The Chronological order, adopted in the common arrangement of the canon, has been chosen without reference to chronology. It proceeds apparently on consideration of the relative length and importance of the Epistles, giving, however, to Paul the preference. After his thirteen was placed the Epistle to the Hebrews, as being, if not by him, an appendix by some hand almost guided by his. Then followed the "Catholic" Epistles—then the Revelation. This plan has the advantage of something like system, and is, perhaps, for convenience of reference, the best. A. According to the probable order of time, six were written before Paul's first Roman imprisonment, viz.: 1. THESSALONIANS, from Corinth, A. D. 52. 2 THESSALONIANS, from Corinth, A. D. 53. 1 CORINTHIANS, from Ephesus, A. D. 57. 2 CORINTHIANS, from Macedonia, A. D. 57. GALATIANS, from Corinth, A. D. 57. ROMANS, from Corinth, A. D. 58. Four were written during the first Roman imprisonment (Acts 28), viz.: Three were written after the imprisonment recorded in Acts 28, probably as follows: 1. TIMOTHY, from Macedonia, A. D. 67. TITUS, from Ephesus, A. D. 67. 2 TIMOTHY, from Rome, A. D. 68. B. 1. PAUL, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, 2 (which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) concerning his Son 3 Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and 4 declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resur- 5 rection from the dead: by whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to 6 the faith among all nations, for his name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus 7 Christ: to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace 8 from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus 9 Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I 10 make mention of you always in my prayers; making request, if by any means now at length 11 I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see 12 you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. 13 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other 14 Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to 15 the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. THE Gospel is as old as the first promise. For, from the beginning, man's sinfulness, atonement through vicarious suffering, God's free and righteous mercy, the efficacy of prayer, the necessity of holiness—all were revealed. But now these truths are set forth with new proofs, are enforced by new motives, amid stronger light and for a wider audience. The Gospel is a THREE-fold message—of forgiveness through our Lord, of personal holiness through the renewing and ever-gracious help of the Spirit, of blessedness, amid all earthly changes, for those who love and serve God. Forgiveness, holiness, blessedness! What more can we need? The Gospel is a TWO-fold message—Christ's work for us, in living, and dying, and pleading, and reigning; and Christ's work in us, beginning in grace and ending in glory. The Gospel is a SINGLE message—of Christ as crucified—the concentrated revelation of the divine holiness and love, the Redeemer and Comforter, the pattern and the sanctifier of us all. This Gospel—threefold, twofold, single—Christ came to found, even more than to teach. Yet it is the gospel he taught, as it is the gospel his apostles taught. And so mighty did it prove that the most successful preacher of the apostolic age resolved, from experience as well as from direct inspiration, to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ as crucified. The Jews deemed it no “sign,” no embodiment of power, and the Greeks deemed it foolishness; but he found it to be power and wisdom; nay, more, the power of God and the wisdom of God. J. A. At some time during his stay at Corinth for the winter 57–58, he probably wrote the Epistle to the Galatians. The great subject which the fickleness of the Galatian Church had brought into prominence had been much before his mind. “Ye are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus”; this wrought, and was kept fermenting by the Divine Spirit in his thoughts, and, as centuries after in him who was to enforce the great doctrine in ages of corruption, so now in the ear of the Apostle of the Gentiles, “The just shall live by faith,” was ever sounding. Coincident with this engrossing of his thoughts by this one great theme, came news from the now growing and important Church in the metropolis of the world; news that in it, as so often elsewhere, the Jew and Gentile elements were not in Christian accord; that questions of precedence and questions of observance wanted settling among them. What more natural than that the apostle should regard the tidings thus brought as furnishing an opportunity for laying forth the great doctrine of “Life by Faith” for the Church of God? He had long been intending to visit the Roman Church. It was of necessity the most important Christian community in the world. It would be sure to receive the greatest future accessions; it had the advantage of the greatest publicity, and the widest ventilation, for any truth delivered to it. An occasion then having arisen for a letter to explain and settle the misconceptions which had grown up among the Romans, what wonder if the great apostle availed himself of it to lay forth to them the whole dispensation of God’s grace to Jew and Gentile? Phoebe, a deaconess of the Church at Cenchrea, the port of Corinth, was traveling to Rome. She had won, by her acts of beneficence to the Church and to himself, the apostle’s approval and esteem. She therefore (for we can hardly otherwise understand chapter 16: 1, 2) becomes the bearer of the Epistle. The letter was most probably sent from Corinth in the spring of A. D. 58. Three years after, in the beginning of A. D. 61, the apostle arrived a prisoner at Rome. A. (Read page 143.) The history of the Roman community is most remarkable. It grew up in silence, founded by some unknown teachers, probably of those who were present in Jerusalem at the first publication of Christianity by the apostles. During the reign of Claudius, it had made so much progress as to excite open tumults and dissensions among the Jewish population of Rome; these animosities rose to such a height, that the attention of the government was aroused, and both parties expelled from the city. With some of these exiles, Aquila and Priscilla, Paul formed an intimate connection during his first visit at Corinth; from them he received information of the extraordinary progress of the faith in Rome. The Jews seem quietly to have crept back to their old quarters when the rigor with which the imperial edict was at first executed had insensibly relaxed; and from these persons on their return to the capital, and most likely from other Roman Christians who may have taken refuge in Corinth, or in other cities where Paul had founded Christian communities, the more perfect knowledge of the higher Christianity, taught by the Apostle of the Gentiles, would be conveyed to Rome. So complete, indeed, does he appear to consider the first establishment of Christianity in Rome, that he merely proposes to take that city on his way to a more remote region, that of Spain. The manner in which he recounts in the last chapter the names of the more distinguished Roman converts implies both that the community was numerous and that the name of Paul was held in high estimation by its leading members. It is evident that Christianity had advanced already beyond the Jewish population, and the question of necessary conformity to the Mosaic law was strongly agitated. It is therefore the main scope of this celebrated Epistle to annul for ever this claim of the Mosaic law to a perpetual authority, to show Christianity as a part of the providential design in the moral history of man, while Judaism was but a temporary institution, unequal to, as it was unintended for, the great end of revealing the immortality of mankind, altogether repealed by this more wide and universal system, which comprehends in its beneficent purposes the whole human race. Milman. It seems probable that the Church was composed of Jews and Gentiles in nearly equal proportions. This fact will account for the general character of this Epistle, so unlike that of the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians, though written at nearly the same time. The Gospel had to contend in Rome, not specially with Judaism, nor specially with heathenism, but with both together. The letter, evidently, was not written to answer any doubts, or to settle any existing controversies then rife at Rome. It has no special character or application, thus differing widely from the other Epistles just referred to. There is only one instance of special application to the Church of the metropolis. The injunction (13: 1) of obedience to temporal rulers would most fitly be laid upon a Church brought face to face with the imperial government, and the more so as Rome had been the scene of frequent disturbances, on the part of either Jews or Christians, arising out of a feverish and restless anticipation of Messiah’s coming. In the Epistles to the Corinthians and to the Galatians, recently written, we see the attitude of the gospel toward the Gentile and the Jewish world respectively. They are direct and special, evoked by present emergencies, and are full of personal applications. The Epistle to the Romans is the summary of what he had written before, the result of his dealing with the two antagonistic forms of error, the gathering together of the fragmentary teaching in the Corinthian and Galatian letters, in a general form. J. B. L. Throughout the discussion, constant reference is made to law and justice; and this is characteristic of the Epistle. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he gave prominence to wisdom, for the Greeks sought after wisdom. But Rome was the city of imperial law, and the great seat of jurisprudence and government. It was therefore fitting that to Jews and Gentiles residing there, should be addressed this demonstration of the position of mankind, as transgressors condemned by divine law and justice, and unable by deeds to justify themselves. The world centered at ancient Rome; and in a letter sent to Rome was the whole world proved and pronounced to have “been guilty before God.” D. F. 1-7. These words are the beginning and end of the long superscription which opens the series of Apostolic Epistles. That superscription forms a close and living union with the preceding book, in which we have known Paul the servant of Jesus Christ, his calling to be an apostle, his separation to the gospel of God, and have left him at its close testifying to that gospel in Rome itself. Here the apostle seems to stand before us as he did in the previous history, firmly holding his ground in the prophetic and historic line of the old covenant, and from that standing-point opening the dispensation of the Spirit, which has its source and its pledge in the resurrection, and claiming “all nations” for the “obedience of faith.” T. D. B.—It would seem as if the apostle had before his mind the metropolitan majesty of the imperial city of Rome, and set against it the majesty of the great revelation of the Son of God, the fulfillment of the world-long promise, the temple of the indwelling Spirit poured out upon mankind, the first-born from the dead. He looked upon all the world obedient to the sway of Rome, and he thought upon that wider and grander obedience of faith which should bring under its sway all nations of the earth. There is not a grander thing in literature than this opening of the Epistle to the Romans. A. 2-4. The original and peculiar glory of the Bible is its revelation of the Messiah. Deity must be presented, and not merely in some of his attributes, nor yet as a shadowy form on the distant clouds of his own glory, but as a well-defined personality. God in man, thinking, feeling, speaking, acting in human relations, proposing the recovery of the lost to an immortality of holiness, solving the mighty problem of remitting Law’s penalty while adding sanction to its claims, gathering from the apparent weakness of death the resurrection forces of eternal life, and out of the mists of the tomb clothing his redeemed ones with the garments of glory. The Bible utters thoughts that could originate only in Jehovah’s breast, pencils the ideal of the man who is his fellow, and reveals the clear impressions of the mold into which was cast the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who at its close was “declared to be the Son of God, with power according to the Spirit of Holiness by the resurrection from the dead.” T. D. A.—Nothing speaks more decisively for the divinity of Christ than these juxtapositions of Christ with the eternal God, which run through the whole language of Scripture, and the derivation of purely divine influences from him also. Ols. 14. We might say, he is debtor to God, to Christ, to the Cross. But these are not now in his mind. It is to Greek and Jew, wise and unwise, men of all nations, the whole fallen world, that he feels himself a debtor. It was when Paul became possessed of the unsearchable riches of Christ that he felt himself a debtor to the world. To God himself he can not pay this debt directly, but he can indirectly, by pouring out the God-given treasure upon others. His debt directly is to God; but then, indirectly, it is to the world. Thus the Christian man feels his debt—his obligation to the world because of his obligation to God. Bonar.—When human knowledge and life are spreading out into ever wider circuits, the Christian ministry must seek to show itself a debtor to men of every class and character, and must endeavor to prove that there is no department of thought or action which can not be touched by that gospel which is the manifold wisdom of God. The more we study the way of God’s commandments, the more shall we find it as broad as his other works, and increasingly rich to meet all the developments of human nature. Ker. If Paul felt himself “a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians,” what has the Church now become to the whole unchristianized world? A debtor indeed, involved in a debt which she will never have done paying till the last of an unconverted race shall, under her leading, have come home to God. When we call on her members for their silver and their gold—ay, for their whole bodies and souls—we do not call on them for charity; we call on them to aid in the payment of a simple debt—a debt which we moet righteously owe. The particular church which will not engage in sending the gospel to the heathen, which perseveringly holds back from this work of debt-paying, can not live. Its very spirit, and the measures which that spirit dictates, will, even at home, shut it out from quickening, life-sustaining influences. It will die. J. S. S. PAUL’S doctrine, like his life, centers in the great antithesis of the want of salvation before Christ and the supply of salvation in Christ. Before Christ and out of Christ is, with him, the reign of sin and death; after Christ and in Christ, the reign of right, cousness and life. There he sees the killing letter; here the life-giving Spirit. There, bondage and curse; here, freedom and blessed sonship. There, a powerless struggle between flesh and spirit and a cry for redemption; here, no condemnation, but wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, and the inseparable communion of the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Hence he opposes no error so decidedly and vehemently as the Judaizing, which would degrade Christianity to the former level of bondage and death. Much as Paul insists, however, on the absolute newness of Christianity and its infinite elevation, not only above heathenism, but also above Judaism, he still forgets not its historical and religious connection with the Old Testament. He represents the way as positively prepared for the Christian religion by the Old Testament revelation. He calls the law a schoolmaster to lead to Christ, and describes the gospel as promised before by the prophets. There is, therefore, a connecting link between the Jew Saul and the Christian Paul, between the two stages of his religious experience and views. This link is the idea of righteousness, which forms the center and fundamental principle of his system of faith and morals. While a Pharisee, he had striven with all his might after righteousness in the way of obedience to the law of Moses. Even his persecution of Christ, whom he took for a revolutionary opponent of the Old Testament religion, proceeded from this honest effort. But in faith in the very One he persecuted he found righteousness, and with it peace and salvation. After his conversion he saw this to be absolutely impossible without faith in Christ and the renewal of the whole man. Now he learned that all men, Jews as well as Gentiles, are by nature without righteousness, and can be made righteous and be saved only through the merits of Jesus Christ. If he had previously laid the chief stress on the law and on works, he now laid it all on free grace, and on living faith, which appropriates Christ and his atoning death. Hence he may justly be called the apostle of faith, or of the righteousness of faith. Paul accordingly distinguishes two kinds of righteousness: 1. Man's own righteousness, or the righteousness of the law, also called righteousness of works, which man strives after, but in reality can never attain, by his natural power, and which is therefore altogether imaginary. The ground of this impossibility of a self-righteousness, which would stand before God and establish a claim to salvation, is not in the law—for this is good, holy, spiritual—but in the corruption of man, in his carnal nature, which must be regenerated and renewed by the grace of God, before it can perform anything truly good. 2. The righteousness of God or from God, i. e., the righteousness which comes from God and is acceptable to him; or the righteousness of faith, i. e., the righteousness which springs from faith in Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour; is vitally apprehended by faith, and is imputed and given to the believer by God, without merit, without the deeds of the law, in free grace. The righteousness of faith also, being of this character, necessarily excludes all boasting, and yields the glory to God alone. The divine act, by which man comes into possession of this righteousness, is denoted by the expressions: justification, to justify, to count for righteousness. This Pauline doctrine of justification is evidently founded on the notion of a judicial process. The holy and just God is the judge; the law of God, the accuser; the sinner or transgressor of the law, the accused; conscience, the witness; Christ the advocate and substitute for the accused; the atoning death and the merits of Christ, the price of reredemption; faith, the instrument, the spiritual hand of the penitent sinner, by which these merits are appropriated. The justification itself is (1) negative, the judicial sentence of God, in which he pronounces the sinner, for the sake of Christ, free from the curse of the law, from the guilt and punishment of transgression—in other words, the forgiveness of sins, pardon; (2) positive, the imputation and actual communication of the righteousness of Christ to the penitent, believing sinner. The communication on the part of God and appropriation on the part of man take place by means of faith, which is wrought by the Holy Ghost in the Church through the word and the sacraments, and is not, indeed, the objective ground, the efficient cause, yet the indispensable subjective condition and instrumental cause, of justification; since, renouncing all merit of its own, it lays vital hold on the grace of God and the merits of Christ, and receives them into itself. By faith the man is raised out of his sinful state, united with Christ, and wrought more and more into His holy being, so that the old man no longer lives, but Christ lives and moves in him. Of course such a faith is absolutely inseparable from love and good works. An antinomian disjunction of faith from its fruits, as also of justification from sanctification, is a radical and most dangerous abuse of Paul's doctrine, which he himself repelled with horror. In this comprehensive moral contrast between false self-righteousness, which works death, and the true righteousness of God, which is life and salvation, Paul's whole system centers. It may, therefore, be best presented in two sections. The first part treats of the want of righteousness, or the condition of man before and out of Christ. This is the reign of the first, natural, earthly Adam, or the reign of sin and death, appearing partly in unguided heathenism, partly in the disciplinary institution of legal Judaism; though in the latter case connected with divine promises and significant types and anticipations of the future. The larger, positive section has to do with the gospel, the absolute religion of liberty and divine sonship—setting forth the true righteousness as offered in Christ and appropriated by faith. This is the reign of the second, spiritual, heavenly Adam, or of grace and life. This plan is not one arbitrarily forced upon the doctrinal system of the Gentile apostle, but lies clear enough on its surface in this, his most methodical and systematic epistle. Here, after the introduction, he first states the essence of Christianity by saying that "it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1: 16, 17). This is the theme, the leading thought of the Epistle. In unfolding this the apostle first proves that all men, not only the Gentiles (1: 19, 32), but also the Jews (2: 1-3, 20), are by nature destitute of righteousness, and therefore of salvation and life, and are sinners worthy of condemnation. Then from chapter 3: 21 onward he shows that Christ has fulfilled righteousness and procured life and salvation; that these are imparted to us through firm, living faith; that this faith gives the most troubled conscience peace, and reveals itself in a holy life of love and gratitude. P. S. Every proof that could be made to consist with the rules of evidence establishes the truth of the Christian religion. The subject of the Christian religion 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to 17 every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the 18 righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by 19 faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighte- 20ousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known 21 of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things 22 of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that 23 are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because 24 that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but 25 became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing them- 26 selves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an 27 image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 28 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to 29 dishonor their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, 30 and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. 