Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Him that honour wherewith He is most pleased, when you venture your all upon Him both for time and for eternity. We do not bid you earn a place in heaven. We do not bid We do not bid you work for your forgiveness. We bid you receive it. We bid you hope for it. And eternal life will be the sure result of your thus receiving and thus hoping. Could we get you truly to rely, we are not afraid of licentiousness. Many see a lurking antinomianism in the doctrine of faith. But where there is a true faith there is no antinomianism. It has its fruit unto holiness here, and then everlasting life hereafter. But do try, ere you embark on that course of new obedience which leadeth to the final abode of holy and happy creatures-do try to have peace in your conscience with God. Do dwell on the simple affirmation which you meet with in the New Testament, of a Saviour who welcomes all sinners, and of a blood which cleanseth from all sin. Do let the terrors and the suspicion of guilt take their departure from your labouring bosom; and then emptied of all that kept God at a distance from you, will there be room for those feelings and those principles which form the rudiments of the new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord. Love will cast out fear. Delight in God will take the place of dismay. The heart emancipated from bondage, will rise freely and gratefully to Him, in all the buoyancy of its new-felt enlargement. It will be found that the legal spirit, with its accompanying sensations of jealousy and disquietude and distrust, that this in fact is the mighty drag which keeps back the only obedience that is at all acceptable

the obedience of good will. And the faith which we now urge upon you in all its strength and in all its simplicity, is not more the harbinger of peace to a sinner's heart, than it is the sure and unfailing germ of his progressive holiness.

48

LECTURE XXIX.

ROMANS, vi, 1, 2.

"What shall we say? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may

abound? God forbid.

any longer therein?"

How shall we, that are dead to sin, live

We have ever been in the habit of regarding this chapter as the passage of greatest interest in the Bible-as that in which the greatest quantity of scriptural light is thrown on what to the eye of the general world is a depth and a mystery—even on that path of transition which leads from the imputed righteousness that is by faith, to the personal righteousness that is by new and spiritual obedience. We know not a single theme in the whole compass of Christianity, on which there rests to the natural discernment a cloud of thicker obscurity, than that which relates to the origin and growth of a believer's holiness-nor is it seen how, after an immunity so ample for sin has been provided by an atonement of which the power is infinite as the Divinity Himself, there remaineth any inducement to obedience so distinct and palpable and certain of operation, as that which is offered by the law of Do this and live-a law that we are given to understand is now superseded by the gospel terms of Believe and ye shall be saved.' It is of importance to know surely what were the first suggestions which arose in the apostolical mind, when met by what appears to be a most plausible

[ocr errors]

6

and pertinent objection taken to the doctrine of grace, as if it led to licentiousness; or to the doctrine of a free and full remission of sin, as if it encouraged the disciple to a secure and wanton perseverance in all its practices. In the apostle's reply to this, we might expect those ligaments to be made bare to our view, by which justification and sanctification are bound together in constant and inseparable alliance; and in virtue of which it is, that a sinner both feels himself secure from the penalty of sin, and keeps himself most strenuously and fearfully aloof from the performance of it.

We have already said that it was of use to mark the recurrence of similar phrases in the train of the apostle's reasoning, as it may serve to mark the connection of its distant parts, and thus to afford a more commanding view of his whole argument. We have no doubt that the question of this verse- -Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?'-was prompted by a recently written sentence in the preceding chapter, the very cadence of which seemed to be still alive in the apostle's memory-"Where sin abounded grace did much more abound."—It is well to trace the continuity of Scripture, broken and disjointed as it is by the artificial division that has been made of it into chapters and verses-to read the letter of an inspired writer, as you would read the letter of an ordinary acquaintance, not in sheets, but as an entire composition, through which there possibly runs the drift of one prevailing conception which he aims to establish; and thus it is that we think to have profited, by the perusal of those editions of the

[blocks in formation]

Bible, which vary from the one that is current, by the simple device of omitting the verses, and casting it like any ordinary book into sections and paragraphs. But the possession of the Bible in such a form is by no means indispensable. In reading the bibles that you have, be aware of the concatenation that we now speak of; and let it not be frittered away on your minds, by those mechanical breaks through which, to a listless peruser of Holy Writ, the sense is often interrupted. In guarding against the disadvantage which has just been specified, you will be led to the habit of comparing scripture with scripture a habit, which, if accompanied by that divine illumination without which even the Bible itself is made up of bare and barren literalities, will be altogether tantamount to that habit of the apostle, through which he became a proficient in the wisdom that the Holy Ghost teacheth-even the habit of comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

[ocr errors]

Ver. 2. God forbid'-Let us here bid you remark the prompt decisive and unhesitating reply of the apostle, to the question wherewith he introduces this chapter. Paul has by way of eminence been called the apostle of justification. By no other has the doctrine of pardon as held out in free dispensation on the one hand, and as received by simple trust upon the other, been more fully and zealously vindicated. Heaven, instead of coming to the sinner through the medium of wages and work, is made to come to him through the medium of a gift and an acceptance. One would think from his representation of the matter, that salva

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »