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* Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled."-HEBREWS, xii. 14, 15.

THE great end for which we are required to hear and to receive God's holy Word, one principle object for which we are directed "not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together," is, that we may learn what we must do to be saved. Understanding by "salvation" the happiness of that part of our nature which we believe is destined to survive these perishable bodies, and to live through endless ages, we cannot be engaged in any more important inquiry, than whence this salvation arises, and how it is to be secured.

It is not necessary, brethren, for me to go about to prove to you that we stand in need of salvation: I presume that you are well acquainted with that fundamental truth on which the whole scheme of the Gospel is built, that we are all by nature children of wrath, enemies of God, heirs of perdition. It is in deliverance from this state that the notion of salvation consists. Now that we, who were "enemies to God by wicked works," have been reconciled unto him that our sins have been pardoned-that we are able to offer him an acceptable service—and that we are permitted to entertain the hope that, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, we may dwell together with him in that presence which is fulness of joy; these privileges, the possession of which is comprehended in the term "salvation," are the result of the free, unmerited kindness and love of God. He, whose creatures we are, prompted by the low estate and the misery into which sin hath brought us, sent, in his own good time, his only begotten Son to visit us with his salvation, to bless us in turning us away from our iniquities. For us men, and for our salvation, that Son in whom his Father was always well-pleased-that Son who had been partaker from everlasting of the glory of the Father-laid aside that glory, and came down from heaven; that by assuming our nature, and suffering in it, mysteriously united to his own, the punishment we had deserved, he might make a full and complete satisfaction and atonement for sin. Without this atonement we had been still in our sins, and consequently under the wrath of God. The constant assertion of Scripture is, that "without shedding of blood there is no remission:" and the same Scriptures, in declaring that "the blood of bulls and Farewell Sermon.

VOL. III.

of goats cannot take away sin ;" and that "no man may deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him ;" prepare us to look for the perfect propitiation in that Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.

Now, without asking whether the object accomplished by this stupendous sacrifice, might not have been effected otherwise; but accepting the scriptural fact that "Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree;" can we say that we had any claim to such an interposition on our behalf? We surely shall not presume to say, or to think, that we have. Is it not then to the grace and mercy of God, that our deliverance from sin and its consequences, by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, is owing? Our salvation is repeatedly attributed in the Scriptures to grace; in order, probably, that our sense of the goodness of God may be enhanced; and that those feelings of pride and self-righteousness, which the corrupted heart of man too readily conceives, may be suppressed. "By grace are ye saved," says St. Paul to the Ephesians and the same Apostle, speaking of the state in which justification and peace are provided, represents it as "this grace wherein we stand." To the same effect is the wellknown summary of the design of the Gospel, in the epistle to Titus: "The grace of God, which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men."

I should be occupying your time too long were I to adduce all the passages in which Christ's salvation is spoken of as "the free gift of God," which confirm St. Paul's declaration, that we are "justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Asserting, then, unequivocally, that "salvation is of the Lord"-that as "it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves;" so hath he saved and called us, "not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace;" I would still say that this most precious gift of God, is not unconditional, but that we are required to do something to qualify us for participating in its benefits. For wherefore has this grace appeared, but to teach us "that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in the present world?" For what purpose has he given his Son to die for us, but that we who live "should not henceforth live to ourselves, but unto Him that died for us, and rose again?" For what end has the promise of the Spirit been given to all believers, but to assist their natural infirmities, and to enable them to become holy as He that hath called them is holy? In short the object of that dispensation which emanated from the love of God to his disobedient and perishing creatures, is, in the first place, to redeem them from the penalties of sin, and, in the second place, to renew them after the image of Him that created them. It is to no purpose that the first object has been accomplished, if the second be lost sight of. The grace of God, unless it has the effect of renewing those to whom it is communicated in the spirit of their minds, will not bring salvation: it is received in vain. That there is a danger "lest we may fail of the grace of God," is declared in the very language of the text, by describing that, from failing in which he warns us, as "the grace of God." The Apostle affirms that great principle for which he has so strenuously contended in his epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, that we are justified freely: while, by his inculcation of charity and holiness, he shows in what condition the grace of God may be expected to bring eternal salvation. For we may be formally adopted into

the family of Christ at baptism; we may profess to believe in Christ: but unless, when we are baptized into Christ, we spiritually put on Christ; unless we hold the faith in the unity of the Spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life; our baptism and profession are of no avail.

