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being now set aside as a covenant, while it remains with us as a rule of life. This single change of economy teaches us, to what of the law it is that we are dead, and to what of it we are still alive. are dead to all those jealousies which are apt to arise about the terms and the punctualities of a bargain. There is no longer the lifting up of a bond, upon the one side, and this re-acted to by the spirit of bondage, upon the other. There are a dread and a distrust, and the feeling of a divided interest, between two parties, when it is the business of the one to look after the due performance of certain covenanted articles, and of the other, by his square and regular performance of these, just to do as much as that he may escape the denounced penalty, or as that he may earn the stipulated reward. "I call you no longer servants but sons," did our Saviour say to his disciples; and this, perhaps, goes most effectually to distinguish between the obedience which is under the old, and that which is under the new economy. We do the very same things under both, but in a wholly different spirit. As sons, we do them from the feeling of love. As servants, we do them by the force of law. It is the spontaneous taste of the one. It is the servile task of the other. The meat and drink of the servant lie in the hire which is given for the doing of his master's will. The meat and drink of the son lie in the very doing of that will. He does not feel it to be a service, but the very solace and satisfaction of his own renovated spirit. is well to apprehend this distinction; for it, in truth, is that which marks, most precisely, the evangelical from the legal obedience. To all these feelings,

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which have been termed the feelings, or the fears of legality, the believer under the economy of the New Testament is altogether dead. He is not exempted from service, but it is service in the newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter-not gone about in the style of a hireling, who looks merely to his reward, and is satisfied if he can but fulfil the literalities of that contract by which the reward is secured to him. We see how at once, by this single change, a new character is given to his obediencehow, when dead to the law, which tells him to do this and live, he looks away from all those narrow suspicions, and all those besetting fears, wherewith a mercenary service is encompassed-and how when alive to the gospel, which first gives him life, and then bids him do, he instantly ascends upon a higher walk of obedience, being now urged onward by a taste for the virtues of the law, and not by the terror of its violations-and instead of looking for some distinct reward after the keeping of the commandments, which in truth argues nothing spontaneously good in the character at all, feeling even now, that in the keeping of the commandments there is a very great reward.

With this explanation of what it is to be dead unto the law, we may fully understand what it is to live unto Christ. As to be dead unto any object, is to want that sensibility which the object is fitted to awaken-then to be alive unto any object, is just to have the sensibility. One of our poets designates the child of sensibility to be one who is feelingly alive to each fine impulse. It is thus that we are alive to the call of distress-alive-to the

charms of a landscape-alive to the obligations of honour-alive to the charms of gratitude or friendship. It marks an attribute of the personal character, because it marks its degree of sensibility to any such objects as are presented to it: and we may easily consider, what the result will be when Christ is the object, and when he to whom this object is addressed is alive unto Christ. Let us only conceive him to cast an intelligent look upon the Saviour, to compute aright the mighty surrender which he had to make, when he surrendered the glory of Heaven, for a death equivalent in its soreness to the eternity of accursed millions in helllet us think of the tenderness to our world which urged him forth upon the errand to seek and to save it, and the strength of that unquenchable love which so bore him up amid the pains and the perils of his great undertaking-let us but look on the fearful agonies, and listen to the cries, that, in the hour and power of darkness, were extorted from him, who had the energy of the Godhead to sustain him, and who, from the garden to the cross, had to travel through a mystery of suffering, that sinners might go free-let us but connect this terror, and these shrinkings, of the incarnate Godhead, with the peace of our own unburdened consciences, as we draw near unto the mercy-seat, and plead our full acquittal from that vengeance which has already been discharged, from that penalty which has been already borne-let us bring together in thought, even as they stand together in reality, the love of Christ and our own dear-bought liberty, and that to him all the immunities of our present grace, and all

the brightest visions of our future immortality are owing. To be awake unto all this with the eye of the understanding, and to be alive unto all this with the susceptibilities of the heart, is just to be in that practical state which we now endeavour to set forth and under which it is, that every true Christian gives up the devotedness of his whole life, as an offering of gratitude to him who hath redeemed itand feeling that "he is not his own, but bought with a price, lives no longer to himself, but to the Saviour who died for him and who rose again."

But it is the unceasing aim of gratitude to gratify its object; and the question comes to be, What precise direction will this affection, now stirring and alive in our hearts towards Christ, impress upon our history. This will resolve itself into the other question, of how is it that Christ is most gratified? what is it that he chiefly wills of us, or that we can do, which his desires are most set upon ? For the resolution of this inquiry, the Scriptures of truth give us abundance of testimonies. His will is our sanctification. The great and ultimate object for which he put forth his hand upon us was to make us holy. He gave himself up for us, that we might give ourselves up unto the guidance of that word, and the gracious operation of that Spirit, whereby he purifies unto himself a peculiar people, and makes them zealous of good works. He has now risen to the throne of his appointed Mediatorship; and the voice that he addressed to his first disciples, still issues therefrom to the disciples of all ages-" If ye love me, keep my commandments;" and, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." Now the com

mandments of Christ to whom we are alive, are just the individual commandments of that law to which we are dead. The things to which we were before driven by the terrors of authority, are the very things to which we are now drawn by the ties of gratitude. God in his love to righteousness framed all the virtues which compose it into the articles of a covenant that we had violated, but which now in Christ is settled and set by. And God in his still unabated love to righteousness, yet wills to impress all the virtues of it upon our person.

What

before he inscribed on the records of a written commandment, he would now infuse within the repositories of a believer's breast-and those precepts which, under the old economy, were the ground of a condemnation that is now taken away, compose, under the new economy, a rule of life, the obligation of which remaineth with us for ever.

Though the law be now taken away from the eye of the believer, yet Christ stands in its place, and these very virtues which were exacted by the one, are still taught and exemplified by the other.* He is the image and representation of his Father, and long ere the moralities of absolute and everlasting rectitude were impressed on a tablet of jurisprudence, they had their place and their living delineation in the character of the Godhead. The laws and threatenings of the tablet are now expunged and taken away from the sight of the believer, but the character remains in full view, and now more impressively bodied

* We again refer the reader to that Section, in the Second Part of this Work, which treats of " The Imitation of Christ," for an admirable illustration of our preceding argument.