 Would he have no occasion to regard himself as treated with 
 neglect and scorn ? 
 
 (d) You have violated his Sabbath. God asked of you to devote 
 the one-seventh portion of your time.wholly to him ; the remainder 
 he gave to you, under a proper recognition of himself, to pursue 
 your worldly plans. That was the time he gave you to plough your 
 fields, and to do your trading, and to write your letters, and to 
 perform your travelling, and to accomplish your secular reading. 
 But the one portion the seventh he deemed not more than a 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE COMMAND TO REPENT. 321 
 
 suitable part of your time for the proper recognition of himself in 
 the world, and for securing those spiritual influences on the soul 
 indispensable for your own best good. You took all the time to 
 yourself. You worked hard all through the week, filling the mind 
 with worldliness, and then took " the Lord's day " to do up a 
 great number of miscellaneous items that could not be brought 
 into the week, or that the customs of society would not allow you 
 to do. You read novels and newspapers ; you wrote letters and 
 adjusted your accounts ; you indulged the worldly thinking which 
 you could not find time for in the week ; you made out briefs, 
 and arranged the testimony in a case preparatory for the morrow ; 
 you lounged ; you slept; you went abroad for recreation. Is there 
 no wrong in this ? " Will a man," says the prophet, " ROB GOD ?'' 
 There is indeed no wrong on the supposition that the Sabbath is 
 to be like all the other days of the week. But suppose it is not. 
 Suppose there is some meaning and binding force in these words, 
 " Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy ;" and in the 
 declaration that it belongs to " the Lord thy God," and that " in 
 it thou shalt not do any work." May there not be a robbery of 
 time as well as money? And may not your Maker be robbed 
 as well as man ? 
 
 (e) You have cherished hard thoughts of God. You have 
 thought that his character was unlovely. You have thought that 
 his laws were stern and severe. You have thought that he has 
 dealt hardly with you when he has taken away your property, 
 your health, or your child. You have thought that he was partial in 
 saving others, and not saving you. You have complained in your 
 spirit that you were to die, and to be judged ; and that you were 
 exposed to his endless wrath. Is there no wrong in this ? Suppose 
 your child thought thus of you what would you think of him? 
 Would it be agreeable to you that he should entertain these 
 thoughts of a father ? 
 
 This catalogue might be indefinitely extended, but I have said 
 enough for my purpose. If these things are so, if it is true that 
 we have all guilty thoughts and feelings which we would not have 
 disclosed before the world ; if we are conscious of many acts of 
 criminality in the past, and admit that there are many more which 
 we may have forgotten, and would have been many more if we 
 had not been restrained ; and if it is true that we have been guilty 
 of long-continued wrongs against our Maker, then the position 
 which was laid down may be regarded as demonstrated, that it is 
 right for God to call on every man to exercise true repentance. 
 
 I add but one other remark in conclusion. These sins and 
 wrongs with, which vou are chargeable secret and open, remein- 
 
822 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 bered and forgotten must in some way be disposed of. They must 
 either be repented of and forgiven, or they must be recalled to 
 your remembrance hereafter, and enter into the account when 
 you are judged. It is impossible but that they should be noticed 
 in some proper way by your Maker. If they are forgiven, if they 
 are blotted from his book, that ends the matter. But if they are 
 not, they must come into judgment. And who could bear this 
 revelation ? Who is there that would not turn pale, and tremble, 
 and call on the rocks and mountains to cover him, if he knew that 
 all that he has ever thought, and said, and done, were about to be 
 disclosed to assembled worlds ? 
 
SERMON XXY. 
 
 THE EVIDENCES OF TRUE REPENTANCE. 
 
 2 COR. vii. 9 11. " Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that 
 ye sorrowed to repentance ; for ye were made sorry after a godly sort, that 
 ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh 
 repentance to salvation not to be repented of ; but the sorrow of the world 
 worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a 
 godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of your- 
 selves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, 
 yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge ! In all things ye have approved your- 
 selves to be clear in this matter." 
 
 THIS was an instance of genuine repentance, and the things here 
 enumerated are characteristics of true repentance. The case 
 referred to was one in which manifest wrong had been done by 
 the church at Corinth, 1 Cor. v. Paul had written to them 
 respecting the wrong, enjoining on them to take the speediest 
 measures to put it away. This letter had had all the effect 
 which he wished. They had seen the error ; they were deeply 
 grieved and pained on account of it ; they felt the force of the 
 reproofs of the apostle ; and the sorrow which they experienced 
 was such as God approved, and such as was fitted to work salva- 
 tion. There was deep distress of mind evinced in their " sor- 
 rowing after a godly sort ;" there was "carefulness," or diligence, 
 effort, forwardness in removing the evil ; there was a " clearing 
 of themselves," not an apology for the sin, but a desire to state 
 all the mitigating circumstances of the case, and to show that 
 the church was not disposed to be the defender of evil ; there 
 was " indignation," indignation against the sin, and a cordial 
 hatred of it ; there was " fear," fear lest the thing should be 
 continued or repeated a state of mind anxious that the whole 
 evil might be corrected, and that no vestige of it should remain 
 among them ; there was " vehement desire," a fervent wish to 
 remove all cause of complaint ; there was " zeal," zeal in 
 putting away the sin, and in producing a reformation ; there was 
 "revenge" that is, they immediately set about the work of 
 punishing the offender. This sorrow, and ardour, and earnest- 
 ness, and promptness, the apostle regarded as good evidence of 
 
324 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 the genuineness of their repentance ; as a specimen of that 
 " godly sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation not to 
 be repented of." 
 
 The subject which will now be considered is, the evidences of 
 true repentance. The inquiry is, What are the evidences of true 
 repentance ? What distinguishes true repentance from false ? 
 How may w.e satisfy ourselves that we have truly repented of 
 our sins ? 
 
 The characteristics of repentance may be arranged under three 
 heads, or three things seem necessary to the full and complete 
 proof of true repentance. They are these : the internal 
 feeling of regret or sorrow which is experienced in view of sin ; 
 the purpose deliberately formed in the mind to abandon it ; and 
 the actual forsaking of the evil. I say these are necessary to 
 the full and complete evidencing of real repentance. It is true 
 that there may be circumstances where the first alone, or the 
 first and second combined, would be indicative of genuine repent- 
 ance, but there might be no opportunity to test them, and the 
 three are necessary to furnish evidence that shall be of the 
 highest kind, or that shall be satisfactory in the highest degree. 
 I propose to illustrate these in their order. 
 
 I. The first which I specify is, the internal feeling ; the regret 
 for the wrong ; the sorrow of heart which is experienced. This 
 of course, will be known only to the individual, except so far -.as 
 he chooses to make others acquainted with it. 
 
 I do not say that mere regret or sorrow, of itself, is full evi- 
 dence of repentance, for it may not be the right kind of sorrow 
 it may not be such as would bear the application of a test it 
 may not be permanent in its influence ; but regret, or sorrow, 
 enters always into true repentance. It results from the laws of 
 the mind that where a wrong which we have done is contem- 
 plated in a proper manner, it should produce regret and pain. 
 It enters into the meaning of all the words by which we are 
 accustomed to express repentance. Thus in the text and con- 
 text, the apostle says that the letter which he had sent to the 
 Corinthians had made them " sorry though it were but for a 
 season ;" he says that they " sorrowed to repentance ;" he speaks 
 of their " mourning ;" he speaks of their " sorrowing after a godly 
 sort." There may, indeed, be great diversity in the depth, and 
 pungency, and duration, and external expressions of sorrow 
 experienced by true penitents. This diversity arises much from 
 a difference of temperament ; from the previous character ; from 
 the extent and aggravation of sin ; and, so far as appearances 
 are concerned, from the habits of self-control or the want of it in 
 
EVIDENCES OF TRUE REPENTANCE. 325 
 
 individuals. There is often the most deep and permanent feeling 
 when there are no tears ; and the sorrow which is accompanied 
 by loud and boisterous outcries, is often a sorrow which lies very 
 near the surface of the soul, every trace of whose existence soon 
 vanishes. But sorrow of some kind is necessary to repentance ; 
 and if we have never had a pang of regret for the past, if we 
 have never felt that we have done wrong, if we have never felt 
 ashamed, and humbled, and confounded in view of our errors 
 and faults, if we have never had anything of the spirit of the 
 publican when he said, " God be merciful to me a sinner," or of 
 the prodigal when he said, " Father, I have sinned against heaven 
 and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son," 
 or of David when he said, " I acknowledge my transgression, 
 and my sin is ever before me," we may be sure that we have 
 never truly repented. 
 
 Yet we should not suppose that all sorrow experienced in. 
 view of past sins is necessarily true repentance. " There is a 
 sorrow of the world," in view of sin, " which worketh death," 
 Judas the traitor had deep anguish in view of his crime, and 
 went and added to his guilt another enormous act of transgression. 
 Many a gambler has had the keenest feelings of regret when 
 his money is gone, who had no real penitence ; and there is 
 deep sorrow in those " doleful regions" where there is " weeping, 
 and wailing, and gnashing of teeth," but there is no true repent- 
 ance there. 
 
 At this stage of our inquiry, therefore, it is of the highest 
 importance that we should endeavour to lay down some marks 
 by which we may be able to distinguish that sorrow which enters 
 into true repentance from that which constitutes the false; and 
 this may be done by asking ourselves the simple question, Why 
 do we feel sorrow at all in the case? What is it that produces it? 
 If it is produced by any of the things which I will now specify, it is 
 clear that the sorrow furnishes no evidence of true repentance : 
 
 (1.) If it is produced by the mere dread of punishment. It 
 is clear that in such a case the sorrow which exists is not in 
 view of the sin, but only of the penalty. If the apprehension of 
 punishment were taken away, the sorrow also would disappear. 
 
 (2.) If it arises from the mere shame of detection. In such a 
 case there is clearly no evidence of true repentance. A man 
 may be greatly ashamed and grieved because some base, or 
 mean, or vile, or detestable act is found out, who would have 
 had no trouble on account of it if it had remained concealed. 
 His grief is, that he has been exposed, not that he has done the 
 wrong ; and there are none, probably, who have not done many 
 
326 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 things which would suffuse the cheeks with crimson if they were 
 known, hut who have no compunctious visitings as long as they 
 are concealed. 
 
 (3.) A similar kind of false repentance or sorrow for the past 
 arises from the idea that a man has made a mistake, or is likely 
 to suffer loss on account of his conduct. When a man has made 
 a bargain which is likely to involve him in loss, or when he has 
 missed an opportunity to make an advantageous bargain, he 
 often experiences regret, and in many cases reflects on himself 
 for his folly. So a man may feel in relation to his past life. 
 He looks at the money which he has squandered, and the time 
 which he has wasted which ought to have been employed in 
 study or in honest industry ; at the hours of his life which 
 he has trifled away in foolish conversation, or equally foolish 
 reading ; and finds himself now placed at an eminent disad- 
 vantage on account of it, and if he has any proper sense of it, 
 will regret it. But still he may regret it, not as having any 
 sense of the wrong, or the sinfulness of his course, but only as a 
 matter of loss and with much the same feeling that the man 
 has who has made a bad bargain. If the loss could in any way 
 be made up to him, he would have no trouble on account of his 
 course considered as sinful. So a daughter of vanity may exer- 
 cise the same kind of repentance in view of the waste of time, 
 and the loss of health, in the ball-room. She has allowed her 
 rest to be broken ; she has exposed herself unprotected by any 
 suitable dress to the cold of a winter's night after being heated 
 in the dance ; and she begins to be alarmed at the paleness of 
 her own cheeks, and then at the slight hectic that she cannot 
 conceal, and then at the cough which will not leave her, and she 
 is sad and sorrowful as she sees that the grave must soon close 
 over her in spite of all that friends and physicians can do. But 
 there is necessarily no genuine repentance here no sorrow for 
 the sin. She mourns over her faded health and beauty ; over 
 her imprudent exposure ; over the fact that she has wasted her 
 life ; but there is no sorrow that she has done wrong ; that she 
 has offended God ; that she has spent her time in the neglect of 
 her Saviour and her soul ; and that she has jeoparded her 
 salvation. 
 
 (4.) There is often sorrow, and deep sorrow, in view of our 
 conduct considered as a violation of some law of etiquette, when 
 there is no sorrow for the act considered as a violation of the 
 law of God. I apprehend, that some of the deepest pangs that 
 are felt in this world are those which arise from the violation of 
 some social lawj from something that may expose you to the 
 
EVIDENCES OF TRUE REPENTANCE. 327 
 
 censure of so-called " society ;" something that may occur to 
 throw you out of the fashionable circle in which you wish to 
 move ; something that may forfeit the favour of those distin- 
 guished in elevated life, whose " good grace" you would wish to 
 preserve. Many a votary of fashion experiences pangs of this 
 kind keener than ordinarily accompany true repentance towards 
 God ; and amidst the ever- varying delusions of the human mind 
 it is possible that this may sometimes be mistaken for true 
 repentance. You have offended the world ; you have been dis- 
 appointed in your attempts to secure its favour ; you have been, 
 thrown out of the circles where you were ambitious to shine ; 
 and you turn your attention to religion, and suppose that you 
 come into the church a true penitent. And yet there may be 
 no evidence of repentance at all. You may never have had one 
 real -sigh of regret for anything that you have ever done against 
 God ; and you come weeping to the altar of Christ, not because 
 you have offended him, but because you have been disappointed 
 in your foolish ambition to move in a circle from which you have 
 been excluded. 
 
 It would be easy to enumerate many other things of this sort 
 which may be mistaken for sincere repentance. The idea is, that 
 the sorrow which is produced by mere loss, or by the disgrace 
 of exposure, or by disappointed ambition the sorrow which 
 terminates on the world, has in it necessarily none of the 
 elements of repentance. I will not deny that any one of these 
 things may be the occasion of turning the mind to a contempla- 
 tion of the evil of the course pursued, and that, impressed with 
 the folly of these things in one point of view, you may be led to 
 see their folly and wickedness in a higher sense. But clearly, 
 in the matter as we have contemplated it thus far, there is of 
 necessity no true repentance, and a man may have all these 
 things, and never experience one pang of regret for his conduct 
 regarded as a sin against God. 
 
 The sense of what I have said, therefore, is this : that true 
 repentance is based on the contemplation of an act regarded 
 as in itself evil and wrong ; regarded as a sin against God. 
 Whether it exposes to punishment or not ; whether it is detected 
 or undetected ; whether attended with loss or with gain ; whether 
 reputable in the eyes of the world or. disreputable ; and whether 
 it will continue us within the limits of the clique, or clan, or 
 caste where we have been, or raise us to that to which we have 
 aspired, does not affect the question. It is seen 10 be evil and 
 wrong in the sight of God, and the sin is loathed, and we loathe 
 ourselves on account of it. Our thoughts are not occupied 
 
 22 
 
328 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 about the question of exposure or concealment ; about the honour 
 or disgrace attending it; but about its intrinsic loathsomeness, 
 and hatefulness, and vileness. It follows, consequently, that the 
 true penitent, in dealing with his own heart, is more concerned 
 with those things that are unknown to the world, and of which 
 there is no danger that they should be known, than he is with 
 the fact that the " secret faults " that have been concealed from 
 every eye are now disclosed, or with those " presumptuous sins" 
 that every one sees. It is sorrow for the wrong done ; the 
 intrinsic evil ; the loathsomeness, the vileness, the ingratitude, 
 the corruption of a heart seen to be blacker and viler than has 
 ever been suspected by the world. When that sorrow exists, 
 and from these causes, a man may trust that he has exercised 
 true repentance. 
 
 II. The second thing which I specified as entering into true 
 repentance is, the purpose deliberately formed in the mind to 
 abandon the evil. My meaning in this connexion is, that it is 
 not enough to have sorrow for the past, unless there is a purpose 
 corresponding with that sorrow, and co-extensive with it, to 
 forsake the evil course altogether. I will admit, also, in regard 
 to this, as in regard to the former, that even this would not be 
 full and complete evidence of the sincerity of repentance for 
 (1,) the purpose, though formed, might not be adhered to ; and, 
 (2,) there might be no opportunity to carry it into effect : but 
 there can be no true repentance, and no satisfactory evidence of 
 repentance, where this purpose is not formed. 
 
 To explain this remark still farther, it should be said, that the 
 purpose referred to is not one of distant and future amendment, 
 but is one which contemplates the immediate and entire abandon- 
 ment of the evil; a direct "breaking off from transgressions by 
 righteousness, and by turning unto the Lord." To resolve to 
 abandon a sinful course at some future period, however solemn 
 and sacred that resolution may be, is no evidence of present 
 repentance. In such a case, the actual state of the mind is seen, 
 in the determination to continue the wrong-doing, and that state 
 indicates a prevailing love for the sin, and a determination to 
 practise it as long as it will be safe. 
 
 It is not difficult to persuade men to form purposes of future 
 amendment. Indeed, most men need no persuasion on that point, 
 but, however wicked they may be, they have in general made 
 up their minds to it already. The point of difficulty is, when, 
 you come to persuade the man to resolve at once to give up 
 his habit of profane swearing ; to become temperate ; to forsake 
 the companionship of the vile ; to abandon his dishonest arts in 
 
EVIDENCES OF TRUE REPENTANCE. 329 
 
 dealing ; to commence the habit of family prayer ; to begin to 
 serve the Lord. I should have no difficulty in so setting before 
 you the evils of a wicked life as to persuade you to resolve at 
 some future period to reform ; my difficulty is in persuading you, 
 in view of a life perceived to be wrong, to resolve at once to 
 break off from your evil ways. I wish now to show you that 
 there can be no evidence of repentance without this. 
 
 It surely cannot require many words to convince you that this 
 is so. In all the appeals that are made to men in the Bible to 
 repent of their sins, it is implied that there should be a resolu- 
 tion at once to forsake the evil. It is nowhere hinted it would 
 be a mockery of all our conceptions of repentance if it were that 
 men might resolve to pursue their evil courses a little longer, 
 intending then to return to the Lord. Nothing is more manifest 
 in the Scriptures than the duty of immediate repentance ; of all 
 that is involved in a purpose to abandon an evil course as soon as 
 it is seen to be evil. We all see at once, that this accords with 
 all the conceptions that we have on the subject of repentance. 
 If a man does not thus resolve, whatever may be the expressions 
 of sorrow which he may utter for the past, it is clear that his 
 heart still loves the evil. The purpose, moreover, must relate to 
 entire abandonment of the evil in every form and modification. 
 It will not do, for example, for a man to resolve to abandon the 
 open form of the sin, and to practise it in secret. It will not do 
 for him, constrained by public sentiment, to yield so far to that 
 public sentiment as to abandon the sin for the present, and to 
 retain the secret love of it in his heart, and to hope for the time 
 when by a change of public opinion it may be proper for him to 
 resume it. It will not do to resolve to give up one form of the 
 sin, and to practise it under a different name. It would not do 
 to take the capital which public sentiment or the laws should 
 forbid him to employ in one way, and to invest it in a form 
 equally evil. It would not do, for example, for a man who had 
 a large capital invested in the slave-trade, to take that same 
 capital and build a distillery, or to sell out his distillery and 
 become the lessee of a theatre. Where there is true repentance, 
 there must be a deliberate purpose to abandon evil in any and 
 every form, and in every modification. The repentance, if 
 genuine, is not so much for the form of the evil, as it is for the 
 evil itself. 
 
 This is so plain, that it requires no farther remarks to prove 
 that when there is true repentance there will be a purpose 
 deliberately formed to forsake evil as evil; to forsake all evil. 
 It is necessary here, as under the former head, only to make a 
 
330 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 few remarks in order to distinguish true repentance from false, 
 considered in this view. It may be observed, then, that in this 
 aspect, more than in the former, a man may be led to resolve to 
 abandon a course of evil from some motive which may be no 
 indication of sincere repentance. He will be still more likely to 
 resolve to abandon a course of conduct from some motive which 
 is no indication of true repentance, than he would be sincerely 
 to regret it. He may be induced to resolve to abandon an evil 
 course from any one of the following motives and when these 
 are the motives, nothing can be inferred as to the genuineness of 
 repentance : (1.) It may be because the course involves a loss 
 of property, and not because he is convinced of the wrong. 
 Thus a man might give up gambling, or horse-racing, because he 
 always loses ; or a seller of ardent spirits might abandon the 
 traffic, because it makes so many bad debts ; or a man might set 
 his slaves at liberty, because they are unprofitable. Desirable 
 and proper as the course in this and similar instances might be 
 in itself, yet the man should not infer that he has had any true 
 repentance for the wrong; for it is clear that if the business had 
 been profitable, he would have had no trouble on the subject. 
 In the same manner a man may resolve not to travel any more 
 on the sabbath, or to withdraw his investments from a sabbath- 
 breaking railway company, not because he exactly sees that it is 
 wrong, but because he is apprehensive that in the end it will 
 prove to be unprofitable. (2.) A man may resolve to abandon 
 an evil course, because he is involved by it in disgrace. He has 
 become a drunkard, and he resolves to reform, not because he is 
 convinced of the evil and wrong of intemperance in itself con- 
 sidered, but because he has lost his character in the view of the 
 community, and is likely also to lose all his business. It is 
 evident that, in such a case, there would be no true repentance 
 for the course considered as an evil, but only of regret for the 
 dishonour and disadvantage coming on him. (3.) In like manner, 
 a man may resolve to abandon a certain course because the 
 strong current of public sentiment is set against it. Thus 
 multitudes are the friends of temperance, not because they see 
 any evil in moderate drinking, and especially in wine-drinking ; 
 and not because they have any sense of the goodness of God in 
 keeping them from the ruin into which others have fallen, who 
 began life in the same way in this respect with themselves ; and 
 not because they have any compunction that they ever wasted 
 their own money, and squandered their own time, and jeoparded 
 their own souls, or ruined their sons or others by their own 
 example, but because the public sentiment is changed. The 
 
EVIDENCES OF TRUE REPENTANCE. 331 
 
 result is indeed a good one, whatever is the motive for it is a 
 great point gained when even one, from whatever cause, hecomes 
 a warm, pradlical friend of thorough temperance ; but let not 
 the man suppose that there is necessarily any principle in this, 
 or that there is any genuine regret for the evil of his own 
 example and life. 
 
 The sum of what I have said under this head of my discourse 
 is this : that in true repentance there will always be a deli- 
 berate purpose to abandon every evil ; but that so far as this 
 furnishes any evidence of true repentance everything depends on 
 the motive by which it is done. 
 
 III. The third point which I proposed to illustrate is, that in 
 true repentance there will be an actual forsaking of sin ; an 
 endeavour to arrest the progress of the sin at once, and to repair 
 its evils on ourselves and on others. The essential idea here is, 
 that injury has been done by the life of sin, and that there is an 
 actual exertion to stay that injury a closing up of the plan of 
 evil a counter-influence of good commenced, to be continued 
 ever afterwards. This occurred in the case mentioned in the 
 text ; and it is so manifestly required in every instance of true 
 repentance that it would be improper even to attempt to prove 
 it. All that is necessary is to show what is implied in it. This 
 evidence of repentance, then, involves the following things : 
 
 (1.) It involves an honest abandonment of the sin, no matter 
 how lucrative, how alluring, how reputable, or how honourable. 
 The eye in true repentance is fixed on the sin, not on the profit 
 or loss, the honour or dishonour. When there is true repent- 
 ance for a course of life, there will be an immediate cessation of 
 the wrong, no matter what may be involved in it even though 
 it may be attended with the sacrifice of any amount of property. 
 At Ephesus there were many persons transacting a lucrative 
 business by a species of magic, employing a considerable invest- 
 ment of capital. Many of those engaged in it became convinced 
 by the preaching of the apostles that the employment was evil, 
 and they " brought their books together, and burned them before 
 all men," amounting in value to fifty thousand pieces of silver, 
 Acts xix. 19. So if a man who has been engaged in the manu- 
 facture or sale of ardent spirits becomes convinced that the busi- 
 ness is contrary to the word of God, it will be abandoned, no 
 matter what may be the pecuniary loss, or the effect on his 
 business. The consideration of property as opposed to the will 
 of God in the case, will not affect him for a moment. If he is a 
 true penitent, he will hereafter live an upright, and a godly life. 
 He will seek another employment, or he will beg or starvp rather 
 
332 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 than persist in doing wrong. If a man is convinced that slavery 
 is sinful and wrong, no pecuniary consideration will induce him 
 to continue the relation for a moment longer ; the only question 
 will be in regard to the welfare of those whom the law has recog- 
 nised as under his protection. If a man is convinced that it is 
 wrong to run cars, or canal-boats, or stages on the sabbath, and 
 that it is wrong to be the owner of money thus invested, no 
 pecuniary consideration will induce him to retain property thus 
 invested; no pecuniary loss or sacrifice will prevent his with- 
 drawing from the business. The sole question that passes before 
 the mind when there is true repentance, is in regard to the right 
 and the wrong of any particular course of life ; and when that is 
 settled, all is settled. 
 
 The remark now made may be extended to everything even 
 to those things where no pecuniary sacrifice is involved. What- 
 ever may be the nature of the sacrifice implied in giving up a 
 sinful course, it will be submitted to. For there are often sacri- 
 fices, on becoming a true penitent, greater than those of money. 
 If you have loved the gay world ; if you have been the patron 
 of vanity and folly; if you have 'lived, not to honour God, but 
 to find pleasure in the theatre or the ball-room ; if your heart 
 has become wedded to a life frivolous in the eyes of mortals, and 
 odious in the eyes of angels and of God, it may require of you a 
 sacrifice which gold could not well measure to give up this 
 course to which you have been devoted. Yet it is of the nature 
 of repentance for the follies of the past that it should be done. 
 What repentance requires, is not that you should come to the 
 altar with streaming eyes and a head bowed down like a bul- 
 rush to-day, to mingle in such scenes again to-morrow ; but it is 
 that the evidence of your repentance should be manifest in the 
 place where wrong has been done. Your vacated seat at the 
 table of sinful hilarity and song ; your vacated place where you 
 have been accustomed to be seen in the dance ; your prompt and 
 decided expression pf a purpose to lead a different life when 
 allured to scenes where God is forgotten, and where religion cannot 
 be honoured, is the way, and the only way in respect to this 
 in which you can evince true penitence for the past, and satisfy 
 the world that you mean to live for nobler ends. 
 
 (2.) True repentance, as it respects the conduct, and as the 
 evidence of ft is to be found in the conduct, involves a course of 
 life that is fitted to repair the evil which we have done to our- 
 selves by our former lives. We cannot, indeed, even in the most 
 thorough repentance, do this entirely. We cannot recall the 
 "Wasted hours j we cannot recover the money that we have lost 
 
EVIDENCES OF TRUE REPENTANCE. 333 
 
 by vicious indulgence ; we cannot at once restore health to the 
 body enervated by dissipation perhaps we can never do it per- 
 fectly, but we can set about an honest purpose to repair the 
 evil by a different course of life, as far as it may be possible. 
 We cannot, indeed, recover the hours already wasted ; but we 
 may resolve that there shall be no more wasted, and we may be 
 at such a time of life that the squandered part shall not mate- 
 rially affect our ultimate attainments and usefulness. We cannot 
 recover our squandered property; but we can so regulate our 
 lives that there shall be no more squandered, and so that we 
 may acquire all that shall be necessary for our own wants and 
 the wants of our families, and so as to furnish us the means of 
 doing extensive good. We may have, indeed, injured our health ; 
 but the injury may not be irreparable, and we may resolve that 
 the wrong done shall be carried no farther, and we may yet 
 be enabled to pursue our task of life with restored and invigo- 
 rated powers. If there is such a purpose at once to check and 
 arrest the progress of the evil on ourselves, there is evidence 
 of genuine repentance for the past ; if there is not, sighs, and 
 tears, and professions amount to nothing. 
 
 .(3.) The evidence of repentance implied in our conduct invoves 
 also such a course of life as shall repair, as far as possible, the 
 injury done to others. There is much, indeed, here which cannot 
 be repaired. You cannot recall from the grave the man who 
 has been deprived of life ; you cannot bring to the cheerful light 
 of the living, the father and the mother whose hearts have been 
 broken by your misconduct, and who have gone down with 
 sorrow to the tomb ; you cannot make the hair of a fafcher that 
 has been turned prematurely grey by your ingratitude and folly, 
 black and glossy again ; you cannot restore to innocence the 
 deluded victim whom you have ruined by your seductive arts, 
 your example, or your bad principles. 
 
 But you may, notwithstanding, do much to repair the evil 
 which you have done to others. A wounded father's heart you 
 may heal by a frank confession, and by a subsequent life of strict 
 propriety and virtue. A wrong which you have done to another 
 by dishonesty and fraud, you may in a great measure repair by 
 confession, and by an honest restoration of all that you have 
 taken from him by fraud. And though in many cases it may 
 be beyond your power to undo the wrong that you have done 
 to them, yet you may more than compensate for this to the world 
 by the service which you may render to society. In a battle, 
 you have at one moment proved yourself to be a coward, and 
 the battle may be lost; but in a hundred subsequent engage- 
 
334 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 meats you may be faithful to your standard, carrying it into the 
 very camp of the enemy. You may have made one infidel by 
 your example or bad principles, and you can never save him 
 now from the blighting influence of infidelity ; but by a con- 
 sistent and zealous Christian life you may save hundreds of 
 others from becoming infidels. In the days of your sin and 
 folly you may have led one ingenuous and noble youth to love 
 the intoxicating glass, and no effort of yours can save him from 
 a drunkard's grave ; but by becoming now the warm and con- 
 sistent friend of temperance, you may be the means of saving 
 hundreds of such youths from such a grave ; and so far as society 
 is concerned, you may do an hundredfold to repair the wrong. 
 Saul of Tarsus, when he was converted, could never recall to 
 life the martyred Stephen ; nor could he bring back to the earth 
 those whom he had imprisoned, and against whom he gave his 
 voice when they were put to death; but he could devote his 
 great talents to the work of propagating the religion which he 
 had persecuted, and save thousands and tens of thousands from 
 a more dreadful death than that of the martyrs. He did it. He 
 set about the great work of repairing the wrongs which he had 
 done to the world as a persecutor ; and the sincerity of his re- 
 pentance was evinced not only by his expressions of deep humi- 
 liation and sorrow in view of the past by his solemn declara- 
 tion that he was the "least of all the apostles," and was not 
 " fit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of 
 God," but by such a life of devotedness to a righteous cause as 
 man never before led, and by a career pursued in repairing the 
 wrong, which was felt to the ends of the earth, and which will 
 continue to be felt to the end of time. 
 
 In this abandonment of an evil course ; in this struggle against 
 sin ; in this solemn purpose to forsake that which has been seen 
 to be wrong, and in this honest and persevering effort to repair 
 the injuries which have been done by our past misconduct, is to 
 be found the evidence of true repentance. 
 
 We may learn from our subject, 
 
 (1.) That there is much false repentance in the world. There 
 is much sorrow that expends itself in sighs and tears and tempo- 
 rary emotion, and that " brings forth no fruit meet for repentance." 
 There is much forsaking of sin for other reasons than because it 
 is seen to be wrong. It is abandoned because it is unprofitable ; or 
 because it is unfashionable ; or because it docs not comport with 
 good breeding and the maintenance of the character of a gentle- 
 man ; or because the popular sentiment sets strongly against it ; 
 or because it is expensive, and cannot well be afforded ; and not 
 
EVIDENCES OF TRUE REPENTANCE. 335 
 
 because there is any deep sense of the evil. The evil is still 
 loved, and you would be ready to practise it again if your own 
 circumstances, or the views of the public, should be changed. 
 So, many men break off from certain sins, not because they hate 
 them, but because they are growing old, and can no longer 
 enjoy them ; many do it, not because their views are changed, 
 but because they are laid on a bed of pain, and the hour of death 
 draweth near. It becomes, therefore, obviously a very solemn 
 duty for each one to examine his own heart, to ascertain why 
 it is that he has forsaken the paths in which he once so 
 cheerfully walked. 
 
 (2.) We may see the reason why a death-bed repentance is of 
 so little value. Jeremy Taylor maintained that a death-bed 
 repentance is impossible. There could not be, he said, evidence 
 furnished that it is sincere and genuine. But, whatever may be 
 true on that point, our subject teaches us that all the evidence 
 furnished by a death-bed repentance is of very little value. A 
 moment's reflection, it would seem, would satisfy any one of the 
 truth of this remark. Let him think how many regrets are felt 
 by those in health for their past conduct, which never amount to 
 true penitence ; how many expressions of sorrow are made, 
 followed by no correspondent action ; how many alarms are felt 
 that produce no turning from sin ; how many resolutions are 
 formed only to be disregarded ; and then let him reflect on the 
 usual condition of the mind on a death-bed : how incapable of 
 calm reflection ; how likely to act from the influence of mere 
 alarm ; how often it is wholly or partially delirious, and he will 
 see how little dependence is to be placed on expressions of peni- 
 tence in such circumstances. Let him ask himself also how 
 many in the sphere of his observation there have been, who on a 
 sick bed have resolved to forsake their sins and to live to God, 
 but who on their recovery have shown that their repentance 
 was false and hollow, and he will learn what to think of that 
 repentance when there has been no such recovery. It is a 
 common thing for men when they are sick, and suppose that 
 they are about to die, to become apparently penitent and reli- 
 gious ; not common for them when they recover to give evidence 
 that the repentance was genuine. In a ministry now of nearly 
 thirty years, I have had opportunity to see many sick and 
 dying persons. In all that time I cannot now recall a solitary 
 instance of one who became apparently penitent on a sick-bed, 
 who furnished any evidence in his subsequent life that it was 
 genuine. Now, if this be so in the usual cases of restoration to 
 health, I would not say that it would absolutely prove that in 
 
336 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 cases which terminated differently there was no evidence of true 
 repentance ; but who can help asking the question, What 
 evidence would they have probably furnished, if they had been 
 restored again to health ? 
 
 (3.) Finally, the conclusion of the whole matter then is this : 
 If we would have evidence of repentance that is worth anything 
 that will furnish consolation to our friends when we are gone 
 that will enable them to go and bend over our graves with the 
 consolation derived from the belief that we are in heaven ; if 
 we would have them go and inscribe on the stone which marks 
 the place where we sleep, in an intelligent manner, some simple 
 and sweet passage of the word of God indicating their belief 
 that we are happy, or have them plant there the flower which 
 as it blooms from spring to spring shall be expressive of the 
 hope that we shall be raised to life and glory, that evidence 
 must be found in a life of piety so uniform as to show that we 
 hate all the ways of sin. It must be founded on the workings of 
 our minds in their best state, and in their maturest powers. 
 And for myself, I desire to have, and to leave to my friends in 
 that hour when, so far as this world is concerned, I shall give 
 them the parting hand, a hope not derived from the workings of 
 a mind broken and prostrate by age or disease, or from an 
 expression of regret then wrung from my dying lips but a hope 
 derived from the best exercise of my intellect and my heart in 
 my maturest days, employed with prayerful energy, and assisted 
 by the grace of God, on the great subject of religion. No other 
 subject so demands the exercise of those powers ; nothing else 
 would I desire to have placed on so firm a basis, and so far 
 beyond the danger of deception, as my hope of immortality. 
 
SEKMON XXYL 
 
 FAITH A CONDITION OF SALVATION. 
 
 MARK xvi. 16. "He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved." 
 
 IN illustrating this text, I propose to answer the question, why- 
 faith has been demanded as one of the conditions of salvation. 
 The objections to giving such prominence to faith in a system of 
 revealed religion, and to making the whole question of salvation 
 turn on it, are objections more commonly felt than urged ; but 
 they are such that it will not do to pass them by as unworthy 
 of notice. They are such as these : that the rewards which 
 God has to dispense to men are elsewhere bestowed, not accord- 
 ing to their faith, but according to their character and conduct ; 
 that it would seem to be proper that the retributions of the 
 future state should be according to what a man does, and not 
 according to what he believes; that it is not probable that the 
 retributions of eternity would be made to turn on any mere state 
 of mind, and that if they did, there is no reason why the state 
 of mind implied in faith should be selected in preference to any 
 other ; and that to make eternal life depend on the exercise of 
 faith is, in fact, to propose a reward for credulity, and to justify 
 the remark sneeringly made by the sceptic, that " our holy 
 religion is founded on faith, not on reason."* Perhaps to these 
 objections, some would be disposed to add another, that even the 
 Scriptures themselves declare that when the rewards of eternity 
 shall be apportioned on the final trial, the retribution will be 
 " according to the deeds done in the body," and that the grand 
 question which will come up will be, not what a man has 
 believed, but what he has done. 
 
 These objections are worthy of particular consideration. I 
 propose, then, to ask your attention to the inquiry why faith in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ has been made an indispensable condition 
 of salvation. The inquiry will be exhausted if the following 
 points can be made clear: that it is proper that there should 
 be some conditions of salvation ; what would be the proper 
 characteristics of such conditions ; and whether these character- 
 istics are found in the faith that is required in the gospel. 
 * Hume. 
 
338 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 You will perceive that the argument which I propose to con- 
 duct is one that is to be derived very materially from an appeal 
 to the common sense of men, and will rest much on what calm 
 reflection will show to each one to be proper in the case. I 
 regard this mode of argument as legitimate, because I suppose 
 that, in fact, the gospel makes its appeal to the common sense of 
 \ mankind, and is to be kept up by that from age to age. 
 
 I. It is proper that there should be some conditions of salvation ; 
 that is, that there should be something in view of which the 
 rewards of eternal life will be bestowed, or which will con- 
 stitute the public reason why they are bestowed. The essential 
 idea here is, that in order to our being saved, there should be 
 something on our part which will indicate our wish to be saved ; 
 or which will show that we regard salvation as a great and 
 desirable thing, and that we are willing to be saved in the 
 method proposed. This proposition is so clear, that I suppose 
 it will be admitted by all persons, unless it be held that all men 
 will be saved; and even then it would hardly be maintained that 
 men would be saved without any conditions that is, without 
 anything that would be a public and sufficient reason why they 
 should be admitted into heaven. 
 
 That, if men are saved, there are to be some conditions on 
 which it is to be done, seems to be clear, because it is the uni- 
 versal law under which we live. There are certain well-under- 
 stood terms on which we expect that the Divine favours will be 
 bestowed, and the knowledge of these constitutes the basis of all 
 our calculations and efforts. It is true that favours are some- 
 times conferred without respect to any known conditions ; but 
 it is also true that such interpositions are very rare, and that 
 they never enter into a wise man's calculations as a basis of 
 action. Thus, sometimes, a man may, in pulling up a shrub, like 
 Atahualpi, open a vein of silver ; sometimes a man may discover 
 a valuable mine of gold or copper on his farm ; sometimes he 
 may unexpectedly be found to be heir to a great estate in a dis- 
 tant land ; or some one of whom he knows little, and on whom 
 he may have no claim, may, by a mere freak, leave all his pro- 
 perty to him by will. But these things occur so rarely, and are 
 regulated by laws so subtle, if regulated by laws at all, that they 
 are not the ordinary rules on which men act, and they can never 
 enter into the calculations of a wise man. As there are no 
 known conditions on which they are regulated, we do not form 
 our plans in view of them, and, in fact, our plans are the same 
 as if it were understood that they were never to occur. 
 
 The great law under which we act is different. It is, that 
 
FAITH A CONDITION OF SALVATION. 339 
 
 there are conditions on which all that we hope for depends. 
 There are things appointed by which we are to show our interest 
 in it ; our sense of its value ; our desire to obtain it. If we are 
 to have anything, it is on certain conditions : if wealth, we aref 
 to labour for it ; if health, we are to take proper precautions in 
 regard to it ; if reputation, we are to show that we deserve it. 
 There is not one thing which we expect under the operation of 
 chance or hap-hazard, or which a wise man would calculate on 
 from that source ; and since this is the general law under which 
 we live, no one can complain that the offer of heaven is put on 
 the same footing. In fact, no one does complain. Each man 
 supposes that there is some condition on which eternal happi- 
 ness may be obtained. Each one supposes in his heart that he 
 does certain things, or that he believes certain things, which will 
 be regarded as the ground or reason why he should be made 
 happy hereafter. One man, with this view, maintains a life of 
 strict integrity and honesty ; another is kind to his family, to 
 the distressed, to the poor ; another is the friend of his country, 
 and glories in the name of a patriot ; another is zealous in the 
 outward duties of religion ; another puts on a hair cloth, and 
 immures himself in a convent ; another makes a pilgrimage to a 
 distant shrine ; another believes that there is one God, and that 
 Mohammed is his prophet; and another believes that Jesus is 
 the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, and looks for salvation only 
 through him. In all these, and in all the other methods by 
 which men hope to be saved, there is something which they 
 regard as a condition of salvation ; that is, something which will 
 indicate such a desire for salvation, or such a fitness for it, that 
 it will constitute a public reason why they should be saved, and 
 not lost. 
 
 It may be regarded, then, as the common opinion of mankind, 
 that there should be some conditions of salvation, and this common 
 opinion evidently accords with the Scriptures. 
 
 II. The second inquiry proposed was, What are the proper 
 characteristics of such conditions ? Making our appeal to the 
 common sense of men, and to their observation in regard to the 
 manner in which the Divine favour on other subjects than re- 
 ligion is bestowed, it will not be difficult to furnish an answer 
 to this question. The following seem to me to be obvious and 
 just principles in the case. 
 
 (1.) The conditions of salvation should be as easy as possible, 
 consistently with the maintenance of other interests. That is, 
 they should be such as not to put salvation out of the power of 
 any for whom it is designed, and to whom it is proposed. There 
 
340 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 might be other important interests to be looked at and secured, 
 but evidently this is one, and one which could not be overlooked. 
 If the other interests could not be secured consistently with this, 
 it is clear that no offer of salvation could be made. If a garrison 
 were besieged, and a surrender were proposed and agreed on, it 
 is plain that the conditions of the surrender should be such as 
 could be easily complied with by all who were embraced in the 
 articles ; and if women and children were included in the number, 
 it would be the height of injustice to make the terms such that 
 they could be complied with only by armed warriors in their 
 full strength, and that deliverance could be secured only by the 
 highest skill of military discipline. So in salvation. A proposal 
 for salvation should be such as will be adapted to all. It should 
 be such as can be embraced by all. It should therefore be of 
 such a general character that it would be applicable to all, 
 and so easy that all could avail themselves of it. But who are 
 the " all " embraced in a plan of salvation ? Not philosophers 
 merely ; not men of learning, and rank, and experience, and 
 wealth, and age only ; but women, children, servants ; the poor, 
 the unlettered, the down-trodden ; the savage, as well as the 
 freeman and the man of civilized life. It is quite clear that a 
 condition of salvation might be conceived of that could be com- 
 plied with by a man of the intellectual power of Plato or Bacon, 
 which would be entirely beyond the grasp of a child or a savage ; 
 and yet it is as clear that in a system of religion designed for 
 man, there were important reasons why the question of salvation 
 should be made to turn on some one thing that could be com- 
 plied with by all. It would be very easy to show that the 
 distinctions made in this world by rank, and wealth, and talent 
 are not such as it would be desirable to perpetuate in heaven, 
 and therefore not such as could properly be laid at the founda- 
 tion of a system of true religion on earth. 
 
