In both these passages Paul gives thanks for deliverance from a sinning and sinful state.

To bring this subject fully before us, I remark,

I. That unconverted men are morally and spiritually dead.

II. Moral death of sinners is a fact of experience.

III. There must be efficacious remedy for sin.

IV. This remedy is never in ourselves.

V. What the Bible thus declares, is true also in philosophy and in fact.

VI. Thanksgiving for victory over sin.

VII. Until the church is sanctified, the world cannot be converted.

I. The Bible everywhere teaches and facts prove that unconverted men are morally and spiritually dead.

1. They live as if there were no God. They appreciate neither His rights nor His feelings. To all intents and purposes, they are, towards God, as dead men. Considerations concerning God have no influence on them. This is one of the most obvious facts in human life. So true is it, that in fact we often find men pleading as their excuse that they have no inclinations towards God. Thus they reveal their moral death, not in their lives only, but in their very excuses; showing that they are conscious of their moral apostasy and death, and but too well aware that they have no tendencies in themselves towards God.

2. Christians, on the other hand, are represented as being alive but not in good and perfect health, and not mature in their growth. At first they are new-born babes, needing the pure milk of the word; then youth, needing counsel; then fathers and mothers in Israel, of "full age," and "having their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." Often the scriptures represent Christians as being very weak, so that they have great liability to stumble and fall. This stumbling and falling becomes a sad stumbling-block in the way of wicked men -- those men who are prone to look for and seek stumbling-blocks for their excuse. They do not realize the condition of Christians, only in part reclaimed from their death in sin. They do not consider that though born, they are yet babes, or at best, but children. But they are not disposed to make allowance for these circumstances -- a fact which only serves to show how unreasonable sin is.

Returning to the fact that Christians are usually weak, I remark, this weakness is moral, not natural. Natural weakness pertains to one's created faculties; moral, to one's voluntary purposes. Weakness of nature is a misfortune; weakness of moral purpose is a fault. Death in sin is simply a fault -- always and altogether, a fault. This weakness in Christians is also a fault, because it results from a want of faith in Christ, and love to His name.

1. I have myself had but too much reason to know what it is. I found a total discrepancy between my convictions and my actions. I could say, "So I ought to do, but so I do not." When I questioned myself, asking -- Why is this so? I could only say, It is wholly unaccountable. Wide awake on all other subjects, and to all other interests, yet perfectly dead to this, I found myself in a strange state, and if not a "wonder to many," I was at least to myself. In a wretched state, I knew I had no disposition to get out of it. And every sinner who reflects knows that this is just his state.

2. The spiritual weakness of Christians manifests itself in a conscious want of promptness to act upon, and fully up to, their convictions of duty and sense of obligation. They are more deeply conscious of these defects than sinners are, or can be, of theirs. Sinners have little anxiety or trouble about their own moral death; but not so with Christians. They recognize their obligations, and are unusually conscious of being ready, prompt, and anxious to meet them, yet painfully aware that while "the spirit is willing the flesh is weak." Sometimes they are strong in the Lord, and their sense of weakness has passed away; anon, perhaps, they trust to their own strength, and find out their weakness to their cost; they fall sadly short, and come into darkness and trouble.

3. This state in both saints and sinners is among the most patent and obvious facts in the world. Who can doubt that there is moral life in real Christians, and moral death in sinners? This the Bible everywhere teaches or implies. It is a fact that no man can doubt who has eyes to see, and a mind candid enough to apprehend and admit a plain fact.

I often think it strange that unconverted men allow themselves to be so stumbled by the weakness of professed Christians. I have met some impenitent men who had thought candidly on this subject, and who seemed to appreciate fully the state and difficulties of Christians, and consequently were not stumbled at all by any mistakes or errors into which they might fall. They did not at all wonder that Christians are no better. If I had not considered this matter, and had not ceased to stumble myself on the imperfections of professed Christians, I never could have become a Christian. If I had not seen that all this is according to the Bible and reason, I could not have come into a state of mind towards God and Christianity in which my conversion from sin would be possible. Usually, in a place where there are many Christians, there will be some who stumble constantly upon them, as if utterly unable or unwilling to apologize for their failures on the score of infant piety, superinduced upon long-standing habits of sin.

So of Christians, if there be not some efficacious remedy, giving them victory over sin, they too must be lost. In my early life I was much more ready to doubt whether any could be saved, than to believe that all would be. There seemed to me more reason to suppose all would be damned, than all saved. The great inquiry was, How can any be saved? It was never this, How can God damn any? Let any sensible man get a clear and full idea of what salvation is, and he will see it can be no easy thing. He will assume that the law must go into full execution against all, and that so, none can be saved. My mind before my conversion ran on this text -- "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" I could see that even Christians must have mighty help from some quarter, being only babes in Christ, and their salvation a work of many difficulties.

It has always been passing strange to me that any man could be a Universalist. Even before my conversion it was a profound mystery. Why, said I then, does not everybody see that men must become holy or be lost? If the Holy Ghost does not go down into hell to convert sinners, surely they cannot be saved there. Unless there be some efficacious remedy for sin, taking effect to the full extent of actually giving the victory over it, salvation in heaven is impossible.

In Romans 7, Paul describes a state in which there is the greatest effort to get rid of this state of sinfulness. There he cries out, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of sin and death?" Then, the gospel opening on his anxious eye, he thanks God for deliverance through Jesus Christ. He saw the remedy.

IV. This remedy is never in ourselves.

Nowhere in the wide range of the material system all round us, can it be found; nowhere outside of God. It might be demonstrated that in our own nature there is no efficacious remedy. Yet by this I do not mean to say that if any man would use his powers right, he could gain no relief; but I do mean to say that, apart from God, he never will use his own powers right for this end. His own will is committed in an opposite direction. He has fallen into the slough of his corrupt propensities. These propensities are fearful adversaries to his being holy, and must be, until they are subdued. Hence we are constantly pressed with the question -- Where is the power that can subdue them and give us the victory?

1. Paul answers, thanking God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him we have it. Yet until men come to know the gospel by an inward apprehension, it is to them dark, and almost without meaning. They feel but little if any interest in it. But when the divine Spirit reveals Jesus to the mind, these dark things become precious realities. Light breaks in, and illumines the chambers, so recently in thick darkness. Under this influence gospel truth becomes intensely interesting, and even exciting. Men who have been swept away by the influence of worldly objects, who would not look at spiritual things, and were almost mad in their pursuit of objects which appeal only to the senses, are now wonderfully changed. Christ reveals Himself so clearly that He overbalances and overcomes these earthly excitements. Especially is this the case when the Spirit reveals God as being truly love. This at once, takes prodigious hold on us. Said one who had long professed Christ, and had known something of the gospel in her own experience, "All at once, after so long walking in comparative darkness, the Lord showed me that I had hitherto known Him but very imperfectly. I did not know God was love, before. I did not see this in its own true sun-light. I had opinions; I had notions; but it could not be said I had knowledge. I had heard of Him by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye has seen Him, and my heart has been ravished with His love."

From this time onward her whole soul seemed all glowing with love to God, and radiant with the love of God, revealed to her. So it will always be when the Spirit reveals Jesus to the soul, and we see why He died for us, and why He has in so many ways done so much for us. When these things come up from the realms of theory, into the position of fact, and of experience, apathy ceases; the sensibilities are no longer stagnant; all is wakeful; slavish fear is gone; the soul approaches God freely, and in the spirit of a child; he is no longer religious, because he must be, nor reads the Bible because he must, nor does he pray, or give in benevolence, for such reasons. All these forms of dead experience have passed away, and the mind looks back on it as a loathsome abomination. While these views of Christ are before his mind, he will make no more legal efforts -- will no more strive to gain the favor of God by mere works of law. Christ, thus revealed, breaks the power of sin.

2. Turning now to my impenitent hearers, I ask you if you do not know and admit that I have given a fair account of your case. You know that you have no proper regard, practically, for God, no more than if your heart and intellect were separated, and all mutual influence of one over the other were broken off. Your convictions of truth are often clear and strong; but the response of your heart to this truth is utterly withheld. The state of your affections and will seems to have no correspondence to your own convictions of what they should be. Yet this strange discrepancy is altogether within your power, and you ought to put an end to it at once. You have no right to live on so; God asserting His claims, but your soul utterly disowning them. This is precisely the state of the sinner; his conscience dissevered from his heart. When his attention is turned to this, he is conscious of this utter disagreement and discordance. In my days of sin, I was just as sensible of this as of my own existence.

Do you ask, What is the reason for this? Am I ever to become self-consistent? Said one of the first lawyers in New York -- "There is no use in trying to vindicate myself. I can make no defense; can offer no explanation. It avails nothing for me to argue my case, for I have nothing to plead." So you know you have no reason to offer for your course of sin. If I were to put it to you all, to say by a public expression if this be not your case, you would at once, if honest, rise to give assent. You are in a lost state. You feel, sometimes, a deep sense of this lostness. Is there a remedy for you?

3. Some of you who profess religion are in great doubt whether you have any spiritual life. Let me ask you if you have not been greatly tried with the fact of your own spiritual impotence, and of your having so little rallying power in yourself? Are you not surprised and troubled at your want of energy, your inefficiency in duty? Have these things pressed you, and have you been led to inquire, anxiously, whether there is a remedy? Do you want to get hold of one, if it be yet possible?

Our text gives us the true and only remedy. God in Christ is the only efficient and all-sufficient power to reach and remedy this direst of all things, sin. Everywhere else in the Bible, the condition of this victory over sin is declared to be faith in Jesus Christ. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even your faith." Without faith the gospel never takes effect in us.

Goodness revealed has attractions over even sinners. It is its very nature to attract all human hearts.

1. Some of you felt this attraction even when you were in your sins. Perhaps you feel it somewhat even now. In my own case I recollect the circumstance of weeping profusely at an instance of goodness. I thought then it came near to winning me over to sympathy with goodness. I could not help crying out, This is not in me; I know my heart is not in sympathy with God; -- so strangely did this manifestation of goodness affect me.

You who have read Uncle Tom's Cabin will remember the story of Topsy and little Eva. Topsy seems never to have seen any manifestations of kindness and goodness towards herself. Always beaten about, every influence only driving her the farther from goodness, no wonder she became surly and morose. Little Eva approached her on one occasion as she sat, and looking her mildly and sweetly in the eye, asked her if she could not be good. Now, for the first time, she saw an interest manifested in her happiness, and saw also, in contrast with Eva's spirit, what her own was. This is represented as the first step before the great moral change.

2. No doubt this is true in philosophy. There is something in goodness which strongly tends to draw a moral being into sympathy with itself.

3. Christians are made strong by the revelations which Christ makes of Himself to their minds. "Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, (Jesus) they are changed from glory to glory." The view of His own glory, which the Lord gave to Moses when he prayed, "I beseech Thee show me Thy glory," and the Lord answered, "I will make all My goodness pass before thee," this strengthened Moses greatly. It seemed to cast the mantle of Jehovah upon him, and make him a new and wonderful man.

