ready passed-not as if he had to look, perhaps doubtfully and ambiguously, forward to some future day, when a verdict of exculpation shall be pronounced upon him; but as if he stood exculpated before God even now, and even now might rejoice in the forgiveness of all his trespasses.

We think that, in the clause before us, the term now reaches the full extent of this signification. When a sinner closes with Christ, God takes him on the instant into reconciliation; and from that time are his sins washed out in the blood of the Lamb. I will remember them no more. I will make no more mention of them; and they are among the things that are behind, and which ought to be forgotten. The believer should feel his conscience to be relieved from the guilt and from the dread of them; and, instead of being any longer burdened with them as so many debts subject to a count and reckoning on some future day, he has a most legitimate warrant for looking on the account as closed, and that there is a full settlement and discharge because of them between him and God. We have heard that it is wrong in a believer to live beneath his privileges, and we fully agree in so thinking. We know not how the spirit of bondage is ever to be done away, or the joy of the gospel ever made to spring up in the heart, if, still beset with the entanglement of his scruples and of his fears, he shall suspend the remission of his sins on any thing else than on the blood of Jesus. Now all that is told of that blood should assure him of a present justification; and this should send an instant peace into his bosom; and, like the

jailor of old, should he on hearing of the power and property thereof, forthwith and from that moment rejoice. Be translated then into the sense of God being at peace with you. Receive the forgiveness of your sins, through Him whom God hath set forth as a propitiation. Look unto Christ lifted up for the offences of the world; and be encouraged in the thought, that the whole weight of your offences has indeed been borne away from yourself, and indeed been laid upon another. It is on the strength of this simple exhibition, that I should like to assure you of pardon; nor would I embarrass the matter with any conditions, or hang it on any dark and uncertain futurities that may lie before you. Christ hath made atonement, and with it God is satisfied; and if so, well may you be satisfied delighting yourselves greatly in the abundance of peace, and going forth even now in the light and the liberty of your present enlargement.

But the verse further proceeds to inform us, who they are that have this inestimable privilege; and the first circumstance of description which it brings forward respecting them, is, that they are in Christ. There are some, who actuated by the distaste of nature towards gospel truth in all its depth and all its peculiarity, understand this phrase in a way that is but vaguely and feebly expressive of its real meaning. They have no tolerance for the doctrine of a vital and mystical union between Christ as the head, and Christians as the members who receive from Him both their guidance and their nourishment; and they fear lest fanaticism should betray them into some of her illusions, by

carrying too far the analogy between a vine and its branches; and so they get over the phrase of being in Christ, and get quit of all that special intimacy of alliance with the Saviour which it is fitted to convey, by the very general interpretation that to be in Christ is just tantamount to being a Christian. And so it is, if you understand a Christian in the full sense and significancy of that high denomination: But then we must not shut our eyes against the closeness of that personal and substantial attachment, which we every where read of, as subsisting between the Redeemer and those who are the fruit of the travail of His own soul; nor are we jealously to exclude from our minds the impression of that very near relationship, which is suggested by the following passages-" But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature." "The dead in Christ shall rise first." "We are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ." "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." "He that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit." "And be found in him not having my own righteousness."

But lest we should wander into a region of mist and of obscurity, let us not forget, that, for the purpose of being admitted into this state of community with the Saviour, the one distinct and intelligible thing which you have to do is to believe in Him. There is nothing mystical in the act by which you award to Him the credit for His declarations; and this is the act by which your are grafted in the

Saviour. Whatever this matter of your union with Christ be, it all hinges upon your faith in Him —which faith is the great tie of relationship betwixt you. As you hold fast the beginning of your confidence and persevere therein, the tie will be strengthened the relationship will become more intimate -the communications of mutual regard will become more frequent, and more familiar to your experience -every day you live might bring you into more intense acquaintanceship with the Saviour, and that on the strength of your faithful applications to Him, and of His sure and faithful responses unto you-And thus, by certain exercises and feelings which certainly are not recondite in themselves might you arrive at a state of fellowship with Christ; which fellowship, in the description of it, might be very recondite both to those who stand without, and even to those who have got no farther than to the threshold of Christian experience. By the simple expedients of believing prayer; and the habitual commitment of yourself to the Lord your Saviour, in circumstances of trial or difficulty; and the encouragement of your heart's regard and gratitude, because of all the favours that you have gotten at His hand; and the strenuous maintenance within you of that peace which He hath purchased by His blood, and of that purity by which His will is complied with and His doctrine is adorned-by these you may so overshoot the experience of other men, as to have attained a sense and a discernment of incorporation with the Saviour, wherewith they are not yet prepared to sympathise. All this, though not yet realized by many of you, is surely

conceivable by many of you; but meanwhile, and lest you should think of some remote and inaccessible mystery which it were utterly hopeless for you to aspire after, I would have you all to remark, that, though the territory of Christian experience may not be plain to you, yet the way is plain by which you arrive at it-that, more particularly, you are conducted to the state of being in Christ simply by believing in Him: And so, there ought to be nothing more unintelligible in the verse, that 'there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,' than in the verse, "He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only-begotten Son of God."

But there is another circumstance of description that attaches to those unto whom there is no condemnation. This is the privilege of those who are in Christ Jesus; and further, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.

Now here I must come forth with a special demand upon your attention. We are not fond of those less manageable topics in theology, that call either for an elaborate exposition on the part of the minister, or for a very strenuous and sustained effort of attention on the part of the hearers; and nothing else can reconcile us to them, than their practical bearing upon the comfort or the holiness. of Christians. For it is at the same time most true, that a thing may at once be both profound and important. It may lie deep; and yet, like the precious metals, be of use in the familiar currency of the business of religion. The work of godliness