 (2.) The conditions should, if possible, be such as would meet 
 certain evils which already existed, or which would be likely to 
 exist, if salvation were not provided. Thus, for example, in the 
 methods by which property is to be bestowed on men, it would 
 seem to be desirable, and in fact to have been a leading thing in 
 the plan, to meet the evils which would grow out of indolence ; 
 and at the same time that property was conferred, to confer a 
 much greater benefit on the character by the very method by 
 which it was to be obtained. For, there are great and undeni- 
 able evils in indolence. There are great evils which exist when 
 property can be acquiied without the necessity of effort. There 
 would be incalculable evils to mankind if their wants were all 
 
FAITH A CONDITION OF SALVATION. 341 
 
 supplied without the necessity of exertion. The hard soil ; the 
 stern climate ; the very rocks of New England, are more favour- 
 able to good influences on the character than the soil and climate 
 hy which all the wants of man may be supplied under the 
 equator ; and every blow which man is obliged to strike to 
 secure property, is of more value to him than the property which 
 he obtains. So all the exertions which are necessary to secure 
 health, or honourable reputation, or a comfortable home, are 
 designed to meet certain evils which would exist if these exertions 
 were not necessary, and which do exist always when the ends 
 can be reached without those means. It would be an incalcu- 
 lable evil for man if God should build houses for him as he 
 creates trees ; if he made wheat to grow as he does cockle and 
 tares ; if he created flax and hemp as he does nettles and bram- 
 bles ; if he manufactured the robes of princes as he does those in 
 which the lily of the valley is adorned ; and if he clothed the 
 daughters of men with rich attire and with brilliant ornaments, 
 as he gives its beauty to the humming-bird or the flamingo. 
 Every exertion which he has made necessary for man or for 
 woman has been designed to meet some evil which would exist 
 if such exertion were not required ; and every condition which 
 he has imposed on which these things are to be obtained, is an 
 arrangement of benevolence. On the same principle, in making 
 arrangements for salvation, if there were any existing evils in 
 the mind of man by nature, or any things which would be evils 
 if salvation had not been provided, it might be presumed that 
 there would be an eye to those evils in arranging the terms on 
 which men might be saved. If, for example, there were evils 
 which arose from the want of faith in God, it might be presumed 
 that the conditions of salvation would have some reference to 
 those evils, and would be adapted to correct them. 
 
 (3.) The conditions of salvation should be such as to show, on 
 the part of him who would obtain it, an interest in the thing, 
 and a desire to secure it, which would be in some degree com- 
 mensurate with its importance. We may argue this because it 
 is actually the condition under which we live. The efforts 
 which men are willing to put forth, the self-denials which they 
 are willing to practise, the perils which they are willing to 
 encounter, furnish the measure of their estimate of the value of 
 the object. It seems to have been a general principle of the 
 Divine arrangements, not to bestow favours on men unless they 
 showed that they so valued them as to be willing to make efforts 
 to procure them. Thus, the danger encountered by the pearl- 
 diver, shows his sense of the value of the pearl; the labour 
 
342 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 which, a farmer is willing to lay out on his farm, shows his 
 estimate of the value of the harvest ; the perils which a merchant 
 will encounter to procure in a far-distant city a stock of goods, 
 show his sense of the value of gain ; the willing privations to 
 which the soldier submits in the tented field, show his sense of 
 the worth of glory. The degree of interest which we have in. 
 anything is expressed in this way, and so expressed as to be 
 intelligible to all men. 
 
 It could not be expected that salvation would be conferred on 
 us in any way in which our desire for it should not be expressed, 
 any more than it would be expected that diamonds, or gold, or 
 earthly crowns would be. Accordingly it would be reasonable 
 to suppose that the conditions of salvation would be such that 
 by complying with them there might be the honest indication of 
 a desire to be saved. It would be unaccountable, if the matter of 
 salvation should be arranged in this respect in a way unlike 
 anything else ; and if we should find that it was bestowed upon 
 men where no desire was expressed, and there was nothing 
 which could be construed into a wish to be saved. 
 
 (4.) The conditions of salvation should be clearly such as to 
 have a good influence on the character ; to enlarge the mind ; to 
 elevate the aims ; to cultivate the nobler powers of our nature. 
 This may be observed to be the character and tendency of all 
 the conditions which God has made necessary, in securing any 
 object which he approves. The cultivation of the earth, for 
 example, is in itself adapted to produce a happier effect on the 
 human mind in keeping it pure, and raising the thoughts to 
 God, than any other worldly occupation for it had more 
 directly the appointment of the Deity. In that appointment, 
 emanating as it did from God, there is nothing in itself that is 
 fitted to enfeeble the mind ; to debase the powers ; to degrade 
 our nature ; to arouse gross and sensual propensities ; to excite 
 mad and turbulent passions. So in the appointment respecting 
 salvation, it cannot be supposed that the conditions would be 
 such as to debase and degrade our nature ; it cannot be believed 
 that anything would be specified that would call forth our 
 sensual propensities, or that would make our views more con- 
 tracted and narrow. "We should look for that which will expand 
 the mind ; which will elevate the thoughts to higher objects than 
 those on the earth ; which will lead us up to God, and to the 
 contemplation of nobler relations than any which we sustain 
 here below. Whether faith, as a condition of salvation, is 
 adapted to open the eyes on other worlds, and to bring higher 
 and more important relations and interests to view than those 
 
FAITH A CONDITION OF SALVATION. 343 
 
 disclosed by sense, would be a fair and legitimate subject of 
 inquiry. 
 
 III. The third inquiry proposed was, Whether these character- 
 istics are found in the requirement of faith as a condition of 
 salvation ? In answering this question, it would be easy to go 
 over again the points which have been specified, and to show, in 
 regard to faith as a condition of salvation, that it is one of the 
 easiest terms which could be proposed, and that it is adapted to 
 man as such to all classes of men ; that it meets certain great 
 evils in the world which have been originated by the want of 
 faith, and which have always existed where there has been no 
 confidence in God ; that it is a condition in which the highest 
 interest may be shown in salvation, and the highest desire to be 
 saved ; and that it is fitted eminently to elevate the thoughts, 
 and to purify the heart, and to accomplish just those effects 
 which ought to be accomplished on the mind of a being like 
 man, leading him to act, not under the influence of sense, but 
 with reference to the world to come. But to dwell on these 
 points would be only to go over the ground again which we 
 have already trod ; and the subject is capable of illustration in a 
 somewhat different form, and in a manner that shall bear more 
 directly on the question why faith in Christ particularly is 
 required in order to salvation. 
 
 Bearing in mind these obvious remarks that a restoration 
 to confidence would meet innumerable evils in a family, in a com- 
 mercial community, between neighbours, and between nations, 
 where it had been disturbed, and that the restoration of con- 
 fidence in God would meet all the evils under w r hich this world 
 labours now, I proceed to show why faith in Christ particularly 
 is made so important as a condition of salvation. With reference 
 to this, two remarks may be made. 
 
 (1.) The first is, that we are to repose faith or confidence in 
 Christ, as authorized to negotiate the terms of reconciliation 
 between God and man. The whole system of revealed religion 
 proceeds on the fact a fact which is apparent without any 
 revelation that an alienation exists between God and man, or 
 that man is in a state of revolt. It was with reference to this 
 alienation that the Son of God came into the world, to accom- 
 plish the most difficult of all undertakings, that of reconciling 
 opposing minds, and of bringing them into harmony. On the 
 one hand, there was the Infinite Mind of God, whose law had 
 been violated, and whose government had been rejected and 
 outraged, and whose threatenings had been disregarded ; and on 
 the other, there were countless millions of minds that were or 
 23 
 
344 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 would be wholly alienated from the Creator. To bring the holy 
 Creator and the millions of rebellious created minds to harmony ; 
 to propose the terms on which God was willing to pardon ; to 
 make such arrangements that he could consistently pardon ; and 
 to bring the minds of revolted men to a willingness to be 
 reconciled, and to cease their rebellion, was the work undertaken 
 by this Great Peacemaker. 
 
 But it is evident that this work could not be accomplished by 
 him, unless there were confidence in him on both sides of this 
 unhappy controversy. In infinitely smaller matters, when nations 
 are alienated, and have long been contending, if a mediator 
 should propose arrangements of peace, or if ambassadors are 
 appointed to negotiate a peace, it is clear that the matter could 
 not proceed a step, unless there were confidence on both sides in 
 the mediator or ambassador. 
 
 Christ is a great Mediator ; a Peacemaker between God and 
 man. On the part of God, there was every reason to repose 
 entire confidence in so great an undertaking ; for he was his 
 only-begotten Son, eternally in his bosom, and loved, with an 
 infinite love, before the foundation of the world, John xvii. 24. 
 By him the worlds had been made (John i. 3 ; Heb. i. 2) ; by 
 him they had been sustained ; and under him, with reference to 
 the work of redemption, their affairs had been administered up 
 to the time when he appeared in the flesh. God the Father 
 reposed unlimited confidence in him when he appointed him to 
 be the Mediator, and entrusted to him the execution of the 
 great purpose of reconciling the world again to the Divine 
 government. This confidence reposed in Christ in the work of 
 mediation is often referred to in the New Testament by the 
 Saviour himself, and by the sacred penmen. " This is my 
 beloved Son," was declared from heaven at his baptism, " in whom 
 I am well pleased," Matt. iii. 17. "Father," said the Saviour, 
 just before his death, " glorify thy name. Then came there a 
 voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will 
 glorify it again," John xii. 28. " Thou hast given him power," 
 said he again, " over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to 
 as many as thou hast given him," John xvii. 2. " All power is 
 given unto me in heaven and in earth ; go ye therefore and 
 teach all nations," Matt, xxviii. 18, 19. " I am the way," said he, 
 " and the truth, and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father but 
 by me," John xiv. 6. So we are told that " there is one God, 
 and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," 
 1 Tim. ii. 5. These things show the degree of confidence which 
 God reposed in him in the work of mediation entrusting to 
 
FAITH A CONDITION OF SALVATION. 345 
 
 him the message of mercy, appointing him to convey it to men, 
 and endowing him as Mediator with all the power and authority 
 which were requisite to accomplish so great a work. 
 
 But confidence in Christ is not less required in regard to the 
 other party, than in respect of Him who had appointed him. It 
 is clear that, unless we have confidence in him as the messenger 
 and ambassador of God ; unless we regard him as sent from heaven 
 and authorized to propose terms of reconciliation ; unless we feel 
 that he can make a definite arrangement, and that what he pro- 
 poses will be sanctioned by God ; unless we feel that he is 
 authorized to propose terms of pardon, and to declare our sins 
 forgiven, and to pronounce us accepted and justified, it would be 
 impossible for us to avail ourselves of any arrangement for 
 salvation through him. We should feel that we were trifling 
 with a great subject ; and in our serious moments, and when we 
 think of the great interests at stake, we should be in no humour 
 to trifle. None of us would seriously think of embracing any 
 terms of reconciliation with God proposed by Mohammed, or 
 Zoroaster, or Confucius ; by Lord Herbert or Mr. Hume ; for 
 we suppose that none of these men were authorized to propose 
 terms of salvation ; we have no faith in them no confidence in 
 them as ambassadors of God, whatever we may think of them in 
 other respects. We should feel no more safe in regard to salva- 
 tion after such a negotiation than we did before. The primary 
 ground of faith, therefore, in Christ is, that we should have con- 
 fidence in him as a mediator, an ambassador, a peacemaker; as 
 authorized to propose to us the terms on which peace may be 
 obtained with an offended Creator. All this was involved in 
 the idea of the Messiahship, and particularly of his being the 
 " Great Prophet that should come into the world." "If ye 
 believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins," John viii. 24. 
 
 (2.) The second remark to which I referred, showing specifically 
 why faith in Christ is demanded, is, that he himself is in fact the 
 only Saviour ; it is by his agency and merits only that we can 
 be received into the favour of God. He came not only to bring 
 the message of reconciliation, and to propose the terms, but to do 
 and to suffer whatever was necessary to be done and suffered in' 
 order that we might be accepted of the Father, or in order that 
 we might be saved consistently with the interests of justice. 
 The case somewhat resembles what it would be in the instance 
 of an ambassador coming to negotiate a peace, who should not 
 only come to propose the terms, but should actually have in his 
 possession that which alone could be regarded as a reparation 
 for wrong- done by one of the parties to the other, and who 
 
346 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 should come not only to persuade the party which had done the 
 wrong to be willing to he reconciled, hut also to take the benefit 
 of what he was ready to furnish to repair all the evil done, and 
 to satisfy the other party. In such a case, it would not be un- 
 reasonable to ask confidence in himself, or to make this one of 
 the conditions by which the favour might be available. In fact, 
 it could not be consistently made available in any other way, or 
 on any other condition ; and unless there were faith in him, the 
 negotiation could proceed no further. 
 
 Thus we are required to exercise faith in the Lord Jesus. 
 We are destitute of merit. We have violated the law of God, 
 and can do nothing to repair the wrong. We are debtors to an 
 incalculable amount to justice ; and we have nothing with which 
 to pay the debt. We can do absolutely nothing to vindicate our 
 own conduct ; to repair the past wrong ; to undo the evils that 
 we have done ; to make up for the dishonour which we have 
 put on the law of God; to atone for our thousands of faults and 
 follies. At this point the Son of God appears, and he conies 
 with the assurance that he has himself perfectly obeyed the law, 
 and has done all the honour to it which can be done by obedience ; 
 that he has suffered a most bitter death a death aggravated by 
 every form of cruelty as an expiation for our sins ; that he 
 will become the guarantee or surety that the law shall suffer no 
 dishonour if we are saved, and that no injury shall result from 
 our pardon ; that in fact all the good effects have been secured 
 which could be by our being doomed to bear the penalty of the 
 law ourselves ; and that all that is needful for us now is to 
 become united to him by an indissoluble bond, to put ourselves 
 under his protection, and to be so identified with him that it 
 will be proper to treat us as he is treated to treat us as if we 
 had personally obeyed the law, or borne its penalty. That 
 which will constitute the closest union in the case, and which 
 will do most to render this identity of treatment proper, is faith; 
 simple confidence in him as our Saviour, and reliance on his 
 merits. If that exists, we are safe safe as he is, and destined 
 to the same glorious inheritance in heaven ; if that does not 
 exist, we are left as we were without a Saviour, and the law is 
 suffered to take its course, and we perish. The primary ground 
 of condemnation is not that we have not believed on him but it 
 is, that we were before under condemnation for our sins, and 
 should have been whether he had come to save us or not. That, 
 however, is greatly aggravated, showing at once the justice of 
 the previous ground of condemnation, and greatly enhancing 
 it, that we did not embrace his offered conditions of deliverance : 
 
FAITH A CONDITION OF SALVATION. 347 
 
 as when a man is sick, and is likely to die, and certainly will 
 die if he does not take a certain medicine, and yet refuses to 
 take it, the primary ground of the difficulty is not that he will 
 not take the medicine ; the main, the essential difficulty preceded 
 that, and would have existed whether the medicine had been 
 provided or not hut, as a moral being, his case may be greatly 
 aggravated by rejecting the only thing which would save him 
 from the grave. 
 
 I have thus stated some of the reasons, as I understand them, 
 why faith in the Redeemer is required as one of the indispens- 
 able conditions of salvation. Two remarks may be suggested in 
 conclusion : 
 
 (1.) The gospel is adapted to man. Its conditions are of such 
 a nature as was clearly proper in a system of religion designed 
 for man, as such, contemplating the race as made up of a great 
 variety of classes and conditions the rich and the poor ; the 
 high and the low ; the free and the bond ; the learned and the 
 ignorant. It was plain that the terms should not be such as would 
 be adapted to one class to the exclusion of another, but should 
 have such a reference to what was common to us as men, and 
 what was practicable, that they might be embraced by all. Thus 
 salvation resembles all the arrangements which God has made 
 for the race and is like the air which we breathe, and the 
 water which we drink at the fountain, and the fruit which we 
 pluck from the tree, adapted not to kings and philosophers only, 
 but to children and peasants ; not to princesses only that shine in 
 courts, and delicate females that " will not adventure the sole of 
 the foot upon the ground," but to her who has her home in the 
 most secluded valley, or who, in the wildest sportiveness of nature, 
 trips lightly over the hills. And to despise religion on this 
 account ; to pass it by neglected ; to deem it unworthy of our 
 notice because it has been embraced, and loved, and enjoyed by 
 the poor, the uneducated, the unrefined is as wise as it would 
 be to refuse to breathe the air of heaven because those of humbler 
 rank breathe it; or to taste the water of the fountain because 
 "one on whom fair science never dawned" stoops down and 
 drinks there ; or to refuse to find pleasure in the landscape, or 
 the light of the sun, because some poor slave has seen beauty in 
 the prospect, and felt his soul expand with the feeling that he 
 was a creature of God or because some poor wretch has looked 
 out from the grated window of a dungeon, and felt a ray of 
 comfort come into his soul as he was permitted to see the beams 
 of the morning illuminate the tops of the distant hills. 
 
 (2.) It follows, that if there are conditions proposed for salva- 
 
348 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 tion, if these conditions are not complied with, then there is no 
 rational ground for hope of eternal life. So we feel and know 
 about other things ; and why shall we not about salvation ? We 
 avail ourselves of the conditions on which property, health, re- 
 putation, may be obtained ; and feel that the only rational basis 
 of hope in the case is, that we comply with the terms on which 
 these things are offered to men. If we are unwilling to comply 
 with these conditions, and the favour is withheld, we feel that 
 we have only ourselves to blame. But these terms are not as 
 easy as those on which salvation is offered. It is easier for a 
 man to be certain of going to heaven, than it is to be certain of 
 being rich, or of enjoying health, or of being honoured. A very 
 small part of the toil which the merchant or the farmer endures 
 to procure wealth ; a very small part of the self-denial which 
 the soldier practises to obtain honour ; a very small part of the 
 painstaking which the invalid resorts to when he goes to other 
 lands to restore himself to health and often in each case in 
 vain would secure beyond doubt the salvation of the soul. The 
 means appointed are more easy ; the result is more certain from 
 the voice of experience ; the promise is more sure. But if man 
 will not employ those means, why should he not fail of salvation, 
 just as certainly as he must be poor, or sick, or unhonoured, if 
 he gives himself up to indolence, and makes no effort to be rich, 
 vigorous in body, or honoured ? And if at last he perishes, when 
 the conditions of salvation were so easy and so available, whom 
 shall he blame but himself? And how can he avoid perishing 
 if he will not avail himself of the only terms on which God has 
 ever promised eternal life ? In view, then, of all these considera- 
 tions, I repeat once more the solemn declaration of Him who is 
 " the way, the truth, and the life," your final Judge and mine : 
 " He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved; and he that 
 believeth not shall be damned." 
 
SEKMON XXVII. 
 
 THE VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 
 
 HEB. xi. 6. " But without faith it is impossible to please him : for he 
 that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder 
 of them that diligently seek him." 
 
 THERE are two points of inquiry respecting faith which I next 
 propose to consider: one is, the place which faith occupies 
 in the system of revealed religion ; and the other, the reason why 
 such a degree of prominence has "been given to it. 
 
 I. The place which faith occupies in the system of revealed, 
 religion. 
 
 No one can mistake as to this. It is declared to he indispensable 
 to salvation ; the whole question of life or death is made to depend 
 on it ; it is necessary in order to avail ourselves of the "benefit of 
 the death of Christ ; the opposite of faith, i. e. unbelief, is condemned 
 in the most unambiguous manner, and it is solemnly declared that 
 the want of it shall for ever exclude from the kingdom of God. 
 It is unequivocally stated in the New Testament, that where there 
 is not faith there is no true religion, and that no one can approach 
 God with any hope of acceptance without it. It is made one of the 
 conditions of salvation which are never dispensed with ; and what- 
 ever else a man may have, if he have not this, it is declared that 
 he cannot be saved. 
 
 The following passages of the New Testament will show the 
 place which faith occupies in the Christian system, and, though 
 familiar, seem necessary to be repeated in order to prepare for the 
 remarks which I have to make in explanation of the subject. 
 " He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved ; but he that 
 believeth not shall be damned," Mark xvi. 16. " He that 
 believeth on him is not condemned ; but he that believeth not is 
 condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of 
 the only-begotten Son of God," John iii. 18. " He that believeth 
 hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see 
 life, but the wrath of God abideth on him," John iii. 36. " If ye 
 believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins ; ,and where I am, 
 thither ye cannot come," John viii. 24, and vii. 34. So the text . 
 
350 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 " Without faith, it is impossible to please Mm ; for he that cometh 
 to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them 
 that diligently seek him." 
 
 Such passages settle the question in regard to the prominence 
 which faith occupies in the system of revealed religion, and show 
 that, in that system, the whole subject of man's salvation is made 
 to depend on it. It is one of the two indispensable things on 
 which the salvation of any of the race is made to rest. 
 
 Now to this view of the importance of faith in a system of 
 religion, I need not say that numerous objections at once occur 
 to many minds. The prominence given in Christianity to faith 
 has been a standing objection urged by infidels against the system ; 
 and even in minds not inclined to scepticism there are difficul- 
 ties which are not easy to be removed. Mr. Hume, in his 
 Essay on Miracles, remarks with a sneer, that " our most holy 
 religion is founded onj^ilA, not on reason ;" and then proceeds to 
 show that it is not safe to subject it to any severe test of reason. 
 
 The most material objections, and those which involve real 
 difficulty in regard to the prominence given to faith in the system 
 of Christianity, are the following : 
 
 (1.) That it is an arbitrary arrangement; that faith in itself 
 has no such essential prominency and importance as to make it 
 proper to select this as a condition of salvation ; that as a mental 
 exercise it has no peculiar dignity or value over other mental 
 exercises which should have led to its selection; and that, in 
 itself considered, there is no more reason -why faith should have 
 been selected as a condition of salvation than why, for example, 
 hope, or fear, or love should have been. 
 
 (2.) That salvation should not be made to depend on any mere 
 mental operation ; that the rewards of heaven and hell should be 
 apportioned rather to the character and conduct than to any mere 
 state of mind y that we judge of men, not by what they believe, 
 but by what they do ; that the retributions of this world neces- 
 sarily, in courts, in families, in holding offices, and in the measure 
 of prosperity which men enjoy, or the reverses which they ex- 
 perience, are not determined by what men believe or do not believe, 
 but by what they do, or fail to do ; and that there is a propriety 
 that the same rule should be observed in the retributions of the 
 future state. 
 
 (3.) That faith, as a mental operation, is beyond our control ; 
 that we are so made that we cannot help believing where proper 
 evidence is presented, and cannot make ourselves believe where 
 there is not ; and that as men have no control over their faith, 
 they are not responsible for their belief. 
 
VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 351 
 
 (4.) That it is no matter what a man "believes, provided his 
 conduct is right ; and that one mode of faith can no more affect the 
 interests of society, or a man's own soul, than another ; and that 
 the grand question is, not what are a man's opinions on speculative 
 matters, hut what is his character. 
 
 (5.) It would probably be added, that faith stands in quite 
 strong contrast with reason, and that to represent religion as 
 depending on faith is to undervalue the rational nature that God 
 has given us, and that it is in fact making credulity a virtue, and 
 diminishing the respect which our Maker has taught us to show to 
 our own rational powers. 
 
 I could perhaps make these objections appear stronger by ex- 
 panding them, but I have not designedly diminished their force, or 
 concealed the point of difficulty. It will be seen at once that they 
 are capable of being made to be weighty objections, and that the 
 public defenders of the Christian system are not at liberty to pass 
 them by unnoticed, or to treat them as though they were worthy 
 of no regard. As interested themselves in the questions of religion, 
 as well as in relation to their office as guides of others, they are 
 bound to meet them in a frank manner, and to inquire whether 
 they can be removed. 
 
 II. We are conducted, then, to the second and main point to 
 be considered the reason rvhy such prominence has been assigned 
 to faith in the system of revealed religion. 
 
 I begin this part of my subject by observing, that a word, 
 though susceptible of an easy and unobjectionable explanation, 
 may by long usage, or by certain associations, have had certain 
 ideas attached to it which may greatly injure its use in an argu- 
 ment. Instead of suggesting only what is essential in the meaning 
 of the word, it may suggest, either with that or without it, certain 
 other things which may greatly impair its force, and leave a very 
 erroneous impression. Thus the word faith, when suggested, 
 may have in many minds a near alliance to credulity; in the 
 same minds, or in other minds, it may be understood as some- 
 thing in contradistinction to reason, as implying that faith is not 
 based on reason, or would not be sustained by it ; and when the 
 word is used, there may be conveyed with it the idea that it is 
 something wholly separate from reason, and that the thing in 
 relation to which faith is exercised is something which could not 
 be supported by reason. This was evidently the aspect in which 
 the word was suggested to Mr. Hume's mind when he said, " Our 
 most holy religion is founded on faith, NOT on reason." 
 
 There will be some advantage, therefore, and no injustice in 
 any way, in conducting the argument, in taking a word which 
 
352 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 involves all that is essential in faith, without the danger to which 
 I have referred. I propose, therefore, to make use of the word 
 confidence; a word which expresses all that is essential in the 
 idea of faith, and which is not liable to the disadvantage already 
 referred to. Confidence, it is clear, may be founded on good and 
 substantial reasons. Indeed, it cannot exist without something 
 that is regarded as a valid reason in any particular case, for we 
 always connect with that word the idea that there is good reason, 
 in the instance to which it is applied, why confidence should 
 exist. If a man has confidence in the ability of a mercantile 
 house to meet its engagements, it is supposed to be because he 
 has good reason for it. The same thing may be true indeed of 
 faith, and should be in all true faith, but the word does not 
 always suggest that idea. I ^propose, therefore, in illustrating the 
 value and importance of faith, in a system of religion, to make 
 use, in general, of the word confidence instead of the more usual word. 
 
 The question then is, What is the value of confidence in a 
 community; or, in other words, Is there any such value to be 
 attached to it as to justify the primacy and importance attributed 
 to faith in the Bible ? What important part does it perform in 
 the world ? What evils result from the want of it ? 
 
 Faith, or confidence, if a virtue at all, or if of value at all, is a 
 social or relative virtue. It is true that we sometimes speak of 
 having confidence in ourselves ; but it is under the influence of 
 that common fiction of the mind by which we regard ourselves 
 as two persons, or as having antagonist feelings and principles ; 
 as when we speak of the reason and the passions as in conflict, 
 and struggling for the mastery, and identify ourselves with one 
 of them as at war with the other, Rom. vii. 17 23. But when 
 we speak of having confidence, with strict propriety, it is of 
 confidence in another another person, a government, a bank, a 
 debtor. Faith, then, might be distinguished, if it were necessary 
 to go further into an examination of this point, from many virtues 
 which terminate on ourselves, and which pertain only to ourselves. 
 The point of examination now is, its value in the relations which 
 men sustain, or in social interests. All that I can say will be 
 merely to vary a very simple idea, or to apply one thought to 
 different things ; but it will, I trust, conduct us to the conclusion 
 which it is desirable to reach in order to confirm the statement 
 in my text.* 
 
 * Some of the remarks and illustrations on the subject of faith in this 
 discourse have been made substantially in a different connexion in a previous 
 sermon in this volume, but they seem so appropriate to the design of this 
 discourse that it was not found convenient to omit them. 
 
VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 353 
 
 (1.) I begin with a reference to the value of confidence in a 
 family. It can hardly be necessary to do much more here than 
 simply to refer to the subject. All of us feel that the welfare of 
 a family depends wholly on this ; and that if it were destroyed, 
 happiness would at once flee from our dwellings. All the good 
 order, the prosperity, the happiness of a family depends on the 
 confidence that a husband and wife repose in each other ; on the 
 confidence that children have in their parents ; and perhaps in a 
 not less degree on the confidence which parents have in their 
 children. Every hour that we live in these relations we are 
 dependent on that confidence for our peace of mind ; and in rela- 
 tion to our domestic comfort and order there is nothing that could 
 be substituted for it. Every hour of happiness that any of us 
 have had in the marriage relation has been identified with that, 
 and at any moment our happiness would have been destroyed 
 effectually if that had not existed. There could have been no sub- 
 stitute for it. No prosperity abroad ; no success in business ; no 
 honours lavished upon us in the world ; no sudden gains ; no 
 pleasures derived from literature, science, or the arts, could have 
 been a substitute for this, or could have mitigated the panga 
 which would have existed in the bosom at the very idea of 
 "infidelity," or a want of confidence, in this relation. The 
 happiness and success of a parent depend wholly, too, on the 
 confidence which his children repose in him. No parental govern- 
 ment can answer the purpose where this is not secured ; there can 
 be no domestic peace where this is not found. It is not on force 
 that we rely in governing our families and making them happy ; 
 it is in the confidence which our children shall have in our wisdom, 
 our integrity, our ability to give them the advice which they 
 need, our qualifications to govern in the little community of which 
 we are the head. If that cannot be secured in a family, there is 
 nothing else that can be permanently substituted in its place. 
 And, as already remarked, perhaps to a not less degree is domestic 
 happiness dependent on the measure of just confidence that we 
 repose in our children. If we have no confidence that they will 
 act rightly ; if we cannot trust them out of our sight ; if we feel 
 when they go out of the door that they will visit some place of 
 infamy, regardless of our commands, whatever else they may 
 have, whether learning or talent, it is plain that peace will be a 
 stranger to our bosoms, and that slumber will not visit our 
 eyelids. 
 
 Now if these things be so, it will be seen that the most effective 
 mischief which any man could do, or could desire to do, in a 
 family, would be simply to destroy this mutual confidence. If I 
 
354 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 had the power, and wished to strike the most deadly hlow at the 
 heart of a family, I should do nothing more. I would go and take 
 away all the confidence of a husband in his wife, and of a wife in 
 her husband, and fill their minds with distrust and jealousy and 
 by doing this I would take away all peace from their bosoms, and 
 sleep from their pillows. Or I would go and destroy all confidence 
 in the bosom of sons or daughters towards a father ; and teach 
 them to feel that he was not worthy of their respect or love and 
 I would thus introduce insubordination and disobedience into the 
 most peaceful dwelling on earth. Or I would go and destroy all 
 the confidence of a father in his sons or his daughters ; and I would 
 make him restless and sad whenever they were out of Ms sight ; 
 and I would fill his bosom with the keenest anguish at the feeling 
 that all his hopes had been blasted, and I would transform all his 
 cherished and happy prospects in regard to their future character 
 into dark and gloomy forebodings, and I would so torment him by 
 a simple want of confidence as to make him wish that neither he 
 nor they had been born, and long for the hour when he should 
 find rest from his mental tortures in the grave. 
 
 (2.) Let us apply this remark to the relations sustained in a 
 commercial community. Let a man reflect but for one moment 
 how much the prosperity of such a community depends on mutual 
 confidence, and he cannot be insensible to its value and importance. 
 Let confidence in a commercial house be shaken, and how many 
 interests are aifected by it at once ! Let confidence in a bank be 
 shaken, and there may not be an interest in that community which 
 is not affected by it. As when the storm shakes an old oak that 
 has stood for generations, the admiration of men, the far-distant 
 fibres of the roots, fine and tender, that run under the ground 
 hidden from human view, shall be torn and rent, so it is when 
 confidence in such an institution is shaken. There are a thousand 
 interests which you would not have supposed would have been 
 affected, that feel the shock. For such a shock affects not merely 
 the commercial world the men whose business may be dependent 
 on its stability. In that bank shall have been confided the 
 little property of hundreds or thousands of widows and orphans. 
 He who had had the ability to lay up what it was hoped would 
 make old age or the day of sickness comfortable, had entrusted it 
 there. The professional man that had saved from his hard earnings 
 what he felt he should need when the infirmities of age should 
 forbid his longer toil, had felt that he had made competent provision 
 for declining years, and had deposited it there. The father who 
 had a beloved daughter, for whom he would make some provision 
 as an expression of his love, and who had sought to calm his own 
 
VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 355 
 
 mind when lie reflected that lie might be taken away, and be no 
 longer able to be her protector and friend, had deposited what he 
 meant for her there. When confidence fails in such an institution ; 
 when it reels, ready to fall ; when it comes down a mass of ruins, 
 and no one can tell where the millions entrusted to it are scattered, 
 there are thousands and tens of thousands of hearts that are made 
 to bleed, and a blow is struck that vibrates through a community, 
 reaching remote points that you would not have supposed could be 
 affected by such a shock. 
 
 To commercial men, it is needful only to advert to this point. 
 Well do they know that the entire prosperity of the community 
 depends on confidence, and that when that is gone, all is gone. 
 To see this in its full force, all that would be necessary would be 
 to recall to recollection past events in our own community, and 
 iii our own land. From the minds of those who then lived, and 
 especially from the minds of the multitudes who were so deeply 
 interested, those scenes will never pass away while life lasts. Con- 
 fidence in banks, and commercial houses, and in the solvency of 
 distant debtors, seemed almost universally to have failed, and the 
 whole land was agitated and convulsed, not because we were poor, 
 or because our soil had ceased to be fruitful, or our air was pesti- 
 lential, or our resources had departed, or because " grim-visaged 
 war" frowned upon us, but because confidence was gone. 
 
 The same remark might be made here which was made respect- 
 ing the peace of a family. If I had the power, and were disposed to 
 inflict the deepest evil on a community, I would do no more than 
 destroy this universal confidence. I would go into the commercial 
 world and breathe suspicions, and start rumours, and insinuate 
 doubts, and circulate reports, and unsettle the confidence of one 
 commercial house in another, and of one bank in another, and of one 
 part of the country in another, until I produced universal distrust ; 
 and just so far as I succeeded, I would spread universal ruin. No 
 foreign war, no spreading pestilence, no change of the seasons, 
 would produce deeper distress in this land ; for what commercial 
 operation is there that could be continued for a day, if confidence 
 were gone ? 
 
 (3.) Let us apply this remark to the intercourse of nations, and 
 see if we can find an illustration of the value of confidence or faith 
 there. Nations never have been entirely independent of each 
 other ; as society advances, they are becoming less and less 
 so. They may be independent in their government and laws, 
 and so far as any direct foreign interference is concerned; but 
 they are so in no other sense. They are adjacent to each other, 
 and the prosperity of one affects the prosperity of another; or 
 
356 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 they are distant, and are dependent for a thousand things which 
 can be produced in the one, but which cannot be produced in the 
 other. Formerly, when men had fewer artificial wants, and when 
 the facilities of commerce were less, they were far more indepen- 
 dent ; for Assyria, and Persia, and ancient Germany, and Gaul, 
 were far less dependent on other nations, and would feel the effects 
 of any change in other nations, far less than Great Britain and the 
 United States, or even France and Russia, would now. The 
 tendency of things is to increase the dependence, and to make the 
 nations of the earth one great brotherhood. 
 
 There have been two ways of endeavouring to secure a safe and 
 prosperous intercourse among nations : by the force of arms, and 
 by treaties of commerce and of peace ; by the dread of the sword, 
 and by mutual faith. The ancients relied mainly on the former ; 
 and seemed to regard a treaty as secure only so far as there was 
 dread of the armed legions, or the war-galley. Rome had little 
 confidence in the fidelity of the nations that were reduced to her 
 control as provinces, except as they understood that if they were 
 not faithful, the Roman legions would soon thunder at the gates 
 of their cities. 
 
 The course of events, the tendency of society, is leading the 
 world to repose on another kind of security in the intercourse 
 between nations. We indeed endeavour to blend the two things 
 still to intimidate, and to secure confidence, and there is a sort 
 of reliance on both ; but there is a growing sense that the former 
 is unnecessary, and that our main dependence is on the latter. 
 What merchant is there that sends a ship from one of our 
 ports to Calcutta, or Canton, who ever thinks . of the armed 
 vessels that float in distant seas as a reason why he may commit 
 his property safely to the chances of commerce? What is it that 
 holds the commercial world together, and renders commerce safe ? 
 Is it our navy, our army, or is it the faith of treaties ? You may 
 say, perhaps, that those treaties would not be regarded if an armed 
 power were not at hand to enforce them ; but that remains to be 
 Been. The truth is, that the nations are depending more and more 
 on what is for their mutual interests, and on the faith of treaties ; 
 and are looking with more and more jealousy on any armed 
 interference, and more aversion on any . effort to secure com- 
 mercial advantages by superior force of arms. The world is to 
 be held together by carifidence^ and not by the terror of arms; 
 and the sacreduess of plighted faith is to take the place of the 
 sword. 
 
 Let any intelligent man reflect how much at this moment the 
 commerce of our own country and of the rest of the world is secured 
 
VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 857 
 
 Tby treaty, by plighted faith, and lie will see the force and the 
 value of the observations which I am making. There is almost 
 no nation none with whom a treaty would be of value with 
 whom such a treaty of commerce does not exist. There is almost 
 no land, no port even, where we have not a consul not an armed 
 man at the head of embattled legions ; not a man with the em- 
 blazonments of war the epaulette and the sword, but a simple, 
 plain, unostentatious citizen usually of plain dress and plain 
 manners the fit representative of a peaceful treaty, and the 
 exponent of the faith of nations. What is right to be done in the 
 land where he is, it is presumed will be done ; if wrong has been 
 committed toward any of the citizens of his own land, he presumes 
 there will be a disposition to redress it; and though he may 
 feel indeed, and be assured, that the entire power of his country 
 would be ready to enforce what is right if it is denied, yet how- 
 rare a thing it is that there is any allusion to such power in 
 regulating commercial intercourse. 
 
 Suppose, now, all this Avere to come to an end. Suppose no 
 further reliance could be placed on treaties and international 
 compacts. Is there any form of mischief that could be done in this 
 world so great as to disturb this coirfidence between nations, this 
 faith in compacts ? If it were done, if it were felt that there were 
 no reliance to be placed on any treaty hereafter, even with all the 
 armed force that you could send, is there a vessel that would leave 
 this port, or any other part of our land, to bring back the produc- 
 tions of distant climes ? Could the commerce of the world survive 
 such a destruction of confidence ? 
 
 (4.) We may apply the remark respecting the value of confi- 
 dence, or faith, to the administration of a government. We have 
 seen its value in a family, in the commercial world, in the inter- 
 course of nations. It is an obvious remark that it is of no less 
 value in the administration of a government, in the enacting and 
 execution of the laws, in a judicial transaction. Peace and 
 harmony, and in connexion with them all forms of prosperit}^ 
 depend wholly on the degree of confidence that shall be reposed 
 in the administration of a government, or the decision of a court. 
 You may be certain, indeed, that a sheriff or a marshal has power 
 to summon an armed force to his aid, but you are not induced by 
 that to pay your taxes or your custom-house duties, or to submit 
 to the judgment of a court. You calmly acquiesce, because you 
 have confidence in the general working the equitableness of the 
 institutions of your country. Such confidence may be reposed in 
 a judicial opinion that a nation shall acquiesce in it, though con- 
 flicting claims of the highest order may be involved ; the laws of 
 
358 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 states may have come in collision; and property to an amount 
 which no one can estimate may be at stake. 
 
 Our whole land is dependent every day on confidence in 
 the government ; on confidence in the judges ; on confidence in 
 the general virtue of the people ; on confidence in the excellence 
 of our institutions. There is not a wheel of the government that 
 could move for a moment if it were not for this. No one of us 
 would entrust a letter to the mail, no one of us would carry a 
 cause before any constituted tribunal, or even submit it to an 
 arbitration. 
 
 (5.) We are prepared now to apply the remark to the main 
 thing pertaining to the subject before us the government of God. 
 The demand in the Bible is, that man shall repose confidence in 
 his Maker, for " without faith it is impossible to please him." 
 The inquiry which we have had in view has been, What is the reason 
 why faith under his government has such a primacy, and is of 
 BO much value ? 
 
 Now it is obvious that the value of confidence is as great 
 in God's government as in any other, and may be as great in 
 the universal family, embracing all worlds, over which he presides, 
 as in the much smaller families with which we are conversant. 
 But it should also be added, that to an extent elsewhere propor- 
 tionably unknown the government of God is one of cotifidence, 
 not of force. With all power in his arm, and with all resources 
 to bind, and fetter, and restrain, and punish, at his command, 
 still that which he most relies on in his administration is not 
 force, but love and confidence. It is in every way probable that 
 that is the only thing on which reliance is now placed in heaven 
 in controlling the pure and happy minds there, and that vast as 
 they know the power of God to be, they are not restrained by 
 that, but by the all-controlling influence of affection. They have 
 confidence in God in his wisdom and his goodness in the equity 
 of his laws and in the principles of his administration ; and this 
 is all that is needed to preserve order, and harmony, and peaceful 
 obedience in heaven. For 
 
 Love is the golden chain that binds 
 The happy souls above. 
 
 The thing, too, on which reliance was placed in Paradise to secure 
 obedience was confidence. There was no force employed there. 
 There were no walls built around it which man could not overleap. 
 There were no cherubim with flaming swords to prevent the 
 egress of man, as there were, after his apostacy, to forbid his 
 return. As long as confidence in God remained, man was happy. 
 
VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 359 
 
 WLen that failed, lie was ruined ; and the want of confidence in 
 God was there, as it ever has "been since, the source of all the 
 woes that man has ei porienced. With strict philosophical accu- 
 racy, all the woes which have come upon the race have arisen 
 from a want of confidence in God as *he just moral Governor of 
 the world. Man has no confidence ii. Ms law, in his goodness, 
 in his truth, in his promises, in his threatenings, m his qualifica- 
 tions for empire. He has no such confidence in him as to submit 
 to his teachings ; to bow reverently to his will where his dealings 
 are mysterious ; to resign himself to him in his trials ; to embrace 
 his promises, when he offers heaven to him ; to feel alarm, and to 
 turn from his sins, when he threatens the punishment of hell. 
 Even now, with all our external sources of trouble and woe, with 
 all the sorrows and ills of poverty, want, sickness, bereavement, 
 and dreaded death, this would be a happy world if man had con- 
 fidence in God ; for the moment you can infuse into the bosom of 
 a sufferer, no matter whether in bereavement, on a sick bed, or 
 in any other form of woe, confidence in God, that moment you 
 have soothed the anguish of the soul, and diffused through the 
 bosom peace and joy. 
 
