Jesus came, and by his own blood-shedding he opened a royal road, along which the sinner of every shade and every hue of guilt might travel forward, even to the borders of God's restored kingdom. Without holiness none can see the Lord: Jesus (and mark this, I pray you) Jesus died for sin, that we his people might die unto sin. He not only came to free us from the condemnation of guilt, but he came to set us free moreover from its bondage. He came to open the prison-doors, and to proclaim liberty to the captive: so that they who had been held too long beneath the thraldom of the evil one-those who had been sold unto the basest of all slavery, were now to be emancipated, and were henceforth to enjoy the liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free.

And therefore when we tell you of these things; when we speak of pardon, when we speak of holiness, what is it but to bring before you the cross of the Saviour that died for you? To preach the Gospel is, in other words, to preach the death of Christ. If we would speak of peace to the rebel, of pardon to the apostate, of liberty to the captive, the binding up of the wounds that sin hath inflicted; it is only just so far as we preach Christ crucified. If there be one sweet and precious promise in the whole Bible to the believer, it belongs to him only just so far as Jesus hath written it upon him in crimson characters; only just so far as Jesus hath sealed it with his own blood. If there be any thing for us of sparing mercy-if there be any thing of lovely or of gracious, that hath escaped the fall, it is only because of the interposition of Jesus' blood. If there be any hope for the future; if there be any aspirations of the Spirit after God and after eternal blessedness; and if there ever breathe upon our wearied spirits the airs from the land of the redeemed; and if we ever seem to catch the melodiousness of heavenly harpings—it is because Jesus by his own bloodshedding, hath opened mercy's gate, and presented the way whereby heaven may be reached. If I go to the young convert, if I go to one on whose conscience the conviction of sin has been bound, I dare not speak of aught but the blood of Jesus. Such an one might look to the past, but it would be a weary waste, affording not one green spot where he might rest for his soul's comfort. He might look to the future; and there should seem to be only the bursting and the overwhelming tide of divine indignation. But I may tell him of Christ; may tell him of his precious Gospel, as the ark in which his soul may be shut in and be safe, when the storm shall burst upon the ruined world. Or do I go to the dying bed of one of God's own people, one established in the faith, who has long walked with his Maker, who has been doing his work upon earth, and serving his precious Saviour? I dare not speak to such an one a word of comfort to be derived from his own doings: I dare not tell him, even my grey-headed brother or father, of what God hath enabled him to effect, as the ground of his dying dependance. But even such an one would I remind— aye, till his pulse should quicken, and his heart should beat with anticipated blessedness-that Jesus had died for him; and that the out-poured blood of the Saviour, which had been his soul's comfort, through many a day of trial, conflict, and weariness, and temptation, shall be his rest and his hope even when he is departing. And this, when he shall stand before the judgment-seat, he shall be able to plead, and not one word shall he say of his own doings;

I

but as he casts his golden crown which Jesus hath given him before his feet, he will render praise, and honour, and glory, and thanksgiving to the Lamb who died for him.

Finally, brethren, if I wished to give comfort to the mother, mourning for her dear babe whom God hath taken from her in its earliest infancy, and as she looked on her coffined little one, she was inclined to shed a mother's tears for her tender babe, this is the only ground of consolation that I would offer her-that Jesus has died for your child; it has been washed in its Saviour's blood; and a very tender God hath taken the little one away ere it lived to commit the sin of rejecting Christ. And, therefore, whensoever as Christian people, holding intercourse with each other, or whensoever in our intercourse as minister and people, these things come before us, we find in the outpoured blood of Jesus, the only ground for our consolation and hope.

Now for the comfort of one's own soul, one would be glad on such a day as this, here to leave our subject; one would be glad to close the consideration of such a matter as this with the consolations that belong to the people of the Lord. But I dare not believe concerning you, in the wildest imagination of my heart, I dare not believe concerning you, that you are all the people of Jesus Christ: I dare not so forget the distinction which the Bible establishes, as to confound you all because you come to the house of God in one single indiscriminate mass. I am bound to think concerning you-and I think it with all thankfulness-that some are the servants of Jesus Christ, that some are indeed the sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty: though others there are over whom I cannot but mourn in spirit, and to whom I must now speak a word of affectionate exhortation. I am bound to deal faithfully with your souls; and I dare not take that bread which belongeth to the children, and deal it forth to the strangers who have not come within the compass of the family of God. And, therefore, I say to you, (and methinks it is a most solemn warning,) that these very things, which are for the comfort and assurance of the believer, will be the very ground of the final condemnation of those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ. It will not be that you sinned against the light of nature: it will not be that you rejected the evidence of your own reason: but it will be that Jesus shed his blood; it will be that Jesus sent his Gospel to be preached to you, and that you disregarded it, that you trampled it under foot, and closed your understandings and your hearts against the entrance of that Gospel. And at the great day of account, the witness for the condemnation of Christendom will be fetched in from the garden of Christ's agony, and from the mount whereon his cross was planted: and Jesus himself—the kind, the loving, and the precious Saviour-will himself appear as the awful witness; and he will testify concerning those who disbelieved and rejected him, "I came to them, and I laid down my life for them, and I offered them mercy; and I sent the pleadings of my compassion; and they heard me not. I bore for them thirty-three years of sufferings-I, the Just, in the midst of the unjust; for them I endured three hours of mental anguish, ere I yielded up the ghost. And they would not serve me, but they served mine enemy, who made them no such offers, and who had nought to tempt them with, who could not tell them of eternal life: but for the

paltry possession of earthly gain, or the acquisition of shadowy honours, they have sold themselves.

