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This is the jubilee

These are the hap

comforted with his love. Christ's spiritual presence supplies all their wants, and satisfies all their desires. Under the sacred symbols of bread and wine, they have the best and the richest blessings conveyed. Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, find themselves filled. Here strength additional is imparted to the strong, support to the weak, consolation to the afflicted, and a seal of a blessed immortality given unto all. of the saints of God. py moments, when their hearts burn within them, and experience a secret bliss, beyond the power of the whole world to purchase. Rising to heaven on the wings of faith, the rays of divine light and love beam upon their souls. Filled with ecstacy and sublimed to rapture, they feel a present deity, they taste the joy of God, and already begin to drink of those rivers of pleasures, which for ever flow from beneath his throne.- -Are these the privileges of worthy communicants ?—are these their holy, heartfelt joys; then let us be anxious to feel the kindling flame of ambition to attain them, glowing in our breasts. Let us wait upon the Lord, and

beg the bland influence of his grace. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits! O that his high praises were ever in our mouths! O that we more rejoiced to come into his presence, and worship in his courts! They that are far off from Him shall perish; but they who "are made nigh by the blood of Christ," shall never perish; they shall have everlasting life. And happy the people who are in such a case, yea, happy that man whose God is the Lord.-Amen.

THE GRACE OF GOD.

ROMANS V. 20.

But here sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

ONE of the great objects of the Epistle to the Romans, is to set forth the superior excellence of the Christian above the Mosaic, and every prior dispensation. Accordingly, after a general salutation to the brethren at Rome, and a declaration of his undissembled and ardent affection for them, we find the Apostle expressing his eagerness fully to unfold to them the Christian scheme, and to diffuse, as widely as possible, the knowledge of it among them, because it, and it only, he assures them, was the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. And to vin

dicate and demonstrate its excellence in this view, he proceeds to point out the extreme and indispensable necessity, under which the whole world lay of cordially embracing it. The Gentiles having no law, were a law unto themselves, and the Jews, misinterpreting the oracles of heaven, were seeking for salvation by the law of Moses. But both, he declares, were confessedly sinners: By the Gentiles, he clearly shows, that the law of nature, had been, times and ways without number, broken, and that of the law of Moses, the Jews themselves were, undeniably, most heinous transgressors, This being the case, he justly infers, that the Jews, as well as the Gentiles, could never, with reason, look for acceptance with their Maker, by any obedience they could render to the law. Nay what is more, instead of looking for the Divine acceptance by the deeds of the law, he boldly affirms, that, in this way, they could look only for wrath and condemnation; for he adds, "the law entered," not to remove, "the offence"-not to absolve men from its guilt, not to redeem them from its punishment; but on the contrary, "that the offence might abound,"-that its guilt might be

more deeply aggravated, that the horrible evil of it might be more fully demonstrated, and that the burden of it upon the conscience might be made heavier and more grievous to be borne. "But where sin,

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by the entrance of the law, was thus made "to abound, there, declares the Apostle, "did grace much more abound:"-or, in other words, while sin, by the law, became thus more" exceeding sinful," and the fears arising from it more awful and overwhelming, then did the value of that grace which offered deliverance from it appear more magnified, and its riches become more copiously displayed.-The interests of the Gospel of this grace, the Apostle, it appears from the brief view now given of the context, has been all along pleading, and this last, this endearing circumstance relating to it, he here mentions to the persons whom he is addressing, with a view to recommend it the more to their cordial reception; for to be cordially embraced, he well knew that Divine grace needed only to be fairly represented and fully made known.-We too, if we would hope for salvation, must embrace this grace of God, and to embrace it cordially, we too must study worthily to apprehend it.

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