 I will ask your attention, in view of the reasoning pursued in. 
 this discourse, only to one thought of a practical nature suggested 
 by the subject. It is, that infidelity, or unbelief, as a speculative 
 or practical matter, is not a harmless thing. It is often supposed 
 to be so. It is regarded as a mere matter of speculation a thing 
 in reference to which the utmost freedom of the mind may be 
 innocently indulged ; a thing in which you do others no wrong, 
 for you deprive them of no property by it, and suppose that you 
 do nothing to sap the foundation of their happiness. 
 
 But if the views suggested in this discourse are correct, nothing 
 can be more unfounded than this opinion. Is that a harmless 
 system which, if it came into your family, would unsettle all 
 the confidence which you have in your wife, and all the confidence 
 which your children have in you as a father ? Is he an innocent 
 man who would unsettle all confidence in a commercial house, in 
 a bank, in a lawyer, in a physician, in a bench of judges ? Would 
 that be an innocent system which would breathe suspicion in the 
 community on the character of every minister of the gospel, and 
 every professor in a college, and every teacher in a school ? And 
 if you may suppose that a man of capital should establish a system 
 of agencies all over the land, and have them wholly under his 
 control, and that the design should be by a well-arranged scheme 
 of operations to destroy all confidence, say in every merchant, and 
 every monied institution, would you say that that was a harmless 
 
 24 
 
360 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 system of operations ? And suppose that a man should come into 
 your family and unsettle all the confidence of your children in 
 God, and in the principles of virtue and sound morals, and in 
 that holy volume which you regard as the foundation of all 
 just views of morals, shall we regard him as a harmless man, 
 and his opinions as a matter of no consequence? Or suppose, 
 by an extended system of agencies, by the facilities of the 
 press, by his power of scattering pamphlets and books all over 
 the land, he should pursue an extended scheme of operations to 
 destroy all the confidence of man in God as a moral Governor, 
 and in his law, and in the principles of virtue, and in the 
 foundations of morality ; that should tend to destroy the con- 
 fidence which the poor, the afflicted, the oppressed, and the 
 dying repose in God their Saviour ; which should leave them to 
 suffer without support, and to feel that they are " in a forsaken 
 and fatherless world," and to die without hope, will you say 
 that such a system is harmless ? Why more so than when a 
 malignant agent establishes a system with a view of unsettling 
 the confidence in every merchant and monied institution through- 
 out the land ? Is confidence in the foundations of morals, and 
 confidence in God as the righteous moral Governor of the world, 
 of less importance than in a man or in a bank ? The perpetrator 
 of the deepest mischief in this world is the man who lives to 
 unsettle confidence. Let my enemy come, if he wishes, and take 
 the little property which my hands have earned ; let him come 
 and strike me on one cheek and on the other ; let him take my 
 coat and my cloak also ; let him turn me out from my happy and 
 peaceful home, a penniless wanderer on the face of the earth ; 
 but let him not come and destroy the confidence which my wife 
 reposes in me, and I in her ; let him not come and unsettle the 
 foundations of moral principle in which I have endeavoured to 
 ground my children ; let him not seek to alienate our confidence 
 in each other and in our God. Poor, and penniless, and cold, 
 and naked, and with no certain dwelling-place, I should wander 
 with my family with one source of pure happiness, undisturbed, 
 if they trusted in me, and I in them, and all in God ; but in the 
 most splendid palace that imperial wealth could build and adorn, 
 I could never be happy if confidence in them, and in my Maker 
 and my Saviour, were blasted and destroyed. 
 
 Nor is unbelief, as a practical personal matter, more harmless. 
 Sinner, it is not an innocent thing that you have no confidence, 
 no faith in the God that made you. You wrong him ; you wrong 
 your own soul. There is no being that is so worthy of your con- 
 fidence as he ; none that has so high a claim. And how can you 
 
VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 361 
 
 "please Mm" if you have no confidence in him? Can a child 
 a son a daughter though learned, and accomplished, or graced 
 with polished manners, though admired for beauty, or praised 
 for talent, or distinguished for eloquence, can such a child 
 * 4 please " his father, can he be worthy of his loye, if he has no 
 just confidence in him if he treats him with cold neglect if 
 he never relies on his promises, or respects his principles ? 
 Sinner ! the source, the root, the germ of all the evil in your 
 soul, is the want of confidence in God. The evil will be arrested, 
 the ruin which is coming on you will be stayed, the moment you 
 are brought back, through the great Mediator, to exercise faith 
 in him who made you and not till then. Without that, 
 dissociated from him, you are destined to a degree of wretched- 
 ness and woe, compared with which all the evils produced by 
 want of confidence in a family, a commercial community, between 
 nations, or under a human government, are trifles not to be 
 named ! 
 
SEEMON XXVIIL 
 
 FAITH AS AN ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 
 2 COB. v. 7. "We walk by faith, not by sight." 
 
 IK the first discourse on the subject of faith, I illustrated the 
 inquiry why faith is made an indispensable condition of salva- 
 tion ; in the second, I considered the value and importance of 
 faith. 
 
 Faith enters so much into the Christian system, is regarded 
 as so essential an element in our conduct as religious beings, and 
 is designed to accomplish so important effects on our character, 
 that, in every point of view in which it can be regarded, it de- 
 mands our careful and prayerful consideration. It seems to 
 be supposed that there is some foundation for the importance 
 attached to it in our very nature, or that man is so made that 
 it is designed that faith shall be an important element of his 
 conduct, and shall exert an important influence over him. If 
 there were not something in man that laid the foundation for 
 this, the prominence given to faith in the Bible would seem to 
 be unauthorized, and the purpose of making so much out of it 
 would seem to be an attempt to institute an arbitrary arrange- 
 ment, and to separate religion from all other principles of action. 
 I propose, then, in order to explain the prominence and the 
 value assigned to faith in the Bible, to consider it as an elemen- 
 tary principle of conduct ; or to inquire into the influence which 
 it is adapted to exert on man. I shall refer to it, not exclu- 
 sively as a Christian virtue for the object is to inquire why it 
 should be incorporated among the Christian virtues ^at all ; but 
 as a state of mind a principle of conduct a law of our being. 
 Our aim is to ascertain what place it is designed to occupy in 
 the mind of such a being as man, and placed in the circum- 
 stances in which he is ; and the bearing of all my remarks will 
 be to illustrate the power of that principle stated in the text, 
 " We walk by faith, not by sight." 
 
 In order to illustrate the subject properly, it will be necessary 
 to consider two points : I. What the principle is ; and, II. Its 
 influence as an. element of conduct. 
 
FAITH AS A PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 363 
 
 I. The first inquiry is, What is the principle referred to ? It 
 is of the highest importance to settle this, because, either by 
 inadvertence or design, faith is so often confounded with other 
 things, that its value as an element of action is by no means 
 appreciated, and on this account religion is charged with that 
 which, if true, would make it unworthy the serious attention of 
 mankind. A very common impression is, that faith is synony- 
 mous with credulity, and that in proportion as we exalt faith as 
 as principle of action, we undervalue reason. Let us then inquire, 
 and see whether we can ascertain precisely what the state of 
 mind is, when we say in any proper sense, that a man " walks 
 by faith" Perhaps we can bring out the state of mind which 
 it is proposed to consider, by placing it in contrast with other 
 things. 
 
 (1.) It is to be distinguished from credulity, and indeed in 
 many respects is the opposite of credulity. " Credulity is a 
 weakness of mind by which a person is disposed to believe, or 
 yield his assent to a declaration or proposition without sufficient 
 evidence of the truth of what is said or proposed ; a disposition 
 to believe on slight evidence, or no evidence at all." Webster. 
 Credulity relates to the belief of reported or alleged facts ; be- 
 lieving them when there is no sufficient testimony or evidence, 
 and is the opposite of clear and thorough investigation ; faith, 
 as an element of action, refers not so much to what are now 
 facts, as to what may be; not so much to what has been in the 
 past, as to what may be or will be in the future. Credulous 
 men believe in things which are said to have occurred, or which 
 are alleged to be occurring at the present, which are of little 
 importance in themselves, and which are fitted to exert no good 
 influence on the character ; faith has relation, as an element of 
 conduct, to things to come, and to those things which are deeply 
 to affect our character and destiny. Children, in an amiable 
 sense, are credulous for they act on the principle of our nature, 
 which teaches us, and prompts us to believe, until we learn to 
 distrust by painful experience. Whatever is reported to them, 
 they believe for they have not yet learned to distinguish truth 
 from falsehood, and indeed have hardly learned as yet that there 
 is any such thing as falsehood. j Men in the infancy of society 
 are credulous for they are then much like children ; and amidst 
 the multitudes of things which are before their minds, and the 
 numerous questions which present themselves, and under the 
 influence of an imagination easily excited, they have not yet 
 learned to separate the true from the false, and believe them all 
 alike : stories of preternatural apparitions, and the influence of 
 
364 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 the stars, and portents, and omens, and the deeds of demi-gods, 
 all together. Hence, all early history is made up of marvels 
 like the books with which it has been so much the fashion to 
 entertain children. The dupes of superstition are credulous ; for 
 they connect certain things with religion, and they have settled 
 it in their minds that all that is connected with religion is true. 
 Hence they can believe that the blood of St. Januarius is liquified 
 at certain seasons of the year, and that the " house of the Virgin" 
 was borne miraculously through the air from Palestine to Italy; 
 hence they can believe in the virtue of climbing up the steps on 
 Pilate's staircase, and that the " seamless coat" of Christ was 
 discovered by St. Helena, after lying for centuries unknown, and 
 then again, that it was as marvellously preserved in the cathe- 
 dral at Treves. Infidels, though it may seem to be a paradox, 
 are credulous men. Lord Herbert, among the best of them, was 
 among the most credulous of men; and I take the liberty to 
 affirm that, as a body of men, none have been more distinguished 
 for credulity than those who have been reckoned among infidels. 
 Faith, as a principle of action, is wholly distinguished from this. 
 A man who has faith, and is greatly influenced by it, may be a 
 credulous man ; but his credulity pertains to other things con- 
 nected with his mental organization, and not to his acting by 
 faith. 
 
 (2.) By many, faith is sometimes contrasted in a strange manner 
 with a habit of scepticism and of doubt, and with an implied advan- 
 tage in favour of the latter. It is supposed by them, that, as a 
 habit of mind, a disposition to doubt, to be cautious, to be slow in 
 admitting evidence, and to refuse assent in cases where so many 
 yield so readily, not only stands in strong contrast with the state 
 of mind required in the gospel, but is a better state of mind. Such 
 a man, therefore, supposes that while he retains this disposition 
 of mind to examine everything in an impartial manner, and to 
 admit the full influence of all reasonable doubts on his mind in 
 any case, he cannot be a Christian. Yet, if I understand the 
 matter, this is not a just view of the case at all. The faith of 
 the gospel is not opposed to the most candid and thorough in- 
 vestigation of any subject ; and the state of mind here referred 
 to, and placed in contrast with it, is not distinguished from the 
 faith of the gospel by a habit of bolder and more independent 
 thinking. The difference between them is not in regard to the 
 freedom of inquiry; it is in regard to the influence of hope and 
 of desire. Give to a man who is a sceptic the influence of the 
 hope which the gospel proposes ; create in his heart a desire for 
 that on which faith rests, and in view of which it acts, and that 
 
FAITH AS A PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 365 
 
 same man will be no more cautious and independent than he 
 who lives by faith. It is the absence of this, and not inde- 
 pendence of thinking, which distinguishes him ; for while he 
 has no desire to know God, to live for ever, to be holy and pure 
 in a future world, he is of course sceptical. He cares nothing 
 about the evidence on the subject. He neither examines it, nor 
 will he allow it to make any impression on his mind. His mind, 
 therefore, is not better, in the sense that it is more candid, and 
 cautious, and independent; but worse,in the sense that it is a mind 
 that does not feel or appreciate the influence of hope, and of 
 desire for that which is of the highest value and importance. 
 
 (3.) Faith, as an element of conduct, I need hardly say, is 
 distinct from acting under the mere influence of the senses. 
 " We walk by faith, not by sight." Most men act only from a 
 reference to the senses, or in the light only which the relations 
 of the senses cast on objects. They say, " Let us eat and drink, 
 for to-morrow we die," 1 Cor. xv. 32. "I shall have peace, 
 though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunken- 
 ness to thirst," Deut. xxix. 19. If they do not live under the 
 influence of the senses, in the lowest meaning of the term that 
 of gross corruption yet they aim to give what they would 
 regard as the due influence to the information derived from the 
 senses, or the inlets of knowledge from the external world. 
 They become " matter of fact " men ; their thoughts range only 
 through the circle of the questions which arise about " profit and 
 loss ;" or they make close calculations by measurements of heights 
 and distances, and abide by them. They give no scope to the 
 fancy to hope to those generous impulses which would carry 
 them out of the range of mere calculation. Now this is well as 
 far as it goes ; and is the basis of many of the excellent rules of 
 economy, and a restrainer of extravagance. But it may make 
 the mind exceedingly narrow, and prevent the development of 
 some of its noblest powers. Man is made to be something else 
 besides a mere creature of sight and of hearing ; he is capable of 
 being much more than an ingenious measuring and calculating 
 machine. Faith, as an element of action, does much more is 
 much more expanding and noble. Even the ancient Greeks and 
 Romans, though heathens, admitting the influence of this prin- 
 ciple, furnished a striking illustration of the power of faith. 
 They opened their eyes on distant worlds, and supposed there 
 were many other things than the sight reveals ; and though the 
 gods which they supposed to have a dwelling-place in the groves, 
 and by the fountains, were the work of imagination, yet they 
 acted out the rinciple of our nature which longs to find other 
 
366 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 things than the sight reveals, and were under far better influences 
 in many respects, in elevating and expanding the mind, than 
 they would have been if confined to the grovellings of sense. 
 Men who have no principle of faith in their nature, who are 
 universally sceptical in regard to its revelations, are like the 
 ancient mariners. In their frail barks they crept along the 
 shore j always kept some headland or promontory in view ; 
 anchored in a friendly bay at night ; and never put out into the 
 open sea. Columbus, with different feeling, turned his prow 
 boldly to the West, and held it steadily in that direction in the 
 faith of " giving a new world to the kingdoms of Castile and 
 Leon." So faith goes beyond the limits of time and of the 
 senses. It not only believes in the existence of the worlds which 
 the telescope reveals, but peoples those worlds ; not only believes 
 in the existence of that universe which strikes the outward eye 
 as so glorious, but in the existence of a more glorious God that 
 formed them all ; not only believes that there is such an atom 
 in creation as this earth, and such a thing as the "vapour of 
 human life," but that there is a world to come, and that there is 
 life everlasting. 
 
 (4.) One thing more may be said in order to distinguish faith 
 as an element of action. It has a very near relation to hope ; 
 and is, in fact, on the authority of an apostle, the embodiment of 
 hope. " Now faith is the substance of things hoped for," Heb. xi. 1. 
 It takes hold of things that are not seen, but which may be as 
 real as though they were ; and of things which are not yet facts, 
 but which may be. A young man hopes for distinction in 
 political life. As a reality, it has as yet no existence. But it 
 may have. It is in his mind's eye as if it were a reality, and he 
 sets it before him as his hopes and desires would prompt ; and 
 though far distant, he studies, and struggles, as if it might be so. 
 Demosthenes, when he went into his cave, and tried the strength 
 of his voice by the raging elements of the deep, doubtless had in 
 his mind's eye an image of what it would be to be the first 
 orator of the world. See vrb&t faith entered into such a purpose, 
 and into such a conception : faith in his own powers ; faith in 
 the effect of careful culture ; faith in believing that formidable 
 obstacles may be overcome ; faith in his countrymen, that they 
 would do honour to him who deserved it ; faith in history, that 
 it would transmit his name to future times ; faith in all coming 
 generations, that they would receive his name with honour, and 
 transmit it onward. So now in higher things : faith carries 
 the mind upward and onward ; fastens on objects of hope, and 
 turns them into living forms, and allows them to influence the 
 
FAITH AS A PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 367 
 
 mind : and the view by faith of those superior realities turns 
 giants here to dwarfs, and mountains to mole-hills, and crowns to 
 baubles, and heaps of hoarded gold to particles of glittering dust, 
 and the palaces of princes to the play-houses of children. Man 
 begins to live for nobler objects ; and there comes over the soul 
 the expanding and elevating thought that there is something 
 worth living for, and that he is indeed immortal. 
 
 II. Having thus endeavoured to state what this principle is, I 
 proceed to consider, in the second place, its influence as an 
 element of conduct. With an ultimate view of illustrating its 
 influence in religion, and of showing you that there is much 
 worth living for beyond what the senses reveal, and that it is 
 rational to act in view of that, I will endeavour to illustrate its 
 value under these specifications : as prompting to action ; as 
 expanding and elevating the mind ; and as indispensable in all 
 just views of religion. 
 
 (1.) We may consider it as an element of our nature leading 
 to action. We will look at it now in general, without particular 
 reference to religion. We have seen that it stands in contrast 
 with cold calculation ; with what is disclosed by the mere 
 testimony of the senses ; with the low and grovelling objects 
 that appeal to the appetites. A man into whose character there 
 enters not the element of faith, is one who has no confidence in 
 the power of truth in meeting and arresting evils ; in the 
 elevation and perfectibility of society ; in the practicability of 
 correcting errors, or of checking and removing individual or 
 organized wrongs ; in himself ; in his fellow-men ; or in God. 
 His mind never ventures beyond a very limited range that 
 which has come under his own observation, or which is within 
 the compass of a very rigid calculation. Let us look at such 
 a mind, and see what it would accomplish in such a world 
 as this. 
 
 (a) A sturdy farmer, trained to the use of the axe, and the 
 hoe, and the plough, and with the advantages of an education in 
 a common school, and with some reading to expand his mind, 
 stands on an eminence in the wilds of the West, and looks over 
 a boundless forest. It waves in the interminable distance, and the 
 sun has never yet been suffered to penetrate through that thick 
 foliage to the earth. There is no city, or town, or even log-cabin 
 to be seen. Not even the smoke of the Indian wigwam reveals 
 that any human being is there. But there, an intelligent eye may 
 see the evidence of as rich a soil as the sun ever shone upon ; 
 and those valleys may yet be covered with harvests and with 
 flocks ; aud houses and mills, villages and towns, may yet spring 
 
368 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 up there. Winding along, through that forest, may be seen the 
 course of a river and the opening where it runs shows that it 
 is a broad stream though on its bosom never yet floated any 
 thing but the bark-canoe of an Indian. In all that boundless 
 expanse, there is neither road, nor bridge, nor fence ; neither 
 church, nor college, nor school-house. Yet that man is possessed of 
 faith ; faith in his axe, in his arm, in his skill in himself, in his 
 growing boy, in his neighbours that will unite with him ; and 
 he believes that all that forest may be felled, and that it may 
 become a fertile field, and that colleges and sanctuaries and 
 cities may smile there, and that on that river the magnificent 
 steamer may glide laden with rich productions from that teeming 
 soil. Many a weary day must indeed be spent, many a hard 
 blow must be struck, before that result shall be reached ; but there 
 is more than hope that it may be done, to animate and cheer the 
 woodsman : there is faith that it will be done ; and the forest 
 gives way, and the fields are ploughed and fenced, and houses 
 and all the improvements of art appear in what was the inter- 
 minable wilderness, as if by magic. Yet there is no magic about 
 it. It is all the result of desire, and hope, and faith, and 
 corresponding toil. 
 
 (b) A man looks at his country. He greatly loves it for it 
 is the land of his birth ; his interests are there ; and in every 
 way he desires its prosperity. But he sees it oppressed. It 
 groans under heavy and unjust burdens. There are evils. The 
 unconstitutional claims of the government, the evils of a deficient 
 representation, may be deeply felt ; or foreign troops may be 
 quartered on the citizens to awe them. On these things the patriot 
 looks with deep emotion, and with an earnest desire that they may 
 be removed. The man in whose soul the reigning element 
 is doubt, or who is governed solely by the decisions of his 
 senses, would be prompted to no effort for relief; would venture 
 nothing for it. But not thus did men look upon the wrongs of 
 their country in the times of Hampden ; not thus did Patrick 
 Henry and John Hancock look upon the wrongs which our own. 
 land endured. In those minds and hearts there were no elements 
 of scepticism. There dwelt there in the strongest degree the 
 element of faith. They were moved, not by the love of gain or 
 applause ; they not merely felt that their country was suffering 
 wrong ; they not merely hoped and desired that their wrongs 
 might be removed, but they had strong faith f unwavering 
 confidence, that it might be done. They had faith in the justice 
 of their cause ; in the virtue of their countrymen ; in the valour 
 of men that might be summoned to defend the national rights ; 
 
FAITH AS A PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 369 
 
 in the fathers and mothers of the land, that they would give up 
 their sons to its defence ; in the nations of the earth, that they 
 would approve their course ; and in God, that he would be the 
 Friend of the oppressed and the wronged and whatever liberty 
 there is in England or in this land is the result of such faith. 
 
 (2.) We have considered this principle of our nature as an 
 element leading to action. Let us now, for a moment, consider 
 it as an expanding and elevating element of conduct. We might 
 here take the very cases which have already been referred to, 
 and perhaps they would furnish all the elucidation which 
 would be required. But we may vary the illustrations, and 
 while we furnish new confirmations of what has been already 
 said, place the point now before us in a more distinct light. John 
 Howard, born to an ample property, and encompassed by all that 
 was necessary to worldly enjoyment, with leisure for literary 
 pursuits, or for the pleasures of the table or the field, or for the 
 refined courtesies of life in England, might have spent his days, 
 as thousands do, with most limited views, and with a heart most 
 selfishly contracted. A sceptic as to the world's improvement ; a 
 doubter as to the feasibility of any project to elevate the de- 
 graded ; a disbeliever in any enterprise that looked to the eleva- 
 tion of the more debased portions of mankind ; a man who con- 
 fined himself to questions of mere calculation, he might have 
 lived only to improve his estates, and in one narrow circle his 
 ideas might have for ever revolved. But God had endued him 
 with a heart benevolent by nature ; and the finger of Providence 
 pointed to an object worthy of its exercise. He was led to look 
 on the prisons of Europe. But how did he look on them ? True, 
 there was enough to excite all the compassion of his soul, and 
 such a man would weep over the unpitied wrongs of the prisoner. 
 But he looked on them not only to weep. There was another, 
 and a much higher and more expansive feeling in his bosom 
 than mere compassion. It was faith. It was a belief that those 
 woes might be mitigated, that those wrongs might be repaired, 
 that the condition of the sufferer might be alleviated. What was 
 this ? It was confidence in human nature ; in man, in his sense 
 of justice and humanity, when roused to it; in princes and law- 
 givers that they might be disposed to do right; in society 
 that its workings might come nearer to perfection ; above all, in 
 God, that he would show himself the Friend of the oppressed 
 and the wronged ; and this faith expanded the heart of Howard 
 to embrace the world, and made him what he was. So Clarkson 
 and Wilberforce looked upon injured Africa not merely with 
 the feelings of compassion, but with faith in the English heart , 
 
370 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 in the justice of their countrymen, if their sentiments were fairly 
 expressed ; in the sense of right with which God has endowed 
 man ; and in the Great Governor of the nations, that he would 
 ultimately crown with success every effort to break the bonds of 
 oppression. 
 
 An American youth, educated at a university, and about to 
 enter upon the theatre of life, looks out over the world. He has 
 a heart filled with love to the Saviour, and is desirous of living 
 to do good. His thoughts are turned to the great West. But 
 how many difficulties may be seen there: difficulties, not so 
 much of poverty, and privation, and toil, and want of the kind 
 of society to which he has been accustomed but difficulties in 
 saving that vast region from the evil influences that are setting 
 in upon it from all quarters of the world. Far more formidable 
 are those moral difficulties than were the forests, and the un- 
 bridged rivers, to our woodsman ; and yet with an eye of faith 
 he may look all over that land, and see it in the future, spirit- 
 ually, as the " garden of the Lord." He crosses the mountains 
 with no doubt that there the standard of the Cross is everywhere 
 to be erected; that those lands are to be cultivated by a Chris- 
 tian people ; that Churches are to be reared, and that colleges 
 and schools are to scatter their rich benedictions all over that 
 immense region. He has faith that this is all to be a Christian 
 land ; and he enters upon his work with a higher and more ex- 
 pansive aim than his own country in any other department can 
 furnish. Long, perhaps, he labours under discouragement, and 
 amidst many trials. Worldliness abounds ; error reigns ; few 
 give heed to his voice ,* yet he never doubts that " the wilder- 
 ness and the solitary place shall be glad, and that the desert 
 shall bud and blossom as the rose." 
 
 With similar feelings, and at the same time of life, another 
 young man casts his eyes over the heathen world. How dark 
 and degraded it seems ! How many millions, and hundreds of 
 millions of human beings are sunk in idolatry ! How sin most 
 loathsome, and debasing, and revolting abounds ! What scenes 
 of misery open on his view ; what cries of distress break on his 
 ear! How long and unbroken has been the reign of death! 
 Who shall elevate the degraded man? Who shall scatter the 
 darkness of the world? It is not in man, he sees, to do it. 
 There is no recuperative energy in the heathen mind to recover 
 it from its low debasement. There are no agencies there at work 
 to bring these evils to an end, and to re-enstamp upon those 
 degraded intellects the effaced image of a holy God. More than 
 in any other department of human action, perhaps, he goes to 
 
FAITH AS A PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 371 
 
 his work under the influence of faith faith in the simple pro- 
 mise of God and his bosom, amidst all that discourages and 
 disheartens, is expanded as by faith he sees "afar" the time 
 when l one song shall employ all nations, and the dwellers in 
 the vales and on the rocks shall shout to each other, and the 
 mountain tops from distant mountains shall catch the flying 
 joy;' when " the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the 
 Lord, as the waters cover the sea." In his benevolence and his 
 faith, he embraces the world; forms, as Paul did, the largest 
 plans for its welfare ; and devotes himself to the high and noble 
 enterprise of spreading everywhere the religion of truth and 
 love. He believes that truth has power ; that the race may be 
 elevated ; that oppression, idolatry, and wrong of every kind 
 may cease ; that the gospel is mighty, and will prevail. He has 
 faith even in man degraded as he seems to be, and is ; that 
 there is some chord in his soul that may be struck that will 
 respond to the proffered offer of pardon and of heaven ; and much 
 more, he has faith in God and his promises, that this world shall 
 not always be thus sunken and wretched, but that it shall be 
 redeemed and elevated. He may not live to see it in the reality, 
 but he sees it as a bright and glorious object in the distant 
 future ; and knowing that many a hardship must be endured 
 before it is realized, that many a youth must give himself to the 
 work and fall in a heathen land before it is accomplished, he is 
 willing to be one of those labourers, that the bright millennial 
 morn may yet dawn upon the world. 
 
 (3.) I have endeavoured to illustrate this principle as an 
 element of action, and as elevating and expansive in its nature. 
 There remains but one other thought, the third, to complete the 
 illustration of the subject. It is, that it is an indispensable 
 element in all religion. The error of false religions is not in 
 acting by faith when they people the invisible world with 
 divinities ; it is, that the objects of their faith are not real, but 
 are false. But all religion must be a work of faith. It goes 
 beyond the regions of the senses. It pertains to the future, to 
 the distant, and to the invisible. It is .designed to bring the 
 invisible, and the future, to bear upon us as realities. If this be 
 not so, there can be no religion. The only thing that reason 
 asks in the case is, that those objects be in fact real, and not 
 the creations of fancy. But if we have religion, we must believe 
 that there is an invisible God ; that there is a future state, yet 
 unseen, of course ; that there are to be rewards hereafter ; that we 
 are destined to a higher sphere of being, and that it is rational 
 to act in view of that higher existence. How can there be any 
 
372 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 religion of any kind, unless there is faith in these things ? And 
 all religion, of all sorts, is just a work of faith, and is designed 
 to influence us by faith. We see one world, and we believe that 
 there is another ; we see stars and suns, and we believe that 
 there is a God who made them ; we see ourselves to be sinners, 
 and we believe that we may be recovered from sin ; we see the 
 race sunken and degraded, and we believe that it may be 
 redeemed ; we see that we are to die, and we believe that we 
 may live again. Going beyond the limits of the world of sense, 
 we bring before us a world that is invisible, and act as if it 
 were a reality ; and in religion, as in all other things, faith, 
 embodying the conceptions of hope, is " the substance of things 
 hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The mind is carried 
 from the narrow limits of the world disclosed by the visual 
 organs to other worlds, and the things unseen control and 
 mould the heart. 
 
 And now, what practical good shall follow from this dis- 
 cussion ? Much may every way. It has brought before us one 
 of the laws of our nature, on which religion purposes to engraft 
 itself, and which is destined to work wonders for man. It is 
 that to which the world owes its elevation thus far, and all that 
 has been accomplished for the race. Every field that we see 
 smiling in the harvest is the result of the faith of him who 
 ploughed and sowed it faith in the seed, and in the fertile 
 earth, and the sun, and the rain, and the Providence of God ; 
 every principle of liberty which we enjoy is the result of the 
 faith of gifted minds of men who believed that oppression 
 might be made to cease, and that man might be elevated to a 
 just conception of his own rights ; every college in the land, 
 every house of refuge, every asylum for the blind and the deaf, as 
 well as every Christian sanctuary, is a demonstration that those 
 who reared them believed that much might be done for the 
 wretched, and that the race might be elevated and saved. 
 
 We are prone to act under the influence of sense. This arises 
 almost from the necessity of the laws of our being. But our 
 Maker meant that the strong principle of faith should come in 
 to counteract this tendency, and to reveal our own true worth 
 and dignity, not as sensual beings, but as rational and immortal 
 as capable, unlike other animals, of going beyond the range 
 of the senses, and of acting in view of the distant, the great, the 
 unseen. Hence, we can act in view of the future of the future 
 liberty and glory of our country, as if it passed before us in a 
 splendid panorama. We can act in view of a world redeemed 
 as if already the shout were going up from every land, " The 
 
FAITH AS A PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 373 
 
 kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God 
 and of his Christ." We can act in view of God as if we saw 
 him everywhere, and felt that he heard every word, and knew 
 every thought ; " enduring," as Moses did, " as seeing him who 
 is invisible." We can act in view of heaven as if we already 
 saw the pearly gates wide unfold themselves, and could look far 
 into distant worlds. 
 
 What man needs for his elevation is the acting out of this 
 principle of faith acting more by faith, and less by sight. 
 He needs a more vivid impression of the presence and the glory 
 of God ; of the reality of heaven ; of the power of truth ; of the 
 wonders of the invisible world the glittering crowns, and the 
 thrones, and the harps of heaven, and then indeed the things 
 of this world would be baubles and trifles. The religion of this 
 age needs to be expanded that it may become more a religion of 
 faith ; the church needs to be taken away from the dominion of 
 the senses, and led to exercise a more simple faith in the truth and 
 the promises of God ; and the human mind needs to be elevated 
 and purified by the contemplation of things that are vast and 
 everlasting. Then shall man rise to his true dignity when other 
 worlds shall have to his view the reality of this ; and when in 
 their overpowering splendour and lory, as apprehended by the 
 mind, the objects which now seem so vast to us shall dwindle 
 down to nothing, and when all through his brief journey to the 
 grave, man " shall walk by faith, and not by sight :" living by 
 it every day ; forming his plans in view of its revelations ; 
 consecrating himself and his all, by its power, to the service of a 
 holy Saviour and to the good of the church and the world : and 
 then, when his work is done, whether sooner or later, under its 
 revelation of brighter worlds, cheerfully going down into the 
 cold river of death the narrow stream which divides the 
 shadows amidst which he has been moving for a few brief days 
 from the realities of the world which, amidst those shadows, he 
 discerned afar, and where he is now for ever to dwell. Thus let 
 us live thus may we die. 
 
SEKMON XXIX, 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INQUIRY, HOW SHALL MAN BE 
 JUST WITH GOD? 
 
 JOB xxv. 4. "How can man be justified with God?" 
 
 THESE are the words of Bildad one of the sages who had 
 entered into controversy with Job in regard to the government 
 of God. They were uttered in view of the majesty and holiness 
 of the Most High ; and the meaning is, ' When the greatness 
 and glory of God are contemplated, how can man he regarded as 
 holy before him ?' " Dominion and fear," says the Shuhite, " are 
 with him. Is there any number of his armies ? How, then, can 
 man be justi c ,ed with God ? or how can he be clean that is born of 
 a woman ? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not j yea, the 
 stars are not pure in his sight. How much less man, that is a 
 worm ?" The same sentiment had been twice before expressed 
 by the speakers in this controversy. It was first uttered by 
 Elihu in perhaps the most sublime account ever given of a vision 
 of God to men : " A thing was secretly brought unto me, and 
 mine ear received a little thereof. In thoughts from the visions 
 of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, 
 and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a 
 spirit passed before my face ; the hair of my flesh stood up : it 
 stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image 
 was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, 
 saying, Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man 
 be more pure than his Maker ? Behold, he put no trust in his 
 servants ; and his angels he charged with folly : how much less 
 in them that dwell in houses of clay?" Job iv. 1219. The 
 same sentiment was expressed also by Job himself as a doctrine 
 by no means new to him, and as one which had received his 
 careful thought, and to which he freely expressed his assent : 
 " I know it is so of a truth : how should man be just with 
 God?" Job ix. 2. The question thus propounded by these Eastern 
 sages, in the earliest debate among men of which we have any 
 record, may be regarded as an inquiry proposed by man by 
 human nature. It expresses the deep workings of the human 
 
HOW SHALL MAN BE JUST WITH GOD? 375 
 
 soul in all ages on one of the most important and difficult of all 
 subjects. The question means, How shall man be regarded and 
 treated as righteous by his Maker? What methods shall he 
 take to secure such treatment? What can he do, if anything, 
 to commend himself to the favourable regards of a holy God ? 
 What can he do, if anything, to make amends for the past ? 
 What can he do, if anything, to turn away future wrath ? Can 
 he vindicate himself before the eternal throne for what he has 
 done ? If not, can he see how it is consistent for God to treat 
 him as righteous ? This question meets us everywhere, and 
 enters into and moulds all the forms of religion on the earth. 
 Let us contemplate it with the interest which becomes so grave a 
 question, and one which is so identified with our everlasting 
 welfare. The inquiry, as illustrating and expressing the feelings 
 of human nature, may be considered with reference to two 
 points: its importance, and its difficulty. 
 
 I. The importance of the inquiry. 
 
 (1.) Its importance will be seen by this consideration No one 
 can be saved unless he is just or righteous in the sight of God. Unless 
 there is some way by which God can consistently regard and treat us 
 as just or righteous, it is impossible to believe that we can enter 
 heaven when we die. Unless man is personally so holy that he 
 cannot be charged with guilt ; or can justify himself by denying 
 or disproving that charge of guilt ; or can vindicate himself by 
 showing that his conduct is right ; or can appropriate to himself 
 the merit of another as if it were his own, no one can believe 
 no one does believe that he can enter heaven. Probably there 
 is no conviction of the human mind more deep and universal 
 than this ; and every man, whether conscious to himself of acting 
 on it or not, makes it elementary in his practical belief. If any 
 one is disposed to call this proposition in question, or if he is not 
 conscious of acting on it, he will see that it must be true, by 
 looking at it for a single moment. The proposition is, that no 
 man can be saved unless he is just or righteous in the sight of 
 God. Can God save a wicked man as such, and in view of his 
 wickedness ? Can he hold him up to the universe as one who 
 ought to be saved ? Can he take the profane man, the scoffer, 
 the adulterer, and the murderer to heaven, and proclaim himself 
 as their patron and friend ? Can he connect a life of open 
 wickedness with the rewards of eternal glory ? Nothing can be 
 more clear than that if a man is made happy for ever in heaven, 
 there will be some good reason for it, and that reason cannot be 
 that he was regarded as an unrighteous person. There will be 
 a fitness and propriety in his being saved ; there will be some 
 
 25 
 
376 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 reason why it will be proper for God to regard and treat him as 
 righteous. This view, which is perhaps sufficiently obvious, 
 may be illustrated by a reference to human government. No 
 just government could become the patron and friend of the 
 pirate and the murderer, or bestow its rewards on one who in all 
 respects deserved to meet the penalty of the laws. On this 
 belief, also, every man acts in reference to his own salvation. 
 Each one has a firm conviction that no man can be saved unless 
 he is just in the sight of God. A man, when he thinks of being 
 saved, always thinks either that he has kept the law of God, or 
 that he has a good excuse for not complying with it, or that he 
 can make reparation by penances, pilgrimages, sacrifices, or 
 fastings, or that he can appropriate to himself the merit of 
 another. He never thinks of finding favour with God as a 
 transgressor, or on account of his crimes ; he never supposes 
 that his iniquity can be the foundation of his salvation. God 
 made the human soul, and he so made it that it never could 
 believe that he would save a man because he was wicked, or 
 unless there was some way in which he could be regarded and 
 treated as righteous. 
 
 (2.) The importance of the inquiry is seen from the testimony 
 of man everywhere. Man is apparently greatly indifferent to 
 religion, and it often seems impossible to arouse his attention 
 to the great and momentous questions connected with it. But 
 taking the race together, he is not so indifferent to the subject 
 as he appears, and could we know all the secret thoughts and 
 feelings of each individual, we should find that his indifference 
 is often in appearance only. There are workings of the soul 
 which are carefully excluded from public view. There are 
 thoughts which every man has, which he would not wish others 
 to know of. There are deep, agitating, protracted inquiries re- 
 sulting in settled conviction, or tossing the soul upon a restless 
 sea, which men would w r ish to hide from their best friends. 
 There is often a deep interest in a man's mind on the subject of 
 religion, when his whole soul seems to the world torpid and 
 inactive, or when he would repel your inquiries, or when he 
 would seem as " calm as summer's morning." 
 
 A very slight acquaintance with the human mind, or with the 
 history of opinions, is all that is needful to show the importance 
 which the inquiry on the subject of justification has assumed in 
 the view of man. 
 
 (a) It was shown in the investigations of ancient philosophers 
 and sages. " How shall man be just with God," was the ques- 
 tion which pressed itself on the minds and hearts of the speakers 
 
HOW SHALL MAN BE JUST WITH GOD ? 377 
 
 in the book of Job, and was a question which was echoed and 
 re-echoed in the whole heathen philosophic world. Many who 
 are profound and patient inquirers on other subjects, often regard 
 investigations on the subject of religion as unworthy their atten- 
 tion. They think them appropriate inquiries for contending 
 theologians ; for disputatious and subtle schoolmen ; for the feeble 
 in intellect, or for the dying ; but they regard them as having only 
 slight claims on a philosophic mind. Yet were they to go and 
 take lessons of the masters of science and of profound thought, 
 they would think differently. Will such men tell us what points 
 of inquiry have most occupied the attention of the intellects of 
 other times ? Will they refer to the volumes which contain the 
 results of the investigations of past ages ? Will they let Socrates 
 once more speak, and Plato give utterance to his views, and 
 Cicero arid Seneca declare what most engrossed their attention ? 
 One thing they will find in all the past one grand absorbing 
 question they will meet with everywhere one inquiry to which 
 all physical science w r as made subservient. It was the subject 
 of religion ; the question of man's acceptance with God ; the 
 grounds of his hope of future blessedness. The real inquiry 
 among thinking men of all ages and lands has been, " How shall 
 man be just with God ?" 
 
 (b) The same earnestness of inquiry we find still in the heatnen 
 world. From the recorded views and religion of the heathen, 
 we may learn much about man when he utters his sentiments 
 without disguise ; and what we find universally among them we 
 may regard as the language of human nature. Now there is no 
 one thing expressed with more uniformity or more earnestness 
 all over the pagan world than this question, " How may we be 
 just with God?" It is the foundation of all sacrifices, penances, 
 pilgrimages, self-inflicted mortifications.' All these things are in- 
 tended so to make expiation for sin, or so to appease the anger 
 of the gods, that they who thus perform the rites of religion 
 may be regarded and treated as righteous. Take this inquiry 
 away, and their sacrifices and penances \vould be unmeaning. Take 
 this away, and the earnestness of their religion would soon cease, 
 and degenerating into an empty form, would of itself soon expire. 
 
 (c) There is another method by which we may learn the views 
 of the human soul about the importance of this inquiry. It 
 is by contemplating the soul when under conviction of sin, 
 and reflecting on its prospects about the future world. Then, 
 there is no inquiry so momentous in the view of the mind as 
 this " How shall a man be just with God ?" There are many 
 more persons in this state than is commonly imagined. There 
 
378 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 is probably no one who reaches the years of mature reflection, 
 before whose mind this inquiry has not at some period assumed 
 an engrossing importance. With almost no danger of error, you 
 may assume of every man whom you meet, that his mind either 
 has been, or is now, deeply interested on the subject of his salva- 
 tion, and that in his life there are periods when no inquiry 
 appears so momentous as this. In his moments of solitary 
 musing, or in a time of bereavement, or under the preaching of 
 the gospel, or when remembered truth seems to come with new- 
 armed power to his soul, or when the recollection of guilt seems 
 recalled to him by some invisible agency, or when lying on a 
 bed of languishing, this great inquiry has come before him, How 
 may he be justified before his Maker ? How may the guilt of 
 his sins be washed away ? How may he be regarded and 
 treated as a righteous man ? To those who have been in this 
 state (and who has not ?) it is needless to say that then no question 
 seems more momentous thaii this. In times of revival of religion, 
 the student in a college loses his relish for his ordinary studies, 
 and almost the capacity to pursue them, absorbed in the more 
 important study respecting salvation ; the merchant loses his 
 relish for his gains, engrossed in the greater inquiry how he may 
 obtain everlasting life ; the farmer, the mechanic, and the mariner 
 feel that they can hardly pursue their wonted employments, for 
 a more momentous subject has engrossed the soul. The eye may 
 be on a passage in Horace or Livy, but the thoughts shall be 
 elsewhere ; and the hands may be employed in labour, but it 
 shall be performed with a heavy heart, and the toil pursued 
 with scarcely any consciousness of what is done. The calm, 
 fixed, steady, contemplative eye of the student, and the readiness 
 of the man of business to leave his counting-room and place 
 himself under religious instruction, show with what intensity 
 this question has seized on the soul. The busy, the studious, and 
 the gay often become absorbed in the great inquiry, and then 
 no honour of scholarship, no amplitude of gain, no brilliancy of 
 pleasure or amusement, seems comparable in value to the solution 
 of the question, " How shall man be just with God ?" We need 
 not pause here to consider whether this is a just estimate which 
 the soul thus puts on the magnitude of this inquiry. We are 
 concerned only in getting at the language of man himself when 
 in his sober moments. It will at least be conceded, that in those 
 moments of profound absorbing thought, those moments when 
 men of all classes are willing to turn aside from their usual 
 pursuits ; those times when the great inquiry can make the 
 pleasures of the ball-room and the scenes of splendid amusement 
 
HOW SHALL MAN BE JUST WITH GOD? 379 
 
 tasteless, and can loosen the hold of the votaries of gold on their 
 gains, and cause the ardent student to turn aside from his books, 
 - then it is that the human mind is as likely as ever to judge 
 correctly of the importance of what has come before it. Yet 
 there is but one sentiment then that this question absorbs and 
 annihilates all others. 
 
