g.ed with and overcame the purpose to make it known. I say, I charge it upon some here, that you have suffered the love of ease to stifle the first design of giving the interesting matter its due circulation. I say, I charge it upon some here, that the affairs on the world sat like a nightinare upon your religious profession. I say, I change it upon some here, that had you made some personally enriching discovery in worldly knowledge, that would have roused the whole man, that would have led to the broad dissemination of the important secret: whereas the conviction, the knowledge that Christ is the ransom, and that his ble is the redemption-price of pit-fallen and prison-bound man, has had no free course at your hand. It may be true that you have, in the pollution or your souls, drank deeply at that fountain opened up for all uncleanness but even at this present are you not sluggish, I say, in enabling thousands who are athirst to partake of the same living waters? My inquiry is-and I have the answer in the sense of your own lukewarmness in the condemnation of your own hearts at this moment-Have you taken any interest, many of you, in making known the glad tidings of the Gospel of salvation? Many have been perishing at your sides for lack of knowledge. I often think that upon the great day of judgment the question will be pressed as to what we have done in unholy things, and as to what we have done in holy things. I often think that the clear perception of the worldly interest will be put in fearful contrast with the blindness to the spiritual interest; that faithfulness, decision, and zeal for the one, will be put in fearful contrast with instability, with indifference, with apostacy, with coldness to the other; that the consideration of the matters temporal will stand in righteous judgment against the consideration of the matters eternal; that the care of the body will be "a swift witness" against you in the care of the soul. Every day we see the necessity that we try the matter by this rule: every day deepens with me the necessity that we pray more and more for the assistance of that blessed Spirit, through which we may become more and more abstracted from the world, and more. devoted to Christ and to the things of Christ.

"I have found a ransom." May this knowledge ever dwell within us in the freshness and in the fulness of its earliest impression, in the impression of the young convert; and may it to the end of your lives excite to all means, to all endeavours towards extending it to others, for the good of souls, and to the glory of the living God! Amen.

"I have found a ransom." These words, you will find, were from the lips of Elihu, the companion and counsellor of Job. Nor was the discovery less present to the mind of that righteous man himself, when he said, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." But the men of that day had but dim visions of Him that was to come: they had to look through the type to the Antitypethrough the symbol to the thing signified. What, however, they saw as in a glass darkly, it is our privilege to see face to face: they walked as men in the twilight; but upon us fall the beams of the meridian sun. Our testimony is, that while every priest of old stood daily ministering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, this man, Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, for ever sat down at the right hand of God. O may our faith, and may our gratitude-O may our love, and may our zeal, keep pace with our privileges, that we be not condemned at last by our privileges!

"I have found a ransom." In the first place, these things bespeak in the

man who uttered them a knowledge of man's state: secondly, they convey a knowledge of man's deliverance-the means of his deliverance: thirdly, they open an inquiry as to the acquisition of this knowledge: and fourthly, I would briefly advert to the effect which this knowledge should produce upon the person who obtains it.

"I have found a ransom." He who said this was practically informed that he wanted a ransom. A ransom signifies the price of redemption from captivity. Before we apply for a ransom we must feel that we are involved; we must have a powerful conviction, we must have a feeling conviction, deeper than words, that the iron hath entered into our souls. "They that are whole," said our great Master, "need not a physician, but they that are sick." The man who trusted the little Jewish maid in her suggestions concerning the prophet, was conscious of his leprosy.

This sensibility to our suffering condition is the very foundation-work of an appeal to Jesus. Man by nature is in bondage; he is taken captive by Satan at his will. In his innocence he was God's own; in his guilt the wicked spirit hath made an invasion, and wrought a fearful conquest: he is no more God's own when he is in subjection to the enemy of God-he is Satan's own. Now this is the situation of the world, and yet the world knows it not-the fact is only spiritually discerned: the natural man is like the poor bird that is encaged from its very nest; its prison is its palace; its home is not the broad sky to which God ordained it, but amidst wires set about it by the hand which made it captive. And so Satan coops us up in the bars of an evil world: thousands, unconscious of their original freedom, die in their confinement, having wings, and yet not knowing how to use them. O it is a melancholy spectacle of the degradation of the reason to see it thus shut up: it is a melancholy spectacle of the abasement of the God-soaring affections, to see them thus curbed and confined by the wicked one. Now there was a time, my brethren, when you were in deep captivity, and you knew it not, and you felt it not; when you thought that the worldling's was the true liberty, and the Christian's freedom was the only slavery; when you esteemed the galling burden of Satan better than the light yoke of Christ. But this view is altered now, and you have found no tyranny so oppressive as the tyranny of sin, and no taskmaster so grievous in his exactions as Satan. You are in the land of promise, the Canaan of rest, and you shudder to look back upon that awful Egypt, in which your servitude was in darkness and in chains. You are now in the exalted train of those who love Jesus as their King, and you recoil greatly at the spiritual condition of the multitude, who are his whom they obey. O it was a miracle, that light in the soul which shewed you what you were! O it was a blessed voice, that cry of your soul that applied to the Lord in tears and in groanings for the great ransom which he sent! And the view of your sorrow was the view of your relief: the moment you felt the weight of your chains, why then your chains were snapped, and you were free: you saw the blackness of your dungeon, and the moment you saw it the door was thrown wide open, and you walked in liberty, for you walked in Christ.

