The New Life (Continued)

I will cause you to walk in my statutes, and keep my

judgments, and do them. — EZEKIEL xxxvi. 27.

^PHE predestination which I believe in, is that of Paul — “Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.” To redeem us from the power, as well as punishment of iniquity, Jesus died. For this his most precious blood was poured out upon the earth — for this the Spirit has descended from heaven. We are “called with a holy calling.” We are “called” to pluck the love of sin from our hearts, and dethrone every idol that usurps the place of God. We are “called” to nail the old man to the cross with his affections and lusts. We are “called” to be like Jesus. His meat and drink was to do his Father’s will. He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” By this lofty end of a good man’s life, by the regard which you cherish to Christ, by the welfare of your soul, by the interest of other men’s souls, you are solemnly bound to beware of everything which might blemish your profession, which might obscure the lustre of your graces, which might hinder you from walking in God’s statutes, and keeping his judgments, and doing them. So far, therefore, as circumstances permit you, see that you literally “depart from evil,” and in the choice of your company and companions follow the example of David, “I am a companion to all them that fear thee;” and remember the warning of his son, “a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Sin is a disease which is communicated by contagion. Shun, therefore, the place of infection. More than if they had plague or» fever — avoid the company of the infected. Abjure every scene, abstain from every pleasure, abandon every pursuit, which experience has taught you tends to sin, dulls the fine edge of conscience, unfits for religious duties, indisposes for religious enjoyments, sends you prayerless to bed, or dull and drowsy to prayer. As the seaman does with surf beaten reef or iron bound shore, give these a wide berth; and, passing on, hold straight away, under a press of canvas, in your course for heaven.

Never fear to suffer; but oh! fear to sin. If you must choose between them, choose rather the greatest suffering than the smallest sin. Stand in awe of God, and in fear of temptation. “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” It is not safe to bring gun powder within the fall even of a spark; nor safe, how ever dexterous your driving, to shave with your wheels the edge of a beetling precipice; nor safe in the bestbuilt bark that ever rode the waves, to sail on the out most rim of a roaring whirlpool. The seed of the woman has indeed bruised the head of the serpent; yet beware! The reptile is not dead; and it is dangerous to handle an adder, or touch its envenomed fangs, if the creature is alive, even though its head be crushed.

Let me also warn you that such a holy life as the text enjoins, is impossible to any but those who stand on their guard against the beginnings of evil. Take alarm at an evil thought, wish, desire. What are these, but the germs of sin — the winged seeds which, wafted on by the wind, drop into the heart, and finding in our natural corruption a fat and too favourable soil, spring up into actual transgressions? These, like the rattle of the snake, the hiss of the serpent, reveal the presence and near neighbourhood of danger. Besides, does not the experience of all good men prove that sin is most easily crushed in the bud, and that it is safer to flee from temptation than to fight it? Fight like a man when you cannot avoid the battle, but rather flee than fight. Be afraid of temptation, avoid it, abhor it; and if caught by the enchantress, tear yourself from her encircling arms, seek safety in flight, your answer that of Joseph’s chastity — “Shall I do this great evil and sin against God?”

True religion, however, consists not in a passive, but active piety. We are to walk in God’s statutes, to keep his judgments, and to do them. Our pattern is not the shaven monk who wears a cowl, and tells his beads, and keeps his midnight vigils, and goes through the dull routine of mumbled prayers and irksome fastings within the walls of a monastery, remote from the world among the snows of the mountains or in the gloom of the forest; nor she who, having assumed the black veil and renounced society, seeks safety from its contamination, or solace from its sorrows, within the cold formalities and quiet cloisters of a convent. The pattern of a Christian is that divine man, who — while he passed a brief period of probation in the lonely desert, and often spent whole nights on the mountain in solitary communion with his God — walked the corn-fields of Galilee, frequented the fishing villages on the shores of Tiberias, and was occasionally to be met with in Judah’s towns, and on Jerusalem’s crowded streets. Our exemplar is he, who, wherever he went, “went about doing good,” earning for himself this noble opprobrium, “the friend of publicans and sinners.”

