THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL.

REV. J. A. JAMES.

KING'S WEIGH HOUSE CHAPEL, FISH STREET HILL, MAY 28, 1834.

WE are assembled, my dear hearers, under the most auspicious circumstances, and with feelings of unmingled and sacred pleasure, to set apart this building, by prayer and praise, by reading and explaining God's holy word, for a place of public worship, according to the principles and usages of Protestant Dissenters. It is sometimes the case on occasions like the present, that our feelings of delight are alloyed by the recollection of the circumstances which originate a new place and a new congregation; for it must be admitted, and on some accounts regretted, that such new congregations do commonly arise from a spirit of division and alienation. No such spot is upon our feast of charity this morning; no such cloudy shadows fall now on this hill of Zion: all is harmony and love; not only is there peace within, but peace with all that are around. I offer my sincere and hearty congratulations to the minister and people who are to worship here, on the arrival of a morning which rewards so much labour, terminates so much anxiety, answers so many prayers, and awakens such lively and joyful anticipations. The blessing of the Lord rest upon his servant, and upon those committed to his care; may his life be as long, his conduct as blameless and holy, his ministry as useful, and his retirement as calm and serene, as those of his venerable predecessor who presided so long over the Church which is now committed to his care; and whose name and honours, we rejoice to think, will be long borne in our Churches, by sons who have reason to call him blessed, and to be called blessed by him.

I believe it is not unusual when a new country, or part of one, is discovered, and ceded to a particular monarch, to unfurl his flag, and to claim it in his name. What is this but a new territory, to be ceded to the King of kings and Lord of lords? And this day will I endeavour to unfurl the banner of the cross, and to claim it for him. The words I have selected as the subject of discourse, are—

"And there they preached the Gospel."-ACTS, xiv. 7.

To gratify curiosity by information on matters of general literature and history, or to please the taste by facts that appeal to the imagination, was no part of the object of those holy men of God, who wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Although they informed us, that the great Apostle of the Gentiles stood amid the beauties of Athenian glory, they tell us of nothing connected with his visit, but of his grief over the wickedness of the inhabitants of that illustrious city. The statues and the temples-the very fragments of which now, in some minds, almost call up the idolatry that reared them—and which were then in the autumnal charms of their vicious loveliness, which had not

Opening of the Chapel.

+ Rev. T. Binney.

Rev. John Clayton, Sen.

then experienced any influence from the storms of human violence, and the wintry season of Greece, passed with them silently to oblivion; and now that the sacred historian relates the circumstances of their visit to those Grecian cities, every thing is passed over in silence but one solitary fact, which other historians would have thought beneath their notice to record. The cities and their inhabitants, for aught that the writer of the Acts of the Apostles cared or thought about them, but as immortal souls, would have passed down the stream of time unnoticed, had not those cities been the scene of apostolical labour, and had it not been said, that "there they preached the Gospel."

This incident, at the present time, awakens interest in more worlds than one. Many a glorified spirit in heaven, and many a miserable ghost in perdition, are looking back to these cities, and to the fact recorded concerning them, and with emphasis, partaking of course of an entirely different character, are saying, "There, indeed, they preached the Gospel." It is with this fact, my brethren, that the solemnities of this morning are associated. We are commencing transactions here of which through eternity, the short, the simple, the sublime record will be, the language of the text. It is not as a place of splendid architecture, it is not as a place of royal residence, it is not as a seat of learning, a hall of science, an asylum of misery, a fountain of mercy, that the memorial of this house will be preserved; but as a place where the truth as it is in Jesus was preached a circumstance which will connect our business this morning with the cause, which is to emerge from the wreck of nations, and the ruin of worlds, as an everlasting monument to the praise and glory of divine grace.

I shall adopt the most simple and inartificial division of the subject; even as it will be thought by some, I have selected a subject exceedingly trite. In the first place, I shall explain what we are to understand by the Gospel; secondly, shew what it is to preach the Gospel; and, thirdly, endeavour to prove the importance of preaching the Gospel.

