LECTURE VIII.

THE COVENANT OF GRACE.

JOB xxxiii. 23, 24.

If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one of a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness : then He is gracious unto him, and saith, deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ran

som.

ON no subject of scripture, perhaps, does the strong and lively language of metaphor so often obtain, as when speaking of the deliverance of the soul from death by the interposition of a Redeemer. This Redeemer is sometimes called a strong hold, and then sinners are urged to flee into it: sometimes an ark, a tower, a city of refuge-in all which representations, danger, on the part of men, is implied, and on the part of God, a provision for deliverance.

This state of danger and misery is further represented under the terms, bondage, death, the grave, a land of famine, and a horrible pit.

With all these, however, some representation of relief is usually connected, and this is presented in the like figurative form as of a victor, overcoming the enemy-a father, forgiving a penitent child-a provident Prince, relieving the miseries of famine-a compassionate benefactor, conferring favour on the distressed-or a meritorious ransom, procuring deliverance for the imprisoned.

But the illustration of young Elihu, in our text, is more striking than any yet adduced. Literally taken, it is the description of a case of severe sickness in an individual, and a restoration to health, which God, in his providence, graciously grants upon repentance and the application of proper remedies. We cannot think, however, that it is to be limited by this construction. There are expressions and personages, as well as facts, introduced into this description, which seem to make it consistent, only on the supposition of being intended, in its highest sense, of the deliverance of a fallen world from death, upon the intervention of a Redeemer:

In this sense, therefore, we shall now use it. Our last lecture left man under all the miseries resulting from a violated covenant of works let us now look at his provisional deliverance, by the covenant of grace.

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I. And first, of the PARTIES in this covenant. Our text presents us with two, who may properly be considered parties in the covenant, and then with a third, who is the subject of it. It is God the Father, who finds a ransom, and proclaims an act of deliverance upon it it is God the Son, evidently, who is here represented as the procuring cause of the deliverance; and he is called, also, as he is in many other scriptures, a messenger, an angel, an interpreter, or prophet, one of a thousand,' on this account, and the very ransom, or Hebrew ceper, so often presented as the meritorious price of our deliverance. These are properly the parties, since, after the fall, to which this transaction looks, only Divine Beings could enter into the coyenant; but there is another party presented as the subject of this transaction, and that is man, or the poor, sick and despairing invalid of our text, whose soul draweth near to death and his life to the destroyers.'-What more striking representation can we have of our fallen state, as lying in the midst of all those miseries, which we so lately contemplated?

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II. But let us now, in the second place, LOOK AT THE TRANSACTION ITSELF. Man is represented as lying in his guilt and help

lessness, under the miseries of the great } condemnation. In this state, we believe God looked at him from eternity; and now, whether we take our text as alluding to that eternal arrangement of mercy, which was made between the persons of the God-head, or only a particular dispensation of that plan, in the interposition made by the Son, at the time of the fall, in either way we have the same essential features of a covenant.

The fallen world is sinking under the weight of the curse in progressive and certain destruction, like the poor diseased patient of our text-no remedy has reached his case-no cheering symptoms of natural abatement appear the wasting effects of disease are every moment more visible, and the despairing decision has already been announced, that he must die! Essential Deity is represented as presiding over the scene. Not with vindictive and unsatiated anger, does God look down upon the fallen world; but he inspects it, and presides over its destinies, as a righteous Judge. He seems to say, the sick man is dying-he dies justlynecessarily it is in consequence of his own sin, and I shall not arrest his progress.' All the Divine attributes, if we might personify