Dear friends, think of this: pray that God may take from those who are dear to your hearts, the hardness under which you have from away you, and been suffering so long; that the understanding being enlightened, and the nature of the inner man being altogether changed, you may seek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is near.

THE SECOND ADAM "A QUICKENING SPIRIT."

REV. W. DODSWORTH, A.M.

MARGARET STREET CHAPEL, CAVENDISH SQUARE, EASTER SUNDAY, 1835.

"There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."-1 CORINTHIANS, xv. 44, 45.

THE various relationships which subsist among men are strictly correspondent with those relationships which subsist between Jesus Christ and his people. This correspondence is not accidental, but it is designed; and it is an indication of the unity of plan which pervades the works of God, whether we regard him as the God of nature, or the God of providence, or the God of grace. If we trace human relationships to their true origin, we shall find it here: They shadow forth those spiritual relationships which God had assumed towards his people in the person of his Son: and doubtless they were constituted as they are for this very end.

For instance: If we look at the great features of human redemption as they are exhibited to us in the leading facts of the Gospel history which we have been commemorating at this season, we may see Jesus Christ standing to us in several of the most interesting of these relationships. In procuring the redemption of his people by the shedding of his own blood, he assumes the standing of a husband, who, by uniting himself to us in the closest union, made himself capable of standing in our place, and answering for our acts. As a husband he paid the redemption price for his spouse. So it is written, "Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing: but that it should be holy and without blemish." Again: in advocating our cause-in order that he may do this effectually, and with an experimental feeling of our wants, he assumes the place of a brother unto us. Having partaken of our nature, he submits to its conditions in the most trying and degrading circumstances, that he might have a fellow-feeling with us in all our trials, and in all our sufferings. And so it is written: "For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." “Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." In this capacity he still acts as our brother, our fellow, our kinsman; and therefore is evidently fitted to be our advocate.

There is another relationship which he assumes to his people, and on which he entered more peculiarly by the event which we this day commemorate-by his resurrection from the dead: and this is, the relationship of a father-the quickener, the giver of life and of being to his people. Under this aspect he is represented in the text. We are here directed, either in the way of resemblance or in the way of contrast-or, as I think, and shall endeavour to show, in both -to the great father of the human race, in illustration of the relationship and office which Jesus Christ sustains to his people, in applying to them the redemption which, by his death upon the cross, he procured. "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."

In order to enter into the true meaning and the full force of these words, it will be necessary to glance at the context; and it will be necessary also (I will add) that you should give me your close and undivided attention: for the difficulty of preserving in our translation the peculiar emphasis of the original, renders the interpretation of the text somewhat intricate.

The text occurs in a passage in which the Apostle is answering the objection to the doctrine of the resurrection, deduced from the difficulty of conceiving how these bodies of ours, after they have been resolved, and the particles of them scattered abroad, should be raised again, and re-formed into bodies. "Some men will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?"

In reply to this objection the Apostle brings several illustrations from nature, in order to show that there are different bodies suitable to different existences, or different modes of existence. For instance: the form of wheat, or of any other grain, has quite a different body as it exists in the bare grain, and as it exists in the full grown ear. So all flesh is not the same flesh for there is one kind of flesh which is proper to man; another kind which is proper to beasts; another kind which is proper to fishes; and another kind which is proper to birds. In like manner a difference may be observed among the heavenly bodies, one greatly differing from another in glory. "So also is the resurrection of the dead," says the Apostle: that is, a difference, analogous to these which I have just mentioned, is to be found between the body as it now exists in its humiliation, and as it will exist subsequent to its resurrection: for "it is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power." And then follows the expression with which the text stands more immediately connected: "It is sown a natural body;" or, to preserve the emphasis of the origin, as well as to shew its connexion with the words before us —“ It is sown a body proper to a soul:" "it is raised a spiritual body;" or, "a body proper to a spirit." For as there is a body proper to a man, as well as a body proper to a beast; so, by analogy, in the case of the resurrection, there is a body proper to a soul, and there is a body which is proper to a spirit. "And so it is written, The first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."

What I wish to observe, and what is lost-perhaps necessarily lost-in our translation, is this: That when it is said, "The first Adam was made a living soul," there is a plain reference to the assertion in the preceding verse, "There