TESTED BY THEIR FRUITS, AND INTRINSIC TENDENCIES

ISAIAH XLIII. 21.

"The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness' sake. He will magnify the Law, and make it honourable."

HERE we have a revelation, full and distinct, of the light in which the Infinite and Eternal Father regards the redemptive work of Christ, and the reason for this regard. In this work Christ stands revealed to the world, and to the universe, as "the brightness (the most luminous and impressive form) of the Father's glory, and the express image (the most full and distinct manifestation) of His substance." His work is, in every particular, an absolutely perfected and finished work, so finished and perfected that the eye of God cannot discover a single defect in it.

The central reason why God thus regards this redemptive work of Christ is given in the second clause of the text: " He will magnify the law, and make it honourable." This conducts us to the theme of this discourse, the great idea of the law, as "magnified and made honourable" through the redemptive work of Christ. We must bear this in mind, that it was no part of this work to render the law more or less sacred in God's regard. God entertains an infinite and unchangeable respect for His own law, and nothing has ever occurred nor can occur, to increase or diminish that respect. The purpose of God is to induce a similar respect in the mind, not only of every believer in Jesus, but in that of every unfallen being in existence, so that all, in common, shall be as unchangeable in their hatred of sin and love of righteousness as is God Himself. "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us," and perfected the redemptive work for the revealed purpose of "making an end of sin and bringing in everlasting righteousness." The final result of this work will be the introduction in all minds, and throughout all worlds, outside of the dark realm of the Second Death, of such a sentiment in regard to sin, and such a respect for the law of righteousness, that, to eternity, there will never occur a single act of violation of the divine law. God, the Eternal Father, has, then, good reason to be well pleased with the redemptive work of Christ. Let us now turn our thoughts directly to the great doctrine of the text---"the law of God magnified and made honourable" through this redemptive work. In accomplishing this object, we will, first of all, direct attention to

The Law itself.

Of this Law, in the language of another, "nothing less than this can be said, that its home is the bosom of God, and its voice, the harmony of the universe." Its home is the bosom of God, because, that there, from eternity, this law has had its fixed dwelling-place, all God's activity, thoughts, purposes, and ways, being in absolute harmony with its spirit and principles. "Love is the fulfilling of the law," and "God is love," love as representing and implying all possible forms and degrees of moral excellence. There is still another reason why the bosom of God is the home of this law. As presented to the universe, and imposed upon creatures, it is simply the representation of His thought and will, as He has entertained the same from eternity.

This law is the harmony of the universe, because that as far as, and wherever, full obedience to its requirements obtains, absolute harmony and union are assured between God and His creatures on the one hand, and between them, one towards another, on the other. In bringing the holy, intelligent creation into absolute conformity to the spirit, principles, and precepts of this law, discord iii any form, or degree, becomes absolutely impossible throughout the wide domain of the Kingdom of Light.

We may, perhaps, attain to some proper apprehension of this subject, by contemplating it in the light of a single passage of inspiration. "There is one lawgiver." One of the greatest thinkers America ever knew, the honourable Daniel Webster, once remarked that there was one passage of Scripture---a passage upon which he had for many years strongly desired to write a sermon. When he had reflected, however, upon the great truth therein embodied, he had found that truth too vast for his capacities, so that he had been deterred from attempting to accomplish the end desired. The passage he remarked is this, "There is one lawgiver." It is more than thirty years since we heard that statement. Since that time, that passage has been to us a central object of thought. Yet the truth it embodies has ever appeared too vast for our capacities. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." Yet there are features and elements of this truth which we can understand. One is this: God is the only being in existence who has the prerogative of making or prescribing laws for His rational offspring. All moral legislation obligatory upon rational, moral natures comes from God, and has authority but as expressive of His will. To obey any law which prohibits what God commands, or commands what He prohibits, is treason toward God.

There is, also, as revealed in this passage, not only one, and only one, lawgiver, but one and only one---law, one common law for all moral beings in all relations and conditions of existence. This law is the will of God when revealed as such, to His creatures, a law, first of all, written upon the universal conscience, and then written out in the Scriptures of truth. Conformity to this law is denominated holiness, righteousness, virtue, purity, and perfectness; and nonconformity: unholiness, unrighteousness, iniquity, and impurity.

The Law when Magnified and made Honourable.

