we should be misled by it to be careless, carnal livers, profitless professors of the Gospel, counting that if we are not to be saved by works but by grace, works might as well be left alone -he adds, “for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." As though he said, Still I am not preaching that good works are not to be done, God forbid we are God's workmanship still, and created by Him afresh through Christ; and it cannot be imagined that He would have His works, made and renewed by Him, all go wrong. He did not make and renew them for this, surely. No maker of any earthly fabric is satisfied, if on the proving it turns out so ill as to put him to shame, instead of being unto him a credit. And so it is with the great Maker of all things. If He gives man appetites, it is not that he may indulge them like a beast. If He gives him an understanding, it is not that he may employ it in fraud. If He gives him hands, it surely is not to steal with - or a tongue, it surely is not to lie with -or eyes, it surely is not that he may look through them on another man's things with jealousy. If He gives him riches, it surely is not that he may corrupt himself with them, and harden his heartor if He gives him health and strength, it surely is not that he may consume it in the devil's service or if He gives him time and length of days, it is not that he may set up his rest here, and think there is no hereafter. If God gives him a Church, it is not that he may never go to itor a Bible, it is not that he may never read itor Sacraments, it is not that He should turn on them his back. If God has given him His Spirit, it is not that he should grieve It or His Son, it is not that he should never profit by His example. It is not for such ends as these that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. No

reasonable person can dream that it is; but, as the Apostle continues, it is for good works that He hath so created us, "which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them "; and so that the workmanship should be a glory and not a shame to its Maker. Therefore our Church, in another of her Articles, anxious to guard against the errors I have named, says, "Albeit that good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known, as a tree discerned by the fruit."

This, my friends, be assured, is the true view to take of this great, this weighty question. Let no man ever deceive you into a belief that God would publish a Gospel that was to make the world wicked. - for if it sets a man free from the obligation to do good works, it does make the world wicked. God sent the Gospel for a very different purpose. He sent it to open men's eyes rather to the hateful nature of sin in His sight, which demanded no less a sacrifice than the blood of His Son;-how can He look upon sin with indifference now, who once exacted for it such a ransom? He sent it to comfort those who, conscious that they have defiled themselves with sin, and thus made themselves an offence in God's eyes, seek a way for escape from His vengeance and such way He provides for them by faith and repentance. And He sent it to drive, as far as possible, for the future, sin out of the world—by directing its precepts to the heart of man, that the fountain being clean, the issues might be clean; by presenting to mankind a spotless example in Christ Jesus our Lord, whom they were to imitate and follow; by assuring them that the Holy

Ghost is to be in the world for ever, to guide them into all truth; and by opening to them, far, far beyond it was ever opened before, the mysteries of the world beyond the grave-representing to them Christ raised, and so the first fruits of all that sleep; Christ ascended to Ilis Father's right hand, there to continue our Intercessor, till He comes again to be our Judge; the trial He shall institute; the sentence He shall pass; the very words in which it shall be conveyed. God grant that we may be found prepared for that day; and in order to our being so, let us remember that it is a day in which God "will render to every man according to his deeds -to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil - but glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good." These are not my words, or mere man's words, but his words who was a chosen vessel who was favoured with a vision of Jesus Himself, and heard His voice from heaven after that He had risen from the dead who was carried up in the spirit into the third heaven and who was the appointed minister of Christ Jesus to complete to the world that knowledge of His will which He had Himself left imperfect. Such words, spoken by such a man, therefore will assuredly stand fast even when heaven and earth shall pass away—and will rise up in judgment against every mother's son who shall continue in sin upon the plea that grace abounds.

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SERMON XXIV.

THE ATONEMENT.

ST. JOHN, xii. 32, 33.

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. This He said, signifying what death He should die."

IN these words of our Blessed Lord, uttered no long time before His end, He foretells the nature of the death which He should die; that He should be lifted up from the earth, that is, upon the cross-a mode of death which none could have guessed likely to befall Him, for it was a Roman manner of capital punishment, not a Jewish; and what had He done to provoke the wrath of the Romans? If He had said that He should be stoned to death, one might have believed there was some conjecture in it; for that was a Jewish mode of despatching people, and it was clear that the Jews were likely enough to lay hands on Him. He however spake from fore-knowledge, and described an event which, though it seemed unlikely at the time, proved the truth. But mark the consequences He attributes to this event, prophetically attributes: "If I be lifted up from the earth," says He, "I will draw all men unto Me." How striking a reproof this, of those who see in the Gospel only or mainly a code of excellent moral laws. It is not upon

that feature of it, great and prominent as it is, admirable as those laws are, that Jesus rests the character and influential force of the dispensation; but upon the propitiation for sin it provides,-upon His own death and passion it sets forth,-upon the virtue and efficacy of the Cross. "If I be lifted up from the earth "—there lay the strength of the new covenant.

Nothing could exceed the beauty and perfection of the precepts our Blessed Lord had taught. There never were, since the world began, such noble maxims published for the guidance and governance of man, as those of the sermon on the mount. Nothing could exceed the glory and majesty of the miracles He had wrought. But neither the purity of His doctrine, nor the grandeur of His signs, had succeeded in drawing all men unto Him, or in drawing many men unto Him. Immediately after the end of His ministry, when there seems to have been a muster of His followers at Jerusalem, the number of the names, we read, was only a hundred and twenty: small fruits these of His labours. Three years of incessant preaching and teaching and doing good and working wonders, were but poorly rewarded, one would say, by such a return as this poor company of converts. Yet, when our Lord uttered the words of my text, such was the position of His Church, so scanty its numbers, so despised and rejected of men its offers. And who, judging by man's judgment, would have thought it was likely to gather strength from the events that were coming on it? Who would not rather have thought that, being already feeble, it would now die and perish altogether? For here was its Head, who had apparently effected so little towards its establishment at present, actually upon the point of being taken away from it entirely. Who would not have said, if the cause could not succeed whilst the Master was at