family of believers. As in Adam, it is said, all die-even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But the 'all' does not refer to the same body of people. The first who die in Adam, evidently refer to the whole human race. But the second who live in Christ are restricted by the apostle to those who are Christ's, and will be made alive by Him at His coming. All men have not faith, and all men therefore will not reign in life by Christ Jesus.

For any thing we know, the mediation of Christ may have affected, in a most essential way, the general state of humanity; and, by some mode unexplained and inexplicable, may it have bettered the condition of those who die in infancy, or who die in unreached heathenism; and aggravated the condition of none, but those who bring upon themselves the curse and the severity of a rejected gospel. But the matter which concerns you is, that, unless you receive Christ in time, you will never reign with Him in eternity. You will not be admitted into the number of those all, who, though they comprehend the entire family of believers, do not comprehend any that obey not the gospel; and it is at your peril, if, when the offer of an interest in the righteousness of Christ is placed within your reach, you turn in indifference away from it.

And it is of vital importance for you to know, that the free gift, though it comes not upon you all in the way of absolute conveyance, it at least comes upon you all in the way of offer. It is yours if you will. The offer is unto all and upon all who now hear us-though the thing offered is

We ask

only unto all and upon all who believe. each individual among you to isolate himself from the rest of the species-to conceive for a moment that he is the only sinner upon the face of the earth, that none but he stands in need of an atoning sacrifice, and none but he of an everlasting righteousness brought in by another and that might avail for his justification before God. Let him imagine, that for him the one and solitary offender, Christ came on the express errand to seek and to save that for him He poured out His soul unto the death-that for him the costly apparatus of redemption was raised-that for him and for him alone, the Bible was written; and a messenger from heaven sent to entreat that he will enter into reconciliation with God, through that way of mediatorship which God in His love had devised, for the express accommodation of this single wanderer, who had strayed, an outcast and an alien from the habitations of the unfallen: And that it now turns upon his own choice, whether he will abide among the paths of destruction, or be readmitted to all the honours and felicities of the place from which he had departed. There is nothing surely wanting to complete the warrant of such an individual, for entering into hope and happiness; and yet, ye hearers, it is positively not more complete than the warrant which each and which all of you have at this moment. To you, individually to you, God is holding out this gift for your acceptance-you is He beseeching to come again into friendship with Him. With you is He expostulating the cause of your life and your death; and bidding you

choose between the welcome offer of the one, and the sure alternative of the other if the offer is rejected. He is now parleying the matter with every hearer; and just as effectually, as if that hearer were the only creature in the world, to whom the errand of redemption was at all applicable. There is nothing in the multitude of hearers by whom you are surrounded, that should at all deaden the point of its sure and specific application to yourself. The message of the gospel does not suffer, in respect of its appropriateness to you, by the ranging abroad of its calls and its entreaties over the face of the whole congregation. The commission is to preach the gospel to every; and surely that is the same with preaching the gospel to each. It does not become less pointedly personal in its invitation, by its being made more widely diffusive. The dispersion of the gospel embassy over the face of the whole world, does not abate, by one single iota, either the loudness or the urgency of the knock which it is making at your door. This is a property which no extension of the message can ever dissipate. It cannot be shipped off, either in whole or in part, by the missionary vessel which carries the news and the offers of salvation to other lands. Your minister speaks with no less authority, though thousands and thousands more are preaching at the same moment along with him. Your bible carries no less emphatic intimation to you, though bibles are circulating by millions over the mighty amplitudes of population that are on every side of you. God, through the medium of these conveyances, is holding out as distinct an overture to you, and

pledging Himself to as distinct a fulfilment, as if you were the only sinner He had to deal with; and whether He beseeches you to be reconciled, or bids you come unto Christ on the faith that you will not be cast out, or invites you weary and heavy laden to cast your burden upon Him and He will sustain it, or sets forth to you a propitiation and tells you that your reliance upon its efficacy is all that is needed to make it effectual to you-Be very sure that all this is addrest as especially to yourself, as if you heard it face to face by the lips of a special messenger from heaven-that God is bringing Himself as near, as if He named you by a voice from the skies-So that if you, arrested by all this power and closeness of application, shall venture your case on the calls and the promises of the gospel, there is not one call that will not be followed up, nor one promise that will not be fully and perfectly accomplished.

The

The thing offered in this passage is, that you shall be instated in the righteousness of Christ. Let me crave your attention to the substantial meaning and effect of such an overture. technicals of theology are so familiar to the ear, that they fail to arouse the understanding; and the thinking principle often lies in complete dormancy, while there is a kind of indolent satisfaction felt by the mind, at the utterance and the cadency of sounds to which it has been long accustomed. The proposal that Christ's righteousness shall become your righteousness in such a way, as that you will be honoured and rewarded and loved and dealt with by God, just, as you would have

been, had this righteousness been yielded in your own person and by your own performances-this, ye hearers, is the very jet and essence of the gospel; and could we only prevail on you to entertain the wondrous proposal and to close with it, like a man translated from beggary to some exalted order of merit that had been won for him by another, might you instantly be clothed in the glories of a high and splendid investiture-recognised by God Himself, and by all the subject ranks of His administration, as the occupiers of a dignity and a constitutional standing, to which all the homage due to worth and excellence and lofty prospects may rightfully be paid. You would become kings and priests unto God; and, like many of those sublimities of nature where the noblest effects often spring from the simplest of causes, is this princely elevation of guilty and degraded man brought about by the simple credence which he renders to the testimony of God respecting His Son-on which it is that he passes from death unto life, and according to his faith so is it done unto him.

This is the way of being translated into a condition of righteousness with God, and there is no other. We are aware of the tendency of nature to try another; and that, in the obstinate spirit of legality, it is her constant forth-putting to establish a righteousness of her own-an object, in the prosecution of which, she is ever sure, either to dissipate her strength in a fatigue that is unavailing, or at length to sink down into the repose of a formality that is altogether lifeless and unfruitful. This positively is not the way. The way is to lay your confident