66 Rethe name of

vation. It is your birth-right, as born under the benign promise, that the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent. Were assembled thousands before me as they stood before Peter on the day of Pentecost, I would isolate each individual among them from the rest, and address him in the language of that apostle, pent and be baptized every one of you in Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins." Were the eight hundred millions who now compose the population of this globe, assembled on some vast plain, I should be warranted, by the nature and sufficiency of this great salvation, to address each one by himself alone, and, as though he were the only solitary transgressor who needed salvation through the blood of the Cross, to assure him in God's name that he might have it for the taking. I would tell him that nothing is wanting to make it his, but his accepting it. This is the language of the Cross to every living man. God would not seal up his testimony to this lost world without including in it that comprehensive invitation, "And the Spirit and the bride say, come. And let him that heareth say, come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." My brother of the lost family of man, it is on this mountain of Zion that the reader and writer are invited to a "feast of fat things, of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.' "" The voice of him who was "set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood," does but speak the language of his own warm heart, when he gives you the assurance, that "him that cometh he will in no wise cast out." Make ever so large demands upon the Cross, and you do not exhaust its efficacy. You have no need of any other refuge; no, not even of any auxiliary. It is the exclusive right of that great sufferer to

redeem. He insists upon this great and glorious monopoly. Casting his eyes upon you, as you turn over these pages, he says, "Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth; for I am God and there is none else."

It is an affecting reality that you still occupy a place in this world of hope. You dwell on the earth where the holy child Jesus was born; where he wept, and bled, and died. There are those to whom this same announcement might have been made; but it is too late to make it to them in that world of darkness and despair. Could we tell them of these glad tidings now-could some herald of heavenly mercy be commissioned to enter that dark abode whence the light of hope has ever been debarred, with what wonder would its wretched inhabitants, from those seats of woe, look at the unwonted messenger! They could scarcely conceive the purpose of his coming; and when, amid the accents of horror which are everywhere uttered, this messenger of heaven should sound forth through the interminable dungeon a note of mercy; human language fails to describe the unknown, the almost infinite emotion that would leap into being at the sound. Oh, could it be told in that gloomy, frightful world, that there is a wondrous method of restoring mercy, their wild revulsion of joy words would fail to express, even if it could be conceived. But there are no such glad tidings for those deep abodes of darkness and death. The voice of mercy never has broken that melancholy monotony of ages, and never will break it. But the hope that is denied to them is imparted to fallen man. The mercy they may not look for, and the life which they forever despair of regaining, are offered and brought nigh to you. To you, is "the word of this salvation sent;" to you, and not to devils; to you, and not to the spirits of lost men; to you, and not to the dead;

to you, and not to the heathen; though you are but 66 man that is a worm, and the son of man which is as a worm; though your sin abounds and your iniquities are as scarlet and crimson; and though you have so often rejected it. And what reception will you now give to it? Oh, thou polluted and condemned! come and wash in this fountain of ablution and grace; come and find pardon at this blood-stained mercy-seat. Oh, thou wanderer and outcast! while the storm lowers, and before it breaks in its fury, hearken to him who would cover you from its indignation, even as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings. The Cross is the emblem of tranquillity and peace. Help is far, and death is nigh, if you turn away from the Cross. As God has made you to differ from the devils and the damned, from the heathen and from the spirits of lost men, so does he hold you accountable for his proffered grace. "The servant that knew his Lord's will and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes." Some future period in your undone eternity may remind you of the Cross of Christ. Some deeper cavern in the world of despair may witness the surpassing intensity of your grief, beyond the sorrows of many a less guilty convict, who never trampled upon a Saviour's blood.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CROSS A COMPLETED JUSTIFICATION.

PARDON through the blood of the Cross is preliminary to advancement through its righteousness. The criminal who is pardoned by the State, is not on that account received into favor: rather is he still regarded as a disgraced and degraded man; and it requires singularly meritorious services to reinstate him at court. So pardon through the Cross does not so restore the sinner to the favor of God as to give him a title to all the immunities of the divine kingdom. It is indeed a great matter that the death of Christ has procured his pardon; but this is not all that he needs. By this, he is simply acquitted from the penalty of the law; he escapes from punishment; he is merely kept out of hell, and has "attained the mid-way position of God's letting him alone." He asks for something higher; he seeks the privileges of a loyal and obedient subject; he would be entitled to the rewards of righteousness; he would stand restored, reinstated in the favor of his heavenly Prince, and not merely a fair candidate for gracious advancement, but the titled possessor of courtly, of heavenly honors. This title the Cross of Christ gives him. To every believer, it is a completed justification. Thus it is that his entire salvation is not the work of man, but from beginning to end the work of Christ, and will be to the glory of Him who " is all in all." And this is one of the attractions of the Cross.

The prominent point of divergency of all false religions from the true, will be found in ignorance, denial, or perversion of this great truth. Among the radical errors. of the Church of Rome, is the doctrine of human merit and of works of supererogation. The belief of that antichristian system is, that all that Jesus Christ has done for men is to enable them to merit the favor of God for themselves; that his desert makes them deserving; and that his merit consists in giving merit to their own obedience. It teaches that there are good works over and above those which God requires, and which constitute a fund of merit to be distributed as an offset to all defalcations, and are to be regarded as a claim for favor otherwise forfeited. When, after many painful struggles, a few pious and devoted men, who had been educated in the bosom of that church, had become so convinced of her apostacy as to resolve on a separation from her communion, and a systematic organization of a Reformed Church, the great means on which, under God, they relied, next to the circulation of the Holy Scriptures, was the great doctrine of the sinner's acceptance through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Of all the truths which produced such mighty results in the state of the world at that period of conflict, and which was honored of its divine Author in effecting the Reformation, none stood forth more prominent than this. "This article reigns in my heart," said Luther, "and with this the church stands or falls."

Justification is the reverse of that state of condemnation to which man as a sinner is adjudged by the law of God. It is not the creature's act, but purely the act of God. It is not the moral character of the creature that is effected by it, but his legal relations. It is not the work of the Holy Spirit on his heart, nor his own per