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can escape the vengeance of the violated law. Those who really feel themselves guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, might even be willing that the rocks should fall upon them and the mountains cover them, yea, might hie them to the blackness of darkness forever, if by these means they could hide themselves from him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.

It is not till we advance a step beyond the holiness of God and his law shining in the person of his Son, that we come to take hold on the blood thus shed by our own hands, as the means of cancelling our guilt, as an all-sufficient atonement to render God just in justifying us, and to give us all joy and peace in believing. Then it is that we believe with a heart unto righteousness, or then it is, that by the power of the Spirit, we believe ourselves into the actual possession of heart holiness, and into that state of favor wherein. we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Then it is, that we are begotten to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and eternal life begins its reign in our souls, so as to be a vital and most satisfactory experience, affiliating us to God, giving us the spirit of adoption-God our Father, heaven our home, Christ our Elder Brother, and the Spirit witnessing with our spirits that we are indeed born of God. Then it is, that we become new creatures-old things pass away and all things become new.

I must now insist upon confession, as a part of this process no less necessary than believing, beginning, progressing, ending with it, so that the latter is an impossibility without the former. Indeed, confession in our text is put first, because it is in most cases the antecedent of any controlling influence of faith over us-“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." But in the next verse the order is reversed, and faith is put first: "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." It would thus appear that they are collateral exercises, going hand in hand till the soul enters into a justified state and into heavenly glory. This confession, I conceive, includes any mode of declaring our acquaintance with Christ, as the original seems to indicate, or our sense of needing a Saviour up to the extent of our feeling it at the time, and it may specially refer to a profession of our faith by submitting to the ordinances which Christ has instituted for this purpose.

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You have, my unconverted friends, some degree of sensibility to divine things, some impression of needing a Saviour, some anxiety in reference to a judgment to come, and you cannot deny that pel truth has met with a degree of response from your own minds and hearts. Thus the word is nigh you, even in your mouth, and in your heart. But these inward impressions of the truth cannot control your minds nor produce saving faith, so long as they are repressed and concealed, and are not out-spoken in the ears of

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Christians and the audience of the world. Think of that solemn declaration of our Lord, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels." How can a change from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, the greatest moral transition known to the universe, take place in your minds, without some form of confession or outward manifestation? Such is the connection between the inward and the outward, the thought and its tendencies to expression in words, in our natures, that the strong impulse of Christ's resurrection could not be felt within, without being manifested in word and deed. To repress and conceal, is to extinguish the light of the truth from our hearts. It was concealment in Nicodemus that rendered his piety for a time so undecided and unavailing. And not a few among us are kept in a similar condition from the same cause. How many are deeply impressed with the holiness of Christ, the justice of the divine law-who are deterred by pride, the fear of man, and various influences, from confessing what they feel, and the consequence is, like the seed that fell by the wayside, it is caught away by the wicked one," and no good results ensue. Refusing to speak of your convictions is sure to repress them, strong as they may be, while the feeblest spark may be fanned to a flame by giving it vent and air. How true is it, that except a man deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Christ, he cannot be his disciple!

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Those who think themselves secret believers, should respect the saving nature of their faith. A faith that has not sufficient strength to develop itself in confession, cannot be relied on as genuine or saving. To such, Jesus, because he knows all men, will not commit himself. He sees that their piety is without root or the power of endurance, like that of the stony ground hearers. Let all secret believers consider how necessary it is to become so openly, how false this cautious concealment is to a Saviour so precious and a cause so glorious, and how imperious is the obligation which they are under to go forth without the camp, bearing the reproach of Christ.

God always presents some outward test of our inward feelings, and unless we abide it, our feelings cannot be right. Adam had his test in the prohibited tree; Nicodemus his in acknowledging his lowly Messiah before an unbelieving generation; the assembly on Mars hill theirs in cleaving to one so rude in speech as Paul, with Dionysius, Damaris, and others; and we have ours, perhaps, in reference to a meeting for inquiry, to private conversation with a minister or Christian on the interests of our souls, or in some other way. Who is able to meet these various modes of testing our inward feelings, and thus of confessing Christ before men, as often as occasion may require, up to the extent that our experience will justify? What we do not feel, we are not required to confess;

but why should we not boldly acknowledge all that God has done for our souls, whether it be little or much? Let us not despise the day of small things.

The tendency of these confessions, whether in a free conversation on the state of our souls, or in submitting to the ordinances of religion, is to strengthen the principle of faith, and lead to a more decided influence of the gospel over our hearts and lives. Thus it is that we acquire power over temptation, strengthen and settle in us the principles of righteousness, and enter fully into the joy of God's great salvation. Think not that you are equal to the task of leading a Christian life, without these divinely appointed auxiliaries to your faith. Piety nourished in secret, has but a pale and sickly life, like plants in a dark cellar, which bloom without fruit and die without hope. It must have air, and light, and action, or how can it have increase or productiveness?

CONCLUSION.