Observe, also, that activity of Christian life is implied in the very terms of the text. Grant that we may thereby be exposed to hardships and temptations, from which a retiring piety might exempt us. Still, a life of active service shall prove best for others, and in the end also for ourselves. A candle set beneath a bushel is, no doubt, safe from wind and weather; but of what use is it? On whose work does it shine? Whose steps does it guide? Whose path does it illumine? I would rather burn and waste on some lofty headland to guide the bark through night and tempest to its desired haven. No light shineth for itself, and “no man liveth for him self.” Besides, the very trials to which piety is exposed on the stormy heights of duty, impart to it a robust and healthy character. The strongest trees grow not beneath the glass of a conservatory, or in sheltered and sunny valleys. The stoutest timber stands on Norwegian rocks, where tempests rage, and long, hard winters reign. And is it not also with the Christian as with the animal life? Exercise is the parent of health, and strength the reward of activity. The muscles are seen most fully developed in the brawny arm that plies the blacksmith’s hammer. Health blooms ruddiest on the cheek of him, who — not nailed to a sedentary occupation, nor breathing the close atmosphere of heated chambers — but fearless of cold, a stranger to downy pillows and luxurious repose, rises with the day, sees the early worm rise in the dank meadow, hears the morning lark high over head, and, passing his hours in athletic exercises, increases his strength by spending it. Even so, the most vigorous and healthy piety is that which is the busiest, which has difficulties to battle with, which has its hands full of good works, which has — I may say — neither time nor room for evil, but aiming at great things, both for God and man, promptly, summarily dismisses temptation, with Nehemiah’s answer — “I have a great work to do, therefore I cannot come down.”

With so many living and dying in it without God and hope, with the whole heathen world still unconverted, with thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands at home sunk in the deepest ignorance, and slaves of the vilest sins, with members of our families or friendly circles far from God, and between whom and us — appalling thought! — death would make an eternal separation, this world has much need that we were up and doing, and throwing ourselves with eager zeal and our whole soul into the cause of active Christianity. Our opportunities of good are many and multiform. A Christian man should feel like some strong, brave swimmer, who has hundreds around him sinking, drowning, shrieking for help. The difficulty is to make selection, on whose unhappy head first to lay a saving hand. Amid such scenes and calls, oh, it is lamentable to think how much of our time has been frivolously, if not worse than frivolously spent. “The time past of our lives may suffice us to have wrought the will of the flesh;” to have enjoyed our own ease, made money, and gathered around us the comforts of life. To nobler ends be its remaining sands devoted! Take Jesus Christ for your copy. Run in God’s statutes without wearying, walk in them without fainting; and let the day on which some good has not been done to ourselves and others — some glory won for God, some progress made in the divine life — be a day mourned over, wept for, this black sentence written down against it in the calendar of our life — “I have lost a day.” Our Christianity is a name, a shadow, a mockery, unless we resemble him who, being incarnate God, was incarnate goodness, and of whom, although he stood alone in that judgment hall — without one brave brother’s voice raised to speak for him — there were hundreds and thousands to bear witness, that he “went about doing good,” the friend both of sufferers and sinners. Thus are we to fulfil the duties of the Christian life, and thus exhibit a living picture of one to whom this promise is fulfilled — “I will cause you to walk in my statutes, and to keep my judgments and do them.” In closing my observations on this part of our subject, I remark —

I. One of the most powerful means to accomplish the duty of the text is to cultivate the love of Christ.

They who would live like Jesus must look to Jesus. The effect which should be produced by “looking to Jesus” we may learn by turning our gaze on the sun. To eyes which have been bathed in his dazzling beams, how do other objects appear? Why, all are changed. They have grown dim, if not dark and invisible. Candles, that burned bright, have lost their flame; flowers, that looked gay, are colourless; the very diamond has ceased to sparkle. And saw we Jesus Christ in the full effulgence of his Saviour glory, all sinful, even all common created objects, would appear to undergo some such change.