31 Amen. 32 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change 33 the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the 34 natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working 35 that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which 36 was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them 37 over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with 38 all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness: full of envy, 39 murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despitful, proud, 40 boosters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant- 41 breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment 42 of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but 43 have pleasure in them that do them. Man had degraded God, says the apostle, and God degraded man. Man can only degrade God in his conceptions of Him. He may think meanly and poorly of God, instead of investing Him in his ideas with every perfection. And this is just what took place. Man might have learned from Nature (for Nature is a revelation of God to a rational creature) the lesson of God's eternal power and Godhead, had he been so minded; His magnificence, wisdom, benevolence, are written in no obscure characters on the whole frame of the universe. But man could not, rather he would not, rise to those lofty conceptions of God's character which Nature, studied with a simple and docile heart, furnishes. Man would not think of God as a Being infinitely raised above even the noblest works of His hands; he confounded Him with the creatures that were derived from him, and allowed the religious instinct—the instinct of worship—to fasten upon them instead of the Creator. In a word, idolatry (or the surrounding the creature with the attributes of the Creator) is the original, fundamental sin of man—the point of departure from which man started on his downward course until he reached the lowest depths of wickedness. Man debased God in his conceptions of Him. And God, as the meet recompense of such dishonor done Him, really and actually debased man by abandoning him to the dominion of vices, the very mention of which freezes the blood of an upright man. E. M. G. 17. The words "the just," or "the righteous shall live by faith," might also be understood, "the righteous by faith," "those that are righteous by faith," "shall live." A.—I noticed how the words are connected together, "the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, as it is written, The just shall live by faith." I saw the apostle's meaning, that by the gospel is made known that righteousness which avails with God, in which God, out of mere mercy, makes us righteous through faith. On this I felt as if I was wholly born anew. The precious Scripture now appeared quite another thing to me. I ran quickly through the whole Bible, and collected all that it says on the subject. And thus, as I had hated the expression, "God's righteousness," I began dearly to love it as the gladdest word in Scripture; and that passage became to me the very gate of heaven. Luther.—Like a nail in a sure place this saying sticks in Luther's memory. He wanders through the convent, he trudges it to Rome, he crawls up Pilate's staircase, but still the sentence is sounding in his ear. Through seas of anguish and dismay he buffets his laboring path, no ray to guide him but this tiny spark, till all at once at that little spark Luther's soul is kindled, and the Reformation-beacon flames. Hamilton. 18. The origin of the atonement is to be sought in the righteous wrath of God against sin. Paul recognizes the wrath of God as the fundamental fact in which we are to seek for an explanation of that scheme. "Herein," says he (that is, in the gospel), "is the righteousness of God revealed." And then, commencing the explanation necessary to elucidate these words, he adds: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness" (sin against the first table) "and unrighteousness" (sin against the second table) "of men." The idea is perfectly simple. God has given us a law, involving duty to himself and duty to our fellow-men—a law promulgated explicitly to the Jew, and graven in characters, not obliterated, yet dim and confused through the fall, on the hearts of all mankind. God is a Spirit, a searcher of the thoughts and intents of the heart; and, therefore, a mere outward observance of this law, in the letter of it, can never meet his requirements. All mankind have broken the law either literally or spiritually, or both; and, by the violation, God's displeasure is incurred. E. M. G. "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven." This saying contains a deep and awful truth. God's punishment is God's wrath against sin; and is not merely the consequence of lifeless laws, but the expression of the feeling of a living spirit. It would be most perilous to do away with these words; for if the wrath of God be only a figure, his love must be but a figure too. F. W. R.—The revelation is given on purpose that we may avoid that wrath; for the wrath is future, and we are commanded to flee from it; and faith in it is requisite, before the experience of it, that we may flee from it. The most vivid images of Scripture are but faint and inadequate shadowings forth of the reality; they demonstrate and unveil it as far as possible, but they require belief. Our blessed Lord makes his appeal to our very senses, as far as it can be made. He takes the torture which is most terrible to us, that from which our sensitive nature shrinks back with the greatest horror and repugnance, and constructs a world out of it, and carries us into the midst of that world, as in the tremendous colloquy between Lazarus in heaven and the lost man in hell; so that we see the flames, we hear the wail of souls tormented, we observe the anguish of despair. G. B. C. 20. The apostle says that the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and Godhead, "are clearly seen from the creation of the world" (i. e., God's creation of the world is the source from which true information respecting his lofty attributes may be gained), "so that they" (the Gentiles) "are without excuse," because the lessons which they might have learned of God from Nature are quite sufficient to have condemned their idolatries. E. M. G.—Various as have been God's dealings with the world, there is, after all, a terrible impartiality in his dispensations to his rational creatures. Wherever men possess reason and conscience, they possess in some measure the means of pleasing or displeasing him; whenever they can, in the lowest degree, conceive his law, they are bound to obey it. He can estimate every district and age of the world by the standards appropriate to each. And as He contemplates the vast prospect, Christian and heathen—as he beholds in the one division those to whom Christ was hidden, but who would perhaps have “received him gladly”; in the other those to whom Christ was revealed, but who despised and neglected the revelation—he doubtless can bring men to a level, balancing their opportunities against their actions to a degree wholly unattainable by our weak and perplexed vision. W. A. B. 21. A man may lose the good things of this life against his will; but, if he loses eternal blessings, he does so with his own consent. Aug.—The more carefully we observe the workings of our own wills, the surer will be our conviction that they can ruin themselves. We shall indeed find that they can not be forced or ruined from the outside. But if we watch the influence upon the will itself, of its own wrong decisions and its own yielding to temptations, we shall discover that the voluntary faculty may be ruined from within; may be made impotent to holiness by its own action; may surrender itself to appetite and selfishness with such an intensity and entirness that it becomes unable to convert itself and overcome its own wrong inclination. And yet there is no extraneous compulsion, from first to last, in the process. The man follows himself. He pursues his own inclinations. He has his own way, and does as he pleases. He loves what he inclines to love, and hates what he inclines to hate. Neither God, nor the world, nor Satan himself, forces him to do wrong. It is the most spontaneous of self-motion. But self-motion has consequences as much as any other motion. Because sin is a free act, it does not follow that it has no results, and leaves the will precisely as it found it. It is strictly true that man was not compelled to apostatize; but it is equally true that, if of his own will he did apostatize, he could not then and afterward be as he was before. He would lose knowledge; his understanding would become darkened. And he would lose spiritual power; his will would become impotent to holiness. Shedd. 22. The term spiritual folly includes not only those who are in the common sense of the term foolish, but a great many who are in the common sense of the terms prudent, sensible, thoughtful, and wise. It is but too evident that some of the ablest men who have ever lived upon earth have been in no less a degree spiritually fools. And thus it is not without much truth that Christian writers have dwelt upon the insufficiency of worldly wisdom, and have warned their readers to beware lest, while professing themselves to be wise, they should be accounted as fools in the sight of God. T. A. 23-32. Roman society was a living commentary upon the words of John, “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father.” The principle known to formal theology as “concupiscence,” and to popular language as active selfishness, was everywhere dominant. It was embodied in the whole social and political fabric of the empire. It was displayed in its triple form of unrestricted sensuality, unchecked covetousness, and unbounded self-assertion. As sensuality, it was preying upon the strength and manhood of the people. As covetousness, it was drying up the wealth of provinces and the sources of enterprise. As pride, it was everywhere in active conflict with personal and social liberty. But these effects, outward and political, were harmless compared with the degradation inflicted by unchecked self-worship upon the human soul within. When man is his own center, his own ideal, his own end, his own God; when the indulgence of passion, and the acquisition of income, and general self-assertion are leading and uncontrolled principles of action, the human character sinks to a point of degradation which language can shadow out, but which it can not describe. The Roman Christians must have recognized the society around them, the men and women with whom they had daily dealings as fellow citizens, in the dark and terrible touches of this first chapter. H. P. L. This picture of the moral state of heathendom is not a whit overwrought. Its truth is confirmed by the astounding representations of the corruption of those times of the empire, which we find in the most celebrated and earnest-minded heathen writers. Wherever Tacitus, the greatest of Roman historians, looks, whether to heaven or upon earth, he sees nothing but black night and deeds of cruelty. He feels that the destruction of the world is near, when she must drink the cup of divine wrath to the dregs. The elder Pliny, too, lost in wonder at the works of nature, could enjoy no rest in contemplating them. He could find nothing certain, but that there was no certainty; and nothing more miserable than man. He could wish for no greater blessing than a speedy death; and this he found in the flames of Vesuvius (A. D. 79). P. S.—Paul’s terrible indictment is not more severe than the indignant assertions of Seneca. He compares society, where every one makes his profit by injuring somebody else, to the life of gladiators, who live together to fight each other. “All things,” he says, “are full of crimes and vices. More is perpetrated than can be removed by force. There is a struggle to see which will excel in iniquity. Daily the appetite for sin increases, the sense of shame diminishes. Casting away all respect for right and justice, lust hurries whithersoever it will. Crimes are no longer secret; they stalk before the eyes of men. Iniquity has so free a course in public, it so dominates in all hearts, that innocence is not only rare—it does not exist at all. It is not a case of violations of law in individual cases, few in number. From all sides, as at a given signal, men rush together, confounding good and evil.” He then proceeds to specify, in a long catalogue, the forms of iniquity, some of them revolting and unnatural crimes, which exhibited themselves on every hand. G. P. F.—Such was the state of things in the days in which Christianity appeared. Pleasure mounted the throne, shame departed from the heart. Religion, long the fruitful source of unbelief, superstition, and immorality, could not offer a remedy. Even philosophy sat down perplexed. The human understanding had run through the circle in which, left to itself, it could move. A Cato and Cesar dared publicly confess that the belief in an eternal existence was fabulous, and that on yonder side of the grave neither sorrow nor joy was to be expected. The elder Pliny makes the undisguised declaration “that all inquiry after a higher truth may be denominated ridiculous, and that it is to be doubted which is more advantageous to mankind, the skepticism of some or the disgraceful religion of others, yea, that this alone is certain, that absolutely nothing certain exists, and that a more wretched as well as prouder creature than man does not exist.” Van O. 28,29. If you take away a man’s knowledge, you do not bring him to the state of an infant, but to that of a brute; and of one of the most mischievous and malignant of the brute creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man’s body by lowering his mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the passions leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to feed them by continued gratification. T. A.—The result of that old idolatry was the indulgence of fleshly lust. And the language of the apostle precisely describes the connection between the cause and the effect. They did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They had supplied to them ever by their conscience a higher ideal; not perhaps the highest, nor even in itself very high, but still higher than could be represented by their gross worship. They felt higher instincts, higher impulses. But they put the lower above the higher, and the end was the downright dominion of the lower nature. F. T.—The teaching here is plain and indisputable. God gave men the means of knowing his perfections and his will. From these they turned away, because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, and chose and worshiped the meanest reptiles, nay, even the images of beasts instead of the Creator. Against such awful impiety he displayed his displeasure, or made known his wrath, by allowing them without restraint to pursue their own course. He gave them over. The consequence was, a condition of the most degraded iniquity and more than brutish sensuality and lust. F. W. 1. THEREFORE thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest; for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. 2 But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit 3 such things. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and 4 doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? Or despisest thou the riches 5 of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God 6 leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up 7 unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of 8 God; who will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient con- 9 tinuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: but unto 10 them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation 11 and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew 12 first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh 13 good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God. 14 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have 15 sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (for not the hearers of the law are just before 16 God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not 17 the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law 18 unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel. 17. Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and 18 knowest his will, and approves the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of 19 the law; and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which 20 are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of 21 knowledge and of the truth in the law. Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest 22 thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that 23 sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest 24 idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through break- 25 ing the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gen- 26 tiles through you, as it is written. For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: 27 but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. Therefore 28 if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be 29 counted for circumcision? And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the 30 law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law? For he is not 31 a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: 32 but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, 33 and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. BEHOLD the goodness of God in the same view with the manifestation of his mind against sin—the expressions of denunciation accompanying his holy law, and mingled with all his communications to man—how many they are, how decisive, how solemn, and at the same time just! And yet, notwithstanding, the world around us is not made an unmingled scene of vindictive execution; sinful men are not, in every path and dwelling, crushed under the falling judgments of heaven. There is an immense dispensation of benefits. The series of the divine goodness, too, may be counted by the succession of a man's sins. Not one sin, small or great, but close by it were acts and proofs of this goodness. If this had been realized to thought, what a striking and awful admonition! Each and every sin a testimony, a representative of goodness; and what a wonder that the train of goodness should still persist to go on! So, "the goodness of God" is to be viewed in its character of patience and long-suffering. All his lengthened indulgence, his train of favors—what should we in conscience deem it to have been for? What, but that there might be increasing gratitude, devotedness, wisdom, and service? Conceive the state of a soul hardened under "the goodness of God!" No longer even a perception of his mercies as such—a fixed, impenetrable ingratitude; an established, habitual repellency to all his attractions; a cessation, nearly, of regret for not being at peace with him; the man's mind made up, as it were, just to seize and enjoy as much temporal good as God will permit him (not give him) during the remainder of the brief space of life, and leave all that is to follow to be as it may. Consider, on the other hand, how happily the sentiment of "repentance" from a sense of "the goodness of God" mingles and harmonizes with all the noblest and most delightful sentiments of religion—with gratitude, humility, holy reverence, and zeal—and with the aspiration to a better life, where there shall be no more sin. J. F. Chapters 2, 3, and 4.