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for his return, and the same father seeing him on his return, though yet a great way off, would run and fall upon his neck and kiss him. But the heart is hard, and the spirit utterly selfish, and he will is perverse and determined, and therefore the natural owledge of God and his law which the sinner possesses by his constitution, and the added knowledge which the efforts of ent Christians have imparted to him are not strong enough me his inclination and induce him to break of his sins by To him, also, as well as to every sin-loving man, words will be spoken in the day of final adjudication: "God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, ness of men who hold down (Karey) the truth in because that which may be known of God is in them; for God hath showed it unto them. e things of him, even his eternal power and godhead, carly seen from the creation of the world, being understood y the things that are made; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God they glorified him not as God." The subject which we have thus discussed is exceedingly fertile in its inferences and teachings; but we shall limit ourselves to two, that have a direct bearing upon the enterprise of Foreign Missions.

For

1. In the first place it is evident that if the positions that have been taken are correct, natural religion consigns the entire pagan world to eternal perdition.

Strictly speaking, it is not Christianity that sends the race of mankind to hell, but it is ethics. Christ himself says that he came not into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. (John iii. 17.) Men are condemned already, previous to redemption, by the law written on their hearts; by their natural convictions of moral truth; by natural religion, whose truths and dictates they have failed to put in practice. Those theorists, therefore, who reject revealed religion, and remand man back to the first principles of ethices and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him. "Tell me," says St. Paul," ve that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? The law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live by them." (Gal. iv. 21; iii. 12.) "Circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law; but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision." (Rom. ii. 25.) If man had been true to all the principles and precepts of natural religion, it would indeed be religion enough for him. But he has not been thus true. The entire list of vices and sins recited by St Paul in the first chapter of Romans, is as contrary to natural religion as it is to revealed. And it is precisely because the pagan world has not obeyed the principles of natural religion, and is under a curse and a bondage therefore, that it is in

as of revealed religion. Little do those

when they propose to find a salvation Jure light of natural reason and conscience. ealized the truths of natural conscience in and his outward life? What pagan is there that will not be found guilty before the bar What heathen will not need an atonement ve up even to the light of nature? Nay, what Nicial cultus of heathenism but a confession that ...c world finds and feels itself to be guilty at the reason and conscience? The accusing voice within their forebodings and fearful looking-for of divine and they endeavor to propitiate the offended Power by Velings and sacrifices.

n the second place, it follows inevitably from these positions Paul, concerning the guilt of the pagan, that nothing but Created religion can save him from an eternity of sin and woe. Our Lord Jesus Christ well knew the significance of his last ommand to his apostles and his church, to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He knew what a measure and degree of moral truth had been wrought into the structure of the millions of mankind. He knew that there is a light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9,) He knew that that truth had been held in unrighteousness, and that that light had shined in the darkness that comprehended it not. He knew that upon the plane of natural religion and conscience the responsible creature stood a guilty criminal; that he was without excuse; that he was utterly unsheltered, and must be pierced through and through by the glittering shafts of the law which he had known, and which he had violated. The incarnation of the eternal Son of God is utterly unintelligible except upon the supposition that every human creature is a guilty creature; and this guilt is inconceivable except upon the supposition that when he knew God, he glorified him not as God.

It is this dark and awful fact which the Church of Christ is continually to keep in mind. The whole world lieth in wickedness, (1 John v. 19,) and wickedness is crime, and crime must either be cancelled by the blood of the God-man, or be punished through endless ages. We are summoned to take the same view of this wretched and sinful world which the Founder of Christianity took. We are to look through his eyes, and breathe his spirit. His eyes are a flame of fire, and pierce through all the self-deceptions by which man would extenuate or nullify his sin; and his spirit is that of self-sacrificing love to the guilty. If the Man of Sorrows saw in the mass of mankind a mass of perdition, his followers must see the same. If in the midst of all his tenderness and selfsacrificing love for the human soul, he never uttered a single word

that leads us to suppose that that soul merits anything but hellpunishment, or will receive anything but this, if it stands upon its own merits in the day of judgment; if the pitiful Son of God and Son of man, in all his various representations of the eternal future, never spoke a syllable that can be tortured into the theory of the innocency of any human being, be he Jew or Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, young or old, then the disciple is to be as the Master. The Church of Christ must look out upon the millions of India, China, and Africa, as the Son of God looked down upon them from the heights of the eternal throne, and must behold in them millions upon millions of guilty and lost moral agents. Like him they must engage in efforts for their salvation; and not waste their energies in futile queryings and doubting. The problems before the Eternal Mind, respecting the sin and salvation of man, were far more difficult of solution than those which beset the mind of the Christian or the sceptic. For our Lord and Saviour knew infallibly how many millions upon millions of the race, for whom he proposed to pour out his life-blood, would reject him. He knew long beforehand how many millions upon millions of this miserable and infatuated race would resist, and ultimately quench the only Spirit that could renovate and save them. The checkered career of the Christian Church, its alternating progress and decline in different ages and countries, the unfaithfulness of his own redeemed, and their lukewarmness in obeying his parting command to evangelize the nations-the whole career of Christianity, so discouraging in many of its aspects, lay distinct and clear before that omniscient eye. But it did not dampen his love or his ardour (if we may use such a word) for an instant. Even to his own view, much of his love and self-sacrifice would run to waste, so far as the actual redemption of immortal souls is concerned. He knew that, like his prophet, he was to stretch out his hand all day long, yea, ages after ages, to a disobedient and a gainsaying race. But he never faltered, and he never hesitated. He vailed his deity in the "muddy vesture of decay," and suffered and died in it, with the same willingness and alacrity as if he had foreknown that every human soul would have welcomed the great salvation.