1. The precise nature of the Spirit's work in our regeneration is herein revealed. It is that of unfolding the spiritual connections of Christ's resurrection. The word of the truth of the gospel states the outward, but the Spirit makes us see the inward facts and relations of this great subject. It is through his influence that the commandment comes, sin revives, and we die. He makes Christ's love in dying for us the means of begetting love in us, thus shedding it abroad in our hearts, and filling us with all joy and peace in believing. He witnesses with our spirits that we are born of God, by exciting in us the affections of the new birth. It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.

2. Sinners must consider, however, that their voluntary co-operation is necessary throughout this process. The holiness and love of Christ, distinctly brought to our view, are adapted to raise in our minds a class of emotions which only require an appropriate action on our part to lead on to saving results. We can no more avoid being affected by them, when thus brought to our view, than we can avoid being touched by the story of the Roman daughter, whose father was condemned to death by starvation, and whom she kept alive in prison by means of the aliment which nature had provided for her new-born infant. The most undutiful children feel the beauty of this story, and if they were only to act on the impression, they would become more kind and respectful to their parents.

So, the worst of sinners cannot fail of being impressed with Christ's love in dying for sinful men, when they seriously contemplate the subject in the light of his resurrection, setting forth the greatness and glory of his character. Action on this impression in confessing their sins, is faith, and the more decisive and longer

continued this action is, the more controlling the influence of the faith becomes, till at length, through the accompanying agency of the Holy Spirit, they are renewed to obedience and begotten to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The work of the Spirit in the production of saving faith, essential as it is, is never effectual, without the voluntary co-operation of the sinner himself in some form of confession or manifestation.

3. Herein also we see the precise nature of unbelief. It is not simply the unconvinced reason withholding its assent from a lack of evidence, but it is a rebellion of the will against those decrees which the conscience gives forth under the promptings of the truth as it is in Jesus. Unbelief consists in resisting the impression of obligation to reform our lives, which the facts connected with Christ's resurrection make upon our minds, and hence it is the opposite of confession, it is a denial of Christ before men.

If the truth as it is in Jesus did not contain in itself a powerful call upon us to break off our sins by righteousness, how should our unbelief and resistance to it be esteemed so great a crime? How should this be singled out from all our other sins, as the reason of our being doomed to hell? If the word of Christ was not in the sinner, under the form of this powerful movement of conscience towards a new life, how should his resistance to it involve a guilt so black and a doom so fearful? Did not the sin of the Jews consist in opposing themselves to their inward sense of Christ's holiness and love, because his character did not accord in other respects to their worldly expectations from the Messiah? They sacrificed his holiness to their pride, his love to their ambition, and in this their sealing sin consisted.

Our faith, therefore, is the reverse of this process; it is following out all the tendencies of this holiness and love, and actively repressing and crucifying pride, ambition, avarice, and every contrary tendency. It is confessing Christ before men, coinciding and agreeing with Christ, and thus both faith and unbelief is a voluntary process throughout, never depending on the sufficiency or insufficiency of evidence addressed to the reason.

Finally, sinners may see how impossible it is for them to occupy a neutral position in regard to Christ. Can conscience be neutral on a clearly stated question of right and wrong? Can the heart be neutral in reference to a matter involving the most serious consequences to our interest and our happiness? Do not the pleadings of conscience on the one hand, and of appetite on the other, the conflicts of reason and passion, of truth and error, of holiness and sin, within our own breast, create an imperious necessity of taking sides one way or the other? The outward may admit of neutrality, but not the inward, not the contrary tendencies and issues of our own spiritual nature, arising from the introduction of Christ's word into our minds. 'He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad."

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XIV.

THE PLACE AND IMPORTANCE OF AN INDIVIDUAL.

BY REV. ALBERT BARNES,

PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA.

"But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.”—1 Cor. xii. 20, 21.

My remarks on this occasion will have a single object. They will be designed to impress upon my hearers a sense of personal obligation in the cause of religion; the obligation resting on us as individuals. In doing this, I shall endeavor to ascertain the place and the importance of the individual in the social organization, and particularly in the church:-"There are many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.' It will contribute to give order to the remarks which I propose to make, if I arrange them under the three following heads:-the erroneous views which prevail in regard to the place and the importance of the individual; the place which, according to the divine arrangements, he necessarily occupies in the social organization, and the place which he may voluntarily occupy in promoting the cause of religion.

I. First, the erroneous views which prevail in regard to the place and importance of the individual.

In regard to this, there are two quite opposite errors, though not equally bordering on virtue, or equally harmless.

1. The one which is most common, and the least virtuous, is that of over-estimating our importance, and consequently of being unwilling to occupy the place which we were designed to fill. It is unnecessary, I presume, to attempt to demonstrate the fact here adverted to, or to search out the causes of it. The error is the child of selfishness and pride; the effect of closing our eyes on the truth respecting ourselves; the result of always looking at one minute object, until it magnifies itself so as to occupy the whole field of vision. There are few persons who at some period of their lives are not seized with this overweening estimate of themselves;

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