Secondly, the words before us indicate a knowledge of THE MEANS OF MAN'S DELIVERANCE. 66 I have found a ransom." The prisoner finds a ransom

where! In the offers of the worldly-wise? In the counsellings and the sug gestions of self? No; fling back the offers upon the deceiving lips. Count the advices as light and vain: return them as folly into the hand which proffered them, and bury the flatterers of self, blind and weak self, in the dust. The ransom is in none of these; it is nowhere but in the all-compassionate, the all-sufficient mercy of God; it is no where but in the unmerited, the free, the full, sovereign, and spontaneous outpouring of the love of the divine heart. it is no where but as presented in the utterance of that blessed sentence, "God will provide himself with a lamb for the burnt-offering."

"I have found a ransom." No man ever breathed this assurance until his eyes were fixed on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. To what else could he turn? His sin in its reckless daring had provoked the infinite majesty of heaven: his soul, in its guilt, had sullied the law of the infinite in holiness: his sin in its penalties had exacted an infinite condemnation from the infinite in justice. And where might he look for infinite compensation, but in the infinite merits of the Son of God! The ransom that could redeem from the bottomless hell, and raise to the glories of God's right hand, could only be found in the unsearchable riches of the incarnate Christ.

Now the man of science will tell you, that upon a few drops of poison being cast into the sea, the infusion will spread through the whole ocean: and thus the believer will say, Sin has diffused its virulent influence through all the depths of my immortal soul: and what shall be able to spread over its surface, to neutralize the pervading evil, to cleanse and to purify, but the infinite virtues of the mysterious God-man, Jesus Christ? His precious blood, as a Lamb without blemish or spot, was the only equivalent that could satisfy the demands of the broken law, was the only ransom that could be accepted for the redemption of the sinner from the miseries of an eternal world.

"I have found a ransom." To him, in these words, all the patriarchs, all the judges, all the kings, all the priests, all the prophets looked under the old dispensation; and to him, in these words, must every soul look to the end of time, who would pass from the power of Satan unto the light and the blessedness of the family of God. O, my friends, let me ask you earnestly and affectionately, Do you realize this truth? Do you, I say, realize this truth? Is it yours to say, "I have found my ransom in Christ? It is true that I was sunk in the deepest bondage to the enemy: it is true my will and my understanding was his, and my affections were his, and all my strength was his—all my exertions of the head, of the hand, and of the heart; and my soul was his. It is true that I had bound myself, that I had sold myself, to work mischief, like another guilty Ahab, in the sight of the Lord. It is true that in my natural state I laid tied and bound, as it were, ready to feed the unquenchable burnings. But now I am emancipated, freed, and delivered from the body of this death: I am snatched as a brand from the fire: I am a pardoned man, I am a reconciled man I am a sanctified man, I am a justified man, I am an accepted man, I am au adopted man, and when my strength faileth, I shall be a glorified man by reason of the precious ransom that was given for me, and received for me, in the atonement of Him that became a ransom for many."

Ah, my brethren, if you have thus found that ransom which is freely offered to all who are travailing and heavy laden under the sense of sin, sure am I, that whatever the ills that press upon you—though fortune deceive, and though

friends abandon, and though you were the only desolate thing amongst God' works, though, like Job, you be chastened with pain upon your beds, or like David in your distress you may tell all your bones, that stand staring and looking on you-still, I say, you are a privileged man, a highly honoured man; you have a store which all the barns of time cannot contain, and which overflows in the riches of eternity.

