you are

one of them is from the hand of Christ: "I stand at the door, and knock." In the year now past, Christ has striven with you in his providence. To some of you he hath come once and again. Christ is with you. (3.) With them in their sins. Christ is present at all their unholy feasts, unholy jests, desires, engagements: "I know thy works." Do you ever think, when engaged in some silly game, that Christ is by your side? He sees the smile of satisfaction on your cheek, but he sees also the deluge of wrath that is over your soul. He sees you sporting yourself with your own deceivings; sitting on the brink of hell, yet pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw. Ques. What does he say? He says: "How long, ye simple ones, will ye love your simplicity?" and again: "Lord, let it alone this year also."

2. So long time. There is reason to think that Jesus strives with the soul from its earliest years; that he strives on to the last. Some good men have thought that Christ doth sometimes give over striving, and leaves the soul to be joined to its idols; but perhaps it is more accordant with Scripture to say, that Jesus waits all the day. How long a time Christ has pleaded with some of you! This day another year of striving with you is finished. Think of this. O the long-suffering of Christ!

3. Not known me. Ah! there is reason to think that many of you are as ignorant of Christ as the day I began my ministry among you; yea, as ignorant as the day you were born. If you knew Christ, it would break your heart with a sense of sin; but your heart is whole within you. If you knew Christ, it would drive you to seek an interest in him, but you seek him not. Hark how tenderly the Saviour pleads with you this day: "Have I been so long time with you?" O it will be one of the greatest miseries of hell, to remember how often Christ was with you in this house of prayer, in your providences, aye, in your sins; and you would not look at him! to remember how often he was set forth a broken Saviour in the sacrament; preached by his servants a free Saviour; how often he bended over you, and wept over you, and ye would have none of him!

O, sirs, I fear this year will witness against you in the judgmentday! I fear there are many of you who will accuse me in that day, and say: Why did you not speak plainer, louder, oftener? Why did you not knock oftener at our doors, to tell us and our children of Christ, the way of glory! ah! was it not worth more effort to save us from an eternal hell? Ah! dear friends, be wise. Many of you will not see another year come to a close. If there be fifty-O how dreadful!-you may be among that fifty; nay, if there be forty, thirty, twenty, ten, still you may be among the ten. If there be but one, you may be that one. O it will be an awful word in that day: "I was a long time with you, but you would not know me!" Amen.

Dundee, Dec. 31, 1837.

SERMON LXXIV.

WHO SHALL SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST ?

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us."-Rom. viii., 35-37.

In this passage there are three very remarkable questions: 1. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Paul stands forth like a herald, and he looks up to the holy angels, and down to the accusing devils, and round about on a scowling world, and into conscience, and he asks, Who can accuse one whom God has chosen, and Christ has washed? It is God who justifieth. The holy God has declared believers clean every whit. 2. "Who shall condemn?" Paul looks round all the judges of the worldall who are skilled in law and equity; he looks up to the holy angels, whose superhuman sight pierces deep and far into the righteous government of God; he looks up to God, the judge of all, who must do right-whose ways are equal and perfect righteousness-and he asks, Who shall condemn? It is Christ that died. Christ has paid the uttermost farthing: so that every judge must cry out, There is now no condemnation. 3. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ?" Again, he looks round all created worlds-he looks at the might of the mightiest archangels-the satanic power of legions of devils-the rage of a God-defying world-the united forces of all created things; and when he sees sinners folded in the arms of Jesus, he cries, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Not all the forces of ten thousand worlds combined, for Jesus is greater than all. "We are more than conquerors through him that loved us."

The love of Christ! Paul says: "The love of Christ passeth knowledge." It is like the blue sky into which you may see clearly, but the real vastness of which you cannot measure. It is like the deep, deep sea, into whose bosom you can look a little way, but its depths are unfathomable. It has a breadth without a bound, length without end, height without top, and depth without bottom. If holy Paul said this, who was so deeply taught in divine thingswho had been in the third heaven, and seen the glorified face of Jesus how much more may we, poor and weak believers, look into that love and say: It passeth knowledge!

There are three things in these words: 1. Explain the love of Christ. 2. Who would separate us from it? 3. They shall not be able.

I. I would speak of the love of Christ.

1. When it began in the past eternity: "Then I was by him as one brought up with him and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth; and my delights were with the sons of men."-Prov. viii., 30, 31. This river of love began to flow before the world was—from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. Christ's love to us is as old as the Father's love to the Son. This river of light began to stream from Jesus towards us before the beams poured from the sun; before the rivers flowed to the ocean; before angel loved angel, or man loved man; before creatures were, Christ loved us. This is a great deep, who can fathom it? This love passeth knowledge.

