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even balance in her hand. When the scripture speaks of human affairs, this is always the sense of the word righteousness; for thus it is used Lev. xix. 36. "Just "balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin shall ye have." The same word is here four times rendered just, which in the text is rendered righteousness. And in like manner in Deut. xxv. 14, 15. the command runs, "Thou shalt not have in thine house diverse measures, a great and a small, but thou shalt "have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have." So again Ezek. xlv. 9, 10. "Take away your exactions from my people saith the "Lord God. Ye shall have just balances, and a just “ephah, and a just bath." In these passages, not to mention any more, the same word which is translated righteousness in the text, is undoubtedly applied to the evenness of the balance, and to strict justice in weights and measures. When the scripture speaks of dealings between man and man, this is the established sense of the word; and if we spiritualize this sense we shall understand the usage of the word in religious affairs, All that we are, and all that we hope for is God's free gift, and therefore as the Lord and giver of all he has an unalienable right to our continual service. And he demanded it. He gave us an holy, just, and good law, to which he required the perfect uninterrupted obedience of every faculty of soul and body. If man had paid it him in thought, word, and deed, then he would have been just he would have dealt uprightly with God, and the divine law and justice would have had no demands upon him. But if we pay it not, then we are unjust; and the law for the first offence pronounces its curses upon us for it is written, "Cursed is every "one who continueth not in all things, that are written "in the book of the law." If we continue not in all things, if we fail but in one point, then we rob God of his due. We become his debtors, and law and justice may seize upon us, and cast us into prison, until the uttermost farthing be paid; which it is impossible we

should ever pay, because the obedience of millions of years could make no satisfaction for one single transgression against the infinitely perfect law of God. One transgression having infinite demerit in it, would weigh down the scale infinitely, and therefore eternally; unless some infinitely perfect obedience, which no finite creature can pay, be put into the opposite scale.

Upon this state of the case it appears, that righte ousness signifies the most strict and unerring justice in our dealings with God. The law of God, which is his revealed will, and the rule of our obedience, is holy as God is holy, yea, perfectly, infinitely holy. It cannot behold the least iniquity, any more than God can behold it, and therefore it cuts the sinner off from all right and title to legal righteousness for the very first offence, puts him under the curse, and subjects him to all its pains and penalties: and upon whom the law pronounces its curses, God the righteous Judge will pour down the vials of his wrath. Upon the unrighteous he will rain snares, fire, and brimstone, storm, and tempest, this shall be their portion to drink for ever and ever.

it

Are you then, my brethren, in the number of the righteous, or of the unrighteous? Is it not of infinite consequence to know what state you are in? For certainly if it should appear that you are unrighteous, you would not act so contrary to your own interest, as to choose to be subject to the curses of God's holy law, and to suffer the threatened punishment, if there be a way left to escape. Do you see then, how necessary is we should enquire, whether we have acted righte ously with God or not. To the infallible word therefore, and to the testimony, let us repair. The oracles of truth inform us, that after God had finished his six days work, he looked down from heaven, and behold, all things were good. There was no disorder in the natural world, and no evil in the spiritual world. But he is soon after represented looking down from heaven upon the children of men, and behold all things

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were evil. "And God saw that the wickedness of "man was great in the earth, and that every imagina❝tion of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually," (Gen. vi. 5.) Whence was the origin of this universal evil? Mankind had gone out of the way of righteousness, they had broken the law, and had made themselves altogether corrupt, and were become abominable, there was none of them righteous, no, not one. What! Not one righteous man left upon earth? No.-God declares by the mouth of his holy prophet, that there was not one. They had all sinned, and come short of the glory of God. They were by nature children of his wrath through one man's disobedience; and they were ten times more the children of wrath by actual guilt, and being sinners against God's law, both by nature and by life, he hath shut them all up under sin, in a state of condemnation, reserving them to the judgment of the great day.

