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tion, stripped of his possessions, bereaved of his children, and driven, under the violence of a loathsome disease, to sit in the dust, to cover his head with ashes, and to scrape his body with a potsherd; nothing, apparently, being left him in his well-nigh exhaustive desolation but friends who misinterpreted Providence in his case, and a wife who counseled him to die with blasphemy on his lips. Aside from the instructions of the Gospel, what sinner may infer, from the dealings of Divine Providence, a disposition on the part of God to pardon his guilt and receive him to favor? He dwells in the land of the curse, and evils in a thousand forms attest the existence, and avouch the scope, of the law of retribution. Famine, war, pestilence, and death, proclaim themselves the ministers of distributive justice. There is no escape from the conclusion, uttered as with trumpet tongues on every side, that God will punish the guilty. It is true, that even to the wicked "He leaves not Himself without witness in that He does good and gives them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness." But these providential dealings appear to be tokens of the beneficence of God exercised only for a season even towards incorrigible offenders, as a testimony against them, leaving them without excuse, rather than proofs of His merciful disposition to pardon the guilty without reparation to His justice. Nothing can be determined from Providential blessings which are common to the just and the unjust, and indicate no discrimination betwixt them. No, my brethren, the providence of God, apart from the Gospel, furnishes no illustration of those adorable perfections of the divine nature which are conspicuously magnified in the salvation of sinners. Its native language is not that of grace and

mercy. When it speaks to us of them it borrows its dialect from the Gospel.

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Shall we, then, look to the law? Let us take our place with the Israelites, as, in response to the divine summons, they assembled at the base of Mount Sinai. The preparations for meeting God, and receiving His law, are stringent and awful. On the appointed day the trumpet peals forth from the mountain on the startled ear of the congregation, and waxing louder and louder shakes the camp with terror. Thick clouds and impenetrable darkness enshroud the seat of the august Lawgiver, while breaking forth from them, quick, keen flashes of lightning and tremendous thunderings strike horror into the very heart of the people. The mountain quakes to its centre, and hark! there issues from the darkness, smoke and flame, that awful "voice of words, which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more. The congregation shrinks away appalled. They had been confronted with that law which reflects with dazzling lustre the insufferable purity and the inexorable justice of God. Do or die is the only alternative it presents. "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." That scene is now not seldom re-enacted in the sinner's case, when conscience, waking up in near view of death and the last judgment, affirms the sentence of the law, presses in its terrible sanctions upon the impenitent soul, and binds the sinner over to everlasting despair. The law utters not one syllable of grace or mercy. Its office is to convince the sinner of guilt, to condemn him for his sins, and to shut him up, either to despair, or to the acceptance of a vicarious righteousness, which God may be pleased in mercy to

provide. That it affords light in regard to some of the attributes of God is true, but it is such light as shines upon the criminal who is sentenced to be burned to death, from the midst of the fire which consumes him.

It is evident, my brethren, that not the frame of nature, nor the scheme of Providence, nor the utterances of the divine law, nor all of them combined, considered merely in themselves, can represent to the sinner the glory of the blessed God so as to elicit his gratitude for saving grace, and call forth his thanksgivings for redeeming love. It is reserved for the Gospel, and for it alone, to reflect those glorious properties of the divine nature which exhibit God in an aspect of infinite mercy towards the guilty and the lost. With what beauty and force does the Psalmist describe the difference between the teachings of nature and Providence on the one hand, and of the Gospel on the other, touching the perfections of God in their relation to the spiritual interests of man! "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." Such are the lessons which nature imparts. The power, wisdom, and majesty of God the Creator and Providential Ruler, are magnificently proclaimed; but not a word is uttered in regard to the grace, the love, the mercy of God the Savior.

But the Psalmist continues in another strain: "The law of the Lord"-and by the law, I conceive, he means the great principles, both legal and gracious, which are embodied in the Gospel-"the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Most clearly, too, does the apostle contrast the terrific deliverances of the law with the peace-speaking provisions of the Gospel, in a passage as remarkable for its eloquence and sublimity as for the consolatory and elevating instructions it conveys: "For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more (for they could not endure that which was commanded, and if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart; and so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake). But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel."

III. I would further remark, that the Gospel is the representative of the glory of God, as it reveals all the attributes of the divine nature harmonized in the person and work of the glorious Redeemer. The glory of God is the collective result of all His perfections meeting in unison in His own most blessed nature, and shining forth in perfect harmony in the fulness of their manifestation to His intelligent creatures. If it be asked, where this effulgent glory is the most conspicuously and illustriously displayed, I answer—in the wonderful person and atoning work of the incarnate Savior of sinners. "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." There is no attribute of the divine character of which we have any knowledge from nature, from Providence, from the law, or from the Scriptures themselves, which is not gloriously magnified by the great Mediator; but above all do the redeeming grace and mercy of God, which are no where else displayed, shine in the face of Jesus Christ. The plan of redemption has its foundation in the mercy of God. Sinners might have been left eternally to perish and divine justice would have been glorified in their destruction. But God, having, in infinite mercy, determined to save them, there were formidable difficulties opposing the fulfilment of that purpose, growing out of the insulted perfections of His nature and the claims of His violated law. It was in meeting and removing these difficulties, that the eternal Son of God at once magnified the holiness, the justice, and the veracity of God, and secured the end which was contemplated by free and unmerited mercy. Let us briefly consider the means by which this result was achieved.

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