—The apostle goes on to show that, in this matter of sinfulness before God, all are alike; that none has a right to set himself up above and judge another; for that man's unworthiness and God's long-suffering are universal. And so he passes gradually to the case of the Jews, whom by and by he directly addresses, especially with reference to their supposed and real advantages over others in the knowledge of God; contrasting the pride of the Jews in their law and their God with their actual disobedience to both; showing that by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified; and that Abraham's real advantage was his faith, by which he was justified before God without the works of the law. And this justification by faith was not his alone, but shall be ours also, if we believe the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This is the state of the main line of argument as far as the end of chapter 4. A. 2,3. To what in yourself will you ascribe that which in others you ascribe to criminality? Compare yourself with others upon whom you have been sitting in judgment, and wherein are you dissimilar? Be not deceived, God is not mocked. What are you doing, as estranged from him who came to save you, but fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind, and walking in your own chosen way? E. M. 4. Where, if not in Christ, is the power that can persuade a sinner to return, that can bring home a heart to God? Common mercies of God, though they have a leading faculty to repentance, yet the rebellious heart will not be led by them. The judgments of God, public or personal, though they ought to drive us to God, yet the heart, unchanged, runs the further from God. Do we not see it by ourselves and other sinners about us? They look not at all toward Him who smites, much less do they return; or, if any more serious thoughts of returning arise upon the surprise of an affliction, how soon vanish they, either the stroke abating, or the heart, by time, growing hard and senseless under it! Leave Christ out, and all other means work not this way; neither the works nor the word of God sounding daily in his ear, Return, return. Let the noise of the rod speak it too, and both join together to make the cry the louder, yet the wicked will do wickedly. L.—Sin hath by so much the greater evil in it by how much it is committed against the greater goodness. As good things received bind us stronger unto duty, so good things abused bind us stronger under guilt. Caryl.—God gives us all the mercies of this life as helps to an immortal state of glory, and as carnests of it. Sensualists know not what a soul is, nor what soul mercies are, and therefore know not the just value of all bodily mercies; but take up only with the carcass, shell, or shadow, instead of the life of their mercies. No wonder they are so unthankful for God's mercies, when they know not the real excellency of them. Baz. 7. Patient continuance.** If duty be not so holy a power as love, yet, as long as we remain here, we need the strength of duty as much as we do the fire of love. The steady discharge of the duties of the day saves our religious life from being a mere weak alternation of fits of joy and fits of depression. The resolute will that allows no mere mood ever to interfere with the appointed work of the present moment is the backbone of the truly religious character. The instinct of love, glorious as it is, yet may degenerate into mere dreamy feeling, into sentimental sorrow for sin, and sentimental longing for a holier life. That which saves it from this degenerate end is the strong, steady sense of duty. And there is no one quality which it is better for us, in every sense, to form, to retain, to cherish in our souls than this. F. T. Glory and honour. Nothing in all the success of Satan in his management of the world's affairs is so saddening to contemplate as the false direction he has been enabled to give to the enthusiasm of men. Enthusiasm is a beautiful and sacred thing, implanted in us that we might launch forth on sublime enterprises of mercy to man and of glory to God. Enthusiasm would make of a holy man a seraph. Men hardly know what to do with this divine faculty. They thirst for glory, honor, immortality, but limit their conceptions of these things to what the world, the fallen, doomed world, can give. G. B. Eternal life. Christ and his apostles seem to have given less space than we might have expected to the particulars of the soul's condition after death. A few great, simple, commanding, comprehensive assurances are made to stand out before us, with outlines that are very sharp and foundations that are very broad and firm. The fact of the Christian's immortality, the fact of the judgment at the entrance, the fact of the separation of the righteous from the wicked, the fact that this judgment proceeds on one principle, and that this separation is determined by one affection or the absence of it, the fact that afterward there are two parted families, each of them a social state, the perfect blessedness of the one consisting supremely in the fully recognized presence and love of the Lord, and the complete wretchedness of the other in absence from Him—these are all. On these the Scriptures lay all the stress. Around and under them they spread out all that immortal land. To the faithful who seek by patient well-doing there shall be glory, honor, and immortality, but tribulation and anguish to every soul that loveth and doeth evil. F. D. H.—When it is told us that the consciousness we inherit is strictly indestructible—that no mutations in the mode of existence, no accidents, no alterations in the laws of nature, not even the upturning of the material universe, not the extinction of all things visible, can bring about the annihilation of man—then, indeed, it becomes a question of unutterable consequence, "What is God?" for we, even we, are to be the companions of his eternal duration! The creatures of a day, of a summer, of a century, might be imagined, when they stand upon the threshold of their term of existence, to make inquiry concerning the attributes and dispositions of the Creator and the rules of his government: for these are to give law to their season of life, and to be the measure of their enjoyments. But with what intenseness of anxiety might the Sons of Immortality put such questions, as they come severally to set foot upon a course that shall have no end, and that must always be gathering to itself importance! Apart from the doctrine of immortality, the doctrine of the divine attributes might be tranquilly dealt with, as we deal with any abstruse matters, or with mathematical principles. They are of some moment; but it is bounded by the brief period of our own connection with the material world. How much otherwise is it when every attribute, natural and moral, of the Infinite Being shall for ever concentrate its rays, as in a focus, upon the immortal created spirit; so that this spirit shall draw to itself, in some manner, and without end, a special consequence from the omnipotence and the omniscience, from the rectitude and the benignity of God! When once the soul awakes, as from a dream, to the rational consciousness of either truth, with what force and majesty does the other present itself to the mind! The belief of immortality brings God before the soul, as if visibly manifested; the knowledge of God kindles the conception of endless life. I. T. Faith acts its noble energy forth into righteousness, works by love, bears the fruit of philanthropy, integrity, patience, temperance, emancipation, brotherly kindness, charity. Everlasting life is the result. The soul has reached its period of victory. From the far country it has traveled back till it has come home—home—O word of unspeakable and unexhausted meaning! The door of the Father's house was open, and it has entered in. This is life eternal. Henceforth there shall be labor, indeed, because labor is the best satisfaction of a spiritual being. But it shall be labor in the Master's society—labor under the encouragements of his friendship—labor with the crown on the head, and the seal in the forehead, and the reconciliation in the heart. Faithful continuance in well-doing has brought the disciple to his Lord; and when he looks up, behold! glory and honor and immortality are the spiritual trophies that adorn his dwelling. F. D. H. 8. In the end of this verse "damnation" does not mean what we now commonly understand by it, and would be better, therefore, expressed by "condemnation." A. 11. God has no respect to the outward appearance or circumstances of a man in dealing with him. God takes him for what he is, not for what he seems. The word translated "person" means mask or face-covering; that which disguises a man, and makes him look different from what he is. God regardeth not the person or appearance of a man. To God the man is just what he is, exactly, and neither more nor less. An. 12-16. The whole world is under a solemn economy of government and judgment. A mighty spirit of judgment is in sovereign exercise over all, discerning, estimating, approving, or condemning. Now, it was requisite there should be something in the soul to recognize this; that it should not be as some vague, unperceived element around us; and something more and deeper than the mere simple understanding that such is the fact; a faculty to be impressed, to feel obligation and awe and solemn apprehension; something by which the mind shall be compelled to admit the indwelling of what represents a greater power. Conscience is to communicate with something mysteriously great, which is without the soul, and above it, and everywhere. It is the sense, more explicit or obscure, of standing in judgment before the Almighty. And that which makes a man feel so is a part of himself; so that the struggle against God becomes a struggle with man's own soul. Therefore conscience has been often denominated "the God in man." J. F.—Conscience is a very busy faculty of the soul, and it hath many offices. It is a register, to take notice of and record what we do. It is a witness against us when we do amiss. It is a judge, and gives sentence; it sits upon a throne as God's deputy to award life or death. It has the office of a tormenter; it is that worm which dieth not and a fire that never goeth out. The lost shall feel the sting of conscience for ever, though here they have bribed it and blinded it that it might not trouble them. Caryl. Men who have not the revealed law of God do have in their consciences the sense of obligation to the self-same duties which that law commands; and even when they disregard truth, justice, honor, purity, fidelity, in their own actions, they exact these virtues from others toward themselves. But he who condemns another for theft, fraud, lying, murder, shows that he has in his own heart a law, a standard of right and wrong; and by that law he himself shall be judged. God deals with men according to their light; but all men have light enough to know the difference between right and wrong. God is patient toward sinners and seeks to win them by his love; but, if they will not repent, the warnings of conscience shall be followed by the judgment of the last day. J. P. T.—These acts of conscience, in the present life, have a final respect to God's tribunal; and, though the accounts are so vast, there shall be an exact agreement between the books of God's omniscience and of conscience in the day of judgment. It will be one of the miracles of that day, to enlarge the view of conscience to all sins. Now the records of conscience are often obliterated, and the sins written therein are forgotten; but then they shall appear in so clear an impression, that the wicked shall be inexcusable to themselves, and conscience subscribes their condemnation. And oh the formidable spectacle, when conscience shall present to a sinner in one view the sins of his whole life! Bates.—Conscience! it will cry amen to every word that the great God doth speak against thee. It will hold pace with the witness of God, as to the truth of evidence, to a hair's breadth. The witness of conscience is of great authority; it commands guilt and fastens it on every soul which it accuses. Bun. 16. The thought of the coming of Christ to judgment almost inevitably leads the mind to the two great revelations which will then be made: the revelation of the secrets of the hearts of men and the revelation of the true substance and nature of things. At present there is a perpetual contradiction between faith and experience; justice does not rule the world, and obedience to the Law of God, which ought to be the one supreme force in the world, is thrust aside by what is plausible, by what is resolute, by mere accident even and blind chance. But on that day the higher harmony which rules all these discords shall be revealed; the wrong shall either be set right before our eyes, or shall be shown never to have been wrong, but only to have been misunderstood. So, again, at present we live with good and with evil, which none knows except the man himself, and even he but imperfectly and fitfully. But then we shall be seen and known of all men; for the judgment will be a public judgment, and all will acknowledge its justice. F. T.—All sins, whether secret or open and visible, shall be accounted for. Those sins that have been acted in the most secret retirement, so that no eye of man could take cognizance of them, shall then be made manifest. Nay, the sins of the thoughts and affections, of which Satan could not accuse men, when the inward fire of lust or malice is not discovered by the least smoke or sparkles, by no expressions—all those shall be brought to judgment. God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. Bates. 1. WHAT advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much 2 every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. For 3 what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? 4 God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest 5 be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous 6 who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man.) God forbid: for then how shall God judge 7 the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; 8 why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, 9 and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is 10 just. What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved 11 both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, 12 no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They 13 are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth 14 good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used 15 deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitter- 16 ness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the 17 way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes.19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the 21 law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is mani- 22 fested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23 for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace 24 through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitia- 25 tion through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that 26 are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: 27 that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting 28 then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. There- 29 fore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the 30 God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. 31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law. If God is to be honored and loved by human beings, he must present himself in the light of those qualities which we may call by the name of justice, and of those to which we give the names of goodness, kindness, tenderness, or mercy. Christ united these two sides of character in their due mixture in his one person. This is remarkable in regard to our Lord, that one who should have become acquainted only with his traits of love, as forbearance, patience, mildness, pity, and forgiveness, would be apt to suppose that he had seen the whole framework of his character; while another person who heard his awful rebukes of the Pharisees, and saw with what zeal he defended the rights of God, and observed what he thought of sin and what were his threatenings against it, would take him for a man made out of iron justice alone. But he united in unrivaled harmony both these aspects of character. The strength of his holiness and justice proves the depth of his love, and his love was the stronger, because it rested on the fixed rock of justice and holiness. Christ then, with such a nature, would be the loving Saviour, the friend of sinners, but he would be also the wise law-giver and the just judge. He is thus like God and fitted to represent God; he embodies that idea of God, which, with the help of the noblest passages of the Old Testament, our minds, in their best frames of thought and feeling, are able to form. And if, in a larger sphere, the Son of man shall judge the world he came to save, it will not be in a new character, but only in a new office. T. D. W. 2. Oracles of God. Good men have ever felt that the words must be living oracles, ever flowing forth freshly from the seat of God's majesty, yesterday, to-day, and for ever the same; addressed to them as to their fathers, to their children as to them. T. A. 3. The faith of God without effect. By faith of God is meant faithfulness of God. The word has not only the objective sense of faith, belief, confidence in another, but also the subjective sense of faithfulness to an agreement, promise, or pledge. We may read, "Because that unto them were intrusted the oracles of God. For what if some were unfaithful? Shall their unfaithfulness make the faithfulness of God without effect?" Crosby. 5. Is God unrighteous? This objection was leveled against that grand pillar of a sinner's hope, justification by faith only; as if it were a doctrine tending to licentiousness, and to the overthrow of morality and good works. This, the apostle says, some did not scruple to affirm; but he adds that the report was slanderous. Hill. 9. The Greek word, which we here translate sin, signifies to fail of an end; to lose one's way. The sinner is a being lost; he is a traveler, with a destination before him, but misled to a route which does not lead to it. Or, putting in place of the figure what it signifies: the sinner is one who ought to follow a certain moral direction, and who takes the opposite. Monod. 10-18. The world over, in its serious hours the heart longs, sighs, groans, and travails with sorrows that can not be uttered, to be delivered from the bondage of sin and death. The Scripture has no other doctrine of the matter on any of its pages; and scarcely one page where this is not. Read the burning confessions of the fifty-first Psalm, and of many another before and after it, where the fire of remorse, which is only the lurid reflection of sin, almost visibly scorches the Psalmist's heart; read the terrible descriptions of that state of man without his Redeemer written by Paul to the Romans; or the tragic picture of Paul's own fearful struggles with the law of his members; or the awful prophecies of a society forgetting its Lord, given in Jude. Recall the narratives of depravity in Scripture history, and the denunciations upon it by prophets, and the thrilling exhortations against it by apostles. Remember that the Bible begins with the first inroad of sin, and finishes with warnings of its punishments. Above all, remember that the first word of the new dispensation was "Repent," and its consummation was the Cross built on Calvary to assure forgiveness to "repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ"; and you will hardly need to multiply these convincing tokens that all the ministrations of our religion to the human soul presuppose that we all have sinned, are sinners still. F. D. H. There is a vast, immortal want stirring on the world and forbidding it to rest. In the cursing and bitterness, in the deceit of tongues, in the poison of asps, in the swiftness to blood, in all the destruction and misery of the world's ruin, there is yet a vast insatiate hunger for the good, the true, the holy, the divine, and a great part of the misery of the ruin is that it is so great a ruin; a desolation of that which can not utterly perish, and still lives, asserting its defrauded rights and reclaiming its lost glories. And therefore it is that life becomes an experience to the race so tragic in its character, so dark and wild, so bitter, so incapable of peace. The way of peace we can not know, till we find our peace, where our immortal aspirations place it, in the fullness and the friendly eternity of God. 18. If sin is weak, if it is mean, little, selfish, and deformed, and we are ready to set humanity down as a low and paltry thing of nothing worth, how terrible and tragic in its evil grandeur does it appear, when we turn to look upon its defiance of God, and the desperate obstinacy of its warfare! There is no fear of God before their eyes. In one view there is fear enough, the soul is all its life long haunted by this fear, but there is a desperation of will that tramples fear and makes it as though it were not. H. B. 19. This is the genuine voice of the law, "Do and live"; "but the soul that sinneth shall surely die." It knoweth no middle sentence between these two; it doth not whisper one word of mercy; but the smallest deviation subjects the transgressor to the justice of God, and to all the fatal effects of his indignation. This being the case, it is easy to discern the use of the law to lead men to the Saviour. The law discovers sin, and at the same time demands an unsinning obedience. None of us can plead innocence, and the law admits of no excuse for guilt. Nay, it is not only silent as to the doctrine of forgiveness, but in plain and awful words pronounces the sentence of death. Thus the sinner's mouth is stopped, and nothing remains for him but to continue in misery, and bear the curse of God, or else to appeal from the law to the gospel, and to claim the benefit of that indemnity which Christ hath purchased with his blood. R. W.