was that which made glad the early believers. "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, he saw it and was glad." The epitaph inscribed upon the slab which covers the sepulchre of the early saints has written upon it, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off." And to-day we believe that Christ is to come according to promise. We think we have abundant evidence in the words that were uttered by the lips of inspired prophets and seers, and more especially from the enraptured pen of John in Patmos. Do they not testify that Christ shall surely come? We now, like Abraham of old, do see his day; our eye catches the coming splendour; our soul is overwhelmed with the approaching glory. Did the Jew look for Messiah, the Prince? So do we. Did he expect him to reign? So do we. In fact, the very Prince for whom Israel now looks in all her hardness of heart, is he whom we expect. They doubt Messiah's first advent and they look for him to come as the fairest among ten thousand, the Prince of the Kings of the earth. Hail, Israel! in this thy Gentile sister is agreed. She looks for him to come in the selfsame form and fashion, and when his coming shall have removed the scales from the blind eyes of Israel's tribes, then the fulness of the Gentiles shall with Abraham's seed praise and magnify the Lamb once slain, who comes the second time as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. In both cases we think the advent of Christ fully promised.

But we must remark in the next place, that the second advent of Christ will be like the first in its being unexpected by the mass of people. When he came before, there were only a few looking for him. Simeon and Anna, and some humble souls of the sort knew that he was about to come. The others knew that the patriarchs and prophets of their nation had foretold his birth; but the vanity of their thoughts, and the conduct of their lives were at such entire variance with the creed to which they were trained, they cared nothing for him. The Magi might come from the distant East, and the shepherds from the adjacent plains, but how little sensation did they make in the streets of busy Jerusalem, in the halls of kings, or in the homes of business. The kingdom of God came not with observation. In such an hour as they thought not the Son of Man came. And now, though we have the words of Scripture to assure us that he will come quickly, and that his reward is with him and his work before him, yet how few expect him! The coming of some foreign Prince, the approach of some great event

if it be of grace it is not of works, otherwise grace is no more grace; and if it be of works, then it is not of grace, otherwise work is no more work. It must be either one or the other. These two cannot be married, for God forbids the banns. He will have it all grace or all works, all of Christ or all of man; but for Christ to be a make-weight, for Christ to supplement your narrow robes by patching on a piece of his own, for Christ to tread a part of the winepress, and for you to tread the rest; oh! this can never be. God will never be yoked with the creature. You might link an angel with a worm and bid them fly together, but God with the creature-the precious blood of Jesus with the foul ditch-water of our human meritsnever, never. Our paste gems, our varnished falsehoods, our righteousnesses which are but filthy rags, put with the real, true, precious, everlasting, divine things of Christ! Never! Unless heaven should blend in alliance with hell, and holiness hold dalliance with impurity! It must be one or the other, either man's merit absolutely and alone, or unmixed, unmerited favour from the Lord. Now, I suppose if I were to labour never so arduously to hunt out this evil spirit from the sons of men, I should miss it still, for it hides in so many shapes, and therefore let me say, that in no shape, in no sense, in no single case, and in no degree whatsoever, are we saved by our works or by the law. I say in no sense, because men make such shifts to save alive their own righteousness. I will show you one man who says, "Well, I don't expect to be saved by my honesty; I don't expect to be saved by my generosity, nor by my morality; but then, I have been baptized; I receive the Lord's Supper; I have been confirmed; I go to church, or I have a sitting in a meeting-house; I am, as touching the ceremonies, blameless." Well, friend, in that sense you cannot be saved by works, for all these things have no avail whatever upon the matter of salvation, if you have not faith. If you are saved, God's ordinances will be blessed things to you, but if you are not a believer you have no right to them; and with regard to Baptism and the Supper, every time you touch them you increase your guilt. Whether it be. Baptism or the Lord's Supper, you have no right to either, except you be saved already, for they are both ordinances for believers, and for believers only. These ordinances are blessed means of grace to living, quickened, saved souls; but to unsaved souls, to souls dead in trespasses and sins, these outward ordinances can have no avail for good, but may increase their sin, because they touch unworthily the holy things of God. Oh! repose not in these; oh! dream not that a priestly hand and sacred drops, or a God-ordained baptism in the pool, can in any way redeem you from sin, or land you in heaven: for by this way salvation is impossible. But if I drive the lover of self-righteousness out of this haunt, he runs to another. You will find others who suppose that at least their feelings, which are only their works in another shape, may help to save them. There are thousands who think, "If I could weep so much, and groan so deeply, and experience so much humiliation, and a certain quantity of repentance, and so much of the terrors of the law, and of the thunders of conscience, then I might come before God." Souls, souls, this is work-mongering