We see but through a glass darkly. The dimness of sin impairs our vision; but were we to see Jesus, as he shall be seen in heaven, would it not happen to us as once it befell a celebrated philosopher? Pursuing his discoveries on the subject of light — with a zeal not too often consecrated to science, but too seldom consecrated to religion — he ventured on a bold experiment. With out protection of smoked or coloured glass, he fixed his gaze steadily, for sometime, on the sun — exposing his naked eyes to the beams of its fiery disc. Satisfied, he turned his head away; but, strange to see! — such was the impression made on the organ of sight — wherever he turned, the sun was there; if he looked down, it seemed to have dropped from heaven and was burning at his feet; it shone in the top of the sky in the mirkest midnight; it blazed on the page of every book he read; he saw it when he shut his eyes, he saw it when he opened them. The last object which he saw when he passed off into sleep, it was the first to meet his waking eyes. Now, happy were it for us if we got some such sight of Christ. Happy for us if the glory of that sun of righteousness were so impressed upon the eye of faith that we could never forget him. Ever seeing, we should ever love him. With Christ thus always present to our mind’s eye, we should be able more fully to adopt the words of Paul, and say, “the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again.”

Experience has proved that of all instruments, the mightiest for conversion is the love of Jesus. None other than “Christ and him crucified,” was Paul to know and preach; and in every age of the church and region of the world has not that proved the rod to smite rocky hearts? Let me illustrate the fact by referring to the oft-quoted experience of some Moravians who had gone to carry the glad tidings to the cold clime and rude savages of Greenland. Imagining that there must be a preparatory process, they commenced and continued for months to preach to these savages of their sins. They announced the wrath of God; they sounded Sinai’s thunders; they blew its loudest trumpet in their ears; they appealed to conscience, to fear, to their self love and self interest. They told them of a heaven above, with a sun that never set; they told them of a dark and dreary hell below, where nor sun, nor hope ever rose; of fire that burned and a worm that gnawed incessantly. Thus they preached. But their preaching was all in vain. The aspect of their hearers had its counterpart in the wintry landscape of these Arctic regions; characterized by a sunless sky — perpetual night — the intensest cold — a death-like silence — the land wrapped in a death-like shroud — and a sea bound fast in chains of ice. These good men changed their plan. Choosing another therne, exchanging the law for the love of God, they preached of Calvary, they expatiated on the love which brought the Man of Sorrows to a cross, and opened his arms to embrace the world. The effect was as immediate as it was remarkable. When summer came, and the snows melted on the hills; and, with sounds, like the salvos of cannon that announce a victory, the ice broke on these frozen seas; and beneath the beams of a sun, which blazed at mid-day nor set at midnight, the earth — like a corpse come to life — dis robed itself of its shroud; and the sea, rejoicing in freedom from its icy bonds, with tides that ebbed and flowed, once more answered to the influences of heaven, and rising to the wind, praised God night and day with the voices of its roaring breakers, this glorious change was but a picture of the melting, moving, transforming, regenerating power felt by the wondering savage, as he gazed with weeping eyes on the love of Christ and the bloody cross of Calvary.

As the love of Christ to us is the mightiest power to awaken faith, so in the love of our hearts to Christ will be found the mightiest power to secure obedience, and ensure our walking in God’s statutes, and keeping his judgments, and doing them. Therefore, we urge you to cultivate it; for

Love is the most powerful of all motives.