—Alas! he who boasteth himself in the works of the law, he doth not hear the law. When that speaks, it shakes Mount Sinai, and writeth death upon all faces, and makes the Church itself cry out, A Mediator! else we die. The law out of Christ is terrible as a lion; the law in him is meek as a lamb. Bun. 20. Justified. We seem by the Scriptural language to be introduced to a court: there are a law, a sanction, a tribunal, a judge, an accusation, a condemnation, an advocate, a surety, an acquittal. But there is not a syllable about changing the character; it is only a change of standing, or relation to law. To justify is not to make just, in the sense of making holy, but to declare just. When the judge justifies a man, he does not by that act render him any better than he was before: he simply adjudges him to be innocent. Justification, therefore, is an act of God, whereby he remits our sins, and accepts us as righteous. J. W. A. 21-24. All that merits salvation for sinners is in Christ; and faith accepts Christ as God offers him, and so makes his merit the believer's own. If there be any worthiness, then, in Christ, any sufficiency in his precious blood-shedding for the removal of sins, any glory in his righteousness and obedience to the law, for man—faith, giving the sinner a personal interest in all these, brings at once a full and finished salvation into his soul. This blessing belongs not, indeed, to the thousands who say they believe, while their whole walk gives the lie to their assertion; but to all who do believe, and that simply because they do. The chief of sinners is a justified person, "justified" eternally "from all things," that instant that he brings his sins, in humble confession of them, to God, and believes God's testimony of his Son, that he is indeed the Lamb, the sacrifice provided of God, which "taketh away the sins of the world." In this way, the vilest may be saved—freely pardoned, through the tender mercy of our God, who has laid our trespasses upon Jesus. "Being justified freely, by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." And as this is the first hope of a sinner, so it is the only hope to the last, by which any man, though holy as Paul himself, can draw nigh unto God. In the pilgrimage of life, in the hour of death, in the day of judgment, his only acceptable plea is summed up in this: Christ my atoneme—, Christ my righteousness. Goode. 25. God hath set forth. If there is a necessity of justification for God's pardoning the guilty, there is also a necessity of justification for God's offering up his own Son. How could he do it without an infinite and eternal reason? How could he do it for any expediency or necessity short of infinitude? How could he do it, but under the sanction, which indeed he has revealed to us, of the power of an endless life for guilty creatures on the one hand if redeemed, and the power of an endless death inevitable on the other hand if not redeemed? G. B. C.—To be a propitiation through faith in his blood. Here behold the significance and the life of those bloody sacrifices instituted when man fell and flaming up to heaven for four thousand years! Here see the grand fulfillment of the law and the prophets, as all down the ages they point with unerring finger to this divine man who is to bear sin by the shedding of his blood for the world! Where now are the bloody altars? the priestly sacrifices? the hierarchy of Aaron? the temple service? They heard the cry from the Cross, "It is finished!" The real sacrifice for sin is offered and bled for ever. Altar, priest, temple, all crumbled to dust, while the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world, proclaims to all men free forgiveness and eternal life for every one who in humble faith will receive and obey him as the Redeemer. Now a spiritual, universal kingdom is possible; for humanity is redeemed, and faith, repenting, receiving, loving him, is the sole condition of citizenship. S. W. F. If the apostolic doctrine of justification through faith be clearly held and cordially admitted, it will occupy the foremost place in our regards; for it is the ground of all our hopes, and the relief of every fear: it is the luminous center of all religious truth. It is the sun in our heavens; it is the source of light and the source of vital warmth. We do not, therefore, hesitate to affirm that it is scripturally held only by those who do assign to it this prominent position; who recur to it ever and again with delight; who never feel it to be an exhausted theme; who build their own hopes upon it firmly; who invite others to do the same with confidence; who neither distrust it in theory nor dishonor it in practice; who enounce it freely and boldly; and of whose piety it is the spring and reason. I. T. 27. It was “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” which separated you from an ungodly world and made you laborers for heaven. It is the same grace that keeps you from forsaking the work which you have begun. You are working out your salvation, solely because God in his mercy continues to “work in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” “Where is boasting then? It is excluded.” The pride of your hearts can find nothing to rest in. The simple question, “Who made thee to differ?” lays it low. And what a crowd of feelings rise up one after another in its place! Wonder, joy, love, praise, and perhaps, stronger than all, self-abasement and shame! C. B. 29. The truth that God is not a national God, not the God of any one tribe or people, but the God and Father of all men, and that the gospel is designed and adapted to all mankind, however little it may affect us, filled the apostles with astonishment and delight. They were slow in arriving at the knowledge of this truth; they had no clear perception of it until after the day of Pentecost. Before that event, they were Jews; afterward, they were Christians; before, they applied all the promises to their own nation; the only Jerusalem of which they had any idea was the city where David dwelt; the only temple of which they could form a conception was that in which they were accustomed to worship. But when they received the anointing of the Holy Ghost the scales fell from their eyes; their nation sank and the Church rose on their renovated sight; the Jerusalem that now is disappeared when they beheld the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven; the temple on Mount Zion was no longer glorious, by reason of the excelling glory of that temple which is the habitation of God by his Spirit. C. H. 31. We establish law.** Grace, in its turn, leads back to the law. Grace, as it is manifested in the gospel, is the most splendid homage, the most solemn consecration, which the law can receive. This grace is of a peculiar character. It is not the soft indulgence and the easy indifference of a feeble father, who, tired of his own severity, shuts his eyes to the faults of a guilty child. It is not the weakness of a timid government, which, unable to repress disorder, lets the laws sleep, and goes to sleep along with them. It is a holy goodness; it is a love without feebleness, which pardons guilt, and executes justice at the same time. It is not possible that God, who is the supreme sanction of order, should tolerate the shadow of disorder, and leave unpunished the least infraction of the holy laws he has given. Thus, in the work of which we speak, condemnation appears in the pardon, and pardon in the condemnation. The same act proclaims the compasion of God, and the inflexibility of his justice. God could not save us without assuming our nature, nor assume our nature without sharing our misery. The Cross, the triumph of grace, is the triumph of law. A. V. Man must “die, or justice must.” Divine Justice becomes man, and dies to meet the obligation. In the stains of holy blood upon the ignominious tree, upon the accursed earth, and upon the fair, cold body of the lovely Redeemer, the believing sinner reads, as in letters of crimson, Obligation, Obligation. This is a matter of experience. All true penitents find it so. Who shall affront my deepest sensibilities and holiest apprehensions of generous love, by charging that this my view of gratuitous redemption by the blood of the Cross tends to diminish my conscientious sense of duty to him who died! What spectacle in heaven, earth, or hell, so magnifies the law as the spectacle of Christ expiring in the tortures of law, and of vicarious suffering? J. W. A. The gospel is called the law of faith and the law of the spiritual life. This law of grace is very different from the law of nature that required entire innocence, and for the least omission or accusing act passed an irrevocable doom upon the offenders; for that strictness and severity is mollified by the gospel, which accepts of sincere persevering obedience though imperfect; accordingly it is called the law of liberty. But the law of faith is unalterable, and admits of no dispensation from the duties required in order to our being everlastingly happy. Bates. 28. First in systematic order as well as in magnitude is the doctrine of the propitiation, effected by the Son of God—so held clear of admixture and evasions as to sustain in its bright integrity the consequent doctrine of the full and absolute restoration of guilty man to the favor of God, on his acceptance of this method of mercy; or, as it is technically phrased, “justification through faith.” A doctrine this which in a peculiar manner refuses to be tampered with or compromised, and which will hold its own place or none. It challenges for itself not only a broad basis on which it may rest alone, but a broad border upon which nothing that is human may trespass. This doctrine, when unadulterate, not only animates orthodoxy, but shows us why it was necessary to lay open the mystery of the divine nature so far as it is laid open in scriptural Trinitarian doctrine; for we could not have learned the method of salvation without first learning that he who “bore our sins” was indeed able to bear them, and was in himself “mighty to save.” Whatever belongs to the divine nature must be incomprehensible by the human mind, and therefore the incarnation is incomprehensible; and therefore the atonement involves a mystery incomprehensible; but not so the consequent doctrine of justification through faith. This doctrine turns upon the well-understood relations of a forensic substitution; and as to transactions of this order, they are among the clearest of any with which we have to do as the subjects of law and government. A forensic act, authoritatively announced, and in consequence of which the condemned stands exempt from the demands of law, must be in its nature absolute. It is not an undefined indulgence; it is not a weak connivance; it is not a timid compromise; it is not an evasion which must be held to condemn, if not the law, its administrators. In the justification of man through the mediation of Christ, man, individually, as guilty, and his divine sponsor, personally competent to take upon himself such a part, stand forward in the court of heaven, there to be severally dealt with as the honor of law shall demand; and, if the representative of the guilty be indeed thus qualified in the eye of the law, and if the guilty, on his part, freely accept this mode of satisfaction, then, when the one recedes from the position of danger, and the other steps into it, justice, having already admitted both the competency of the substitute and the sufficiency of the substitution, is itself silent. Now, in the method of justification through faith, God himself solemnly proclaims that the rectitude of his government is not violated, nor the sanctity of his law compromised. It is he who declares that, in this method, he “may be just while justifying the ungodly.” After such a proclamation from Heaven has been made, “who is he that condemneth? It is God that justifieth!” I. T. 1. WHAT shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? 2 For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. 3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for 4 righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is 6 counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto 7 whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities 8 are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not 9 impute sin. Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised: that righteousness might be imputed unto them also: and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. 13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his 14 seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of 15 the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: because the law 16 worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the 17 father of us all, (as it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be 18 not as though they were. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the 19 father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an 20 hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: he staggered not at the 21 promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being 22 fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. 23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, 24 to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the 25 dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. EXPLAUTION is provided by Christ, in his vicarious obedience, suffering, and death on the Cross. In the mystery of his divine condescension, of his unspeakable love for sinners, he voluntarily was made a human subject of the law which he had given. He obeyed it as a man. He expressed in all his life its purity. He even met that death of a strange anguish, unspeakable, unsearchable, with the hiding of the face of the Father himself attending and crowning it, when standing in the sinner's place. And so he honored and magnified the law, and showed most clearly God's infinite regard for it; and made it possible for the penitent to be pardoned. He made the law as clearly supreme in God's administration as it would have been if every man had been perfectly holy, or every sinner had been for ever condemned. R. S. S. Strikingly in the instance of Abraham are the nature and value of faith made evident; that in its foundation and essence it is through all eternity the same, whether directed toward the promises of salvation of a yet hidden or of an already revealed and accomplished gospel. True faith is an immovable trust in the promises of salvation. Faith dwells specially in the heart; it does not rest on our insight, but on the foundation of God's word and testimony; and even "hoping against hope" it holds fast this testimony, because it looks away from seen and temporal things up to the unseen, concerning whom it is persuaded that he is faithful and almighty. Let it be often with us as though we heard the voice: "Look up now to heaven." The stars we can count even less than Abraham; but beyond them lives the author and finisher of the faith, which even Abraham practiced imperfectly. His light disappears not from your gaze; his fidelity guards you here, his love awaits you yonder. Van O. 1-12. Jewish objections met by appeal to the Old Testament and the example of Abraham. Abraham's belief in God's promises foreshadows Christian faith, Christians being by virtue of their faith the spiritual children of Abraham, and heirs of the promises. C. 3. Faith is not that which constitutes the ground of our acceptance with God, but which places us upon that ground; it is not our justifying righteousness, but that which unites us to Christ, and appropriates his righteousness to ourselves. "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him 'to,' 'in order to,' or 'toward,' his justification." It is not, then, for our faith, but by it, that we are justified: faith, as an act of ours, is no more the meritorious ground of our justification than any other of our performances; for, if it were, we should still be justified by works, as faith is as much a work as penitence. J. A. J. 5. I do not say that the Spirit of Christ gives the least liberty to sin; God forbid; but his convictions are of a more saving and refreshing nature than the convictions of the law, and do more constrain the soul to holiness than that: the law saying, Work for life; the Spirit saying, Now to him that worketh not (for life), but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. One saying, "Pay me that thou owest"; the other, "Thou art freely forgiven all." Bun.—Believing is the most wonderful thing in the world. Put anything of thine own to it and thou spoilest it; Christ will not esteem it believing. When thou believest and comest to Christ, thou must leave behind thee thine own righteousness (that is hard), all thy holiness, sanctification, duties, tears, humblings, and bring nothing but thy sins, thy wants, and miseries, else Christ is not fit for thee, nor thou for Christ. Christ will be a perfect Redeemer and Mediator, and thou must be an undone sinner, or Christ and thou can never agree. It is the hardest thing in the world to take Christ alone for righteousness; that is, to acknowledge him Christ. Wilcox. 6-8. The New Testament idea of pardon is not merely the forgiveness of sin, nor even its virtual annihilation so that the sinner may be deemed innocent, but it is justification—something by which he may be deemed "righteous." And Paul says that this was the Psalmist's idea, though he only appears to express the half of it. "Even David," he affirms, "described the blessedness of the man unto whom the Lord imputeth righteousness, without works." So that, according to Paul, the non-imputation of sin is either to be regarded as the same thing as the imputation of righteousness, or that with God the one act implies and is always accompanied by the other. One thing is certain, that the whole transaction is based upon, and springs out of, the redemptive work of Christ; that in that work, whatever may have been its precise nature, there is a reason presented to the divine eye, on the ground of which God can look upon the sinful man who trusts in Christ as so identified with him as to have his faith counted for righteousness, and thus, in Christ, or for his sake, to be accounted justified as well as forgiven. T. B. 8. The term, "to impute," or "put to the account of," is a term borrowed from pecuniary transactions among men; and, as applied to sin, contemplates it in the light of a debt, which is put by consent of all parties to the account of a surety, and is thus made his own and discharged by him for the debtor. This state of a sinner wherein God lays no sin to his charge is called a state of justification; which as a term of law signifies the declaring a person righteous. It supposes the arraignment of the criminal before God at the bar of conscience. The case is tried. The charge of sin and desert of wrath is brought home to the soul by the Holy Spirit. The convinced man admits it all; sets up no defense of works done, or to be done; thou art "just," saith he, in "judging, and clear in condemning"; but, Lord, thou hast thyself provided me with an all-sufficient plea—the atonement and righteousness of Christ: thou hast assured me of my personal interest in them, when I take them as meant for me, on the faith of thy own word. Lord, I believe. I plead with thee to do as thou hast said; to deal with me as righteous, seeing I present to thee that perfect righteousness of Christ, which is mine by believing acceptance of him as thy gift to men. This plea God admits. The debt (to look again at sin in this light) is hereupon "blotted out." The sinner is declared righteous. Goode. 9-11. We are justified by believing. In accepting God's testimony to the righteousness—in crediting his word concerning this justification—we are justified at once. The righteousness becomes ours; and God treats us henceforth as men who are righteous, as men who, on account of the righteousness which has thus become theirs, are entitled to be dealt with as righteous, out and out. Of Abraham it is said, "His faith was counted for righteousness"; that is, God counted this believing man as one who had done all righteousness, just because he was a believing man. Not that his act or acts of faith were substituted as equivalent to work, but his believing brought him into the possession of all that working could have done. Thus, in believing, we get the righteousness. Bonar. 