At least, if we do feel with Christ thus weary and sick at heart of the wickedness of those about us, let us also remember with what words and what actions Christ immediately followed up His complaint of man's unworthiness. "Bring thy son hither," he said to the father of the lunatic child, and He rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the child, and delivered him again to his father. So if the sense of the evil and hardness of heart that was in the world oppressed Him in the garden of Gethsemane even to agony, yet from that agony He arose calmly and resolutely to go and complete the object of His coming, and die for those who were so evil and so hard hearted. Well, then, may St. Paul say to us, "Be ye full of meekness and long suffering ; forbearing one another and forgiving one another, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye;" for "God commendeth His love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

LALEHAM,

September 24th, 1827.

SERMON III.

ROMANS VI-VIII.

ROMANS, viii. 8.

They that are in the flesh cannot please God.

WE are now arrived at the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. In the five former ones, the Apostle had declared his message of acquittal through Christ, had said how much all men needed this acquittal; that none had been so good as to have deserved it from their innocence; that Abraham, the Father of the Jewish nation, was himself acquitted, not because he was free from sin, but because he had thrown himself entirely on God's direction and mercy; that the state of those who had obtained their pardon through Christ, was one of entire confidence and peace with God, and that His love in the redemption of mankind was as universal, and was more remarkable, than the mischief which had followed from Adam's sin. Here, then, we are pausing, as it were, after our first entrance into the Christian faith. We are now at this moment fully forgiven, we are humbled

before God, and thankful to Him; we are at peace with Him, and the heirs of His glorious promises. But will this sunshine last till the end of our lives? Will there be no clouds of sin, small at first, perhaps, like a man's hand, which yet may arise slowly, and shut out from us the face of heaven, and leave us in a worse darkness than that from which we at first had been rescued? Does it, in short, clearly follow, that having been justified or acquitted by God, we shall also at last be glorified?

The three chapters, then, which follow concern ourselves most directly: they speak of men in that state in which we are all now standing, men who have heard and received the Gospel message, and are accounted heirs of the Gospel promises. So far, then, we have come safely. We have been delivered out of Egypt, and are set on the way to our land of rest, with the promise that it is prepared for us. Shall we ever reach it? Or shall we be like the Israelites of old, whose carcases fell in the wilderness, and to whom God sware in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest? Let us now hear what the Apostle says with respect to this middle point of our pilgrimage, this midway between hell and heaven.

The first danger which he supposes may threaten us is one which would, indeed, be impossible to all those who were Christians in earnest, and which bears with it so much of baseness that it might seem almost too bad to be injurious to any one. It is an abuse of the mercy of God, because He has shown Himself so merciful. Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? Such a question shows how little many of those in every age, who have called themselves Christians, have

known in reality what a Christian was. Observe, that this question seems very shocking when put before us in this plain form. Yet it is very much the same feeling in reality which many entertain now, when they look upon Christ's death as affording an allowance for a more imperfect life than would formerly have been required; when they think of the Gospel as laying down a less strict rule of conduct than the law. Is not this really to ask, Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Since Christ has died for us, and God has so declared His mercy towards us, may we not safely be less perfect than if He had not thus shown forth His readiness to pardon us? Now it is plain, that any one who thus feels must be very far from the condition of those, who, having been reconciled to God by the death of His Son, are saved through His life; that is, through His Holy Spirit new making their hearts to fit them for His kingdom. Of this salvation by the Spirit of Christ they can know nothing at all. Yet this work of the Spirit is the most important thing in the whole matter. Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid! How shall we, who are dead to sin, live any longer therein? The Apostle answers for himself, and for all true Christians: When we received our pardon for sins past, through Christ, we understood at once that we stood bound in receiving it not to commit any fresh offences. God declares all the past forgotten. Shall we, then, bring it again before His remembrance, by doing again the very same things for which we were once before condemned in justice, and forgiven only in mercy. Shall we not strive to forget it too, to put it utterly out of our sight, to be, as it were, dead to it? Let all the evil of our

past lives be buried in the grave with Christ. He has arisen, and a new day has dawned upon us, and our lives should be new also to become it. We are unfit to walk with Him in the light of the Sun of righteousness, if we still long for the excesses of the past night. If they are buried to rise no more, then we ourselves, freed from their weight, may rise with Christ ourselves lightly and happily. If we be dead with Christ, if we have laid aside all the sins of our nature, as He did its mere bodily weaknesses and temptations when He died once for all, then we may safely believe that we shall live with Him, the spiritual with the spiritual, the immortal with the immortal, freed from the evils and sufferings of this earth, as we have put off its sin, and living only to God, and therefore destined of necessity to live for ever, and to live in perfect happiness.

Before our redemption we were the slaves of sin; that is, that though we knew right from wrong, and though our reason approved of the one and condemned the other, or, in other words, though we were living under a law, whether of reason or of God's word, yet still that principle in us, whatever we call it, which makes us act, was not in agreement with reason and conscience; our desires, lusts, inclinations, call them by what name we choose, were turned towards evil; and what we like, that in the long run we are sure to do. This, then, the Apostle calls being the slaves of sin; that is, liking and doing things which we would rather not do and like; being, in a manner, in a diseased state, when our appetite for those things which best nourish a healthy body, was lost and gone. From this condition the Gospel message was intended to deliver us; and our difficulty in understanding this