propitiatory sacrifices to the gods? The mighty achievement of proving human innocency was left to modern infidels; seeing, however, my brethren, fact and experience so much against their theory, and feeling, you need the mercy of an offended Maker, receive it where alone it offers, in the Gospel;—and believe it "a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

58

THE SANCTIONS OF THE GOSPEL MINISTRY.

Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.-Mark xvi. 15.

SOME of the most distinguished men, since the Christian era, in poetry, painting, and music, have employed their talents, with very great success, upon the subjects of Scripture. They found that nothing afforded them more abundant or more favourable opportunities of making known their extraordinary powers, than the facts and sentiments of this Book; in delineating which, they could give their genius all the scope it required, and bid it move without restraint in its wide, luxuriant flow, or in its melting tenderness, or in its geraphic raptures, or in its loud dread rolling thunders. Whether our text has ever called forth the painter's skill, I know not; but am sure of this, that less than a master's pencil would only mangle the scene which it contains;—that even his might fail; but if he succeeded in throwing upon the canvas a few of the conceptions which this passage suggests, he would deserve a place among those artists who live

for ever in the memory of mankind. We view no less a spectacle than the Son of God, who had become incarnate, and for the redemption of a lost world had appeared in the lowest class of civil society, that of a servant, with an ample share of its privations, and of the obloquy, contempt, and insult poured upon this condition by the wealthy and the noble, and who had passed through a life of singular suffering, and lately submitted to an ordeal at once dreadful and unexampled, here rising from the depth of woe and the regions of the dead, a triumphant conqueror, an accepted Saviour, presenting, as he rose to heaven, the aspect of one who had fought in the fierceness of the battle, and was anxious to enter on his rest; but pointing significantly as he rose to the victorious laurel on his brow, to the thrones, principalities, and powers of hell chained captive at his chariot wheels, to the plan of human redemption which he held completed aloft, crying, as he let drop amongst his chosen disciples the important roll, Go, publish it to all nations, and to every individual in the families of man; "Go ye out into all nations, and preach the Gospel to every creature;" adding, as he flung around him mediatorial grandeur and sublimity, and showed in his hand the sceptre of universal government and the destinies of our race, "He that believeth shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." To these judicial sanctions contained in the latter part of the verse, we would now more particularly invite your attention.

They are co-existent with the christian ministry. Granting that the chief means employed by the Holy Ghost in the conversion of sinners is the public preaching of the word, either it must be proved that the full intention of the Saviour's death, and the travail of his soul, and the prophetical declarations of the latter-day glory, were accomplished by the first disciples, and consequently that the heavenly commission terminated with their career,—a task which no one would engage in who has read the sacred volume,-or it must be allowed that this glory was not shed around the heads alone of those singularly-endowed Apostles to whom our Lord immediately spoke, but was given as an hereditary bequeathment, descending, like a family estate, from one succession of ministers to another, until the period when the purposes of God shall have been fulfilled,—that is, until the Gospel shall have been published throughout the habitations of men,-until the fulness of the Gentiles shall have been brought in, with his ancient people Israel,— until the song be uttered, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ." Nay, our Lord intimates that this ministry, and therefore its sanctions, shall be coeval with time, and exist until the angel, standing, one foot on the earth and one on the waters, swear by Him that liveth for ever that time shall be no more, and a voice proclaim, "Let him that is unjust be unjust still, and him that is filthy be filthy still, and him that is righteous be righteous still,

and him that is holy be holy still;" for he says, "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world."

These sanctions are also universal as the preaching of the Gospel. As the term Gospel is variously understood by different persons, it becomes us here, in order to avoid ambiguity on a point involving so many and important consequences, to be more explicit, and to say, they accompany the ministrations of all who maintain the grand articles of man's exposure to divine wrath without a Mediator, and of his utter inability to live holy without supernatural help,—of the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ, the Spirit's work, and the obligations which the Gospel imposes on its followers to forsake the vanities of the world, and to crucify the old man with his affections and lusts; though the individuals publicly insisting upon these truths may be divided on other subjects, and be contra-distinguished as Episcopalian, Independent, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Calvinistic, Arminian, Baptist, and the like. For this affirmation we have one simple, but, we think, convincing proof: God has abundantly blessed all the denominations above-mentioned with spiritual favours, and the saving mercy promised in our text to those who believe the Gospel, has been largely enjoyed, even in the present life, by thousands who embraced the cross as propounded by the ministers of one or other of these sects, having received with it also, the peculiarities of that party.