in its most damnable shape, for it has deluded far more than that bolder sort of work-trusting, which says, "I will rely upon what I do." If you rely upon what you feel, you shall as certainly perish as if you trust to what you do. Repentance is a blessed grace, and to be convinced of sin by God the Holy Ghost is a holy privilege, but to think that these in any way win salvation, is to run clean counter to all the teachings of the Word, for salvation is of the free grace of God alone. There are - some, moreover, who believe that if their feelings cannot do it, still their knowledge can. They have a very sound creed; they have struck out this doctrine and that; they believe in justification by faith, and their sound creed is to them a confidence. They think that because they hold the theory of justification by faith, therefore they shall be saved. And oh! how they plume their feathers; how they set up their peacock tail because they happen to be orthodox! With what awful pride do they exult over their fellow professors because they hold the truth, and all the rest of the Church they think is deluded with a lie. Now this is nothing but salvation by works, only they are works performed by the head instead of by the hand, and oh! sirs, I will tell you-if you rest in creeds, if you hope to be saved because you can put your hand to the thirty-nine articles of an Episcopalian prayer-book, or to the solemn league and covenant of the Presbyterian, or to the confession of faith of the Calvinist-if you fancy that because you happen to receive truth in the head you shall be saved, you know not the truth, but still do lie, because you cling to Satan's falsehood-that salvation is of man and not of God. I know that self-righteousness was born in our bone and that it will come out in our flesh, and even that man in whom its reigning power is kept down will still feel it sometimes rising up. When he has preached a sermon and has got on pretty well, the devil will come up the pulpit stairs and say "Well done.' When he has prayed in public and has had unusual fluency, he will have to be careful lest there should be a whisper behind-"What a good and gifted man you are." Ay, and even in his hallowed moments, when he is on the top of the mountain with his Lord, he will have to watch even there, lest self-congratulation should suggest-"Oh, man, greatlybeloved, there must surely be something in thee, or else God would not have done thus unto thee." Brethren, when you are thinking of your sanctification, if you are tempted to look away from Christ away with it; and if when you are repenting of sin you cannot still have one eye on Christ, recollect it will be a repentance that will need to be repented of, for there is nothing in ourselves that can be offered to God. There is a stench and putridity in everything that is done of the creature, and we can never come before God save through Christ Jesus, who is made of God unto us, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. I have thus tried to denounce the plan which God has rejected.

II. I shall now, in the second head, SHOW THAT BOASTING IS EXCLUDED, for in a blessed sense God has accepted the second plan, namely, the way of salvation by faith through grace.

The first man that entered heaven, entered heaven by faith. "By faith Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain." Over the tombs of all the goodly who were accepted of God, you may read