In the first place, I am to endeavour to explain THE NATURE OF THE GOSPEL. In etymology the term signifies "glad tidings:" in theology the terin signifies the glad tidings of salvation through the mediation of Jesus Christ our Lord. By "the Gospel" we are not to understand what is usually denominated the New Testament, as distinguished from the Old; for there is much Gospel in the Old, and much law in the New. It is the ministration of life, as distinguished from the ministration of death; it is the foundation of a sinner's hope, as distinguished from the rule of the creature's and the Christian's conduct. It is called "the Gospel of the grace of God," because the whole system originated in free and unmerited favour: "the everlasting Gospel," because it occupied the counsels of the divine mind from eternity, remains the same amidst all the changes and revolutions of time, and will extend its benefits over eternity. It is called "the glorious Gospel of the blessed God," because it is intended to manifest the attributes combined in the moral character of Jehovah in all their harmony and glory. It is called "the Gospel of the kingdom," because it is the basis on which the whole kingdom of the Redeemer rests. It includes in itself the divinity of our Lord's person; the atoning sacrifice of his death; the justification of a sinner, by faith, in the sight of God; the renovation of the heart, by the influence of the Holy Spirit; the universal invitation to all sinners to avail themselves of its rich provision of promise, that all that believe shall be saved. One word, but millions of ideas; uttered in a moment, but perpetuating

its blessings for ever; including what can be comprehended only by the All-wise and Infinite Mind.

In the second division of discourse, I shall state WHAT IT IS TO PREACH THE GOSPEL. Of course it summarily means, to explain its nature, to exhibit its blessings, to enforce its obligations; but I must be a little more particular here, and enter into some details.

To preach the Gospel, is not to exhibit exclusively a system of morals, even though it may be a system of Christian ethics, and far removed from the coldness of Seneca or Epictetus: for, viewing man as a condemned sinner, perishing under the guilt that he has contracted, is it Gospel to him to tell him how good he must be? Pardon is what he wants, and nothing is Gospel but what tells him how it is to be obtained. Neither is the preaching of the Gospel to be understood as meaning the everlasting and unvarying exhibition of the high and awful doctrines of God's sovereignty in personal and eternal election: for can it be Gospel to an individual asking in all the solicitude of an awakened mind "What shall I do to be saved?" to one simply told, and told nothing else, that God from eternity has chosen a people for himself, and that peradventure he may, or may not, be one of them? I do not mean to say, that either morality or the doctrine of the divine decrees, is opposed to the Gospel; but I am simply affirming, that the exhibition of these truths and obligations, separately and by themselves, is not the preaching of the Gospel in the spiritual meaning of the phrase.

What is it? First, the exhibition of the crucifixion of Christ as a fact, in connexion with the design of that fact, as connected with the moral government of God. I say, there must be a union of the fact and of the design, or there can be no Gospel. Separate the death of Christ from its design as an atonement for sin, exhibit that death merely as the closing scene of even the first of martyrs, the highest of the witnesses of truth, and it is no more in fact Gospel, than the presenting of the death of one of those illustrious individuals whose sufferings are recorded in the pages of the Christian martyrology. The atonement of Christ is not merely a doctrine of the Scriptures, it is the Scripture itself: it is that which is exhibited in substance in the New Testament, in shadow in the Old; and it is the connecting link between the two. To deny the doctrine of the atonement, is not so much to misunderstand the testimony of Scripture, as to contradict it. This then is the Gospel-to exhibit Christ, as the propitiation, through faith in his blood, for the remission of sins.

In the second place, to preach the Gospel, is to exhibit Jesus Christ in the divinity of his person. The divinity of Christ is essential to the atonement. An atonement, properly understood, signifies an equivalent, either in kind or in effect. The atonement of Christ of course partakes not of the character of an equivalent in kind; but unquestionably it does, and must partake, of the character of an equivalent in effect. Now, brethren, if this be correct, can there be an atonement made by a mere creature, that, viewed in the relation to the moral government of God, can be an equivalent in effect, compared with the result of the everlasting perdition of all that have transgressed. It is a remark of Fuller, that to speak of any mere creature, however exalted, making atonement for sin (and he is here, you will particularly observe, reasoning against the Arian hypothesis) to speak of any mere creature, however exalted that creature might be, making atonement for sin, is just as if it had been said, the king of Great

Britain, when he pardoned the deluded votaries of the Pretender, set forth a worm, tortured upon the point of a needle, as an exhibition of his justice, at the time that he was disposed to manifest his mercy. This, then, is the preaching of the Gospel-to exhibit Him, "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but took upon him the form of a servant; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."