The law is "magnifled and made honourable" when, in its spirit, principles, and endlessly diversified applications, it becomes the central object and theme of thought, regard, and discourse--- when such absolute respect for its requirements is felt as to insure prompt and implicit obedience to the same in all their forms---when such obedience insures to the subject the highest honour, esteem, and respect, and disobedience covers the perpetrator with the deepest shame, disesteem, and reprobation---and when, in short, there is an omnipresent interest in, and supreme "love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity." Whatever induces such results as these, " magnifies the law and makes it honourable," an d this is what Christ has accomplished through His. redemptive work. This end He has accomplished, we remark.

How Christ has magnified, and does magnify, the Law, and makes it honourable.

1. By the absolute obedience which He rendered. to the law, and the deep respect which He manifested for it, during the entire period of His incarnation, and humiliation on earth. When Christ emptied Himself of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was---" took upon Himself the form (condition) of a man, and was made in the likeness of men," subject to all their trials and temptations, and responsibilities too---the eyes, not only of God, but of the universe, were fixed upon Him, to see how the case would turn with. Him. Will He stand, or will He fall, as Adam did? absorbed the thought of heaven and hell too. When it was perceived that in all respects, and in. every condition of being and life, even in death, His obedience was perfect and absolute, that not one jot or tittle of what the law requires failed in Him: then, in the presence of such an example of respect for the law, and obedience to its precepts, the holiness of every being in heaven took on the form of eternal stability. To such a degree was "the law magnified and made honourable," that to eternity no creature there will disobey it. The same is true in this world, just as far as that example is known and appreciated. By what means could the Most High so effectually" magnify His law, and make it honourabIe," as, in the person of Christ, to assume the condition of the creature in its worst and most trying possible forms, and there, as an example to the universe, render full and absolute obedience to His own law.

In all his teachings and associations, Christ manifested the same absolute respect for the will and law of God. "Whosoever did the will of God," whatever his condition in other respects, "was to him as a brother, and sister, and mother," and whosoever refused such obedience, all other conditions and relations notwithstanding, were the objects of His disesteem and reprobation. The love of righteousness (obedience) and hatred of iniquity (disobedience) were omnipresent, and all-impressive, manifestations of His entire teaching and life.

2. In His special redemptive work, that of atonement---every thing possible is done by our Saviour to "magnify the law, and make it honourable." Atonement what is it? A substitute for the penalty of violated law, a substitute fully ensuring the end which the penalty was intended to insure. In the forgiveness of sin through this divine atonement, the law is not made void, but established. That is done which renders it, not only merciful, but just, in God, to "justify the believer in Jesus." What awe inspiring impressiveness is imparted to the law by the forgiveness of sin, on such a ground as this.

3. In the conditions of pardon and acceptance with God, the same respect for the law is most impressively conspicuous. Before God will listen at all to a request from the sinner for pardon, the latter must, in all sincerity, justify the law both in its precepts and penalties---confess the fact, inexcusableness, and infinite criminality of all his acts of disobedience---and having "broken off his sins by righteousness, and his iniquities by cleaving unto the Lord," he must seek and accept forgiveness as a matter of exclusive grace and mercy through Christ. Thus again is "the law magnified and made honourable."

4. Let us now turn our thoughts to the revealed relations of Christ to all believers. The revealed object of His mission and atoning grace is to "save His people from their sins "---to make provisions by which "the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in them," by which God's laws might be "put into their hearts, and written in their minds," and they caused to "walk in God's statutes, and to keep His judgments and do them." As the mediator of the New Covenant, He is revealed as "able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him "---to "make all grace abound towards them, so that they, having all sufficiency for all things, may abound unto every good work".---and as "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." Then, as the same Mediator, He stands pledged by absolute promise, that when He is enquired of by us to do it for us, "He will sprinkle clean water upon us arid render us clean, that He will cleanse us from all our filthiness, and from all our idols; that he will ! put His Spirit within us, and cause us to walk in God's statutes, and keep His judgments, and do them "---" that he will sanctify us wholly, and preserve our whole spirit and soul and body blameless unto His coming." Such are the revealed relations of Christ to us in the sphere of our sanctification, or "obedience to the will and Jaw of God," relations in all of which the law is specifically "magnified and made honourable."

5. In the finaI Consummation, we remark, in the last place, the work under consideration will be rendered complete and eternal. All who have repented of sin---" washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb "---and returned to full obedience to the law and will of God, will, in the presence of an assembled universe, be received into the Kingdom of Light; while all, of every name, who have refused to return to obedience will be "covered with shame and everlasting contempt." Christ will then have so "magnified the law, and made it honourable," that as we have said, outside of the realm of the Second Death, sin will never again have place in the universe of God, Christ "having made an end of sin, and brought in EVERLASTING righteousness."