16. Of faith . . . by grace.** Man, the disinherited, is brought back and reestablished in that for which he was made; or, his lost and forfeited inheritance is restored. All is done, too, as originally planned. The divine purpose is accomplished, the divine promise fulfilled. It is "of faith," and "by grace." It is the one, that it may be the other. T. B. 17. God quickeneth the dead.** First in the resurrection this great declaration of Paul comes to its full accomplishment. Death still reigns here below, although for the Christian his terror is vanquished; we expect, however, the arrival of the hour in which the song of triumph, "Death is swallowed up in victory," shall no more lack one note. Sin's last word is death, but the last word of God Almighty is life; and what matters it though the eye of sense at times can see nought else but dissolution and decay? This earth is passing away with all that is subject to death, but the great Resurrection morn is coming, of which at once the hallelujah and amen shall be this word, that God, and God alone, is he who quickeneth the dead. Van O. 20. Strong in faith.** What did Abraham believe? What God was pleased to reveal. That Abraham should become the father of many nations, was but a small part of what was revealed and of what he believed. The sum of what God revealed to him was, that one of his descendants was to be the promised Saviour of men; and that both he and his spiritual seed were to be saved by faith in him. Why did he believe this? Just because God had said it. He had no other ground for it. Everything else would have led him to doubt or disbelieve it. His faith was firm and hopeful, and no seeming impossibilities could shake it. J. B. A gracious soul knows that if he is rich in faith he can not be poor in other graces; he knows the growth of faith will be as the former and latter rain to all other graces; he knows that there is no way to outgrow his fears but by growing in faith; therefore his cry is, "O Lord, whatever I am weak in, let me be strong in faith; whatever dies, let faith live, whatever decays, let faith flourish." Brooks.—Faith is faith, whether it be as a grain of mustard-seed, or like the tree in whose branches "the birds of the air lodge." Faith must grow in strength. At its birth it is only as a little child, but, by the training grace of God, it grows up to the strength of youth and of manhood. As faith is, so also is the soul. The soul is strong when faith is strong. A. C. 24. Imputed.** The union of believers with Christ is the ground of their receiving his righteousness. That is set to their account which has become theirs by this gracious connection. This, and no more, is what we mean by the imputation of Christ's righteousness. Instead of an arbitrary ascription to us of something contrary to fact, it is God's beholding us as intimately connected with the Great Surety. The obedience which he rendered was rendered by him in our nature, in our name, and as our covenant head. It was in its very intention that it should be regarded as ours. It had no other intention. Faith completes the union, long contemplated in the covenant, and thenceforth God regards the believer no longer in himself, but in Christ, and the Church of elect saints as the body of Christ, invested with his righteousness. J. W. A. 25. My sin is gone; for it is forgiven. The righteousness of Jesus is mine; for he has given me faith in him. The separation from my God and Saviour is ended by the forgiveness of sins in the blood of Jesus; the union between me and my God is restored by Christ, the Crucified and Risen One. He is my righteousness; and, since I have him, my sins can no longer terrify me. This is what Paul saith: "Christ was raised again for our justification." A. C.—It was impossible Christ should be holden by death. It was naturally impossible upon the account of the divine power inherent in his person; and legally impossible because divine justice required that he should be raised to life; partly to vindicate his innocence, for he was reputed and suffered as a malefactor, and principally because he had fully satisfied God. Accordingly the apostle declares, he died for our sins and rose again for our justification. Briefly, our Saviour's victory over death was obtained by dying, his triumph by rising again. He foiled our common enemy in his own territory, the grave. Bates. ly secure an honorable issue to all the afflictions and temptations of his people. He carried his pitying nature to the throne, and is still touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and disposed to help us in every time of need. Lastly, the life of Christ secures to his people the resurrection of their bodies, and the happiness of the whole man, in the full and everlasting enjoyment of God. Therefore praise and magnify that compassionate Saviour, and faithful high priest over the house of God, who ransomed us with his blood; and amid all the splendors of his exalted state is not unmindful of his charge upon earth, but continually appears in the presence of God for us; whose ear is always attentive to the voice of our supplications; whose mouth is ever open to plead in our behalf; and, as if it had not been love enough to die for us, still lives and reigns for us. R. W. How amazing that there should be found in all the wide world a single being reluctant to avail himself of the expiation thus made for sin. The utmost eloquence of men, the most terrible warnings in providence, the profoundest experience of the misery springing out of their league with sin, all fail to obtain for this wondrous gospel of the grace of God entrance into the hearts of men. They say unto God, day by day, hour by hour, "Thou holy God, impute unto us all our offenses. Let it be with us as though Christ had not died. Let there be no Gethsemane or Calvary for us." G. B. 1. THEREFORE being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus 2 Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice 3 in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing 4 that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and 5 hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the 6 Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time 7 Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradven- 8 ture for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward 9 us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now 10 justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, 11 we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. THE one thing which meets man's great want, which alone fits him to live and prepares him to die, without which he is orphaned from hope, and with which no calamity can more than temporarily depress him, the one thing which leads him to live with a right purpose, which consecrates all his aims, which gives him a constant refuge, which gilds with light the darkest cloud, which brings relief to fear and foreboding, which makes the weary journey of life a pilgrimage to heaven, and which alone teaches the triumphant song, "O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?"—the one thing that does all this is religious faith, the faith by which being justified we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. E. H. G. Amid all the accusations of the past the believer enjoys permanent calm. He has peace literally, as regards God in the way of atonement, by which all that lies behind him is wholly covered, and the filial relation completely restored. If the conscience is yet wounded at every turning, the balsam of consolation pours forth in streams. God beholds us in Christ; and he who is really one with Him, however much by nature a child of wrath, is in the sight of the Most High unspeakably well-pleasing. Thus has also the redeemed sinner in regard to the future a well-founded hope. Can it be more forcibly expressed than in the heart-elevating passage: "We stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God?" Verily it might sound too high, were it not preceded by this testimony regarding Jesus Christ, "By whom also we have access by faith into this grace." Hitherto the entrance had remained closed, no hope, but miserable fear could alone be ours; there could be no mention of standing, but rather of the sinking of despair; of no vaunt of hope, but of an endless lamentation over disappointed expectation. On the other hand, where peace from above has descended into the heart, it can not be otherwise than that the hope of salvation should also come to dwell there; he who sees his sullied past obliterated, knows at the same time his eternal future to be safe. Van O. With this chapter begins the general statement, for Jew and Gentile alike, of the blessed consequences of this justification by faith; of the nature and extent of the blessings bestowed on us by the death and resurrection of Christ; their extent being as wide in their saving influence as Adam's sin was in ruining; yea, wider, because the nature of a free gift is of itself wider and more spreading than that of a prescribed and limited condemnation. And the very use of the law was this, to make abundant and multiply the grace of God, by creating sin, over which grace might triumph. In verse 2, render, "we glory in the hope of the glory of God." In verses 3, 4, for "patience," "endurance," and for "experience," "approval," both twice. A. 1-5. Faith is the door of the heart by which peace enters. Love is the tender shelter beneath which peace reposes. The essence of peace consists in the inward assurance of salvation. This assurance brings us the confident hope that we have the love of God, and that we enjoy friendship with him. A. C.—A cordial reception of the two great truths of spiritual Christianity, justification through faith, and the sovereign, indwelling influences of the Holy Spirit, brings with it a settled and affectionate sense of security, or peace and joy in believing, which becomes the spring of holy tempers and virtuous conduct. Through the knowledge of the gospel, and the hearty reception of its promises, we are "made partakers of the divine nature." But God is "blessed for evermore." Shall we then be drawing near to this nature continually, without a happy consciousness of the felicity we are approaching? Shall we come up to the fountain of light, and receive thence no illumination? Those do not appear to know much of human nature who are jealous of happiness as an energy of virtue; or who suppose that virtue on earth will not show whence she has descended and whither she is going. I. T. 1. Justified by faith.** If a man believes, he is saved. Not as if in faith itself there was any merit. We often hear belief in the gospel of Christ spoken about as if it, the work of the man believing, was, in a certain way and to some extent, that which God rewarded by giving him salvation. What is that but the whole doctrine of works come up again in a new form? It is Christ's life, Christ's blood, Christ's sacrifice, Christ's intercession, that saves. Faith is simply the channel through which there flows over into my emptiness the divine fullness; or, to use the good old illustration, it is the hand which is held up to receive the benefit which Christ lays in it. A living trust in Jesus has power unto salvation, only because it is the means by which the power of God unto salvation may come into my heart. On that side is the great ocean, Christ's love, Christ's abundance, Christ's merits, Christ's righteousness; or, rather, that which includes them all, there is the great ocean, Christ himself; and on this is the empty vessel of my soul—and the little narrow pipe that has nothing to do but to bring across the refreshing water—that is the act of faith in him. There is no merit in the dead lead, no virtue in the mere emotion. It is not faith that saves us; it is Christ that saves us, and saves us through faith. A. M. Peace. The peace, which by simple faith in Christ the conscience obtains, is the first step in sanctification. And still through our whole course Christ's blood of atonement and his life of perfect righteousness are the great fountains of peace which travel with us, just as the stream, which flowed from the smitten rock, followed Israel in the pilgrimage. E. M. G. 2. Access by faith.** Thou hast done away with the barrier by thy fulfillment of the law, and we have now free access to God. Thou art our access, our way; for thy fulfillment of the law is ours; thy righteousness is ours. The divine satisfaction which rested on thee now rests on us. A. C.— Rejoice in hope. Faith, upon the authority and credit of the divine promise, persuades the heart that there is such a glorious state of things reserved for the saints, and so serves instead of eyes in the divine light to view those glories; or it presents them to view, whence hope reaches forth to them and possesses them; gives the soul an early anticipated fruition of them for its present support and relief—so that it rejoices in the hope of the glory of God. Howe. Faith looks to Christ as dead, buried, and ascended; and hope to his second coming. Faith looks to him for justification, hope for glory. Faith fights for doctrine, hope for a reward; faith for what is in the Bible, hope for what is in heaven. Faith purifies the heart from bad principles, hope from bad manners. Bun. 3-5. "And not only so, but we exult also in our [present] sufferings; for we know that suffering gives the steadfastness of endurance, and steadfast endurance gives the proof of soundness, and the proof of soundness gives strength to hope, and our hope can not shame us in the day of trial; because the love of God is shed forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given unto us.” C. We have here the genealogy of hope. The experience we have of God’s power and mercy in saving us out of former troubles begets and nourishes hope against future times of trouble. Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. Caryl.—Tribulation. It is derived from the Latin tribulum, which was the threshing instrument, or roller, whereby the Roman husbandmen separated the corn from the husks; and “tribulation,” in its primary significance, was the act of this separation. Sorrow and adversity being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them was light, trivial, and poor, from the solid and the true, their chaff from their wheat, therefore these sorrows and trials are called “tribulations,” threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner. T.—It is one of the mortifying proofs what stubborn and unteachable pupils of the Divine Master we are, that no way could be found of bringing us to our immortality but through such a system of checks and penalties. We must be baffled, smitten, scourged; we must ache, and weep, and die; we must suffer the stripes of misfortune, of disease, of mortified ambition, of bleeding affections, of mortal separation. The very word “tribulation” predicts the result, as well as describes the process. The flail (tribulum) in the hand of the thresher is to bruise the sheaves and break out the wheat from the straw. In every threshing-floor there is tribulation; and that is the world over. Blows of pain have to divide the spirit and flesh. The pure fruit of goodness does not come from us but by breaking off the worldly crust. F. D. H. Patience. Patience is the endurance of any evil, out of the love of God, as the will of God. There is nothing too little in which to approve ourselves to God; nothing too little in which, without God, we should not fail; nothing too great which, with the help of God, we may not endure. The offices of patience are as varied as the ills of this life. We have need of it with ourselves and with others; with those who love us and those who love us not; for the greatest things and for the least; against sudden inroads of trouble and under our daily burdens; disappointments as to the weather or the breaking of the heart; in the weariness of the body, or the wearing of the soul; in our own failure of duty, or in others’ failure toward us; in every-day wants, or in the aching of sickness or the decay of age; in disappointment, bereavement, losses, injuries, reproaches; in heaviness of the heart or its sickness amid delayed hopes, or the weight of this body of death, from which we would be free, that we may have no more struggle with sin within, or temptation without, but attain to our blessed and everlasting peace in our rest in God. In all these things, from childhood’s little troubles to the martyr’s sufferings, patience is the grace of God, whereby we endure evil for the love of God, and keep ourselves still and motionless, that we offend not God. Pusey. Experience. Faith, in its reproductive power and process of growth, may be compared to the great Oriental banyan tree. It springs up in God, rooted in God’s Word, and soon there are the great waving branches of experience. Then from these very branches the runners go down again into God’s Word, and thence spring up again, new products of faith and new trees of experience, till one and the same tree becomes in itself a grove, with pillared shades and echoing walks between. So experience just grows out of faith, and then a greater faith grows out of experience, the Word of God being all the while the region of its roots, and again a still vaster, richer experience grows out of that faith, till every branch becomes not only a product, but a parent stock, set in the same wood. Thus it is that experience is founded in faith, not faith on experience. Faith is from God and in God, and so produces the work of God, a holy experience of God in the soul. G. B. C. 5. This love of God which is poured out in our hearts, and is here declared to be our ground of confidence in him, is his love to us, and not ours to him. T.—Observe how constantly the Scripture word looks to the love of God, for the ingeneration of love in men, and so for their salvation. The radical, everywhere present idea is, that the new love wanting in them is to be itself only a revealment of the love of God to them, or upon them. Thus the newborn life is to be “the love of God, shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost.” The gospel plan proposes the unbosoming of God’s love to man, that it may be shed abroad in him by the Holy Ghost, and become a salvation, as it begets, by the Spirit, an answering love. H. B.—It is through the intimate personal operation of the Spirit of God, by his indwelling light and grace shed abroad in the souls of them that believe, that the heart is discharged of selfishness and sin, and is filled with the holy beauty and triumph of a supreme virtue. The truth is his instrument, but only the instrument. The essential power by which this amazing change is wrought, is that same energy of the Holy Ghost by which prophets and apostles before were inspired, which in the Lord was ever revealed. It reaches the inmost springs of life; turns gloom to gladness, passion to peace; till the soul becomes a temple alight with love, ringing with praise, the breath of constant supplication filling it as with incensed air. R. S. S. 6. Without strength. The old system is right in laying so urgent a stress on conviction of sin. The grand significance of the gospel is help. The measure of man's eagerness to receive help, is it not his feeling of helplessness? It is no secret, probably, that in most of the persons we meet in the streets, and even in our meeting-houses, it would be difficult to find any such thing as a vital consciousness of sin at all. F. D. H. Died for the ungodly. He assumed our nature expressly that he might be able to suffer in our stead; for the distinct and deliberate object of pouring out his blood, and of making his soul an offering for sin. He planted a cross, and presented to the world a prodigy of mercy of which this is the only solution, that he "so loved us." He took our place in the universe, espoused our interest, opened his bosom, and welcomed to his heart the stroke which we had deserved. J. H.—Christ is not a critic on the soul's frail steps, as it comes tottering home to him, a prodigal from the far country, or a penitent from the sinful ways of the city. Every promise of his gospel is a pledge to accept sinners, not after they have ceased to be sinners—for when would that be?—but while yet they are sinners. This is the glory of the Cross. The dying is for the ungodly. The Physician is for the sick. The scarred shoulders of the Shepherd are for the sheep that was lost. F. D. H.—He died for the unrighteous, the enemies, choosing to be an exile from heaven, that he might carry us back to heaven; a tender Friend, a wise Counselor, a strong Helper. "What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?" I have but two little things, yea, very little, to give—a body and a soul: or rather, one little thing, my will; and shall I not give up that to his will, who, being so great, was the first to visit one so little as I with such great benefits, and bought all that I am with all that he is? Bernard. 7. "Righteous" here is a man who righteously fulfills the duties of life, and "good" is the good and benevolent man with whom we ourselves have been brought into contact. C.