Thirdly, to preach the Gospel, is, to exhibit the atonement and righteousness of Christ, as the exclusive foundation of the Christian's hope of acceptance before God. Without the doctrine of justification by faith, there can be no Gospel. Let it be known, or imagined, that there is something more than the work of Christ necessary for the reconciliation of the sinner to God, that something yet remains to be done to complete the ground of his being admitted to Divine favour, and the silver trumpet is dashed from the lips of the preacher, the rising beam of hope is extinguished in the heart of the sinner, and the whole world of transgressors is thrown back at once into everlasting despair and hopeless night. The doctrine of justification by faith is the Gospel, and then we preach the Gospel, when we declare, that "being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Again to preach the Gospel, is to exhibit the death of Christ as the great means, in the hands of the Spirit, of the sanctification of the sinner's heart. Justification is but half the word salvation; sanctification is the other half. The man that preaches only deliverance from the curse of the law by faith in the righteousness of Christ, preaches but half the Gospel. Go to the sinner, go to the miserable criminal in jail, withering away under the power of a loathsome and fatal disease, and tell him you have brought him the pardon of his sovereign, who in his great clemency has determined to rescue him from death ; he will turn upon you with half-closed eye, and if there be strength left, he will ask you, with his half-suppressed and silent voice-"What is the clemency of my sovereign to me? I shall be a dead man, notwithstanding his pardon, in a few days or a few hours." To meet this man's case, you must carry him, not merely the pardon of his sovereign, but the medicine of his physician; and only the union of these two favours can meet his case. And so is it with the sinner let him only have pardon, being under the power of a moral disease, that pardon will be of no avail to his happiness: you must provide him with sanctification, or you meet not his case: with an unrenewed heart, an unsanctified nature, he must be a wretch upon the highest throne in glory; he must find a hell in the immediate vicinity of the throne of God himself. Therefore, a man is preaching the Gospel as entirely, as effectually, when he is preaching sanctification through the influence of the truth, as when he is preaching justification through faith in the cross.

Again: to preach the Gospel, is to exhibit the invitations of mercy co-extensive with the aspect of the atonement, and to exhibit both co-extensive with the reach of human guilt and misery in the world. My brethren, if we are not to invite all, we can invite none; and the advocates for the restricted system are perfectly consistent with themselves, when they adopt the latter course: but their consistency with the testimony of God's word is another matter. The Gospel can be no glad tidings to any man, if, on its own account, it is not to be published as a record of divine grace offered to the guiltiest of the human Blot out that word "whosoever," from the pages of Scripture, and you

race.

have put out one of the brightest beams of the Gospel: take away that word, and the whole world is full of the torture of uncertainty as to who are invited to partake of the blessings of salvation. Retain that, sound it, explain it, enforce it, spread out the riches of divine grace before a lost world, present the blessings of salvation, and tell all that hear, that they are invited to accept, believe, and live; and you then preach the Gospel.

I have glanced at the influence of the Spirit; I must return for a moment or two to that. We preach the Gospel, when we exhibit the provision God has made for the renovation of the human heart, by the work of the Holy Ghost. It has been conjectured by some, and not without the apparent support of reason and revelation, that the design of the human system in the moral government of God, was, to prove to the universe, and for ever, that the creature who had once broken his allegiance to God, could never, under any circumstances, be restored again, but by the special interposition of God himself. And here, then, we have the provision: for, brethren, even after the sacrifice had been offered upon the cross, and the invitation had been sounded out to all the world, not an individual of the human race would have been saved, had there not been a provision made, in the wisdom and mercy of God, that by his holy Spirit, sinners should be made willing in the day of God's power.

Lastly, we preach the Gospel of Christ, when we exhibit as the supreme and ultimate object of Christian hope, the second advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he shall come without a sin-offering unto salvation. "As for the personal reign of Christ," says the great Dr. Owen, "I leave this to the persons with whose discove ies I am not, and with whose curiosities I would not be acquainted." These, brethren, are the truths which are to be exhibited in preaching the Gospel; which will substantially be exhibited from this pulpit; which are exhibited with a greater unanimity of opinion, and with a greater harmony of spirit, in that denomination to which we belong, than perhaps in any other. Without creeds, without articles, without condemning those who adopt them, we have, by the blessing of Almighty God and the effusion of his holy Spirit, maintained that agreement of sentiment, that unity of the Spirit, which we consider, not our boast but our glory, and that which we regard as a token for good that God indeed is with us.

In the third head of discourse, on which I shall, perhaps, dwell rather longer than on the preceding, I shall shew THE IMPORTANCE OF PREACHING THE GOSPEL.

In the first place, consider the grandeur and sublimity of its ultimate desig». That design is nothing commercial, nothing scientific, nothing political, nothing philosophical. The minister of Jesus Christ, when preaching the everlasting Gospel of the Redeemer, was infinitely above the philosopher in his study, the statesman in his cabinet, the traveller in his course; above all that occupy themselves by merely secular pursuits, however lawful or however dignified they may be. Brethren, we magnify not our office for our own sakes, but for the sake of the object which we contemplate in that office; and we are bound to affirm, that all that the human mind can contemplate, all that the human imagination can conceive, compared with the end of the ministerial office, and the preaching of the Word of God, are but as the puerilities of children, and the trifles of a moment. Our object is, the salvation of immortal souls, in connexion with the manifestation of the divine glory. Sculs! Do we think