When do believers in Jesus magnify the law and make it honourable, as Christ did?

"The glory which the Father gave to Christ, He has given to His followers." It is their glory and privilege to "magnify the law, and make it honourable," in their sphere, and through their lives, example, and teachings, as He did in His. This high end they accomplish when, and only when, their respect for all God's commandments, and their obedience to "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," take form from Christ's example, when their esteem and love for those who do, and their disesteem for those who do not, "the will of our Father in heaven," and when their "love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity" are a copy of those of Christ.

In the primitive age of the Church, when men would affirm anything to be impossible to man, they were accustomed to say: "You can no more do that than you can induce a Christian to sin." When the visible obedience of believers extorted such confessions from the world, then it was that "the Gentiles came to the light of the Church, and kings to the brightness of her rising." So it ever will be. When believers in Jesus show visible "respect to all God's commandments," and prompt and implicit "obedience to every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," then men fear and tremble at the thought of their own sins, and magnify and honour God's law, by "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." When believers visibly fall short of this, then "the name of God is blasphemed, and His law despised, through them."

In heaven an all-pervading public sentiment exists, requiring of each and every individual implicit and perfect obedience to the law and will of God, and a universal expectation that such obedience will be rendered. By such a sentiment "the law is magnified and made honourable" there. When the same sentiment shall pervade the Church on earth in regard to all its members, then will "the law," in a similar manner, "be magnified and made honourable" here. When, also, in the heart and teachings of the Church, the grace of Christ shall be magnified as fully adequate and available to enable each believer to " stand perfect and complete in all the will of God," the law will thereby be magnified also. In making and revealing such grace, God reveals infinite respect for that law. Had He provided grace less adequate, or not fully available to our faith, He would have manifested indifference to His own law.

When is a law rendered the object of disesteem and disregard?

A very important inquiry here arises---namely, When is a law rendered the object of disesteem and disregard? This result arises, we answer, when subjects are in such relations to the law that they may violate its spirit, principles, and requirements with very little or no sense of the criminality of such conduct---when they may confess such disobedience without shame, or seeming remorse--- when little esteem and honour attaches to the fact of obedience, and little disesteem and dishonour to that of disobedience---when little obligation is felt or cherished to obey, on the one hand, and not to disobey on the other---and finally, when the love of righteousness, and hatred of iniquity, have ceased to be supreme in the mind. Whenever, and wherever, such results as these appear, but one cause can be assigned for the same---viz., a loss of sacred respect for the law itself. No principles, doctrines, or teachings, we remark, can be so pernicious and subversive in their tendency and influence, as those which intrinsically tend to relax the sacredness of the will and law of God upon the obedience, full and implicit, of His creatures. No one will question the strict validity of these statements. Our last and not least important inquiry is this. What principles, doctrines, and forms of teaching, do intrinsically tend to induce such pernicious and subversive results? To this inquiry we answer:

Principles, doctrines, and teachings, which "make void the law," ---or tend to relax a sense of its sacredness.

