Mark, if you anxiously desire to know, you may know. no; but the whole Bible tells us, from beginning to end, that salvation is not by the works of the law, but by the deeds of grace. When the Church rejects you, casts you out, annoys, despises you, still be ready to defend her, and when you have an ill name even in the lips of God's people, still stand up for the common cause of Zion, the city of our solemnities. How is this? Can you not do it? The fool does not say in his heart there is no God, for he knows there is a God; but he says, "No God I don't want any; I wish there were none." How shall the heir of God be content till he rests on his Father's bosom, and is filled with all the fulness of God? An exile, far away from his native country, has been long forgotten, but on a sudden a vessel brings him the pardon of his monarch, and presents from his friends who have called him to remembrance. Nor can any creature accuse his saints, nor can heaven, or earth, or hell disprove our rights or infringe upon our title so long as his title stands undisputed and indisputable. The adoption is not manifested yet, the children are not yet openly declared. II. I now come to finish up with CONSOLATION. The debt is paid, and Christ is at the right hand of God. Is not the free air we breathe the purchase of their death? I see "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Delivered on Sabbath Morning, March 6th, 1859, by the, "Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called." Satan was no friend to Christ, but finding him in the desert he came to him with this accursed "if" "If thou be the Son of God." You and I are also groaning for it. Turn to Romans, the 4:chapter, 13th verse (Romans 4:13 ) and you will find that there the promise that was made to the seed was that he should be heir of the world. A little more than he said about the others. Paul had been persuaded of this truth by his own experience. He has discharged the debt; and we have still another assurance that it is all gone, for the apostle goes on to speak of Christ "who is even at the right hand of God." Like the marvellous structures of Palmyra of Baalbek, in the far off east, the earth in ruins reveals a magnificence which betokens a royal founder, and an extraordinary purpose. Thou hast lain among the pots, but he hat made thee as a dove whose wings are covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold. Now, I think I hear somebody say, "you see these godly people who profess to be so happy and so safe, they still groan, and they are obliged to confess it." At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. I cannot stay longer on that point, except just to notice, that we must never quarrel with this divine arrangement. If we now suffer the good vessel of gospel truth to be drifted by adverse winds upon the rock, if we keep not good watch to her helm, and cry not well to her great Master that she may led to a prosperous end, surely those who are to succeed us will look on us with scorn, and say, "Shame on the men, who had so great and glorious a mission, and neglected it, and handed down to us a beclouded gospel and an impure Church." Forth it steps into the arena, and we behold the law of God. Oh, what a sweet persuasion is this! He gave to us his person, it has become our meat and our drink; we eat his flesh and drink his blood. We know that young lions, when tamed and domesticated, still will have the wild nature of their fellows of the forest, and were liberty given them, would prey as fiercely as others. He never repents of what he gives, nor of what he calls. But another bitter taunt comes to me, "You have sinned in spirit. Can we glory that he is full of immutability, and changes not? The influence of his holy religion has made abundant atonement to the world for any wrong that you ever did to it. "The good of all the land of Egypt is yours," said Joseph to his brethren, and Jesus saith this to all his people, "All are yours, for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's.". We who are but babes cannot hold the great ocean of Godhead in our infantile palms. Thou canst bear faithful witness, if thou wouldst speak the truth, that each person here has so transgressed against God, so continually broken his laws, violated his Sabbath, trampled on his statutes, despised his gospel, that it is true, aye, most true, that "the carnal mind is enmity against God. Do you shrink from being tempted? There once was chaos and confusion, but the Holy Spirit brooded over all, and His mind is the originator of that beautiful arrangement which we so admire in the visible creation. This glorious truth is most sweet when earth's honeyed words are taken away, and most lustrous when we no longer attempt to illuminate her with human language. Let us mark a yet more positive passage, Romans ix. He cannot perish who relies on Christ, and he who hath faith in Jesus may see the heavens pass away, but not God's Word. Old Testament or Considerable Portions Thereof. And this persuasion helped him to gain his aspiration. "We have not an High Priest that cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities." And who amongst us has not been so foolish as to desire that there were no God? Thus we are sighing that our entire manhood, in its trinity of spirit, soul, and body, may be set free from the last vestige of the fall; we long to put off corruption, weakness, and dishonour, and to wrap ourselves in incorruption, in immortality, in glory, in the spiritual body which the Lord Jesus Christ will bestow upon all his people. We love everything earthly better than we ought; we soon fix our heart upon a creature, but very seldom on the Creator; and when the heart is given to Jesus, it is prone to wander. Reach the bottom of Christ's sea of joy, and then hope to understand the bliss which God hath prepared for them that love him. Live with Christ and you will soon grow like Christ. A few winged hours must fly; a few more billows must roll o'er thee, and thou wilt be safely landed on the golden shore. He does not say it is opposed to God merely, but it is positive enmity. How seriously, then, should each stand and think. Then let me give you just one piece of homely advice before I send you away. Now, therefore, the one thing to which the Lord is working us through his Spirit, both by providence and by grace, is the likeness of the Lord from heaven. The cross and Christ are nailed together by four nails, and they will never be disassociated in the experience of any Christian. When I think of my sin, it seems impossible that any atonement should ever be adequate; but when I think of Christ's death it seems impossible that any sin should ever be great enough to need such an atonement as that. They work, in opposition to idleness. And now at Gods right hand there is not left a record of thy sin; for when our Lord Jesus Christ quitted the tomb, he left thy sin buried in it once for all cast away never to be recovered. And as Paul thought of the nature of this new life, he felt persuaded that it would not die; he was convinced that he would never be separated from the love of God. I tell thee, thou poor brother in Christ, there is a dignity about thee that even angels may well envy. The apostle says that those who love God are "the called according to his purpose" by which he means to say two things first, that all who love