countenance I have gotten from its upright and patriotic citizens.

Let me entreat as one parting memorial, that you will treasure up the summary of my own deeply felt experience. Martin Luther hath pronounced it to be the article of a standing or a falling Church, even that of justification by faith and the righteousness of Christ, or that the Church will stand which keeps to Christ, and that the church will fall by which he is forgotten. The same truth would I record in the hearing of you all-not in the shape of a mere catechetical dogma-not as one of the catechetical orthodox doctrines-not as an assumption laid upon the consciences of men by the hand of human intolerance-not, in one word with any of these accompaniments which serve to revolt many a generous spirit, and to invest this precious, this venerable truth, with the air of a severe and scholastic controversy. I should like it to drop as balm on every weary and agitated spirit, and to assure him that if in time past he hath labored to establish a righteousness of his own, and that still his conscience warns him that he is as far both from rest and from spiritual affection as before, then let him wrap himself round in the garment of that ready made righteousness which Christ hath brought in, and all will be light and love and liberty. This indeed is the power of God and the wisdom of God to salvation. This has a regenerating charm, not merely to tranquilize the sinner's fears, but to turn him into the ways of new obedience. The great

apostle was determined to know nothing else among his people but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified; and this, not to darken the ample field of revelation, and leave nothing to the eye of the beholder but one naked and solitary apex but to place him on a summit whence he may descry the whole richness and variety of the prospect that is spread out before him. Let me entreat your frequent, your earnest perusal, accompanied with prayer, of the fifth chapter of St. Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where the hope of immortality and the gift of the Spirit, and the walk of faith, and the acceptance of the life that bears throughout

all its history a reference to the judgment-seat, and the principle of Christian obedience, and the mighty change implied in Christian regeneration, and the beseeching tenderness of God, and his free overtures of reconciliation to all, where these are found to mingle together, not, it is true, according to the forms of an artificial system, but in the very order of God's own Spirit. Oh! to learn to suspend the whole on this master proposition, that He hath made Christ to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him!

SERMON XXX.

[A FEW years ago Dr. Chalmers looked over and carefully assorted and classified those of his unpublished pulpit preparations which were in short hand, a large mass of which is still existing. Out of these he selected a few which he extended into long hand, four of which, viz., Sermons xx., xxi., xxii., xxviii., have in the present volume been presented to the reader. The sermon which follows was one of these, but as it was more than simply rewritten, as it was remolded in the transcription, and became Dr. Chalmers' most favorite sermon in later years, I have thought it right to place it as belonging to the period which succeeded the Glasgow ministry. It was written originally in two parts, and preached at Kilmany on October 2, and October 9, 1814. Even then more than ordinary value appears to have been attached to it by its author, as he repeated the delivery of both parts at Kilmany on July 2, 1815, the last Sabbath but one before leaving that parish. He was much interested himself in discovering it and re-employing it many years after he left Glasgow-after an interval, as he himself calculated, of about twenty years. How very frequently he used it after its recovery, all who of late years have had frequent opportunities of hearing him preach, will remember. He chose it as the sermon to be delivered, when on a very memorable Sabbath he preached to a large assemblage in the lawn before Banchory House, on 10th September 1843; and also when, to a smaller audience, but in a locality which deeply interested him, he preached in the Free Church by St. Mary's Loch, in April, 1846.]

ISAIAH VII. 3-5.

"Fury is not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together. Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me."

The first,

THERE are three distinct lessons in this text. that fury is not in God: the second, that He does not want to glorify Himself by the death of sinners-" Who would set the thorns and briers against me in battle ?" the third, the invitation-"Take hold of my strength, that you may make peace with me; and you shall make peace with me."

I. First, then, Fury is not in God. But how can this be? is not fury one manifestation of His essential attributes?

do we not repeatedly read of His fury-of Jerusalem being full of the fury of the Lord-of God casting the fury of His wrath upon the world-of Him rendering His anger upon His enemies with fury-of Him accomplishing his fury upon Zion-of Him causing his fury to rest on the bloody and devoted city? We are not therefore to think that fury is banished altogether from God's administration. There are times and occasions when this fury is discharged upon the objects of it; and there must be other times and other occasions when there is no fury in Him. Now, what is the occasion upon which He disclaims all fury in our text? He is inviting men to reconciliation; He is calling upon them to make peace; and He is assuring them, that if they will only take hold of His strength, they shall make peace with Him. In the preceding verses He speaks of a vineyard; and in the act of inviting people to lay hold of His strength, He is in fact inviting those who are without the limits of the vineyard to enter in. Fury will be discharged on those who reject the invitation. But we cannot say that there is any exercise of fury in God at the time of giving the invitation. There is the most visible and direct contrary. There is a longing desire after you. There is a wish to save you from that day in which the fury of a rejected Saviour will be spread abroad over all who have despised Him. The tone of invitation is not a tone of anger-it is a tone of tenderness. The look which accompanies the invitation is not a look of wrath-it is a look of affection. There may be a time, there may be an occasion when the fury of God will be put forth on the men who have held out against Him, and turned them away in infidelity and contempt from His beseeching voice; but at the time that he is lifting this voice-at the time that He is sending messengers over the face of the earth to circulate it among the habitations of men at the time particularly among ourselves, when in our own place and our own day Bibles are within the reach of every family, and ministers in every pulpit are sounding forth the overtures of the gospel throughout the land-surely at such

a time and upon such an occasion, it may well be said of God to all who are now seeking His face and favor, that there is no fury in Him.

It is just as in the parable of the marriage feast: many rejected the invitation which the king gave to it-for which he was wroth with them, and sent forth his armies and destroyed them, and burned up their city. On that occasion there was fury in the king, and on the like occasion will there be fury in God. But well can He say at the time when He is now giving the invitation-there is no fury in There is kindness-a desire for peace and friendship a longing earnestness to make up the quarrel which now subsists between the Lawgiver in heaven, and His yet impenitent and unreconciled creatures.

me.

This very process was all gone through at and before the destruction of Jerusalem. It rejected the warnings and invitations of the Saviour, and at length experienced His fury. But there was no fury at the time of His giving the invitations. The tone of our Saviour's voice when He uttered "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," was not the tone of a vindictive and irritated fury. There was compassion in it a warning and pleading earnestness that they would mind the things which belong to their peace; and at that time when He would willingly have gathered them as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings-then may it well be said that there was no fury in the Son of God, no fury in God.

Let us make the application to ourselves in the present day. On the last day there will be a tremendous discharge of fury. That wrath which sinners are now doing so much to treasure up will all be poured forth on them. The season of God's mercy will then have come to an end; and after the sound of the last trumpet, there will never more be heard the sounding call of reconciliation. Oh, my brethren, that God who is grieved and who is angry with sinners every day, will in the last day pour it all forth in one mighty torrent on the heads of the impenitent. It is now gathering and accumulating in a store-house of vengeance;