the epitaph-"These all died in faith." By faith they received the promise; and among all yonder bright and shining throng, there is not one who does not confess, "We have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." The plan, then, which God has chosen, is one of grace alone. I will try and picture that plan before our mind's eye. We will imagine Boasting to be exceedingly desirous to enter into the kingdom of heaven. He marches to the door and knocks. The porter looks out and demands, "Who stands there?" "I am Boasting," saith he, "and I claim to have the highest seat; I claim that I should cry aloud and say, Glory be unto man, for though he has fallen, he has lifted himself up, and wrought out his own redemption." And the angel said, "But hast thou not heard that the salvation of souls is not of man, nor by man, but that God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and will have compassion on whom he will have compassion? Get thee gone, Boasting, for the highest seat can never be thine, when God in direct opposition to human merit, has rejected the Pharisee, and chosen the publican and the harlot, that they may enter into the kingdom of heaven." So Boasting said, "Let me take my place, then, if not in the highest seat, yet somewhere amid the glittering throng; for instance, let me take my place in the seat of election; let it be said and taught, that albeit God did choose his people, yet it was because of their works which he foresaw, and their faith which he foreknew, and that, therefore, foreseeing and foreknowing, he did choose them because of an excellence which his prescient eye discovered in them; let me take my seat here." But the porter said, "Nay, but thou canst not take thy place there, for election is according to the eternal purpose of God, which he purposed in Christ Jesus before the world was. This election is not of works, but of grace, and the reason for God's choice of man is in himself, and not in man; and as for those virtues which thou sayest God did foreknow, God is the author of all of them if they exist, and that which is an effect cannot be a first cause; God foreordained these men to faith and to good works, and their faith and good works could not have been the cause of their foreordination." Then straight from heaven's gate the trumpet sounded("For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger," Then Boasting found that as works had no place in election, so there was no room for him to take his seat there, and he bethought himself where next he could be. So after a while Boasting said to the porter, "If I cannot mount the chair of election, I will be content to sit in the place of conversion, for surely it is man that repents and believes." The porter did not deny the truth of that, and then this evil spirit said, "If one man believes and not another, surely that must be the act of the man's will, and his will being free and unbiassed, it must be very much to that man's credit that he believes and repents and is therefore saved, for others, having like opportunities with himself, and having the same grace no doubt, reject the proferred mercy and perish, while this man accepts it, and therefore let me at least take my seat there." But the angel said in anger, "Take thy

seat there! Why, that were to take the highest place of all, for this is the hinge and turning-point, and if thou leavest that with man then thou givest him the brightest jewel in the crown. Does the Ethiopian change his skin and the leopard his spots ? Is it not God that worketh in us to will and to do of his own good pleasure? Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, and it is not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of birth. Oh, Boaster, thy free-will is a lie; it is not man that chooses God, but God that chooses man; for what said Christ, "Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you;" and what said he to the ungodly multitude, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life;" in which he gave the death-blow to all ideas of free-will, when he declared that man will not come to him that he might have life; and when he said again in another place, as if that were not enough, "No man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him." So Boasting, though he were fain not to admit it, was shut out, and could not take his place in heaven upon the stool of conversion; and while he stood there but little abashed, for bashfulness he knows not, he heard a song floating over the battlements of heaven from all the multitude who were there, in accents like these, "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name, O Lord, be all the praise."

"Twas the same love that spread the feast

That gently forced us in ;

Else we had still refused to taste,

And perished in our sin."

"But then," said Boasting, "if I may not have so high a place, let me at least sit on the lowly stool of perseverance, and let it at least be said that while God saved the man and is therefore to have the glory, still the man was faithful to grace received; he did not turn back unto perdition, but watched and was very careful, and kept himself in the love of God, and therefore there is considerable credit due to him; for while many drew back and perished, and he might have done the same, he struggled against sin, and thus by his using his grace he kept himself safely; let me sit, then, on the chair of perseverance." But the angel replied, "Nay, nay, what hast thou to do with it? I know it is written, 'Keep yourselves in the love of God,' but the same apostle forbids all fleshly trust in human effort by that blessed doxology,-Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.' That which is a command in one Scripture is a covenant promise in another, where it is written, 'I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me."" Oh! brethren, well do you and I know that our standing does not depend upon ourselves. If that Arminian doctrine, that our perseverance rests somewhere in our own hands, were true, then damnation must be the lot of us all. I cannot keep myself a minute, much less year after year.

"If ever it should come to pass,

That sheep of Christ should fall away;
My fickle, feeble soul, alas!

Would fall a thousand times a day."