—The whole strength of our affections can be elicited only when goodness is manifested toward us individually. That which should call forth our strongest affections would evidently be a being of perfect moral excellence, putting forth effort and sacrifice on our behalf. M. H. 8. Commendeth his love. The very causes, and the only causes, which could check that love, have not checked it, have only served to draw forth its most abundant stream. All our guilt, instead of drawing forth the thunders of the Almighty and sinking us in the flames of his wrath, has only furnished the occasion for the triumph of his mercy. It was in view of this that angels sang with raptures of wonder and joy, "Glory to God in the highest!" Here is the love of God in meridian brightness and glory. N. W. T.—There has never yet been found an intellectual or moral or social condition too high or too low for this doctrine. No debasement has been too vile, and no natural purity has been too refined, for it. The explorations of Christian missionaries have found no nation or tribe on the face of the earth—even where the very idea of any deity was most nearly extinct—in which this simple message, "Christ died for us," has not been apprehended, seized, rejoiced in, and lived upon, as the opening eye welcomes light. F. D. H. 10. The first argument is: "If God did so much for us when enemies, what will he do for us when friends?" The second is: "If Christ's death has done so much for us, what will his life do?" He loved and blessed us when enemies; will he not much more love us when friends? He loved us when we hated him; will he not love us more when we return his love? When subjected to the dominion of him who had the power of death, he yet conquered for us, and won glorious spoils; what will he not do now when he has led captivity captive, and completed his mighty victory? If the Cross and the tomb have done so much for us, what will not the throne secure? Here, then, are two truths which, in assuring us of pardon, assure us of everything. "Jesus died, and Jesus liveth"—these are the truths which contain everything for us. "Jesus died!"—that contains everything that we need for reconciliation and peace: "Jesus liveth!"—that contains everything pertaining to the promised inheritance. "Jesus died—Jesus liveth!" The simple knowledge of these simple truths is salvation, forgiveness, peace, eternal life. All that can come forth from his grave, or down from his throne—all that a dying and a living Saviour can do, is ours! Joy, glory, dominion, royalty, priesthood, and a boundless inheritance—all these are ours, and all of them made irreversibly sure to us from the fact that "Jesus liveth." He was dead and is alive; yea, and he liveth for evermore. This is our pledge for the perpetuity of our possession. Bonar. Saved by his life. The powerful influence of the life of Christ upon everything that belongs to complete salvation is manifest in the justification of believers, which, purchased by the death of Christ, is rendered sure and permanent by his restored life. The life of Christ is no less available to insure the sanctification of all who believe on him. For this end did he enter into the heavenly sanctuary, that from thence he might send forth his conquering Spirit to cleanse and purify the hearts of those whom he had washed with his blood; that, as no guilt might be left to provoke the justice of God, so neither should there be any defilement to offend his holiness. Further, the life of Christ doth effectual- 11. By whom we have atonement.** If an atonement were necessary, and for that we must trust the express warrant of Scripture, we know not where the vicarious victim was to be sought without insuperable objections on the score of justice and of goodness, except in the offended Judge himself. Our atonement appears to demand, from the very nature of the case, a Person not less than divine. And thus, hidden in the depths of justice and mercy, is found the solution of this astonishing coalition of glory and of woe. Essential happiness thus embraces essential misery, because the God of happiness is also the God at once of infinite purity and infinite love. We first start aside at the impossibility; we gaze longer and deeper, and the conviction slowly rises that it could not be otherwise, and God be what he is. The sacrifice, strange as it is, is but the natural growth of this being; it is but the child of eternal mercy wedded to eternal truth; and their spousal home is in the heart of God. Hence it is that the life and happiness of the universe, in its love at once of justice and of us, comes, through the medium of the inferior nature, in direct contact with misery and death. W. A. B. Before going into another division of the discourse, instituting his immortal parallel between the first Adam and the second Adam, between the offense and the grace, between condemnation and salvation, he utters a burst of satisfaction, as he surveys the goodly prospect, and thus expresses the joy of a soul which accepts Christ: "And not only so, but we also joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the atonement." The same Greek word is elsewhere translated reconciliation. The joy here spoken of is that high exulting joy, when the soul is lifted up with complacency in the blessing possessed. This is a summing up of all the bright and stupendous things contained in the foregoing verses. And so all the gospel, the good news, the glad tidings, is in this one word, Reconciliation. This is the message sent by the word of preaching to be believed, that God is reconciled; and he that believes this is saved. J. W. A. 12. WHEREFORE, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death 13 passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (for until the law sin was in the world: but 14 sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the 15 figure of him that was to come. But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by 16 grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free 17 gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness 18 shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) Therefore, as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon 19 all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sin- 20 ners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: 21 that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. We can not hesitate to perceive that the powers of evil consist of two great detachments, which speculative men have called physical and moral evil, which plain people are familiar with under the titles of pain and guilt—pain, which seems naturally to tend to weakness and death; and guilt, which, by a process as natural, descends into habitual and irremediable sin. Distinct as are these two forms of evil, even in our own experience we detect traces of a connection between them; but it is to Revelation that we are indebted for the clearest intimation of their secret but indissoluble association; to Revelation, which announces that physical infirmity and death entered our human creation in the footsteps of willful sin, that willful sin is the forerunner of pains eternal. To these powers, then, the two great engines of the adversary, Christ is revealed as the counteracting agent. He came to triumph over both; his work is respectively directed to each. In relation to sin, he is a mediator of justification and holiness; in relation to death and pain, he is the author of endless life and glory. W. A. B. 12-21. Whatever else this important and somewhat difficult Scripture may contain, it contains at least these things: that Adam was a type of Christ, in the extraordinary sense of the latter's being set over against the former in all moral relations to our race; that as Adam brought sin and death upon all, so Christ brings righteousness and life to all; that as Adam, by one act of transgression, brought condemnation, so Christ, from many acts of transgression, brings justification; and that, while the evils of Adam's sin are unconditional, absolute, the benefits of Christ's righteousness are conditional, contingent. By his sin Adam actually, positively brought death, temporal and spiritual, upon all men. By his righteousness Christ brings life, spiritual and eternal, conditionally, under terms, to all men. By his first disobedience, Adam opened and spread the broad roll of a flying curse over the whole race of man. His act, which was one of rebellion, cut the race off from God; and, thus cut off, the whole fell into a state of moral separation from him: a state which rendered it certain that every individual would, on reaching years of moral action, commit actual sin. That state of the race, including this attendant certainty, constitutes original sin. It is a state over which "God's wrath and damnation" rest; and, at the same time, one which includes every individual of the race, from Adam to the last of his stock. Thus much of the full. In the recovery, Christ, the second Adam, by his obedience unto death, brought in a blessing, which, in the possibilities of its application, is co-extensive with the primal curse. He threw the reach and embrace of mercy around the entire race. He "tasted death for every man." He opened the door of the kingdom of heaven to all mankind. He made eternal life possible to the whole race, from Adam to the last of his stock. And thus much of the recovery. J. S. S. The doctrine of the apostle is that as all men are, in certain points, treated as if they were sinners, entirely on account of the first sin of the first man, Adam, so all men who are justified are treated as if they were righteous entirely on account of the obedience to death of him of whom the first man was an image—the Lord from heaven. All the evil that befalls mankind, either in the present or the future world, may be considered as originating in the first sin of the first man, directly or indirectly. Some of these evils are realized, however, only through the individual, in his own person, becoming an actual violator of the divine law, and are realized by him in the degree in which he does so. There are others that come directly on the race, as the manifestation of the displeasure of God at the first sin: Death, including a life longer or shorter, it might be, but liable to disease, doomed to death; and the greater loss of that divine influence which is the soul of the human soul, the principle of its true excellence and highest happiness. These—mortality and destitution of spiritual goodness—come equally on all men, without reference to personal acts of guilt; and these are the evils, the manner of incurring which the apostle employs as an illustration of the manner in which the great blessing of justification is obtained for man. This seems plain from the apostle's object, for evils not resulting entirely from Adam's sin would not have corresponded with blessings resulting entirely from our Lord's obedience; and further, it appears from his obviously contrasting the judgment of the one offense, which is executed, with the judgment of the many offenses, which is graciously removed in justification. J. B. The meaning of the latter part of this chapter, as Augustine loves to draw it out, is as follows: The apostle had spoken in what went before of Christ's death, and the fruits of that death; but the question might well present itself: How should the death of one have such significance for all? Paul answers the question. This one is not merely one; he stands in a relation to all men which can only find its analogy in the relation in which Adam stood to all. He may be rightly called a "second Adam." In Adam the whole natural development of man was included; the entire human race is but the unfolding of that first, that one man. Exactly so Christ is a spiritual head. The whole race of regenerate men was shut up in him, is unfolded from him. As the huge oak with its trunk and all its spreading branches is rudimentally wrapped up in the single acorn; so the world, or mankind natural, in Adam, and the Church, or mankind spiritual, in Christ. Only from this point of view, of the race, namely, as included in Adam, do we attain any right apprehension of the significance of Adam's sin. The injury which by that sin Adam inflicted on himself, he did not inflict on himself alone. It was a flinging of poison into the fountain head, and thus an infecting lower down of every drop of the stream. And only so do we attain any right apprehension of the significance of Christ's righteousness; for that other is but one side, the sadder and the darker side, of the same truth. That which held good for death held good also for life. The same law of intimate union between the members of the race and their head, which made one man's sin so diffusive of death, has made one man's obedience or righteousness so diffusive of life. Christ shall diffuse himself no less effectually than Adam, as the one by generation, so the other by regeneration. Nay, there shall be, as there ever must be, a mightier power in the good than in the evil; for while the one sin was sufficient to ruin the world, the righteousness of one did not merely do away with that one sin, but with all the innumerable others which had unfolded themselves from it. T. The dogma of original sin implies and affirms these propositions: 1. That God, in creating man, has created him an agent, moral, free, and fallible. 2. That the will of God is the moral law of man, and obedience to the will of God is the duty of man, inasmuch as he is a moral and free agent. 3. That, by an act of his own free will, man has knowingly failed in his duty by disobeying the law of God. 4. That the free man is a responsible being, and that disobedience to the law of God has justly entailed on him punishment. 5. That that responsibility and that punishment are hereditary, and that the fault of the first man has weighed and does weigh upon the human race. The authority of God, the duty of obedience to the law of God, the liberty and responsibility of man, the heritage of human responsibility are, in their moral chronology, the principles and facts comprised in the dogma of original sin. Guizot. Most evangelical divines are divided between the Augustinian or realistic, the federal or forensic, and the Arminian theories. It should be remembered that the main difficulty lies in the fact itself—the undeniable, stubborn, terrible fact—of the universal dominion of sin and death over the entire race, infants as well as full-grown sinners. No system of philosophy has ever given a more satisfactory explanation than the great divines of the Church. Outside of the Christian redemption, the fall, with its moral desolation and ruin, remains an impenetrable mystery. But immediately after the fall appears, in the promise of the serpent-bruiser, the second Adam, and throws a bright ray of hope into the gloom of despair. In the fullness of the time, according to God's own counsel, he appeared in our nature to repair the loss, and to replace the temporary reign of sin by the everlasting reign of superabounding grace, which never could have been revealed in all its power without the fall. The person and work of the second Adam are the one glorious solution of the problem of the first, and the triumphant vindication of divine justice and mercy. This is the main point for all practical purposes, and in this, at least, all true Christians are agreed. P. S.—We offer a summation of the whole subject: 1. The vast majority, not only of Calvinists, but of Christians, hold that the race so had its probation in Adam's first trial, that it fell in his fall, and the consequences of his sin to himself passed over to his posterity. 2. The majority hold that his descendants did not sin in him really and literally. 3. A great majority hold that death is the penalty of sin, and includes every kind of penal evil. 4. A great majority hold that death thus extending to soul and body was visited upon Adam and his posterity by sin. 5. A great majority hold that Adam's sin was so reckoned to the account of (imputed to) the race, that its loss of the divine favor and communion with God, and, by consequence, its lapse into sin, was a visitation in judgment for that sin. 6. A great majority believe that evil inflicted on moral beings for sin, in support of law, is punishment, and that the present degradation of our race came in this way. 7. A great majority believe that Christ bore our sins, only as he bore their penalty, became a curse for us, and had the chastisement of our peace laid upon him, and hence that sin may be so imputed to or reckoned to the account of those who did not personally commit it, that they shall bear its penalty. If this is possible in one extraordinary case, it may be in another. 8. A great majority believe that Christ is the second Adam, of whom the first was a type, inasmuch as, being condemned for the sin of the first Adam, we are justified by the righteousness of the second. "As by the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." Herein are found the elements of the true doctrine of original sin. These pregnant words of Pascal can not be gainsaid. "It is astonishing that the mystery which is farthest removed from our knowledge (I mean the transmission of original sin) should be that without which we can have no knowledge of ourselves. It is in this abyss that the clew to our condition takes its turns and windings, inasmuch that man is more incomprehensible without this mystery than this mystery is incomprehensible to man." C. H. 12. By Jesus we have received the reconciliation (v. 11); by one man sin entered into the world. In stating this similarity, the apostle draws the attention of his readers from Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, of whom they boasted, and through whom they inherited many blessings, to a more remote ancestor, from whom both Jews and Gentiles were descended, and through whom they both inherited the same dismal legacy. In ascending to Adam, the distinction between Jews and Gentiles is lost, and the necessity of a Saviour is laid in that condition, which is common to all mankind. G. Hill. 13,14. The 12th verse states that all mankind are exposed to death in consequence of the first sin of the first man. The proof of this fact is contained in the 13th and 14th verses, which refer to infants. These die entirely on account of the sin of the first man, without reference to their own personal violation of the divine law. J. B. 17,18. Sin is death's parent. Had there been no sin, no one would have died. The first man received God's commandment on condition that if he kept it he should live, if he violated it he should die. By not believing that he would die, he did what caused him to die; and found that to have been true which the Giver of the law had affirmed. Thence came death, thence man became mortal, thence came labor, thence misery, thence the second death after the first, that is, after temporal death, death everlasting. This tradition of death, this law of destruction, binds every man who is born, except that one Man who became Man that man should not perish. For he came bound by no law of death; therefore he is called in the Psalm, "Free among the dead"; who lived without sin, who did not die because of sin; sharing in our penalty, not in our offense. Death is the penalty of offense; our Lord Jesus Christ came to die, did not come to sin; by sharing in our penalty without our offense, he annulled both our offense and penalty. What penalty? That which was due to us after this life. So he was crucified, that on the Cross he might show the dying out of our old man; and he rose, that in his own life he might show our new life. Aug. Verse 18 should stand, "Therefore as through one trespass the issue was unto all men to condemnation: even so through one righteous act the issue was unto all men to justification of life." A. 19-21. When our unrighteousness was consummated, and full proof was given that punishment and death were to be looked for as its reward, and the time was come which God had preordained for the manifestation of his own loving-kindness and power (for the love of God, which proceeds from his transcendent benignity, is peerless), he did not hate us, nor repel us, nor did he remember evil, but showed his long-suffering, bore with us, himself took upon him our sins, gave up, of himself, his own Son as a ransom for us, the Holy for the lawless, the Innocent for the wicked, the Just for the unjust, the Incorruptible for the corruptible, the Immortal for the mortal. For what else but his Son's righteousness was able to cover our sins? Wherein was it possible for us, the lawless and impious, to be justified, save in the Son of God alone? O that sweet substitution! O that unsearchable plan! O those unexpected benefits! That the transgression of many should be covered by one righteous, and the righteousness of one should justify many that were unrighteous. Epistle of 2d Century. How by one man's obedience could many be made righteous? The answer is not far to seek. The transcendent worth of that obedience which Christ rendered, of that oblation which he offered, the power which it possessed of countervailing and counterbalancing a world's sin, lay in this, that he who offered these, while he bore a human nature, and wrought human acts, was a divine person; not indeed God alone, for as such he would never have been in the condition to offer; nor man alone, for then the worth of his offering could never have reached so far; but that he was God and man in one person indissolubly united, and in this person performing all those acts: man, that he might obey and suffer and die; God, that he might add to every act of his obedience, his suffering, his death, an immeasurable worth, steeping in the glory of his divine personality all of human that he wrought. T.