I do not mean to disparage the importance and the efficacy of faith; without it we must "fail of the grace of God." The answer given by the apostle Paul to the question of the jailor of Philippi, "What must I do to be saved?" may be also addressed to every one of us: "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." If we would apply to ourselves the benefits of that atoning sacrifice of Christ, which is the result and the foundation of God's grace to sinners, we must, with sincere acknowledgments of our own unholiness and inability to work out our own salvation, accept him as our Saviour, and believe in our hearts that He, the Eternal Son of God, for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, was made man, was crucified, and died. This faith in the meritorious sacrifice of Christ, is the condition of that covenant of reconciliation which God has been pleased to enter into with sinful men; without compliance with which, Christ will profit us nothing: for, "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."

But this faith that is thus described as the essential condition of our acceptance with God, is not to be understood as dispensing with the necessity of repentance and obedience: the faith that justifieth, purifieth also. If we really believe that Christ died and rose again for us, we shall ourselves endeavour to die to sin, and to rise again unto righteousness. That the benefits which Christ has purchased by his death might be communicated to the world—that the conditions on which they may hope to inherit eternal life might be known unto men-that the necessity of making religion personally and practically influential, might be urged upon them-that, in short, they might not "fail of the grace of God," was the end and object for which the Christian ministry was ordained. It is ours, as "workers together with God," to remind and to "beseech you, that ye receive not the grace of God in vain." We have not now, indeed, as the early preachers of the Gospel, to turn you "from lying vanities to the living God:" we have not to announce to you for the first time, as new tidings, your natural corruption and liability to death, and your redemption by the death of Christ: but we have to warn you with all diligence, that you rest not satisfied with knowing these "first principles of the doctrine of Christ," but that you "go on unto perfection." It is ours, in the work of our calling, to confirm men in the faith, to warn the careless and indifferent, to reclaim the wandering, to alarm (if possible) the profligate and impure, to convince the gainsayer, to speak peace to the desponding; that thus the word of the Lord may have free course, and God be glorified by the increase of his church, and the maintenance of pure religion.

And the basis of the teaching of the minister of Christ must ever be the same. He must preach the doctrine of reconciliation through Christ crucified; for although he has no longer to contend with the obstinacy of Jewish prejudice, or the self-conceit of Gentile philosophy, he will ever have to combat the

innate pride of the human heart; which, where it does not formally reject, yet studies studiously to detract from, the efficacy of the cross of Christ. Recollecting that woe is denounced against him if he preach not the Gospel; convinced by the declaration of Scripture, that there is "no other name given" save that of "Christ;" he asserts, with the great Apostle, that Christ crucified -however he may be to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness-however he may be undervalued by the indifferent, or degraded by the modern rationalist, is yet to them that believe "Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." In the discharge of his ministry he studies by the display of man's natural enmity to God, and constant liability to eternal punishment, to evince the necessity and the value of a Redeemer. While, too, he inculcates the humiliating truth of man's inability of himself to do any thing pleasing or acceptable to God, he feels the importance of the doctrine of sanctification, and points out the methods by which the Holy Spirit of God may be induced to take up his abode in the heart of the believer; subduing the emotions of the old man, and making him a new creature devoted to God, in righteousness and true holiness. Knowing, too, the "terrors of the Lord," and that “ we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ," to receive our everlasting doom, according to the things done in the body, he fails not to remind the disobedient and profane, that indignation and wrath await every soul of man that continueth to do evil.

