you and supply the place of a parent to the child. If die as you live, strangers to the Gospel of Christ, you perish. Hearken, then, my friends, to the testimony of the Lord; "Hear and your soul shall live." This is the command of God, that ye believe upon his Son Jesus Christ--who came into the world to save sinners. "There is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby ye must be saved"-"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," saith his accredited ambassador, and "ye shall be saved." (Acts xvi. 31.) JUSTIFICATION. "Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." JAMES 11. 24. It is the recorded and deliberate judgment of one, whose memory ought to be dear to every lover of divine truth, and whose sayings should be held in high estimation by every participator of divine light, that "if the article of justification be lost, then is all true Christian doctrine lost with it; and he makes the holding or rejecting of this truth, to be the test of a standing or of a fallen Church. This saying of the indefati : gable and indomitable Luther is true: whose judgment in this matter perfectly accords with the oracles of God and all who have been instructed in the school of Christ will doubtless agree with this Reformer, that there is nothing, connected with divine truth, so necessary evermore to be urged upon the consideration of man, as this doctrine, because of the natural repugnance of the mind to hold it firmly in its legitimate import. The world hates it, and always misrepresents it. The Devil hates it, and labours to overthrow it; and when foiled, too often succeeds in his efforts to corrupt it. To the world's hatred of it on the one part, and to the Devil's corruption of it on the other, are to be ascribed all the systems of false religion which obtain among men. To this are to be attributed the vile calumnies which are either openly heaped upon it or covertly entertained to its prejudice--the outcry raised against it as being subversive of good conduct, and as necessarily setting men at liberty to do as they list; and to this is ascribable the gross and manifestly ungodly delusion, that men may be accepted of God in virtue of their own actions. No wonder that the world hates it, for it is not of the world- it was neither discovered by its wisdom, nor invented by its ingenuity--it discountenances, and condemns the world's carelessness, and indifference, and forgetfulness of God, and stamps as abominable in His sight, what the world highly esteemeth. Bad men hate it, because of its uncompromising holy tendency-self-righteous men hate it, because of its unshackled freeness-and worldly 66 66 wise men hate it, because it brings to nought their wisdom, and marks it as foolishness with God" (Rom. i. 22; 1 Cor. iii. 19)--they despise it because of its unassuming simplicity. No wonder the Devil should impugn it, for it dismembers his kingdom--by the preaching of it his prisoners are emancipated, and light is poured in upon those, who during the period of his supremacy were sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.” (Luke i. 79.) And will he tamely suffer this? No : but as he has always employed his wiles and craftiness, and the subtleties of a vain philosophy, and "science, falsely so called," (Eph. iv. 14; Col. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 20) with which he infects the minds of his subjects, he will still with all his energy use them, to overthrow, or to eradicate, or to corrupt the precious doctrine of Justification by faith only. Yet, when we consider the world's hatred of this doctrine, and the opposition it meets on every side, how strangely infatuated and inconsistent, according to human judgment, do men appear, when it is the most precious, the most suitable, the most animating that ever yet was presented to the contemplation of fallen man. That they who are shut out from the Scriptures of God should reject it, is no wonder-that a vitiated and deadly system misnamed Christianity should reject it, is no wonder-but that they who profess to enjoy the light of the divine word, and to belong to reformed Churches should deny it, is indeed a wonder; since this truth is the very essence of the word of God: it is “the jewel of the reformation”.—the point upon which that mighty revolution hinged-in defence of which martyrs bled and burned--and by the revival of the preaching of which, its long-doomed desolation is rolling upon the seat of the beast; and in this our day, his kingdom is convulsed to its very centre; the awful "consumption by the spirit of the Lord's mouth," which is prophesied to take place before the final destruction of every Antichristian system with the brightness of Jesus' coming. (2 Thess. ii. 8.) This is to be the subject of our present discourseand I have selected the passage which I read from the Epistle by James, with the intent to shew the perfect harmony that subsists upon this momentous matter between him and his brethren Apostles; and the rather, because this very text is commonly quoted by the maintainers of Arminian heresy, for the purpose of neutralizing that precious doctrine of Justification by faith only, which one of our own articles expressly, and in the true spirit of the divine word declares, to be most wholesome, and very full of comfort. (Art.xi.) Let us consider, 1. The nature of justification. II. How a man is justified. III. How this statement of James is to be understood, and IV. The character of the works to which the Apostle alludes. And do Thou, God of truth! so teach thy servant, that he may speak nothing rashly or unadvisedly with his lips; that all he may say on this subject may bear |