considered. His tenderness of conscience, his sense of the unspeakable evil and desert of sin, his unaffected repentance before God for every transgression, combine in producing the effect. He sees the holiness of the moral law to be a transcript of the infinite purity of the divine nature: for he will not doubt an instant that the Apostle Paul speaks of the moral and not of the ceremonial law, when he describes it as spiritual, as holy, just, and good, as the object of his delight after the inner man3. and as communicating the knowledge of sin*. He finds that this law takes cognizance of every movement of his affections, as well as of every outward act, and requires perfect and uninterrupted obedience. Its holiness and excellency he clearly perceives to be equal to its justice. He compares himself with this unerring standard, and perceives that his innumerable offences exclude him from any hope whatever of acceptance upon the terms which it enjoins. He considers himself therefore as exposed to its tremendous yet just denunciation of eternal death. To make any atonement is impossible. Even his present obedience, now that he strives to do the will of God, is so imperfect, that, instead of covering a single past transgres Rom. vii. 14, 12, 22. ♦ Ibid. iii. 20. sion, it stands in need of being atoned for itself: whilst any hope of relaxation in the demands of the law, or of mitigation in its punishment, to those who remain under it, is to suppose the nature of God, or the relation which subsists between him and his creatures, to be capable of change, and is therefore as vain as it is impious. Our inquirer, being thus alarmed at the critical and even awful circumstances in which he finds himself placed, has precisely the state of heart which will dispose him to behold with admiration and delight, in the Scriptural statements I have read to you, that which precisely meets his case. He therefore joyfully embraces the mercy of the Gospel; that mercy of which he views a bold and copious display in the writings of St. Paul, while he perceives it preserved from misrepresentation, but not in the slightest degree weakened or contradicted, by St. James; and which consists in a full atonement for sin, and a deliverance from the curse and condemnation of the law. He ceases then from all attempts at establishing his own merits, and he cordially accepts of the righteousness of Christ. He contemplates his incarnate Saviour, with an interest which no words can describe, as dying the just for the unjust3, as bearing our sins in his own body on 5 1 Pet. iii. 18. the tree', as being the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth": and he relies by faith on His obedience unto death for that righteousness, which, being reckoned or imputed unto him, renders him just in the sight of God, and even the righteousness of God in Christ. Thus he wins Christ, and is found in him, not having his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is of the faith of Christ, even the righteousness which is of God by faith. Nor would any thing short of this full view of the doctrine suit his case. Were the scheme of divine mercy less free or less abundant, it would reduce him, even supposing his outward conduct to have been ever so correct, to absolute despair. As it is, he finds peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord'. Practical piety has thus thrown light upon his path, opened to him his way through the mazes of controversy, and warned him of the seducing tracks of error. It has been to him indeed what experience is to a mariner, who weathers the tempest, escapes the surrounding rocks, and reaches safely the haven, not so much by a knowledge of the theory of navigation, as by the practical skill acquired amidst the toils and dangers of the ocean. 61 Pet. ii. 24. 7 Rom. x. 4. 2 Cor. v. 21. 9 Phil. iii. 8, 9. Clear on this grand point, he is prepared successfully to investigate the place which good works occupy in the evangelical economy. Whilst he knows that he is justified by faith alone, and that good works are entirely excluded from that act of mercy, he is conscious that a recovery to the image of God and a conformity to his commands must be the ultimate end of all religion; and accordingly he perceives that the Scriptures, on their very surface, attach immense importance to personal holiness, and insist on it as indispensable to a state of salvation in this world, and a state of happiness in the next. He learns its exact situation under the Gospel by observing that the apostles uniformly and carefully represent duties, not as the ground of acceptance with God, but as the necessary evidence and effect of faith, which may be discerned by them, as a tree is known by its fruit. This leads him to remark that the declarations of St. James harmonize most entirely with those of St. Paul; since the faith by which the believer is justified is not that dead pretension to it which is separated from obedience, but a living, efficacious principle, which, while it is imputed alone without works in the matter of justification, is yet constantly the source of every part of holy conduct. He perceives therefore that the faith, which St. Paul so largely extols, is the incorruptible seed of a divine life, which worketh by love', and produceth obedience; that which St. James condemns, a speculative assent, an indolent presumption, a shadow, a name. That the effect of the one is the conscientious and habitual, though imperfect, discharge of every duty; while the fruits of the other are notions, pride, envy, and disputation. That the first is of the operation of God, the second the product of man. That he who has the one is the penitent, humble, practical Christian; he who has the other is at best but the advocate of a correct system, which he has never received into his heart, nor obeyed in his conduct. Thus he does not invalidate any one expression of the two apostles, but gives their full and entire weight to all; he does not confound but combine their views, and dwells on both statements, as the occasion may require. To the afflicted penitent he holds out the encouraging positions of St. Paul; and cautions him who professes to receive these positions, from perverting them, by urging the exhortation of St. James. If any object, as men who do not understand the question always have objected and always will object, to the scheme of justification by faith alone, as of an immoral tendency, he will observe that this very difficulty was : Gal. v. 6. |