My Christian friends, I trust that in the course of my ministry among you. these important articles of Christian doctrine have not been overlooked. i trust that, however imperfectly, I have yet not handled the Word of God deceitfully; that I have not shunned, to the best of my ability, to declare unto you the whole counsel of God. The Christian minister who commences his ministry with a determination to know nothing, among those for whom he ministers, but "Jesus Christ, and him crucified"—that is, to make Christ the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of his preaching--is called upon at its close to exhort those who have been committed to his charge, to continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and not moved away from the hope of the Gospel. Christ, however, solemnly enjoined his apostles—and in them all succeeding ministers -to teach the people to observe and do all things whatsoever he commanded. Agreeably to this injunction, I have endeavoured to combine the enforcement of the precepts, with the exposition of the doctrines, of the Gospel; to render the great truths of our holy faith instrumental to the production of holiness, and pureness, and love. This is a branch of the ministerial office always important, always obligatory and my own ministerial duties in this place cannot, I believe, be more profitably terminated, than in setting forth the necessity, and exhorting you to the cultivation, of that "holiness without which no man can see the Lord."

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The end of all religion is to bring men to God. In effecting this the Christian religion alone has succeeded; for although it has concluded all men under sin, it only has exhibited God as a reconciled Father in Christ Jesus." Now, every religion assuming that God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity but with abhorrence, and that man is a being capable of paying obedience to a given law, must come to the conclusion that holiness is required of man. For

in what does holiness consist but in being like God? and how can any man be like God except by obedience to those laws which he has ordained for him to walk in?

The Gospel has made no alteration in this fundamental requirement of all religions. To those, indeed, who by reason of sin were aliens to God—that is, to all mankind-it has opened a fountain for the purification of all sin and uncleanness but it has pronounced, in terms which cannot be misunderstood, that, without that holiness of heart and life which is enforced in the discourses of our Lord and his apostles, no man can, without presumption, expect to see the Lord. When, therefore, we preach the necessity of holiness as a condition of acceptance with God, we are building on the apostles and prophets we are not diminishing the efficacy of Christ's atonement; for it is only the blood of our Lord, through faith in that blood, that can cleanse our consciences "from dead works to serve the living God." It was to renew the holiness in which man had originally been created, but which by disobedience he had lost, that the glorious mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God was designed and accomplished. For what was it Christ lived-for what was it that he died; for what was the everlasting Gospel to be preached to the ends of the world; for what was the priesthood instituted, and the sacraments ordained; but that sinners might be made righteous-the unholy holy? If we would please God—if we would answer the end for which we were createdif we would live as the redeemed of the Lord-if we would not do despite unto the Spirit of grace-we must cultivate real practical holiness.

It is to this as to the end of all religion, the design of all that our blessed Saviour did and suffered-that I now solemnly and earnestly exhort you. Let those who cast the Gospel behind their back, make it their chief study to obey the flesh and the lusts thereof: let them be content to mind only earthly things. But be not ye like-minded: knowing that your inheritance and your hope is there, let your tempers, your conversation, and your lives savour of heaven. To this end, believe in the Lord Jesus. I here speak of faith as the animating principle of religion: for it is in vain that the understanding assents to doctrines if the heart be not affected by them, since our actions arise from the united operation of the affections and the understanding. If, therefore, we would do right, we must so believe as to act upon our belief.

Let it not be imagined by any person (for I would anxiously acquit myself of such a suspicion) that in enforcing the duties of the Christian religion I have ever intended so to inculcate them as supposing them to be the meritorious cause of salvation. In conformity with the plain exposition of Scripture, in obedience to that interpretation of Scripture which is laid down in the formularies of our Church, I would maintain that "we are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings." I thankfully confess that Christ is the sole meritorious cause of man's salvation, and that faith is the instrument by which we apply his merits to ourselves. But I also believe that no faith can be instrumental in the application of those merits unaccompanied by obediThe same lips in which was no guile, from which proceeded the gracious assurance, "He that believeth on me shall never die," declared also, "If thou

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