1. The first that we notice is this: Familiarizing-the minds of believers, converts especiaIIy, with the fact that they will sin---sin daily in heart, thought, word, and act. All are aware of the almost resistless influence which a full conviction that a specific event will inevitably occur exerts upon the mind. Death has, in many instances, beef induced by the simple belief that it would occur. Familiarize your convert with the fact, and induce in him the absolute conviction, that he inevitably will sin, and that in the forms above stated, and you have rendered two events equally inevitable---the fact that he will thus sin, and that he will soon become possessed of a conscience seared and deadened to a sense of the criminality of the sin which he does commit. No other results will or can follow. We lay this down as a principle that knows no exception, a principle verified by the entire mass of facts that lie all around us in all the Churches, that Christians manifest little remorse, and no shame, in respect to forms of sin which they expect and are expected to commit, while their remorse and shame are deep and intense in respect to those classes of sins which they are expected not to commit. "Forsaking their first love," worldly mindedness and conformity, an evil temper, covetousness, and sins of a similar character, Christians generally expect, and are expected to commit; while the grosser sins of blasphemy, theft, lying, drunkenness, and licentiousness, they are expected to avoid. Search Christendom, and you will find the consciences of believers comparatively dead to the criminality of sins of the former class, and all alive to that of the latter. There are communities called Christian, where Christians are expected to perpetrate the latter as well as the former class of sins, and here you will find the conscience just as callous to the criminality of the one, as of the other class. There are countries where the absence of the virtue of chastity in woman, and a robber-life in man, are considered as not incompatible with the possession of Christian character and an assured hope of eternal life, and where Christians are expected to commit these very sins. Here we find the same absence of shame and remorse, for these crimes, that we do in our Churches in respect to the sins to which we have referred. Talk to those adulteresses and robbers about the vices and crimes which they perpetrate, and they will listen to you with the most shameless and unblushing effrontery. Talk to these same individuals about eating meat on Friday, neglecting the confessional, the sacrament, making the prescribed crossings, or counting their beads, and you will find that here their consciences are most quick and wakeful. The reason is obvious. In the former case, you speak of sins which the subjects expect, and are expected, to commit. In the latter you refer to imagined duties which they expect, and are expected, not to omit. The principle is a universal one, and just as fixed in its operation as are any of the laws of nature. Teach the convert that he will sin, sin daily in heart, thought, word, and act, and these results will inevitably follow. In the first place, he will sin, and will go farther in sin than you expect. Then, since he does nothing but what he expects, and is expected, to do, the fact of sin will not startle or alarm him. As a consequence his conscience will slumber, and gradually become callous to the criminality of his sin, and if he does not sleep the sleep of death "on the enchanted ground," he will "be saved so as by fire." By such teachings he is placed under the most perilous influences conceivable.

One of the main sources of the peril connected with these teachings lies in their indefiniteness The subject, as he is assured and made to believe, will sin, sin daily in heart, thought, word, and deed. Of the form and degree of the sin, which, as he is assured, is inevitable (grosser vices and crimes excepted), he has no apprehensions whatever. When he aims at perfection, as he is taught that he must, he does so under the absolute assurance of failure, failure in what form, and to what extent, of this, the grosser sins excepted, he has no conception. Can believers be placed in circumstances more open and defenceless to the deadly assaults of "the world, the flesh, and the devil," than they are when under the full power of such beliefs and expectations as these? If we could only know the form and extent in which sin is inevitable, we should have before our minds a definite standard of practicable attainment, and should know what to aim at with rational hope. Oppressed with the absolute assurance of falling into sin, into what forms and to what extent we know not and cannot know, Satan can ask for no more open exposures for "his fiery darts," than he here finds the believer in.

Impress the convert, on the other hand, that what, and only what, is expected of him is a sacred "respect for all God's commandments "---obedience, prompt and implicit, to "every word that proceed eth out of the mouth of God;" that he is no more expected to sin in any one form than in any other; that a common criminality and peril to the soul's eternity, attends sin in all forms alike; and that when sin, in any form, has been committed, nothing but "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ," can save the soul from death, and then, and only then, "will his righteousness go forth as brightness and his salvation as a lamp that shineth," and "God's law will be magnified and made honourable "through Him.

2. Suppose, now, that the convert, in common with other believers, is not only familiarised with the fact, and impressed with the conviction, that he will continuously sin, but that this conviction is confirmed by the assurance with -which he is also familiarised, that the holiest individuals that have ever lived have thus sinned; such individuals, for example, as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, Apostles, Paul particularly, and all believers in all ages who are most venerated for the sanctity of their lives. Even these men, the convert is assured, did sin daily in heart, thought, word, and deed, and he must not entertain the proud and presumptuous idea of being more holy than they were. What will, what must, be the inevitable result of such teachings upon all who receive them as truths of God? But one result ever has followed, or can follow. The degree of the sin to be committed is unknown; sin in its grosser forms, which no believer is expected to commit, excepted. Hence, while the convert avoids these, nothing will occur to disturb his fears, or alarm his conscience. However far he may depart from God, he will find in the sins of these holiest of men, sins with which you have familiarised his mind, just the opiate which will stupefy his conscience, and perfect his carnal security. While he may, as he no doubt will, admit the fact that he is not where and what he should be, he will do so without shame, or disquieting remorse. Admonish him for his shortcomings, and he will confess the fact; but will find his apology in the example of those holy men and women, whose sins, instead of whose faith, you have really taught him to follow.