 (3.) There is another consideration which shows the import- 
 ance of this inquiry : it is, that the views that are entertained of 
 justification modify and shape our views concerning all the other 
 doctrines of religion. It is the central doctrine in the whole 
 system, and spreads its influence over every other opinion which 
 man holds on the subject of salvation. The opinions entertained 
 on this subject distinguish respectively the Protestant and the 
 Papal communities ; divide Protestants themselves into two great 
 parties, evangelical and non-evangelical ; separate heathens from 
 Christians ; give form to all the systems of infidelity and Deism, 
 and constitute the peculiarity of every man's individual faith. 
 When it is known definitely what a man thinks on this one 
 point, it may be known whether he is a Papist, or a Protestant ; 
 a Christian, or an infidel ; a heathen, or a friend of the Saviour ; 
 a formalist, or a devoted servant of God. Luther did not say 
 too much when he said of this doctrine of justification, that it 
 was the article on which depended the permanency or ruin of 
 the church; and with a sagacity equal to that of Tallyrand, 
 when from a very slight matter he predicted that the throne of 
 France would be overturned, Luther saw that the doctrine of 
 justification would meet every corruption of the Papacy, and 
 eventually overturn the system. 
 
 The fabric of the Papacy is an ingenious attempt, originated 
 and arranged under the auspices of a higher than human intellect, 
 though fallen, to delude man with the belief that there is some 
 other way by which he may be justified with God than by faith 
 in the Saviour. The whole system of heathenism is an attempt 
 to answer the question how man may be justified with God. 
 The systems of infidels, and of men who are depending on their 
 own morality, or relying on penances and pilgrimages, are 
 another answer which is given to the question. If the observa- 
 tions now made are correct, it will be conceded that this doctrine 
 has an importance which cannot be over-estimated. If it be so, 
 that no man can be saved who is not justified in the sight of 
 God, that the race everywhere, in the anxious inquiry of sages, 
 in the systems and sacrifices of the heathen, and in the deep 
 workings of the soul rendering every other pursuit tasteless and 
 valueless, has shown a sense of its importance, and that it 
 
380 THE WAY OP SALVATION. 
 
 spreads its influence over every form of belief, the importance 
 of the inquiry will be admitted. 
 
 II. The second point proposed to be noticed is, the difficulty 
 of the inquiry. By the speaker in our text it was evidently fe] t 
 that it was not easy to furnish an answer to the question pro- 
 posed. Bildad, Eliphaz, and Job were agreed in one point : 
 it was, that man could not be pronounced free from sin before 
 a holy God. The evidence of his depravity was too manifest to 
 admit of this. In the sight of God, too, they held that the very 
 heavens were not pure, and that the angels were chargeable 
 with folly, Job iv. 17; xv. 15. So bright was his holiness that 
 the moon was shorn of its beams, and the stars were not pure, 
 ch. xxv. 5. How, then, could man be pure ? How could he be 
 just with God? 
 
 But what is the difficulty? Why has the human mind been 
 so much perplexed in relation to it ? Why may not God admit 
 man to heaven, and regard and treat him as if he were righteous ? 
 These questions can be answered in a single remark, and the 
 whole difficulty may then be seen at a glance. It is, that mart, 
 is in fact not righteous. The difficulty is, to see how God can 
 regard and treat him as if he were. It is easy to see how, if he 
 were righteous, God could treat him so ; or how he could treat 
 him as a sinner that is, according to his real character. But 
 how shall he treat him differently from what he deserves, or as 
 if he had a character which it is known he has not ? Whatever 
 theories may be embraced by men, or whatever opinions may be 
 entertained on the subject of religion, it is true as a matter of 
 fact that these perplexities have been felt by men, that they 
 have given rise to grave and agitating questions, and that man 
 has not felt that he could give a solution that was wholly satis- 
 factory. There is no inquiry which has taken hold on man 
 everywhere, under all forms of government and opinion, and in 
 every climate, and amidst every degree of progress, which has 
 not had some real foundation in the nature of things. The race 
 in its soberest moments does not busy itself with trifles, and 
 especially will not allow itself to be troubled and tortured by 
 inquiries that are of no importance. The difficulty which has 
 been felt on this subject, therefore, is not imaginary ; but from 
 the fact that the inquiry has been so universal, and so beyond 
 the human powers satisfactorily to explain, it is clear that God 
 meant it should be regarded by man as a point to be solved only 
 by Divine revelation. The real difficulties in the case, and the 
 state of the human mind in regard to them, may be illustrated 
 by the following observations : 
 
HOW SHALL MAN BE JUST WITH GOD? 381 
 
 (1.) There was the impossibility of man's vindicating himself 
 from the charges of guilt brought against him. If he could do 
 this, all would be clear, for God will not condemn the innocent. 
 But it could not be done. These charges were brought in such 
 a way, and enforced in such a manner, that man could not so 
 meet them as to escape the conviction of their truth. They are 
 brought where there is a revelation by God himself in his word ; 
 and where there is not, as well as whea*e there is, by conscience. 
 Man is told, in the word of God, that he is a sinner ; his recollection 
 of what he has done assures him that it is so ; the dealings of 
 God with him convince him that there must be some cause of 
 alienation between himself and his Maker ; and every sick bed, 
 and every grave, and every apprehension of future wrath, con- 
 firms the conviction. If man were to undertake to convince 
 himself that he is not held to be guilty, the argument could not 
 be derived from the dealings of God with him in this world. 
 It is not easy for a man to satisfy himself that he is not a sinner, 
 when the earth is strewed with the dying and the dead ; when 
 his best friends are cut down all around him ; when he himself 
 is to die, and when he is so made that he cannot but tremble at 
 the apprehension of the judgment. If any one wished to con- 
 struct an argument to prove that he is not a sinful man, and 
 that man can be just with God, he would need to be removed to 
 some world where he would not see so many things that seem 
 to be mementoes of human depravity, and so many evidences 
 that his Creator regards him and his fellow-men as guilty. Men 
 have everywhere felt this difficulty. There is no one sentiment 
 in which they more uniformly agree than in this. Every man 
 regards every other man as a sinner, and puts himself on his 
 defence against him, for his locks, and bolts, and notes, and 
 bonds, and securities all demonstrate this ; and every man knows 
 that he himself also is a sinner. There is nothing of which he 
 is better apprized; nothing he believes more firmly than this. 
 There is not a living man that could bear the revelation of his 
 thoughts to others for a single day ; and that not merely because 
 others have no right to know what is passing in his mind, but 
 because he feels that those thoughts are wrong. Confusion, blushes, 
 shame, and shrinking would diffuse themselves over every as- 
 sembly, and through every crowded thoroughfare in the streets of a 
 great city, and in every lonely path where stranger should meet 
 stranger, if each one knew that another was surveying closely 
 the thoughts of his heart, and saw what was passing there ; and 
 if every man felt that his bosom were so transparent that all 
 the workings of his soul could be observed by others, no one 
 
382 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 would venture out of his chamber ; no one would move along 
 the pathways where he might encounter a fellow-man ; the 
 thronged places of business would be deserted, and our great 
 and crowded cities would become like the cities of the dead. 
 No man would venture at midnight on the mountain top, or on 
 the lonely prairie, to stretch out his hands to heaven, and say, ' I 
 am pure as the stars that shine upon me, or as the God that made 
 them.' So universal is the consciousness of guilt, and so certain 
 does every man feel in his'sober moments that he cannot vindicate 
 himself before God. " How then SHALL man be just with God ?" 
 
 (2.) It must have been early apparent to men, and any one 
 can see now, that it would involve a difficulty, if the guilty 
 were saved, or if they were regarded and treated as righteous. 
 How could this be done ? Man does not do it himself in refer- 
 ence to those who are guilty, and how could God ? No father 
 feels that it would be proper to regard and treat an offending 
 child as if he were obedient ; no friend acts thus towards one 
 who professes friendship ; and no government acts thus towards 
 its subjects. All order and happiness in a family would cease 
 at once, if this were to occur ; and government on earth would 
 be unknown. There is a great principle of eternal justice which 
 seems engraved in the convictions of the soul, that every one 
 ought to be treated according to character, and that there ought 
 to be a difference in the Divine dealings towards the good and 
 the evil. But what if God treated all alike ? What if he made 
 no distinction in regard to character ? What if he admitted all to 
 favour, punished no one, and rewarded piety and impiety, fraud 
 and honesty, vice and virtue, reverence and blasphemy alike, 
 with the same immortal crown? -What if the murder of the 
 innocent, and the highest deed of benevolence, were equally a 
 passport to his favour ? What if he met the licentious, and 
 those of virgin purity of soul, when they came before him, with 
 the same smile of approbation ? Would not the universe feel 
 that he was regardless of character ? Would it be possible to 
 correct the impression ? 
 
 But it will be said, perhaps, might he not pardon the guilty, 
 and the fact of pardon constitute a ground of distinction which 
 the universe would understand ? True, if it would be proper to 
 pardon in this state of things. But are there no difficulties 
 attending the subject of pardon ? Can it always be granted ? 
 Can it be granted to an unlimited extent ? Does a father feel 
 that it is safe and best to adopt it as a universal rule that he 
 will forgive all his children as often as they may choose to 
 offend him, and without any condition? Any one may easily 
 
HOW SHALL MAN BE JUST WITH GOD? 383 
 
 see the difficulty on this subject. There are thousands of men 
 confined in penitentiaries. Many of them are desperate men, 
 regardless of all the laws of heaven and earth. Would it be felt 
 to be safe or proper at once to open their prison doors ? Who 
 would wish to be in the neighbourhood, when they should be 
 turned impenitent and unreformed upon the world ? If the com- 
 munity is scarcely safe now with all the precautions and guards 
 of justice, what would it be if they were all withdrawn ? These 
 difficulties must occur to any one when he asks the question, 
 How can the guilty be justified ? 
 
 (3.) It is a matter of simple fact that men have felt this 
 difficulty, and the methods which have been resorted to, to 
 devise some way of justification, show how perplexing the sub- 
 ject has been to the human mind. We may learn something of 
 the embarrassments which men feel by the devices to which 
 they resort to overcome them. Look, then, for a moment, at some 
 of the methods to which men have resorted in order to answer 
 the question satisfactorily, How can man be just with God ? 
 
 (a) One class have denied the charge of guilt, and these have 
 endeavoured to convince themselves that they are righteous, and 
 that they may safely trust to their own works for salvation. If 
 this could be done, all would be well. But the mass of men 
 have felt that there are insuperable difficulties in the way of 
 doing this. We shall hereafter inquire whether it is practicable. 
 
 (6) Many have endeavoured to excuse themselves for their 
 conduct, and thus to be justified before God. They are sensible 
 that all is not right ; but if they can find a satisfactory excuse, 
 that is, if they can show that they had a right to do what they 
 have done, or could not help it, they feel that they would not 
 be condemned. And they are right in this. To do it they lay 
 the blame on Adam, or on ungovernable passions, or on a fallen 
 nature, or on the power of temptation, or on the government of 
 God. They attempt to show that they could do no otherwise 
 than that they have done ; that is, they have a right to do it in 
 the circumstances, and of course are not to blame. We shall 
 inquire hereafter whether this position can be made out. 
 
 (c) Many have endeavoured to make expiation by blood, and 
 have sought to be justified in this way. Hence the sacrifices of 
 the heathen the flowing blood and burning bodies of lambs, 
 and goats, and bullocks, and prisoners of war, and slaves, and of 
 children offered to appease the anger of the gods. Thousands of 
 altars smoke in this attempt, and the whole heathen world pants 
 and struggles under the difficulty of the inquiry, How may a 
 guilty man be justified with God ? 
 
384 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 (d) Many have sought the same thing by pilgrimages and 
 penances ; by maceration and scourging ; by unnatural and pain- 
 ful postures of the body ; and by wounds which their own hands 
 have inflicted on themselves. The victim of superstition in India 
 lies down beneath the car of his idol, or fastens hooks in his 
 flesh, or holds his arm in one posture till it? is rigid. Simeon, in 
 Syria, on an elevated column, spent his years in misery. Antony, 
 in Egypt, went and lived in a cave ; and Benedict originated the 
 monastic system in Italy. Mecca is crowded by pilgrims, to 
 acquire righteousness by a visit to the tomb of the prophet ; and 
 the shrines enclosing the bones of the saints are encompassed by 
 throngs in Italy for a similar purpose. The garment of hair frets 
 and tortures the body, and the sound of the lash is heard in the 
 cells of the convent, to gain the same end ; and the whole system 
 of penance and self-inflicted torture, all over the world, is just 
 a commentary on the question, How shall man be justified with 
 God? 
 
 (e) To crown all this, another device has been resorted to. It 
 has been held that there were extraordinary merits of saints 
 who lived in former times ; that they performed services beyond 
 what were required ; and that these merits were garnered up in 
 a sacred treasure, and are placed at the disposal of the head of 
 the Papal community, to be distributed at his pleasure to those 
 who are conscious of guilt, and this is the answer some have 
 given to the question, How shall man be justified with God ? 
 
 From these remarks will be seen what men have thought 
 of the difficulty of this question. In these various ways, human 
 nature speaks out and reveals what is passing in the bosom. They 
 are the methods to which men have resorted, as the best answer 
 which they can give to this inquiry. To see the real difficulty, 
 however, we should be able to go down into the depths of the 
 soul ; to gauge all the agonies of guilty consciences ; ' to look at 
 the woes and sorrows which men are willing to endure that they 
 may be justified ; and then to see how one and all of these plans 
 utterly fail how they leave the conscience just as defiled as it 
 was before, the propensities to evil unchecked, the grave as 
 terrific as ever, and the judgment-bar as full of horrors. When 
 we stand and survey these things, we ask with deep concern 
 whether any one of these is the way by which man can be 
 justified with God ? If not, is there any other way, or is there 
 none ? 
 
 I shall have accomplished my object in this discourse if I 
 have secured one thing if I have been enabled to turn your 
 attention to the subject as a personal matter. I have sought to 
 
HOW SHALL MAN BE JUST WITH GOD? 385 
 
 show you the importance of the inquiry, and the difficulties 
 which encompass it. I Lave wished to awaken the mind to it 
 to excite a spirit of inquiry which may be allowed to occupy the 
 mind in hours of leisure. I aim to make an impression which 
 will not pass away like words which vanish in the utterance. 
 Assuredly, I need not say that this inquiry is one in which every 
 man has a personal concern, and is one from which none should 
 turn away. It is clear that unless a man can be justified with 
 God he cannot be saved, and the question then comes up at once 
 whether we know of any way, or whether we have embraced 
 any method by which we can be thus justified. Can any one 
 of us over-estimate the magnitude of this inquiry ? Can we 
 attach too great importance to a question which is to throw its 
 influence for ever onward into that vast eternity on which we 
 are soon to enter ? Am I asking an unreasonable thing of each 
 one of you, when I ask you to allow the full pressure of this 
 inquiry to come upon your hearts this day, How can I be justi- 
 fied with God ? Is it unreasonable to entreat you to review the 
 method on which you have been relying, and to ask yourselves 
 whether that method will answer in the great day ? I will pro- 
 pose one other question. There is one Book that professes to 
 answer this inquiry. It has a simple object. Its laws, and 
 poetry, and prophecy, and proverbs, and history, more pure, 
 sweet, and sublime, than can be found in any other book, all 
 bear on this one subject. It is the scope of the Book the begin- 
 ning, the middle, and the end. It proposes to answer the ques- 
 tion which human reason cannot answer ; to furnish instruction 
 where philosophy fails ; to reveal a great sacrifice, where all 
 other oblations are ineffectual; and to give peace to the con- 
 science, when everything else leaves it like the troubled sea. 
 Am I in error in saying that each one of you has that Book in 
 your possession ? Am I unreasonable in asking you to open its 
 holy pages, and to kneel down and say to the Father of lights, 
 ' Teach me, my God, how I may be justified with thee ?' 
 
SERMON XXX. 
 
 MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF BY DENYING OR DISPROVING 
 THE CHARGE OF GUILT. 
 
 ROM. iii. 20. " By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified." 
 
 BY the " deeds of the law " is denoted conformity to the law, or 
 obedience to the law. The word " law" here includes law of all 
 descriptions, moral as well as ceremonial ; for the apostle, in the 
 previous part of the chapter, had referred particularly to the 
 violation of the moral law. Having shown that men were 
 universally guilty of such violation, he draws from this argument 
 the conclusion stated in my text, that it is impossible now for 
 any one to be justified by obeying the law of God. The pro- 
 position, then, which I derive from the text, and which I propose 
 to defend, is, that man cannot be justified by his own righteousness. 
 To see the truth of this proposition, it is necessary to know what 
 is meant by being justified, and then to show that it cannot be 
 secured by a man's personal obedience. 
 
 The term justify is a legal term, but it is also in common use, 
 and is intelligible to all. An illustration or two will make it 
 plain, and will lay the foundation for the train of thought which 
 will be pursued in this discourse. A man is charged with 
 murder. He may put his defence on one of two grounds. He 
 may either deny the fact of having killed ; or admitting that, he 
 may show that he had a right to do it, or is excusable for it. If 
 the charge is not made out against him, of course he is just 
 in the sight of the law, and is acquitted. Or if the fact be made 
 out or admitted, he may take the ground either that he did it 
 in self-defence, or that it was done under such a state of mental 
 derangement as to destroy responsibility and he is acquitted. 
 He had no " malice prepense." He intended no murder ; he 
 committed none ; and the law does not hold him guilty of the 
 charge. A man is charged with trespass. He takes a similar 
 ground of defence. He denies the fact, or maintains that he had 
 a right to do what he has done. He sets up a claim to a " right 
 of way" over a field which his neighbour owns, and having 
 established that, he is acquitted, or is held to have done no 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 387 
 
 more than he had a right to do in the case. He is a just man 
 in the eye of the law, and may pursue his own business, enjoy 
 the immunities of a good citizen, the honours of an unsullied 
 name, and protection in his rights unmolested. It may he added 
 here, that there is no other way by which a man can justify 
 himself in the sight of the law. He could not do it by admitting 
 the fact of the trespass, and by paying the fine, or making com- 
 pensation for the injury done ; for though he might be dis- 
 charged, yet this would be no justification of what was done, 
 and would avail nothing towards showing that he was right in 
 doing it. It does not make a wrong right either to intend 
 beforehand to pay for the mischief, or to make amends for it 
 after the deed is done. This remark will be used hereafter in 
 examining the attempts which men have made to justify them- 
 selves. 
 
 Now if man attempts to justify himself before his Maker, he 
 must take one of the grounds referred to. He must either deny 
 the charge brought against him ; or admitting the facts in the 
 case, he must show that he had a right to do what he has done. 
 If he can do either of these, he will be justified, for God does 
 not condemn the innocent. We will suppose, then, the case of 
 a man arraigned at the bar of his Maker, as we all soon shall be, 
 on trial with reference to eternity. There are two things that 
 occur to us at once. What is the charge against him ? What 
 is the defence which he sets up? If there is no charge, he is 
 justified of course. If his defence is valid, he will be acquitted. 
 
 It is necessary then, first, to look at the charge which is 
 brought against man. The charge is, that he has violated the 
 law of his Maker, or is a transgressor. It is that of apostacy, 
 or revolt from God ; entire failure to keep his laws ; a life 
 spent in the constant neglect of acknowledged duty, and the 
 habitual commission of known sins. It may be assumed that 
 every person is sufficiently familiar with the Bible to know 
 the nature of these charges without their being specified in 
 detail. No one trained in a Christian community can be igno- 
 rant of the account of our race which the Bible gives. These 
 charges of guilt do not make the impression which they ought, 
 for these reasons : because we are so familiar with them ; 
 because others are implicated with us ; because we do not 
 cordially believe them. Many a man reads the account of 
 human nature in the Bible without supposing that there is any- 
 thing serious in the matter, or that is fitted to trouble him. 
 There is many a one who would pass a sleepless night if he 
 knew there was a charge of petty larceny against him, which 
 
388 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 would bring him into court to-morrow, who has no trouble at 
 the charge of total apostacy and utter revolt brought against 
 him by God. There is many a one who would be in the deepest 
 consternation if he knew that his name was before a grand jury 
 in some such connexion as his conscience could easily suggest, 
 who has no alarm at the thought of the " grand assize," and no 
 dread of the formidable catalogue of crimes drawn up against 
 him in the secrecy of the Divine counsels. A few remarks will 
 demonstrate that these charges against man in the Bible ought 
 to make an impression, and that men ought to be willing to 
 look at them. A case or two may therefore be supposed which 
 will show how men ought to be affected in view of such charges 
 brought by the Creator. The case of an officer in a bank may 
 be referred to. He has been long there, or in other stations in 
 public life ; and has gained a character, compared with which all 
 the gold that the vaults of the bank could contain would be 
 worthless as the sand. Suddenly, charges are brought against 
 him of unfaithfulness to his trust. They come from quarters 
 worthy of his attention ; proceed from such a source as inevitably 
 to gain the ear of the community ; are such that his family must 
 know of them ; are sustained by such circumstances of actual 
 losses in the bank as to render the charge credible ; and are of 
 such a character as to make it necessary for him to leave his 
 post, disgraced perhaps for ever. Now it is not necessary to 
 suppose that these accusations are true. All that is designed 
 is to show the effect which charges of guilt, from a respectable 
 quarter, usually have on a man's mind. But suppose he secretly 
 knew they were all true, how could his conduct be explained, if 
 he were utterly indifferent and unconcerned ? 
 
 In regard to the charges which are brought against man a few 
 remarks may be made here, to show why they should be allowed 
 to make an impression on the mind. (1.) One consideration 
 respects the source from whence they come. They are professedly 
 the charges of our Maker and final Judge. They are those on 
 which we are to be tried at his bar, and in reference to which our 
 destiny is to be determined. (2.) They are the most fearful of all 
 accusations which can be brought against a creature. No crime can 
 be equal to that of being an enemy of God ; and no offence against 
 human society can equal, in enormity and ill-desert, the crimes 
 of which man is charged against his Maker. (3.) The charge 
 extends to every human being. No exception is made in favour 
 of youth, beauty, rank, or blood; none in favour of the- amiable, 
 the honest, or the moral ; none in favour of those who have 
 endeavoured to wipe away the accusation by their own good 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 389 
 
 conduct. It is not indeed charged that one is as bad as another, or 
 that any one is as bad as he can be ; but it is that every one is 
 guilty of violating the law of God, and is held to be such a 
 sinner that he cannot save himself. (4.) It is charged that each 
 and every one is of such a character that the eternal pains of 
 hell would be an adequate recompense for his crimes. He is 
 held to be under condemnation, and to be justly exposed to 
 punishment that shall be severe in the extremest degree, unmiti- 
 gated, and everlasting. Each one is held to be such an evil-doer 
 that it would be wrong for God to admit him to heaven as he is, 
 but not wrong to consign him to unending woe. It is important 
 not to disguise anything about this, or to seek to hide it by soft 
 names. The robber is deemed worthy of the penitentiary ; the 
 murderer is regarded as deserving death on the gibbet ; and in 
 like manner it is held in the charge brought against man> and 
 the threatenings appended to them, that every man deserves the 
 pains of everlasting death, and that if he should receive what is 
 properly due to him, he would be cast off from God, and 
 punished for ever. Such is the nature of the charges against 
 man. On these he is held guilty ; on these he will be arraigned. 
 The Bible has two aspects. It reveals a way of pardon ; but it 
 is also the grand instrument of indictment against man. It is 
 designed to reveal his character ; to reprove his crimes ; to over- 
 whelm him with the conviction of guilt ; and to be* the standard of 
 judgment on the final day. The question therefore arises, now to be 
 considered, whether if these are the charges against man, he can 
 vindicate or justify himself. It has been already remarked, that 
 there are but two grounds to be taken in such a vindication. 
 One is, to deny the facts charged on man ; the other is, if the 
 facts be admitted, for him to show that he had a right to do as 
 he has done. There is nothing else that can be conceived of in 
 the case to be done by him, unless it were to attempt to make 
 expiation or reparation by extraordinary merit, by penance, or 
 by sacrifice; though this would not justify him for what he had 
 done, any more than a man's paying a fine could make it right 
 for him to put out his neighbour's eye, or burn his house. If 
 neither of these things can be done, it will follow that man 
 cannot be justified by his own righteousness. These points will 
 now be considered in their order. The first is, that man cannot 
 deny the truth of the charges brought against him. In support- 
 of this the following considerations may be urged: 
 
 (1.) The source whence these charges come. They are made 
 by God himself. It is assumed here that the Bible is true, and 
 the argument will be conducted on that assumption. In a pre- 
 
390 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 vious discourse it has been shown that it is equally impossible to 
 deny the main facts, whether the Bible be true or false. The 
 position now is, that the sinner cannot take the ground that 
 God has mistaken the facts about man, or that he has designedly 
 brought a false accusation. It surely cannot be necessary to go 
 into an argument to prove this, but an illustration or two may 
 be allowed, (a) One is, that it is impossible for God to mistake 
 on this subject. Men often do mistake in reference to character 
 and conduct. Charges are often falsely brought, and men are 
 often condemned as guilty on false accusations. This may be 
 intentionally done ; or judges and jurors may be mistaken ; or 
 witnesses may be suborned to sustain the accusation, or those 
 needful for the defence may be absent ; or a combination of cir- 
 cumstances which no human sagacity can control, may seem to 
 confirm the charge of guilt against the innocent. But obviously 
 no such mistake can occur in relation to the charges brought in 
 the Bible against man, nor can man set up a vindication of him- 
 self on the ground that his Maker has erred in reference to the 
 facts alleged, (b) As little can he urge that the accusation has 
 been overdrawn ; that a degree of guilt has been charged such 
 as the facts would not justify; or that there has been an inter- 
 mingling of prejudice or passion which has given a colouring to 
 the charge, and that a calmer view may modify these accusa- 
 tions. We can easily admit that such things may occur among 
 men. Judges and jurors are liable to the same passions as other 
 men, and in a time of popular excitement it may happen that 
 the contagion may reach the bench and the jury-room; and 
 hence the laws are careful that the administration of justice 
 shall proceed with as much calmness and coolness as possible. 
 It may happen, also, that false charges are brought against men, 
 because they are obnoxious to those in power. Many a one 
 who has stood in the way of the purposes of a tyrant has been 
 removed under the forms of law, to gratify the passions of such 
 a man, and many a pure name has been covered with infamy 
 by the malignity of those in authority. But it is not needful to 
 show that none of these things can be alleged by man in regard 
 to the charges brought against him by his Maker. It cannot be 
 pretended that God has been hurried into these charges under 
 the influence of passion ; or that man is obnoxious to his pur- 
 poses, and that he would have him removed. The charges are 
 made with the utmost deliberation. They are made by the most 
 benevolent Being in the universe ; by One who can have no 
 pleasure in finding out proofs of guilt; by One who, from his 
 nature, is disposed to make every possible allowance for weak- 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 391 
 
 ness and infirmity ; by One who sees, better than man can state 
 it, everything that can be said in his defence ; by One more 
 disposed than any human being ever was to do justice to all 
 that is amiable and pure. If man wishes to find a friend who 
 will be kind to his infirmities, and do justice to him when the 
 world does him wrong, he can find no such friend as God. (c) It 
 may be added here, that the charge is one that no denial affects. 
 It has been deliberately made, and is that on which we are to 
 be tried. We may deny it, or disregard it, but it is not thereby 
 affected. Whatever we may choose to think of it does not change 
 the estimate which our Maker affixes to our character, any more 
 than the private views of a prisoner at the bar can modify the 
 estimate of the judge and jury. God will pronounce sentence on 
 us according to his own estimate of our character ; and the only 
 security which we can have that we shall not meet with con- 
 demnation will be in the fact, that on some grounds he will 
 regard it as not proper to condemn us. But that cannot be by 
 attempting to deny the truth of the charge which he brings 
 against us, or by holding him either to be malignant or mistaken. 
 (2.) To show that man cannot deny the truth of what is 
 alleged against him as a violator of the law, it may be observed, 
 secondly, that so far from obeying the perfect law of God, he 
 has failed of yielding perfect obedience to the very lowest rules 
 of morality. The standard at which man aims is in general low 
 enough, and might be supposed sufficiently accommodating to 
 satisfy any one who wished to save himself by his own righte- 
 ousness. That standard is, at any rate, at an immeasurable dis- 
 tance from the holy law of God. Yet let a man take any 
 standard of conduct which he pleases, and he will fail in all 
 attempts to show that he has always been conformed to it. 
 Who would undertake to prove before any tribunal that could 
 take cognizance of the motives, the thoughts, the words, as 
 well as the outward conduct, that he has always been honest, 
 true, kind, chaste, or courteous ? Who would attempt to prove 
 that he has on no occasion failed in his duty in the tenderest 
 relations of life ? What husband would attempt to prove that 
 he has always had right emotions towards the wife of his youth ? 
 Who in this relation would attempt to prove that he has on no 
 occasion forgotten the high trust committed to him when she 
 left her home and friends to be his ? What child is there that 
 would undertake to prove that he has never failed in his duty 
 to his father or his mother, that he has always been as respect- 
 ful, obedient, and grateful as he ought to have been? Is there 
 no compunction when he sees a father die? Is there nothing 
 
 26 
 
392 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 which he would wish to recall when he stands by a mother's 
 grave ? What brother would undertake to vindicate all his con- 
 duct towards a sister? or what friend is there that has never 
 had a feeling towards his friend which he ought not to have enter- 
 tained ? Who is there that would undertake to say that he has 
 never failed in the duty of perfect honesty and truth in the trans- 
 actions of business ? Nay, to come down to a lower standard. 
 Who, professing to be governed by the laws of honour, would 
 venture, when he comes to die, to stake his eternal welfare on 
 the fact that he has never failed of perfect conformity to that 
 arbitrary code ? Who that professes to be governed by the rules 
 of etiquette, would attempt to maintain that those laws have 
 always been perfectly observed? Let a man choose his own 
 standard of action ; let him refer to any code by which he pro- 
 fesses to regulate his conduct ; would he be willing that every 
 thought, and word, and feeling, and action of his life should be 
 brought out to noonday, and that his eternal welfare should be 
 determined by the issue of the question, whether he had or had 
 not been perfectly conformed to that code? If not, how shall 
 he vindicate himself from the charge of sin ? And if he can- 
 not vindicate himself in reference to these low and imperfect 
 standards, how shall he stand acquitted of the charge of having 
 violated the high and holy law of God? That, he has never 
 made a standard or rule of life. That, he has never attempted 
 to obey. The love to his Maker which that requires, he has 
 never once attempted to exercise. The holy duties which that 
 enjoins, he has never endeavoured to perform. Its sacred in- 
 junctions he has never thought of bearing with him to the rela- 
 tions of life, to the counting-room, to the circles of his friendship, 
 or to the scenes of his amusement. How, then, will he proceed 
 in attempting to show that the charges of guilt brought against 
 him are not true ? 
 
 (3.) The charges which are brought against man by his Maker 
 are sustained by all the facts of history. What ground would 
 that man take, who should attempt to show that the accusations 
 in the Bible against the race, that it is sinful and prone to evil, 
 are unfounded and false ? On what would he base his argu- 
 ment ? To what part of the world, to what historic monument, 
 to what recorded opinions, would he turn ? Men often feel that 
 the account in the Bible of the character of man, of the human 
 heart, of the tendency of our nature, is harsh and gloomy. 
 They are inclined to think better of the race, and to suppose that 
 the views in the Bible must have been derived from the observa- 
 tion of man in a peculiarly dark age of the world, or were the 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 393 
 
 result of feelings bordering on misanthropy. They think that 
 man is better than he is there represented ; or at least that by 
 certain modifications in society he reaches a state where that 
 description does not apply to him. On this account it is felt 
 that the charge is one that cannot be sustained ; and that it is 
 not true now that all hope of salvation on the ground of an 
 upright life is cut off. But let a few indisputable facts be 
 submitted to candid men. (a) One is, that the historic account 
 of human conduct in the Bible is no worse than in other records. 
 The narration of crimes, of wars, of ambition, of carnage, of 
 blood, of sensuality, of venality, of political profligacy or corrup- 
 tion of manners there, is no worse than is to be found in Livy 
 or Suetonius, in Gibbon or Hume. Every crime recorded in the 
 sacred narrative has more than one parallel in the records of 
 profane history ; and every sentiment there expressed about man 
 can be confirmed by any number of testimonies that the most 
 sceptical could demand. The world has been many a time in a 
 state like that described by Moses as the cause of the deluge ; 
 and the earth now bears up many a city where all the crimes 
 on account of which Sodom was overthrown still have an exist- 
 ence. Herculaneum and Pompeii have been revealed, by the 
 monuments exposed to human view from beneath the ashes that 
 covered them, to have been as corrupt, and corrupt in the same 
 sense, as the cities of the plain ; and a single one of the capitals 
 of Europe embosoms probably now more revolting sins than they 
 all. There is not an instance of fraud, corruption, or villany, 
 attributed to man in the Bible, which has not its parallel in the 
 present age of the world. The instances of depravity whose 
 deeds are recorded in the Bible find abundant parallels in 
 profane history ; and not one of the men of guilt there referred to 
 surpasses in wickedness the names of Nero, or Tiberius ; of 
 Alexander VI., or his wretched son; of Henry VIII., or Charles II. ; 
 or of the leaders of the French Revolution, (b) The account 
 contained in the Bible of human depravity is sustained by the 
 opinions of the sober and reflecting in all ages. Those who 
 have given themselves to the contemplation of the condition of 
 the world, have seen in it the sad tendency to depravity 
 in human nature, lamented it, and sought to correct it, and yet 
 the current of iniquity has swept over every barrier which man 
 could erect against it, and sweeps on unchecked from age to age. 
 (c) The same view of the human character has been taken by 
 wicked men themselves. Byron had no confidence in human 
 virtue ; Walpole said that every man had his price ; Chesterfield 
 regarded all virtue as false and hollow ; Robespierre and Dantoa 
 
394 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 acted under the belief that every man deserved the guillotine. 
 And (d) every man acts on the presumption that every other 
 man is a sinner, and that no confidence can he placed in him 
 without securities ; and expects that every other one will regard 
 himself in the same light. His security is not in human virtue, 
 but in vaults, and bars, and locks, and bonds ; and he himself 
 expects to be treated by every other man as if he had the same 
 character. His head neither hangs down with shame, nor do 
 his eyes flash with indignation, when he is asked for security 
 that he will pay an honest debt, or when he is told in a bank, 
 or on exchange, that no individual or corporation will trust him 
 without having some other security besides himself that he is a safe 
 and honest man. In these circumstances, how can man go before 
 God and attempt to justify himself on the pretext that the charges 
 against him are not true ? Can he take the ground that his Maker 
 is mistaken, or that he has maliciously brought a false accusation? 
 (4.) There is but one other observation which it is necessary 
 to make on this part of the subject. It is, that conscience 
 sustains the truth of all the charges which are brought against 
 man. Man exhibits this very strange and remarkable charac- 
 teristic, that he often frames an argument to show that the race 
 is not as guilty as it is accused of being, and perhaps succeeds in 
 convincing others, but still his argument does nothing to affect 
 the proof as it lies in his own soul. There is that within himself 
 which is to him overpowering demonstration that his arguments 
 are all false, and that the charges against him are true. God 
 has so formed the soul, that he has there at all times what may 
 be summoned forth, at his pleasure, as a living witness that all 
 that he has charged on man is true, and that shall render 
 nugatory in a moment all the reasonings of men about the 
 uprightness of their own hearts. This proof is found in a man's 
 own conscience. This is a device by which man himself is made 
 to coincide with and confirm the views of the Almighty ; to 
 approve where he approves, to condemn where he condemns. 
 It stands apart from the deductions of reason ; is little affected 
 by the arguments which men may employ; is susceptible of 
 being called up to give judgment at any time ; often pronounces 
 sentence against the favourite opinions of the man himself ; and 
 when unbiassed, uniformly declares judgment in favour of right, 
 and condemns what is wrong, and is always on the side of God 
 and his claims. This mysterious and wonderful power is wholly 
 under the Divine control. No matter what may be the cherished 
 opinions of man ; no matter how he may call in question the cor- 
 rectness of the Divine testimony against human conduct, and no 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 395 
 
 matter how reluctant man may be to admit the impossibility of 
 being saved by his own works ; God has power at any moment to 
 summon the mind itself to sustain his own account of the state 
 of the heart, and to put it into such a condition as to leave not 
 a shadow of doubt that all that he has said respecting its 
 depravity is true. It requires all the art of a sinner to keep the 
 voice of conscience silent, and to save himself from its rebukes. 
 Well he knows that if suffered to speak out, it will be in tones 
 of deep condemnation. It often does speak out. In solitude ; in the 
 silence of the night ; under the preaching of the gospel ; when 
 the mind in its lonely musings runs back, by some mysterious 
 law of association, to the past ; in a revival of religion ; on a bed 
 of sickness, or in the prospect of death, conscience often utters 
 its voice in tones that are so distinct that they can neither be 
 misunderstood nor suppressed. These are circumstances where 
 man is most likely to judge according to truth ; and in such 
 circumstances, he is so made as to feel, without a doubt, that the 
 judgment pronounced by conscience is in accordance with that 
 of the Most High, and that the views pressed upon his con- 
 science then about his own character, are those which will be 
 confirmed by the sentence of the final Judge. " In thoughts 
 from the visions of the night," said an ancient sage, " when deep 
 sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which 
 made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my 
 face : the hair of my flesh stood up : it stood still, but I could 
 not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there 
 was silence, and I heard a voice saying, Shall mortal man be 
 more just than God ? shall a man be more pure than his Maker ? 
 Behold, he put no trust in his servants ; and his angels he 
 charged with folly : how much less in them that dwell in houses 
 of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before 
 the moth?" Job iv. 1319. 
 
 I have concluded but one part of my argument, having 
 aimed to show that man cannot justify himself before God 
 by taking the ground that the facts are not as charged 
 upon him, or that he has not in fact violated the law of God. 
 This has been shown by these considerations : that it is im- 
 possible to believe that God would bring a false charge against 
 man ; that, as a matter of fact, man fails of perfect conformity 
 to the very lowest standard of morals ; that the account in the 
 Bible of the human character is confirmed by all the records 
 elsewhere existing of the character of man ; and that when man 
 has denied the charges against him, conscience comes in to con- 
 firm the accusations and the decisions of the Almighty. 
 
396 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 I should be glad to leave a single distinct impression on the 
 minds of my hearers. It is, that charges of guilt of a most serious 
 nature are made against every one of us. I most earnestly en- 
 treat you to consider the source of those accusations, and to be 
 willing to look at the evidence that they are true. If, as I 
 believe, they are brought against us by God himself, not one 
 word is needed to show that they demand attention. They are 
 the most serious charges that can be made. They come from a 
 source demanding the ear and the fixed attention of those against 
 whom they are brought. If they are alleged by our Creator, 
 they are true ; if true, they should excite alarm. They must 
 somehow, and at some period, be met. It will not do to deny 
 their truth, or to laugh at them, or to forget them, or to regard 
 them with unconcern. There they stand written against us in 
 the word of God. They are recorded in the history of our race. 
 They are engraven on our own souls. They are of such a nature 
 that they can easily be made to meet us on the bed of death. 
 They are such that unless they can be shown to be false, or unless 
 the offences charged on us be forgiven, they must sink us down to 
 everlasting suffering. And can man be unconcerned, where there 
 is the slightest evidence that such allegations are brought against 
 him by his Creator ? There are those from whose eyelids, if they 
 had a suspicion that a rumour were breathed abroad in this 
 community respecting their integrity as men of business, sleep 
 would depart to-night. There are others, whose character is to 
 themselves so dear and so sacred, that a whisper about their 
 want of holy virtue would throw them on a restless bed, and 
 drive peace from their bosom. Can you be indifferent when your 
 Creator stoops from his throne and charges you with sin, with 
 open rebellion, with such a character as to exclude you from his 
 favour ? Can you suffer all this to pass by you as the idle wind ? 
 Oh ! could you see all, your eyes would not know the sweets of 
 slumber to-night; your body would be deprived of calm repose ; 
 your conscience would be racked with horror ; your soul would 
 be overwhelmed with deep and gloomy forebodings. Can it be 
 a 'slight thing to be charged with damning guilt by the eternal 
 God? 
 
SEBMON XXXI. 
 
 MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF BY SHOWING THAT HIS 
 CONDUCT IS EIGHT. 
 
 ROM. iii. 20." By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified." 
 
 IN the last discourse, I proposed to show from these words, that 
 man cannot be justified by his own righteousness. In doing 
 this, I endeavoured to point out what is meant by justification, 
 and then entered upon an argument to prove that man cannot 
 justify himself before God. I observed that when a man is 
 accused of crime, there are two grounds of defence which he may 
 set up, on either of which, if successfully maintained, he will be 
 acquitted, or will be declared just in the sight of the law. He 
 may either deny the fact charged on him, or, admitting the fact, 
 he may urge that he had a right to do as he has done. I showed 
 that man is charged by his Maker with the violation of his law, 
 and that if he will justify himself, he must either deny the truth 
 of the charge, or show that in the circumstances of the case he 
 had a right to do as he has done. The first of these grounds of 
 defence I proceeded to examine at length, and attempted by the 
 following considerations to establish the position that man can- 
 not deny the truth of the charges brought against him : that 
 God, who brings them, could not be mistaken, and could not have 
 brought them from malignity ; that man, in fact, so far from 
 obeying the holy law of God, has failed of perfect conformity to 
 the lowest standard of morality ; that the account of man in the 
 Bible is confirmed by all the facts and all the monuments of 
 history; and that the charges in the Bible are sustained by the 
 decisions of conscience. 
 