—The obedience of Christ is expressly declared to be the ground of our acceptance, and the sufferings of Christ are but a part of that obedience. Taken together, the active and the passive obedience constitute that one righteousness which is the sole meritorious ground of our acceptance. What he did, and what he suffered, are but one object in the sight of the law; a glorious righteousness, with which we are graciously invested; wrought out by our head, in our nature, but deriving infinite value from the hidden fountain of the Godhead. J. W. A. WHAT the Scriptures teach on this subject, according to the common doctrine of evangelical Protestants, is, all who die in infancy are saved. The Scriptures nowhere exclude any class of infants, baptized or unhaptized, born in Christian or in heathen lands, of believing or unbelieving parents, from the benefits of the redemption of Christ. C. H.—In the case of those who die in infancy, with original sin only affecting their natures, Christ, it would seem, stands to them for good, over against Adam for evil. As they are brought under the condemnation of original sin through Adam, so they receive remission of it through Christ. And the condition (involuntarily enjoyed, indeed, on their part, but voluntarily secured to them on God's)—the condition on which they receive this remission is, that they have committed no actual sin. Being taken away from the ordinary conditions of the gospel, they need no other. For if, in receiving this grant of remission, their relation to Christ be involuntary, so, in becoming subject to the sin forgiven, was their relation to Adam involuntary. Is it not reasonable, therefore, that, on the condition named, Christ, the greater, should remove what Adam, the less, entailed? It is the great law of the Church under the gospel that—while, in the case of those who live to commit actual sin, the death of Christ can be rendered effectual only by being applied in the exercises of faith and repentance, or of that inward renewing which is the work of the Spirit in the use of truth—in the case of all who die in infancy and without actual sin the death of Christ itself is effectual, without being so applied. As they have not become voluntary in following the first Adam's sin, so need they not be voluntary in relying on the second Adam's righteousness. Had it not been for Christ, the whole race had perished. But since he "hath tasted death for every man," they only perish who, to the fact of original sin, as an infection from our common head, add the guilt of actual sin, as the intelligent and voluntary issue of their own minds; and who, thus guilty and defiled, never become renewed and sanctified by the Holy Ghost unto repentance, faith, and holiness; but, on the contrary, either by an actual volition, or by cherishing tempers which would prompt such an act, reject the offer of pardon and life through the Saviour, and thus seal, beyond reversal, the sentence of their own condemnation. This view of the effects of Christ's death and sacrifice accounts for the fact that so little is said in the Bible of those who die in infancy. Toward infancy and childhood as states of life, the Bible is full of the tenderest regard. The language of Christ to those who would have kept the little children from him may be taken as the best expression of that regard in summary; while it shows that between original sin in infancy and actual sin in subsequent years there is a broad and important difference. But the case of those who die in infancy the Bible leaves in almost unbroken silence. The comforted mourning of the penitent David over his dead child, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me" (2 Sam. 12 : 23), is the plainest and loudest if not the only word ever uttered to break that silence. But, in the remarkable silence which it generally observes, it plainly intimates that this is a case to which the ordinary conditions of the gospel do not apply; that, as "what the law says, it says to them that are under the law," so what the Bible anywhere says, it says to them that are under the Bible, and can understand its elementary and fundamental teachings; that dying infants not belonging to this class are in God's hands; and that, as he sees good to take them away from the ordinary lot of sinful men, so he probably takes them to that bosom of mercy, to that freeness of pardon for Christ's sake, to which the actual transgressor can be admitted in no other way than that fully prescribed in the gospel. This leads to bright and blessed views of their future lot; views full of the sunlight of hope, and rich with the blessedness of anticipated glory, to all whom God, in his chastening goodness, is pleased to beckon away ere the stain of actual sin has rested on their spirits. If they can not have, neither do they need, that specifically renewing and sanctifying change which God demands of all others. If they do not live to receive that gift of a renewed mind which Christ came to bestow, neither do they live to feel that voluntary breaking out of the disease of sin, the workings of which Christ came to destroy. Through Christ's sacrifice, the fact of original sin is, it may be believed, forgiven them; through God's intervention, the stain of actual sin is not contracted. The pains of temporal death come upon them, not in punishment of voluntary guilt, but as that only part of the original penalty which follows involuntary infection. In them, Adam still dies for his first offense. In them, Christ now lives, through his satisfying obedience. The first Adam plunged them into the peril of original sin. The second Adam travailed for them in bloody pain, and delivered them out of their peril. The former left them to a state of misery, as the inevitable consequence of introducing sin into the world. The latter wins them to a life of blessedness, as part of his promised reward for becoming a sacrifice for sin. J. S. S. 1. WHAT shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. 8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. 15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. THE rich contents of this chapter may be summed up in this single proposition: the believing Christian can not possibly be a minister of sin. The true Christian can not live in sin, because the love of sin is destroyed in his heart since he really entered into fellowship with Him who died through sin and for it, that we might live through Him. The courage to strive against sin is enkindled by the union of faith with Christ; this faith awakens love to the Lord Jesus, and it is impossible that love and sin should permanently subsist together. Nay, through this courage is procured strength to obtain the victory, since he is indissolubly united, not merely with the dead, but also with the risen Christ: the spirit of life is in the Christian; and wherever He dwells and works, he must necessarily manifest himself as a purifying fire, consuming all unrighteousness. We may go yet a step further, and maintain that the true Christian will not serve sin, just because he feels himself free and happy under the dominion of grace. Experience testifies that the stumbling of true believers is really something different from the iniquity of the wholly unregenerate; the last live in sin, the first feel with deep pain that sin yet lives in them, and the history of centuries shows that the power of sin is most thoroughly broken by living faith and free grace where these have subjugated the life. Van O. Our bodies—our natural bodies—will die alike in all of us. This is one death; but besides this shall all die another, the death of our sins or the death of our souls. Remember that one of these two deaths, both painful, we must die, every one of us. Which shall it be then? Shall it be the death of our sin or the death of our soul? The death whose pain comes at first most, yet even then, by Christ's grace, it is endurable; but afterward the suffering and the struggle lessen, and there comes the rest of death, and the vigor and the freshness and the glory of that divine and eternal life which the death of our sins has given birth to; or shall it be the death whose first strokes are silent and painless, which pours in its poison and we feel it not—more and more triumphant, and we more and more insensible; till behold, its work is accomplished, and then the agony is neither to be uttered nor conceived, and Christ is gone from us for ever, and life and death are become one for our destruction; a death of all good, a life of all evil. T. A. 1-23. There are two aspects in which the religion of Christ may be viewed, and we should never magnify the one at the expense of the other—as a Principle of Life and Happiness, and as a Principle of Subjection and Obedience—life that quickens obedience, obedience that manifests life—life that makes obedience delightful, obedience that makes life visible and practical. In the sixth chapter, you will find this representation a clew to the involutions of its rapid eloquence. This chapter is composed of the answers to two objections, and the objections and their respective answers (so often hastily confounded) are specially directed to special and distinct views of the gospel. The former objection speaks of life, and it is answered out of the nature and characteristics of spiritual life and death; the latter objection speaks of subjection, and it is appropriately answered by citing the characters and contrast of the sinful and the righteous service. The one asks (v. 1), Shall we abide—or “live” (v. 2) in sin, that grace may abound? and the answer is that we are dead to sin, that the old nature is crucified (v. 6), and that therefore it is unnatural, in the nature of things incompatible, that we should live to it. This death to sin is declared to be publicly solemnized in the expressive rite of baptism; and in it, as well as in the resurrection that follows it, we are declared to be copyists and partakers of Christ—“baptized into him,” into his death, his resurrection, and his eternal life (vs. 3-11). The consequence drawn from this (vs. 12-14) is that sin should not “have dominion over us,” that it should not be suffered any longer to intrude its foreign tyranny upon the purchased possession of God: and this forms the transition to the topic of the second objection, which turns upon the cardinal idea of subjection, and asks, “Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?” The course of animated appeal that replies to this interrogatory (vs. 16-20) is fitted to it with exact and exclusive propriety. We are declared to be no longer “the servants of sin,” but “the servants of righteousness”; that, whereas in the bitter bondage of nature and the law men were “free from righteousness” (v. 20), they are under the dispensation of grace “free” (or rather freed)—emancipated—from sin, and formally articled to that holy servitude of godliness and love, whose “gift is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v. 23). Having thus concluded his double course of illustrative exposition, Paul passes (v. 21) to a further consideration, which results from both, and manifestly is framed to allude to both. He speaks of “the fruits,” or consequences, of the ways of nature and grace; and to each he applies the notions, before so copiously treated, of service and of life. Now, the “fruit” of bondage is properly its “wages,” the fruit of God's service is “a gift.” And therefore it is that, binding the whole argument and all its topics—life and freedom—death and bondage, and the fruits of each—into one summary, he declares that, “being freed from sin, and servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life; for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” W. A. B. 3. His argument is briefly this: The abounding of grace in the free pardon of sin by Jesus Christ neither encourages nor tolerates sin, because, in accepting by faith that covenant of grace which is sealed in baptism, we come under the most solemn obligations to abstain from all sin; while at the same time, if we are not hypocrites, we have that inward principle of the new life which the Spirit quickens in us through the truth, and which ultimately works the utter death of all sin in our natures. So far, therefore, as his language in the third verse is concerned, there is no need of seeking for anything more, or for anything else, than the idea intimated in the paraphrase, that “as many as are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ are baptized with a profession of that inward renewing which makes us dead unto sin, even as Christ once died for sin.” J. S. S.—Christians are here said to be baptized, as in another Epistle they are said to be circumcised, by their union to Christ (Col. 2: 11). As the one expression describes a state of mind, represented by an outward act, but never produced by it, so does the other. Both ceremonies were useful, as other means of religious instruction, and other ways of religious profession; but that they had any peculiar power to change the spiritual condition of men, is nowhere taught in the Bible. This is now universally admitted of circumcision, and it is equally true of water-baptism. 4. Buried. The resemblance of the Christian to his Lord, which is here described, must be moral and spiritual, and not corporeal. As the death referred to is a state of mind, and the crucifixion which precedes death, and the life which follows, so must the burial be. It is nothing outward and formal. The mention of burial connects the death with the resurrection spoken of; and it shows more fully the separation of the Christian from the world. He is crucified, he dies, and he is buried. These are figurative representations of the spiritual state of all who have faith in Christ, and follow him. The same figure is repeated by the apostle in another Epistle, where they who have the circumcision of Christ are said to be buried with him in this baptism (Col. 2: 11). The interchange of these terms shows that both denote simply a spiritual purification and consecration. J. H. G.—The Spirit is not tied to baptism, but he may act out of the sacraments as well as in them. Understand this of the bare want of baptism, not of the contempt or willful neglect of it. How did the thief upon the cross enter into Paradise which Christ promised him? Without baptism. So that one may enter into heaven without baptism by water, though not without the baptism of the Spirit. Charnock. Walk in newness of life. Not by merely trying not to sin, but by entering farther and farther into the new life, in which, when it is completed, sin becomes impossible; not by merely weeding out wickedness, but by a new and supernatural cultivation of holiness, does the saint of the New Testament walk on the ever-ascending pathway of growing Christliness, and come at last perfectly to Christ. This is the true difference between law and grace; and the New Testament is the book of grace. Oh, that the richest, and livest, and most personal word in all the language did not sound so meager, dead, and formal! In its fundamental character the New Testament is a book not of prohibitions but of eager inspirations. P. B. 5. Literally, have become partakers by a vital union [as that of a graft with the tree into which it is grafted] of the representation of his death [in baptism]. The meaning appears to be, if we have shared the reality of his death, whereof we have undergone the likeness. C.—6. In our inward renewal, professed and sealed in baptism, our old man is crucified with Christ for the very purpose that henceforth we should not serve sin. 7. For he who has thus died to sin is Christ’s free man, and no longer a slave to sin. 8,9. The sense of the passage is as follows: “If, as we profess at baptism, we be really ‘dead with Christ,’ really penitent for sin, thoroughly determined to renounce it, and inwardly deadened to its power, ‘we believe we shall also live with him’; shall continue to cherish and cultivate and enjoy the spiritual life which our repentance and faith imply; and not only so, but shall ultimately rise, like Christ, from the dead, and live with him for evermore. ‘As death hath no more dominion over him,’ so shall it have no more over us, either in the tyranny of sin in this life, or in the abiding power of the grave over us, when this life shall have ended.” It is probable that, at baptism, the early converts to Christ professed their faith in the great doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, based on the FACT of the resurrection of Christ. J. S. S. Faith looks so steadfastly on its suffering Saviour, that it makes the soul like him, assimilates and conforms it to his death, as the apostle speaks. That which Papists fabulously say of some of their saints, that they received the impression of the wounds of Christ in their body, is true, in a spiritual sense, of the soul of every one that is indeed a saint and a believer. It takes the very print of his death, by beholding him, and dies to sin; and then takes that of his rising again, and lives to righteousness; as it applies it to justify, so to mortify, drawing virtue from it. Thus said one, “Christ aimed at this in all those sufferings that, with so much love, he went through; and shall I disappoint him, and not serve his end?” 10. He that is one with Christ by believing is one throughout in death and life. As Christ rose, so he that is dead to sin with him, through the power of his death, rises to that new life with him, through the power of his resurrection. And these two are our sanctification, which whosoever do partake of Christ and are found in him do certainly draw from him. All they that do really come to Jesus Christ come to him as their Saviour, to be clothed with him and made righteous by him; they come likewise to him as their Sanctifier, to be made new and holy by him, to die and live with him. 11. No sinner will be content to die to sin, if that were all; but if it be passing to a mere excellent life, then he gaineth, and it were a folly not to seek this death. It was a strange power of Plato's "Discourse of the Soul's Immortality," that moved a young man, upon reading it, to throw himself into the sea, that he might leap through it to that immortality. Were this life of God, this life to righteousness, and the excellency and delight of it, known, it would gain many minds to this death, whereby we step into it. L. 12,13. The real seat of sin is in the will, alienated from God, and set upon the gratification of self. The motives to sin, and its agents also, are the passions and desires of our lower nature—the flesh as acted upon by the enticements of the world. The senses and members of the body become the occasions and the instruments of unrighteousness. But, through yielding to these, the will itself becomes their slave; and the man who should rule the body and have dominion over the world by his spiritual nature, which is the image of God, subjects that nature to the body, and is ruled by the world, the flesh, and the devil. J. P. T.—The divine laws are the rule of duty to the entire man, and not to the soul only. And they are obeyed or violated by the soul and body in conjunction. The soul designs, the body executes; the senses are the open ports to admit temptations. Carnal affections deprave the soul, corrupt the mind and mislead it. The love of sin is founded in sensible pleasures: "And the members are the servants of iniquity." The heart is the fountain of profaneness, and the tongue expresses it. And the body is obsequious to the holy soul in doing or suffering for God, and denies its sensual appetites and satisfactions in compliance with reason and grace. The "members are the instruments of righteousness." Bates. Yield yourselves. The gospel binds us to the service of a God of truth and purity, and only in this way can its blessings be enjoyed. When we accept the gospel, we not only receive something from God, we give something to him. In the language of the apostle, "we yield ourselves unto God." Where this is forgotten altogether, where service is passed by, it is what the apostle terms "receiving the grace of God in vain," and where it is put into the background, it produces a weak, sinewless Christianity, which seeks a comfortable home for itself, and does small work for the cause of either God or man. Ker. 14. The believer is not still struggling, trying sorrowfully to get faith enough, any more than works enough, to be saved by. He is up on the heights of spiritual liberty, no longer under law, but in grace. He knows whom he has believed, and is assured that he is "saved already" in that he does believe—"passed from death unto life." And thus, being emancipated from the hindrance of self-interest, he obeys from love, brings his body more and more under, for the pure Master's sake, goes from grace to grace, and has "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." F. D. H. 15. Where, in the New Testament, can we find a single word that should lead us to suppose ourselves less debtors to the law, because Christ became our ransom? He pardons the criminal, he has paid the debt, but he does not abrogate the law. Nay, how he "magnified" it, by himself becoming a perfect example of obedience! R. Hill. 16. The living belief which has really been implanted in the soil of thought and feeling can not but bear its proper flower and fruit in the moral and intellectual life of a thoughtful and earnest man. H. P. L.