As to the second question, Obedience is not all that the law requires of a guilty creature; (and in the place of such creatures our Saviour stood,) a guilty creature is not only obliged to be obedient for the future, but to make satisfaction for the past. The covenant made with Adam had two branches: obey, and live; sin, and die. Now the obedience of Christ did honour to the preceptive part of the covenant, but not to the penal part of it. Mere obedience. to the law would have made no atonement, would have afforded no expression of the divine displeasure against sin; therefore, after a life spent in doing the will of God, he must lay down his life : nor was it possible that this cup should pass from him.

As obedience would have been insufficient without suffering, so it appears that suffering would have been insufficient without obedience*: the latter was preparatory to the former. Such an High Priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. (Heb. vii. 26.) And such a meetness could not have appeared, but by a life of obedience to God. As a Mediator between God and man, it was necessary that he should be, and appear to be an enemy to sin, ere he could be admitted to plead for sinners. Such was our Redeemer to the last, and this it was that endeared him to the Father. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.-Finally: The sufferings of Christ

I use the terms obedience and suffering, the one to express Christ's conformity to the precept of the law, the other his sustaining the penalty of it; though, in strict propriety of speech, the obedience of Christ included suffering, and his suffering included obedience. He laid down his life in obedience to the Father.

could go only to the removal of the curse; they could afford no title to eternal life, which being promised on condition of obedience, that condition must be fulfilled in order to ensure the blessing. Hence it is by the righteousness of one that we partake of justification of life. Rom. v. 18.

The great ends originally designed by the promise and the threatening, were to express God's love of righteousness, and his abhorrence of unrighteousness; and these ends are answered by the obedience and sufferings of Christ, and that in a higher degree, owing to the dignity of his character, than if man had either kept the law, or suffered the penalty for the breach of it. But if Christ had only obeyed the law, and had not suffered; or had only suffered, and not obeyed, one or other of these ends must, for aught we can perceive, have failed of being accomplished. But his obedience unto death, which includes both, gloriously answered every end of moral government, and opened a way by which God could honourably, not only pardon the sinner who should believe in Jesus, but bestow upon him eternal life. Pardon being granted with a view to Christ's atonement, would evince the resolution of Jehovah to punish sin; and eternal life, being bestowed as a reward to his obedience, would equally evince him the friend of right

eousness.

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THE NECESSITY OF SEEKING THOSE THINGS FIRST, WHICH ARE OF THE FIRST IMPORTANCE.

A GREAT part of the evil which prevails in the

world, consists in an entire neglect of what God commands, or in doing what he hath expressly forbidden; but not the whole of it. There may be an attachment to many things, which in themselves are right, and yet the whole may be rendered worse than void by the want of order, or a regard to things according to their importance. Our Lord did not censure the Pharisees for attending to the lesser matters of the law, but for attending to them to the neglect of the greater. If we pursue things as primary, which ought to occupy only a secondary or subordinate place in the system, we subvert the whole, and employ ourselves in doing what is worse than nothing.

I think I see the operation of this principle among us, and that to a wide extent. I see it amongst the unconverted, amongst the converted, and amongst different parties or denominations of christians.

1. It is by this that great numbers who lay their accounts with obtaining the kingdom of heaven will be found to have deceived themselves.-It may be too much to say of them, that they do not seek the kingdom of God; but they seek it not as a first or primary object. The world is their chief good, and the kingdom of God only occupies a secondary place in their affections. They wish to attend to their everlasting concerns; but they cannot spare time. Now we can commonly spare time for that which we love best.

The sensualist can find time for his pleasures, and the man of the world for getting money. They can think of these things when sitting in the house, or walking in the way; and every thing else is made to bend, or give way to them. The result is, this preposterous conduct mars the whole; for God and religion must be supreme, or nothing. There are certain relations even amongst us in which it is impossible to be contented with a secondary place. If a wife give her heart to another than her husband, and aims only to oblige him so far as to keep him in tolerable good humour, it is what cannot be endured: he must be first, or nothing; and such is the claim of heaven.

2. It is owing to this, among other causes, that many christians go from year to year in doubt with respect to their interest in Christ and spiritual blessings. It is very desirable to have clear and satisfactory views on this subject. To live in suspense on a matter of such importance, must, if we be not sunk in insensibility, be miserable. How is it that so much of this prevails amongst us; when, if we look into the new testament, we shall scarcely see an instance of it among the primitive christians? Shall we cast off all such characters as unbelievers? Some have done so, alleging that it is impossible for a person to be a believer without being conscious of it. Surely this is too much : for if the grace of God within us, whatever be its degree, must needs be self-evident to us, why are we directed to keep his commandments as the mean of knowing that we know him?* The primitive christians, however, had but little of this fear; and the reason of it was, they had more of that perfect love to Christ, to the gospel, and to the success of it, than we have, which

* 1 John ii. 3.

tended to cast it out*. If we make our personal comfort the first object of our pursuit, (and many attend the means of grace as if they did,) God will make it the last of his: for it is a general principle in the divine administration, “He that honoureth me, I will honour; but he that despiseth me shall be lightly esteemed." If we seek the honour of God, we shall find our own peace and comfort in it: but if we make light of him, he will make light of us, and leave us to pass our days in darkness and suspense.

3. It is owing, if I mistake not, to the same cause that various denominations of christians, who at some periods have been greatly blessed of God, have declined as to their spiritual prosperity.-Several of our religious denominations have arisen from a conscientious desire to restore christianity to its primitive purity. From this motive acted, I believe, the greater part of the reformers, the puritans, the non-conformists, and the baptists. I do not know that any one of these denominations were censurable for the separations which they made from other professing christians. It may be alleged, that they have torn the church of Christ into parties, and so occasioned much evil: yet some of them did not separate from the church of Christ, but from a worldly community calling itself by that name; and those who did, pretended not to be the only people of God in the world, but considered themselves merely as withdrawing from brethren who walked disorderly. It is a melancholy fact, however, that no sooner have a people formed themselves into a new denomination, than they are in the utmost danger of concentrating almost all their strength, influence, zeal, prayers, and endeavours for its support; not as a part

* 1 John iv. 18.