4. When the Lord gains the confidence of a sinner so that He can reveal Himself, the first step is to reveal His goodness. So we should expect, and so it is.

But this goodness must be believed. Confidence must be reposed in Christ, else He cannot reveal His goodness in any saving manner.

5. A conscious victory over ourselves and sin is the only evidence of a saving change. An apparent victory is the only evidence to others of our being savingly changed. This victory consists in being saved from sin, and in becoming like God. Nothing less than this is real salvation.

Love revealed to faith is the power of God unto salvation. Suppose one of you comes into a state in which you have not a particle of confidence in any one who tries to do you good; all that any friend should attempt to do for you, you ascribe to some sinister motive. So long as you withhold confidence his love is not revealed to your faith, for you have no faith to which it can be revealed. In this case, by a natural law of mind, all the goodness he reveals to you only makes you more wicked and only works out a deeper ruin.

The love of God revealed to faith, is the power of God to bring the soul out of its bondage. But love manifested, yet through unbelief rejected, works ruin to the soul by a natural law; and by the same law, the clearer the revelations of that love, the more rapid and fearful the ruin wrought. The case of the Jews, taught by Christ in person, is in point, a most striking and affecting example. The way they rejected their Messiah served fearfully to deprave their hearts and to hasten the ruin of the nation. Christ Himself said, "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin, (that is, comparatively none) but now they have no cloak for their sin." When Christ went through all Judea and Galilee, manifesting everywhere the evidences of His being the Messiah, and bearing Himself with so much kindness, dignity, and humility, it seems wonderful that the people in mass and their priests and scribes especially, did not open their hearts to bid Him welcome. But when instead of this, they withheld their confidence, and rejected Him in stern and wicked unbelief, they became fearfully hardened. Every step in the process of this rejection, worked only mischief and ruin. Suppose you have in your family a son whom you are trying to save; but the more you labor for this result, so much the more does he withhold his confidence, traduce your motives, and pervert to evil all your intended good. Such a course as this on his part throws him fearfully into the power of Satan, and he is led captive, by that arch-deceiver, at his will.

6. None can appreciate our texts, and other passages of this class, except those who have had experience. "Thanks be to God," cries Paul, "who giveth us the victory;" -- a song in which none can truly join but those who have gained this victory, and know its power and blessedness. What can an impenitent man know of such emotions? What can he say? Can he thank God for victory of which he knows and experiences nothing? No; he has been only vanquished, and Satan sings the peans of victory over the ruin of his soul.

To the Christian, really victorious, there is the utmost occasion for gratitude and thanksgiving. He esteems this far above all his other mercies, that he finds himself lifted above the power of temptation, his old chains broken, his religious exercises and purposes become spontaneous, and religion the life and joy of his soul. How earnestly does he bless the Lord who hath given him the victory!

1. It is sad to see how little there is, in our day, of this thanksgiving for victory over sin. How rarely do you hear such thanks for grace received and victory obtained! We have been in the habit here of having a thanksgiving meeting, for the purpose of expressing our individual grounds of thanksgiving. When the next thanksgiving day occurs shall we hear any offerings of praise to God for giving the victory over sin? We used to hear thanks for grace received; shall we have such thanks again? It was once, more common with us than thanks for temporal mercies; shall it be so again?

2. If the numbers who return to give thanks for this blessing are small, what shall we infer? Is it not fearfully sad and perilous that the gospel should lose its power, in any community?

Many seem not to be aware of their real state. It is hard to convince them that they are not altogether right, yet they have no thanks for this victory. Yet if they had gained this victory they surely would acknowledge it, and express their gratitude to God for it. No other victors are more grateful than Christian victors. If they find themselves victors, they will not conceal the blessed truth, but will naturally wish to shout the praises of victorious grace!

3. Many professed Christians spend their time and breath in brooding over their great weakness, talking it over, praying about it, and discouraging themselves and others as if the Lord were a hard master, who imposed heavy tasks and allowed only the least possible amount of grace to help His children perform them. Yet they do not usually quite despair of help in themselves; do not cease from legal efforts; are not dead to this class of efforts, as those who have utterly renounced them, and who trust in Christ alone. They still think they shall gain the victory by some work which they shall do in themselves. By efforts made without faith, they hope to get faith, and so work out their own righteousness. But it is only when self is really despaired of, that deliverance comes. When you see a sinner on the verge of despair in himself, then you may know he is near the kingdom of grace and mercy. When he has done everything he can do in himself, to save himself, and is compelled to despair of doing anything more, then he is ready to trust in Jesus. Who of us has not seen this experience in others, and felt it in ourselves? At first we thought we could get religion with little effort; we started off self-righteously, made some ineffectual struggles to pray, and soon learned that our case was far worse then we had supposed. Before my conversion I had never prayed much. For a short time previous, I used to lock my office door, stop the keyhole, and whisper out a short prayer in the greatest perturbation lest somebody should hear my voice, or in some way learn that I was praying. But this answered no purpose; I must pray better than this. I seemed to be bound up and hemmed in on every side, and could not pray. But it occurred to me that if I could get entirely away from everybody, and could meet God alone, that then I could pray. So I went off into the woods, far beyond any danger of being overheard, or seen. But even then I could not pray. My heart refused to pray; there seemed to be no prayer in it. I felt fearfully faint -- said, All is over with me; I never can pray. Despair came down on my heart for a moment; the last prop was knocked out from under me, and there was nothing more I could do but to fall helpless at Jesus' feet, and find mercy there!

4. Often persons talk and complain much of their weakness, but do not despair of yet further efforts in their own strength. They are not so shut up to God that they know they cannot take another step to purpose, in any other direction. They seem little aware of the fact that Jesus Christ is knocking at the door of their heart every moment, as He said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock" -- yet they do not bid Him enter with welcome. In fact, they even bolt the door against Him.

A lady of my acquaintance, hopefully a Christian, felt her need of sanctifying grace, and really exhausted her strength in efforts, after her own ideas of the matter, to get the command of her temper. At length she fell into despair; said she was not a Christian and could do no more, and would profess piety no longer. At this crisis Jesus revealed Himself to her, and in a moment she found deliverance. She was completely saved from the power of her giant temptation. Years after this, she said to me -- "I have no more expectation of committing those sins of temper than I have of committing murder."

5. Real despair of help in one's self does not make men careless and lead them to drop all efforts; on the contrary, the more they despair, the more their soul reaches out on every side for help and hope.

Until Christians can testify with their lips and lives, it cannot be expected that the truth will take effect.

A man of much prominence in New York had a pious wife. When the subject of sanctification came to be agitated here, some eighteen years since, she was enough of a Christian to understand it, and to feel her need. She studied it and embraced it. When her unconverted husband saw the astonishing change it wrought in her, he said, "the church must have this. When they do, the world will understand the gospel. They will have something intelligible to aim at." How true! Until the church gets the victory, and, rejoicing in this victory, can show it to the world, she need not think she is greatly recommending religion, or is likely to secure many converts.

1. Converts are likely to be converted only to the current standard of piety in the church where they are. Often you see this illustrated in a very striking manner. Although they have the Bible in their hand, and although they have excellent preaching, yet their practical ideas of religion are usually drawn from the observed life and spirit of their Christian friends. The living patterns have the practical power. Hence, if young converts have before them high example, it puts them upon high aims and efforts. They aspire to the standard of those whom they most esteem. O how precious to them, to have high and holy examples for their imitation!

2. Church members are in their own light when they reproach converts, for they only reproach themselves. They often do not consider that these converts are only themselves reproduced; a mirror in which they can see the reflection of their own faces. So, also, for the church to complain of each other is only to complain of themselves. We are every one of us responsible in our measure, for the state of the church, and to blame for its state being no better than it is. It is therefore of no use for us to recriminate.

Some professors of religion say, "All this does not apply to me, for I don't profess sanctification." A great mistake; for you have professed sanctification. Scarcely could you make a more solemn profession than you made when you joined the church. Then you publicly avouched the Lord Jehovah to be your God, Jesus to be your Savior, and the Holy Ghost to be your sanctifier. You solemnly promised to abstain from all ungodliness and every worldly lust, and if this is not a profession of entire sanctification, what is? Certainly, your promise and profession went the whole length of pledging yourself to full and whole-hearted obedience -- an obedience not so complete as you may perhaps, render in after years, with more and better knowledge; for holy obedience may progress with knowledge, onward through all time and all eternity. But after such a covenant, it avails nothing to say that you have not committed yourself to a life and a state of entire consecration to God.

Is it not the fact that some of you, instead of coming up to the gospel standard, keep shy of it, more than willing to waive the question about entire consecration, and really anxious to build up a new highway to heaven, which shall not be the "highway of holiness"? Brethren, such building of other highways for the Christian life, must be a fearful failure. There is perdition at the end of such a pathway, and there ought to be. If God's redeemed people rebel against being constrained by redeeming love, and insist that some little sin must be indulged and admitted into the standard Christian life, ought not God to give them up to their own lusts? Nay more, will He not do this as sure as He is holy, and as surely as He hates sin with utter hatred?

An ambassador is an agent or representative of a government. In ancient times, they were employed only in regard to matters of war and peace. In those times, commercial relations were of small account, compared with what they are now. Now it is common to sustain ambassadors at all the foreign courts, to look after those numerous relations that obtain between nations at peace with each other. No such thing was thought of in New Testament times. Our Savior speaks of ambassadors being sent, but it was only to "offer conditions of peace." In this sense, God sends His ambassadors to guilty men.

The Church, and especially her gospel ministers represent Christ on earth, and are engaged to do His work. The world being in revolt against its own Maker, Ruler and Father, He sends His ministers as ambassadors to plead with men to be reconciled to God. Ministers are divinely appointed and commissioned for this express purpose. Holding their credentials from the Lord Jesus Christ, they are authorized to offer men free pardon on condition of unqualified submission to God's will and acceptance of pardon in the name of Jesus only. I need only say, on this point, that a duly appointed ambassador holds such relations to both parties, that, while acting within his commission, his acts bind the government he represents, as truly as their own acts can do. His business is to keep within his commission and instructions, and report what he has done. Then his action is conclusive upon his employers.

I. Sinners are not reconciled to God.

II. But what is implied in being reconciled?

I. The text assumes that sinners are not reconciled to God.

This is, of course, true of every sinner. It is indeed only an identical proposition -- a mere truism -- only another way of saying the same thing. Sin is transgression of God's law, and, of course, is opposition and not friendship towards God. This is the very idea of being a sinner. To say that a sinner is unreconciled to God is only to say that he is a sinner. The being a sinner, implies an unreconciled state.

