But lastly. However safe it is to commit the oracles of God into the hands of others, yet, considering ourselves in the light of those to whom these oracles are committed, it is a matter of urgent concern, whether, to us personally, the gain or the loss will predominate. It is even of present advantage to the nation at large, that the word of God circulates in such freedom and with such frequency among its numerous families. But this onlybecause the good rendered to some prevails over the evil of that additional guilt which is incurred by many. And still it resolves itself, with every separate individual, into the question of his secured heaven, or his more aggravated hell-whether he be of the some who turn the message of God into an instrument of conversion; or of the many who, by neglect and unconcern, render it the instrument of their sorer condemnation. It may be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for him in the day of judgment. To have been so approached from Heaven with the overtures of salvation, as every man is who has the Bible within his reachto have had such invitations at your door as you may have had for the mere reading of them-to have been in the way of such a circular from God to our guilty species, which though expressly addressed to no one individual, yet, by the wide sweep a whosoever will," makes it as pointed a message to all and to any, as if the proprietor of each Bible had received it under cover with the inscrip

of

66

argument, as we have already brought it forward in the 15th Sermon of our Commercial Liscourses-at p. 374, Vol. VI of

the Series.

Vind de via nisi expuation had prepared for ta. ŠINCI PER the cust of a world that is out war; and iving as

so

we list, kept by pity indiferex 10 efers 80 full of tenderness, to poses of gly so bright and so alluring.

But let us hope better things of you and things that accompany salvation though we thus speak. Let us call upon you to follow in the train of those Old Testament worthies, who, though few in number, edeemed the loss incurred by the general perress of their countrymen, as to make it on the for the advantage of their nation that to them mmitted the oracles of God. Be followers

of them who through faith and patience are now inheriting those promises, which, when in the flesh, they saw afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Declare plainly by your life that you seek another country; that you have no desire for a world where all is changing and breaking up around you-where sin is the native element, and death walking in its train rifles the places of our dearest remembrance, of all those sweets of friendship and society which wont to gladden them. Let the sad memorial of this world's frailty, and the cheering revelations of another, shut you up unto the faith-Let them so place the alternative between time and eternity before you, as to resolve for you which of them is far better. And with such a remedy for guilt as the blood of an all-prevailing atonement, defer no longer the work of reconciliation with the God whom you have offended; and receive not His grace in vain; and turn to the study and perusal of those oracles which He hath granted to enlighten you—knowing that they are indeed able to make you wise unto salvation, through the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

The

arise against it; and, speaking, in the person of an adversary, he proposes this objection in the form of a question from him. This question he answers in his own name. And the remonstrance of his imaginary opponent, together with his own reply to it, occupy the first and second verses of the chapter upon which we have entered. Look upon these two verses as the first step and commencement of a dialogue, that is prosecuted onwards to the 9th verse; and you have, in what we have now read, a kind of dramatic interchange of argument, going on between Paul and a hostile reasoner, whom he himself, by an act of imagination, has brought before him. This is a style of argumentation that is quite familiar in controversy. preacher will sometimes deal with an objection, just in the very terms he would have done, if it were cast in living conversation against him, by one standing before his pulpit; and the writer, when he anticipates a resistance of the same kind to his reasoning will just step forward to encounter it, as he would have done, if an entrance were actually made against him on the lists of authorship. This is the way in which the apostle appears to be engaged in the verses before us; and if conceive them made up of objections put by an antagonist, and replies to those questions by himself, it will help to clear your understanding of the passage now under our consideration.

you

You have already heard at length all the elucidation which we mean to offer, on the first question and part of the first answer of this dialogue. After the Jew had been so much assimilated in guilt to

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