APPENDIX B. SERMON I. ROMANS I.-V. ROMANS V. 7, 8. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die; but God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. WHEN I said, some time since, in speaking of the Epistles of St. Paul, that we might be surprised that they were not more difficult, I meant of course to say, that they were easier than we might have expected to those who take pains to study them. And in studying them, we must go through them from beginning to end if we wish to understand their true meaning. A single text taken by itself may give me a quite different notion from that which I should have, if I were to know what came G G before and what followed it; and even a whole chapter, if read alone, may seem hard, and may be understood in a wrong sense; when, if we had read the whole Epistle, we should have found the sense easy. Now as there is not time in the church to read a whole epistle through at one time, it is very much to be desired that we all were so familiar with the Scriptures as to know what had gone before and what came after the chapter which was read as the lesson for the day, that so we might fully understand what it was about, and see what was the particular object of the writer. In this way, if we were to hear the fourth, or fifth, or sixth chapters of the Epistle to the Romans read separately, without knowing or remembering what had been said in the beginning of the Epistle, some of the language used in them might doubtless appear strange, and the Apostle's object might be greatly mistaken; whereas, if we bore in mind what he had said before, we should see at once at what he was aiming, and his language would seem plain and natural. Let me therefore just repeat, that St. Paul begins his Epistle by declaring to the Romans the Gospel, or great message of God, that he had revealed a way of acquitting men of the guilt of their sins, if they threw themselves entirely upon His mercy and His guidance; and that after stating this, he says that this acquittal ought to be highly valued, because This he declares they who were found guilty in God's judgment, would be visited with the heaviest punishment: and then he goes on to say, that as the world then was, all classes of men, whether Jews or Gentiles, were in danger of being found guilty. in the nineteenth verse of the third chapter, where he speaks of all the world becoming guilty before God; and then very naturally adds, that as such was the state of mankind, they had no chance of being acquitted upon the merits of their case; that the possession and knowledge of the law, of which the Jews boasted, was indeed a great advantage, but one which they had not chosen to use; and that like all other opportunities when neglected, it only made them the more inexcusable, as it had given them a knowledge of right and wrong, and yet they had not become the better for their knowledge. now, Again, then, in the twenty-first verse, does St. Paul repeat the Gospel or good tidings, which he was sent everywhere to preach. This Gospel is, that God in His mercy will acquit those who have no right to be acquitted, if they feel that it is a matter of grace, not of right, and are willing to throw themselves before Him, to receive His pardon on His own terms. And here, what he had before described simply as "faith," he now explains further, by calling it," faith in Jesus Christ," or "faith in the blood of Jesus Christ." "We are acquitted," |