God love him because he called them to love him. What shall I do? I think, dear friends, you will all admit that if a man can pray, his trouble is at once lightened. Can you now detect in your calling, the hand of God, and the voice of God? When the work of grace begins in the heart, the man is not always clear that it is God's work; he is impressed under the minister, and perhaps he is rather more occupied with the impression than with the agent of the impression; he says, "I know not how it is, but I have been called; Eli, the minister, has called me." "Begotten not made," says the Athanasian Creed, and it says truly too, "being of one substance with the Father." (1) They seem to have misunderstood Paul's teachings and to have charged that he taught that the greater the sin the greater the glory of God (3:8). Amen. Now which shall it be! In us the living and incorruptible seed abode and grew. You will bear in mind that I discussed the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ's atonement by his death, in the sermon of last Sunday morning. There are not many in England, I think, who believe those words. I know it is good for me that my faith, my love, my every grace should grow and increase, and that I should be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ my blessed Lord and Master." Or, to come nearer the truth, it is as when a mother puts her arms around the neck of her little child, and her child puts its tiny arms about the mother's neck; that is how we and God are joined together. That leads me to pass on to the second thing of which Paul was persuaded. I remember an old divine using a very pithy and homely metaphor, which I shall borrow to-day. If the believer can take anything and everything to God, then he learns to glory in infirmity, and to rejoice in tribulation; but sometimes we are in such confusion of mind that we know not what we should pray for as we ought. Be just before you are generous, and especially before you are generous to yourselves. If I promulgated the doctrine on my own authority, I could not blame you if you should turn against me, and reject it; but when, on the authority of Holy Scripture, I propound it, God forbid that any man should quarrel therewith. He knows and comprehends the cryings, and meanings, and sighings, and chatterings of his bewildered children. Say not, "In my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, and a child of God." He became a partaker of our infirmities and sicknesses that we might be partakers of the divine nature in all its excellence and purity. All the attributes of divinity are the property of God's children their inheritance entailed upon them. The tail feathers of pride should be pulled out of our prayers, for they need only the wing feathers of faith; the peacock feathers of poetical expression are out of place before the throne of God. He dwells within us as a counsellor, and points out to us what it is we should seek at the hands of God. Why, dying is the end of work; it is living that is hard work. The strifes of barons and kings for mastery might have been thought to be likely to tread out the last spark of British liberty; but they did rather kindle the pile. Would you take Job's jewels, but not his dung-hill? So, when we get the first works of the Spirit of God, we are not to say, "I have attained, I am already perfect, there is nothing further for me to do, or to desire." Is it not a wonderful thing that God loved me, and loved you, (let us individualize it,) that God so loved us that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life? The next argument for making us sure that they will speed is this that they are "the mind of the Spirit." Thou movest about this world as a prince among the crowd. Oh! Our little debts we can pay. I have lately seen one or two of our friends almost in the very article of death; I think that they cannot long survive, but I have come out from their bed-chamber greatly cheered by their holy peacefulness and joy. When at any time then the Holy Spirit comforts you sheds a sweet calm over your disturbed spirit; when at any period he instructs you, opens to you a mystery you did not understand before; when at some special period he inspires you with an unwonted affection, an unusual faith in Christ; when you experience a hatred of sin, a faith in Jesus, a death to the world, and a life to God, these are the works of the Spirit. You may cast your eye to the remotest star, or send your thoughts beyond into the untraversed leagues of space, but look where you will, as all is Christ's, so all is yours. That man is not called who cannot look back upon darkness, ignorance, and sin, and who cannot now say, that he knows more than he did know, and enjoys at times the light of knowledge, and the comfortable light of God's countenance. It is almost as good as Scripture; for Scripture leads us to think of the sufferings of Christ as an unfathomable deep. We read of "the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood." he assures and consoles directly, by coming into immediate contact with the heart. "All things work together," for that kind of good to God's people. Oh! Well, if not in this text, there is in another. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." Yea, that harp is mine, and my soul by faith would make every string resound with melody. Impossible! Who shall accuse the Redeemer? how can the imagination revel, when the body is in an ill condition? Man! This call is sincere on God's part; but man by nature is so opposed to God, that this call is never effectual, for man disregards it, turns his back upon it, and goes his way, caring for none of these things. Yes, say we, we have many corruptions. Let a man once get that, and it will anoint his head with fresh oil, it will clothe him with the white garment of praise, and put the song of the angel into his mouth. If he had not been a Christian, his Jewish dignity would never have condescended to call a Roman "brother;" for a Jew sneered at the Gentile, and called him "dog." He had not time so much as to eat bread, full often, so eager was he to accomplish all his work. satanic enormity! It means, first of all, that Christ is now in the honourable position of an accepted one. For memory graspeth with an iron hand ill things, but the good she holdeth with feeble fingers. The world is not at play; it hath an object in its wildest movement. That will be the subject of this blog. To be cheered under many things, which otherwise would depress him, the believer may betake himself to the matchless mysteries of the grace of God, which are wines on the lees well refined. But I ask you, does your spirit say to-day "I am God's child." There are four things of which I shall speak this morning. "It came to pass afterward that David's heart smote him." I served the world, he would not, in mine age. We see, on the other hand, the truest heroism for the right, and the greatest devotion to the truth in hearts that God has touched. To such who have preceded us we owe the purity of the Church, and to them we are debtors. "Loose him and let him go," saith the Redeemer; and then he walks in all the liberty of life. The will, if valid for one, is valid for all. We are like Israel in the wilderness, and are footsore, but blessed be God, we are on the way to Canaan. 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