It is plain that God looks on sinners as being unreconciled; else how should He call on them to be reconciled? I am aware that sinners often say, "I have nothing against God," but this only shows that they know not what spirit they are of. They really act towards God as if they had the utmost reason for disliking Him; and if they were carefully to search their own hearts, they would find real enmity against God -- a spirit that loves to find fault, even where there is not the least occasion.

It is a simple and notorious fact that sinners are at variance with God. There is not another fact on all the face of this world's history more patent than this.

II. But what is implied in being reconciled?

That we cordially approve His character, and not His character only, but His government, so that we practically consent to obey Him. This implies supreme love to God, for He requires just no less than this. It implies submission to His providence also -- that is, to His actual administration of the affairs of this world. It includes a cordial embracing of His whole will -- in every department of His government and providence. A cordial and constant co-operation with Him in all His ways, must be embraced; for as He holds the position of Supreme Ruler, nothing less than this can be commensurate with our obligations.

1. There are many reasons why you, who are in sin, should be reconciled to God.
 
(1.) Because everything He has done is perfectly right. There is no fault to be found in His law -- all there, is holy, just and good. There is no fault to be found with the Gospel; that is ineffably condescending and compassionate -- gloriously good and wise. What reason, then, have you to be otherwise than reconciled?

(2.) It is utterly useless for you to persist in this controversy with God. You know He is right, and yourself wrong; and you also know that no amount of debate and controversy will ever make your case any better. Why, then, should you prolong such a controversy, so unjust to God -- so unreasonable; and to yourself as ruinous as it is unreasonable?

(3.) You ought to yield because you cannot afford to live so. You can find no happiness, no good of any sort in prosecuting this controversy.

(4.) God can never yield to you. You must yield, or there must be an everlasting antagonism. And can you look upon such a result with any other feelings than dread and horror?

(5.) That you should yield is intrinsically right -- a reason which ought to be sufficient alone, if there were no other.

(6.) Of course, it is safe to yield -- perfectly safe. You lose nothing -- run no risk of losing anything.
 

2. Suppose you were at variance with any other person, and there were only this one reason urged for your becoming reconciled, that it would be on your part simply right -- would you not be a knave if you were to resist? And ought you not to be so esteemed by all the world unless you would yield? In all controversies, the first thing enquired after is -- Who is in the right and who in the wrong? In the case between you and your Maker, this is perfectly plain. Not one unprejudiced judge in all the universe will ever decide in your favor.

Again, it is expedient. It will cost you nothing. It will deprive you of no good. In every point of view, expediency demands that you submit to God. I know sinners are often ashamed to admit that themselves are wrong; but which is most honorable; to maintain a position which everybody decides to be wrong; or to recede from that position -- nobly come out, and confess and avow what you know to be right, though it condemn your own past course? What do men say of those who doggedly maintain a wrong position because they are too proud to confess their known wrong? Do they honor such a spirit? Nay, verily, but , on the contrary, men always say if you have done wrong, it is noble and generous to admit it. What a wonderful thing to have a controversy with God, and maintain it, because you cannot brook the humiliation of confession and repentance! What! To contend with God, knowing that you are utterly wrong, and God altogether right; yet you maintain the controversy and go into it deeper and deeper every hour! What would you think of a child that should have such a controversy with its father, the child totally wrong in every point, the father perfectly right, and yet the child persists in maintaining the controversy?

Again, consider, God seeks a reconciliation -- seeks it although He is the offended and injured party, and although your course has been utterly and unreasonably wrong, and only wrong continually. Yes, the offended party comes and seeks reconciliation. He would live in peace with you. Not that He wants your help; for, is He dependent on you? No; but He seeks your peace and welfare -- seeks it simply and only because He is kindhearted and really benevolent.

3. You can have no peace, either within or without, until you yield to God. If you have a controversy with a neighbor, it is perpetually rasping and chafing your feelings; how fearful, then, to have such a controversy with God? How fearful to have an enemy who is present everywhere; so that, if you ascend into heaven, He is there; if you make your bed in hell, He is there; or if you take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth, even there you find your adversary -- a fearful Presence to blight your peace! The chariot-wheels of His government will roll on and on; and if you throw yourself in their path, they tarry not and turn not, but must "grind you to powder!" Where can you find a place to live, unreconciled to God? Why then, will you prolong this controversy?

God seeks to be at peace with you, not because He fears you; not lest you should destroy or even mar His happiness; no; you are to Him so small and so contemptible an enemy, He has only to withdraw His sustaining hand from underneath you, and you sink at once to hell by your own gravity. It is only because He loves you that He should ever care to bring you from your wretched rebellion to be at peace with Him.

4. He cannot be at peace with you unless you change. There is no possible way to restore a good understanding between yourself and God, unless you consent to become reconciled to Him. He cannot change and come over to you; you must consent to change your position and return to Him. And you must do this voluntarily. For God to force you, implies a contradiction. Omnipotence cannot force a sinner to be reconciled. Anything that should make this change irresistible, is simply absurd -- overlooking the intrinsic nature of the change itself.

5. God is your nearest neighbor, and always will be. You cannot move away from Him; He will be your nearest neighbor wherever you go or wherever you stay. Why would you keep up a controversy with your nearest neighbor -- with one who held the same room with you? Would you like a perpetual quarrel with your roommate? How much less should you, then, with one so all-present, so all-wise and powerful as God!

6. You cannot deny the fact of the controversy, nor the fact that you are wrong in it. How bad, then, to persist in your rebellion, and refuse to yield yourself implicitly to His will!

While God might command and might threaten, He yet for the most part, appears in a very different attitude. Laying this aside, He comes down to beseech you to be reconciled. Just as if your neighbor, who had all law and right on his side; who might prosecute you at law, and might prove you in the wrong, and make you suffer the consequences -- should, instead of this, come to you in a modest and quiet way, entreating you and saying -- "Now let us be at peace." So God comes in tones of most tender entreaty, and beseeches you to be reconciled.

7. If you do not come, you sin against your own soul. You impose on Him the hard necessity of destroying you. The feelings with which He views this hard necessity, you may see in His language when He cries out -- "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within Me; My repentings are kindled together." O sinner, hear that! "How shall I give thee up!" He bursts out in the language of grief, as if His very heart would break! Long time, and with every means in His power, He has followed the sinner, beseeching him to turn and live; how sad, then, to a heart of infinite love, to see that, probably -- yes, certainly, all these compassionate labors must fail! O, to follow a sinner so, in the fulness of an aching heart, for years and scores of years -- and then have it come utterly to naught!

And is this God's bearing towards thee, O sinner? Precisely so; these are God's own words. And He feels thus and speaks thus only because He so dislikes to take vengeance. Therefore, it is that He waits so long and so patiently, and still comes forth in mercy to entreat and beseech wayward sinners to be reconciled to God.

8. Consider yet, that God has taken the greatest pains to put things in the best position for entreating you. Think of this -- that God should take the attitude of a suppliant -- and before whom? Not an equal -- not a lofty angel even; but before a poor, weak and mean sinner! To even such, He sends His ambassadors praying and beseeching! And is this really so? Suppose you should meet Him on earth, and, instead of reproaching you, He should look you in the face most tenderly, and ask you why you had been abusing Him so long and so grievously. Suppose He presses you to say why you have ever had it in your heart to abuse Him at all. What could you answer? That He should come and really beseech you -- would not this break your heart as a potter's vessel?

9. God loves to do this when He can do it safely. It is only when He knows that He can spare no longer, with safety to His kingdom, that He changes His attitude, rises in His majesty to maintain the honor of His throne, and hurls the sinner down to eternal ruin!

1. Sinners often pretend to think the difficulty is on God's part. They say -- "I have nothing against God; I am reconciled to God."

What does that mean? Do you really mean that you yield obedience to God, and in every way, take your own proper position towards Him? How can you say that while you are in conflict with Him at every point?

What base hypocrisy it is for sinners to set aside the whole question by saying -- I have nothing against God. But you have something against God. Your heart is full of prejudice against Him. You utterly fail to love, honor, or obey Him! Not one thing, appropriate to your relations to God, have you ever done! How basely hypocritical, then, for you to claim that you have nothing against God, and that all is right on your part!

2. Sinners seem to think that they must move God. They will have it they must persuade God to make up with them, and almost, if not quite, confess, that He has been in the wrong. Instead of praying that they may themselves come back to God and feeling that they ought to, they insist that God ought to come back to them. You may have heard of the little girl who became convicted of her sins, and who prayed for a long time with great agony; but, at length, got hold of the true idea of her relations to God and of God's to her, and running in, she cried out to her mother, "Ma, ma, I have made up with God!"

3. The world has gone off into rebellion against God, and is utterly removed from all sympathy with Him. Upon this state of things, God has ordained an economy of proceedings, all arranged for the one purpose of restoring man to love and obedience. It aims to illustrate God's government and yet to demonstrate His love. In the development of this great plan, Christ came in person to His own chosen people; when they reviled, He reviled not again; when they cursed, He only blessed; when they blasphemed, He prayed for them; and when they plotted and perpetrated His murder by most wicked hands, He prayed, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, and proceeded at once to offer them pardon through the very blood they had shed, "beginning at Jerusalem." In how many ways did He strive to teach men, even sinners, that God is their friend, displeased, indeed, with their sins, yet earnestly seeking their welfare and ready at once to blot out all their transgressions, if they will repent and accept of mercy. See how beautifully all this stands revealed before us in the last scenes of the Savior's earthly life. You know how He finally died under their hands; how He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, meekly and unresisting; how they mocked Him, put on Him a crown, not of pearls, but of thorns -- a reed in one hand for a scepter; how, when the Roman Governor would release Him, they preferred the scandalous Barabbas, as if glad of an opportunity to show their appreciation of the Son of God! You know how this mobocrat and murder was released instead of Jesus, and how they heaped on Him every form of abuse and of insult they could devise. And did He lose all patience? Does He call for twelve legions of angels to sink that guilty city a thousand fathoms deep in the gulf of destruction? No; far from this as can be! After He has comforted His disciples, the first thing He does is to say -- "Go, preach My gospel among all nations, but begin at Jerusalem." Go, first of all, to My murderers!

4. And now, after this demonstration by "God manifest in the flesh," can you suppose that the difficulty is on God's part, and that He cannot consent on reasonable grounds to be reconciled to you?

5. How can this difficulty be settled? God on His side says -- "What can I do more that I have not done" to you? As one of Christ's ambassadors, I ask -- What more shall God do for you? Can you suppose anything short of your yielding up the whole controversy can save you? Indeed, if God were to change ever so much, and recede from His claims ever so fully, your conscience would wage everlasting war against you and you could get no peace! I said to a young lady -- Are you a Christian? She replied, "I believe God deserves better treatment than He has ever received from me." What sinner does not know this? And who would not be compelled to say it if he where shut up to the truth? You know you have no occasion to treat Him with any, even the least, contempt.

