tastes; you may form to yourself some other Gospel, or qualify this to render it more palatable, more subservient to your own views, but it is not the Gospel of Christ. You may indeed thus deceive yourselves in this world; but remember, "God is not mocked," and it is according to this Gospel of Christ that you will be judged. Let us learn, then, my brethren, to see in it the power of God unto salvation; let us put aside our own theories, and place our trust in that which God has declared to us. When the baseness and folly of human superstition, when the absurdity of all the speculations and wisdom of philosophy had fully shewn themselves, when to any reasonable man it had been clearly demonstrated that the blood of bulls and goats, or any other rites or ceremonies, could not take away sin, in this fulness of time God sent forth his Son, that a propitiatory sacrifice of so inestimable a value might be offered for the sins of the whole world. In this consisted the great Gospel-power of God unto salvation; to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness. To the Jews a stumblingblock, as they trusted for righteousness to their law, which they nevertheless did not fulfil to the Greeks foolishness, because it accorded not with the dogmas of their vain philosophy; but to us, and to every one that believes, the wisdom of God, and the power of God. Such is it to every one that believes, that embraces the Gospel, not as a religion in which he has been brought up, and of which he is content to observe just so much as is convenient, but as a personal message of God to himself, on which depends his eternal salvation; one which cannot be partly accepted, but, if of any, of such all-engrossing interest, as to influence every. thought, action, and feeling of his life. We cannot be almost Christians. God will not accept that convenient division of our services, which leaves us to follow our own corrupt servants of the world desires, or be the his language is, "Give me thy heart;" nor will he be satisfied with a service of the lips, while that heart is far from him in the business of the world. He who so believes in the Gospel of Christ as to make it the power of God unto salvation, must wean his devotions from the world, and fix them on the blessed subject of Gospel revelation, on Jesus Christ and him crucified; he must sow in his heart, by contemplating his sufferings for the sake of man, and by reading his holy word, the seeds of holiness and of a Christian life; he must frame his temper and feelings to the holy pattern which Christ himself has set him, and by his example draw others to the same holy profession, that seeing his good works, they may glorify their Father which is in heaven. Such will be the conduct of every one who so believes the Gospel, as to render it in his case the power of God unto salvation. Deceive not yourselves, my brethren, by attaching to names or professions any saving influence: he is a Chris tian whose life and conduct savours of the Gospel; he believes unto salvation, who, founding his belief on love, is thereby influenced in all his actions and feelings to imitate the blessed example of his Saviour. To such is the Gospel indeed the power of God unto salvation, revealing in its holy pages the "righteousness of God," explaining to us the gracious method which he has adopted for our salvation; how by the offering of an all-sufficient sacrifice, his attributes of justice and mercy are reconciled; how in the person and sacrifice of our blessed Lord, mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other; how that mysterious difficulty which had baffled the highest efforts of wisdom and philosophy should be got over, that God should be just, and yet the justifier of him, notwithstanding the transgression of his law, who believeth in Jesus. This is the righteousness of God which the Gospel reveals, and reveals, the apostle tells us, from faith to faith. It explains this high mises and merciful dispensation of God to us, that that faith which it excites in his promay daily grow and increase in us. No sincere reader of the Gospel can rise from its perusal, without his affections and feelings warmed with gratitude for the great mercies which God therein declares he has worked for us by the ministry of his Son; he has attested these mercies by miracles, by prophecy, by every species of evidence that we could require for our satisfaction. This may be considered the first or historical faith which the Gospel narrative cannot fail to wake in our minds. To this we all attain. There is no one, however thoughtless, who does not believe, or profess to believe the truths which the pages of holy writ contain. It is not, however, this faith on which the Christian is to rely; he is to proceed from faith to faith; this, which is but too often thought sufficient, is to be but the ground-work on which saving faith is to be erected: "leaving these principles of the doctrine |