ought not this to be felt as a precious enhancement of the blessing? setting an irrevocable seal as it were upon our reconciliation with God-placing it securely beyond the reach, not merely of the impediments which sin already contracted had thrown in the way; but also beyond the reach of all those future accidents, that the sin, into which we shall be surprised or into which we shall stumble, may afterwards involve us. We set not the remedy at its full worth, if we use it not to quiet the alarms of the guilt that is before us, as well as of the guilt that is behind us-if, like the children of Israel, we think that some great purifying ceremonial must be set up anew to wash away the outstanding defilements of the current year, under which they are meanwhile in a state of distance and displeasure from God-if we regard not the fulness that is in Christ as a perennial fountain, which is at all times accessible; and is a very present cure to the conscience, under the many inroads and solicitations of that sinful nature which never ceases to beset us with its urgency-Thus overbearing the sense of guilt with the sense of that healing virtue which lies in the blood of the one sacrifice; and upholding the spirit of the believer, even while opprest with the infirmities of his earthly tabernacle, in the clear and confident feeling of his acceptance with God.

But is not this, it may be said, equivalent to the holding forth of a Popish indulgence for all sins, past, present, and to come? And, is not this a signal for antinomianism? And will not the feeling of our death to the guilt of sin, make us all

alive to the charm of its many allurements- -now heightened by a sense of impunity? And will not the peace that we are thus called upon to maintain, even while sin has its residence in our hearts, lull us still further into a peace that will not be broken, even though sin should reign over our habits and our history? We have sometimes thought so, my brethren, and, under the suggestion of such a fear, have qualified the freeness, and laid our clauses and our exceptions and our drawbacks on the fulness of the gospel; and, solicitous for the purity of the human character, have lifted a timid and a hesitating voice when proclaiming the overtures of pardon for human guilt. But we are now thoroughly persuaded, that the effective way of turning men from sin to righteousness, is to throw, wide and open before them, the door of reconciliation; and that a real trust in God for acceptance, is ever accompanied with a real movement of the heart towards godliness; and that to mix or darken the communications of good-will to the world through Him who died for it, is not more adverse to the rest of the sinner, than it is adverse to the holiness of the sinner; and that, after all, the true way of keeping up love in the heart, is to keep up peace in the conscience-thus making your freedom from the guilt of sin, the best guarantee for your deliverance from its power; and this because if you can interpose the death of Christ in arrest of condemnation, when Satan for the purposes of disturbance would inject the fears of unbelief into your bosom, he the great adversary of souls, paralysed at the very sight of such a barrier in all his measures of

hostility against you, would retire a baffled enemy from that contest, in which, for the purposes of a sinful dominion over you, he tried to assail and to conquer by the force of his temptations.

But the certainty of that connection, which obtains between a death unto the guilt of sin, and a death unto its power, will be more manifest afterwards : And, meanwhile, after having said so much on the clause of being dead with Christ, it may now be time for offering our remarks on the clause that we shall live with Him.

Yet before we proceed to the elucidation of this latter clause, we may remark a sanctifying influence in the former one. We are looked upon by the Lawgiver as dead with Christ-that is, as having in Him borne the penalty of our sins, and therefore as no longer the subjects of a curse that has already been discharged, of a condemnatory sentence that is already executed. Now though we share alike with Christ, in this privilege of a final acquittance from that death which has no more dominion over Him, and is for ever averted from us-yet it was at His expense alone, and not at ours, that the acquittance was obtained. It would have cost us an eternity of suffering in hell, to have traversed the whole of that vengeance that was denounced upon iniquity; and it was therefore so condensed upon the person of the Saviour, who had the infinity of the Godhead to sustain it, that on Him, during the limited period of His sufferings on earth, all the vials of the Almighty's wrath were poured forth and so were expended. By our fellowship with Him in His death, we have

been borne across a gulf, which to ourselves would have been utterly interminable; and have been landed on a safe and peaceful shore, over which no angry cloud whatever is suspended; and have been conclusively placed beyond the reach of those devouring billows, into which the despisers of the gospel salvation shall be absorbed, and have for ever their fiery habitation. But this is just because Christ has, in the greatness of His love, for us travelled through the depths of all this endurance-just because, in the agonies of the garden and the sufferings of the cross, were concentrated the torments of millions through eternity—just because, in that mysterious passion which for us He underwent, He with tears and cries and anguish unutterable, forced the way of reconciliation-And we who are dead with Christ, partake in all the triumphs of this sore purchase, but not in the pains of it; and have now our feet established on a quiet landing-place. And the sanctifying influence to which we now advert, and which no real believer can withstand, is gratitude to Him, who hath wrought out for us so mighty a deliverance. It is the respondency of love from our hearts, to that love which burnt so unquenchably in His, and bore Him up under the burden of a world's atonement. It is the rightful sentiment, that now we are not our own, but the ransomed and redeemed property of another. This touches, and touches irresistibly, upon him who rightly appreciates all the horrors of that everlasting captivity from which we have been brought, and all the expense of that dreadful equivalent which Christ had

to render—And he thus judges, that, as Christ died for all, then were all dead; and He died, that those who live might live no longer to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again.

We believe that we shall also live with Him." To explain the phrase of our being dead with Christ, we had to ascertain how it was that Christ was dead; and we find by the following verse that He died unto sin, and we in like manner are dead unto sin; or, in other words, the wages of sin being paid to Christ, there is no further reckoning between them-and, as this transaction was for us and in our stead, it is just as if death the wages of sin had been rendered unto us; and sin can now hold no ⚫ further count, and prefer no further charge against us. This sense of dying unto sin on the part of Christ, will conduct us to the sense of His living unto God. The life that He now lives with Him, has been conferred upon Him in the shape of wages. In other words, it is a reward consequent upon what He has done for us, and in our steadeven as the death that He bore was a punishment, consequent upon His having become accountable for us, and in our stead. This will recall to you, my brethren, a distinction to which we have already had occasion to advert; and for which there seemeth a real warrant in the book of revelationthe distinction that there is, in point of effect, between the passive and the active obedience of Christ -the one satisfying for sin and making an end of its curse and punishment-So that to be dead with Christ and dead unto sin, is to live in the condi