6. If He deserves better treatment at your hands, shall He have it? What do you say to that? Shall He have it from this time and onward forever? God being your helper, and by His grace, will you yield entirely to His claims? This is implied in being reconciled to God; have you any reason why you should not do it?

7. Suppose God should abandon all efforts to make peace with you! This is more than supposable; it will certainly take place ere long. He has plainly told you that He will not always strive with you. And, besides, it is every way reasonable that He should at some time desist from all further effort. You could not think it strange if He were to desist now. It should even be expected. Suppose, then, that His compassion should fail -- His forbearance go no further -- the Spirit be withdrawn, God give you over to hopeless impenitence and endless woe -- to let your enmity rage on forever; what then? Suppose this result which surely must be reached in time, were reached today? There remains no more hope for you. You can look back on a hopeful past -- a period when you sat near the very gate of heaven, and almost without effort, you might have pressed your way within the strait gate; but that time has forever past. O, how you wish you could have one more gospel Sabbath, and have another gospel sermon, and have once more a waiting Savior and a striving Spirit! O might it only be! But with you it is all too late!

Are you not afraid of this result? You know God will not wait long. You know you have abused His patience already, past all human endurance, and how long can you presume that even divine forbearance and compassion will hold out?

Having made you proposals from my Master, and in His name, I come now to demand from you an answer. What shall I say from you to my Master? Suppose I come to you individually -- for this business is all to be done with you as individuals -- I come to you, then, as individuals, and would fain know what you reply to my Master. I am going to report the matter; what shall I report? Do you say that you have no report to make -- that you take no action in the case? But this is impossible. To try to do nothing, is to neglect this offered salvation, and insult your Redeemer, and say back to God -- "Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways!' It is scarcely possible that any action can be so fatal as this.

Suppose Christ should appear -- in this very place and hour -- and with a voice that should shake this house, should say, "I come to demand a decision! Tell Me now, once for all, whether you will or will not repent -- whether you will or will not have salvation through My blood! Now, therefore, let every sinner choose the ground he proposes to stand on forever. As you say now, so it shall be at the judgment, and so shall stand through eternity!"

So Jesus does beseech you to choose this day whom you will serve, and so He may accept your virtual decision as final, and set His seal upon it forever!

In speaking from these words, I shall,

I. Notice some of the ways in which God reproves the wicked;

II. Show what is meant by hardening the neck;

III. Point out some of the ways in which men do harden the neck;

IV. What is meant by being suddenly destroyed;

V. What, by being destroyed without remedy;

VI. Why this destruction is remediless.

I. The ways in which God reproves the wicked are various.

1. All His providences are disciplinary. Every one of them has a voice of admonition, speaking to the sinner in tones of love, and appealing to his fears, or to his conscience, or to his heart.

2. His revealed word is another means of reproof. There God speaks in burning words to the sinner. What language could be more plain and persuasive! And every word teems with reproof against sinners and admonitions to cease from sinning.

3. God's Spirit reproves the sinner, making use for this end of both God's word and providence. Often these reproofs are felt by the sinner to be deeply solemn and searching.

4. Besides all these agents, God makes use of the human conscience. He has constituted the human soul with a faculty which takes cognizance of its moral acts and states. Through this, He rebukes the sinner. He also employs our friends and our enemies, availing Himself of the social law of our nature to reach us through fellow-beings, and do us good.

The figure is that of a bullock who presses against the yoke until his neck becomes callous -- a figure both plain and common to denote the stubborn resistance of the sinner's will against God.

III. The ways in which sinners harden their neck are many and various.

1. They do it by refusing to attend to God's reproof. Nothing is more common for sinners than to divert their attention voluntarily from the reproof which God administers. For example, they go to meeting, not because they wish to hear of God and duty, but because they cannot well avoid going. Once there, if truth annoys their conscience, and they cannot divert their attention otherwise, they will leave the house, or open a book and read. Why do they refuse to attend to Gods' messages? What is this but strengthening one's self in rebellion against God.

Some of you have done this very thing today. Many of you know full well that you have set yourself against God's claims, and do not mean to give them even so much as your serious regard.

2. Sometimes, when friends seek an opportunity to converse with you, you are careful to give them no opportunity. As those who are invited to the gospel feast are represented by Christ as begging to be excused, so sinners in our times, will even try to escape hearing even the invitation to the feast.

Again, sinners harden their necks by refusing to interpret God's providences rightly. They resist the admission that God has a controversy with them. In every way they try to get rid of the idea that God has any meaning in His providences, and especially, any meaning for them. They ascribe all these events to be fixed laws, or to fate, or to change -- any form of atheism, rather than admit a present and ever-acting God!

3. When the finger of God's providence becomes so plain that they cannot deny it, then they refuse to justify God. Instead of yielding the point at once, saying -- "I have sinned, and I have nothing to say in my own behalf, they murmur, and rebel, and think it very hard in God to single them out for such a stroke. They wonder why it is that God deals thus and thus with them -- a common way of intimating that they have done nothing so very wrong as to call for such rebuke from God.

4. An almost universal method of hardening one's neck against God is to refuse to make self-application of the truth to one's own life and heart. Sinners can very readily apply truths to others, both bad men and good, but they feel strongly averse to making this sort of application to their own heart and conscience. Why? Because they don't love the truth, and do not mean to yield their hearts to its claims.

5. When the rebukes of truth apply unmistakably to their own case, they refuse to justify God, but insist on justifying themselves. Just at this point, they reveal their real state of mind. You remember how Nathan came to David, and how he managed his application of truth so well that he drew out from David a most decisive verdict against a special case of wrong-doing before he let him see how entirely the case was his own. David's indignation was aroused and he declared that the man who had done so should die. Yet when Nathan solemnly replied to him -- "Thou are the man" -- what did David do? There he revealed his real character. He did not rebel -- did not resist the application, but humbled himself at once, and confessed his great sin. Often, however, it happens that, when persons cannot mistake the application of rebuke to themselves, they refuse to justify God, and insist on justifying themselves.

6. Sometimes, when persons have done that which publicly disgraces religion and are publicly reproved for it, instead of humbling themselves, they complain and think themselves hardly treated. Indeed, they often talk as if God's ministers had no right and no authority from their Master to reprove men for their sins. So they defend their position in sin, and, of course, harden their necks.

7. Often men plead some excuse to palliate their wrong, and thus harden their necks. They insist that others are to blame, and seem determined to assume that this ought to excuse them. Suppose you were laboring to enforce the truth upon one of your children, but he should dodge every point and try to cover up, and cast the blame on others; would you not feel greatly grieved that you could not reach his conscience to do him good?

8. Yet further, sinners harden their necks by objecting to the manner in which the reproof is administered. Instead of looking at the matter of the reproof, and asking themselves if it be not true, and if it does not involve very great guilt, they engross their minds with the manner, and complain of that as being perhaps very strange. But God is not wont to consult the taste of wicked men as to the manner in which He shall rebuke their sin. Probably He is not so fastidious as they are. It often happens that men do object to His manner when He handles them roughly, and get only the result of being thereby more fearfully hardened.

9. Sometimes they object against the persons who reprove them, saying -- "Physician, heal thyself." Or you may hear talk loudly of impudence and impertinence. David, rebuked by Nathan, did not do so, although he had all the power a man could ask, The reason of his different course was, that he had a conscience and humbled himself before a holy God.

But let reproof come from whom it may, and in whatever manner it may, those who reject it are surely hardening their own necks. There is nothing, perhaps, which more clearly reveals a man's real character than his course and spirit under reproof. You may, perhaps, recollect the case of a minister who was so much abused in his own house, that his wife lost all patience, and said to him -- "Why not show the man the door?" but who mildly answered his wife's suggestion, saying, "Let us hear all he has to say against me; we may learn some good. If the Lord suffers him to curse, who knows but he has some wise ends to answer." It is most true that God sometimes lets our enemies try us and provoke us sadly. Happy is that man who has humility enough to receive such rebukes and make the best of them. The justice of the reproof, not the manner of it, is the thing we should look at. This is the matter that most concerns us in our relations to God. If the reproof be administered manifestly in a bad spirit, then you need pre-eminently to be on your guard. Then you are in the greater danger of repelling it, and becoming thereby the more hardened. Human nature is exceedingly prone to feel deeply, and to object strongly to the manner, or the person who reproves; but God will not hold us guiltless if we repel reproof for such reasons.

10. Persons often harden their own hearts by complaining of the language used in the rebukes they receive. They think us too severe, or perhaps, extravagant, while really no language can adequately describe their own great wickedness.

11. All sorts of excuses made for wickedness, harden the heart and stiffen the neck against God. Sometimes, when reproved, men will resort to recrimination, abuse and retort. Instead of receiving rebuke in humility, they hurl it back with resentment. Woe to him who does this. Nothing that he can do will more fearfully harden the heart.

12. Some seek relief under the sting of reproof, by indulging hard feelings against those who reprove them. These feelings tend strongly to confirm the will in its rebellious attitude against God, for as long as one indulges these feelings, he is, or course, hardening his neck against reproof.

13. Some, to excuse themselves, will plead their inability, or that they have other duties to perform, yet are compelled in honesty to say, "I might have done it if I had been in the spirit of religion, and had realized the value of souls."

14. Some persons excuse themselves from attending meetings, but would not, if they knew and felt the value of souls. It is entertained only as an apology for neglect. Or by allowing some prejudice to prevail, men will repel the truth and harden their neck. Or they will utterly deny the justice of the charge made against them. This spirit of self-justification is sometimes so strong that they will not confess. Press them as you may, they are still so full of the spirit of self-justification, they will not lisp a word of confession -- will not come down in true humility.

These are some of the ways in which sinners harden their necks.

1. This class of words -- destroyed, kill, etc., does not mean annihilation. We know nothing about annihilation. Who can know anything about it? We have had no observation and of course no experience of it. We certainly do not know that it is possible, save to the omnipotent power of Jehovah. This, however, we do know -- namely, that the words kill, destroy, etc., never mean annihilation; but only the death of the body, leaving the soul as full of life as ever. Therefore, in using these or similar words, God does not threaten annihilation.

2. Nor again, can it denote a merely temporary punishment. No man would use such language in such a sense. Nor can it denote any light degree of punishment. It must mean the loss of the soul -- the utter ruin of all the sinner's well-being.

3. It shall be sudden -- that is, it will come unexpectedly. This is the usual sense of the word, sudden. In such an hour as they think not, the fearful blow will fall.

1. It must mean that the threatened destruction cannot be prevented. You are sick and send for a physician; but he decides that your case is beyond a remedy. The meaning is, that he cannot avert impending death. The threatened calamity will come, despite of every means of resistance. So the sinner, of hardened neck, must be destroyed, and nothing can prevent it. He may resist instruction, but cannot resist destruction. He may withstand the rebuke that seeks to reclaim, but the rebuke that comes to avenge God's insulted majesty, no power can withstand. When God's own right hand is lifted to destroy, there is no mightier arm than His that can deliver. Alas, the sinner may look imploringly in every direction, but no help can come!

