SERMON II.

THE HEIRS OF PROMISE.

GALATIANS III. 29.

IF YE BE CHRIST'S, THEN ARE YE ABRAHAM'S SEED, AND

HEIRS ACCORDING TO THE PROMISE.

Ir was not the least among many wonderful peculiarities of the Gospel, that its mighty salvation should be preached to the Gentiles, not in the first instance by converts, whom the Holy Spirit had made among themselves, but by Jews, who held them to be accursed, and would gladly have thrust them beyond the pale of mercy. Out of the very people, who would have locked up the kingdom of heaven from them, and cast the key of it into the depths of the sea, where a Gentile might never find it, men were raised up, who threw it open as entirely, in all its extent of divine love, as the Holy of Holies was made accessible, when the vail of the temple was rent in twain, at the Redeemer's death. Here was in itself a strong and happy

presumption to the aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, that the salvation of God was indeed intended for them. And when St. Paul, especially commissioned to be the Apostle of the Gentiles, shewed how the middle wall of partition had been broken down, it became clear that "the Gentiles were to be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of the Spirit's promise in Christ by the Gospel.1

This cheering assurance of absolute irrespectiveness on the part of God, is continually brought forward in the Apostle's preaching and Epistles. He labours, as it were, to shew to those who might otherwise have doubted it, the Saviour's gracious impartiality; even as He Himself stated it to the Jews-" Other sheep I hare, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring with Me, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one Shepherd." It is his high delight to testify, as loudly as to any other Scriptural truth, that "there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ all and in all, 3 among the members of his renewed church. In like manner does he address the converts of Galatia. He

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Ephes. iii. 6.

2 John x. 16.

3 Coloss. iii. 11.

testifies by arguments the most invincible, that every blessing bestowed by God upon Abraham, in absolute mercy, through faith, was equally the property of any believer, whether descended by natural birth from the friend of God, or nationally a stranger to him and his posterity. "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."

I have endeavoured to shew you what the supposition in the text implied; and the extent of blessed meaning involved in the emphatic term, "If ye be Christ's."

I now proceed to consider, for the believer's furtherance and joy of faith,

II. THE CONCLUSION DEDUCED FROM THIS SUPPOSITION. If ye be Christs' then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. It is sufficiently clear, that in the literal meaning of the terms, this statement could not be true. The Galatians had no portion among the natural and national kindred of the father of the faithful. From any distinctions arising out of these relations, they were as much severed, as if Judæa and Galatia had been placed at opposite extremities of the world. We are consequently compelled to give the Apostle's words their plain meaning, by a spiritual inter

pretation. Indeed it would have been a poor and mean ambition to have wished for merely civil and ecclesiastical adoption into the family of Abraham after the flesh, on the part of those, who being Christ's, by the Father's gift, the weighty purchase of the cross, their baptismal investiture, their mystical union with the Saviour's body, and their own gracious surrender, possessed in these distinctions the highest honour, and the deepest sources of happiness, which man can enjoy. But it was another matter, one of dear and delightful interest, one to which they might well aspire, to be thus made partakers of all the spiritual blessings possessed by Abraham, as a spiritual man, and made over to all his spiritual descendants. To this point of joy and consolation the Apostle labours to bring the Galatians, in the argument before us, which closely resembles that used by him in the 4th Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. And we learn from it, that

1. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are the spiritual seed of Abraham.

The patriarch stands in two, and those widely different relations to his posterity. He is the parent of a natural offspring, sons and daughters; the father of many nations. Among them were

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the children of the bond-woman, even of Hagar, who were not to be partakers of his name and substance. Among them, moreover, were all his children by Sarah,-the whole nation of the Jews,--merely considered as acknowledging him to be their natural father, but having no interest in the spiritual mercies vouchsafed to him; because they had no moral and spiritual resemblance to him as their father, believing and justified of God, and therefore no portion in the blessings of his God as believers. Among them were some who cried concerning Abraham's Saviour, on whom his heart had leaned for mercy almost two thousand years before He appeared on earth, Crucify Him, crucify Him: his blood be upon us, and upon our children." And while they boasted of their high progenitor, (as well they might, if they had wisely boasted,) "we have Abraham for our father," the Lord rebuked the empty pride that condemned themselves; and shewed them what they really were, not according to the genealogies of men, of which birth and burial embrace the little all, but according to the state wherein their unbelief placed them before God, "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. Ye are of

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