Apply this principle to specific forms of Christian duty in any of the particular relations of life, and what would the inevitable result he? Respect for parental authority and other kindred duties are, in fact and form, prescribed iii the Bible as essential elements of religious duty. Suppose, now, that parents should educate their children in this wise:

First of all such children are taught that they might to "obey their parents in the Lord," and are induced to resolve and promise to do so. At the same time they are assured, and that as a revealed truth of God, a truth which they will disbelieve at the peril of their souls, that no child since the fall, the child Jesus excepted, "hath, by any grace received in this life," been able fully to obey such precepts, but "daily doth break them in thought, word, and deed." You then confirm your child in his expectation of thus sinning, by assuring him that you and all other parents thus sinned when you were children, arid that this is true of all the men and women whom he holds in the deepest esteem and veneration. You know very well that under such teaching all children would become shamelessly lawless and disobedient, and void of natural affection. Suppose that teachers in our schools should give out their rules, and none but wholesome ones, and should then induce their pupils to resolve upon, and most solemnly pledge, full obedience. We will then suppose that these pupils are furnished with a manual containing such an item as this: No pupil, since schools were organised, hath been able fully to obey such rules, but daily doth break them in heart, thought, word, and act. The pupils are then assured that all teachers, that all parents, and all the wisest and best men and women of all ages, did thus sin, when they were pupils; and that present pupils should not expect to be better than their predecessors. We all know what the result would be. The same lawless, remorseless, and shameless results would undeniably follow from similar teachings and beliefs in every conceivable sphere of human life. Can a sentiment, thus subversive in all other relations, be of hallowed influence in the family of God and school of Christ?

3. Suppose now, that the convert and all believers are further taught that God has abundantly, in His own Word, revealed the fact---a fact which we must believe, or "make God a liar "---that all Christians do, and will, sin daily in heart, thought, word, and act, and that it is a perilous error to believe or expect the contrary. You go further, and furnish your pupils with numberless affirmed proof texts, confirming the belief and expectations under consideration; thus inducing in the mind the habit of searching the Bible, not to find "the grace which bringeth salvation," but proofs of the fact of the absolute certainty that the subject ---viii sin. The conviction, of the inevitable certainty of actual sin is thus confirmed by affirmed specific revelations from God Himself. Surrounded as the convert is by numberless temptations and besetments from the world, the flesh, and Satan, an infinite weight is thus added to the pressure that lures him onward in the direction of sin.

4. A wide step, we will suppose, is now taken in advance of all this. The convert and other believers are impressed with the conviction that it is a revealed and fixed arrangement of divine purpose and grace, not only that no believer shall in this life be "sanctified wholly," be "saved unto the uttermost," or be "redeemed from all iniquity," but that he shall be gradually recovered from the power of sin. You assure the convert that while "Christ can, by one word of His power, render us sinless, God is glorified, not in the instantaneous perfection of His redeemed, but by their gradual deliverance from imperfection." "Gradual growth out of the evil into the good is the divine law (method) of holiness." "Man prefers the instantaneous to the gradual, but will he prevail against God?" The above are cited from the writings of a leading divine of this age. When your pupil has received such a doctrine as that, and received it as a revealed truth of God, will he, can he, regard the degree of sin, under the power of which, by divine choice and fixed purpose, he is left, the degree of sin, deliverance from which would be a reversal of "the divine law of holiness"?---will he, can he, regard this amount and degree of sin, as in reality, "an evil thing and bitter"? You may---and he may---call it such, but in the presence of such apprehensions, neither He nor you can regard it as such. Recognising yourself, on the other hand, as under "the divine law of holiness," as in the state in which alone "God is glorified," you cannot, if you respect the law under which God has, as you believe, immutably placed you, but be content to continue under the degree of sin where God leaves and continues you. It is thus that men "make void the law of God by their traditions."

5. The same baleful influence results from those forms of teaching in which sin itself is represented as an infinite evil, while "the sense of sin" is eulogized and magnified as of immortal benefit to the soul. "The sense of sin," says a distinguished theologian, "is like the atmosphere in which the earthly bird wings its flight, for all its powers are adapted to a resisting medium." "The sense of sin," he says again, "is to the soul what the air is to the bird. In our present imperfect state it is essential to its growth." The immutable condition, as this author afterwards states, of the existence of "a sense of sin," is the continued conscious presence of sin in the heart. How can a spiritual atmosphere, without which spiritual life and growth are impossible, be regarded as an infinite good, and the sin without which the existence of the atmosphere is impossible, be in the mind's regard our infinite evil? "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" " Abiding in Christ," "faith in His name," and the power of the Spirit received by faith, are God's revealed atmosphere of spiritual growth and development. For all "the sense of sin "needed, "the time past of our lives," we are assured, "may suffice."

