who felt no value for the worth of moral accomplishments, and bestowed no labour on the cultivation of them. We beg the attention of our readers to the contrast which obtains between a very prevailing fancy upon this subject, and the fact, as it stands experimentally before us. The fancy is, that those who disclaim a justification by works, are those who take the least pains in the doing of them. The fact is, that it was by their very pains to be perfect and complete in the doing of them, that they found this foundation to be impracticable; and, now that they are upon another foundation, it is unto them, and not unto others, that we look for works in their greatest abundance, for works in their greatest purity. The fancy is, that, by linking their whole security, not with the rewards of obedience, but with the grace of the gospel, these people have given up all business with the law. The fact is, that, ever since they thought of religion at all, they have been by far the busiest of all their fellows about the requisitions of the law. It was their schoolmaster, to bring them unto Christ; and now that they are so brought, the keeping of the law forms their daily and delightful occupation. It may well rank as one of the curiosities of our nature, that they who are most hostile to the doctrine of the efficacy of faith, because they think that works of themselves are sufficient for salvation, are, in the real and practical habit of their lives, most negligent in the performance of them; and, on the other hand, that they who are most hostile to the doctrine of the efficacy of works, because they think that it is by the power of faith that we are kept

unto salvation, are the men who have most to show of those very works on which they seem to stamp so slight an estimation. And, to complete this apparent mystery, they who impute nothing but licentiousness to orthodoxy, tolerate licentiousness only in those who are the enemies, and never in those who are the professors of it-look upon the alliance between vice and evangelical sentiment, to be a far more monstrous and unlikely alliance, than that which often obtains between vice and an irreligious contempt for all the peculiarities of our faith-reproach the doctrine of the gospel for its immoral tendencies, and yet, for every flaw in the morality of its disciples, will they lift the reproachful cry of their lives and their opinions being in a state of disgraceful and hypocritical variance with each other proving, after all, that the men who build their security most upon faith, are the men to whom even the world looks for most in the way of practical righteousness; are the men whose delinquencies are ever sure to raise the loudest murmurs of wrath or of astonishment from bye-standers; are the men over whom satire feels herself to have the greatest advantage, when, by any peccadillo of conduct, they furnish her with a topic, either of merriment or severity. And what else can we make of all these inconsistencies, than that there is a deep and prevailing misconception about the real character of the evangelical system? and that, while there has been imputed to it a cold and repulsive aspect towards virtue, there lies veiled under this a powerful and a working principle, from which even the public at large expect a more abun

dant return than they do from any other quarter of human society, of all the graces and all the accom→ plishments of virtue ?

There is a change in the direction of our mind, when, from the object of being justified by works, it turns itself to the new object of being justified by faith. It is then only that it puts itself in quest of the only justification which is possible; and yet, when thus employed, there is still a way of running uncertainly. For, first, as virtue is a thing which attaches personally to him who performs it, so is faith a thing which attaches person→ ally to him who possesses it. The one has just as local a residence within the mind, as the other. To have kind affection, and to have it not, argues a difference in the state of one's heart; and to have faith, or to have it not, argues, just as effectually, a difference in the state of one's understanding. To believe is to do that which we ought. To disbelieve, is to do that which we ought not. And further, we are expressly told in the gospel, that, with the right thing about us, there is linked our inheritance in heaven; and, with the wrong thing about us, there is linked our everlasting consignment to hell. Here then is faith, like virtue, a personal acquirement; the possession of which is a right thing, and the want of which is a wrong thing. With such a statement before us, there is nothing more natural, than that we should look upon faith as standing in the same place, under the dispensation of the Gospel, that obedience did, under the dispensation of the Law; that we should set about the acquirement of the one, very much

i

in the way in which we set about: the acquirement of the other; that we should put ourselves to work with the terms of the new covenant, just as we had been in the habit of working with the terms of the old covenant; strive to render our half of the bargain, which is faith, and then look to God for his half of the bargain, which is our final and everlasting salvation.

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Under the economy of "Do this and live," the great point of anxiety with him who is labouring for the good of his soul, is, “O that I had obedience !" Under the economy of "Believe, and ye shall be saved," the great point of anxiety with him who is labouring for the good of his soul, is, "O that I had faith!" There is, in both cases, an carnestness, and perhaps a striving after the acquirement of a certain property of character. The only difference between the two cases, lies in the kind of property. But, just as the mind may put forth a strenuousness in its attempt to realize the grace of temperance, or in its attempt to realize the grace of patience; so may the mind put forth a strenuousness in its attempt to realize the grace of faith; and, with the success of this endeavour, may it connect the prize of a happy eternity, and be virtually in the same attitude of labouring to substantiate a claim under the gospel, as it formerly was under the law. So that, in fact, the old legal spirit may be as fully at work with the new requirements, as ever it was with the old The prospect of bliss may still be made to turn as much as before upon a performance. only change is in the terms of the performance.

ones.

The

But, in point of fact, men may make a work of faith. They may offer it to heaven, as their part of a new contract into which God has entered with the guilty. Faith and reward may stand related to each other, as the corresponding terms of a stipulation, in the same way that obedience and reward did. The favour of God, instead of being seen as a gift held out for our acceptance, may still be seen as a thing to be gained by a mental work, done with the putting forth of mental energies. In the doing of this work, there may be felt all the darkness, and all the anxiety, and all the spirit of bondage, which attached to the work of the old

covenant.

And thus it is, that there are many, with the doctrine of the gospel in their minds, and the phraseology of the gospel on their lips, upon whom the grace of the gospel is utterly thrown away, and who, as if still goaded on by the threats and exactions of the law, continue to run as uncertainly, and to fight even as one who beateth the air.

Now, it is evident, that in this way the gospel may be so misconceived, as to have no right or appropriate influence whatever on the mind of an inquirer. If salvation, instead of being looked to, as by grace through faith, be looked to, as by faith, in the light of a rendered condition on the part of man, upon which he may challenge a certain stipu- · lated fulfilment on the part of God, then, all the distance, and suspicion, and unsatisfied longings, by which he felt himself to be harassed and enfeebled, when attempting to work and to win under the old economy, may still attend him, as he tries