2. As it cannot be prevented that it shall not come, so neither can there be any redemption from it when it has once fallen. No relief, interposing, can prevent it from being final and complete.

1. For the reason that it is just and righteous altogether.

2. Also, because it is of no use for God to spare such sinners any longer. Having reached the point where reproof only serves to harden their necks the more, it is plain that for them to live longer, would only serve to enhance their guilt, and there heighten their doom.

3. Why, then, should not God destroy them suddenly? And yet further, it is benevolent towards all other beings to make of them a public example. The public good would be in jeopardy if God's forbearance were prolonged indefinitely. And should not God take care of the interests of the holy and pure not less than of the hopelessly vile?

1. This text is applicable to nations. When they are often reproved, and yet still harden their neck, they may expect destruction speedily and without remedy. Of this the Jews were examples in more than one generation.

2. So of the visible church.

3. And so, also, of sinners. After great provocations of His long-suffering patience, they are left of God. In revivals, especially, we often see how God cuts them down. I could stand here and give you the names of many whom God has cut down as in a moment. They had abused His Spirit until they had become fatally hardened, and God saw there was no more hope of their turning to Himself. What could He do, then, better than to cut them down where they were, ere they had swollen yet more the measure of their guilt, and the fearfulness of their retribution?

We can often predict the doom of sinners when we see them hardening themselves against God. How awful to look on and see them hardening themselves against God, and yet know assuredly that ere long they must be suddenly destroyed, unless they at once repent! Some of us have had our faces turn pale as we have seen our children hardening their necks. O, what sorrow can be like this sorrow!

It is, of all things else, most alarming, to see persons becoming so blind to their own guilt and danger, that they can rush on, reckless of God and of His righteous retribution. Hear them crying, Peace and safety! All seems well to them; they enjoy perfect health, perhaps, and think their mountain stands strong; but ere they are aware, sudden destruction cometh on them, and they shall not escape forever!

Sinner, do you wish to know when God will arise in His wrath and cut you down in your sins? It will be just when you are crying "peace and safety," and are hardening your neck against all sense of either guilt or danger. Then, in a moment, it will burst on you like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky! Just this our Savior affirmed when He said, "In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh."

Think of the case of sinners here. In every breeze they may hear the gentle whispers of Divine love; in each day's prolonged life, another appeal to their souls to render unto God the honor and gratitude which are His due; at every table, a fresh demonstration of His loving-kindness; through every Sabbath and every week, the voice of God re-echoes in their ear -- but alas! they are weary of hearing so much from God! They are tired of these constant appeals to do what they hate and to honor Him for whom they care not. So they harden their necks and make their course of sin as smooth and as undisturbed as possible!

Ah, we shall see how it will be with them! We shall see whether they withstand the Most High when once He shall arise in His wrath to take vengeance on His foes! Who hath ever hardened himself against God and prospered? Just when they thought themselves on the eve of triumph over their great enemy, then sudden destruction fell on them, and there was no escape!

4. The infidelity of many in regard to God in providence, is to them a stumbling block. They will have it that there is no God in these events that occur. They are most averse to any recognition of His agency. "God speaketh once, yea, twice; but man regardeth it not." Nothing is so unwelcome to the sinner as to meet with manifestations of a present God. He does not love the truth taught by Christ, that "even the very hairs on your head are all numbered." O, if they could only be forever beyond the reach of this great and awful God! But they cannot!

5. Their pride and self-will are their ruin. Long time has God been laboring to subdue your self-will; but you resist and will not yield. You are determined this proud will of yours shall not be subdued. Has not God been making appeals to your heart and conscience to induce you to yield to His sway? Has He not in many ways sought to move you by affliction, until, perhaps, He is saying of you -- "Why should you be smitten any more? Ye will revolt more and more." Reproof comes to you from the four winds of heaven; every living thing has a voice for God to use in solemn warning and affectionate entreaty; and shall it all be in vain? Will you yet make your heart hard as an adamant stone? If so, we shall see whether God will be true to His word. We shall see whether sudden destruction will or will not come, and that "without remedy!"

How fearful must such a destruction be, and especially so to those who have been so long and so well instructed as most of you have been! Some of you are from families where you have been continually reproved of sin from early infancy. O, how fearfully hardened must your necks have become! Will it not be most awful for you to fall into the hands of a just God!

The older I grow, the more I admire and love the book of Proverbs. Its wisdom is most profound. Manifestly these proverbs are the result, not of inspiration only, but of much observation and reflection in the writer. They are useful, being easily remembered, and so various, that you can always find something to apply, be your circumstances what they may. It is plain the author had moved among men with his eyes wide open. Hence, he had noticed that the wicked are forever stumbling, and seem not to know at what they stumble. It is to this great truth that I now call your attention.

I. It is well, in the first place, to notice several facts of human consciousness.

II. To state in detail some of the things over which sinners stumble.

III. A few words should be said here as to the course that true wisdom dictates.

I. It is well, in the first place, to notice several facts of human consciousness.

Whoever shall carefully study these facts, shown by human consciousness, must see that the pretended skepticism of men is mere hypocrisy. Men know better.

What are these facts?

1. In any moral agent, the spirit of living to one's self, as distinguished from living for others, is sin. Every moral agent knows this because his irresistible convictions affirm it.

2. Consciousness affirms that the way of the wicked is one of self-will. For, to make the promotion of one's own interests the chief end of life is self-will. Self-will and nothing else prompts and pushes men to this. And, in respect to this point, it matters not whether the interests sought to be promoted are temporal or eternal -- those pertaining to time, or those which reach forward into eternity.

3. Sinners are alienated from God. God is cast out of their regard. They scarcely think of Him, and never, with the reverence, love, and trust, which are His due. Every sinner knows this, because his own consciousness affirms it.

4. Yet, even in this fearfully wicked course, they seek to justify themselves. Consequently, they are tempted to be very uncandid; nay, ore -- not only tempted, but if they will persist in their sin, compelled. They cannot justify themselves, and still be fair-minded. The truth is all against them; so that it must make them ceaseless trouble if they consent to see things as they are.

5. Of course, this leads to great blindness. The Bible represents sinners as being blinded by sin; you can now see how this must certainly result. When men take a false position towards God, the truth annoys them terribly; it becomes entirely essential to their quiet in such a position, that they should see things, not as they are, but as they are not; so that they are led on to pervert the truth, and blind their own eyes. Such a result from such causes, is by no means peculiar to religion. It takes place just as certainly and palpably in politics, and there, we may see it any day. When men resign their opinion to the control of self-will, they, of course, become uncandid, and thus blinded. This is a simple matter of fact, coming within the pale of consciousness.

6. Such men become filled with prejudice. They try to seek some refuge of lies. They get up excuses -- which yet are no excuses, and they inwardly know it. Yet, suppressing all notice of this inward knowledge, they manage to make themselves almost believe in the validity of these excuses -- this being the only way in which they can live any way comfortably in their sins. It is remarkable that a sinner will bring himself with great ease to accept some delusion; a single suggestion suffices often, and he does not trouble himself about the evidence. "The wish is farther to the thought."

7. The Bible says of the wicked, that "their way is as darkness." It is as if one was groping along, in the dead of a night, starless and rayless; he feels his way; he stumbles and knows not at what. He cannot see things as they really are. Such is the way of the wicked.

His self-will prevents him from coming to the light. "Every one that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, because his deeds are evil."

8. The control of self-will and self-interest ensures profound misapprehension. Those of you who observe the errors and prejudices of politicians, are often amazed. It shocks you to see what absurd positions they can take, and with what facility they can utterly distort the truth, and yet make it seem to their eyes to be truth yet. Of late, I do not pretend to believe the party papers. Let them say what they please, I know there is no confidence to be reposed in either their facts or their opinions. So, on any subject, let a man become committed to a party, and that moment he becomes the victim of prejudice. If you had fallen in with the members returning from the National Democratic Convention, you would have been surprised to see how differently from yourselves they view the great questions of the day. Are they right? No; they are committed, and, by consequence, prejudiced. So, on any side of any question, men committed under some selfish influence, are sure to be misled.

9. When the Bible says of the wicked -- "They know not at what they stumble," it assumes that they do stumble and fall. Of course, this refers, not to the body, but to the soul. Misled as to their relations and attitude towards God, they stumble and fall into eternal perdition.

They stumble -- they know not at what. They are in no state to see. They have enveloped their own minds in deep darkness. How can they discriminate? All the effort they put forth for this purpose, while in this state of self-will, is vain. They will not adjust and weigh the evidence fairly. All their trying is likely to avail nothing, unless they shall really cut loose from their committal -- sunder the bonds that hold their minds under the sway of prejudice, and let in the light of truth upon their own souls. In fact, until they do this they do not try to see the truth, in any proper sense. They might see the truth easily if their minds were in an upright and honest state.

Let me beg of you, as I name these points, to note their bearings on your own experience.

1. Sinners stumble at their own ignorance. Often they are amazingly ignorant -- of God, of His attributes; of their own relations to God, and indeed, of themselves. It is amazing to hear the things they say, and the conclusions to which they come. Yet they seem not at all aware that they are stumbling at their own ignorance. A young man of skeptical views, who came here some years since, said to me, in answer to some question of mine in regard to his spiritual state -- "I do not take the same views of Christianity that you do." What, said I, what does this imply? It must imply either that you have given more attention to the subject than I have, or more able thinking, or that you are more honest. Yet, when he came to bring out his own view, anybody could see that he was stumbling over his own ignorance. He had, as he thought, got bravely over the prejudices of his godly father; had broken off all the trammels that hold the professors here; in fact, so profound was his ignorance, he seemed not to have comprehended the first thing pertaining to the subject. Just as you sometimes see persons talking very large and wise on other subjects, when every word they say, show their ignorance to be most profound; so it is here.

In like manner, sinners stumble over the ignorance of others. They follow leaders who mislead them, and cause them to stumble over themselves into destruction.

2. They stumble over their own foolish and wicked prejudices. It is impossible to be wicked without being prejudiced. Usually, men are not well aware of the depth and power of these prejudices. Hence, under this influence they are the more surely led on to ruin.

This prinicple is true on political as well as on religious subjects; and, indeed, on any and all subjects.

3. Sinners stumble over their own enmity against God. Through neglect to notice their own consciousness, and through neglect of God, they do not admit the fact of their being at enmity with God, and consequently fail to account for many things in their own history as they might. Indeed, they often assume themselves to be friendly to God and to religion, while really there is the deepest enmity in their hearts. Hence, no wonder that, under such a delusion, they become fearfully blinded, and stumble into perdition.

Often sinners misunderstand and pervert sermons and the truths they teach, because of their own bad state of mind. The enmity of their hearts boils up, and its fumes becloud their mental vision.

