In those blessed abodes which Christ has gone to prepare, we are told, there is the broad river of the water of life, having on its banks the trees which yield their fruits every month, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations; there is a city with glorious foundations and streets of purest gold,— a temple in which God and the Lamb shall dwell, an inheritance that is incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, -yea, a kingdom that cannot be moved; a crown of life, and righteousness, and glory; a Father's house of many mansions, a table that shall never be drawn, a robe of spotless purity for every guest, a feast of fat things and of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, and of wines on the lees well refined. But these things, and all the unspeakable glory they faintly shadow forth, are the purchase of Immanuel's blood. Our forfeited inheritance, with all that belongs to it or has been added to it, was bought back by our Kinsman-Redeemer. Hence, the beloved disciple, to whom, in vision, the glories of the world to come were unveiled, describes the ransomed throng as casting their crowns at the feet of their blessed Redeemer, and saying, 'Thou art worthy to take the book,"—that is, the title-deeds of the inheritance," and to open the seals thereof; for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God, kings and priests." But the bliss of these kings and priests just consists in the glorifying and enjoying of God, and therefore in the perfection of that holy character which alone capacitates for glorifying and enjoying Him, in entire conformity to the moral image of Him who is at once our Redeemer and our Exemplar. And as He is the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God, who is the Author and Finisher of our Faith, who is engaged to carry out and bring to perfection the good work He has begun in our souls; as it hath pleased the Father that all fulness of grace and blessing should dwell in Him, that out of His fulness we may receive unfailing supplies; as no giving can impoverish Him, or exhaust His divine fulness:surely He is able to fill every vessel of honour to the full, and the riches of His rewarding glory, as well as of His sanctifying grace, are unsearchable. Such, dear brethren, are the nature and extent of the riches of Christ, your Saviour God,-which are all offered to you in His Gospel, and sealed over to worthy receivers in His holy sacraments. And now, in fulfilment of our commission, we would G preach them unto you,-declaring, in the name of the Master we serve, that these unsearchable riches are for you-for each of you, to take, to use, to live on; for you, though poor and unworthy,—yea, just because you are poor, unworthy, and in need of all things; for you, as a free gift from the Father of mercies and His blessed Son. We say they are a free gift to you; for, though they are above all value, and have cost Him dear, the price has been fully paid, and you may now take them freely, and buy them without money and without price. In His name we offer these riches to you to each of you. We entreat your acceptance of them,-as gold tried in the fire-the trueenduring, all-satisfying, inexhaustible riches-the treasures which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thief steal, nor death part from you. The apostle declared the glad tidings respecting them to the Ephesians, who were, by nature, dead in trespasses and sins, without God and without hope in the world. They listened, and believed, and received the offered boon, and they were raised from their low estate, to sit in heavenly places with Christ; they were brought nigh to God, blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ, and set forth, as patterns, to show unto the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace. Believing that it is only by the same Gospel-the same precious and lifegiving truths respecting Christ and His fulness,—that the same blessed effects can be still produced, in our Master's name we declare the same glad tidings to you. We assure you, on His own faithful testimony, that He is as rich in mercy and full of grace now as then, and offers all His blessings as freely and lovingly to you as He did to them. We assure you, further, on His own warrant, that if ye will only be followers of their faith, ye too shall be pardoned, sanctified, and glorified; ye shall be no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God,-yea, heirs of God and jointheirs with Christ,-monuments of the riches and efficacy of His unsearchable grace,—sharers in His unspeakable glory. Neglect not, then, His great salvation; spurn not His gracious offers. Hear, and your souls shall live; and He will make with you an everlasting covenant, and give unto you the sure mercies of David. "Act but the infant's gentle part, Yearns like thy God's to make thee blest." In conclusion, let no one suppose that, in preaching thus, I have been preaching a different gospel from that which was believed and preached by the framers of those Confessions, which, in earlier and later times, have commanded the reverence of all the Scottish Churches. There are, as has been lately said, heights in these we cannot scale, and depths we cannot fathom; but the highest of the heights, and the deepest of the depths, are found in the Word of God as well as in them, and can no more be eliminated from the epistles of Paul and Peter than from our symbolical books. While holding these mysterious truths in the sense in which they are meant to be held, and claiming the right, when occasion calls, to treat of them cautiously and reverently, I protest against all such caricatures of them as have been recently put into circulation.