Samson’s great strength lay in his hair. Shorn of his flowing locks, he was like other men. Now the Christian’s great strength lies in his love; and when Christ invites us to sacrifices and sufferings which the world would pronounce intolerable, love is prepared both to explain and justify the language of his invitation — “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for it is easy, and my burden, for it is light” On the back of love the burden loses more than half its weight, and the work that is done in love loses more than half its tedium and difficulty. It is as with a stone, which in the air, and on the dry ground, we strain at, but cannot stir. Flood the field where it lies; bury the block beneath the rising water; and now when its head is submerged, bend to the work. Put your strength to it. Ah! it moves — rises from its bed — rolls on before your arm. So, when under the heavenly influences of grace the tide of love rises, and goes swelling over our duties and difficulties, a child can do a man’s work, and a man can do a giant’s. Let love be present in the heart, and “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings God ordaineth strength.” Strength! How great strength? Death pulls down the youngest and the strongest; but love is stronger than death. She welcomes sacrifices, and glories in tribulation. Duty has no burden, nor death any terrors for her.

Look at that bird, which, with wings outstretched, sits dead on the scorched and blackened tree. She might have flown away in safety. The smoke below alarmed her. Dashing through and through it on frightened wing, she screamed, as, climbing from branch to branch, the fire rose to her nest and unfeathered brood. She plunges right into the danger; and, perched on the brim of the nest — a tender mother — with her wings she fans her young as they gape and gasp for breath. At length the flames lick it with their fiery tongues — and now she leaves her perch. False to her God? False to her offspring? No. A true mother. She has abandoned it — not to soar away to heaven — but as on dewy nights and in happier hours, to seat herself above her poor nestlings; and with wings expanded, protecting them to the last — to be found dead with a dead brood beneath her. I look on that — or on this other mother, who stands with her child on the side of the sinking wreck, watching the last chance of a passing boat. She seizes it — not to leap in herself; but, lifting her boy in her arms, and printing a last loving kiss upon his lips, she drops him in, the mother herself remaining to drown and die. Or I look at that noble maid in old border story, who having caught a glance of the arrow that, shot by a rival’s hand, came from the bushes on the other bank, flung herself before her lover, and received the quivering shaft in her own true and faithful heart. I look at these things, and seeing love to ‘be strong as death, I urge you to cultivate the love of Jesus, and pass on in its divine strength to the field of duty, and the altar of sacrifice.

I do not say that you will find it easy to walk in God’s statutes, to keep Christ’s commandments, and do them. To pluck sin from a bleeding heart — to place our right hand on the block and cut it off — to pull a right eye from its socket, and put our foot upon it — for a proud man to learn humility — for a lover of the world not to love it — for one whose corruption is strong to nail it to the cross, and keep it nailed there till it die — when the path of duty is strewed with flints and thorns, to walk over them with bleeding feet — is, and must be painful. There is no use of concealing it, or of denying it. No. But all the more need there is that you inflame your love by looking to Christ. Go often, arid, with the shepherds, gaze on the heavenly babe as he lies on a pallet of straw in the corner of a manger. Accompany the disciples to Gethsemane, and sit with them beneath her hoary olives, listening in the stilly night to the groans of a Son in his Father’s hands. Or join the group of weeping women, and with the other Marys and his fainting mother, take up your station beside the awful cross. Meditate on these things till you can say with David, “While I was musing, the fire burned.”

Love is a motive to duty as pleasant as it is powerful.

