sovereignty, but how is it compatible with the justice and holiness of God? If David obtained pardon, who had been guilty of great sins, how was it that Saul, the first king of Israel, was rejected for one offence, did he not also say, “I have sinned," and ask forgiveness? Yes, but his confession was hypocrisy. "And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words, because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord. And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel :" "And also the Strength of Israel will not lie, nor repent: for he is not a man that he should repent. Then he said, I have sinned: yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord thy God." (1 Sam. xv. 24-26, and 29, 30.) The only sorrow which touched Saul's heart, was the loss of the kingdom, not his rejection of God, but his rejection from the throne. His only concern was to be honoured before the elders of his people, and his only motive for religious worship, the public sanction of the Lord's prophet.

Saul was unhumbled, impenitent: his afterlife, the murder of the Lord's priests, the impiety of his reign, his suicidal death, prove it. If Saul perished, the sin lies at his own door,— "The soul that sinneth shall die." God does not cease to be just and holy because David found mercy-God does not save any one in his sins, but from his sins. When grace saves, it sanctifies. God is gracious and merciful, but he "will in no wise clear the guilty." Where is the child of God, who has sinned, that has not smarted for it? Yes, grace works holiness in the people of God. When God, by his Spirit, convinces of sin, humbles the sinner, purifies the heart, moulds the character, conforms it to the image of his Son. Divine grace is glorified in the holiness of God's saints, so fitted for honour. By the word of the prophet Nathan, therefore, Christ Jesus, the prophet of his church, arrests the sinner, "Thou art the man." By the word of his prophet he pardons, binds up, and heals, saying "The Lord also hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die."

197

SERMON XIV.

DIVINE

CHASTISEMENTS FOR SIN, CONSIS

TENT WITH THE FREE GRACE DISPLAYED IN THE FULL REMISSION OF IT.

2 SAMUEL Xv. 25, 26.

And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the city if I shall find favour in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again, and show me both it and his habitation. But if he thus say, I have no delight in thee, behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him.

THAT a plenary remission of all sin, and the final perseverance of the saints, held out in the covenant of grace, do not afford encouragement for any one to live in sin that grace may abound, the justice and equity of God's moral government will abundantly prove. We have an example of this in the stage of David's experience now under review. In the progress of this investi

gation, we shall see that humiliating chastisements for sin do not militate against the free grace and mercy displayed in the pardon of it; that it is not inconsistent with the grace of God to forgive all trespasses, and at the same time to visit the transgressors with evident tokens of his displeasure for the trespasses committed. If pardon carried with it exemption from the stripes of the rod, if no tokens of divine displeasure were to ensue upon acts of rebellion, God would appear in this world at least to redeem from guilt a sinner, and save him in his sins, which would be to clear the guilty, and violate his own word where he has declared, "That he will by no means clear the guilty." But, no! God will be justified in all his ways, both in heaven and on earth, before angels and men, before the visible and invisible world." "Wisdom is justified of all her children." What though the devil and Satan, the accuser of the brethren, impugn the holiness of God, when God pardoneth iniquity, and passes by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage! the holiness of God is vindicated before the eyes of the invisible creation. The broken-hearted and humbled sinner is healed by the blood of sprinkling, for there stands "in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, a lamb as it had been slain," as a testimony

in heaven for God. But how shall the honour of God be vindicated before his own people, and the eyes of an ungodly world here below, when any of his children shall have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme by their own folly? The Lord tells us how: "I will chasten him with the rod of men, and the stripes of the children of men." Thus saith the Lord by his prophet, "Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know, therefore, and see, that it is an evil thing, and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts." (Jer. ii. 19.) Is not this truth opened out to a demonstration in God's dealings with David? "Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from thine house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah, the Hittite, to be thy wife. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun. And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die." (2 Sam. xii. 10-13.)