4. They stumble over their own dishonest state of mind. They are uncandid and dishonest towards God, and this constantly perverts their views. They say that when they read the Bible, they cannot understand it. Reason; lack of an honest mind. They stumble at God's character, providence and dealings with men -- all because they are not in a state of mind to see and judge fairly. When they read the Bible, they are forever looking after its discrepancies and its difficulties, and they find almost nothing else there. Now, the Bible is so written that a dishonest mind can make for itself any amount of difficulty with it. The explanation of this fact is, that the sacred writers were so eminently honest and simple-hearted, they wrote right on as men who take no pains to avoid being misunderstood. Honest themselves, it does not seem to occur to them that any of their readers will be otherwise. The Bible is, in style, utterly unlike the documents of diplomacy. A man who remembers that his words are to be quizzed and sifted, will take care for the one construction which shall answer for one emergency, and, perhaps, also, for other constructions, to meet other emergencies. A crafty writer looks out in all directions. Honest men, like apostles and prophets, never trouble themselves about cavilers.

Hence, cavilers against the Bible abuse that model of beautiful simplicity -- to their own damnation. They can do this if they choose, and they choose to do so because they love darkness and not light. The Bible is particularly open to perversion, so that, if men are dishonest, they will almost certainly misunderstand it. If you talk with Universalists, you will be amazed to see how they can swallow down the greatest absurdities, and the most monstrous lies and delusions, taught them by their ministers. No matter how hard and tough it may be, they seem to have a capacity equal to it -- their hearts going before and creating an appetite for this doctrine.

5. They stumble over their own unbelief. Their want of confidence in God leads them to misinterpret His providence; to question its universal goodness, and to misunderstand His works and ways. Now, it is in the nature of the case impossible for God to explain all His conduct to His creatures as He goes along, so that they can understand all He does. Hence, the natural necessity for faith, and hence, if you have not faith in His goodness, you are stumbled. Take, for instance, the existence of American slavery. It certainly exists under God's government. Not that He has ordained, in the sense of commanding or approving it; but He has suffered it to exist. Now, suppose you infer from this that God is tyrannical and cruel. This inference would only show your want of confidence in God's providence. It would not, by any means, show that God is doing wrong. So sinners stumble at what God does or omits to do. Suppose your children have no confidence in you. Unless you explain everything, they are stumbled, and think hard of your course. They must see through all your plans and approve them all, or they cry out against you. Would not you think this horrible?

Sinners are often stumbled through their sheer aversion to God. They cannot bear to admit that He is as holy, just, and good, as He truly is. If they were willing to believe this, it would be easy enough. Just as when you are greatly prejudiced against a neighbor, and hear much good said of him, you will be like to reply, "I can't believe that." Yet the reason why you cannot lies not in the man, or in the evidence, but in your own prejudice. You might perhaps say -- There is so much counter evidence, I cannot believe it; -- but really the force of this counter evidence lies only in your own prejudice. So with the sinner; the root of the difficulty is that he is so alienated from God, that he cannot bear to think well of Him.

6. They stumble also over their own uncharitableness. You meet thousands who are stumbling over what they are pleased to call the faults of professors. Now the fact is, that ordinarily by far the greatest part of all that is said against Christians is untrue. If you search out these charges, you find but a lean foundation, often, for the gravest part of them. I have found it so in cases almost without number. Sinners will tell you gravely that they are greatly stumbled against the things they hear of Christians; when the fact is, they would give no credit to such stories on equal evidence, yet bearing against friends. That is, they believe them only because they are prejudiced against Christians. They hate God's people, and are eager to catch up any scandal against them. One instance in point occurred not long since where I was laboring. A brother whom I had long known, I found was generally spoken of with disrespect. It was said he was dishonest in his business. I determined to enquire into the case; did so, and found this report false, and that report false, and indeed could not track down any of the reports to a valid foundation. I then went to those brethren in the church who had been circulating these reports, and said to them, Do you know those evil reports to be true? "No." Have you carried these reports to that injured brother, for his explanation? "No." Then, said I, you ought to be turned out of the church, every man of you, for slandering your brother.

In the same way the uncharitableness of others becomes an occasion of stumbling to sinners. They hear others speak uncharitably, and they believe it because it falls in so entirely with their own tendencies of mind.

This uncharitableness is one of the most fruitful sources of stumbling to the souls of men. Just think how much sinners influence each other to uncharitableness, and turn each other away from God.

7. Some stumble over a false hope. Suppose it to be a minister of the gospel. If he holds fast to his false hope, it will almost inevitably shape his views of Christian experience. Taking himself to be a Christian, and judging what piety is by his own experience, all his notions are modified accordingly. Hence, he will not only stumble himself, but others also. He tells his Christian friends that they cannot expect to make this or that attainment in this life. Inevitably he will lower down the standard of the Christian life. I have now in mind the case of a pastor who invited a brother to preach in his pulpit. The latter preached to Christians that they ought not to stop short of being fully conscious of loving God; that religion was a matter of consciousness, and hence, if they were not conscious of its presence and power in their souls, they ought to conclude they know nothing of it.

After he had gone, this pastor set himself earnestly to fritter all these ideas away. He told his people men might be Christians and not know it; that many were so, doubtless, who did not regard themselves as Christians; that it was a bad sign to be too sure and confident, etc., etc. It fills my heart with grief to see a minister take so much pains to let the people down to the level of his own experience. This defective experience may be a legal, as distinct from a gospel, experience or it may have other elements of a false religion. No matter, if it be false, it becomes a grievous occasion of stumbling.

8. Men stumble over a false profession. Even though they may see clear as light that they have professed without possession, yet their pride may keep them from admitting it. Then, to keep up appearance, they are subjected to a life of hypocrisy -- a fearful curse to the soul!

It often happens that these false professors are a stumbling block to others. Sinners will place before themselves some false professor, choosing the worst and not the best, as their model of religion, and say, "Well, any how, I am as good as some professed Christians." So they think to hide behind such an example, and stumble over it to the depths of hell.

The real faults of professed Christians often become the occasion of stumbling to sinners. They however do not usually go to the bottom of the difficulty. They ascribe their stumbling to the faults, say, of a certain minister; but the real cause lies in their own state of mind. If they were right themselves, not even the real faults of Christians would stumble them. These faults might grieve them; but could not harm them. "Great peace have they that love Thy law, and nothing shall offend (stumble) them;" -- not even the manifest faults of gospel ministers.

It is much more common for men to stumble over apparent or supposed, than over real faults. The common feeling towards Christians being what it is, there are vastly more apparent or supposed faults than real ones, floating about on the surface of the common talk of the world. All these answer the purpose of those who really seek some relief from the pressure of a troubled conscience, and who want some excuse for a life of sin.

9. Men are wont to stumble over their own dishonest moral judgments. For example, they judge themselves by a false standard. One, it may be, of mere external morality instead of heart piety; while at the same time they know better, as is manifest from the fact that they judge others by a very different rule. They will insist that others must truly love God, and not merely be of decent morality. Why do they not judge themselves by this same standard? They are not honest. Besides, in practice, they will allow themselves to do the very same things which they condemn and stumble over in others.

10. Their habit of procrastination is the ruin of thousands. They hear enough, but not for the sake of learning their duty that they may do it. They learn not to regard what they hear. Persons who have lived here a long time seem not to be aware of their fearful danger in this respect.

11. It is fearful to see how many stumble over God's forbearance. Because vengeance is not executed speedily, their hearts are fully set in them to do evil. The longer God waits on them, the more presumptuous they become. Indeed nothing is more commonly a stumbling-block to men than God's goodness. They will have it that God is too good to send men to hell. Instead of combining His goodness with justice and holiness, as they should, they fritter it down to a mere good-nature. They think Him good with such a sort of goodness that He cannot restrain His creatures from ruining themselves, and the whole universe besides -- so very good-natured that He must forsooth let all the wicked be as wicked and selfish as they please, and must be sure not to hurt them, however much they desolate His great family and spread ruin over His kingdom. How often and naturally Universalists do this! In fact, it seems to lie at the foundation of their system. David said, "Why boasteth thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The goodness of God endureth continually;" -- the very goodness of God being a reason why men should be afraid to do mischief.

12. Multitudes are stumbled by their selfish views of the whole matter of personal religion. Their whole conception of the plan of salvation makes it only an expedient to accommodate their sin, so that they can enjoy sin almost to the end of life, and then get religion enough to save their souls from hell. Have not some of you made this very mistake? Has not this been the great practical question with you; How long will it be prudent to neglect this great salvation? How long can I afford to run the personal risk of living in sin? So asking, your whole concern turns on self. You care not a farthing for God's feelings, or His rights. You have not the remotest idea of laying your soul and body on His altar, and making yourself truly a living sacrifice to the interests of His kingdom. All the love He has shown you seems to have no influence to draw you towards this earnest consecration to His service. A sinful heart makes men credulous as to falsehood, but incredulous as to truth. "How is it," said one, "that incredulity takes on such a type? Men are strangely incredulous as to what is good. They doubt the sincerity of this good man; but their doubts all look in only one direction, for they are most ridiculously credulous in admitting lies."

1. The facts of human consciousness in regard to man's selfishness and alienation from God should be thoroughly admitted and deeply studied.

2. You should most fully assume the fact of God's infinite love, purity, wisdom and power. I say assume these, because you certainly know them to be true. You know that God is universally and perfectly good. This you know and should never allow yourself to call in question.

3. Let it also be taken for granted that no objection can be valid against God's law or His gospel.

4. If men would assume these two things, it would save them from countless mistakes and delusions; namely,
 

(1.) That God is infinite and perfect; consequently nothing can be said against Him;

(2.) That there never can be any valid excuse for sin. The goodness of God makes it certain that His law is right, and His administration too;

-- that He never requires anything unreasonable. Wisdom dictates therefore, that these points should be forever settled.

5. Again, you should always assume man's natural alienation from God. Say, I am , if unconverted, an enemy of God. Let me remember that. Let it be settled also and admitted, that being an enemy, you are almost sure to be prejudiced. This must be true of you and of all who are enemies in heart to God. Now if you know you are prejudiced, or are likely to be, you ought to be closely on your guard in that direction. For example, those of you who have a hope that does not purify your heart, take warning. Remember your proneness to self-deception. And those of you who never had a hope should say -- the causes of self-deception are in my very heart; I am in the utmost peril of deceiving myself; let me be on my guard against self-justification and against a thousand other sources of danger. My dear friend, you must cast yourself on God for help. Say to Him -- "O Lord my God, Thou knowest all my wicked heart, and Thou knowest how many dangers beset me on every side. Now unless Thou save me, I shall surely ruin myself."

6. Another thing; beware what you hear and how you hear it, lest you listen earnestly to the wrong and love it; or lest, hearing truth, your heart should be turned aside by prejudice, and you permit it to your destruction. Say to yourself -- I shall certainly do something to ruin my soul if I am not on my guard. Consider always that while in sin, your state of mind is such as exceedingly to endanger your ultimate salvation. You ought to know the great facts of your own consciousness; and these should solemnly admonish you of your ever present danger.