Love weaves chains that are tougher than iron, and yet softer than silk. She unites the strength of a giant to the gentleness of a little child; and, with a power of change all her own, under her benign and omnipotent influence duties that were once intolerable drudgeries become a pure delight. The mother, for instance, with drawn from scenes of gaiety, without which to others and once also to herself the cup of life was flat and tasteless, is awakened to new enjoyments. She never wearies watching by her infant’s cradle; nor does she grudge the nights of broken rest, the toils, the cares, the troubles that creature costs her, although these may have blanched her cheek, and paled the lustre of her eye. To cares that others would feel irksome, how cheerfully she devotes herself, even before the babe can lisp her name or reward her kindness with a look of recognition and its grateful winning smile! Nor does the father weary of the toil that wins his children’s bread. The thought of these imparts strength to the arms of daily labour, fires the patriot’s zeal, kindles a soldier’s courage, cheers the seaman on his midnight watch, and reconciles thousands of our honest poor to a life of incessant struggle — carrying them through toils and hardships, otherwise intolerable, with a contented, cheerful, buoyant, singing spirit. You would think it a most weary and dreary thing to lead the life which that mother passes. And why? You think so, because you are a stranger to her love. And it is just because they are strangers to the love of Jesus — because they have never known nor loved him, that many cannot comprehend, how a pious life can be a pleasant one — how any man can think that the finest music is the sound of Sabbath bells — that God’s is the best house — and the Lord’s the best table. How a man of exalted grace would rather sit down with a devout peasant at the Lord’s supper, than at a banquet where he was the guest of kings — and how King David should have thought a day spent in the sanctuary better than a thousand passed amid the stirring scenes of camp life, or the glory and luxuries of a palace, they cannot understand. They cannot understand how, unless they were fools or fanatics, the disciples should leave the judgment seat with bleeding stripes, and rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ; they cannot understand how Paul and Silas should have sung as cheerfully in a dungeon as ever lark that shook the night dew from its wings, and rose to greet the morning sun; they cannot understand how the only fear of that brave old man John Welch in yonder rocky prison of the Bass, was lest, that others were winning the crown of martyrdom, he should miss it, nor be counted worthy of that bloody honour. But they, in some measure at least, understand these things, whose pulse beats true to the law of God, and whose heart burns with the love of Christ. To the feet of love the ways of that law are like a fresh and flowery sward, “ways of pleasantness and paths of peace.” Love changes bondage into liberty. Delighting in a law which was to our carnal nature what his chain is to the dog, what his task is to the slave, and against which our corrupt passions once foamed and fretted like angry seas on their iron shores, she takes up the harp of David, and thus celebrates its praise : —

2 B “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the judgments of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether; more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the droppings of the honeycomb.” “Oh! how I love thy law, 0 Lord; it is my meditation all the day.”

II. A powerful motive to the duties of the text lies in the fact, that by our obedience to these statutes the verdict of judgment shall be settled.

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We are saved by grace, but shall be tried by works. We are to be judged by the “deeds done in the body, whether they were good or bad.” “Every one of us,” says Paul, “shall give account of himself to God.” Oh! how should these solemn truths hedge up our path to a close and holy walk in his statutes! The great realities of eternity are projected in outline on the field of time, and this world lies under the long, solemn shadow of coming events. Imagine them come — the day of judgment come! For whatever purpose met, there is something impressive in the spectacle of a great multitude; that vast sea of faces — that mighty aggregate of human beings with living hearts, immortal souls, eternal destinies — all in a few years to be dead and gone; the joys and sorrows, the fears and hopes, that now animate and agitate them, cold and buried in the dust. How unspeakably more solemn the scene of the resurrection! the spectacle of a world come from their

graves to judgment! that vast assembly where, amid circumstances of terrible and transcendent sublimity — thunders that rend the skies — the perpetual hills passing away — burning mountains hurled into boiling seas — the sun dying — the starry heavens rolling up like a scrollall eyes are fixed on the “great white throne,” which rises in lonely majesty high above the countless crowd.

It shall be a solemn thing to meet the dead, and see those again — our father and mother, children, brethren — who are now mouldering in the dust. How solemn it was to part with them — to stand by the dying bed and look on as they passed away, till we heard life’s parting sigh, and saw the last convulsive quiver on the lip of one that was our own. But the meeting of those who, although lying side by side, have been long parted — who, although their coffins and dust commingle, have held no communion in these silent graves, shall be a still more solemn thing; and an awful thing, should we meet, how dreadful the thought! — with face of terror, mutual accusations and bitter reproaches; awful, overwhelming, unless we meet with mutual congratulations, to dwell together in a better than our old, sweet, earthly home — in those blissful mansions where friends in Jesus meet to part no more.