 The only other ground of defence or of justification which man 
 can set up is, that it was right or proper for him to do as he 
 has done ; that admitting the facts in the case to be as they are 
 charged that he does not love his Maker with a perfect heart 
 that he violates his laws that he is under the influence of 
 unholy passions and that he neglects many things which are 
 required of him, yet that such are the circumstances in which 
 he is placed that it was not wrong for him to do as he has done, 
 
398 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 or that he has a valid excuse, and ought not to he condemned. 
 His condition, he might be ready to admit, is one that is to be 
 pitied ; but his conduct is not such as to deserve blame or punish- 
 ment. If a man can make this out, he will not be condemned, 
 for God will not condemn the innocent. If he has a good and 
 sufficient excuse for what he has done, there is no being in the 
 universe who will look more benignantly on it than God, for 
 there is no one so ready to do justice to the innocent, or to 
 allow its proper weight to all that ought to exculpate. It 
 is necessary, therefore, to examine this ground of defence, or to 
 inquire whether man can set up the plea that he has a right to 
 do as he has done ; to live as he is in fact living. He is soon 
 to stand before his Maker on a high charge of guilt. If he can- 
 not deny the facts charged on him, he must take the ground that 
 he had a right to do as he has done ; that he has a valid reason 
 which excuses him ; that he ought to be acquitted, and that his 
 deliverance should be hailed everywhere with songs and rejoicing, 
 and that he ought to be received to heaven in triumph. What 
 is this ground of defence ? What is its value ? Will it avail 011 
 the final trial ? 
 
 Here it may be observed, that man will not set up the plea of 
 insanity, though more insane on the subject charged on him 
 than many who have been acquitted by human tribunals. He 
 has too much pride, and too much confidence that he is right 
 and that God is wrong, to urge this plea. Nor would he main- 
 tain that God has no jurisdiction over the case, for nothing is 
 plainer than that he owes allegiance to the laws of his Maker, 
 and that he cannot go beyond the limits of his empire. The 
 points on which the accused sinner must rely, if he would under- 
 take to show that he is not to blame for what he has done and 
 to justify himself, must be such as the following : either that 
 the constitution of things under which he is placed is such as to 
 make it inevitable that he should do as he does ; or that he is 
 but acting out the nature which God has given him, and that 
 therefore it must be right ; or that the law of God is unreason- 
 ably severe and stern, and he is excusable for not obeying it ; or 
 that the time of preparation for eternity is too short, and that 
 too great interests are made to depend on this brief period of 
 existence ; or that the penalty is too severe, and that if a man 
 acts as well as he knows how, though he does not conform t^ the 
 holy law of God, he ought not to be recompensed with eternal 
 torments. If these points can be made out, man ought to be 
 acquitted. If they cannot, has he any other ground of defer^e 
 on which he can rely? 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 399 
 
 I. The first of these grounds of defence is derived from the 
 constitution of things under ivhich we are placed. Our minds, 
 when we set up this defence, go back to the arrangement with 
 Adam, and the effect of his sin on his posterity. The form of 
 this defence is, that his fall, by the Divine arrangement, placed 
 us in far more unfavourable circumstances for salvation than 
 those in which we should otherwise have been ; that his apostacy 
 made it certain that all his descendants would sin ; that it made 
 it certain that the first act of each moral agent on earth would 
 be wrong ; that there was a strong probability thus created that 
 all his posterity would be lost ; and that all our strong propen- 
 sities to evil, and our exposure to ruin, are to be traced to this 
 arrangement. If they who rely on this ground of defence were 
 disposed to take shelter under the declarations of Scripture, the 
 defence would be found in the following statements of the apostle 
 Paul: "Through the offence of one many are dead." "The 
 judgment was by one to condemnation." " By one man's offence, 
 death reigned by one." " By the offence of one, judgment came 
 upon all men to condemnation." " By one man's disobedience, 
 many were made sinners." " The law entered, that the offence 
 might abound," Rom. v. 15 17, 20. If these things are so, 
 how can man be held to be guilty for conduct thus rendered 
 certain and inevitable ? 
 
 The question now is, whether this can be regarded as a vin- 
 dication of the undisputed facts in the conduct of man. Will it 
 be admitted as a sufficient reason for what we have done in 
 violation of the holy law of God, when we stand at his bar ? 
 The fact is undeniable, that man early goes astray, and that he 
 continues to wander farther and farther unless he is restrained 
 or reclaimed. Is it a sufficient excuse for this that Adam fell, 
 and that we live under such a constitution that his sinning made 
 it certain that we should sin also ? 
 
 Now in examining this question we may admit two things : 
 one is, that our circumstances in consequence of his fall are in 
 many respects less favourable than they would otherwise have 
 been, or that incalculable evils have come upon us in conse- 
 quence of his apostacy; and the other is, that there is much 
 about it which neither revelation nor human philosophy ex- 
 plains. But these are different points from the one before us, 
 whether that act of our first father is a sufficient excuse or 
 apology for our crimes ; or, whether we can take shelter under 
 that constitution as a vindication from the charge of guilt. In 
 reply to this, two or three remarks may be made. 
 
 The first is, that we are responsible not for his sin, but for our 
 
400 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 own. The sin which is charged upon us is not his, but ours. 
 The question is, not whether his acting as he did will free us 
 from accountability or ill-desert, on account of his act which is 
 plain enough ; but whether it will free us from ill-desert on 
 account of our own sins. We could not be held guilty, that is, 
 blameworthy, for his sin ; and if this were the charge, the de- 
 fence set up must be conclusive. No reasoning has yet shown 
 that man either is or can be regarded as blameworthy on account 
 of the crime of his first father. 
 
 Again, the fall of Adam, and the constitution under which we 
 live, compel no one to sin. All sin is voluntary, and there is 
 nothing in which man more consults his own pleasure than in 
 the course of life which is charged upon him. Every profane 
 man means to be profane ; every dishonest man prefers to be 
 dishonest ; every sensual man has pleasure in moral corruption. 
 It is a great law of our being that where freedom ends, respon- 
 sibility ends, and there is nothing more universally true than 
 that a wicked man does only what he prefers to do. Nay, the 
 sins which are charged on him are very often the fruit of long 
 and deliberate plan ; and so attached is he to a course of ini- 
 quity, that no argument or entreaty is sufficient to induce him to 
 attempt to change his method of life. So voluntary are men in 
 their sins, that there is no argument or topic of persuasion 
 which will induce those living in sin, of themselves, to break off 
 their transgressions and turn to God. A man must take the 
 ground that he is compelled by the act of Adam to do what he 
 would otherwise not do, before that apostacy can be a vindica- 
 tion from the charges alleged against him. Further, this plea 
 would neither be urged nor admitted by man himself in any 
 other case. In all the numerous charges brought against men 
 before human tribunals, in different lands and ages, it is pro- 
 bable that this has never once been alleged as a vindication. 
 To no murderer, thief, pirate, or traitor, has it ever occurred to 
 urge this in his own defence. The state of the world has never 
 been such that it would be tolerated for a moment ; nor has the 
 consideration that Adam fell, and that we are under a constitu- 
 tion where all sin, probably ever modified, even in a single 
 instance, the verdict of a jury. There have been men on the 
 bench, and in the jury-box, who have held this as a theological 
 dogma, or as an excuse for their own sins before God ; but in a 
 court-room nature speaks out, and no man would venture to 
 apply such a dogma of theology to a decision of the bench. 
 What would it avail on a charge of murder before any court in 
 the world? 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 401 
 
 One other remark. It remains yet to be shown, that the faci- 
 lities for obtaining the Divine favour by men in their fallen 
 state are less than they would have been had they entered the 
 world in the condition of their first parents. Are any sent to 
 hell for Adam's sin ? That remains yet to be proved. Are any 
 infants loSt ? Not a particle of evidence has ever yet been fur- 
 nished of this. Is it beyond the capacity of children to please 
 God ? Let the remarks of the Saviour about the hosannas in 
 the temple answer. Is it less easy for us to obtain the Divine 
 approbation, and to be saved, than it would have been if Adam 
 had not fallen ? That remains to be proved : for if a choice 
 were to be made, it would seem to be easier to believe on Christ, 
 and to trust to him for salvation, than to keep a holy law un- 
 broken for ever. And if these things are so, then man cannot put 
 his defence on the ground that he is brought into the world under 
 a constitution which made it certain that he would be a sinner. 
 
 II. A second ground of defence to which man resorts in self- 
 vindication, akin to this but more common and more plausible 
 is, that he is but acting out the propensities of his nature. He 
 did not make himself. He is as God made him. He is but 
 indulging inclinations which his Creator has implanted in his 
 bosom, and the indulgence of which, therefore, cannot be attended 
 with blame, or followed by his displeasure. Can it be wrong 
 for him to look upon the light of the sun ? Can it be wrong for 
 him to be charmed with the beauty of a sweet landscape, or the 
 pleasant music of a waterfall ? Can it be wrong for him to allay 
 the demands of hunger and thirst, to protect himself from cold, 
 and to provide a shelter from the storm ? The innocence of 
 these things being admitted, as it must be, he applies the con- 
 cession to all the propensities and inclinations within him, to all 
 that has led him to do what is charged upon him as wrong, and 
 says, ' I am as God made me, and for that I cannot be held to 
 be guilty : I ought, therefore, to be acquitted of the charge of 
 guilt.' Let us inquire whether this will answer as a ground of 
 defence before God. 
 
 The most obvious remark in regard to it is, that if it is a valid 
 excuse in reference to religion, it is in reference to human con- 
 duct generally. For why may not any man accused of crime 
 urge the same thing in self-defence ? Has he done anything 
 more than act out certain propensities which he found in his 
 nature ? When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Hannibal the Alps, 
 Alexander the Granicus, or when Napoleon poured his armies 
 on Italy, Egypt, Austria, or Russia, did they do anything more 
 than follow out the inclinations of their nature ? Did they not 
 
402 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 find stirring within them a spirit of ambition which urged them 
 on to trample down the liberties of mankind ? Did Hobespierre 
 or Diderot, Alexander VI. or Caesar Borgia, do anything more 
 than act out certain propensities in their souls? Did Tor- 
 quemada in the inquisition, or Cortes in the butcheries of Mexico, 
 do anything but act out what they found within theirs ? And 
 the assassin, the duellist, the murderer, what does he do more ? 
 Is he not following out his natural impulses, as much as the 
 sinner who urges this plea? And would not this plea be as 
 good for the one as the other ? 
 
 But further, this plea is contrary to the convictions of common 
 sense, and the universal judgment of right among men. If it 
 were well-founded, then the true course for man, if he would 
 please God, would be to give unrestrained indulgence to every 
 inclination in his bosom. Nay, then it would be wrong for him 
 to check any of his passions, and his duty would be to give them 
 the rankest growth, and the broadest indulgence possible ; for 
 should not man cultivate all that God has implanted in his 
 bosom ? Then all the restraints on the passions of children must 
 be displeasing to God; all the lessons of order, morality, and 
 religion, are a contravening of his wishes ; all colleges, schools, 
 and churches, are a nuisance ; all court-houses and prisons are a 
 violation of human liberty. Then the great benefactors of the 
 race, and those who have been especially the friends of God, and 
 have obtained the highest seat in heaven, have been those who 
 have proclaimed the innocence of universal licentiousness, or 
 who have furnished the greatest facilities for the indulgence of 
 passion. From the preachers of religion from pious princes 
 from the dispensers of justice from the patrons of order and of 
 law from Paul, Aurelian, and Hale, the crown is to be trans- 
 ferred to such moralists as Paine, such princes as Charles II., 
 and such judges as Jeffries. But who is prepared to take this 
 ground ? This view goes against the common sense and the 
 common judgments of men. There are things in man to be 
 restrained in order that he may be virtuous. It is not sufficient 
 to secure the meed of virtue to say, ' I am as God made me, and 
 am but acting out the propensities of my nature.' What then 
 is the mistake which is made in this plea ? What fallacy is 
 there in it, for it seems to have plausibility and truth? An 
 answer may be readily given to these questions by making a 
 distinction, which the young man may apply through life to the 
 noblest purposes of self-improvement. In the plea set up, two 
 things are confounded, which are wholly distinct, and which are 
 to be dealt with on different principles : our constitutional pro- 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 403 
 
 pensities as God made them, and our corrupt propensities which 
 have another origin. The former are to he cultivated, and carried 
 to the highest pitch of perfection possible ; the latter are to he 
 checked, restrained, subdued. The former are innocent, noble, 
 and ennobling ; the latter are debasing and degrading " cor- 
 rupt, sensual, devilish." There are propensities of our nature, 
 and laws of our being, which God has implanted, and which, 
 if kept within proper limits, are harmless, or which may con- 
 tribute to our highest elevation in the scale of existence. To 
 eat, to drink, to sleep, are laws of our animal being, harmless if 
 restrained, debasing if indulged contrary to the just rules 
 of temperance. To aspire after knowledge, to seek a " good 
 name," to rise to the fellowship of higher intelligences, to bring 
 out and cultivate the benevolent affections, is to follow nature as 
 God has made us, and never degrades or debases us. But to 
 follow out the inclinations of ambition, and pride, and vanity, 
 aftd lust, and revenge, is a different thing. These debase and 
 sink to a lower level than that of brutes ; for in proportion as 
 we may rise, so may we descend. The star that culminates 
 highest, may sink the lowest ; and as woman, if vile, sinks lower 
 than man can, so man, if debased, sinks beneath the brute. 
 
 Men mistake then in this. When they indulge in these things, 
 they are not in any proper sense acting out their nature. They 
 are not as God made them. They are sunken, debased, fallen. 
 Let men act according to the great laws which He has impressed 
 upon their being, and they will be noble, holy, godlike. Thus 
 acting, man would have met the approbation of his Maker, and 
 might have pleaded innocent to the charges of guilt. But let 
 him not give indulgence to corruption, and then seek shelter in 
 the plea, " I am as God made me." 
 
 III. A third ground of defence would be, that the law of God 
 is stern and severe, and that his requirements are of such a nature 
 that man has no power to comply with them. The position which 
 would be taken is, that there is no obligation where there is no 
 ability, and that as man now has no power to yield obedience, 
 he cannot be held to be chargeable with guilt. The principle 
 here stated seems to be one that is based on common sense, and 
 that must ever command the assent of all men who are not & 
 blinded by theory or by prejudice. It is impossible for man to 
 feel himself guilty, or blameworthy, for not doing what he had 
 no power to do. He may count it a misfortune, or he may ex- 
 perience calamities and suffer losses, because he has no greater 
 power, but it is not possible for him to feel on this account the 
 compunctions of remorse. "With the limited powers of man, it 
 
404 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 is impossible for him ever to feel himself guilty for not creating 
 a world, or not guiding the stars, or not raising the dead ; and 
 he cannot conceive that by any revelation whatever, or any 
 course of reasoning, or any requirement laid on him, he should 
 ever feel himself blameworthy for not doing these things. If 
 then it were so, that God has required of man more than he is 
 in any sense able to perform, the nature which he has given us 
 and which in that case would be a very strange and unaccount- 
 able endowment would teach us two things : one, that his 
 government was a tyranny; and the other, that man could not 
 be to blame. Such a creature under such a government might 
 be made to suffer, but could not be punished ; he might ex- 
 perience pain of body, but he never would know the pangs of 
 remorse. But is this so ? The law itself is the best exponent 
 of the views of God on this subject, and that law is clear and 
 explicit. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is 
 the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto 
 it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two com- 
 mandments hang all the law and the prophets," Matt. xxii. 37 40. 
 Could anything be more reasonable than this ? God asks nothing 
 which we have not ; nothing which we have no power to render. 
 He asks " all" the heart, the mind, the strength, and he asks no 
 more. He does not require for himself the service claimed of 
 angelic powers, but that adapted to our own ; he asks no love 
 for our neighbour which we do not feel that we are abundantly 
 able to show to ourselves. To take shelter from the charges 
 against us, under the plea that our Maker has required services 
 beyond our power to render, is therefore directly in the face of 
 his own requirements ; is to charge him with tyranny, where 
 his requirements are as clear as noonday, and as equal as they 
 can be, and where he has expressly told us that the plea cannot, 
 and will not be sustained : " O house of Israel, are not my 
 ways equal ? Are not your ways unequal ? Therefore will I 
 judge you, O house of Israel, according to your ways, saith the 
 Lord God. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgres- 
 sions ; so iniquity shall not be your ruin," Ezek. xviii. 29, 30. 
 
 IV. A fourth ground of defence on which man charged with guilt 
 is secretly relying in self-justification is, that the penalty of the 
 law of God is unreasonably severe, and that no consideration can 
 make it right to recompense the errors and crimes of this short 
 life with eternal punishment. The ground here taken is, that it 
 would be wrong for God to punish man in this manner, and 
 therefore that man has a claim to eternal life. The inference 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 405 
 
 which the sinner charged with guilt draws is, that if the penalty 
 is unreasonably severe, he cannot be held to be guilty, and has a 
 right to disregard the law of his Maker. Now it is not my design 
 to attempt a defence of the doctrine of eternal punishment, or to 
 show that the impenitent sinner will suffer for ever. It must be 
 admitted that there are mysteries on that subject which the 
 human powers at present cannot explain. All that the subject 
 demands is, to examine this reasoning which the sinner sets up 
 in his defence. Is the severity of a penalty, then, even sup- 
 posing it to be wholly unreasonable, a valid excuse for violating 
 law, or for doing wrong ? It is possible to conceive for such 
 things have been that the penalty for the crime of treason may 
 be entirely too severe ; that its execution may be attended with 
 barbarous cruelty ; and that it may be followed by a taint of 
 blood, and by inflictions on the family of the traitor, wholly 
 unjustifiable by any principles of equity. But would this be any 
 justification of the act of treason ? Does it make the betrayal 
 of the state a matter of duty or of innocence ? Is it such a 
 meritorious act, that he who performs it has a claim on the 
 offices and emoluments which a sovereign has to bestow on 
 deserving subjects ? So in the matter before us. If there are 
 things which we cannot explain about future punishment, if it 
 has a degree of severity which we have no means of vindicating, 
 is it fair to infer that it is right to violate the law of heaven ; 
 and has he who does it a claim on the crown of glory ? Yet 
 this seems to me to be what is involved in this ground of 
 defence which a man charged with sin sets up. Would it be 
 reasonable or proper for him to suppose that God would admit a 
 plea drawn from his own alleged injustice and cruelty, as a 
 reason for the habitual violation of his law ? But the plea has 
 no force in another respect. Our relations to the administration 
 of justice are not only concerned with the question what the 
 penalty is, but with the question whether it is practicable to 
 avoid it. There may be reasons operating in the appointment 
 of a penalty which we do not understand. All that is necessary 
 for us to know is, what the penalty is, and to have such freedom 
 that we can avoid it by a correct life. They who live in 
 England now, or they who lived under the administration of 
 the laws in times of greater severity, can have no reason to 
 complain, so far as appears, of the punishment affixed there to 
 treason. It can be readily seen, indeed, that there would be 
 much that would be painful and disgraceful in being drawn on 
 a hurdle to the place of execution ; in being quartered, and 
 publicly exposed j in the confiscation of property, the degradation, 
 
406 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 of a family, and the taint of blood ; but wby should a good 
 citizen, who did not design to commit treason, complain of it ? 
 It would be easy to avoid it, and his knowing the severity of the 
 punishment should only make him the more cautious to do his 
 duty to his country. Least of all, knowing what the penalty 
 was, could he when he had betrayed his country set up a plea of 
 innocence on the ground that the penalty was severe ? Without 
 pursuing this reasoning any further, may it not be asked here 
 whether it is not just as applicable to the government of God as 
 to a human administration ? 
 
 V. There is but one other ground of defence, or self-justification, 
 which the accused sinner can be supposed to set up : it is, that 
 too great results are made to depend on the present life ; that life 
 is too short, that our days are too few and fleeting, that our 
 continuance here is too uncertain, that we are liable to be too 
 suddenly called away, to make it proper to suspend so great 
 interests on anything that we can do here. The accused sinner 
 would take the ground that eternal consequences demand a 
 longer probation, and that the longevity of the antediluvian 
 patriarchs was a period quite circumscribed enough to make it 
 proper to suspend so great interests upon life. Much might be 
 said in reply to this, and reference might be made to the 
 instances which occur in the life of an individual or in a state, 
 where the most momentous and far-reaching results are made to 
 depend on the action of a moment. But without dwelling on 
 the numerous illustrations which occur on that point, two re- 
 marks may be made in reply to this ground of defence. One is, 
 that, as experience has in millions of cases shown, the time 
 allotted to man is ample for a preparation for eternity. Count- 
 less hosts before the throne have found it so, and millions are on 
 their way to join them, who find the period of probation abun- 
 dant to enable them to prepare for heaven. That all others are 
 not with them in the same blissful path is not because life is too 
 short to enter it, but is to be traced to other causes. Men re- 
 quire length of days to amass wealth, or to perfect their schemes 
 of earthly aggrandisement, but the purposes of salvation do not 
 need it. The giving of the heart to God in sincerity through Jesus 
 Christ an act which may be performed in the briefest period 
 during which a moral agent lives is enough to secure salvation. 
 Wealth or honour could not be secured in so brief a period, but 
 the salvation of the soul may. The other remark is, that this 
 vindication is set up in. circumstances which painfully demon- 
 strate that it cannot be sincere. Not time enough to secure 
 salvation ! Too great interests suspended on this brief period of 
 
MAN CANNOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF. 407 
 
 existence ! Unreasonable to make eternal results depend on the 
 fleeting hours of this short life ! And faom whom do these objec- 
 tions come ? From those on whom the hours of life hang heavily, 
 and " who are often wishing its different periods at an end ;" from 
 those who are impatient for some season of festivity or enjoy- 
 ment to arrive, and who chide the slow-revolving wheels of 
 time ; from those whose days are weariness and sadness, for the) 1 
 have nothing to interest them, nothing to do ; from those whose 
 principal study is the art of killing time, and all whose plans 
 have no other end ; from those who waste the hours that might 
 be consecrated to prayer in needless slumber, and from whose 
 lips each morning, while they now are locked in repose, there 
 might proceed the earnest breathing of a penitent heart that 
 would ensure salvation ; from those who, over worthless or cor- 
 rupting verse, or in the perusal of romances, or in day-dreams, 
 or at the toilet, waste each day time enough to secure the redemp- 
 tion of the soul. From such lips and hearts, from those who 
 live thus, and to whom life puts on these forms, assuredly the 
 objection should not be heard, that too great results are made 
 to depend on this short life, and that therefore they are blame- 
 less in neglecting God. 
 
 If these are correct views, then the sinner cannot justify him- 
 self. It has been shown that he cannot deny the reality of the 
 facts charged on him, and the grounds of defence which the 
 human heart is disposed to set up in self-vindication have been 
 considered. It is not improper, at this stage of the argument, 
 to make a personal appeal to my hearers, and to ask them to 
 look at the ground which we have gone over as a personal 
 matter. To my mind it seems clear beyond the shadow of a 
 doubt, that the position which has been taken is correct as an 
 argument, and that it is clear that man can neither deny the 
 truth of the charges alleged against him, nor vindicate himself 
 for what he has done. But whatever may be thought of the 
 argument, attempted as an argument, on one point there can be 
 no difference of opinion that the conclusion which we have 
 reached is in accordance with the Bible. That conclusion is, 
 that the unpardoned sinner is a lost and ruined being ; that he 
 is under condemnation ; that he is held to be guilty in the sight 
 of God ; that he is soon to be arraigned on charges involving the 
 question of his eternal welfare ; and that unless he is in some 
 way acquitted of those charges, they will sink him to ruin. The 
 views which have been thus expressed lie at the foundation of 
 the system of salvation by grace. They are such as when felt 
 lead to the conviction of sin, and to that sense of helplessness 
 '27 
 
408 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 which is preparatory to the reception of pardon and salvation 
 by the grace of the gospel. If these views produced the effect 
 they are fitted to work, they would leave the impression of guilt, 
 helplessness, and danger on the mind of every one who is not 
 converted and pardoned. Sooner or later every one will feel 
 this. The sinner may be unwilling to admit the force of these 
 arguments now ; for no one, if he can help it, will be over- 
 whelmed with the conviction of guilt, or have his mind un- 
 settled and harassed by apprehensions of danger. But not 
 always can he put this subject far from him. He will lie down 
 and die ; and there are sad feelings which the dying sinner has, 
 when he reflects that his life has been spent in sin, and that he 
 is dying under condemnation. He will, from the bed of death, 
 look out tremblingly on the eternal world on that shoreless and 
 bottomless ocean on which he is about to be launched ; and it 
 will be sad to feel that he is about to enter that vast and fearful 
 world an unpardoned sinner. He will tread his way up to the 
 bar of a holy God ; and little as he may be concerned about that 
 now, it will be sad to tread that gloomy way alone, and to feel 
 as he goes that he is under condemnation. He will stand and 
 look on the burning throne of Deity, and on his final Judge ; he 
 will await, and with what an agony of emotion, the sentence 
 that shall fall from his lips, sealing his eternal doom ! Oh, how 
 can he then be just with God ? How vindicate his ways before 
 him ? How stand there and justify his neglect of the Divine 
 commands, his neglect of prayer, his neglect of the offers of 
 mercy, his neglect of his own soul ? How, then, can he show 
 his Maker that it was right not to love him ; not to pray to 
 him ; not to thank him ; not to embrace his offers of mercy ? 
 How can he show that it was right for him to live without hope 
 and without God in the world ? How can he be saved ? 
 
SERMON XXXIL 
 
 MAN CANNOT MERIT SALVATION. 
 
 JOB xxxv. 58. "Look unto the heavens, and see; and behold the 
 clouds, which are higher than thou. If thou sinnest, what doest thou against 
 him ? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him ? If 
 thou be righteous, what givest thou him ? or what receiveth he of thine 
 hand ? Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art ; and thy righteousness 
 may profit the son of man." 
 
 THESE are the words of Elihu, who, though not inspired, has 
 expressed a sentiment which the Spirit of inspiration has regarded 
 it as important to preserve. The general idea is, that God is so 
 great and independent that the conduct of men can neither injure 
 nor profit him that though man may be affected in his interests 
 by the treatment which he receives from his fellow-men, no sucli 
 treatment, whether good or evil, can affect the great and eternal 
 God the God that made the heavens, and that dwells in regions 
 beyond the clouds. The evil conduct of man cannot mar His happi- 
 ness, or otherwise injure Him ; nor can man's acts of righteousness so 
 benefit Him as to lay Him under obligation. " If thou be righteous, 
 what givest thou him I or what receiveth he of thine hand ? 
 Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; and thy righteous- 
 ness may profit the son of man." It is one part of this general 
 sentiment only that I here design to illustrate that our acts 
 of righteousness cannot so profit God as to lay him under obliga- 
 tion to us. 
 
 In the two previous discourses I have endeavoured to prove that 
 man cannot justify himself either by denying the facts charged on 
 him, or by showing that he had a right to do as he has done. The 
 inquiry at once presents itself, How then can he be saved 1 There 
 are but two ways conceivable one by his own merits, that is, that 
 he somehow deserves to be saved ; the other, by the merits of 
 another or of others. If it be in the latter way, it must either be 
 by the merits of Christ, or it must be because certain eminent 
 saints have done more than was demanded of them, and that their 
 merits, garnered up and deposited in certain hands, can be made 
 over to others. It is not proposed to inquire now whether this 
 latter method be in accordance with truth, but whether men 
 
410 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 can merit salvation for themselves. They can do it if their 
 jives are such that they deserve to go to heaven, or if it would 
 be wrong for God to punish them for ever, for " God will not do 
 wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgment," Job 
 xxxiv. 12. The importance of this inquiry will be at once 
 perceived ; for the great mass of mankind are depending on their 
 own righteousness for salvation, and the grand issue between 
 Christianity and the world lies just in this point. There are two 
 subjects of inquiry, which, if they can be made clear, will conduct 
 to the truth in this case : I. What is meant by merit ? and, II. 
 Can man merit heaven ? 
 
 I. What is meant by merit ? The word is in common use, and 
 the common use is the correct one. We speak of merit when a 
 man deserves a reward for something which he has done, or when 
 it would be wrong to withhold it. He renders to him who employs 
 him an equivalent, or what is of as much value as is paid him for 
 his services. Two or three simple illustrations will make the 
 common use of the word plain, and show its bearing on the question 
 before us. 
 
 You hire a day-labourer. You make a bargain with him at the 
 outset; he complies with the terms on his part, and at night you 
 pay him. He has earned, deserved, or merited that which you 
 pay. He has been faithful to his part of the agreement, and the 
 service which he has rendered is worth as much to you as the 
 wages which you pay him. You could have done the work 
 perhaps yourself, but you preferred to hire him, for you might 
 yourself be more profitably or pleasantly employed. At all events, 
 what he has done is worth to you all which you pay him, and it 
 would be wrong on every consideration for you to withhold it. 
 If you choose to give him anything more than was specified in 
 the agreement, it would be a gratuity ; but that which you 
 agreed to give him he has a right to demand, and you are not 
 at liberty to withhold it. He has deserved or earned it, for he 
 has rendered you a full equivalent, according to the terms of the 
 contract. 
 
 A man enlists to defend his country as a soldier. It is supposed, 
 in the contract which is made with him, that his service will be 
 of equal value to his country with the pay which he receives. 
 By fighting its battles ; by guarding its sea-coasts, villages, towns, 
 and hamlets ; by keeping its fields from being trod down by an 
 enemy ; by protecting the lives of aged men, helpless women, and 
 children f and by defending the flag of the nation from insult, it is 
 supposed that his services are worth full as much to the country 
 as he receives in his pay. The pay is graduated in part by the 
 
MAN CANNOT MERIT SALVATION. 411 
 
 test estimate which can be made of the value of the service which, 
 a man can render in this calling, and the nation would be no 
 gainer by dismissing him from its service. He complies with the 
 contract, and when he comes and shows his scars, and tells of his 
 perils and privations, his weary marches, and his risk of life, 
 and his separation from home and friends in the cause of his 
 country, his country will not grudge him the pittance that he 
 receives, for he has earned it, and merited it, and it would not be 
 right to withhold it from him. 
 
 You employ a physician ; the service which he renders you, you 
 regard a full equivalent for what you pay him. What you receive 
 from him in his care, attention, skill, and sympathy, you consider 
 to be fully equal in value to the compensation which you give 
 him. Your relief from pain, your recovery of the use of your 
 bodily powers, or the restoration to your affectionate embrace in 
 sound health of a wife or child, you consider as an ample equivalent 
 for all which he asks you for his services ; and were an election 
 to be made, you would much prefer to pay the amount of the 
 physician's fees to going through those sorrows again. What he 
 receives from you, you feel that on every account he deserves or 
 has earned, and it would be wrong for you to withhold it. 
 
 In each of these cases, that is true which the apostle Paul 
 affirms, " To him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned of 
 grace, but of debt." These illustrations will explain the proper 
 sense of the word " merit." In each instance, there is an equivalent 
 for what is paid ; in each instance, what is demanded could be 
 enforced as a claim of right. There is no other sense in which the 
 word merit or desert can be used. All besides this is favour or 
 grace. If you choose to give the day-labourer, the soldier, or the 
 professional man more than you agreed, or more than his services 
 are worth to you, you have an undoubted right to do so, but you 
 would not put it on the ground of his merit or desert. You would 
 feel that it was a gratuity which could not be enforced by justice, 
 and that no blame would be attached to you if it were withheld. 
 If his perils, or services, or self-denials and sacrifices, were greater 
 than you anticipated when the contract was made, or if the service 
 rendered was really of more value to you than the amount which 
 you are pledged to give him, you may consider yourself bound by 
 equity to give him more, for you feel that he has earned or merited 
 it. Thus you would be glad to compensate, if you could, the 
 wounded soldier who has perilled all in your defence ; and on the 
 same principle, if you could do it, you would wish to recompense 
 the man who at the risk of his life should save your child from 
 the devouring flame, or from a watery grave. 
 
412 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 II. We come now to apply tliese principles to the case before us. 
 Keeping this explanation of the nature of merit in view, we 
 approach the inquiry, whether man can merit heaven ? Can he 
 be saved because he deserves it ? Can he be so profitable to God 
 that he can advance a just claim to an admission into the world of 
 glory ? If he can, then his salvation follows as a matter of course ; 
 if he cannot, he should lose no time in endeavouring to ascertain 
 whether there is any other way by which he may be saved. In 
 reference to this inquiry, the following considerations may be 
 submitted : 
 
 (1.) Man can render no service to his Maker for which the 
 rewards of heaven would be a proper equivalent. Or, in other 
 words, the amount of service which he can render is not such as 
 can be properly measured by the reward of everlasting life. His 
 service to his Maker and to the universe is not of so much value 
 that he can claim eternal life as an equivalent. We have seen 
 that tins does exist in the case of the day-labourer, the soldier, 
 and the physician. We can see a correspondence between the 
 service rendered and the compensation in these cases, which makes 
 us feel that there is propriety and equity in the reward. But in 
 reference to any connexion or correspondence between the service 
 which man can render his Maker and the rewards of heaven, we 
 can see no such propriety and equity. The one does not measure 
 the other. The universe is not so much benefited by the service 
 of man, that everlasting life and infinite happiness would be only 
 a fair equivalent, or such that wrong would be done if that 
 reward should be withheld. Yet is it not a fair principle, that 
 this must be the case if man deserves or merits salvation ? Must 
 there not have been such an amonnt or value of service rendered 
 that it would be injustice to withhold the reward injustice such 
 as would occur in the case of the faithful day-labourer, the 
 soldier, the physician, if their pay were withheld ? That must be 
 extraordinary service rendered to the universe, or to God, which 
 deserves the glories of an eternal heaven as its reward. That is 
 extraordinary service rendered to you if a stranger rescues a child 
 from impending death, and restores him to your transported bosom, 
 and you feel that no compensation which you can make would be 
 more than an equivalent. That was extraordinary service which 
 was rendered to their country by the heroes of the American 
 Revolution ; and as the results of their patriotism and perils are 
 seen in the unexampled prosperity of the land which they rescued, 
 we feel that the pension of the old soldier is a very inadequate 
 recompense. That was extraordinary virtue which led the father 
 of his country through the trials, perplexities, and perils of that 
 
MAN CANNOT MERIT SALVATION. 413 
 
 time, and which he evinced when, having laid the foundation of 
 our liberty, he voluntarily retired to pm~ate life, leaving tV. 
 people in the enjoyment of freedom ; and we feel that IK we^l 
 which the nation had to offer, no monument of marble or of brass 
 which art could rear, would equal the measure of his praise. Buc 
 has man any such extraordinary service to render to his Maker 
 and to the universe ? Has he done anything, can he do anything 
 for God, and for the empire which he rules, which would make 
 the wealth of heaven and its everlasting glories only an equitable 
 recompense ? Obviously, there is no congruity, no fitness, no 
 correspondence between the one arid the other; and when men 
 talk about meriting heaven, or when they feel that they deserve to 
 be saved, they have not well considered the import of language. 
 They use it correctly in common life. Is it not right to ask that 
 it may be used with the same exactness in religion ? 
 
 (2.) This general principle, which appears so obvious, may be 
 illustrated with particular reference to the religious services which 
 men render to their Maker. If man merits heaven, and is to 
 be saved on account of his own deservings, it will be conceded that 
 the service must be in some way connected with religion, or of 
 such a nature that it can be regarded as the service of God. You 
 would not feel yourself bound to pay a day-labourer if, instead of 
 working for you, he worked all day for your neighbour, or were 
 idle ; you would not think of recompensing a soldier if he slept at 
 his post, or fought under the standard of the enemy. 
 
 There are religious men upon the earth men who are honestly 
 engaged in the service of God, and who, in connexion with their 
 religious services, are looking for the rewards of heaven. Our 
 subject, in its progress, demands that we inquire just here whether 
 the service which they render is of such a nature that they merit 
 eternal life ? Is it because they are so profitable to God and his 
 cause that the rewards of heaven would be only an equivalent for 
 the services which they render? Let us look a moment at this 
 matter. 
 
 A man who is truly religious renders a real and a valuable service 
 to the cause of virtue and of God. His existence is a blessing, 
 and not a curse. The universe is made better and happier because 
 he lives. It would be a loss to society and to the universe, if his 
 example, his conversation, his plans of wisdom, his experience, 
 and his generous deeds, were annihilated or had not been. When 
 the "rewards" of heaven are bestowed upon him, it will not be 
 without some reference to a fitness or propriety that they should 
 be so bestowed. There will be a sense in which every man 
 will be "rewarded according to his works." But in reference 
 
414 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 to the bearing of this indisputable fact on the case before us, there 
 are two or three things that deserve to be considered. 
 
 (a) One is, that your individual existence is not necessary to 
 secure the service which is now actually rendered. God is not so 
 dependent on you that he could not accomplish his purposes 
 without you, or that if you should be removed, service of equal 
 value might not be secured in some other way. By the great law 
 of his kingdom, the agency of man is to be employed in the 
 accomplishment of his purposes, but your individual agency is not 
 indispensable. The services of a minister of the gospel who is 
 eminently useful, and who is at a time of life, and has a measure 
 of experience and learning, that seems to fit him for an important 
 station, can be supplied by some one that God can place in his 
 stead. When he is taken away, a mighty chasm indeed seems to 
 be made ; but his withdrawal soon ceases to be felt, for others 
 rush in to fill his place : as the surface of the ocean soon becomes 
 smooth, and it seems to be as full as it was before, though the 
 waterspout has lifted up and carries away a portion of the mighty 
 deep, or the sun bas caused it to ascend in vapours ; for streams and 
 rivers all the while pour into that ocean, and keep up a constant 
 supply. The man that was so learned and wise that it seemed as 
 if no one else could supply his place at the head of a college, or so 
 sagacious and prudent that it seemed as if some vast plan of 
 benevolence depended on him, is removed ; but the chasm is soon 
 filled up just as in storming a city, when the leader falls, some 
 subaltern steps into his place, and leads on the conquest with the 
 freshness of youth, and with wisdom and valour that had been in 
 training for this very breach which God foresaw would occur. Let 
 us not, then, suppose that our services are indispensable to God. 
 Let us not imagine that he is dependent on us, or is under obliga- 
 tion to us. In the bosom of society, there are undeveloped powers, 
 which will more than fill our places ; in the church, there is piety 
 maturing which can do more than we can do ; and the very 
 purposes of human advancement cherished in the Divine Mind may 
 demand our removal. 
 
 (b) The religious man will reflect, further, that his best services 
 do not deserve heaven. A man who is truly pious, and who has 
 any proper sense of his own imperfections, and of the glory to 
 which he is looking forward, never feels that there is any propor- 
 tion between the services which he renders to God here, and the 
 immortal blessedness to which he hopes to be elevated hereafter. 
 He renders no service to the cause of truth and virtue which in 
 his own estimation is an equivalent for the rewards which he 
 trusts are in reserve for him ; and after all his toils he feels that 
 
MAN CANNOT MERIT SALVATION. 415 
 
 those rewards will be not of " debt," but of grace, and that he is 
 an " unprofitable servant. " God has taken effectual care of this 
 in his plan of salvation ; and whoever he may be that expects 
 heaven on the ground of his own merit, it will not be he who 
 gives evidence that he is truly a devoted and faithful servant 
 of God. 
 
 (c) If, however, at any time this feeling of merit or claim should 
 arise in the mind of a truly pious man, it is effectually checked by 
 a moment's reflection on the way in which he has been disposed to 
 engage in the service of God at all. It is not by any native 
 inclination or tendency of mind ; it has been solely by grace. 
 Whatever service he may render, the origin of it is to be traced 
 back to that distinguishing mercy which led him to seek after God, 
 when he was disposed to pursue his own ways ; which recalled 
 him, when he was a wretched wanderer from the paths of truth 
 and salvation. The case is like this: You go into a "market 
 place," and find a man " idle," and inclined to be idle. You reason 
 and remonstrate with him, and by persevering entreaty, and the 
 offer of reward, arouse him from his indolence, and induce him to 
 spend his time in your service. Now, however faithful he may 
 be, or however valuable may be the services which he may render 
 you, lie will never feel that any merit is to be attributed to 
 himself. He owes to you his industrious habits, and all which he 
 can ever secure by his labour. Or to take a case more in point : 
 You go into a miserable hovel, and find a wretch in the lowest stages 
 of vice and misery. He was once a man in heart as well as in 
 form, but now he has wholly lost the manhood of the one, and 
 almost of the other. He is loathsome by vice and disease, and is 
 a wretched outcast. He has no wish to be a man again ; he has 
 no energy to arouse him from his condition ; lie has no friend to 
 take him by the hand, or even to pity him in his vices and woes. 
 You take compassion on him. You clothe him in decent apparel. 
 You remonstrate with him on his evil course. You remind him 
 of what he was, and tell him of what he may be still. You 
 rekindle the dying spark of self-respect ; show him that he may 
 yet forsake the paths of vice and again be respectable ; breathe 
 into him gradually the wish to be virtuous and pure and happy ; 
 give him a comfortable home to dwell in, and a piece of land to 
 cultivate as his own. You speak kindly to him when he is 
 discouraged ; shield him when he is tempted by his old com- 
 panions ; offer him ample rewards for any services which he 
 may render you, and he returns to the ways of industry, and 
 rises to a condition of competency and respectability. Perchance, 
 doing this, you have lighted on a "gem of purest ray serene" 
 
416 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 in that rubbish, and the unhappy wretch whom you have 
 rescued had a genius which takes its place among the brightest 
 constellations of talent, and its light beams afar on the nations. 
 Yet how will he feel in these circumstances ? Will he feel that 
 this is to be traced to his own merit, and that the wealth or honour 
 which may gather around him is the measure of his desert? 
 He will feel that but for you he would even now have been 
 occupying that wretched hovel, or more likely would have been 
 in the drunkard's grave. Whatever he has of moral worth, 
 influence, or reputation, is to be traced to you. Thus it is with 
 the Christian ; and feeling this, he cannot regard himself as so 
 profitable to God as to merit the rewards of heaven. 
 
