The reason why you remain in the fetters of sin is, that you refuse your consent to some part or other in the scheme of truth. You would fain have orthodoxy, and perhaps think that you are in the actual possession of it, when, without power and without spiritual discernment, you only strain at a few of the literalities of Christian doctrine, and sit down in the unmoved lethargy of nature, with the word upon your lips that there is salvation by faith, and forgiveness through the blood of a satisfying atonement. Could we only get you to admit the necessity of a personal surrender, in all holy obedience unto God-could we prevail upon you. to believe that Christ came, not merely to redeem you from guilt, but to redeem you from the vain conversation of the world-could we, under the power of this incipient conviction, only persuade you to make a beginning, and to move a single footstep in the way of transition from sin unto righteousness-could you understand, that, even as the remission of sins must be had, so repentance must be accomplished, ere you be admitted into heaven, and the honesty of this your understanding approved itself by your forthwith acting upon itcould we only get you thus to set forth on this measure of incipient light, the light would grow with the incipient obedience; and, ever brightening as you advanced, would the principle of forsaking all for Christ become more decided; and your decision for Christ would grow with the growth, and strengthen with the strength of your

dependence upon Him. The justification and the sanctification, these two mighty terms in Christianity, would be alike clearly apprehended as essential to the completion of the scheme of that doctrine, by the obedience of the heart unto which it is that you are saved. And I again repeat it, my brethren, take in the whole of gospel truth— lay hold of its offered pardon, and enter even now upon its prescribed course of purification. The Spirit will not look indifferently on your day of small things; but if you, casting yourself into the mould of the whole truth, shall labour to realise it and seek to be renewed as well as to be forgiven-He will come down with the might of His creative energies upon you, and, breaking asunder the chains of your captivity to sin, will cause you henceforward to be the servants of righteousness.

This practical change, stands connected with the obedience of your heart to the form or scheme of Christian doctrine-for it is upon this being rendered, that you are made free from sin and become the servants of righteousness. Yet let us not think therefore, that we, of our own proper energy, supply as it were the first condition on which our deliverance from sin is made to turn; and that then the Spirit comes down and gives full and finished accomplishment to it. The truth is, that He presides over the initial, as well as over all the successive movements of this great transformation; and accordingly, in the 17th verse,

the primary circumstance of your obeying from the heart the form of doctrine, is made matter of thanksgiving to God. It is through grace, in fact, that you are made to embrace the whole form of doctrine. If any of you feel so disposed in consequence of our imperfect explanations-the glory of this is due to grace, which has revealed to you the necessity of holiness as well as pardon-which has touched and softened your hearts under the impression of this truth-which has moved you to an aspiring obedience thereto-which will lead you, I trust, to carry out the principle into practice and daily conversation-which will vent itself upward to the sanctuary in prayer, and bring down that returning force, which can unchain you from the bondage of corruption, and give you impulse and strength for all the services of righteousness. It is grace that begins the good work, and it is grace that perfects it-and to sin because we are under this grace, carries in it just the same contradiction, as to be in darkness because the sun has arisen ; or to be in despair because an able friend has come forward to support us; or to be in disease because an infallible physician has taken us in his charge, and is now plying us with a regimen which never misgives, and with medicines the operation of which never disappointed him.

190

LECTURE XXXVI.

ROMANS, vi, 19—21.

"I speak after the manner of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousWhat fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed; for the end of those things is death ?"

ness.

THE first clause of the nineteenth verse reminds us somewhat of another passage in the apostle's writings, when he says to his disciples, I speak unto you not as unto spiritual but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. The transition from the rude and raw conceptions of nature, to the heights of spiritual wisdom and discernment, is not an immediate but a successive one; and so it follows, that the illustrations of Christian doctrine, must be varied according to the progress of him whom you are labouring to convince and to satisfy; and we have to speak more in the manner of men, more in the way that is suited to the comprehension of unenlightened and unrenewed humanity, to those who are still in the infancy of their education for heaven —whereas, in the language of Paul, to those who are perfect, to those who by reason of use have had their senses will exercised, we speak what he calls hidden wisdom, even the wisdom of God in a mystery. From the clause before us, we infer that the same

topic may be variously illustrated, and that according to the degree of maturity which our hearers have attained in Christian experience. And, agreeably to this, we find, that, whereas in the first instance, the apostle, in expounding the personal change from sin to holiness which takes place on every believer, borrows a similitude that may be understood by men at the very outset of their Christian discipleship-he passes on to another consideration, the force of which could only be felt and acquiesced in by those, who had in some degree been familiarised to the fruits and the feelings and the delights of new obedience.

This by the way may account for the various tastes that there are for various styles and manners of elucidation; and all it may be of substantially the same doctrine. It justifies fully the very peculiar appetite, that a hearer is often found to express for that which he feels to be most suited to him. Nay it goes to explain the change that may have taken place in his preference for the ministrations of another expounder, whose mode of putting or illustrating the truths of Christianity, is the best adapted to that state of progress whereunto he has now attained. And all that remains for him is to bear in mind, that there are other hearts and other understandings in the world beside his own-that, as there is a diversity of subjects, so there is and so there ought to be a diversity of applications; and, accordingly, a diversity of gifts is provided by that Spirit, who divideth to every