Still the solemnity rises. If it shall be a solemn thing to find ourselves face to face with the dead, how much more solemn to stand face to face with the great Judge both of the quick and dead. We have read of Jesus Christ — -we have often thought of the Saviour, till we felt as if we saw him. We have followed him in fancy’s vision through the chequered scenes of his earthly history — along his rough and bloody path, from the night that angels sung his advent, to the day when they returned to escort the conqueror home. We have seen his form stretched out — for want of a better bed — upon the dewy field, or wrapped up in coarse boat-cloak as he lay asleep amid the storm on Galilee. We have seen the eyes of pity he bent on the weeping Magdalene — the expression of reproachful love he fixed on a recreant disciple — that dying look, so full of tenderest affection, which he turned on a fainting mother. We have seen him standing calm and collected before a prejudiced and time-serving judge, patient and self-possessed beneath the bloody scourge, mute and meek before the frenzied multitude; and as we watched the successive events of the cross, like the eclipse from the face of the sun we have seen the darkness roll away from his soul, and the joy that gleamed in his dying eyes as he raised them to heaven and cried, “It is finished.” We have often in fancy seen him. When our dust revives, and graves shall give up their dead, with these very eyes we shall see him, by the light of a world in flames behold him, a God enthroned for judgment.

The day grows yet more solemn. Its solemnity reaches its highest point, culminates in the momentous issues of judgment. That Last Day is God’s day of settlement with a world that has had a long credit. It is the winding up of this earth’s bankrupt estate and each man’s individual interests. It is the closing of an open account that has been running on ever since the

Fall. It is the day when the balance is struck, and our fate is heaven or hell. And what invests my text with its most solemn importance is this, that by the manner in which we have walked in these statutes, and kept these judgments, and done them, shall our destiny be determined. The most common actions of life, its every day, every hour, are invested with the highest grandeur, when we think how they extend their issues into eternity. Our hands are now sowing seed for that great harvest. We shall meet again all we are doing and have done. The graves shall give up their dead, and from the tombs of oblivion the past shall give up all that it holds in keeping, to be witness for or witness against us. Oh, think of that, and in yonder hall of the Inquisition, see what its effects should be.

Within those blood-stained walls, for whose atrocious cruelties Rome has yet to answer, a prisoner is under examination. He has been assured that nothing he reveals shall be recorded or used against him. While making frank and ingenious confession he suddenly stops. He is dumb — a mute. They ply him with questions, flatter him, threaten him; he answers not a word. Danger makes the senses quick. His ear has caught a sound; he listens; it ties his tongue. An arras hangs beside him, and behind it he hears a pen running along the pages. The truth flashes on him. Behind that screen there sits a scribe committing to the fatal page every word he says, and he shall meet it all again on the day of trial! Ah! how solemn to think that there is such a pen going in heaven, and entering on the books of judgment whatever we say, and wish, all we think and do. Would to God we heard it — heard it everywhere, always heard it! What a check! and what a stimulus it might prove! Are we about to sin, how strong a curb; when slow to duty, how sharp a spur. What a motive have we in that to pray for the blood that blots out a guilty past, and for such grace, in time to come, as shall enable us to walk in God’s statutes, to keep his judgments, and to do them.

Do any flatter themselves that, as to their sins and transgressions, God hath not seen or doth not regard, or hath forgotten? Most fatal delusion! “I have seen all that Laban hath done unto thee,” said the Lord to Jacob in a dream. “Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth,” are his words to Elijah, when he sends him away with a charge to throw down the gauntlet at Ahab’s feet, and proclaim war between heaven and his bloody house. Naboth has been most foully murdered. The crime is concealed. Cunning and cruelty have triumphed; and no living man now stands between Ahab and the vineyard. His evil genius, in his wife, approaches his bed. “Arise,” says Jezebel, “Naboth is dead, arise and take possession.” The king rises, rides in royal state to Jezreel, and luxuriates among the beauties and clustered grapes of his ill-got possession. Suddenly a man clothed in rough garment, unsummoned, unwelcomed, appears upon the scene. He comes boldly on intruding himself on royalty. It is Elijah. With steady step and stern look, he marches up to Ahab, and, fixing his eyes on the quailing coward, asks, “Hast thou killed and also taken possession? In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, they shall lick thy blood, even thine.” Tread upon a worm and it turns on you. Now, to be a king, and yet be rudely bearded before his court .by this unmannerly intruder, to have the damning deed — which had been contrived with such cunning, and executed with such success — dragged out from its concealment by this rough hand into the light of day, to be branded before his courtiers, and proclaimed throughout all the country as Naboth’s murderer, stirs — if not the courage — at least the wrath of Ahab. With guilt on his scowling brow, and malignant anger flashing from his eyes, he turns on the prophet, saying, “Hast thou found me, 0 mine enemy?” “I have found thee,” was the calm, terrible, intrepid answer.