 (3.) If it were conceded that the rewards of heaven were a 
 proper recompense for the religious services which man can render 
 to God, yet they would not be the suitable reward of those who 
 are commonly expecting heaven on the ground of their own 
 merits. The truly religious man, as we have seen, expects 
 heaven, not on the ground of his own deserts, but through the 
 grace of God. We may therefore lay the case of such out of the 
 question in the inquiry whether men can deserve salvation by 
 their own merits. The other class, embracing the mass of mankind, 
 expect to be saved because they deserve to be saved, or, which 
 amounts to the same thing, because they do not deserve to be 
 damned. The ground of their claim is not that they are religious 
 for that they do not profess to be ; and not that they render 
 such service to the cause of God that the rewards of heaven would 
 be an equivalent for their services for they do not profess to be 
 engaged in his service at all. What, then, is it ? It is, that they 
 are honest, true, faithful to their contracts, honourable in their 
 dealings, disposed to aid others in their distress, and courteous 
 in their treatment of their fellow-men. One who leads such a 
 life, they suppose, does not deserve to be cast off and made miserable 
 for ever ; or, what is the same thing, they suppose that in all 
 justice and equity he ought to be made happy in a future state 
 that is, that he may be saved on the ground of his own merits. 
 What is now the value of this claim ? With the principles before 
 us which have been laid down, let us endeavour to answer this 
 question. The inquiry is, Is heaven the appropriate reward of 
 such a life? An illustration or two will make this plainer than 
 abstract reasoning would do. You hire a man as a day-labourer. 
 He comes to you at night for his pay. If he has been industrious 
 according to the contract, and faithful to your interests, the case 
 is a plain one, and you do not hesitate. But you put the inter- 
 rogatory to him, c Did you go into my vineyard, and spend the 
 
MAN CANNOT MERIT SALVATION. 417 
 
 day in cultivating it for me, and in a careful regard to my 
 interests ?' l No,' is the honest reply ; i but I have spent the 
 day diligently. I have not been an idle man. I have attended 
 to the cultivation of my own vineyard, and "been faithful to my 
 family, and I may appeal to all my neighbours for my general 
 courtesy and honesty of life/ If you now say that this is a case 
 which is so palpably absurd that it never could occur, it may be 
 replied, that it has been made absurd on purpose. Such a man 
 would be only speaking out in the honesty of his heart what is 
 the secret claim of every one who is not engaged in the service 
 of God, and who yet feels that he ought to be saved. He does 
 not even profess to be attending to the interests of his Creator, or 
 engaged in his service. You send a clerk to some distant town 
 to collect your debts. He returns. ' Have you been diligent 
 and successful in the duty assigned you?' 'I was diligent. I 
 travelled much. In all my journey I injured no one ; I treated 
 no one roughly ; I addressed no one in any other manner thas. in 
 the language required in refined life. I also acquired valuable 
 lands for myself, and have a prospect of rising to affluence and 
 respectability.' ' But what has this to do with the reward which 
 would be appropriate for one employed in my service ?' l Nothing,' 
 a child would reply. But has it not just as much to do with it 
 as the claim of a man who does not profess to serve his Maker, 
 and who lives only to regard his own interests, has to do with 
 the rewards of heaven ? You have a servant or an apprentice, 
 whom you have a right to punish if he does wrong. You enjoin 
 on him a specific duty a duty of much importance to yourself, 
 and one that is clearly reasonable in its nature. At the proper 
 time you call him to account. The duty is not discharged ; 
 the service is not rendered. He pleads, Jiowever, that he does 
 not deserve punishment. He has been steadily engaged all the 
 while ; he has been entirely honest and upright in his dealings 
 with his fellow -servants ; he has treated them with perfect 
 courtesy, and has even acquired an enviable reputation for amiable- 
 ness of manners ; nay, he has more than once relieved a fellow- 
 servant that was poor and sick and dying. All this is very well, 
 it would be said in reply, but how can this constitute a claim for 
 the particular reward which was offered I How can it show that 
 he who has wholly omitted a known and specific duty does not 
 deserve the punishment which was threatened ? With what face 
 could such a servant claim the reward due to faithful service in 
 the cause of his master ? 
 
 These plain and obvious principles are as applicable to religion 
 as they are to the common transactions of life. God requires of 
 
418 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 us a specific service. It is not general and indefinite, or left to 
 our choice as to what it shall be. It is, that we shall serve him ; 
 that we shall obey his commands ; that we shall seek his glory ; 
 that we shall love him, honour him, and treat him as our God ; 
 that we shall be penitent for our past sins, and be willing to 
 accept his favour on his own terms ; that we shall be serious, 
 5 religious, prayerful, believing, holy. If this is done, he promises 
 I heaven. But it is not done. Those now referred to do not even 
 lay claim to any of these things. One of the last things that they 
 would claim, or that their friends would think of claiming for 
 them, is, that they are religious, or that they act habitually from 
 reference to the will of their Creator. They claim to be moral, 
 honest, true, urbane, kind ; but how can this lay the foundation 
 of a claim to the appropriate rewards of piety 1 How in these 
 things, when they do not even intend it, can they render any 
 service to God which would be the proper basis of his rewarding 
 them in heaven ? No more than the day-labourer, the clerk, and 
 the servant, carefully attentive to their own interests, but 
 wholly regardless of the interests of their employer, can expect 
 a reward. 
 
 Having thus stated these arguments to show that man cannot 
 by any services which he can render make himself so profitable to 
 God as to merit salvation, or be of so much advantage to His cause 
 as to render an equivalent for the rewards of heaven, it remains 
 only to remark, 
 
 (4.) That if he cannot do this by a life of obedient holiness, he 
 cannot by any offering which he has it in his power to make. 
 The reasons for this are so obvious as to make it needless to dwell 
 on them. One is, that no offering which we can make can be of 
 any advantage or profit to God. He is made no richer by any 
 oblation of silver and gold which we can bring him ; he has no 
 unsatisfied wants which can be supplied by our ministrations. 
 " If I were hungry," says he, " I would not tell thee ; for the 
 world is mine and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of 
 bulls, or drink the blood of goats ?" Psa. 1. 12, 13. Another reason 
 is, that all that we possess is his, and we can give to him nothing 
 to which he has not already a prior and supreme right. " Every 
 beast of the forest/' says he, " is mine, and the cattle upon a 
 thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the 
 wild beasts of the field are mine," Psa. 1. 10, 11. Another reason 
 is, that nothing that we could offer would be a compensation for 
 our past offences, or repair the evils which we have done by our 
 neglect of duty and by our open sins. " Wherewith shall I come 
 before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I 
 
MAN CANNOT MERIT SALVATION. 419 
 
 come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? 
 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten 
 thousands of rivers of oil ? shall I give my first-born for my trans- 
 gression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ?" Micah 
 vi. 6, 7. And how shall a man profit God ; how lay him under 
 obligation to save him; how render such service as to be an 
 equivalent for heaven? Shall he flagellate his own body? Yet 
 how will that profit God ? Shall he gird sackcloth on his loins, 
 or wear an irritating haircloth garment to torment himself? Yet 
 how will that benefit his Maker ? Shall he go on a pilgrimage 
 to some distant shrine ? How will his Maker be advantaged by 
 that ? Shall he shut himself up in a gloomy cell, and withdraw 
 from the light of the sun and the moon and the stars, and from 
 tlie society of living men, and doom himself to wretchedness and 
 woe ? But will his God be made more rich or more happy by his 
 austerities? Shall he seize upon the objects dearest to his heart, 
 and destroy before bloody altars the lives which his Creator has 
 given? But will it profit God if we kill his own creatures, and 
 pour out their blood before him ? If none of these things will 
 do, with what plea of merit can we come before him ? How can 
 we render such service as to have a claim on heaven ? 
 
 In view of this train of thought, two additional observations 
 may be made : 
 
 (1.) We see the falsehood of that system of religion which speaks 
 of human merit, of the treasured and garnered merits of the saints 
 of former times. If the principles now suggested are correct, how 
 can there have been any such extraordinary and superabounding 
 merit in past times that it may be available now for men ? If there 
 were such treasured merit left by the saints of other days, it 
 might still be a question what claim of right any man has now to 
 distribute it to others; but any such claim of superabounding 
 merit is alike at variance with the Bible and with every just 
 principle of reason. Yet this doctrine is one of the principal 
 supports of the Papacy, and is one of the dogmas that demand 
 credence in our land and of this generation. It will be shown, 
 hereafter, that in Him who died to atone for our sins there is ample 
 merit to supply all our deficiencies, and that the results of his 
 atonement may be ours. The claim that superabounding merit 
 lias been wrought out by the saints, derogates from and almost 
 annihilates this ; and the claim that his merits and theirs are 
 lodged in human hands, to be dispensed or withheld at pleasure 
 by a priesthood, is one of the chief supports of the most appalling 
 and terrific systems of spiritual despotism that have ever tyrannized 
 over man. Thanks to Him who has bought us our pardon the 
 
420 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 disposal of tlie merits of his sacrifice is committed to no human 
 hands, and can be interrupted by no human power 1 
 
 ( % 2.) This subject is oi.e of direct practical interest to all. If 
 we are ever saved, there will be a good reason for it ; for nothing 
 is merely arbitrary in the matter of salvation. There are but 
 two ways possible of being saved the one by our own merits, 
 the otber by the merits of another. If in regard to the latter 
 there are no merits of the "saints" on which we can rely; no 
 merits of parents or pious friends of which we can avail ourselves, 
 then the merits of the Lord Jesus constitute the only foreign 
 dependence which we can have. The whole question is then just 
 this : Do we rely on our own merits for salvation, or the merits 
 of the Redeemer ? Here the world is divided ; the Christian, on 
 the one side the Pagan, the Mohammedan, the infidel, the moralist, 
 on the other. This single question separates the inhabitants of 
 the globe into two great parties never to be united. But if the 
 principles in this discourse are correct, the question may be put 
 v to every man to his reason, his conscience, his heart whether he 
 has any merit on which he can rely as a ground of salvation. 
 Has he done anything for which the equivalent is to be found in 
 the rewards of an eternal heaven ? Has he so deserved the rewards 
 of life, has he rendered such service to his Maker, that he can 
 stand at the final bar, where we all must soon stand, and claim 
 an admission to heaven? Can he demand it as a right that 
 heaven's portal should be thrown open to him, and he be welcomed 
 there ? If so, on what ground ? What is the basis of the claim ? 
 Religion? The unconverted sinner makes no pretension to it. 
 Repentance ? He has never shed a tear over his sins. The love 
 of God ? He has no spark of love to that glorious Being in his 
 heart. Sacrifices in his service ? He has made none. An honest 
 endeavour to do his will ? He has never made this the rule of 
 his life. What is the service which he has rendered ? What has 
 been the life which he has led ? What is the state of his account 
 with God? What is the condition of his heart? Oh, let him 
 look at the broken law of God, His violated sabbaths, His rejected 
 gospel, His grieved Spirit, His neglected word; let him look at 
 his own life of thoughtlessness, selfishness, and vanity, his neglect 
 of prayer, his pride and opposition to God ; let him look at the 
 sins of childhood and the worldliness and wickedness of riper 
 years ; let him look at the times when God has called and he 
 has refused, when the Saviour has stretched out his hands and he 
 would not regard it ; let him look at his broken vows and pro- 
 raises the times when he resolved that he would be a Christian 
 if he reached a certain period of life, the solemn covenant which 
 
MAN CANNOT MERIT SALVATION. 421 
 
 he made when lie was sick, that if God would spare him he would 
 be His ; let him look at these things, and then see whether he 
 has a claim to an admission to heaven, and whether he can he 
 received there because he has been profitable to God. Oh, if you 
 saw these things aright, you would hail with transports of un- 
 speakable joy the announcement which we make to you, that 
 there is One whose merits can cancel all your sins, and give you 
 a title to salvation. Then, oh! with what joy would you, as 
 thousands have done before you, cast away the " rags of your own 
 righteousness," that you might be clothed in the robe that is 
 " made white in the blood of the Lamb ! " 
 
SERMON XXXIII. 
 
 WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHKIST. 
 JOHN i. 16. " And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace." 
 
 THAT is, all we who are Christians, or who are Christ's real 
 followers. In the fourteenth verse of this chapter it is said of 
 the Lord Jesus, that he was " full of grace and truth." In the 
 Epistle to the Colossians (ch. i. 19), the apostle Paul says of him 
 that " it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell :" 
 that is, with particular reference to the salvation of men, for he 
 immediately adds (ver. 20), " And having made peace through the 
 blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself." 
 These expressions all refer to an abundance or fulness of grace 
 in the Lord Jesus as sufficient for all that would be saved by 
 him, or such as would supply all their want of personal merit 
 when they appear before God ; and as there is in us a total want 
 of merit towards God, the sense of the whole must be, that we 
 can be saved only by the merits of Christ. I propose to endea- 
 vour to explain what that merit is. 
 
 In the previous discourses on the subject of justification, I 
 have endeavoured to demonstrate that man cannot justify him- 
 self before God. In the last discourse I aimed to prove that 
 man has no merit of his own on which he can rely for salvation, 
 or that he can do nothing which will make eternal life a fair 
 equivalent or compensation for his service, or which will bring 
 the Almighty under an obligation of justice or equity to save 
 him. I propose now to show that there is One who has ample 
 merit which can supply all our defect, and which may be so 
 available to us as to secure our salvation. 
 
 There are few phrases in more common use than the merits of 
 Christ ; few declarations that are repeated more frequently by 
 ministers of the gospel and others, than that men can be saved 
 only by His merits ; and few things that are more frequently 
 uttered in prayer than that we plead His merits only for our 
 salvation. The frequency with which this expression occurs, 
 and the bearing which it has on the general subject now under 
 consideration, makes it proper that we should attempt an ex- 
 planation of it. Common as the use of it is, a formal attempt 
 
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 423 
 
 to explain it is not often made, and it is to be feared that it is 
 often used without an intelligent apprehension of its meaning 1 . 
 
 The phrase does not occur in the Bible, but the idea which is 
 intended to be conveyed by it exists there as a vital and central 
 thought in the whole plan of justification by faith. In the pro- 
 secution of this subject it will be proper, I. To explain what is 
 meant when we speak of the merits of Christ ; and, II. To show 
 in what his merits consisted. 
 
 I. What is meant by the merits of Christ? The general idea 
 is expressed in the text : " And of his fulness have all we 
 received, and grace for grace." There was an abundance or 
 fulness in him of which we might partake ; that is, there was a 
 completeness 7r\rjpwfjia which in our conscious want or de- 
 ficiency, could meet all our necessities, so that we could receive 
 "grace" corresponding with that which was in him. When we 
 speak of the merits of Christ in connexion with our salvation, it 
 is meant that there was an amount of merit in his services 
 which he did not need for any personal advantage or for him- 
 self; which had been secured with a special purpose to supply 
 the great and undisputed deficiency of man ; and which can be 
 made available to us, on certain conditions, and in the way 
 which God has revealed as the ground of our acceptance. The 
 main object is not now to prove that there are such merits 
 treasured up in Christ, but to explain the language. Whether 
 the doctrine be true, and if there is such merit in him how it 
 may be available to us, will be the topics of future inquiry. 
 
 (1.) In the explanation of the subject I would then advert, 
 first, to the doctrine respecting merit laid down in the last dis- 
 course. A man merits a reward when he has earned or de- 
 served it ; when he has fully complied with the terms of the 
 bargain ; when his services are worth as much to you as you 
 pay him. We may recall the illustrations of the day-labourer, 
 the soldier, the physician, in each of which cases it was said 
 that the service rendered was fully equal in value to the pay 
 which was given. The service measures the pay ; the one is equal, 
 or is supposed to be equal, to the other. To withhold the com- 
 pensation is injustice, or is palpably wrong. This is the ordinary 
 and proper sense in which the word merit is used among men, 
 and it was in this sense that I endeavoured to show that m n 
 cannot merit salvation. 
 
 (2.) I observe, secondly, that cases may arise where much more 
 may be done for you than one who is in your employ is strictly 
 bound to perform. A reference to some of these cases will enable 
 us to explain the subject before us. 
 28 
 
424 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 () You have a man in your employ engaged under the ordi- 
 nary conditions of service as a labourer, or clerk. Without any 
 special agreement with him, or without anything being said 
 about it in your contract, he is to do what is commonly under- 
 stood to be required in that condition of 'life ; what is usually 
 done by those in the same employment. He is to be at his post 
 at a certain hour in the morning, and to remain until a certain 
 hour in the evening, and is to be faithful to his employer's 
 interests, and diligent in the prosecution of the business entrusted 
 to him. On these conditions, without anything more specific, 
 the contract is usually made with clerks, and bookkeepers, and 
 day-labourers, and journeymen -mechanics, and lawyers, and 
 ministers of the gospel. It is not deemed necessary to be any 
 more specific than that they shall be faithful to the interests of 
 their employers, and render the amount of service which is 
 usually expected in their occupation. But it is very possible 
 to conceive that one may go much beyond that. He may be 
 engaged at a much earlier hour than is usual, and may prolong 
 his toils far into the shades of night. He may evince uncommon 
 tact and sagacity in the management of affairs entrusted to him, 
 and such may be his skill and success, that his services may 
 have a value far beyond anything which you had anticipated 
 in the contract. You would not feel yourself at liberty to turn 
 him off or to complain if he had not done this. You would not 
 feel that he has a legal claim on you for anything more than 
 you promised to pay him, for you did not contract with him for 
 this special service ; but you would be likely to feel that he has a 
 claim of honour on you, and if, when he leaves your service, 
 you know of any situation of special advantage that can be 
 obtained, you would feel yourself under a sort of moral obliga- 
 tion to endeavour to secure it for him. Here is something 
 merited, since more has been done than he was bound to do. 
 
 (b) A second case : A man in your employ may be placed in 
 circumstances where he may have an opportunity of doing some- 
 thing for your special advantage, though of a nature which was 
 not distinctly specified in your contract with him. He may 
 have great sagacity, and may watch the changes and chances in 
 the market, and enable you to make important and advantageous 
 purchases ; he may be in possession of intelligence respecting 
 coming changes in the markets, which may be of great service 
 to you ; or he may, by uncommon tact in business, be enabled to 
 save you from inextricable bankruptcy. Now if he is a mere 
 bookkeeper, or salesman, you could hardly claim as a matter of 
 right that he should .bring his sagacity in these things into your 
 
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 425 
 
 service ; perhaps you would hardly blame him if he took advan- 
 tage of it to advance his own interests, provided he did not 
 injure you. His specific business is to keep your books correctly, 
 or to sell your goods in the manner in which you shall direct 
 him, and his sagacity and tact in these departments you have a 
 right to require should be employed in your service. But your 
 contract and your claim extend no farther. Yet if he chooses to 
 go beyond this, and actually, while he incurs no possible risk, 
 is the means of great advantage to you, as an honourable man 
 you would feel that he deserved an appropriate acknowledgment. 
 Many instances of this kind might be referred to, but these will 
 illustrate the point under consideration. 
 
 (3.) It is necessary to make but one other remark in order to 
 see the bearing of these illustrations on the case before us. 
 Reference has been made to " abounding merit ;" to cases in 
 which service is rendered beyond what was in the contract ; to 
 that which was wholly voluntary, and yet where there would 
 be a claim in honour at least for a suitable acknowledgment, 
 or where an honourable man would feel himself under obligation 
 to bestow a reward. The remark which is now to be made is, 
 that he who has this extra claim on you may do what he pleases 
 with the reward which you may feel willing to give. It may 
 not be needful for him, or he may not choose to make use of it 
 for himself ; but he may be disposed to make another use of it 
 which will develope some trait of mind that will by no means 
 diminish your respect for his character. Suppose some such 
 cases as the following in the application of the instances referred 
 to : that he should ask you to aid a younger brother of his 
 who was just beginning business, and w r ho was greatly in need 
 of credit ; or, in the event of his death, to show kindness to 
 his aged father or mother ; or to appropriate the gratuity 
 which you designed for him to some young man who was strug- 
 gling to obtain an education. Or suppose that the faithful 
 servant should ask you to release from bondage his wife or 
 child, in consideration of the extra and quite equivalent services 
 which he had rendered to you. Or to take another case : 
 Suppose a friend of his had, in an unhappy moment, defrauded 
 you, might he not ask you to "set that to his account P" In 
 either case, would you not feel that what he asked he had a 
 right to ask ? And would you not be the more deeply affected 
 with respect for his character by this request? He did not 
 perform the extra service for reward. He did not expect 
 it. He did not mention it to you. He did not claim any 
 reward. But when you felt that he had a claim to it, and 
 
426 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 pressed it upon him, and would not be refused, he looked not 
 for gorgeous or gay apparel for himself, or for a purse of gold, 
 or a splendid house, nor did he ask you to trumpet his fame ; 
 but he looked round on those struggling with poverty, crushed 
 and enfeebled by age, bound in affliction and iron, or burdened 
 with debts which they could never discharge, and asked you to 
 forget him and to remember them. The developments of such a 
 character would fill your mind with new conceptions of its 
 beauty, and your heart would be insensibly knit with his. 
 
 It will be perceived that these illustrations bear on the expla- 
 nation of what is meant by the merits of Christ. His merit 
 was of this extraordinary or superabundant kind. It was beyond 
 what could have been demanded of him, and was such that, if 
 he chose to ask it, or so designed it, it could be made available 
 to others. This leads us to the second general inquiry 
 
 II. In what did His merits consist ? Keeping in view the 
 remarks already made, it will be necessary to show that all that 
 he did when on earth was of this extraordinary character ; that 
 he rendered real service to the universe for which the rewards 
 given him will be no more than an equivalent ; and that his 
 merits were of such a nature that they may be made available 
 to others. 
 
 (1.) All that he did was of an extraordinary character, or was 
 service which could not have been demanded of him. This 
 remark is based on the fact that he was Divine, and has no 
 pertinency except on that supposition. When it is said that 
 his service or work was such as could not be demanded, it is 
 meant that there was no law or obligation which could bind the 
 Divinity to become incarnate, to be an humble teacher of man- 
 kind, to minister to their wants with his own hands, or to make 
 an atonement for their transgressions. The entire transaction, 
 was of a kind which could be enforced by no law. If he was 
 equal to the Father and one with him, he was under no law 
 but the infinite and eternal law of his own Divine nature. There 
 was no obligation on him to become a man, a priest, a sacrifice ; 
 to toil, to weep, to die. Another illustration may be introduced 
 here. There is an heir-apparent to a crown. Every considera- 
 tion of propriety, and perhaps a statute-law of the realm, requires 
 him to perform the duties of a son in the palace, and to appear 
 and act on all occasions as becomes the first man in the realm 
 next to the throne. But there is no law which requires him to 
 become a day-labourer, or a menial, or that makes it his duty 
 to go into some peasant's cottage and watch the long night by 
 the cradle of a dying child. There may possibly be no law 
 
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 427 
 
 against it, if he chooses to do it ; but it cannot be demanded of 
 him. The Son of God in heaven would appear there always in 
 a manner appropriate to his unequalled relation to the Father ; 
 but what law was there requiring him to come down to earth, 
 to be a man of sorrows, to take part in our sadnesses and woes, 
 and to die ? If he did this, the service was altogether of an 
 extraordinary character, and was entirely a work of merit. This 
 remark is obvious. Its bearings, if conceded to be true, are of 
 great importance. The force and pertinence of this reasoning, 
 as has been already remarked, proceeds on the supposition that 
 he is Divine. If he is not, however exalted as a created being 
 he may be, it does not appear how he could have any extra 
 merit, and consequently how the doctrine of justification by his 
 righteousness could be held. If Christ be a mere man, or an angel, 
 or an archangel, or creature of any rank, no such extraordinary 
 service could be rendered none could be made available to us. 
 
 We have seen that man may acquire extra merit from his 
 fellow-man; merit which may be made available to others. The 
 question is, why a creature may not do this in reference to the 
 service of God ; and why, if the Saviour were less than Divine, 
 he might not do the same thing for us ? The answer to this 
 question is obvious. When you employ a man, you contract for 
 a certain amount of service or of time. You do not contract 
 for all that he has. You contract for what is usual, or what 
 you specify. All beyond the limits of that contract remains his. 
 But there is no such contract, understanding, or stipulation, 
 expressed or understood, between a creature and God. All a man's 
 powers, his time, his talents, his service, his skill, his learning, 
 his influence, belong to his Maker. Of every creature God demands 
 " all the heart, the mind, the might, the strength." There is 
 not a moment of time in which a creature can feel that he is 
 released from the claim of his Maker ; there is not a power or 
 faculty of mind or body which he possesses which is beyond the 
 :ange of the demand of the Divine law ; there is not a service of 
 prayer, or praise, or sacrifice which he could render, which is 
 beyond the limits of his duty ; there is not an act of benevolence 
 :o the poor, the needy, the sinful, or the dying, which he can 
 perform, which is beyond the all-comprehensive grasp of the 
 Divine command to do good. Can a creature of the Almighty 
 jut himself into the midst of a service acceptable to God which 
 le may feel was not required of him ? Can he love with an 
 irdour beyond what God requires ? Can he maintain a degree 
 if fidelity in temptation beyond what is demanded ? Can he 
 itoop to some scene of woe, and do good to a sufferer in a way 
 
428 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 "which the law that hinds him to God did not make his duty ? 
 Can he evince compassion for the sinful and the sad heyond 
 what the law of his nature and the commandment of his Maker 
 demand? If he cannot, how can there he such extra merit 
 that it can he made available to others ? And if the Lord Jesus 
 were a mere man, as one class of Socinians tells us ; or an angel 
 of exalted rank, as another class assures us ; or the highest 
 created intelligence, as the Arian affirms, how could he have 
 wrought out any merit which can he available to us ? How could 
 he have done anything beyond what he was bound as a creature 
 to do ? How could he so have stepped beyond the limits of the 
 Divine law as by abounding merits to save a world ? It is diffi- 
 cult to see, thereforej how he who denies the Divinity of the 
 Lord Jesus can hold to the doctrine of a meritorious sacrifice on 
 his part, or to the doctrine of justification through his merits at 
 all : and there is a melancholy consistency in the philosophy 
 and practical faith of those who deny his Divinity, in yielding 
 up the doctrine of the atonement, and then the whole doctrine 
 of justification by faith. But admit that Christ is God, equal with 
 the Father, and all is clear. Then, being under no obligations 
 to become incarnate, being bound by no law to leave the throne 
 of heaven, and seek a home in a manger, a lodging-place with- 
 out a pillow, a death on a cross, and a burial in the grave 
 destined for another, all this is the work of extra merit, and 
 may all be available for others. We see him in our world, not 
 as a mere man, and thus bound by law to render every service 
 to the cause of God ; but as Immanuel God with us the volun- 
 tary messenger from heaven the equal with God performing a 
 service to which no law bound him, and to which no other 
 powers were adequate, and which therefore may constitute a 
 fulness of merit that may be available for those who have 
 none. 
 
 (2.) The second remark is, that Christ rendered real service to 
 the universe by his work. His coming, his teaching, his death, 
 his resurrection, were an advantage to the cause of God and of 
 virtue, to the full extent of the reward which he will receive. 
 The universe has been so much profited by his voluntary and 
 wonderful service in the cause of virtue and salvation, that there 
 is a propriety that he should be rewarded for it ; and the reward 
 which he will receive is no more than an equivalent for the 
 value of the service rendered. It will be asked, What has been 
 the advantage of his work to the universe ? In what way is it 
 to be measured or estimated ? It may be replied, We do not 
 know fully yet, nor are our minds in a condition now, if they 
 
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 429 
 
 will ever be, to estimate what is appropriate to " satisfy" him 
 for the " travail of his soul," But the general answer, whoever 
 can appreciate its meaning 1 , will be, that the value or worth of 
 his voluntary services is to be estimated by all the evils which 
 his coming has arrested or prevented, and by all the happiness in 
 this world and in heaven of which it has been the cause. If we 
 could ascertain this, we could estimate the amount of his services 
 to the universe, and of course the amount of the reward which 
 is due to him, or the amount of his merit. No attempt can be 
 made by us to gauge the amount of this merit. All that can be 
 done is to submit a few hints to illustrate the real nature of the 
 service which he rendered. 
 
 (a) He did voluntary good through his life. He healed the 
 sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and vigour to 
 the lame ; he restored the maniac to his right mind, and brought 
 back the poor outcast who " dwelt among the tombs" to the 
 comforts of home. All this was doing good to the world, which, 
 if he had not come, would not have been done. 
 
 (b) He set a most holy example of virtue to mankind. He 
 showed what true virtue is how man should live, and how he 
 should meet the temptations of the great enemy of the soul. 
 All this is so much gained to the cause of virtue, above what 
 would have been if he had not come ; and the value of having 
 one perfect example in a world where there had been no such 
 standard, and amidst the conflicting opinions of men on the 
 subject of morals, cannot be estimated. 
 
 (c) He taught man by his example how to bear trials. He 
 himself went through all the usual forms of woe and grief, and 
 showed in each one of them how man ought to endure calami- 
 ties, and hoW in them consolation might be found. But who 
 in a suffering and dying world can estimate the value of such 
 an example ? 
 
 (d) He taught man the true character of God ; the nature of 
 his law ; the kind of worship that would be acceptable to him, 
 and the way in which the throne of mercy may be approached. 
 But who can estimate the value to a sinful world of the know- 
 ledge of the way of pardon ? 
 
 (e) He introduced a religion which has contributed everywhere 
 to the promotion of industry, purity, chastity, truth, honesty, 
 intelligence, and liberty; which has raised one sex from the 
 deepest degradation, and softened the asperities and removed 
 the tyranny of the other; which has led to the founding of 
 hospitals and asylums, and which will ultimately put an end to 
 all the forms of evil and vice that tyrannize over man : and 
 
430 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 who can gauge the amount of service which He has thus ren- 
 dered to man and to the universe ? 
 
 (/) He made an atonement for sin his greatest, noblest 
 work. He vindicated by his death the honour and the law of 
 God, and solved the question which has everywhere confounded 
 the human intellect, how justice and mercy can meet together, 
 and how righteousness oan be maintained, and yet the sinner go 
 free. He secured to the universe by his death all the advantages 
 which could have been secured by the everlasting punishment of 
 the sinner himself, and all the advantages which now result 
 from admitting to heaven countless millions who but for his 
 sacrifice would have been eternally wretched : and what finite 
 mind can estimate the value -of His service rendered to the 
 universe ? 
 
 (ff) He checks evil by his gospel and his grace, and turns the 
 disobedient to the paths of virtue. Take one single example 
 as an illustration of the amount of service thus rendered, the 
 case of Saul of Tarsus. Think of what he would have been with 
 nis extraordinary talents, his uncommon learning, his vast energy 
 of character, and his restless ambition, and his proud and self- 
 confident heart, if there had been no atonement ; and then of 
 xwhat he was after he was converted to the cause of truth. 
 Think of his influence, while he lived, in meeting the evils and 
 corruptions of idolatry; in closing temples of polluted worship; 
 in purifying the fountains of morals ; and in diffusing abroad 
 the principles of pure religion. Think of the good which has 
 been done since his time, by his incomparable writings, in main- 
 taining the truth, and imparting consolation in a world of sorrow; 
 and see in the conversion of that man an instance of the kind of 
 service which the Lord Jesus rendered to the universe. Then 
 reflect that the case of Saul of Tarsus is but one of many hun- 
 dreds of millions individually less bright, but in the aggregate 
 outshining his, as the mingled light of the galaxy is of greater 
 glory than the twinkling of a single star, and then ask, Who 
 can estimate the amount of service which the Son of God has 
 rendered to the universe ? All that has been done by His holy 
 life and example ; all that has been accomplished on earth by 
 the influence of His religion ; all that His death did to honour 
 the Divine law ; all that has been or will be done by arresting evil 
 and staying the desolations of sin ; all the additions which have 
 been or will be made by redemption to the numbers of the 
 heavenly host ; and all the immortal songs and joys of the re- 
 deemed in heaven, all these things are to be taken into this esti- 
 mate, and will be the measure of the voluntary service rendered 
 
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 431 
 
 to the universe by the Son of God. It remains only, in order to 
 a complete explanation of the stifbject, to add 
 
 (8.) That all the merit of Christ's work all the reward which 
 he deserved is available to others. It is that superabounding 
 service which has been before referred to, which can be appro- 
 priated in any way that he shall ask. Not needing it for him- 
 self, for he dwells in " the glory which he had with the Father 
 before the world was," it can be appropriated to those who are 
 poor, and needy, and destitute of any claim of merit. The reward 
 for all his extraordinary services may be such as he shall wish, 
 and his heart will not ask augmented glory for himself in heaven 
 as Divine, but will seek it in the elevation and immortal felicity 
 of the poor and lost upon the earth for whom he died. By such 
 a reward the universe will lose nothing, but will on every account 
 be a gainer ; and the benevolent heart which rendered these ex- 
 traordinary services may be abundantly satisfied by asking that 
 the " lost may be saved." It was on grounds like these that it 
 was said in the promise, " Ask of me, and I shall give thee the 
 heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the 
 earth for thy possession," Psa. ii. 8. Thus too the promise was, 
 " He shall see of the travail of his soul" the fruit of his weari- 
 some sorrow " and shall be satisfied," Isa. liii. 11. Thus too, in 
 asking in his parting prayer that his work on earth might be 
 remembered, he could use with propriety the strong language, 
 M " Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be 
 with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which 
 thou hast given me," John xvii. 24. To secure their salvation, 
 and the universal spread of his gospel, he can urge the extra- 
 ordinary claim of the service which he has rendered by his life 
 of spotless virtue ; his pure example ; his relief of human woes ; 
 and the sorrows which he voluntarily endured in order that the 
 law of God might be maintained, and eternal justice asserted, 
 even when salvation was offered to men. 
 
 If these views are correct, then it follows, 
 
 (1.) That we are to look nowhere else than to Christ as the 
 meritorious cause of salvation. Had it been possible for any 
 mere created being to have wrought out sufficient merit to save 
 the soul, the incarnation of the Son of God, and his death on 
 Calvary, would never have occurred. The moment it is main- 
 tained that man may merit salvation for himself, or for others, 
 the doctrine of the atonement is denied, and the work of Christ 
 dishonoured ; and the doctrine that there are anywhere, or in 
 any hands, garnered up the merits of holy men of which we can 
 avail ourselves, derogates, to just the extent in which it is held, 
 
432 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 from the Great Sacrifice, and is an attack on the fundamental 
 doctrines of the gospel. In our hopes of salvation we have but 
 one place to which to look. It is not what our own hands have 
 done, or what has been done by holy men of other times ; it is 
 the infinite merit of the Son of God. 
 
 (2.) The merits of the Saviour are sufficient for the salvation 
 of all mankind. If the view which has been taken is correct, it 
 is clear that the benefits which he has rendered to the universe, 
 by his holy obedience and death, are commensurate with any 
 rewards which he may receive in connexion with the salvation 
 of men. " It pleased the Father that in him," in every respect, 
 " should all fulness dwell ;" and alike in his power, his bene- 
 volence, his willingness to save, and the merits of his work, 
 there is an ample sufficiency for the wants of all mankind. 
 Needing none of the results of his great work on earth for the 
 promotion of his own happiness, all that he did may be made 
 available to others, and all men may come with equal freeness 
 and confidence. He had the promise of an ample and satis- 
 factory reward, when it was said that he "should see of the 
 travail of his soul, and should be satisfied ;" and on the basis of 
 that promise he himself uses such language as this : " If any man 
 thirst, let him come unto me and drink." " Come unto me, all 
 ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest ;" 
 and " whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." 
 There was no original deficiency in the merits of the Saviour 
 for human salvation, nor has his merit been exhausted by the 
 numbers that have already been saved. Salvation in him is 
 like a copious fountain breaking out in a desert. Such a foun- 
 tain is free for all who may come. It stands in the pathway 
 where the multitudes move, where the caravans pass along 
 and no one has a right to appropriate it exclusively to himself. 
 No tribe of men may enclose it, or may obstruct its waters. One 
 company of weary travellers has as much right there as another, 
 and to no one particularly appertains the office of dispensing 
 it to the fainting pilgrim. Any one who will come and kneel 
 down there, may drink freely. And it will never be exhausted. 
 The fountain will pour out its waters from age to age. The pre- 
 sent company of thirsty travellers will soon pass on. They will 
 pursue their journey, and go off to die ; but then the stream will 
 flow on, unexhausted and inexhaustible, to the end of time. So 
 it is with the fountain of salvation. As many of the present 
 generation as choose may come and partake, and then as many 
 of the next and the next, and still the fountain will flow on, 
 unexhausted and inexhaustible. It will flow just as fresh and 
 
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 433 
 
 just as full in the last generation that lives, as it did in the days 
 of the Saviour's personal residence on earth as it does now ; 
 and the last sinner that is to be saved will find it as pure and 
 as life-giving to his soul as it is to ours. 
 
 (3.) Finally, let no one then say that he is so great a sinner 
 that he cannot be saved. I know how the troubled sinner feels. 
 I know that his guilt often presses him down as a mighty 
 burden, and that he feels he has no claim to salvation. We 
 do not ask you to come depending on your own merits. We 
 believe that you never will find eternal life, if you make your 
 own deeds your plea. But the sinner sometimes has another 
 feeling. He not only feels that he has no merit and no claim 
 to salvation, but he feels that his sins are so great that not even 
 the merit of the Lord Jesus will be sufficient to cancel his guilt. 
 Here, fellow-sinner, you err. Here you do injustice to his holy 
 life, to his benevolent heart, to his death. That infinite merit 
 which he secured by his work on earth, he is willing should be 
 available for your salvation. And that is like the illimitable 
 ocean. It is always full ; and no matter how many have sought 
 and found salvation there, there will be countless millions more. 
 Come, then, thou who art conscious that thou hast no merit of 
 thine own, and be one of that blessed number who receive of his 
 fulness, grace for grace. " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come 
 ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and 
 eat ; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without 
 price," Isa. Iv. 1. 
 
SEEMON XXXIV. 
 
 IN WHAT SENSE WE AEE JUSTIFIED BY THE MERITS OF 
 CHRIST. 
 
 ROM. iii. 24. " Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption 
 that is in Christ Jesus." 
 
 THERE are several things affirmed in this text. One is, that the 
 persons referred to that is, Christians are justified, or that there 
 is a sense in which they are regarded as righteous. A second is, 
 that this is &QJIQ freely Swpedv : that is, that it is not by purchase 
 or merit on our part, but that it has on the part of God thefreeness 
 of a gift. A third is, that it is by the grace of God ; that is, that 
 it is regarded as a proof of his favour to be justified. A fourth 
 is, that this is through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, or 
 is in virtue of his merits. 
 
 In the previous discourses, I have endeavoured to show that 
 man cannot justify himself, and that he has no claim of merit 
 before God ; but that there is in the Lord Jesus infinite merit, of 
 such a nature that it may be made available to us. In the pros- 
 ecution of this general subject, it is proposed now to illustrate 
 two points : I. What is meant by justification in the gospel ; and, 
 II. In what way we are justified by the merits of Christ. 
 
 I. What is meant by justification in the gospel? My object 
 here is to state what is the exact condition of a man who is 
 justified. In what respect does he differ from what he was before ? 
 What change has taken place in reference to him? How is he 
 regarded by his Maker differently from what he was before ? 
 What new relation does he sustain to God, to his law, and to his 
 plan of providential dealings ? These, it will be seen, are im- 
 portant questions, which probably every one is disposed to ask who 
 attentively considers this subject. They are questions, also, on 
 which serious mistakes are sometimes made, as well by those who 
 attempt to explain the subject, as by individual Christians in 
 reflecting on this new relation. A few remarks, showing what is 
 not meant, and what is, will make the subject clear. 
 
 (1.) It is not meant that a man who is justified on the gospel- 
 plan is justified in a legal sense. What it is to be so justified has 
 been before explained. It is when a man is accused of a crime. 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 435 
 
 andyis able to vindicate himself, either by showing that he did not 
 do the act charged on him, or that he had a right to do it. If he 
 can do either of these things, or, which is the same thing, if the 
 charge is not proved against him, he is acquitted by the law, or 
 is held to be righteous in regard to the offence charged. I have 
 endeavoured, in the former discourses, to show that in a legal sense 
 man cannot be justified before God ; and whatever may be thought 
 of the argument in the case, it is certain that this is not the kind of 
 justification described in the gospel. It is needful here to remark 
 only, that Christ did not come to aid man in justifying himself 
 in this sense. He did not come to take the part of the sinner 
 against God, and to enable him to make out his cause. He did 
 not come to be his advocate in the sense of assisting him in 
 rebutting the charges made against him ; in showing that the 
 charges had been falaely laid ; m explaining his conduct so that it 
 might not appear to be wrong ; or in offering palliations for 
 admitted criminality. Whatever be the nature of the work which 
 the Lord Jesus came to perform, and however he may aid us in 
 our salvation, it is all done with the concession, on his part, that 
 we are guilty to the full extent which the law charges on us. 
 
 (3.) It is not in any proper sense a legal transaction. Justifica- 
 tion by the law is known only in one way by perfect and 
 uniform obedience. The law of God, in conformity with the 
 general principle of law, knows no other mode. It makes no 
 provision for the pardon or justification of those who violate it, 
 any more than a human law does. The plan of justification in 
 the gospel is a departure from the regular process of law ; and 
 whatever inferences may follow from this, either against the 
 system or in favour of it, the fact is not to be denied. " But 
 now," says the apostle Paul, "the righteousness of God without 
 the law is manifested ;" that is, the method of justification in a 
 way different from that known in the law, Rom. iii. 21. All 
 attempts to show that the plan of justification in the gospel is a 
 legal transaction, or is in accordance with legal principles, have 
 been signal failures ; and if there can be no other justification than 
 that which is properly legal, the whole effort to be saved must 
 be given up in despair. 
 
 (3.) Nor does it mean that the man who is justified ceases to be 
 ill-deserving or guilty in the proper sense of the word. When a man 
 is justified by law, he is declared to be not guilty or ill-deserving. 
 But it is riot so when a man is justified by the gospel. It is ex- 
 pressly said respecting this plan that God "justifies the ungodly," 
 Rom. iv. 5 : meaning that it is admitted they are ungodly at the 
 time, or that they are personally guilty. The act of justification 
 
436 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 does not change the nature of the offence, or prove that to be right 
 which is in itself wrong. Crime is what it is in its own nature, 
 and is not modified by the manner in which he who commits it is 
 treated. To pardon a man out of the penitentiary does not prove that 
 the act of burglary or theft for which he was committed was inno- 
 cent. To forgive a man under the gallows does not prove that he is 
 not ill-deserving for the act of murder. To be led, from any consi- 
 deration, to treat a man who has injured us as if he had not done it, 
 does not prove that the act was not wrong ; or that he should not 
 regard himself as blameworthy for having done it. Our kind 
 treatment of him will not be likely in any degree to diminish his 
 sense of his criminality; and the act of pardon with which an 
 offender against God is met, when penitent, will not lessen his 
 sense of his own guilt. God never comes in the act of justification 
 to convince him that he has not done wrong, but to save him. 
 though it is admitted that he is a great sinner ; and the conscious- 
 ness that he is a sinner will attend him and humble him through 
 life. He will lift up his eyes and his heart with thankfulness 
 that he is a pardoned man ; not with pride and self-complacency 
 that he is an innocent man. He will have the spirit of the 
 publican, not of the Pharisee. The publican that went down to his 
 house justified would not go feeling that he was innocent ; he would 
 be filled with gratitude that so great a sinner might be forgiven. 
 