6. We will now refer to the covenant obligations, which every convert is required to assume on his entrance into the Church. In every Church the convert is required, under the solemnity of an oath, to pledge himself to God, and to His people, to abstain wholly from all sin, and to render implicit obedience to "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." In all of the Churches in which the doctrine under consideration is received, the convert is required to assume such sacred obligations under the avowed expectation of daily violating them in heart, thought, word, and deed. We have very high authority for affirming that "it is better not to vow than to vow and not pay." What must be the tendency of vowing to God and man with the avowed expectation of not paying? Years after the English government was established in India, the English judges there affirmed that they had never found a native of that country whose oath could be at all relied on in any case where the interest or desire of the witness impelled him to perjury. The reason, and only reason, was the universal expectation that all oaths would be of this character. The same expectation would undeniably impart the same character to oaths in all courts of justice on earth. Is this principle reversed in respect to covenant vows or oaths of still greater solemnity---vows taken by every convert on his entrance into full standing in the Church? We contemplate with horror such vows. If it was the fixed plan to induce general indifference to covenant vows, and to sin itself, what means, we ask, in all sincerity, could be adopted, better adapted to that end, than constraining the convert, in fact and form, to covenant with God and man, and to consider himself under perpetual covenant obligations to do what he avowedly expects not to do, and not to do what he deliberately expects to do? In entering into the married relation, each party solemnly pledges absolute fidelity to the other. What if, in all such transactions, those vows were assumed with the avowed expectation of daily violating them in heart, thought, word, and deed, and with the avowed belief that, since the fall, no husband or wife has been able to keep such a covenant? Covenanting with God is represented in the Scriptures as a marriage. Can it be that making vows to God, with the avowed expectation of daily violating them, does not have the same fatal tendency that ordinary marriage vows assumed with similar expectations, would have?

7. In prayer, we remark again, grace is specifically asked for, that the subject may "stand perfect and complete in all the will of God." Yet, wherever the belief under consideration obtains, such prayers are offered with the avowed expectation of not receiving the blessing asked for. What is the immutable tendency of thus praying, but to render prayer, in all its forms, an unmeaning and heartless service?

As sin, according to this sentiment, is an omnipresent fact in experience, the confession of sin in every prayer is required by those who hold this sentiment And what is the character of the confessions which we commonly hear? If there is anything which must be "a smoke in the nose" of the Almighty, it must be an unfeeling arid heartless confession of sin. Yet this is the smoke which is constantly going up from the prayers offered everywhere, under the expectation of sinning daily in heart, thought, word, arid deed. With what shameless indifference, as if sin was regarded as the merest trifle, are the confessions repeated: "We have done many things that we ought not to have done, and left undone many things which we ought to have done." In such prayers individuals "become rockers, and render their bands strong," and just such prayers will be offered whenever arid wherever the sentiment under consideration shall obtain.

8. The same result, we remark finally, follows from another form of teaching. When the duty and possibility of being " cleansed from all sin," through the grace of Christ, and the power of "the Eternal Spirit" are presented, we are gravely told that we think thus because we have lowered the standard of duty, and relaxed the claims of the law and will of God. "Had you," we are told, "such a standard of moral excellence before your mind as rises before ours, and were God's claims upon our love and obedience as sacred in your regard as they are in ours, you would not speak as you do." A certain lady was in the constant habit of eulogising her minister as one of the greatest theologians of the age. "Why," she exclaimed, on a particular occasion, "so deep and profound are his teachings, that I don't pretend to understand him." You profess, my friend, through your teachings, to "magnify the law and make it honourable" by representing its claims as so high and sacred, that you never think of keeping them. You will effectively secure this end when, and only when, those claims shall become so high and sacred in your regard, that you will never think of anything else but keeping them---of anything else than prompt and full obedience to "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." God never eulogises His law by raising it above the provisions of His grace, the power of His spirit, and the possibilities of faith. "This commandment," He says, "which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." This, also, is just what Paul affirms to be true of "the word of faith, "as taught by himself and inspired associates. Placing God's requirements above the provisions and promises of His grace, "the power of the Spirit," and the possibilities of faith, does nothing else but impart a fatal opiate to the conscience, and enable individuals to sin without shame and almost without remorse.