Thirdly, THE ACQUISITION OF THIS KNOWLEDGE (that is to say, a knowledge of your own heart in a state of nature, and a knowledge of the ransom that is provided for you in the dispensations of grace), both the one and the other proceed (and I have told you this again and again, and I must tell it you again and again as long as I am with you; I say it must become the substance of my every sermon), PROCEEDS IMMEDIATELY FROM THE SPIRIT of God. He convinceth of sin, and he alone. His light shines into all the intricate passages, and the windings and the turnings of the sinner's bosom, and his alone. His ray falls upon and discovers the true features of that odious idol self, that many-headed monster whom we love to set up under one form or another; that legion of hell (shall I say?) that possesses our fallen nature with so many devils. But if this be the work of the Spirit, it is also his work to guide us into all truth, and to bring before the soul in the hour of its intenser wretchedness, at the period of its deepest despair, that most inestimable gift which God in his love hath bestowed, that most welcome ransom that man in his destitution could desire—the Lamb of God in the virtues and in the powers of a vicarious sacrifice. "Behold," said the Spirit by the voice of John"Behold the Lamb of God." "Behold," says the same Spirit to every one that mourneth for a ransom in the house of his captivity-" Behold the Lamb of God."

Now then, if this was found to be the blessed work belonging to the Holy Spirit, with what strength of prayer should you plead for his influence, that you may in humility and godly sorrow prove the truth, that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and that you may from the bondage of Satan be enabled to reach the cross of Christ, in all the vigour of a holy faith. Self-appropriating thus the language of Elihu to the distressed Job, you shall "pray unto God, and he will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will render unto man his righteousness."

"I have found a ransom." These words imply that the ransom was sought for: apa this seeking, as I have said, is a course of humble, and diligent, and Beaver.og prayer. The ransom can be met with in no other way; whilst its aiscovery is certain, is inevitabie, in that. But there are here the unransome: there are here the captives of Satan; there are here those, to whom their very chains are now making pleasant music; who talk of freedom in a dungeon, and call the fare of the prison-house a feast of fat things. Such men, I say, are before O that such should be convinced of their great folly! O that such could enter into the joy, the substantial joy, of the redeemed in Christ! Then they would know what freedom is. O that such would now go home, and shut to the door, and commune in secret with their own souls, and with God, praying that His blessed Spirit may be in them as an influence to illuminate, and as a constraining power to guide; that so, in the words of the chapter of my text, the

me.

Lord inay ' deliver them from going into the pit," may " bring back the soul from the pit to be enlightened by the light of the living."

But what is THE EFFECT where this spiritual and saving knowledge obtains? "I have found a ransom." We know that, in ordinary cases, a great finding is a great rejoicing. As I have said, if a man were to make some new discovery in science, as Newton did of the law of gravitation, or as Harvey did of the circulation of the blood; or if a man were to find a costly pearl or diadem, or if a man were to recover his own lost child, why, there would be an exulting of the heart. O what gratitude, what praise, ought the discovery to make in the soul, of having found a ransom for it-for the immortal soul! Surely the longest life is too short for an adequate ascription of praise; surely the whole heart ought to become, as it were, a living lyre, all the strings vibrating with joy-joy before the Lord!

"I have found a ransom." Now, let me ask, has this interesting fact, if you have found a ransom, begotten a love in your souls to Christ? Do you admire, do you adore, the miraculous grace of God, who hath seen your affliction, and hath come down to deliver you? Or will you partake of the glorious benefit weakly and coldly? What need is there of a faithful voice to point these inquiries, to call your spiritual mercies to remembrance! You are living amidst the very influx of great miracles, and often see not the miracle. You make progress in your journey, but you set up no Ebenezer in the way. In the flooding abundance of holy gifts, the Lord, the giver, receives not a tithe of the praise that belongs to him. But again, remember (and it is a striking instance, at least it would be a striking instance were it not common, of the ingratitude of man), that of the ten that were cured of their leprosy only one returned to give thanks to Jesus. O how often is the conduct of the nine a true picture of your conduct! While God remembers, man forgets. All things else retain the image of the Being who made and enriched them, all but the hard and the unyielding stone within you. The heart-the human heartis the most impenetrable rock in the world, for it needs the Spirit of God to break it.

"I have found a ransom." O inscribe these words upon the door-posts of your chambers; write them upon the walls of the temple; wear them as a frontlet betwixt the eyes, as the most important and the most glorious of all truths which can be brought before you; that there may be a deep, end a vigorous, and a constant flow of the soul in gratitude to God. and in love and praise to the Lamb who hath redeemed us with his blood, that, being bought with this price, you may glorify God in your bodies and in your suis woła aro His! Amen.