 (4.) Justification in the gospel does not mean mere pardon. It 
 has been supposed by many that this is all that is denoted by 
 it. But there are insuperable objections to this opinion. One 
 is, that it is a departure from the common use of language. When 
 a man who has been sentenced to the penitentiary is pardoned 
 before the term of his sentence is expired, we never think of 
 saying that he is justified. The offence is forgiven, and the 
 penalty is remitted ; but the use of the word justify in his case 
 would convey a very different idea from the word pardon. Another 
 objection is, that the sacred writers have so carefully and so 
 constantly used the word " justify." If mere pardon or forgiveness 
 were all that is intended, it is difficult to see why another word 
 has been constantly employed, and a word so different in its 
 signification. Arid another objection is, that mere forgiveness is 
 not all which the case seems to demand. There was required a 
 reinstating in the favour of God ; a restoration to forfeited 
 immunities and privileges; and a purpose in regard to future 
 treatment which is not necessarily involved in the word pardon. 
 It may be conceived that, in cases of pardon for high offences, 
 there would be required, in order to meet all the circumstances of 
 the case, not only a remission of the penalty, but a distinct act 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 437 
 
 restoring to the offender or Ms family Ms title, his hereditary 
 honours, and Ms place in civil relations. The pardon of Lord 
 Bacon would not have restored him at once to the bench, nor the 
 forgiveness of Ealeigh to his station in the court of Elizabeth. In 
 the case of a sinner against God, pardon respects mainly the 
 past ; justification, the purpose of God in reference to the future. 
 Forgiveness remits past crimes ; justification respects the purpose 
 of God to treat the offender as if he had not sinned : and though 
 these may be simultaneous, yet they may be separated in conception 
 as distinct things. The one forgives the past ; the other reinstates 
 the offender in the lost favour of God. 
 
 (5.) It is not meant that in the act of justification the merits 
 of the Lord Jesus become so transferred to us that they can be 
 regarded as literally ours, or that his righteousness is in any 
 proper sense our own. This is not true, and cannot be made to be 
 true. Moral character is not capable of being transferred from 
 one individual to another j and however the benefits of what one 
 does may be conveyed to another, it will always be true that the 
 character of an individual is what it is in itself. It will always be 
 true that Christ, and not we, obeyed perfectly the law of God ; 
 that Christ, and not Ms people, died on the cross ; and that the 
 merit of his life and death is strictly his, and not theirs. It will 
 always be true, also, that they violated the law of God, that 
 their characters were sinful, and that they deserved not the mercy of 
 God. No man can really believe that the moral character of one 
 individual can be transferred to another, and no one should charge 
 the Bible with inculcating any such doctrine, either with respect 
 to the effect of Adam's transgression on his posterity, or the 
 righteousness of the Redeemer in the salvation of his people. 
 
 (6.) We are prepared now to remark positively, that justi- 
 fication on the gospel-plan denotes a purpose on the part of God 
 to treat a sinner as if he were righteous. It implies an in- 
 tention not to punish him for his sins ; not to regard him as 
 any longer under condemnation ; not to treat him as an alien, 
 an apostate, and an outcast; but to regard and treat him in 
 the future in all his important relations as if he had never 
 sinned. It involves the purpose to shield him from the condemning 
 sentence of the law, and the wrath that shall come upon the guilty ; 
 to admit him to the fellowship of unfallen beings; to regard him 
 as entitled to all the privileges of a child of God, as if he had 
 not fallen ; to throw around him the a?gis of the Divine protection 
 and favour to the end of the present life, and then to admit him to 
 immortal life in heaven. These things would have been his if lie 
 had not fallen ; and these things are now rnnde his in virtue of 
 
438 THE WAY OF SALVATION 
 
 the merits of the Redeemer. In all his great relations, in all the 
 most permanent and important things that affect him, he is, and 
 is to he, as if he had not sinned. The main evils of the apostacy 
 in his case are arrested, and it is the Divine purpose to regard and 
 to treat him as a child of God. 
 
 It is important to remark, that in these statements it is not 
 designed to affirm that in all respects the act of justification places 
 a man in precisely the same situation in which he would have 
 been if he had not sinned. It is, indeed, designed to teach that 
 in the direct Divine dealings with him he will he regarded and 
 treated as if he were personally righteous. But why, then, it will 
 he asked, does he suffer and die ? Why is he not removed to 
 heaven, as Enoch and Elijah were, without seeing death? Why 
 does the justified man ever pass through severe hodily trials, like 
 Joh or Hezekiah, or experience the evils of poverty and want, 
 like Lazarus ; or why is he called to part with heloved children, 
 or to he thrown into prison, or to lie down in the sorrows of the 
 most painful form of death, as thousands have already done, and as 
 the children of God now often do ? 
 
 It is necessary to make such exceptions or qualifications as these 
 in explaining the nature of justification. Though justified, man 
 is not in fact treated in this world in all respects as he would 
 have been if he had not sinned. In the life to come he will be. 
 But nothing is plainer than that in the present life things occur in 
 reference to the treatment of those who are justified, which would 
 not have occurred if man had not sinned, and which will not 
 occur in heaven. Poverty, sickness, bereavement, death, and 
 kindred evils, come upon the righteous and the wicked, the saint 
 and the sinner, the man who is justified and the man who is not. 
 These evils are indeed softened and mitigated by religion, and may 
 be among the means by which the justified man is better prepared 
 for heaven ; but still they exist as evils, and are to be regarded 
 as among the fruits of sin not removed by the act of justification, 
 and as furnishing the exceptions or qualifications alluded to when 
 it is said that in this life the justified man is not treated in all 
 respects as if he had not sinned. The reasons why the evils of 
 sin are not entirely arrested by the act of justification, and why 
 the believer is not treated in this life in all respects as if he had 
 not sinned, seem to be principally two : (a) One is, that it is not 
 the nature of religion to arrest or change the operation of physical 
 laws. It will have an indirect and gradual effect in checking some 
 of those laws,but to have made that effect direct and immediate would 
 have required a constant miracle. It is not the design of religion 
 to restore health or property which has been wasted by dissipa- 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 439 
 
 tion ; to check the results of vice in those who have been led 
 astray by evil example, or to stay the effects of a life of guilt on 
 our physical frame. A life of virtue will ultimately do much to 
 accomplish this ; hut to do it at once would require the physical 
 power of a miracle. For the same reason, to be justified does not 
 save from temporal death; from death in accordance with the laws 
 of our physical being. No one can doubt that God could have 
 saved us from this, but it would be easy to suggest reasons why it 
 has not been done, (b) Another reason why the act of justifica- 
 tion does not secure the same treatment in all respects here as if 
 man had never sinned, is that he who is justified, and who is at 
 heart a true believer, is often in circumstances where he needs the 
 discipline of the hand of God. He is not at once made perfect ; 
 and his imperfections, his wanderings, his neglect of duty, his 
 worldliness, often demand the interposition of God for his own good 
 in a way which would neither be necessary nor proper in the case 
 of one who had never sinned. Hence, if the Christian sins, he may 
 be recalled even by stripes. Hence he comes under the regular 
 physical laws of the Divine administration in the world. Hence 
 he is sick or bereaved. Hence, like other men, he may be cut off 
 by the pestilence, may be swallowed up in the promiscuous ruins 
 of an earthquake, or lie down on a bed of long and lingering 
 disease, and die. Here, he is subject to the physical laws of our 
 being, and to the administration of a wise discipline ; in the world 
 to come, he will be treated altogether as if he had never sinned. 
 jN"o distinction will be made between him and unfallen beings, nor 
 will there be any such remembrance of his own former guilt as 
 that he shall occupy a less elevated position, or have less ready 
 access to the throne than if he had never been a transgressor. 
 
 II. It was proposed, in the second place, to show how justifica- 
 tion is accomplished through the merits of Christ, or how his 
 merits become available to us for this purpose. It is not uncommon 
 to say, in explaining this, that His " righteousness is imputed to 
 us," or that it becomes ours. But as this language, to many 
 minds, does not convey a very definite conception, and as, to other 
 minds, it often conveys erroneous impressions, and seems to be 
 irreconcileable with the common notions of men about moral 
 character, it is necessary to explain in what sense we become 
 justified by the merits of Christ. Perhaps in doing this, also, it 
 may be shown that so far from being contrary to the common 
 notions of men about what is right and proper, it is in fact but 
 carrying out, on the most elevated scale possible, what is practi- 
 cally occurring every day in the common relations and transactions 
 of life. It is to be observed, then, 
 
 29 
 
440 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 (1.) That we are often benefited by what others' have done. 
 The meaning is, that what they have done is of the same advan- 
 tage to us, for certain ends, as if we had done it ourselves. A 
 case or two taken from familiar transactions will illustrate what 
 is meant, and help to a proper explanation of the subject. Take 
 the case of a father and a son. The reputation of the one is oi'ten 
 a passport or recommendation to the other, of very great value, as 
 he enters on life. The son has as yet no known character, no 
 acquaintance with the world, no credit. The father has all these;. 
 He is widely known as a man of virtue ; he has an extensive and 
 honoured circle of acquaintance ; he has ample credit in the busi- 
 ness in which he is engaged. Now while it is true that this 
 character and credit belong to the father as his own, and cannot 
 be literally transferred to the son, it is also true that, for certain 
 purposes, it may be made to answer the same ends for the latter as if 
 it were his own. Unless, by his own misconduct, he shall forfeit 
 the advantage which he might derive from it, it will be a passport 
 to him in starting on his career ; it will go before him, preparing 
 many hearts to greet him with kindness ; it will obtain for him 
 the confidence of others ; it may be the means of securing for him 
 many a friend and helper when calamities come, even when his 
 father lies in the grave. While it will always be true that all 
 the merit and the credit appertain to his father, and while, what- 
 ever may be his own subsequent worth, he will cherish a deep 
 and abiding impression of that, it is also true that, for certain 
 purposes, he could have derived no higher advantages in the case 
 if the character and the credit had been his own. It would 
 not indeed to all intents and purposes be the same, but there are 
 great and valuable ends in his passage through the world which 
 could be no better secured if all this had been his own. The 
 influence of his father's name and character, unless he forfeits the 
 advantage, will attend him far on, perhaps entirely through, the 
 journey of life. 
 
 Take another common case. A young man embarks in business 
 without capital. He has acquired already, it may be, a character 
 for industry, talent, and honesty ; but he has no means by which 
 he can commence the enterprise of his life. What he wants now 
 is credit. If he had that, he would be sure of success. But he 
 has none as yet of his own. He has had no opportunity to make 
 himself known, so as to secure the extensive confidence of his 
 fellow-men. You have had such an opportunity, and have reaped 
 its result. To a certain extent, and for certain purposes, you 
 allow him to make use of your name. You endorse his papers, 
 and agree to be responsible for him. Now this to him, in the 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 441 
 
 case referred to, is of just as much value as though the credit 
 attached to your name were his. It will be, in the particular 
 matter referred to, worth as much to him as though he himself had 
 earned all the influence attached to that name, and secured by a 
 long and upright life the credit which it conveys. There will be 
 indeed, in other respects, important points of difference, but not 
 in the immediate use which he designs to make of the name. He 
 will have a very lively sense of the truth that he himself has 
 not this credit, that he is unknown, and that he is under the 
 deepest obligations to you. He will never so far mistake the 
 matter as to suppose that your moral character is transferred to 
 him, or that he can regard it as in any proper sense his own ; 
 but he will consider that it is available for just the purposes 
 for which he wants it. It is all he needs to secure the grand 
 object of his life, and is as good to him as if it were his own. 
 
 Further : if we would look over society we should find that 
 this arrangement prevails everywhere, and that we are indebted 
 to it every day. It may be doubted whether we live a single 
 hour, or execute a single plan of life, without being more or less 
 indebted to it. It is an influence diffused around us like the 
 air we breathe, or the sun which shines on our way; or it is like 
 the tissues of the human frame, where each part derives benefits 
 in its functions from the numerous other parts with which it is 
 more or less closely interwoven. It enters into the very texture 
 of society, that we avail ourselves of the toils, the sacrifices, the 
 virtues, and the honoured names of those with whom we are 
 connected. No man acquires a reputation for virtue who does 
 not do much to benefit his children and friends in this way ; and 
 one of the chief stimulants to effort in parents is, that they may 
 place their children on as high vantage-ground as possible when 
 they embark on life. That youth enters on life under great dis- 
 advantages who cannot encircle himself with this influence, and 
 who is constrained to " cut his way" to respectability or to wealth 
 alone. As a matter of fact, however, there are few that do this. 
 The name and influence of a father or a friend, a letter of com- 
 mendation from those who are known and loved, will be a passport 
 to us in distant climes and among strangers; will meet us with 
 its benign influence on the Rhine or the Ganges ; will help us 
 when we should otherwise fall into the hands of freebooters in 
 a foreign land, or when we should otherwise sink under poverty 
 and want ; or on a distant shore will raise up for us a friend on 
 the bed of death. He enters life under the best auspices who can 
 avail himself most of this, without sacrificing his independence, 
 or being a sycophant or parasite ; and he is the most foolish and 
 
442 THE WAY OF SALVATION 
 
 ungrateful of mankind who would willingly renounce all this 
 advantage, and choose to weather the storms of life, and make his 
 way through the world friendless and alone. 
 
 (2.) The second remark in explaining the way in which we are 
 justified hy the merits of Christ is, that there are two methods by 
 which we avail ourselves of the benefit accruing from the character 
 and virtues of others. The one is, by natural relationship. This 
 occurs in the case of a child, who, as a matter of course, derives 
 advantage from the industry, the character, and the credit of a 
 parent. T ne other is, by an arrangement made for that end. In- 
 stances o'f this latter kind occur everywhere. The case of an adopted 
 child is one a case where there is no natural relation, and no 
 natural claim, but where one chooses, for any reasons, that the child 
 of another should be received into his family, and treated as if he 
 were his own. It occurs not unfrequently in the case of a matri- 
 monial alliance, where the one party makes use of the name and. 
 influence and rank of the other, and on that account has a degree 
 of respect to which otherwise there would be no claim. It occurs 
 in the cases already referred to, where the use of a name is con- 
 ceded. The name of the missionary Schwartz was thus the means 
 of saving from starvation the whole of a British garrison ; and 
 many a man owes his subsequent elevation in life to assistance 
 furnished him at the outset. Cases have arisen where the signet 
 or the ring of a prince has been placed in the hand of another, 
 conveying to him, if danger should befall him, all the influence 
 and security which would be possessed by the owner himself; 
 nor is it very uncommon to give a carte blanche to a friend to be 
 filled up at pleasure. 
 
 (3.) It only remains now, in view of these illustrations, to 
 make a third remark, in explanation of the way in which we are 
 justified through the merits of Christ. The gospel-plan is, that we 
 are permitted to avail ourselves of his abounding merits, so that we 
 may be treated as if those merits were our own. It is not that His 
 merits are transferred to us, or that his moral character or righteous- 
 ness becomes properly ours, or that we cease to deserve punishment, 
 or that an apology is made for our sins, or that Christ takes our 
 part against justice; but that his merits are so ample, his life 
 and death have accomplished so much, and his work has been so 
 meritorious, that we may, by a suitable connexion with him, be 
 regarded and treated as if we were truly righteous before God, so 
 that '' God can be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in 
 Jesus ;" just and true, " while he justifies the ungodly." 
 
 This connexion between the Saviour and those who are "benefited 
 by his merits is not a natural connexion, for no such relation by 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY THE MEftlTS OF CHKIST. 443 
 
 nature subsists as would entitle any one to be regarded and treated 
 as righteous on liis account ; but it is a relation which is consti- 
 tuted entirely by faith. The influence of faith in forming it, and 
 in making it proper that they who are united to him should be 
 treated as righteous, will be explained hereafter. It is sufficient 
 now to remark, that the relation which is sustained is one that is 
 formed, not one that exists by nature. It is formed by a personal 
 union of the soul to Christ, and by the gracious concession on his 
 part, in accordance with the Divine arrangement, that we may 
 av r ail ourselves of his infinite and inexhaustible merits, so that 
 we may be treated as if they were our own. There are two addi- 
 tional thoughts which may be suggested to illustrate this : 
 
 (a) The one is, that his merit is inexhaustible. There is no 
 diminution or exhaustion of the merit of his work by the numbers 
 that avail themselves of it. This makes the plan of redemption 
 wholly different from anything which occurs among men. A man 
 of the widest credit and highest standing may be conceived to 
 allow his name to be so often used by those who have no claim to 
 it, or who turn out to be worthless and abuse his claim, as to 
 exhaust his credit and make his name good for nothing. JN T ot 
 so the Saviour. No numbers that apply exhaust his credit, or 
 diminish at all the merit of that blood by which they are saved. 
 That blood is as efficacious now, and that holy name of out 
 Advocate is as much honoured in heaven now, as when the first 
 sinner was justified, and when the gates of glory were first thrown 
 open to receive a ransomed soul. 
 
 (b) The other remark is, that the Lord Jesus becomes the 
 Surety that the universe shall suffer no wrong by our being 
 admitted to heaven. So far as we are concerned, he pledges 
 himself to meet all the claims of the law and of justice upon us. 
 That is, he becomes the Surety, that, under this arrangement, as 
 great good shall result to the universe from our being saved as 
 would be attained by our punishment for ever. By such punish- 
 ment, nothing would have been gained in regard to the honour of the 
 law, the truth of God, and the interests of justice, which are not 
 secured under the present arrangement by the substituted sorrows 
 of the Son of God in making the atonement. Thus he becomes 
 the " Surety of a better covenant" (Heb. vii. 22), and stands before 
 the universe as the public pledge that no harm is done to any 
 interest of truth and justice by the admission of one who is an 
 acknowledged sinner into heaven. Thus the publican was justified ; 
 thus Paul, the persecutor and blasphemer, i won Christ and was 
 found in him, not having his own righteousness, which was of the 
 law, but that which was through the faith of Christ ' (Phil. iii. 
 
444 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 8, 9) ; and thus multitudes of the profane and the sensual, "by 
 believing on Christ, have entered heaven and been blessed. There 
 stands the Great Advocate, not for their sinSj but for them ; and 
 there stands the security that no injury shall be done by treating 
 even such sinners for ever as -if they were righteous, and that all 
 that law or justice could ask, all that could be secured either by 
 their own personal perfect obedience, or by their enduring the 
 eternal penalty of the law, has been secured by his holy lifa and 
 meritorious death. When, therefore, they enter heaven, it is not 
 over prostrated law ; over an humbled government ; over dis- 
 regarded threatenings ; by a changeful policy ; or by partiality in 
 the administration; it is because their Great Surety has himself 
 secured the honour of the law, and because in their conscious 
 destitution of merit he has enough for them all. His name is the 
 guarantee to justice and to God; his inexhaustible merits, the 
 reason why they may be treated as if his righteousness were 
 their own. 
 
 This is what is properly meant by imputation. The true 
 doctrine implies no transfer of moral character ; no infusion of 
 righteousness into the soul ; no physical identity between the 
 Redeemer and his people ; no such charging of their sins to him as 
 that he became in any proper sense a sinner, or deserved to be put 
 to death, nothing but the purpose on the part of God, in virtue 
 of what he has done, to treat those who are themselves guilty as 
 if they were righteous. " By that righteousness being imputed to 
 us," says President Edwards, " is meant no other than this, that 
 the righteousness of Christ is accepted for us, and admitted 
 instead of that perfect inherent righteousness which ought to be 
 in ourselves. Christ's perfect obedience shall be reckoned to our 
 account, so that we shall have the benefit of it, as though we had 
 performed it ourselves." * 
 
 I have thus submitted to you some views on perhaps the most 
 important subject of religion. They pertain to that great doctrine 
 which separates Christianity from every other system of religion, 
 and to the answer which Christianity furnishes to the question, 
 asked with so much solicitude in every age, " How shall man 
 be justified with God?" The answer is, that we are "justified 
 freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ 
 Jesus." It is this doctrine which divides the religion of the 
 gospel from other systems ; which makes it what it is ; which 
 gives it whatever influence or power it has in speaking peace to 
 the troubled conscience, and bidding the spirit that is captive 
 under sin go free. It is this which will enable man to appear 
 * Works, vol. v. p. 394. 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST. 445 
 
 before his final Judge justified, not by any miserable attempt to 
 deny the fact that he is a sinner; to apologize for his errors and 
 follies, and found a claim to favour on such apology; to substitute 
 an external morality for that holiness of heart which the law of 
 God requires, or to present as a ground of acceptance the vain 
 oblation of outward forms. 
 
 I Lave endeavoured also to show, that though this method of 
 justification is entirely peculiar to Christianity, and separates it 
 from all other religious systems, yet that it accords with princi- 
 ples prevailing everywhere in society, and on which men act every 
 day and in every land. It is the embodiment and concentration 
 of these principles, and shows their operation on the highest 
 scale possible. Thus, as already remarked, in matters pertaining 
 to this life, we owe to the name, and standing, and credit of others, 
 an introduction to the world; facilities for doing business; valued 
 friends who may succour us in trouble : and on substantially the 
 same principles, though on an infinitely higher scale, we owe to 
 the merits of another the Son of God an introduction to the 
 Divine favour; the friendship of angelic beings; the peace of 
 pardon ; the calmness of a Christian death ; a passport to heaven, 
 and the crown incorruptible beyond the grave. Whatever of 
 joy or peace, of honour or favour, we shall have in the long ages 
 of eternity, is to be traced to the operation, on the highest scale 
 possible, of this principle that we may be benefited by the sacri- 
 fice and toils, the name and merit, the righteousness and suffer- 
 ings of Another. 
 
 In common affairs we do not disregard or undervalue this. 
 Those who enter on life consider it a felicitous circumstance in 
 their condition, if they may go forth with such passports and 
 commendations to the esteem of the world. That young man 
 would justly regard himself as destitute of every manly and 
 generous feeling, as well as every principle of self-respect, who 
 should discard and spurn this advantage, and prefer to go forth to 
 the world without the commendation or the patronage of a single 
 friend. We are going to a more important theatre of being than 
 is this narrow world. We shall soon pass beyond its outer 
 bounds, and move through other regions. We are to go up and 
 meet our Maker ; to enter on a mode of existence that shall have no 
 end ; to be associated with orders of beings now to us unknown ; 
 and there are great interests at stake, compared with which all the 
 concerns of earth are trifles. We go to a royal court the court of 
 heaven where we have no claim of right to appear. We go up to 
 obtain, if admitted there, the favour of a Being whose law we have 
 violated, and whose displeasure we have incurred. We go where 
 
446 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 we can take no wealth with us ; and where, if we could, it would 
 avail nothing; where we shall he disrobed of all in a graceful 
 exterior, or in fascinating manners, that may commend us to 
 others here ; and where, if it should accompany us, it would he 
 valueless ; where the name of a father, or the powerful influence 
 of a friend that might recommend us to the favour of men, would he 
 of no avail ; where no earthly thing on which we here rely as a 
 passport to others could be a commendation. But there is One in 
 human flesh that dwells there. He once lived among men. He was 
 most holy, and lovely, and pure ; hut He died. He rose from the 
 tomb, and the everlasting gates were opened, and He entered his 
 native skies. To the very interior of the court of heaven; to the 
 sacred seat of Deity; to the throne itself He has been admitted, 
 and is seated there. With all that heaven He is familiar, for He is 
 there at home. With all its streets of gold; with all its far-distant 
 mansions; with all its many departments fitted up for the abodes 
 of the blessed, He is familiar. His powerful aid He proffers us in 
 our sin and ignorance and helplessness, and assures us of his 
 willingness that we should plead his name, and make mention of 
 his merits as if they were our own, as a reason why we should be 
 welcome there. In heaven, his plea has never been denied ; the 
 claim of his merits has never been dishonoured. Shall we refuse 
 his offer ? Shall we spurn his name ? Shall we turn away from 
 that Friend, and Advocate, and Patron, and go there friendless 
 and alone I Shall we seek to commend ourselves to a holy God 
 by our own doings, and to stand there in our own attempts to 
 vindicate our ways ? Shall we spurn the robes of salvation which 
 he proffers, so white, so pure, so full and flowing, and gird 
 ourselves with the rags of our own righteousness? How you, 
 my hearers, may feel on this point, I know not. But for one, I, 
 who expect to stand soon before that holy throne of Deity, desire 
 to have some better righteousness than any which I have been 
 able to work out myself. I wish to have something which I may 
 plead in the place of that which I have failed to render. I would 
 liave some better passport to the skies than can be furnished by 
 my poor prayers and services in the cause of God. I must have 
 some Friend there whose name is all-prevalent; whose petition is 
 never denied; and about acceptance through whose merits thero 
 cannot be the shadow of a doubt. 
 
SEKMON XXXV. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 ROM. i. 16, 17. " For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ : for it is 
 the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ; to the Jew first, 
 and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed 
 from faith to faith : as it is written, The just shall live by faith." 
 
 IN the last discourse, when showing how we are saved through the 
 merits of Christ, it was remarked, that the means by which we 
 become interested in his merits, or by which they are made 
 available to us, is faith. I propose now to show the influence of 
 faith in our justification. The doctrine of the text is, that a man 
 is considered just before God, and treated as such, not in virtue of 
 his own works, but in virtue of his exercising faith in Christ. 
 " For therein," that is, in the gospel, "the righteousness of God," 
 or God's plan of regarding and treating men as righteous, "is 
 revealed from faith to faith ;" that is, by faith unto those who 
 have faith, or who believe ; " as it is written, The just shall live 
 by faith," or those justified by faith shall have everlasting life. 
 It is needless to prove at length that this is the settled doctrine of 
 the New Testament. " Therefore we conclude," says the apostle 
 in the third chapter of this epistle (ver. 28), "that a man is 
 justified by faith without the deeds of the law." Again, " By 
 the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. 
 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, 
 being witnessed by the law and the propbets ; even the righteous- 
 ness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon 
 all them that believe : for there is no difference," Rom. iii. 20 2:2. 
 So the apostle Paul says again, " A man is not justified by the 
 works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ," Gal. ii. 16. 
 In accordance with this, is the great doctrine which the Saviour 
 taught his disciples to promulgate, as comprising all that he 
 designed them to preach : " Go ye into all the world, and preach 
 the gospel to every creature. He that believeth, and is baptized, 
 shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be damned," 
 Mark xvi. 15, 16. That is, there is no other method of being saved 
 but by believing, or by faith ; and if a man has not this, he must 
 be lost. 
 
448 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 Probably every one who lias ever read these passages has been 
 disposed to ask, Why is so much stress laid on faith in the plan of 
 redemption? Why is it made so central, and so indispensable in 
 the salvation of the soul ? What inherent virtue is there in this 
 act that has given it such a pre-eminence over all other virtues ? 
 What is there in this that shoilld make it a substitute for all the 
 good works that men can perform ? Perhaps some will be dis- 
 posed to add, that the S3'stem of Christianity is thus removed from 
 all other systems, and is different from all the laws and principles 
 on which men act in other things. Merit, in other cases, is not in 
 accordance with a man's belief, but according to his virtues his 
 moral worth ; and why should faith have such special eminence in 
 the eye of God ? The rewards of this life are not distributed 
 according to a man's faith or credulity ; and why should the 
 rewards of heaven be ? We judge of the excellency of a man's 
 character, not according to the readiness with which he embraces 
 what is proposed to him for his credence, but usually somewhat 
 in proportion to his caution and the slowness of his belief; and 
 why does religion require a man to hasten to believe that which 
 is proposed to him, as if this were the chief of virtues ? When 
 also a man is put on trial, he is acquitted, not because he exhibits 
 an example of trusting in his judge or his advocate, but because 
 lie is able to vindicate his conduct ; and why shall we not look 
 for something analogous in religion ? Why are pardon and hope, 
 life and joy, heaven and glory, peace here and bliss hereafter, all 
 made to depend on faith the centre and the circumference, the 
 beginning, the middle, and the end, according to the gospel, of 
 every virtue ? These are inquiries which it is natural to make ; 
 they are inquiries which the friend of Christianity should feel it 
 to be a part of his vocation to answer. The relation or connexion 
 which these questions bear to the subject before us is this : 
 Supposing that man has no merit of his own, as has been shown, 
 and that there are infinite merits in the Redeemer through which 
 we may be saved ; why is it proper that we should avail ourselves 
 of those merits only through faith? Why should faith be the 
 instrument by which we may be treated as if those merits were 
 ours? 
 
 The answer to these questions is, that, in the circumstances of 
 the case, faith constitutes a union with the Redeemer of such a 
 nature as to make it proper to treat us substantially as he claims 
 to be treated that is, as righteous ; to make it proper that we 
 should share his happiness, his favour, his protection on earth, and 
 his glory in heaven ; and that the union formed by faith between 
 the soul and the Redeemer is so tender, so close, and so strong, as 
 
INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION. 449 
 
 to imply an identity of interest, and to make it certain and proper 
 that the blessings descending on him should, according to their 
 capacity and wants, descend on those who believe. It is evident 
 that the particular reason why faith has been selected as the 
 means of this is, that it constitutes a union more close, firm, and 
 enduring than any other virtue ; and that it meets more evils in 
 the world than any other act of the mind would do. On this 
 account, it is singled out from all other acts of the inind in the 
 plan of justifying men. 
 
 To many, these remarks may appear abstract and obscure. 
 It is proposed therefore, in a series of observations, to show rulty 
 faith is so important ; why it is the very cardo rerum the hinge of 
 salvation. One other preliminary remark should be made : it is, that 
 there is a great and essential difference between faith and credulity. 
 We distinguish them accurately in common life ; but we fear that 
 they are sometimes confounded when men think of religion. 
 
 (1.) As we have already seen, faith acts an important part in the 
 affairs of the world. Using the word in the sense of confidence, there 
 is nothing else on which the welfare of society more depends, or 
 which is more indispensable to its prosperous and harmonious rela- 
 tions. It enters into everything, and we are every day and every 
 hour acting under its influence, and depending on it as essential to 
 all that we hold dear. It is the cement of families, of neighbour- 
 hoods, of governments, of nations. The faith of treaties, of com- 
 pacts, of promises, of friendships, of affection, is that which holds 
 the world together, and without which society would go to pieces. 
 To loosen it at once would be like loosening every rope in a ship, 
 or unscrewing every fastening and bolt in a machine. It is by 
 faith, or mutual confidence, that the relations of domestic life are 
 maintained ; that the harmony of a family is secured ; that business 
 in a mercantile community is carried on ; that a banking institu- 
 tion effects the purpose for which it was chartered; or that a 
 government can secure the ends for which it was instituted. It 
 is by faith only that we derive lessons of valuable instruction from 
 history, or that we act with reference to what is yet to come. If 
 we had no more confidence in any of the testimonies of history 
 than we have in the fabulous details of the dynasties of India, the 
 mythological periods of Grecian history, or the legends of the saints, 
 ail past history would be utterly useless, for it would convey no 
 certain lessons. If we had no faith in the stability of the course of 
 events, the rising of the sun, the moon, and the stars the return 
 of the seasons the continuance of the laws of magnetism, of 
 gravitation, or of vegetation, we should form no plan for the 
 future; we should neither plant a field, nor build a ship, nor 
 
450 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 venture out on the ocean, where we might soon be without sun, or 
 star, or compass. We confide in our teachers, in a physician, a 
 counsellor, a clergyman ; and it would be impossible that the 
 cause of education, jurisprudence, or religion, could be maintained 
 if there were no such confidence. The farmer of the Eastern 
 States believes in the vast fertility of the West, of which he has 
 heard, but which he has never seen, and with his wife and children 
 leaves the graves of his fathers to seek that land on the strength 
 of his faith. The merchant believes that there is such a place 
 as Canton or Calcutta, though he has seen neither, and on the 
 strength of that faith would embark all his property in the same 
 vessel, and stake the whole question about making a fortune in 
 this world on his strong confidence that such places, of which he 
 has heard, have an existence. In like manner, we are exercising 
 confidence in everything. We believe the testimony of the 
 historians, though we never saw Xenophon, or Thucydides, or 
 witnessed the events of which they wrote ; we vote for the man 
 whom we have never seen ; we confide in the bankers, across the 
 waters, whom we never expect to behold. Were it not for this 
 unceasing confidence, and its varied operations, we could not get 
 along for a single day or hour. The affairs of the world would 
 at once stand still ; the bands of society would at once become 
 loosened ; and everything would fall into irretrievable confusion. 
 
 It is true there is much credulity in the world, and multitudes 
 in all professions and relations in life are imposed on. But so 
 also there is much counterfeit money, and many may be injured 
 or ruined by it. But the existence of a circulating medium is 
 indispensable, and there is by far more genuine than false coin at 
 any time in the world, and any quantity of spurious coin does not 
 render that valueless which is genuine. So, any amount of 
 credulity does not prove that it is improper for men ever to repose 
 confidence in one another, or that all faith is valueless. 
 
 (2.) The second observation illustrating the importance of faith 
 with reference to the subject before us is, that faith is the strongest 
 conceivable bond of union between minds and hearts. It is, in 
 fact, the cement of all unions, and without which all else is 
 valueless. In friendships, in treaties, in national compacts, in 
 social intercourse, in the tender domestic relations, it is the very 
 bond of union, and there is nothing else that can be a substitute 
 for it. The seal, which is affixed to a letter that is sent to a 
 friend, makes it secure, not because no one has power to break 
 it, but because there is confidence in each post-master through 
 whose hands it may pass, and in each stranger or friend into whose 
 hands it may happen to fall, that he will respect the seal, and will 
 
INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION. 451 
 
 not break it. The piece of wax or wafer, that is appended to a 
 written compact, makes it secure, not because neither of the con- 
 tracting parties has power to break it, but because it is a pledge 
 of mutual confidence. The seal, which is appended to a will, 
 renders it secure, not because no one has power to break it, but 
 because the testator has confidence that his friends and that the 
 courts of his country will respect his wishes, when his mouth is 
 for ever closed against the possibility of his declaring his desires, 
 and his hand powerless to assert his rights. A treaty between 
 nations is secure, not by any inherent power in the parchment 
 on which it is drawn, nor because the seal cannot be broken, 
 but because this is the expression of the confidence which now 
 subsists, the belief that both will regard it. 
 
 Look into the relations of life. What is it that forms and 
 preserves those numerous unions on which the very existence of 
 society depends ? What is the basis of the union of husband and 
 wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister, of friend and 
 friend? What but mutual confidence ? And is it asked, What is 
 the strength of that ? In answer to these questions, an illustration 
 may be employed taken from the most tender relation in life. 
 This illustration is used because it is the very one more than once 
 referred to on this subject in the Bible, and because it enters so 
 vitally into the welfare of society. Here is a young man just 
 entering on life. His character is fair ; his profession is honour- 
 able ; his person and standing are liable to no objection, and no 
 suspicion ; but what he may yet be no one earthly can tell, for 
 no one can certainly predict what a man will be till he is 
 tried. Here is a youthful female, the joy of her mother, and the 
 pride of her father's heart. She has been delicately trained ; has 
 a home that has every attraction; is secure there of unfailing 
 friends as long as her father and mother shall live; and has 
 ample means of support. She breaks all these ties ; leaves the 
 home of her childhood ; bids adieu to father, mother, brothers, and 
 sisters, and commits herself into the hands of this comparative 
 stranger. A father's and a mother's and a brother's love she 
 exchanges for his. Her hand, her heart, her property, she gives 
 to him. She pledges herself to go where he goes ; to suffer what he 
 suffers ; to make his friends hers ; to love him with an ardour with 
 which she loves no other human being ; to break away from every 
 tie of country and home, if he shall will it ; and, in a sense more 
 absolute than exists in any other case, to commit her happiness 
 into his hands. Every day and every hour that they will live, 
 she is dependent on his prosperity, his virtue, and his smiles for 
 her happiness ; and the moment his affections are withdrawn, or 
 
452 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 he ceases to "be a virtuous man, her happiness is dead. If he is 
 virtuous, faithful, and kind, she regrets not the act of confidence 
 with which she gave him her heart and hand. But what if he 
 trifles with her happiness? What if he always meets her with 
 a frown? What if he proves false to his vows? What if he 
 becomes a wretched drunkard? Now what has been the founda- 
 tion, and the source, and the strength of this union ? Confidence ; 
 and when that is gone, domestic peace dies. She has made a 
 sacrifice of her happiness, and her earthly felicity is a wreck. 
 
 Let another thought be suggested here : it is, that this union 
 of confidence secures an identity in their destiny. They are one 
 " one flesh," said the Saviour and the same event will now affect 
 both. Before this union, the storm might have beat on one of 
 them, and sunshine gladdened the path of the other. JVow, the 
 storm and the sunshine come on both alike. The light that 
 gladdens the eyes of the one, is also a pleasant thing to the other ; 
 the star that rises propitiously on one, rises propitiously also on 
 the path of the other. The blessings of peace and joy that greet 
 the one, greet the other also. There is one heart, one pulsation, 
 one breathing, one soul made up of the two. And so, if calamity 
 comes. If, under the roof where they are to abide, the pale 
 destroyer shall come with stealthy foot-tread, and change the 
 rose on the cheek of a smiling babe to the lily of death, it will be 
 a scene in which both their hearts will bleed alike, and they 
 will weep together over the open grave. If one is sad, both are 
 sad ; if one is poor, both are poor ; if around one the storms of life 
 beat heavily, the tempest will beat on both. Their union, one 
 pre-eminently of mutual faith plighted before the altar, constitutes 
 an identity in all the great events of life, and secures to both, 
 substantially the same treatment from the Great Disposer of all 
 things. They share the same fortune the same honour or dis- 
 grace the same sorrows and the same joys ; they are wafted on 
 to a port of bliss, or are wrecked in the same vessel ; they are 
 greeted with the same welcome in life, they are buried in the 
 same grave. It is easy to apply this illustration to the matter 
 in hand. 
 
 (3.) The third illustration is, that faith is of such a nature that it 
 is adapted to meet all the evils of the world. The idea is, that it 
 lias been made the hinge or turning-point of salvation, because the 
 want of it has been the source of all the calamities which man has 
 Buffered, and because, if this is restored, the evils of the woi Id 
 would be at an end. 
 
 The grand evil on earth, and the source of all subordinate evils, 
 is a rvant of confidence in God. This was the evil at the start, 
 
INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION. 453 
 
 tliat man reposed more confidence in the teachings of the tempter 
 than in the law of the Creator ; and this has been the source of all 
 our woe. Man has no confidence in his God. He does not believe 
 that He is qualified for universal empire ; that He manages the 
 affairs of the universe well ; that His law is equal and just ; that 
 His dispensations are in accordance with equity ; that His plan of 
 salvation is wise ; he does not show confidence in Him by yielding 
 implicit obedience to His laws, or by submitting to His dispensa- 
 tions; he does not go to Him and ask counsel of Him in the 
 darknesses and perplexities of life ; he does not seek support from 
 His arm in times of calamity ; he does not commit his great 
 interests to Him, believing that He will be his guide through life, 
 and that He will yet make " all things work together for good." 
 But he confides in other things ; he confides in his own strength, till 
 liis strength fails ; in his philosophy, till it deludes and deceives 
 him; in his fellow-men, till they all betray him; in friends and 
 kindred, till they drop into the grave ; in his skill and sagacity, 
 till he conies to a place in life where the u right hand forgets its 
 cunning." He confides in stocks and stones, in graven images, and 
 four-footed beasts, and creeping things ; but by nature lie has no 
 confidence in God. 
 
 This is the grand evil of the world, this the source of all our 
 woes; for, a want of confidence here produces the same kind of 
 evils, though on a larger scale, as a want of confidence everywhere. 
 We have seen that the welfare of society depends on mutual 
 confidence. Now, to see how wretched any society can possibly 
 be, we have only to suppose the existence there of the same want 
 of confidence which subsists in man toward his Maker. What 
 would be the result ? No man would know in whom to trust ; 
 no one could form a plan dependent in any manner on the 
 fidelity of others ; no one could be certain that any of his 
 purposes of life could be effected. The scene at Babel would be 
 re-acted again all over the world, and worse disorder than that 
 which followed from confounding the languages of the people 
 there, would pervade all classes and conditions of mankind. The 
 remedy for such a state of things would be the restoration of 
 mutual confidence. In such a condition of ill, nothing would have 
 so far-reaching an effect. It would, in fact, meet all those ills, and 
 make society harmonious and happy. The wheels of commerce, 
 of government, of domestic pace, of public improvement, of 
 education, would again roll on harmoniously, and happiness would 
 again bless the world. The want of faith or confidence in God has 
 produced all the ills on earth of which those just supposed are but 
 an emblem; the restoration of confidence in God would strike at 
 
454 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 the root of all those ills, and make tliis a happy world. It is this 
 which makes heaven happy, where every being has confidence in 
 God, and in all that dwell there ; and, with all our wants and 
 Badnesses, this too would "be a happy world if there were universal 
 confidence in God. In our sorrows, we should then have peace, 
 for we should believe that all is well-ordered ; under our heavy 
 burdens of life, we should find support, for we should go and roll 
 all on his arm ; in all the dark and perplexing questions that now 
 agitate us about the introduction of moral evil and the prevalence 
 of iniquity, our minds would be calm, for we should feel that there 
 was a reason for it all ; and in the prospect of death that which 
 now makes us so sad our hearts would find more than peace, we 
 should utter the language of joy and triumph, for it would be only 
 the coming of a messenger to bear us to a much-loved Father's 
 arms. The grand thing that needs to be done on earth to make 
 this a happy world, is to restore universal confidence in God ; and 
 this is the whole aim of religion this the object of the scheme of 
 redemption. Hence the necessity of faith is laid at the founda- 
 tion of the whole scheme ; it is the cardinal thing in the plan of 
 salvation. This restored, what a happy world, after all, would 
 this be ! For it is a beautiful world. It is full of the proofs of 
 God's goodness and love. There are a thousand comforts that 
 meet us every day and every night, and a thousand tender cords 
 that should bind us to our Creator. If we confided in Him as 
 qualified for universal empire ; if we felt that He i&Jtt to manage 
 the affairs of his own world ; if we believed that He will yet bring 
 order out of confusion, and light out of darkness ; if we trusted 
 that his law is good and his commandment holy ; and if we would 
 go to Him with the confiding spirit with which a little child goes 
 and tells all his troubles to his father, this would be still a 
 happy world. For that grand undertaking of the Almighty 
 Father of us all to restore unwavering confidence in himself, 
 manifested in the gospel, the world should be unfeigned ly 
 thankful ; and one of the principal topics of praise on earth 
 should be, that He has required faith as the very elementary 
 principle of his religion. 
 
 (4.) A fourth remark in explanation of the subject is, that faith 
 is required, or is made the condition of justification, for this 
 reason: there is an obvious propriety that, where salvation is 
 provided and offered, there should be some act on our part 
 signifying our acceptance of it. If we are to be saved through the 
 merits of Christ, there should be some act indicating our wish or 
 our will ; some expression of our desire in the case ; something 
 that shall serve to distinguish us from those who are not saved. 
 
INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION. 455 
 
 It evidently would not be proper, it wo'uld not be consulting the 
 nature which. God has given us, to receive the human race 
 indiscriminately into heaven without any intimation of a wish to 
 be saved ; nor would it be fitting to save one part and leave the 
 other, unless there were something that would indicate in the one 
 a desire to be saved, which did not exist in the case of the other. 
 What would better show this than faith? What would be a 
 better expression of a desire to be saved ? What act would be 
 more appropriate in accepting salvation, in the intimating of a 
 wish that the benefits of the death of Christ might be ours ? What 
 would constitute a stronger bond between the soul and Him than 
 this ? What would come nearer towards constituting that identity 
 on which it is proper that those who are united should be treated 
 alike? You are a father. You have two sons. They both 
 become disobedient. They leave your house at their pleasure ; 
 go where they choose; are out at such hours as suit .their 
 convenience ; keep such company as they desire ; and are wholly 
 regardless of your laws. They heed neither your promises nor your 
 threats, and they have gone so far that they have now no confidence 
 in you. You have favours which you are willing to bestow on 
 them. You would be willing to receive them to your house, and 
 to treat them as sons, alike in your lifetime and in your will. 
 But would you think it unreasonable, that as a condition of their 
 being received and treated as sons they should evince returning 
 confidence in you ? And if one / of them should return, and should 
 ever onward manifest the confidence due from a son to a father, 
 and the other should not, would you think it improper to make a 
 distinction between them in your lifetime and at your death ? And 
 would they and the world be at a loss for a reason why it was 
 done ? The remark here is, that faith in Christ is the appropriate 
 act by which we accept of the benefits of his work, and that this 
 constitutes a difference between him who accepts of salvation and 
 him who does not accept it ; and that this is a reason why the one 
 should be treated as if he were interested in those benefits and 
 the other not that is, a reason why the one is justified and the 
 other not. 
 
 (5.) The fifth remark necessary to explain the subject, or to 
 show why faith in Christ is made the turning-point of justification 
 and salvation, is, that the act of believing on Christ is made in 
 circumstances and in a manner indicating confidence of the highest 
 kind that ever exists in the human bosom, constituting a union 
 of the closest conceivable nature. It is an act so identifying 
 the soul and the Saviour that it is proper that the same treat- 
 ment which the Redeemer receives should in their measure be 
 
 30 
 
456 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 received by his people, or that, in the Divine treatment, they 
 should be practically regarded as one. The circumstances are 
 these : 
 
 (a) The sinner feels that he is lost and ruined. He is made 
 sensible that he is guilty before God, and that he has no claim to 
 Divine mercy. His heart is evil ; his life has been evil ; his whole 
 soul is evil. If justice were done him, he feels that he should be 
 for ever banished from God and heaven. Yet he feels that he has 
 a soul of infinite value. It is to endure for ever. It is capable, 
 in the long eternity before it, of suffering more than the aggregate 
 of all the sorrows that have yet been endured on earth and in 
 hell. It is capable, also, in that infinite duration, of enjoying 
 more than the aggregate bliss of all that has been experienced on 
 earth, united with all that has been known in heaven. A bound- 
 less eternity is before the trembling sinner, and infinite interests 
 are at stake. 
 
 (b) He despairs of salvation for himself. He feels now that he 
 has no power to rescue his soul from death. He cannot confide 
 in his own arm, or in the arm of any mortal. He has tried every 
 method of salvation, every way of obtaining peace of conscience, 
 every plan that proposed security to his soul, but in vain. He 
 stands now a lost and ruined being, trembling on the shores of 
 eternity. The boundless ocean spreads out before him. Clouds 
 and darkness rest upon it. He has deserved no mercy ; he has 
 no claim on God to be his guide and protector ; he can urge no 
 reason why he should be admitted to a world of peace. 
 
 (c) In these sad and perilous circumstances, he commits his 
 soul, with all its infinite and eternal interests, into the hands of 
 the Lord Jesus. By a simple act of faith he embraces Him as his 
 Saviour, his Friend, his Sacrifice, his Advocate. Renouncing all 
 confidence in his own merit, he resolves to rely on the merit of 
 Christ; abandoning every plea on the ground of what he has 
 himself done, he resolves to urge the merits of the Saviour as his 
 plea ; and forsaking for ever all reliance for salvation on birth 
 or blood, on moral virtues or intellectual attainments, on rank in 
 life or the commendation of friends, on the goodness of his own 
 heart or on forms in religion, he stakes his own everlasting interest, 
 and the question of his final salvation, on the belief that there 
 is a Saviour, and that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He 
 is able and willing to save him. He is willing to risk the 
 issue on this belief; and he who was a moment before trembling 
 on the verge of Tiell as if there were no hope, now calmly 
 turns the eye to heaven, and smiles through his tears, and says, 
 " I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is 
 
INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION. 457 
 
 able to keep that which I have committed unto him against 
 that day." 
 
 (d) This is a wonderful act of confidence. That is great confi- 
 dence which is evinced when a drowning man seizes a rope that 
 is thrown to him, and suspends the question of his safety on the 
 helief that you can draw him to the shore. That would be great 
 confidence which the man who was shipwrecked, and who had 
 clambered up a projecting rock above the reach of the waves, 
 would evince, if he should fasten around his body a rope let 
 down from above, and swing off over the raging billows, trusting 
 to the rope and the strength of those above to draw him up. And 
 that is great confidence, in a case already referred to, where a deli- 
 cately-trained youthful female leaves her mother and father, and 
 commits herself, for weal or woe, into the hands of a comparative 
 stranger. But such acts are not equal to that by which the dying 
 soul commits itself to the Saviour. They will hardly do for an 
 illustration. For what are the raging waves of the ocean compared 
 with the rolling fires of the world of despair ? What is the perilled 
 death of the body compared with the death of the soul ? What 
 are all the temporal interests which youth, or beauty, or virtue 
 can commit to another here, compared with those eternal interests 
 which are entrusted to the Son of God ? 
 
 (e) It remains, then, only to add, that in virtue of such a union 
 there should be identity of treatment. So we saw in the illustra- 
 tion of the husband arid wife, where the union between them led 
 on to common sorrows and common joys ; common successes and 
 common reverses ; common sunshine and common shade. Much 
 more should it be so in the more tender and close union of the 
 soul to the Saviour by the act of faith. They become one. He 
 is the " Vine," they are the " branches ;" he the " Head," they 
 the " members ;" he lives in them, and dwells in them. He is 
 tl Christ in us, the hope of glory." " We are members of his 
 body, of his flesh, and of his bones." " I live," says the apostle, 
 " yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." " Because I live," said the 
 Saviour, " ye shall live also." Through all life's future tecenes 
 his people will be treated as one with him; and the union is 
 so close that it introduces them to common joys and triumphs 
 with him for ever. They will be made happy, because the same 
 blessings that descend on the " Head " will flow to all the 
 " members." 
 
 In view of these remarks, the following thoughts may be sug- 
 gested in conclusion : 
 
 (1.) The simplicity and ease of the way of salvation in the 
 gospel are remarkable. The leading thing required of him who 
 
458 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 would be saved, is faith, or confidence, in the Redeemer. Tims 
 Paul said to the trembling jailer at Philippi, " Believe on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved," Acts xvi. 31. So 
 again in the Epistle to the Romans, " If thou shalt confess with 
 thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that 
 God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For 
 with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the 
 mouth confession is macle unto salvation," Rom. x. 9, 10. Here, 
 as everywhere in the New Testament, salvation is represented as 
 easy. The terms are as simple as possible. There is no requisi- 
 tion of our attempting to obey the whole law of God as a condition 
 of salvation; no demand on us to offer costly sacrifices, or to 
 make pilgrimages to a distant shrine, or to practise penances 
 and fastings, or to lacerate the body, or to attempt to work out 
 a righteousness by conformity to external forms, or by union to a 
 particular church. The simple, the single thing demanded is, 
 faith on the Son of God. If man has this, he is safe. No matter 
 what his past life has been ; no matter what his complexion, 
 rank, or apparel ; no matter where he lives or dies ; no matter 
 whether he worships in a splendid temple or under the open vault 
 of heaven ; and no matter whether his body rests in consecrated 
 ground or amid the corals of the ocean, he is a child of God, and 
 an heir of the kingdom. Whatever may be said of this plan of 
 salvation, it cannot be said that it is not sufficiently simple, and 
 that it does not breathe a spirit of benignity towards the lost and 
 ruined children of men. The infidel cannot object that God has 
 not adapted it to the condition of human nature as it is made 
 up, for the most part, of the ignorant, of the down-trodden, and of 
 children ; nor that it has required more of any man than the 
 human powers can render. Yet, 
 
 (2.) While thus simple and easy, it is on the great principles 
 which we see everywhere prevail. There is required in salvation 
 that which keeps the social world together, and causes human 
 things to move on in harmony that without which all the interests 
 of man would be a wreck. There is required that which would 
 arrest all human ills, and make this still a happy world coiifidence 
 in our God. Man wants but this to make him a happy being here ; 
 he will want but this to make him happy for ever. As confidence 
 is the great principle which cements society, so it was indispensable 
 in religion that confidence in God should be restored. We cannot 
 conceive that a human being could be saved without faith. Even 
 if it had not been distinctly and formally required in the plan, it 
 is impossible to conceive that there could have been salvation 
 without it. The very process of returning to God from our 
 
INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION. 459 
 
 wanderings implies returning confidence for how or why should 
 sinners return to him if they have no confidence in him ? And 
 how could they be happy in heaven if they had no confidence in God? 
 What would heaven be, if there were there the same distrust of the 
 Deity, and the same rebellion against him, and the same alienation 
 from him, and the same doubt of his being, his justice, and his 
 goodness, which exist on earth ? The plan of salvation by faith 
 is laid in the deepest philosophy, and is based on the irreversible 
 nature of things. 
 
 (3.) The subject suggests a remark on the nature and aims of 
 infidelity. Men often think that unbelief is a harmless thing. 
 They sometimes regard it as a special proof of meritorious inde- 
 pendence to be an infidel. They pride themselves on their philo- 
 sophy and their freedom from vulgar prejudices and priestcraft 
 perhaps on their freedom from the prejudices instilled by a pious 
 parent, a pastor, or a Sunday-school teacher. They consider the 
 denunciation of unbelief in the gospel as singularly harsh, and 
 use no measured terms in expressing their abhorrence of a system 
 which denounces the eternal pains of hell on a man because he 
 will not believe. The want of faith, say they, is a harmless or a 
 meritorious thing. But are you connected with a bank ? Would 
 you think that a harmless effort in a daily paper which should 
 attempt, to unsettle the confidence of the community in your 
 institution ? Have you a character for virtue, which you have 
 secured by years of toil and of upright deportment ? Is that a 
 harmless report in the community which tends to destroy all 
 confidence in that character ? Are you a father ? Is it a harm- 
 less effort of your neighbour when he attempts to unSettle the 
 confidence of your own children in your virtue ? Are you a 
 husband ? Is he a harmless man who shall aim to unsettle your 
 faith in the wife of your bosom, and produce between you and 
 her an utter want of confidence ? And is there no evil in that 
 state of mind where there is no confidence in God that rules on 
 high ; the God that made us, and that holds our destiny in his 
 hands ? Is it nothing to unsettle the faith of men in God, and 
 to introduce universal distrust in his government? Is it nothing 
 to inculcate or cherish the thought that the Governor of the 
 world is a dark, malignant, harsh, and severe Being, and to 
 alienate the affections of creation from its Maker ? Let the history 
 of the earth answer. All our evils began in that unhappy moment 
 when our first parents lost their confidence in their God. " Loss 
 of Eden," toil, sweat, despair, perplexity, and death, tell what 
 the evil was. Calamities have rolled along in black and angry 
 surges, and the dark flood still swells and heaves upon the earth. 
 
460 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 Peace will "be restored, and Paradise regained, only when man is 
 restored to confidence in his God; and this is the grand and 
 glorious work of the gospel. This done in any heart, and its 
 " peace becomes as a river, and its righteousness as the waves 
 of the sea." This done all over the earth, and millennial joy 
 will visit the nations. This done, as successive individuals or 
 generations leave the world, and death is disarmed of his sting, 
 for the departing soul leans with full assurance of faith on the 
 Saviour. 
 
SEEMON XXXYI. 
 
 THE BEARING AND IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF 
 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 ROM. i. 17. " The just shall live by faith." 
 
 FROM these words I desire to illustrate the bearing and the im- 
 portance of the doctrine of justification by faith. The points 
 which have been illustrated in the previous discourses are the 
 f6llowing :- The importance of the inquiry, How man can be 
 justified with God ; the fact that man cannot justify or vindicate 
 himself by denying the truth of the charges against him ; the 
 fact that he cannot do it by showing that he had a right to do 
 as he has done ; the fact that he cannot merit salvation ; the 
 consideration of what is to be understood by the merits of Christ ; 
 the sense in which we are justified by the merits of Christ ; and 
 the agency of faith in our justification. It is proposed now, in the 
 conclusion of the subject, to refer to some historical illustrations 
 of the value and influence of the doctrine of justification by faith, 
 and to show why it has the place which history has assigned it. 
 
 I. In illustrating the value and influence of the doctrine as 
 shoicn by history, three periods of the world may be briefly 
 referred to. 
 
 (1.) The first is, the age of the apostles when, perhaps, the 
 effect of the doctrine of justification by faith was more vividly 
 seen than it has ever been since. That this was the doctrine 
 which Paul preached, which he made prominent in his writings, 
 and which he everywhere defended, no one acquainted with his 
 history can for a moment doubt. It would be needless here to 
 transcribe the passages of his writings which declare his views 
 on this point, or which show how earnestly he expressed his 
 conviction of its truth and importance. Everywhere he main- 
 tained that a man is not justified by the deeds of the law, but 
 by the righteousness of faith ; that we are saved, not by works 
 of righteousness which we have done ; that they that are under 
 the law, are under the curse ; and that they who are justified by 
 faith, have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. In 
 the most earnest and emphatic manner he abjured all dependence 
 on his own merits for salvation ; disclaimed all reliance on the 1 
 
462 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 extraordinary zeal for religion which he had manifested in early 
 life, and on his own hlameless outward deportment; and de- 
 clared it now to be the grand purpose of his soul to " know 
 Christ, and to he found in him, not having his own righteous- 
 ness, which was of the law, but the righteousness which is of 
 God by faith," Phil. iii. 9. In this, he coincided with all the 
 other apostles, who taught as he did, that no reliance is to 
 be placed on outward forms of religion, on good works, on an 
 amiable character, or on alms, as the ground of salvation. It 
 was then that the doctrine of simple dependence on Christ for 
 salvation went forth with freshness and with power. It was 
 unencumbered by any attending doctrine of a different character 
 to fetter its movements, or to hinder its progress through the 
 world. There was no necessity proclaimed of depending on rites 
 or forms of religion ; no reverence for sacred places was inculcated 
 as necessary to salvation ; no connexion with a particular church, 
 organized under a peculiar ministry, was declared to be essential ; 
 no saving efficacy was attributed to sacraments and to alms ; no 
 merits of the holy men of other ages could be looked to, to make 
 up the deficiency of those who sought to be saved ; no promise 
 was held out that the dead might be saved through the extra- 
 ordinary sacrifices and benevolence of the living. The naked 
 doctrine of justification by faith in Christ stood out before the 
 world, fresh in its youthful vigour, with no trappings or orna- 
 ments to hide and obscure it ; a simple, solemn, sublime truth, 
 that all might appreciate, and that might be available to all. 
 This was then the sword of the Spirit, slaying human pride ; 
 cutting down the self-righteousness of men ; prostrating the great 
 and the mean, the learned and the unlearned, the patrician and 
 the plebeian, the master and the slave, the man in purple and 
 the man in rags, alike a sword, whose keenness was not ren- 
 dered useless then by being hid in a gorgeous scabbard. 
 
 The doctrine thus promulgated by the apostles stood opposed 
 to the prevailing views of all the world. It was opposed to all 
 the aims of the Pharisees the essential tenet of whose religion 
 was expressed graphically and honestly by one of their own 
 number " God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are." 
 It stood opposed to all the views of the Sadducees, who held to 
 the necessity of no kind of religion, denying the whole doctrine 
 of the future state. It stood opposed to the Essenes^ the re- 
 maining Jewish sect, who sought to work out their salvation by 
 extraordinary fastings and privations, and by exclusion from 
 contact with the world. It stood opposed to the whole system 
 of sacrifices among the heathen, who sought to propitiate the gods, 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 463 
 
 and to render themselves accepted, by dependence on the forms 
 of religion ; and it was at variance with all the views of philo- 
 sophy the pride of the Stoic, confident in his own righteous- 
 ness ; the licentiousness of the Epicurean, justifying his own 
 voluptuousness; and the self-complacency of the sage, relying 
 on his own wisdom. An apostle could go nowhere, where this 
 doctrine would not come in conflict with all the prevailing views 
 in regard to the way in which men might be saved. Yet no one 
 now can be ignorant of the effect of this doctrine, as promul- 
 gated by the apostles. This it was which changed the religion of 
 the world ; for Christianity made no other advances than as it 
 taught men to renounce every other ground of dependence, and to 
 rely for salvation solely on the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 It had no martial power by which to make its way ; it had no 
 influence derived from name and rank to enforce its claims ; it 
 had no authority derived from a venerable antiquity on which to 
 rely ; it had no gorgeous and imposing forms to enable it to com- 
 mand the respect of those who had worshipped in the Parthenon 
 or the Pantheon ; it had no claims to any new discoveries in phi- 
 losophy. It had but one thing that was new, great, imposing, 
 commanding ; and that was the announcement of Christ cruci- 
 fied, and the fact that men everywhere might now be justified 
 by the merits of His atoning blood. Never has any truth on 
 any subject stood more by itself, to make its own way without 
 adventitious aid, than this did in the hands of the Christian 
 apostles ; and never before had any simple truth on any subject 
 produced such changes in the world. 
 
 (2.) The second fact to which reference will be made, is the 
 state of the world when the doctrine of justification by faith 
 was obscured and almost extinguished in the Church. It soon 
 began to be obscured. Very early the professed friends of reli- 
 gion began to lose sight of it. So strong in the human mind is 
 the love of pomp and ceremony and form; so attached is man to 
 splendour and show in religion as in everything else ; so prone 
 is the heart to rely on its own doings, and so reluctant is the 
 sinner everywhere to .depend for salvation on the righteousness 
 of another, that this doctrine gradually died away, and almost 
 ceased to be remembered in the church. Then arose the system 
 which spread night all over the Christian world the night of 
 ignorance, error, superstition, and crime, a night deepening for 
 ages, till it terminated in the consummate depravity of the 
 Papacy under Alexander VI. Amid this forgetfulness of the 
 doctrine of justification by faith, or of salvation by simple de- 
 pendence on Christ crucified, arose the universal respect for 
 
4G4 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 sacred places and orders of men ; zeal for splendid temples of 
 worship, and for gorgeous ceremonies ; extraordinary veneration 
 for the sepulchres of saints, and for their holy remains ; pilgrim- 
 ages to the Holy Land ; the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, 
 and of absolution of sins by the imposition of holy hands ; the 
 belief that grace was imparted by sacraments, administered by a 
 priesthood ; the doctrine that the merits of the saints of other 
 days were garnered up for the benefit of future ages, and placed 
 at the disposal of the Church ; the multiplication of sacraments, 
 with saving efficacy attributed to them all ; and the belief of a 
 peculiar sacredness attached to ground consecrated to the burial 
 of the dead. All these were features of one great system. They 
 had some relation to Christianity, and had grown in part out 
 of the abuse of its doctrines. But though various, they were 
 arranged evidently under the auspices of one master-mind, and 
 with the same end in view. That was to render nugatory the 
 doctrine of justification by faith, and to substitute in its place 
 the doctrine of salvation by works. It was, indeed, salvation by 
 works connected with the religion of Christ, and was a different 
 system from that of the Pharisee, who expected to be saved by 
 conformity to the law of Moses, or the Grecian philosopher, who 
 hoped to reach heaven by the purity of his doctrine and his 
 morals, or the degraded Pagan, who relied on the blood of sacri- 
 fices, or the man now who relies on his own honesty and fidelity 
 in the various relations of life ; but it was essentially the same 
 system. It excluded the simple dependence of the soul on the 
 Lord Jesus for salvation, and substituted in its stead a reliance 
 on human merit. 
 
 The effect was seen in the darkness, sin, and corruption of 
 Europe before the Reformation. Every feature of the state of 
 things in the " dark ages" can be traced to an obscuring of the 
 great doctrine of justification by faith. Every advance of society 
 into that deep and deepening gloom was connected with some 
 loosening of its hold on that doctrine, and the substitution of 
 something else in its place, until the hold was entirely gone, and 
 Europe was plunged in total night. 
 
 (3.) The third historical fact, therefore, to be referred to, is 
 the effect which the recovery and restoration of this doctrine 
 had on the church and the world at the period of the Reforma- 
 tion. To those who have studied the history of that period, as 
 all Protestants should do, it is unnecessary to say that this was 
 the elementary doctrine the central view the starting-point in 
 the whole of that glorious revolution. This was the great truth 
 which dawned on the mind of Luther, and which led to all that 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 465 
 
 he attempted and accomplished for the restoration of the Church 
 to its primitive purity; and it occupied an equally central posi- 
 tion in the view of all his fellow-labourers. Three times was 
 the doctrine of justification by faith brought before the mind of 
 Luther, with the same sort of power which it had when pro- 
 mulgated by the apostles, and with such energy as to rouse all 
 that was great in his soul into life. The first was when he was 
 a monk in his cell. He had found a copy of the Bible, and he 
 began to study it, and to lecture on it. He commenced with 
 the Psalms, but soon passed to the Epistle to the Romans. One 
 day, having proceeded as far as the seventeenth verse of the first 
 chapter, the words quoted from Habakkuk, " The just shall live 
 by faith," arrested his attention. A new thought struck him. 
 A new way of salvation opened before his mind. A new light 
 shone upon his heart ; and the words, "" The just shall live by 
 faith," seemed never to leave him. The second instance was 
 when he first visited Rome. These words followed him, and 
 lingered on his ear. One of his first impressions was, that he 
 was now in the very place to which Paul had addressed these 
 words in his epistle. Yet in that city how were they obscured 
 and unknown ! On every hand were arrangements for being 
 justified by works by forms and ceremonies, by pomp and 
 pageantry, by the merits of the saints, and by penance. What 
 a total obscuration of the great doctrine which Paul had taught 
 in the letter to the church there, and which he had him- 
 self doubtless taught when he had dwelt in that city ! The 
 third instance in which these words were brought to the heart 
 of Luther was more impressive still. " One day, wishing to 
 obtain an indulgence promised by the pope to any one who 
 should ascend on his knees what is called * Pilate's Staircase,' 
 the poor Saxon monk was slowly climbing the steps which they 
 told him had been miraculously transported from Jerusalem to 
 Rome. But while he was going through this meritorious work, 
 he thought he heard a voice like thunder speaking from the 
 depth of his heart ' The just shall live by faith! 1 He started 
 up in terror on the steps up which he had been crawling ; he 
 was horrified at himself ; and struck with shame for the degrada- 
 tion to which superstition had debased him, he fled from the 
 scene of his folly. This powerful text had a mysterious influence 
 on the life of Luther. It was a creative word for the Reformer 
 and for the Reformation."* It was this truth that wrought out 
 the Reformation ; and whatever there was in that work that is 
 valuable and precious; whatever there was to shed a benign 
 * D'Aubigne. 
 
4G6 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 influence on literature, liberty, and morals; whatever there was 
 to spread pure religion over Switzerland, or Germany, or Eng- 
 land, or ultimately over our own land, and then by a reflex 
 influence on Asia Minor, on Palestine, on the palmy East, on 
 dark Africa, and on the islands of the sea, is to be traced to those 
 moments when this text broke with so much living power on the 
 soul of Luther " The just shall live by faith." It became with 
 him an elementary truth, that the doctrine of justification by 
 faith was the " article of the standing or the falling Church" 
 the very joint or hinge (articulus) on which the whole depended.* 
 To that doctrine we owe, in its various developments, all that 
 we value in this Protestant land, and all that distinguishes us 
 in religion from what Europe was in the days of Alexander VI. 
 and Leo X.; and there is not an interest of religion, liberty, or 
 learning, which has not been moulded by it more than by any 
 other single cause. Our modes of worship ; our readiness to 
 spread the Bible ; our freedom of discussion ; our general diffu- 
 sion of intelligence ; our untrammelled press ; our separation of 
 religion from the state ; our societies for the spread of the gospel j 
 our blessed and glorious revivals ; our deliverance from supersti- 
 tion, and from the tyranny of a priesthood, and from the cor- 
 ruptions and abominations of the monastic system, and from the 
 debasement of penances and pilgrimages, are all to be traced ro 
 the power of this single truth that blazed with such an intensity 
 on the soul of the poor Saxon monk. Such being some of the 
 facts in the case, let us, 
 
 II. In the second place, inquire why this doctrine has this 
 importance and power. This will be seen if we can trace its 
 connexion with what undeniably it has been everywhere united 
 to : a religion of deep spirituality, of simplicity of worship, of 
 deadness to the world, of freedom of opinion, of liberal views, 
 and of great and cheerful sacrifices for the good of mankind. 
 There are but two systems of religion on the earth : the one is 
 that of self-righteousness ; the other, that of salvation by the 
 merits of Christ ; the one, that of men who attempt, in various 
 ways, to justify themselves before God ; the other, that of those 
 who seek to be justified through the righteousness of the Re- 
 deemer. The bearing and importance of the latter, in contrast 
 with the former, is the point now before us. 
 
 (1.) This doctrine of justification by faith has a power of 
 
 reaching the soul, and of calling forth every active energy of 
 
 our nature, which the other system never can have. It leaves 
 
 fhe impression that the soul is of vast value ; that religion is of 
 
 * "Artieulus stands vel cadentis ecclesiae." 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 467 
 
 inestimable importance ; that the grand purpose of living should 
 be religion. The reason of this, which may not at once be 
 apparent, is, that it finds the soul in such a state, wherever it is 
 embraced, that it arouses all that is thrilling, and vast, and 
 momentous in the soul itself, and in its hopes and relations. The 
 language which the doctrine of justification by faith addresses 
 to each individual is this : * You are a lost sinner. You have 
 no righteousness of your own. You never will have any. Your 
 heart is by nature depraved, and your whole past life has been 
 evil. In all that you have done, you have done nothing to merit 
 the favour of God, or even to commend yourself to his approba- 
 tion. All your righteousness is as filthy rags. All your outward 
 forms of religion your fastings, penances, and vows ; your amiable- 
 ness of character, your honesty, your integrity, your pride of 
 birth and station, are all to pass for nothing before God in the 
 matter of justification. Nor can you hope of yourself to do any- 
 thing more in the future that will commend you to God than 
 you have done in the past. No form of religion, no flood of 
 tears, no framing of the life by an outward law, no acts of 
 self-denial, no fastings, prayers, or almsgivings, can wipe away 
 the deep stains of past guilt on the soul, or constitute an expia- 
 tion for what you have done. In this state you are near the 
 grave, and just over the world of woe. A moment might cut 
 you off from the land of the living, and from the possibility of 
 being saved. In this state you are wholly dependent on the 
 sovereign mercy of God. You may be saved, but not by works 
 of righteousness- of your own. You may be saved, but it must 
 be by renouncing all dependence on your own righteousness for 
 ever. You may be saved, but it must be wholly by the merits 
 of another. Kings, sages, philosophers, priests, poets, warriors, 
 knights, senators, judges ; the gay, the accomplished, the rich, 
 the poor, the vile, the bond, the free, all lie on a level before 
 God. You may be saved, but it will only be by making up the 
 mind to a willingness to be saved in the same way as the vilest 
 of the species, and to stand before the throne clothed in the same 
 robes of salvation that shall adorn the most debased and down- 
 trodden of the human race.' Now it is easy to conceive, even, 
 for those who have not experienced this, that such a religion 
 must have the elements of great power of some kind. It can 
 make its way only by sufficient power to crush the pride of 
 man ; to bring down his lofty thoughts ; to humble him in the 
 dust ; and then to impart life where there has been none. There 
 is nothing negative and tame about it. It has living energy 
 through all this process. No man reaches the position of self- 
 
468 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 abasement and self-renunciation, where this doctrine finds him, 
 without a struggle with his own pride. To come down there, 
 and to lie thus low before God, is the result of mighty power on a 
 proud man's soul, and is no neutral or unmeaning thing. It is 
 not the work of ease, and of effeminacy, and the business of a 
 holiday, for a man to renounce all his own righteousness, and to 
 be willing to acknowledge before heaven, and earth, and hell, 
 that he is so great a sinner that he ought to be excluded from 
 heaven, and banished from the earth, and be doomed to un- 
 speakable torments for ever in the world of woe. And it is not 
 an unmeaning thing, when in this state a voice from heaven bids 
 him rise from the dust, and go forth a pardoned man, a reno- 
 vated being, a child of God, an heir of heaven. 
 
 Accordingly, this is the doctrine which arouses the world. It 
 was this which produced the commotions in the apostolic times, 
 when it was said, " These that have turned the world upside down 
 are come hither also." It was this which produced so much 
 excitement at Jerusalem, at Antioch, at Philippi. It was this 
 which aroused Europe in the Reformation. It is this whose 
 power is seen in every revival of religion. It is this whose 
 energy is felt in the efforts made to carry religion around the 
 globe. 
 
 To illustrate what has been now said, reference may be made 
 to the case of two individuals, who have stated the effect of this 
 doctrine on their own minds. The first is that of the apostle 
 Paul. It is found in the Epistle to the Philippians : " If any 
 other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the 
 flesh, I more : circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, 
 of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews ; as touching 
 the law, a Pharisee ; concerning zeal, persecuting the church ; 
 touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But 
 what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. 
 Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss, for the excellency 
 of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord," ch. iii. 4 8. The 
 other is Luther's record of his own feelings when he was 
 first made to understand this doctrine. " Though as a monk," 
 says he, " I was holy and irreproachable, my conscience was 
 still filled with trouble and torment. I could not endure the 
 expression ' The righteous justice of God.' I did not love that 
 just and holy Being who punishes sinners. I felt a secret anger 
 against him ; I hated him, because, not satisfied with terrifying 
 by his law and by the miseries of life poor creatures already 
 ruined by original sin, he aggravated our sufferings by the gospel. 
 But when by the Spirit of God I understood these words when 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 469 
 
 I learned how the justification of the sinner proceeds from God's 
 mere mercy by the way of faith then I felt myself born again 
 as a new man, and I entered by an open door into the very 
 paradise of God. From that hour I saw the precious and holy 
 Scriptures with new eyes. I went through the whole Bible. 
 I collected a multitude of passages which taught me what the 
 work of God was. And as I had before heartily hated the 
 expression, ' the righteousness of God/ I began from that time 
 to value and to love it as the sweetest and most consolatory 
 truth. Truly this text of St. Paul was to me as the very gate 
 of heaven." * 
 
 To a soul thus lost and ruined this doctrine always has this 
 power. To others it has neither power nor beauty ; nor can we 
 hope that it will make its way among men except where the 
 soul is deeply aroused on the subject of religion. Then it is 
 what it is so often said to be in the Scriptures, " the power of 
 God :" it is His mighty energy quickening the soul that was 
 dead in sin to newness of life. 
 
 (2.) The second remark illustrating its bearing and importance 
 will be drawn from the contrast of this doctrine with the 
 opposite. It has already been observed, that there are in fact 
 but two kinds of religion on the earth that of self-righteousness, 
 and that of dependence on another for salvation ; that in which 
 man attempts to justify himself, and that in which he relies for 
 justification on the merits of the Son of God. These systems 
 divide the world ; for, however numerous may be the methods by 
 which men attempt to save themselves, they all have this essen- 
 tial characteristic, that they are systems of self-righteousness. 
 What are the characteristics of these two systems ? What would 
 be the tendency of each of them ? Let them be put in contrast, 
 and what must be their respective effects ? The effect of the 
 one of the plan of justification by faith we have already in 
 part seen. Its obvious tendency must be to produce humility, 
 penitence, gratitude, a simple reliance on the Saviour, a disposi- 
 tion to make him all in all in religion. What are the effects of 
 the opposite system ? They must be such as these : 
 
 (a) Pride. " God, I thank thee that I am not as other men 
 are," is its language all over the world. 
 
 (b) A multiplication of forms, and a reliance on them. Reli- 
 gion becomes an outward thing, not a work of the heart. So it 
 was with the Pharisees, the Greeks, the Romans ; so it is now 
 in the Pagan world, among Mussulmans, and in all the perverted 
 forms of Christianity. It matters little what the outward system 
 
 * D'Aubigne. 
 
470 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 is; where the doctrine of justification is obscured or unknown, 
 religion must degenerate into heartless forms. It makes up for 
 its want of vital power by the multiplication of rites and cere- 
 monies. It adds a new ceremony for every step of departure 
 from the doctrine of justification by faith ; it attaches an addi- 
 tional sacredness to externals as this doctrine is obscured ; and 
 where this is wholly lost out of view, religion becomes merely a 
 punctilious performance of imposing rites, a careful observance 
 of forms. A man, when he thinks of death and the judgment, 
 must have some righteousness on which to rely. If it be not 
 that of the Saviour, and if there be the pretence of religion at all, 
 it must be that consisting of,a sacred reverence for forms. 
 
 (c) The denial of the doctrine of justification by faith will be 
 always attended with superstition. There will be an attempt to 
 merit heaven by reverencing dead men's bones, by pilgrimages, 
 by bodily tortures, by seclusion from the world, by garnishing 
 the sepulchres of the righteous, and by imploring the intercession 
 of departed saints. The world must make up its mind to have 
 the doctrine of justification by" faith held in its purity, or to 
 have a religion of superstition substituted in its place. One or 
 the other has prevailed always ; one has always excluded the 
 other ; the suppression of the one has been the occasion of the 
 introduction of the other ; and one or the other will live to the 
 end of time. The question is now before this country, whether 
 we shall hold on to the great doctrine of justification by faith, or 
 whether we shall go abroad and import all the superstitions of 
 heathenism, either original or baptized at Rome ; whether we 
 shall adhere to the grand truth which was the element in the 
 Reformation, or take Christianity, so called, as it was in the 
 days of Alexander VI. and Leo X. 
 
 (d) The system which denies this doctrine has been from 
 some cause an exclusive and a persecuting system. To whatever 
 this fact may be traced, of the fact itself there can be no doubt. 
 The history of the world has confirmed it, and that history has 
 taught us that if we would be free from the evils of an exclusive 
 and a persecuting system, we must hold in its simplicity and its 
 purity the great doctrine of justification by faith. 
 
 (3.) A third thing illustrating its bearing and importance is 
 its connexion with freedom of thought and the advancement 
 of society. The fact here is more apparent than the reason 
 of it. No one acquainted with history will dispute the posi- 
 tion, that the doctrine of justification by faith has been held 
 with the most simplicity and purity in the times when freedom 
 of thought has most prevailed, and in the lands most charac- 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 47l 
 
 terized for it. And no one can doubt that the denial of the 
 doctrine, and the denial of the right of free inquiry, have gone 
 together. It was the same system that by all its arrange- 
 ments denied the doctrine of justification by faith, which im- 
 prisoned Galileo. The Inquisition grew up in lands where this 
 doctrine was rejected, and has flourished there only, and could 
 live nowhere else. The proclamation of this doctrine in Europe 
 by Luther and his fellow-labourers unfettered the human mind, 
 and abolished the Inquisition ; and nothing can be clearer than 
 that no circumstances could ever arise in any land in which the 
 doctrine of justification by simple faith in Christ is held, under 
 which the Inquisition could be established ; and we may be certain 
 that, as long as we can assert this doctrine in its purity throughout 
 all our borders, we shall be free from thumb-screws, and racks, 
 and auto-da~fes, and dark dungeons made to incarcerate the 
 advocates of any religious belief. Whatever else we may be 
 subjected to, this doctrine will be a palladium to us of far more 
 value than the image of Minerva was to Troy, to secure for us 
 the protection of Heaven. 
 
 The reasons of the fact which is now adverted to would be 
 found in such considerations as these : that in this doctrine 
 there is nothing which we wish to conceal ; that it depends for 
 its support on nothing which may not be fully examined ; that 
 it recognises everywhere the equality of men ; that it asks no 
 patronage from the State ; that it relies for its advancement on 
 its own simple power as truth as commending itself to the 
 conscience and the reason of mankind, and as finding a response 
 in the soul of every man who feels that he is a sinner. The 
 support of the other system is to be found in just the opposite of 
 these things. It cloaks itself in mystery. It seeks to establish 
 the claims of a priesthood composed of a superior order of men 
 and this must be based on arguments that will not bear the 
 light. It is, and must be, sustained by the power of the State. 
 It loves a teaching rather than a reasoning religion. It is 
 identified with all that human ingenuity can devise to substitute 
 a righteousness in the place of that by faith in the Saviour. It 
 is identified with interest where the procuring of absolution 
 becomes a matter of bargain and sale. And it is conscious that 
 the free examination of its claims would show how baseless is the 
 fabric on which it stands, and how worthless are all the devices 
 which have been originated to enable man to work out a righte- 
 ousness of his own. Without pursuing these thoughts further, 
 one other remark may be added : 
 
 (4.) It is the fourth in order, and is this, that the doctrine of 
 31 
 
472 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 justification by faith is connected with liberality in religion. We 
 have seen what is the character, in this respect, of the opposite 
 system. It is essential to every other system that it be illiberal 
 and exclusive. The reason is this : According to every such 
 system, grace is conveyed only through a certain channel. 
 There are certain men who alone are appointed to dispense it ; it 
 is to be obtained only in union with a certain ecclesiastical 
 connexion, and in the performance of certain specified rites and 
 ceremonies. But none of these things are essential to the 
 doctrine of justification by faith. It is a direct concern between 
 the soul and its Saviour. It practically removes every human 
 being from any participation t in obtaining for the sinner the 
 favour of God. However the ministers of religion may have 
 been instrumental in arousing the attention of the soul to its 
 guilt and danger, or in pointing the way to the Cross, yet the 
 transaction is one where all foreign agency and all human 
 holiness of office are excluded. It matters not whether the 
 minister officiates with or without a surplice ; whether in a plain 
 " meeting-house " or a magnificent cathedral ; whether he can 
 trace his commission through the apostolic succession or not ; 
 whether his doctrines can or cannot be sustained by synods and 
 councils ; nay, whether there be any minister of religion at all ; 
 the soul may be justified by simple faith in the Lord Jesus. 
 The worshipper may be a Cameronian on the hills of Scotland 
 under the open heaven ; or a man who has strayed somehow 
 into a conventicle ; or a wandering savage who is made to listen, 
 to attend, to be enraptured, till his eyes pour forth tears under 
 the preaching of some humble missionary on whose head the 
 hands of a mitred prelate have never been laid, and there 
 shall be all the elements of the doctrine of justification. What 
 has occurred to him on the hills, or in the woods, or in a school- 
 house, or in a church, he feels may occur anywhere else in the 
 same way. It will not then become essential, in his view, that 
 the doctrines of religion should be preached on a hill, or in a 
 valley; that the minister stand in front of a tent, or that he 
 serve at a particular altar ; that he wear a certain vestment, or 
 be able to trace his spiritual genealogy back to far-distant times. 
 That which he wishes to know is, whether a man has ex- 
 perienced in his own soul what he has in his the power 
 of the doctrine of justification by faith in the blood of Jesus. 
 If so, that is enough. It is to him a question of comparatively 
 no moment whether such an one thinks that baptism by 
 immersion is the only method ; or whether he regards John 
 Wesley as the greatest and the best of men ; or whether he 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 473 
 
 believes that all human wisdom was embodied in the "West- 
 minster assembly of divines ; or whether he thinks that the 
 ministry exists only in three orders. All these will be com- 
 parative trifles. The grand matter is, that the lost and guilty 
 soul is justified by the blood of the " everlasting covenant ;" and 
 this settles everything that is truly valuable in his view in 
 regard to the salvation of the soul. Such a system, it is clear, 
 must be essentially liberal. It cannot be a system which will 
 be primarily concerned in " questions and strifes of words " 
 about the externals of religion. It will recognise in every man, 
 who has ever felt the efficacy of the blood of Christ, a Christian 
 brother. It will regard all men by nature as essentially on the 
 same level in reference to salvation. There will be, in the 
 matter of religion, no favoured class, no holy order ; none by 
 nature nearer heaven than others, and none who shall have a 
 right to prescribe to others what they are to believe or to do. 
 One point, one grand doctrine distinguishes them, no matter of 
 what sect, or country, or complexion they may be, that they 
 are redeemed by the blood of the same Saviour. They are of 
 the same family. They have the same rights in the kingdom of 
 grace. No one has a right, in virtue of blood, or name, or 
 connexion with outward forms of religion, to claim a superior 
 nearness to heaven ; nor, if the soul is justified by the blood of 
 Jesus, has any believer the right or the disposition to withhold 
 the name of Christian, or to say that a soul thus justified is left 
 to " the uncovenanted mercies of God." 
 
 The doctrine which has been considered constitutes the pecu- 
 liarity of the Protestant religion. Protestantism began in the 
 restoration of the doctrine of justification by faith. This, more 
 than anything else, distinguishes the system. All there is of 
 Protestantism that is of value, is in this doctrine ; and all that 
 we have of liberality in religion, and freedom from persecution, 
 and purity of doctrine, is to be traced to this. 
 
 The whole discussion on the doctrine of justification may be 
 closed by a personal appeal. There are but two ways con- 
 ceivable in which you can be saved. One is, on the ground of 
 your own righteousness ; the other is, on the ground of the 
 righteousness of the Lord Jesus. There is no middle way. The 
 grand question, then, and one in which every individual has the 
 deepest interest, is, What is the ground of your reliance ? On 
 which of these do you depend, when you think of being admitted 
 to heaven ? If you rely on the former, on your own righteous- 
 ness, it must be either because you can disprove the facts which 
 are charged on you as sin j or because, if the facts are undeniable, 
 
474 THE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 you will be able to vindicate your conduct before the bar of the 
 Almighty. Here, then, it may be solemnly asked, whether you 
 are willing to rest your soul's interests on such a foundation ? 
 Are you prepared to abide the issue of such a trial ? Can you 
 calmly look forward to such an investigation of your life before 
 God's bar, and feel secure when you think how tremendous the 
 interests of the soul that are at stake ? Are you prepared to go 
 up to meet your Maker with the feeling that your only hope 
 there is self-vindication ? I AM NOT. I turn to the other system 
 which I have endeavoured to set before you. I look away from 
 all that I have done, the miserable rags of my own righteous- 
 ness, to the white robe of salvation wrought out by my great 
 Redeemer, and seek to wrap that robe around my guilty soul ; 
 and I feel that, if justified by faith in his blood, I shall be safe. 
 
 A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, 
 
 On Thy kind arms I fall ; 
 Be Thou my strength and righteousness, 
 
 My Saviour and my all. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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