1. Because sinners are dishonest, their delusions are entirely inexcusable. If they were really honest, and their delusions excusable, their case would be far other than it is.

2. All the prejudice and errors of sinful men will come out by and by. They cannot last forever. Their utter fallacy and guilt will stand revealed by and by. But it may then be too late to repair their mischief.

There, said a man, now I am sorry; I had a wicked prejudice against a good minister; I held it a long time and it poisoned my mind terribly. At length, I said to him -- Don't you hold this sentiment? No, said he, by no means, Then I found all my prejudices were causeless, and I had brought leanness and guilt on my soul, for no good reason whatever. So sinner, you may be sorry. Your mistake will come out by and by; but very likely too late to be corrected in this world. Then the Lord shall come with ten thousand of His saints to execute judgment upon all, He will surely convince all the ungodly of their ungodly deeds and speeches. But for your real repentance, this will come all too late. Alas, you allowed yourself to disbelieve; you went on stumbling in the darkness which your own wicked heart caused, and now it only remains that you be driven away into everlasting darkness, where is weeping and wailing. The darkness of the sinner's final doom may well remind him of the mental darkness which his own soul loved and caused while on earth.

3. It is often sorely painful to see men stumble in matters which respect only the body. Sometimes they take to the use of quack nostrums, and poison their bodies; sometimes they imbibe the most ridiculous superstitions, and violate the laws of life till they fall an easy prey to pestilence. In cholera times, men would soak their bodies with alcoholic liquors, and surely die by the hand of their own remedy.

But what are all these delusions, compared with that which takes away the soul! Suppose you could see the moral course of sinners painted to the life -- their poor self-deluded souls stumbling into pit-falls which their own hands had dug -- sliding down precipices at the foot of which open the jaws of the bottomless pit; there, there he goes! Alas, you have seen him but your eyes shall see him no more! Gone, gone, where darkness reigns forever! But you see others all around about you, pursuing the same path, and nearing the same death-verge, just ready, some of them, to slide over; and what will you do? Can you save them?

4. Christians are said by Christ to be the lights of the world. So let them take care to be. Let them stand as lamp-posts in the city in dead of night, pouring light on the dangers that would else engulf the unwary. Some of you have heard of the fogs of London -- where the coal-smoke of many thousand fires is wont in a misty atmosphere to settle down like Egyptian darkness upon all the city. When the thick fogs join their influence, London in mid-day is darker than midnight. Men cannot move save by the light of flambeaux held close to the ground as they pass along. How vivid the picture there given, of the deep and thick darkness that rests down on the city of Destruction, where sinners live! Darkness so profound as this seems not to comprehend the light when it comes. There in London, shall be lamps on their posts, burning with what power they have; but in the dense darkness they are visible only a few feet. The light shineth as in the Savior's day, but "the darkness comprehendeth it not." So often to the minds of sinners now. The light of Christian example and instruction shines around them, but their dense impenetrable darkness does not "comprehend" it. Alas for them.

In this last passage, the apostle states, with unusual fulness, the theological, and I might even say, the philosophical design of Christ's mission to our world -- that is, to set forth before created beings, God's righteousness in forgiving sins. It is here said that Christ is set forth as a propitiation that God may be just in forgiving sin, assuming that God could not have been just to the universe, unless Christ had been first set forth as a sacrifice.

When we seriously consider the irresistible convictions of our own minds in regard to our relations of God and His government, we cannot but see that we are sinners, and are lost beyond hope on the score of law and justice. The fact that we are grievous sinners against God, is an ultimate fact of human consciousness, testified to by our irresistible convictions, and no more to be denied than the fact that there is such a thing as wrong.

Now, if God be holy and good, it must be that He disapproves wrong-doing, and will punish it. The penalty of His law is pronounced against it. Under this penalty, we stand condemned, and have no relief save through some adequate atonement, satisfactory to God, because safe to the interests of His kingdom.

Thus far we may advance safely and on solid ground, by the simple light of nature. If there were no Bible, we might know so much with absolute certainty. So far, even infidels are compelled to go.

Here, then, we are, under absolute and most righteous condemnation. Is there any way of escape? If so, it must be revealed to us in the Bible; for from any other source it cannot come. The Bible does profess to reveal a method of escape. This is the great burden of its message. It opens with,

I. A very brief allusion to the circumstances under which sin came into the world.

II. The philosophical explanation of the reasons and governmental bearings of the atonement, must not be confounded with the fact of an atonement.

III. A distinction must here be made between public and retributive justice.

IV. In this atonement God has expressed His high regard for His law and for obedience to it.

V. What can be done to teach these lessons, and to impress them with great and everlasting emphasis on the universe?

I. A very brief allusion to the circumstances under which sin came into the world.

Without being very minute as the manner in which sin entered, it is exceedingly full, clear and definite in its showing as to the fact of sin in the race. That God regards the race as in sin and rebellion is made as plain as language can make it. It is worthy of notice that this fact and the connected fact of possible pardon, are affirmed on the same authority -- with the same sort of explicitness and clearness. These facts stand or fall together. Manifestly God intended to impress on all minds these two great truths -- first, that man is ruined by his own sin; secondly, that he may be saved through Jesus Christ. To deny the former is to gainsay both our own irresistible convictions and God's most explicit revealed testimony; to deny the latter, is to shut the door of our own free act and accord, against all hope of our own salvation.

II. The philosophical explanation of the reasons and governmental bearings of the atonement, must not be confounded with the fact of an atonement.

1. Men may be saved by the fact if they simply believe it, while they may know nothing about the philosophical explanation. The apostles did not make much account of the explanation, but they asserted the fact most earnestly, gave miracles as testimony to prove their authority from God, and so besought men to believe the fact and be saved. The fact, then, may be savingly believed, and yet the explanation be unknown. This has been the case, no doubt, with scores of thousands.

2. Yet it is very useful to understand the reasons and governmental grounds of the atonement. It often serves to remove skepticism. It is very common for lawyers to reject the fact, until they come to see the reasons and governmental bearings of the atonement; this seen, they usually admit the fact. There is a large class of minds who need to see the governmental bearings, or they will reject the fact. The reason why the fact is so often doubted is, that the explanations given have been unsatisfactory. They have misrepresented God. No wonder men should reject them, and with them, the fact of any atonement at all.

3. The atonement is a governmental expedient to sustain law without the execution of its penalty on the sinner. Of course, it must always be a difficult thing in any government to sustain the authority of law, and the respect due to it, without the execution of penalty. Yet God has accomplished it most perfectly.

The latter visits on the head of the individual sinner a punishment corresponding to the nature of his offence. The former, public justice, looks only toward the general good, and must do that which will secure the authority and influence of law, as well as the infliction of the penalty would to it. It may accept a substitute, provided it be equally effective to the support of law and the ensuring of obedience.

Public justice, then, may be satisfied in one of two ways, to wit -- either by the full execution of the penalty, or by some substitute, which shall answer the ends of government at least equally well. When, therefore, we ask -- What is necessary for the ends of public justice? -- the answer is,

1. Not the literal execution of the penalty; for if so, it must necessarily fall on the sinner; and on no one else. Besides, it could be no gain to the universe for Christ to suffer the full and exact penalty due to every lost sinner who should be saved by Him. The amount of suffering being the same in the one case as in the other, where is the gain? And yet, further, if the administration of justice is to be retributive, then it cannot fall on Christ, and must fall on the sinner himself. If not retributive, it certainly may be, as compared with that due the sinner, far different in kind and less in degree.

It has sometimes been said that Christ suffered all in degree and the same in kind as all the saved must else have suffered; but human reason revolts at this assumption, and certainly the scriptures do not affirm it.

2. Some represent that God needs to be appeased, and to have His feelings conciliated. This is an egregious mistake. It utterly misrepresents God and misconceived the atonement.

3. It is no part of public justice that an innocent being should suffer penalty or punishment, in the proper sense of these terms. Punishment implies crime -- of which Christ had none. Christ, then was not punished.

4. Let it be distinctly understood that the Divine law originates in God's benevolence, and has no other than benevolent ends in view. It was revealed only and solely to promote the greatest possible good, by means of obedience. Now, such a law can allow of pardon, provided an expression can be given which will equally secure obedience -- making an equal revelation of the lawgiver's firmness, integrity and love. The law being perfect, and being most essential to the good of His creatures, God must not set aside its penalty without some equivalent influence to induce obedience.

5. The penalty was designed as a testimony to God's regard for the precept of His law, and to His purpose to sustain it. An atonement, therefore, which should answer as a substitute for the infliction of this penalty, must be of such sort as to show God's regard for both the precept and penalty of His law. It must be adapted to enforce obedience. Its moral power must be in this respect equal to that of the infliction of the penalty on the sinner.

1. The design of executing the penalty of the law was to make a strong impression of the majesty, excellence and utility of the law. Anything may answer as a substitute, which will as thoroughly demonstrate the mischief and odiousness of sin, God's hatred of it, and His determination to carry out His law in all its demands. Especially may the proposed substitute avail if it shall also make a signal manifestation of God's love to sinners. This the atonement, by the death of Christ, has most emphatically done.

2. Every act of rebellion denounces the law. Hence, before God can pardon rebellion, He must make such a demonstration of His attitude towards sin as shall thrill the heart of the created universe, and make every ear tingle. Especially, for the ends of the highest obedience, it was needful to make such a demonstration as shall effectually secure the confidence and love of subjects towards their Lawgiver -- such as shall show that He is no tyrant, and that He seeks only the highest obedience and consequent happiness of His creatures. This done, God will be satisfied.

1. God's testimony must be so given as to be well understood. Obviously, the testimony to be given must come from God, for it is His view of law, penalty and substitute, that needs to be revealed. Every one must see that if He were to execute law on the sinner, this would show at once His view of the value of the law. But, plainly, His view of the same thing must be shown with equal force by any proposed substitute, before He could accept it as such.

2. Again, in this transaction, the precept of the law must be accepted and honored both by God and by Jesus as Mediator. The latter, as the representative of the race must honor the law by obeying it, and by publicly endorsing it -- otherwise, the requisite homage cannot be shown to the Divine law in the proposed atonement. This has been done.

3. Again, to make adequate provision for the exercise of mercy to the race, it is plainly essential that, in the person of their Mediator, both the Divine and the human should be united. God and man are both to be represented in the atonement; the Divine Word represented the Godhead; the man Jesus represented the race to be redeemed. What the Bible thus asserts, is verified in the history of Jesus, for He said and did things which could not have been said and done unless He had been man, and equally could not have been unless He were also God. On the one hand, too weak to carry His cross, through exhaustion of the human; and on the other, mighty to hush the tempest and to raise the dead, through the plenitude of Divine power. Thus God and man are both represented in Jesus Christ.

