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THE ADVANTAGES

III.

ENJOYED BY THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN.

Your position is one of gracious privilege. It bears distinguishing marks of the divine favour, and confers on you peculiar facilities for becoming all that you ought to be. All the divinely appointed means of grace are enjoyed by you. You are near to the kingdom of God. The gate of that kingdom stands open before you, and God himself invites you to enter in. Every thing around you is calculated to remind you of the claims of Jesus and his salvation. A thousand influences are brought to bear upon you, urging and drawing you to holy decision. Parental kindness, or Sabbath-school instruction, has taught you from your youth. The Bible, in every page, asserts the supreme authority of your Maker. The Sabbath is a perpetual and public witness for God. Ministers of the Gospel by their preaching, private Christians by their admonitions and their examples, and the churches of the Redeemer by their holy associations and professions, do not cease to persuade you to repent and believe. Not for a single day, or hour, are you permitted to escape from the influence of those circumstances which tend to excite your attention to the Gospel of God. Every providential benefit, as well as every religious ordinance, points you to its Author; whilst every bodily affliction and worldly disappointment calls you in mercy to serious consideration and holy

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submission. Your domestic life abounds with proofs of the pure and peaceful effects of Christianity; and the contrast which obtains at every point between your worldly condition and that of men whose lot is cast beyond the sphere of direct Christian influence, remonstrates with you, and asks why you are not a Christian. All these things are so many tokens of the mercy of God towards you; so many means employed by him to teach you that "HE hath no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he should turn from his way and live," Ezek. xxxiii. 11. This manifold combination of circumstances, which directly or otherwise call you to consider the claims of "God in Christ," is not gratuitous or accidental; it is the arrangement of divine wisdom, and the effect of divine love; it is more, it is the government of divine mercy. As an intelligent and immortal, but guilty and self-ruined creature, God thus presents to you innumerable inducements to study the revelation of his will, and to seek an interest in his favour. The unmerited kindness in which all this originated, is greatly enhanced by the medium through which it flows. To justify on principles of perfect and universal righteousness the employment of these favourable influences, "God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all," Rom. viii. 32. "Him hath God set forth to be a propitiatory sacrifice through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness in the remission of sins," Rom. iii. 25, 26. "God is in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, and beseeching you to be reconciled unto him; for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the

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righteousness of God in him," 2 Cor. v. 18-21. Behold, what manner of love is this!" Is it thus that God deals with you, when he might justly have consigned you to eternal woe, without any hope of mercy? Is it thus that he has multiplied around you the means of life and salvation-the motives to consideration and prayer? Is it thus that he continues to seek your good from day to day, bearing with your careless oversight of his mercy, and your deliberate refusals to turn unto him? How must his heart be set upon your happiness! How anxiously and tremblingly alive must he be to the necessities of your souls! How highly must he estimate the spiritual good with which you trifle! What boundless compassion must fill his breast! And shall so many means be employed with you "in vain, if it be yet in vain ?" Must such love still continue to entreat you in vain? Does not God with strict propriety say, "What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?" Isa. v. 4. Most earnestly would I beg of you not to "despise the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering; the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance," Rom. ii. 4;-is designed and adapted to bring thee to repentance, and does actually impel thee by the use of all moral means, exerting a force meant to bring thee to repentance.

But may I not advance a step beyond all that is implied in the general administration of the divine government, and remind you of the religious knowledge which through these means you

already possess? You have been shown that God is holy, and just, and good; that you are capable of loving and pleasing him, and that you are accountable unto him in all things. Your reason assents to these doctrines of revealed religion, and your conscience urges you to prompt and practical obedience. Nor are you ignorant of your condition as a sinner against God. You know that you have broken his laws, and despised his supreme authority. You know that you have lived unto yourself, and not in obedience to God, or with a sincere endeavour to please him. And you know that as a sinner, you are exposed to punishment. God is holy, and must show that he is opposed to sin. He is just, and must punish it. He "ruleth over all," and must maintain the rights of his throne, and so conduct his government as to secure the confidence of all his intelligent creatures. None of the imperfections which unavoidably attach to human legislation and rule, can possibly belong to the government of God. Sin cannot go unpunished; and mercy cannot be exercised but in full consistency with all the demands of strict and impartial justice. The desert of sin can be determined by God alone. He alone knows himself, against whom it is committed; and he alone knows in all their extent of obligation, the principles upon which his government proceeds, and the influence which a due regard to those principles exerts upon his creatures. You must

therefore receive his own testimony as to the desert of sin; and it is no small advantage which you enjoy in being actually acquainted with it. He has told you in the Bible that "he who

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offendeth in one point is guilty of all," Jas. ii. 10; and that "the wages of sin is death," Rom. vi. 23; which death consists in an everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power," 2 Thess. i. 9; in that world, "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," Mark ix. 44. You know that you are exposed to this consequence of sinning against God; that if you escape, it can only be by his mercy; and that it is his sole prerogative to say whether he will show mercy, and if he will, upon what conditions, and in what mode. He is under no obligation to pardon you, and he must say in what way it is consistent with his just claims to do so. Is it no advantage that you enjoy in possessing this knowledge? And when the sense of guilt presses upon your conscience, as it sometimes does; when you tremble in secret, and are afraid to think of death and of eternity; when the inquiry starts from your mind, "what must I do?" is it not an unspeakable mercy to be informed concerning the way of salvation? Think of your privilege in knowing that God has given his Son to be the Saviour of mankind. "The truth as it is in Jesus," is familiar to you. You know who he is in whom there is redemption, and what he has done for sinners, and how "able he is to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him," Heb. vii. 25. You know that an interest in his salvation is ensured to every one that believeth, and a thousand encouragements urge you to go to him, and to trust in him. How vast are your advantages! How near are you thus brought to God, and to salvation! How thankful would many a wounded