2. And who was it that loved? It was Jesus, the Son of God, the second person of the blessed Godhead. His name is "Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace," "King of kings and Lord of lords," Immanuel, and Jesus the Saviour, the only begotten of his Father. His beauty is perfect: he is the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person. All the purity, majesty, and love of Jehovah, dwell fully in him. He is the bright and morning Star: he is the Sun of righteousness and the Light of the world; he is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the valleys-fairer than the children of men. His riches are infinite; he could say, "All that the Father hath is mine." He is Lord of all. All the crowns in heaven were cast at his feet; all angels and seraphs were his servants; all worlds his domain. His doings were infinitely glorious. By him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible. He called the things that are not as though they were; worlds started into being at his word. Yet he loved us. It is much to be loved by one greater in rank than ourselves to be loved by an angel; but O, to be loved by the Son of God! this is wonderful; it passeth knowledge.

the

3. Whom did he love? He loved us! He came into the world" "to save sinners, of whom I am the chief." Had he loved one as glorious as himself, we would not have wondered. Had he loved the holy angels, that reflected his pure, bright image, we would not have wondered. Had he loved the lovely among sons of men-the amiable, the gentle, the kind, the rich, the great, the noble-it would not have been so great a wonder. But, ah! he loved sinners, the vilest sinners, the poorest, meanest, guiltiest wretches that crawl upon the ground. Manasseh, who murdered his own children, was one whom he loved; Zaccheus, the greyhaired swindler, was another; blaspheming Paul was a third; the wanton of Samaria was another; the dying thief was another; and the lascivious Corinthians were more. "And such were some of you." We were black as hell when he looked on us; we were hell-worthy, under his Father's wrath and curse; and ye

he loved us, and said: I will die for them. "Thou hast loved me out of the pit of corruption," each saved one can say. Oh, brethren! this is strange love: he that was so great, and lovely, and chose pure, us, who were mean and filthy with sin, that he might wash and purify, and present us to himself. This love passeth knowledge!

4. What this love cost him. When Jacob loved Rachel, he served seven years for her; he bore the summer's heat and winter's cold. But Jesus bore the hot wrath of God, and the winter blast of his Father's anger, for those he loved. Jonathan loved David with more than the love of women, and for his sake he bore the cruel anger of his father, Saul. But Jesus, out of love to us, bore the wrath of his Father poured out without mixture. It was the love of Christ that made him leave the love of his Father, the adoration of angels, and the throne of glory; it was love that made him not despise the Virgin's womb; it was love that brought him to the manger at Bethlehem; it was love that drove him into the wilderness; love made him a man of sorrows; love made him hungry, and thirsty, and weary; love made him hasten to Jerusalem; love led him to gloomy, dark Gethsemane; love bound and dragged him to the judgment hall; love nailed him to the cross; love bowed his head beneath the amazing load of his Father's anger. "Greater love hath no man than this." "I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."

Sinners were sinking beneath the red-hot flaines of hell; he plunged in and swam through the awful surge, and gathered his own into his bosom. The sword of justice was bare and glittering, ready to destroy us; He, the man that was God's fellow, opened his bosom and let the stroke fall on him. We were set up as a mark for God's arrows of vengeance; Jesus came between, and they pierced him through and through; every arrow that should have pierced our souls, stuck fast in him. He, his own self, bare our sins in his own body on the tree. As far as east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. This is the love of Christ that passeth knowledge. This is what is set before you to-day in the broken bread and poured-out wine. This is what we shall see on the throne-a Lamb as it had been slain. This will be the matter of our song through eternity: "Worthy is the Lamb!"

1. O the joy of being in the love of Christ! Are you in this amazing love? Has he loved you out of the pit of corruption? Then, he will wash you, and make you a king and a priest unto God. He will wash you in his own blood whiter than the snow; he will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. A new heart also will he give you. He will keep your conscience clean, and your heart right with God. He will put his Holy Spirit within you, and make you pray with groanings

that cannot be uttered. He will justify you, he will pray for you, he will glorify you. All the world may oppose you-dear friends may die and forsake you; you may be left alone in the wilderness; still you will not be alone; Christ will love you still.

2. O the misery of being out of the love of Christ! If Christ loves you not, how vain all other loves! Your friends may love you, your neighbors may be kind to you; the world may praise youministers may love your souls; but, if Christ love you not, all creature-love will be vain. You will be unwashed, unpardoned, unholy; you will sink into hell, and all the creatures will stand around and be unable to reach out a hand to help you.

3. How shall I know that I am in the love of Christ? By your being drawn to Christ: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." Have you seen something attractive in Jesus? The world are attracted by beauty, or dress, or glittering jewels; have you been attracted to Christ by his good ointments? This is the mark of all who are graven on Christ's heart-they come to him; they see Jesus to be precious. The easy world see no preciousness in Christ; they prize a lust higher, the smile of the world higher, money higher, pleasure higher; but those whom Christ loves he draws after him by the sight of his preciousness. Have you thus followed him, prized him-as a drowning sinner cleaved to him?-then he will in no wise cast you out-in no wise, not for all you have done against him. "But I spent my best days in sin "Still I will in no wise cast you out. "I lived in open sin "-I will in no wise cast you out. "But I have sinned against light and conviction" -Still I will in no wise cast you out. "But I am a backslider" --still the arms of his love are open to enfold your poor guilty soul, and he will not cast you out.

II. Many would separate us.

From the beginning of the world it has been the great aim of Satan to separate believers from the love of Christ; and though he never has succeeded in the case of a single soul, yet still he tries it as eagerly as he did at first. The moment he sees the Saviour lift a lost sheep upon his shoulder, from that hour he plies all his efforts to pluck down the poor saved sheep from its place of rest. The moment the pierced hand of Jesus is laid on a poor, trembling, guilty sinner, from that hour does Satan try to pluck him out of Jesus's hand.

1. He did this in old times: "As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."-Verse 36. This is a cry taken from the book of Psalms. God's people in all ages have been hated and persecuted by Satan and the world. Observe the reason: "For thy sake -because they were like Jesus, and belonged to Jesus. The time: "All day long "-from morning till night. The world have