4. The thing to be done, then, required that Jesus Christ should honor the law and fully obey it; this He did. Standing for the sinner, He must, in an important sense, bear the curse of the law -- not the literal penalty, but a vast amount of suffering, sufficient, in view of His relations to God and the universe, to make the needed demonstration of God's displeasure against sin, and yet of His love for both the sinner and all His moral subjects. On the one hand, Jesus represented the race; on the other, He represented God. This is a most Divine philosophy.

5. The sacrifice made on Calvary is to be understood as God's offering to public justice -- God Himself giving up His Son to death, and this Son pouring forth His life's blood in expiation for sin -- thus throwing open the folding gates of mercy to a sinning, lost race. This must be regarded as manifesting His love to sinners. This is God's ransom provided for them. Look at the state of the case. The supreme Law-Giver, and indeed the government of the universe, had been scouted by rebellion; of course there can be no pardon till this dishonor done to God and His law is thoroughly washed away. This is done by God's free-will offering of His own Son for these great sins.

This being all done for you, sinners, what do you think of it? What do you think of that appeal which Paul writes and God makes through Him -- "I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." Think of those mercies. Think how Christ poured out His life for you. Suppose He were to appear in the midst of you today, and holding up His hands dripping with blood, should say -- "I beseech you by the mercies shown you by God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God!" Would you not feel the force of His appeal that this is a "reasonable service?" Would not this love of Christ constrain you? What do you think of it? Did He die for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him that loved them and gave Himself for them? What do you say? Just as the uplifted ax would otherwise have fallen on your neck, He caught the blow on His own. You could have had no life if He had not died to save it; then what will you do? Will you have this offered mercy, or reject it? Yield to Him the life He has in such mercy spared, or refuse to yield it?

1. The governmental bearings of this scheme are perfectly apparent. The whole transaction tends powerfully to sustain God's law, and to reveal His love and even mercy to sinners. It shows that He is personally ready to forgive, and needs only to have such an arrangement made that He can do it safely as to His government. What could show His readiness to forgive so strikingly as this? See how carefully He guards against the abuse of pardon! Always ready to pardon, yet ever watchful over the great interests of obedience and happiness, lest they be imperiled by its freeness and fullness!

2. Why should it ever be thought incredible that God should devise such a scheme of atonement? Is there anything in it that is unlike God, or inconsistent with His revealed character? I doubt whether any moral agent can understand this system, and yet think it incredible. Those who reject it as incredible, must have failed to understand it.

3. The question might be asked -- Why did Christ die at all, if not for us? He had never sinned; did not die on His own account as a sinner; nor did He die as the infants of our race do, with a moral nature yet undeveloped, and who yet belong to a sinning race. The only account to be given of His death is, that He died not for Himself, but for us.

It might also be asked -- Why did He die so? See Him expiring between two thieves, and crushed down beneath a mountain weight of sorrow. Why was this? Other martyrs have died shouting; He died in anguish and grief, cast down and agonized beneath the biddings of His Father's face.

All nature seemed to sympathize with His griefs. Mark -- the sun clothed in darkness; the rocks are rent; the earth quakes beneath your feet; all nature is convulsed. Even a heathen philosopher exclaimed -- Surely the universe is coming to an end, or the Maker of the Universe is dying! Hark, that piercing cry -- "My God, My God; why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

On the supposition of His dying as a Savior for sinners, all is plain. He dies for the government of God, and must needs suffer these things to make a just expression of God's abhorrence of sin. While He stands in the place of guilty sinners, God must frown on Him and hide His face. This reveals both the spirit of God's government and His own infinite wisdom.

4. Some have impeached the atonement as likely to encourage sin. But such persons neglect the very important distinction between the proper use of a thing and its abuse. No doubt the best things in the universe may be abused, and by abuse be perverted to evil, and all the more by how much the better they are in their legitimate use.

Of the natural tendency of the atonement to good, it would seem that no man can rationally doubt. The tendency of manifesting such love, meekness and self-sacrifice for us, is to make the sinner trust and love, and to make him bow before the cross with a broken and contrite heart. But many do abuse it, and the best things, abused, become the worst. The abuse of the atonement is the very reason why God sends sinners to hell. He says, "He that despised Moses' law, died without mercy under two or three witnesses; of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and hath done despite to the Spirit of grace?"

Hence, if any sinner will abuse atoning blood, and trample down the holy law, and the very idea of returning to God in penitence and love, God will say of him, "Of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy" than he who despised Moses' law and fell beneath its vengeance?

5. It is a matter of fact, that this manifestation of God in Christ does break the heart of sinners. It has subdued many hearts, and will, thousands more. If they believe it and hold it as a reality, must it not subdue their heart to love and grief? Do not you think so? Certainly if you saw it as it is, and felt the force of it in your heart, you would sob out on your very seat, break down and cry out -- Did Jesus love me so? And shall I love sin any more? Ah, your heart would melt as thousands have been broken and melted in every age, when they have seen the love of Jesus as revealed on the cross. That beautiful hymn puts the case truthfully --

"I saw One hanging on a tree,

In agony and blood;

Who fixed His languid eyes on me,

As near the cross I stood."

"A second look He gave which said

I freely all forgive;

This blood is for thy ransom paid,

I died that thou mayest live."

This is the genuine effect of the sinner's understanding the gospel and giving Jesus Christ credit for His lovingkindness in dying for the lost. Faith thus breaks the stony heart. If this demonstration of God's love in Christ does not break your heart, nothing else will. If this death and love of Christ do not constrain you, nothing else can.

But if you do not look at it, and will not set your mind upon it, it will only work your ruin. To know this gospel only enough to reject and disown it, can serve no other purpose save to make your guilt the greater, and your doom the more fearful.

6. Jesus was made a sin-offering for us. How beautiful this was illustrated under the Mosaic system! The victim was brought out to be slain; the blood was carried in and sprinkled on the mercy-seat. This mercy-seat was no other than the sacred cover or lid of the ark which contained the tables of the law, and other sacred memorials of God's ancient mercies. There they were, in that deep recess -- within which none might enter on pain of death, save the High Priest, and he only once a year, on the great day of atonement. On this eventful day, the sacred rites culminated to their highest solemnity. Two goats were brought forward, upon which the High Priest laid his hands, and confessed publicly his own sins and the sins of all the people. Then one was driven far away into the wilderness, to signify how God removes our sins far as the east is from the west; the other was slain and its blood borne by the high priest into the most holy place, and sprinkled there upon the mercy-seat beneath the cherubim. Meanwhile, the vast congregation stood without, confessing their sins, and expecting remission only through the shedding of blood. It was as if the whole world had been standing around the base of Calvary, confessing their sins, while Jesus bore His cross to the summit, to hang thereon, and bleed and die for the sins of men. How fitting that, while Christ is dying, we should be confessing!

Some of you may think it a great thing to go on a foreign mission. But Jesus has led the way. He left Heaven on a foreign mission; came down to this more than heathen world, and no one ever faced such self-denial. Yet He fearlessly marched up without the least hesitation, to meet the consequences. Never did He shrink from disgrace, from humiliation, or torture. And can you shrink from following the footsteps of such a leader? Is anything too much for you to suffer, while you follow in the lead of such a Captain of your salvation?

I propose in my present discourse to discuss the moral state of the sinner.

I. All men are naturally free, and none the less so for being sinners.

II. Men have this attribute of moral liberty, it is equally true that they are morally enslaved.

I. The first important fact to be noted is that all men are naturally free, and none the less so for being sinners.

1. They naturally have freedom of will. By natural freedom I do not mean that they have a right to do as they please; for this can by no means be true. Nor do I mean that they are free agents merely in the sense of being able to do as they will to do. In fact men sometimes can and sometimes cannot execute their purposes of will; but be this as it may, moral liberty does not consist in the power to accomplish one's purposes. You are aware that some old philosophers defined liberty of will to be the power to do what you will to do. This for many reasons cannot be the true idea of freedom of the will. For look at the department of doing which is embraced in muscular action. The simple fact is that some of our muscles are not under the control of the will at all, while others are under its control by a law of the sternest necessity. In regard to this latter class, all the freedom there is pertains to the will -- none of it to the action of the muscles controlled by the will. It is then a sheer mistake to deny the location of freedom where it is, and to locate it where it is not. If there be any such thing as necessity in the universe, it is found in the absolute control held by the will over those physical muscles which are placed under its control. The obedience of the muscles is absolute -- not free or voluntary in any sense whatever. Hence the absurdity of locating human freedom there.

2. This freedom is in the will itself, and consists in its power of free choice. To do, or not to do -- this is its option. It has by its own nature and function of determining its own volitions. The soul wills to do or not to do, and thus is a moral sovereign over its own activities. In this fact lies the foundation for moral agency. A being so constituted that he can will to do or not to do, and has moreover knowledge and appreciation of his moral obligations, is a moral agent. None other can be.

It deserves special notice here that every man knows that he has a conscience which tells him how he ought to act, as well as a moral power in the exercise of which he can either heed or repel its monitions.

3. That a man is free in the sense of determining his own activities is proved by each man's own consciousness. This proof requires no chain of reasoning. A man is just as much aware and as well aware of originating his own acts as he is of acting at all. Does he really act himself? Yes. And does he know that he acts himself? Yes. How does he know these things? By consciousness. But he has the same evidence of being free -- for this is equally proved by his own consciousness.

4. Still further -- man can distinguish between those acts in which he is free, and those in which he is acted upon by influences independent of his own choice. He knows that in some things he is a recipient of influences and of actions exerted upon himself, while in other things he is not a recipient in the same sense, but a voluntary actor. The fact of this discrimination proves the possession of free agency.

The difference to which I now refer is one of every day consciousness. Sometimes a man can not tell whence his thoughts come. Impressions are made upon his mind the origin of which he cannot trace. They may be from above -- they may be from beneath: he knows but little of their source, and little about them, save that they are not his own free volitions. Of his own acts of will there can be no such uncertainty. He knows their origin. He knows that they are the product of an original power in himself, for the exercise of which he is compelled to hold himself primarily responsible.

Not only has he this direct consciousness, but he has, as already suggested, the testimony of his own conscience. This faculty, by its very nature, takes cognizance of his moral acts, requiring certain acts of will and forbidding others. This faculty is an essential condition of free moral agency. Possessing it, and also man's other mental powers, he must be free and under moral obligation.

5. It is inconceivable that man should be under moral law and government, without the power of free moral action. The logical condition of the existence of a conscience in man is that he should be free.

6. That man is free is evident from the fact that he is conscious of praise or blameworthiness. He could not reasonably blame himself unless it were a first truth that he is free. By a first truth, I mean one that is known to all by a necessity of their own nature. There are such truths -- those which none can help knowing, however much they may desire to ignore them. Now unless it were a first truth, necessarily known to all, that man is free, he could not praise or blame himself.

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