This is our condition, We are all unrighteous: And we are without strength to attain any righteousness of our own: because we are poor broken debtors, who have nothing to pay. One offence attaints our blood, and renders us incapable of doing any act, that will be deemed good and valid in the court of heaven, for this irreversible decree stands against us in the divine records "The unrighteous shall not inherit the king"dom of God."

From hence arises a question, the most important and interesting that can engage a sinner's attention, upon which every person concerned about his eternal welfare, would reason in this manner, "I acknowledge "the law of God to be holy and good, but I have "broken it, and have robbed God of his glory, and "the law of its honour. I am unrighteous. As such, "heaven is shut against me, and will be shut for ever, "unless I can be made righteous. But how or by "what means can this be done? God's law is immuta«ble. His truth that threatened to punish transgres❝sion is inflexible. His justice is infinite, and must have

"satisfaction for the broken law-yea, full and perfect "satisfaction, suitable to the infinite purity and holi 66 ness of the divine nature. But alas! what satisfac❝tion can I make it? Nay, what satisfaction could all "the holy angels and the highest order of beings, if "they would lay down their lives for me, make to "that justice, which is infinite, and to which I am an "infinite debtor. Nothing can save me, but some di"vine and infinite righteousness wrought out for me, "and in my stead, and God alone can work out such a righteousness; but how can I hope that he will, "since he is the very person, whom I have offended by my

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sin ?"

In this manner, every person concerned about eternity would reason. When he is convinced of his own unrighteousness, he will look out for some means to be made righteous, and he will soon find that there are no human means. Righteousness grows not upon this earth. It fled to heaven, when all the world was brought in guilty before God. And it cannot return to earth, until all the offended attributes of God be satisfied. But what created being can make a satisfaction equal to the offence? All hope, humanly speaking; is cut off: for no finite creature can do an infinite action. Oh! what glad tidings then does the prophet here bring to a guilty world. He sees the heavens from above dropping down righteousness, and the earth opening and receiving it. The blessing is so unmerited, so inestimable, that one would be tempted to askHow God could be so gracious? How can he exercise such mercy consistent with his other perfections? How can he suffer the guilty to be accounted righteous, until the demands of law and justice be fully satisfied? But where is the satisfaction equal to their infinite demands? and until such a satisfaction be made, how can his allpure holiness look upon the impure sinner, or how can his inflexible truth, which threatened punishment, remit it? Glory be to his free grace, which hath found out a righteousness for us, against which law and justice

cannot make the least exception, and which hath preserved the glory of all his attributes inviolate, and that is the righteousness of the God-man Christ Jesus.

We are taught by the Christian verity, that in the divine essence there are three persons of equal glory and majesty, none is before or after other, none is greater or less than another. Between these divine Persons the covenant of grace was ordered in all things and sure; and from this covenant the co-equal and coeternal Three took the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Son is a name of office, descriptive of the wonderful humiliation of the Messiah, who took our nature, and was made a Son for our salvation-God and man being united in one Christ, as much as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man. The God-man undertakes in our nature to pay perfect satisfaction to his Father's justice. Accordingly he paid the law an infinitely perfect obedience. And he thereby magnified it, and made it more honourable than the obedience of all created beings could have done. Then he suffered what was due to our breach of the law, and paid the death which we deserved. And justice demonstrated, that it had no more demands upon him, when it released him from the prison of the grave. And by this obedience and these sufferings he wrought out an infinitely perfect righteousness, which being imputed to the unrighteous, and laid hold of by the hand of faith, renders them perfectly righteous at the bar of justice.

This is the righteousness of God to which every sinner must submit, if he be ever discharged from condemnation. He must receive it from God as his free gift-without the least merit or deserving. And he must trust wholly to it, never presuming to add any thing of his own to it, as a condition of justification. These are hard lessons to the pride of our corrupt hearts. Indeed it is the hardest lesson of grace to humble us so far, that we can give up the merit of all our fancied good works, and take the righteousness of God as a free gift. As if God's righteousness was not