* I protest, with the Synod of Dort, that the Reformed Churches (and our own among the rest) do not hold, but, on the contrary, detest with all their hearts the opinion "that God, by His own absolute or arbitrary will, and without any respect of sin, hath foreordained or created any part of mankind to be damned, or that His decree is the cause of sin, or of final unbelief, in any such sense as it is the cause of faith and good works." I protest, with one of the most distinguished divines employed in drawing up the Westminster Confession, that "no man is created by God with a nature and quality fitting him for damnation. Yea, neither in the state of his innocency, nor in that of his fall and corruption, doth he receive anything from God which is a fit and proper means of bringing him to his damnation;" and with another, that "it is most certain that God is not the cause of any man's destruction; He found us sinners in Adam, but made none sinners;" and with a third, that "the just cause of a sinner's damnation is of and from himself; never lay it on God's decrees, or want of means and helps." And I claim it, as an act of barest justice to them, that the statements of the Confession be interpreted in the light of their own writings and teaching, and not by the travesties of caricaturists, who have never taken the trouble fairly to weigh it, or thoroughly to study it and them. Against the assertion that those who hold these opinions cannot preach a free Gospel, I am content to set the undeniable fact that they did preach a free Gospel, and that few ever did so with more winning tenderness than Arrowsmith, * Preached to the United Presbyterian Congregation, St Andrews, shortly after one of these caricatures of Calvinism had been gratuitously circulated among ministers in this neighbourhood. Calamy, Manton, and Sedgwick in the seventeenth century; or than Boston, Willison, and the Erskines, in the eighteenth; or than Chalmers, M'Cheyne, Bonar, Crawford, Macduff, and Nicholson, in the nineteenth. They all believed that God had a special purpose of mercy towards a people who were to be made willing in the day of His power, and that the stupendous plan of our redemption was not formed and executed at such a cost, to leave it absolutely dependent on the mere caprice of man, whether any fruit should come of it or not. But they also believed and taught, that, to all to whom the Gospel comes, the offer of salvation through Christ is really and sincerely made, and grace is tendered; and that the defect-to use again the language of the so-called grim Synod of Dort-" is not in the Gospel, nor in Christ offered in the Gospel, nor in God who calleth them, but in themselves, who reject the call, and refuse the offer." According to our Larger Catechism, "for their wilful contempt and neglect of the grace offered to them, being justly left to their unbelief, they do never truly come to Jesus Christ." This was unquestionably the teaching of the old Calvinists, and I hope it will never cease to be held and taught by their successors in the present day. Plenteous grace with Thee is found, Let the healing streams abound: Thou of life the Fountain art, PAUL SENT TO THE GENTILES: A SERMON. BY THE REV. J. H. WILSON, M. A., BARCLAY CHURCH, EDINBURGH. "And it came to pass, that, when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance; and saw Him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem for they will not receive thy testimony concerning Me. And I said, Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on Thee and when the blood of Thy martyr Stephen was shed, I was standing by, and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. And He said unto me, Depart: for I will thee far hence unto the Gentiles." -ACTS, xxii. 17-21. THIS passage is possessed of an interest,—I might almost say, a solemnity, of a peculiar kind. In the account which Luke has previously given us of this never-to-be-forgotten event in the life of Paul and in the history of the Church, this further interview between the apostle and the Lord is not recorded; and but for the special circumstances that now arose to call it forth, it might never have been mentioned at all. It had a very direct and weighty bearing on Paul's present position and argument, and might have availed-as, doubtless, he expected it would—to carry conviction to the hearts of his opponents, and disarm their further opposition, if it did not win them to the faith which he himself had been shut up thus wonderfully to receive. The account of any interview with the risen Christ, and especially one that was of such significance, and had such mighty issues dependent on it, may well be listened to with deepest awe. The purpose for which it is introduced is manifest enough. Paul wished to convince his former co-religionists, that just as he had become a Christian and a Christian preacher because he |