Now, if our Lord and Master, knowing infallibly that millions upon millions would trample upon his blood, and that millions upon millions, through the unfaithfulness of his own church, would never even hear of the passion in Gethsemane and Calvary: if our Lord and Master, in the face of these discouragements, while sternly as the eternal nemesis of God charging home an infinite guilt upon the human race, yet tenderly as a mother for a child, received upon his own person the awful vengeance of that nemesis, we and all his people, in all time, must breathe in his spirit and imitate his example. We have no infinite and infallible know

ledge by which to discourage us in our efforts at human salvation. We know not who will reject the message, or whether any will. We cannot

"look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow, and which will not."

We only know that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses all sin from every soul upon whom it drops. And we know that our Redeemer and King has commanded us to proclaim this fact to every human creature. Events and successes are with him. The church has nothing to do but obey orders, like soldiers in a campaign.

The great and the simple work before the church is to sprinkle the nations with the blood of atonement. This it does, instrumentally, when it preaches forgiveness of sins through Christ's oblation. The one great and awful fact in human history, we have seen, is the fact of guilt. And the great and glorious fact which the mercy of God has now set over against it, is the fact of atonement. It requires no high degree of civilization to apprehend either of these facts. The benighted pagan is as easily convicted as the most highly educated philosopher; and his reception of the atonement of God is, perhaps, even less hindered by pride and prejudice.

Let the church, therefore, dismissing all secondary and inferior aims, however excellent and desirable in themselves, go forth and proclaim to all the nations that "they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God;" and also that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life."

SERMON XVIII.

SALVATION BY GRACE.

"By grace are ye saved."- EPHESIANS ii. 5.

No thought is more familiar to our minds than this-that all mankind are sinners. It is impossible for those who receive the Bible as the word of God to gainsay or to doubt this truth. That Bible contains explicit and reiterated and pathetic statements of human depravity. It shows us whence it sprung, dwells upon its manifestations, depicts its completeness and depth, and laments over its injuriousness and ruin. Putting aside all explicit state

* Author's name not furnished with the manuscript.

"

ments, however, the fact of human depravity is implied in all the doctrines and plan of salvation. The Gospel takes our apostacy for granted, and addresses itself to sinners; and to sinners only. Its offers are made to sinners; its provisions are adapted to sinners; itself is nothing else primarily than a mode of deliverance from sin. This Scripture account of our nature and state is amply confirmed by experience. Every man at all instructed in the law of God has learned that he possesses a disposition to violate that law, and that he has actually violated it, in numberless instances and in numberless ways. The multiform wickedness that fills the earth-almost unmingled and unrelieved-conclusively prove the total depravity of the race. Every effect must have its cause a tree cannot grow without a root. If, therefore, the experience of every man be the experience of a sinner, and the history of the world be the history of sinners, there must be a deep hid principle of sinfulness in universal human nature. Consciousness of sin includes a sense of ill-desert, or a sense of just exposure to punishment. Every man possesses this. Conscience invariably pronounces upon the guiltiness of moral evil; and what is guiltiness but that quality of an action by which it properly subjects the man to the infliction of the penalty of the divine law? Whence arise the fear of God, and the apprehensions of wrath, and the shrinking from the future, which agitate the bosom of the offender, but from the consciousness and settled persuasion that he merits, from infinite holiness and justice, only tribulation and anguish? The natural condition of men, therefore-oh, that they felt its peril and its horror !—is one of depravity, actual pollution, and exposure to the awful wrath of a holy God. Deliverance from that condition is what the Bible calls salvation. simple but sublime and comprehensive declaration of our text is, that this salvation is of grace. The word grace is used in Scripture to represent kindness as manifested toward the ill-deserving; any unmerited favour is prompted by a gracious disposition. Mercy, as distinguished from grace, is kindness shown to the suffering; it does not contemplate the moral character of its objects. It very naturally occurs, that while the word grace is mainly used in the Bible to express the disposition of kindness toward the ill-deserving, it is sometimes employed to denote the acts of favour themselves. Says St. Paul," By the grace of God I am what I am," where he undoubtedly means, " By the divine assistance, gratuitously afforded, I am what I am." The influences of the Holy Spirit, especially, are called grace; and the fruits of the Spirit are styled graces. We have a perfect right to take the word, as occurring in the text, in both these intimatelyrelated senses. It will well bear both, and probably was meant to do so. So understood, the meaning widens. The proposition then is, not only that salvation is gratuitous, considered as an ob

The

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