that has sanctified them, has made them happy; and no truth more than the high character of their Redeemer. Take away this foundation, and what will the righteous do? Their hopes have been high, and their joy elevated, and their songs heard in the night, because they had, or thought they had, a mighty Redeemer. From this fact, they calculated to live out the assaults of temptation, and conquer their lusts, and hold on by some pin of the covenant, till they should plant their feet on the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem. Tell the church, that she has no such almighty Redeemer as she has dreamed of, and there will be tears in all her tabernacles, and I fear if there will be silence through half the choir of heaven, and the angels of God be afraid any longer to worship him.

It would hurt their usefulness. They have had high hopes, because they had a mighty Redeemer, and were active in duty, because they had elevated hopes. Sap these hopes, and you sunder the very sinew of action. Will they care to be sanctified, when they shall have learned that their Lord was peccable? Will they press on, to see him as he is, and be like him, when they shall doubt whether he will be known in heaven but by the nail-prints? will they care to invite others to him, when he is robbed of all the charms that attracted them in the days of their espousals? Will they pray with the fervency they have done, that the heathen may be given him for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession, when they shall know that he is to rule by delegation, and does not come into the government but by heirship? Will they spend their perishable wealth to honour him, when they shall feel assured, that he has no incorruptible treasures with which to repay them?

How is it with those who have made the experiment,

and have delivered

terlined, till the Ver their creed to be blotted and in

Deity of their master is gone, and every other truth that hung on it. Are they active for God? do they bless the heathen with the gospel? do they disseminate the Bible? do they press the consciences of sinners, in their daily walk, and in their evening visits, and give an ungodly world no rest, till they love their eclipsed and darkened and degraded Redeemer?

O, hide then this error from God's elect, and let them have the Saviour they are disposed to serve, till he take them up, and show himself to them in all the glory that he had with the Father before the world was.

I naturally close with the question, "What think ye of Christ?" This question faithfully answered by the minister of the gospel, will give you very much the character of his ministry; as it will define the Saviour he proclaims, and of course the success he has; and answered by the private Christian will give the character of his religion. I do not now mean to say that orthodoxy is piety, but simply, that the heart that has been sanctified through the truth, will apprehend and love the truth. In other words, faith will credit the divine testimony. Does the Lord Jesus hold in our ministry, and our creed, the high place that God has given him in the gospel? If we make him merely a teacher and a pattern, so was Moses and Paul. And if we feel that we need no higher Saviour, then is it doubtful, whether we have discovered more than half our ruin. If we have sunk no lower than that a finite arm can reach us, we have yet I fear to learn that we are sinking still, and that the pit is bottomless. A gospel that is the contrivance of men, will suit only those who have never felt the plague of their own hearts. When we shall have felt the full pressure of the curse that rests upon us, we shall feel the need of

one to save, strong as him that created us. The horrors of our condition will scare from us every deliverer, but him who can quench with his own blood, the fires that have been kindled to consume us. When we have looked once upon the incensed throne, we shall hail one as our high priest, who can go in and sprinkle the mercy seat; who can neutralize that consuming ire which issues from the countenance of a provoked Jehovah ; one who has that influence in the court of heaven, that he can procure our acquittal, and can place himself in the van of the redeemed multitude, and conduct us up to heaven, and there plead his own merits as the ground of our acceptance, and the foundation of our everlasting blessedness. "Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus, come quickly."

SERMON XLVII

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL CONJOINTLY

SUSTAINED.

Matthew v. 17.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

IT is then only that the gospel appears in all its glory; when it infringes not upon the sacred rights of the law. One of God's institutions must not eclipse the glory of another. God did not make provision for the salvation of men, because he had become convinced that he had issued a bad law, and would thwart its design. The law stood in his eye as glorious, after men had drawn its curse upon th. as when it dropt fresh from his lips amid the smoke of Sinai. When he instituted the law, he knew that men would break it ; and he affixed his sanctions, sure that all our race would incur them, and many endure them. It was not an experiment, made without a knowledge of the result, but with the result provided for.

Hence the legal and the gospel dispensations, are but different parts of the same benevolent system; by which a good Jehovah, would bind to himself, and when the bond should be broken, would recover and restore to his love and favour, beings he had eternally designed should be happy. And hence our Lord thus early announced it as his design, not to abrogate but establish the law.

Fixed and stable as were the ordinances of the heavenly bodies, and firm the earth he had come to plant his feet upon, these should ali pass away, while not a jot or tittle of the law should fail.

Accordingly, as the Lord Jesus gathered disciples, and freed them of course from the curse of the law, he still subjected them to it, as a rule of duty. He transferred, from the Jewish church to his own family, the very commandments which Moses wrote on the tables of stone. Not an item did he repeal, not a precept alter, not a sanction soften. And the whole gospel is a broad and lucid exposition of the law. Hence it is now as much the fact as ever, that "Cursed is every one, that continueth not in the things written in the book of the law, to do them." I shall state, in a few words, the error I would oppose, and which, as it seems to me, is in direct opposition to sound reason, and the whole Bible; and then proceed to illustrate the doctrine of the text, that The gospel was not intended to supplant, but does sustain the law,

I. State the error. The scheme is, that men by the fall, if not disabled, have become so averse to the law, that a perfect obedience is impossible; and that God will now accept of an obedience that is sincere. If men will obey the law, as well as they are able with their carnal mind, the temper which, without their fault, they inherited from their first parents, God will accept them; and wherein their obedience fails, the merits of Christ will be substituted. By this scheme, the death of Christ removes the curse of the law, from all men, soon as it lights upon them for all do render to the law, the best obedience they are disposed to, and of course are safe, if they should live and die without repentance. It must be seen in a moment, that, if to whatever extent men