Now, impenitent and unbelieving sinner! flatter not thyself that God hath not seen, or cloth not regard. Fancy not that thy crimes are buried in a grave deeper than Naboth’s, and that, because the dust of death lies on the lips of the partners, or witnesses, or victims of thy guilt, therefore you may be at ease, since the dead tell no tales. The day is coming when every unpardoned sin shall find out its author; — when what has been done in darkness shall be revealed in daylight, and the word whispered in the ear shall be published as with a trumpet upon the house top. By our obedience to these statutes and judgments we shall be tried. We have often disobeyed them, and if, on that dread day, we would not have these sins confront us as Elijah did the king — if then we would meet not our sins but our Saviour, oh let us have immediate recourse to the blood that blotteth them out. Without a pardon, Jesus shall have no answer to us but the terrible response of Jehu, “What hast thou to do with peace?”

Peace! — Yes, there shall be peace — “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ;” and the secret of our peace shall lie in that which gave courage to a royal favourite when arraigned before his country for a most flagrant crime. Men wondered at his strange serenity, and how, amid circumstances so trying to the strongest nerves, he could bear himself so calmly. They saw him pass on to the bar without a cloud upon his brow, or an expression of anxiety in his eye, as he gazed around him on judges, accusers, the crowd of anxious spectators. The trial began. As it proceeded, his case grew darker and darker — not so his aspect. Witness after witness bore crushing evidence against him, yet the keen eyes of his enemies could detect no quiver on his lip, or shade upon his brow. Long after hope had expired in the breast of anxious friends, and they looked on him as a doomed man, there he was, looking round serenely on that terrible array. His pulse beat calm, nor started suddenly, but went on with a stately march. Peace, like innocence, sat enthroned upon his placid brow. At length, amid the silence of the hushed assembly, the verdict of “Guilty” is pronounced, and he rises. Erect in attitude, in demeanour calm, he stands up, not to receive a sentence — which was already trembling on the judge’slip — but to reveal the secret of this strange peace and self-possession. He thrusts his hand into his bosom, and lays on the table a pardon — a full free pardon for his crimes, sealed with the royal signet.

Would to God we all were as well prepared for the hour of death, and the day of judgment! Then fare ye well earth, sun, moon, and stars; fare ye well wife and children, brothers and sisters, sweet friends, and all dear to us here below. Welcome death, welcome judgment, welcome eternity; welcome God and Christ, angels and saints made perfect, welcome — welcome heaven. In the grace that leads to a holy walk, in some measure of godly obedience to these statutes, in the faith that worketh by love, purifieth the heart, and overcometh the world, have you the evidence of forgiveness? In these, do you carry in your bosom God’s pardon, already sealed with the blood of Christ, and ready to be produced when you are summoned to trial? Then, you may look forward without fear and with calm confidence to the great account. These shall bear witness that you have received the righteousness which makes the sinner just. Best of all shrouds, may you be wrapped in the “clean linen” of Jesus’ righteousness! With that robe around you may you rise from the grave! — this your plea — Almighty God! of my own works I have nothing to say but this, What is bad in them is mine; what is good in them is thine. Behold this pardon — look on this robe, and “know now whether it be thy Son’s coat or no.”