—In all the articles comprised in the Creed, my belief is unclouded by doubt. Would to God that my faith, which works on the whole man, confirming and conforming, were but in just proportion to my belief—to the full acquiescence of my intellect, and the deep consent of my conscience! S. T. C.—Remember that so many waking hours as we have in every day, so many hours have we of sin or of holiness: every hour delivers in and must deliver its record; and everything so recorded is placed either on one side of the fatal line or on the other; it is charged to our great account of good or of evil. Yes, all that countless multitude of unremembered thoughts and words and deeds take their places distinctly, and swell the sum for condemnation or for glory. In themselves, like ciphers, there is a little figure to be placed before them which gives to them an infinite value; there is faith on the one hand to give them all a virtue for good, there is carelessness on the other hand to make them all count for evil. For whatsoever is not of faith is sin; but whatever is sanctified by a holy and careful general intention, is done, even though it be so common a thing as eating and drinking—is done to the glory of God, and therefore to our own salvation through Christ Jesus. T. A. 17-19. "But God be thanked that you, who were once the slaves of sin, have obeyed from your hearts the teaching whereby you were molded anew; and when you were freed from the slavery of sin you became the bondmen of righteousness. I speak the language of common life, to show the weakness of your fleshly nature (which must be in bondage either to the one or to the other)." C. 18. Sin itself is an element of discipline; and as for the affections enthralled by its despotism, they are sinful, not in themselves as affections, but in their depravation; they are meant to be, not the bond-slaves of evil, but the liberated “servants of righteousness”; they are born for eternity and for God! W. A. B. 19. The body has changed its master. It always serves, but instead of serving the mind it serves the flesh. Yes, the body serves the flesh, for the flesh and the body are not the same thing. They are often distinguished from each other in the gospel; and here Paul shows us the partisans of a fictitious holiness, treating the body with harshness for fear of flattering the flesh. The body or the members, which we ought, according to Paul’s expression, to make the servants of righteousness and holiness, are, under the orders of the flesh or animal principle, the servants of impurity and unrighteousness. The body, then, is a servant to be restored to its true master, who is the Spirit; but the true enemy of the Spirit is the flesh; and, accordingly, in the gospel it is not the body but the flesh which is condemned; for, as Paul says, it is with the flesh, not with the body, that we serve the law of sin (Rom. 7: 25). Jesus Christ, clothed mysteriously with this thoroughly and universally tainted flesh, has condemned sin in the flesh. A. V. 20. Much discourse and much ink hath been spilt upon the debate of free will, but truly all the liberty it hath, till the Son and his Spirit free it, is that miserable freedom the apostle speaks of here: While ye were servants to sin, ye were free from righteousness. And as we are naturally subject to the drudgery of sin, so we are condemned to the proper wages of sin, which the apostle tells us is death, according to the just sentence of the law. But our Lord Christ was anointed for this purpose, to set us free himself, both to work and to publish liberty, to proclaim liberty to captives, and the opening of the prison-doors to them that are bound. Having paid our complete ransom, he sends his word as the message and his Spirit to perform it, effectually to set us free, to let us know it, and to bring us out of prison. L. 21. God has not intrusted these sensitive souls to us to be experimented upon by a vain curiosity or a headstrong self-confidence. They are to be guarded at every point from all that blights and all that defiles. They are to be surrounded with blameless associations, with companions that act and speak no guile. Every hour while contamination is postponed, and corruption kept away, is so much saved for virtue. The powers of right in the soul are strengthening. Good habits are getting formed and confirmed. The currents of desire, of thought, and of emotion, are learning to run in fixed and lawful channels. F. D. H. The end is death. Not the dissolution of the body, not extinction of being, but that final separation from all that is holy and blessed; that hopeless abandonment to all that is evil and tormenting; that unutterable anguish of a mind in perpetual conflict with itself and with God, which constitute most truly the death of the soul; a death to be endured, not for a few years, not for a single century, not for thousands of ages, but for eternity. And shall not he, who beholds the sinner slumbering on the verge of perdition, warn him of his danger? Shall he be censured for preaching terror, and for attempting unduly to move the passions of his hearers, who tells them, in the language of inspiration, the end of these things is death, they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever? Tappan.— 23. The wages that sin bargains with the sinner are life, pleasure, and profit; but the wages it pays him are death, torment, and destruction. He that would understand the falsehood and deceit of sin must compare the promises and the payment together. R. S. Eternal life through Jesus Christ. Oh that we might feel our dear obligations to him who has “delivered us from the wrath to come,” and purchased for us a felicity perfect, and without end! How engaging is the love of Christ, who raised us to the bosom of God, the seat of happiness! Bates.—Undeterred by anticipated sorrows, undismayed by evils from which every other being in the universe would have shrunk, he gave himself to win the prize of life eternal for you—will he, think you, withhold, or be reluctant to bestow, that prize upon you now that his pains and toils are ended, now that he has only to speak the word, and it is yours? The salvation of your soul was an end so glorious, that he was willing to reach it though the way to it led through blood and darkness and death—can you entertain any doubt that he is willing to secure it now when nothing intervenes, when every difficulty has been overcome, when he has but to stretch out the hand of mercy, and the consummation of all his sufferings is attained? No, it can not be. It is impossible to exaggerate the certainty and freeness of that salvation that is in Christ for all who will but lay hold of it. It is impossible that anything in the universe can lie between you and eternal life, if you but accept it as “the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Caird. 1. Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath 2 dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is 3 bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is 4 loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married 5 to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free 6 from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. Where- 7 fore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should 8 be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth 9 fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the 10 law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered 11 from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of 12 spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. 13 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by 14 the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, 15 taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For 16 without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the com- 17 mandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to 18 life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, 19 and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and 20 good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it 21 might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the command- 22 ment might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am 23 carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; 24 but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law 25 that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I 26 know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with 27 me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do 28 not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no 29 more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do 30 good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I 31 see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into 32 captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall 33 deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So 34 then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. WHEN the divine law, as interpreted and applied by Christ, reaches to the very depths of man's consciousness of sin; when it sets before him its inviolable sanctity and its irreversible obligations; when it forces him against his will to test himself by its solemn and searching light; when it reveals the depths of his sin and guilt, far, far below the careless, worldly thoughts and feelings that usually engross and blind the soul; when sin by the commandment becomes exceedingly sinful, and is pictured in all its blackness upon the vivid, stainless background of the imperial rule of rectitude; and when this supernal light is flashed into all the recesses of the quivering and guilty soul with a brightness clearer than that of the noonday's radiance—then, then it is that man comes to know himself, to know himself as a sinner not only against a holy law, but also against a holy God—to know the terrible power of his depravity and guilt as clinging to the very roots of his being. H. B. S. When the aspiration after a purer, nobler life begins to rise within the breast, and the long-passive spirit rouses its energies to check the pride of evil, to force back and stay the current of unholy desire and passion; when the softening principle of divine love and grace begins to thaw the icy coldness of a godless heart, then it is that the soul becomes aware of the deadly strength of sin. Nor is it only in the first struggles of penitence that sin is revealed in its true character to the soul. With every increase of spirituality, whatever of evil remains in it becomes more repulsive to its keener sensibilities, more irksome to its aspiring energies. Faults and errors, unapparent or venial to its former consciousness, become in the higher stages of the spiritual life more and more odious; and in the purest and best actions more of evil is now discerned than formerly in the basest and worst. The quickened conscience feels the drag of sin at each successive step the more heavy; and as the believing spirit yearns with an intenser longing for the life of God, with a more indignant impatience does the cry break from the lip: "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Caird. PAUL's view of the Christian life, throughout the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters, is that it consists of a death and a resurrection; the new-made Christian dies to sin, to the world, to the flesh, and to the law; this death he undergoes at his first entrance into communion with Christ. But no sooner is he thus dead with Christ, than he rises with him; he is made partaker of Christ's resurrection; he is united to Christ's body; he lives in Christ, and to Christ; he is no longer "in the flesh," but "in the spirit." C. 1-6. The illustration obviously describes a great change—a dissolution of old connections and a formation of new ones; the government of the law and the espousal to Christ are manifestly contrasted, and the readers are pointedly warned of the duties that belong to that great and blessed engagement. Paul has established the two great characteristics of the new dispensation—the death to sin which heralds the life to righteousness, and the emancipation from sin which gives the Christian freedman to the service of his God. With both these great ideas—prominent and governing ideas in his view—he enters upon the passage under consideration. In reaching it, however, his mind passes through, and takes the tincture of, an important connecting notion, the notion of the "fruits," the results in heart and habits, of the dispensations of law and grace. In the fourth and fifth verses it is said that we are "to bring forth fruit unto God" instead of "bringing forth fruit unto death"; and this blessed result is declared to follow upon the espousal in the allegory, upon our being "married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead." This passage, then, confirms, repeats, all that has gone before; it does not alter its bearings or displace its relations. Like it, it speaks of a soul that once lived to sin and lived to bondage; like it, of a death which exalts the same soul to righteousness and to freedom. How then shall we dispose the personages of the allegory, to harmonize perfectly with itself and with all that precedes and follows it? Shall we not say that the Wife indeed, the subject of the mighty change, represents the Soul; that the deceased Husband, whose claim or power expires, symbolizes, not the Law, but the Principle of Sin to which the Law ministered, and to which so much of the preceding chapter describes the regenerate soul as "dead"—dead to sin because sin is dead? And when Paul describes the woman as "loosed from the law of the husband," "free from that law," and "answerably dead to the law," shall we not plainly perceive that "the law" in the parable is not represented by the dead husband, but by "the law of the husband," the matrimonial obligation, which kept the soul in bondage as long as sin was alive, but which ceases for ever when sin, the soul's gloomy consort and tyrant, has expired? Under this interpretation all is complete and consistent. The law, by the universal principle of law, has dominion over the woman, as it has over all, as long as life lasts. But with death the obligation terminates; over her that is mystically dead the condemning ing law looses its stern control. How then is this death produced? The second and third verses purposely tell us, with a view to preparing the way for the new connection that is to follow that mysterious death. It is itself a result or necessary accompaniment of the death of the husband. Here is the momentous peculiarity of this case: the husband is the principle of sin, and the death of sin in the soul is the death of the soul unto sin. In this way, conformably to the apostle's assumption in the first verse, the power of the law—that is, in the allegory, the old matrimonial bond—expires; in point of fact, by the simultaneous death of both the parties, but mainly (for this is the chief scope of the whole) by the death of the wife, as he had said above (so exquisitely harmonious is the management of the figure all through), "the one that is dead is freed from sin." Thus is she freed from the obligation of her miserable bondage; she is enfranchised by him who has slain her accursed companion; through his victorious sacrifice, she is "dead to the law by the body of Christ." The death of sin and unto sin liberates from the law and opens the way for the new and celestial union. The law bound the wretched soul in servitude to sin, for "the strength of sin is the law"—it gave sin its sinfulness and gave no power to escape it; nor could this terrible espousal to evil be broken in the nature of things and God's providential dispensation, except by that decease of sin, which left the soul correspondingly "dead to sin," "dead, then, to the law" (which can only govern the living), and free to form the new and sacred union. The main subject of the allegory, then, is not the death of the law, but the death of the soul to sin and the law; it is this which assimilates it to the reasoning it follows, and incorporates it in the mass and current of the apostle's discourse. The interpretation which considers the deceased husband to be the conquered principle of sin is strongly confirmed by the form of expression in the fifth verse; while the sixth verse furnishes a proof that the two great subjects of life and service were never out of the apostle's calculation through all this comparison, and hence as a proof how closely it is connected with the entire. Summing up the past discussion before he proceeds to a new one, he recalls again the two main characteristics of the gift of God which he had bound together in the illustration—the death to sin and the new service to Christ. "We are delivered from the law, that—namely, sin—being dead (or, 'we being dead to that') wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter." Surely this, a professed inference from the passage we have discussed, evidences that that passage itself must contain these elements; must embody in one forcible example the fundamental doctrines of the spiritual death to sin as the great initial step in the Christian course, and the fruits of obedience to God as the manifestation of the spiritual resurrection. 4. You are dead to the law as a sole covenant of life, for it is "the ministration of death"; you are dead to it as a principle of life, for “the letter killeth” and “the flesh profiteth nothing.” To this law you are “dead” in being dead to sin; you stand in the same relationship to it as those whom men call dead, but who indeed are “alive unto God”—who, “through the grave and gate of death,” have passed into another world and a higher form of existence. The law—solitary and terrible—was as such an element in the old world of sin and weakness; it was the curse suspended over the head that could not stir to escape it. All perfect indeed, for it was a copy of the mind of God; but dreadful to behold, for it was above the strength of man. It was the presence of Jehovah in a world unworthy of him; and it consumed where it shone. To this frowning and fearful avenger you are dead, “the body of Christ” has wrought this glorious decease, the lightnings of heaven have fallen on Calvary and expired there, and you can now triumph by death as He has done! W. A. B. 6. “We are delivered from the law, that we should serve in newness of the spirit, not in oldness of the letter.” The spiritual man acts, not from the thought of external command or of external denunciation. He is a law unto himself. The impulses and instincts of “the divine nature,” of which the saved are “partakers,” make duty a necessity, labor a delight, obedience a spontaneous service, conformity to the law a privilege and a joy! T. B. 7-11. He gives an actual experience of his own; he states what none can deny, and what finds an echo in the history of a thousand souls. “The law is NOT SIN”; far be the thought. Yet (not “nay,” which obscures and blunders the whole) so near is the law to being sin, that the law first introduced me to sin—first made me acquainted with it. But how? I was in the habit of coveting. I did it, unconscious of any fault. But the law came in, became heeded by me, with its voice, “Thou shalt not covet”; and my coveting started up into sin, became sinful to me, and in my esteem. And, as we are ever prone to enjoy that which is forbidden, sin thus got life and zest for me, and I indulged in all manner of coveting, just because stolen waters were sweet, and sin wrought upon my human perverseness. Before this forbidding voice spoke within me, before the commandment “came,” I lived; was alive and well; enjoyed a kind of innocence and free will of my own; but after this, not I, but sin in me, lived and wrought its will. And the very prohibition which was for life, by waking up the sense of sin and the desire for sin, killed me, set me lusting for that evil which is death, and slew my free will and my former peace and joy. Yet notice that it was not the commandment itself, but sin, the sinful principle in me, awakened into life by the commandment, that thus killed me: and the commandment only brought out that which was there before, but latent and dormant: brought it out for good, and for the behalf and the life of the better and worthier “I,” the “I” in conflict with sin, the complex man, the “I Paul” of the time present. A. 9-11. Paul himself rested contented with his pharisaism and outward righteousness, until, by a serious application of the rule, he found that to be a merit of death which he had formerly reckoned upon as a plea for life. Not until the law came with its spiritual power did Paul look upon himself as a doomed and devoted malefactor, thankful for the offered pardon of the gospel, and humbly acquiescing in its proposals, and its ways for his acceptance with God. T. M. Amiableness of natural character, correctness of moral deportment, strict integrity in our dealings with our fellow-men, are not the holiness which the law requires. In the believer these acts are the fruit of supreme love to God, entire submission of spirit to his sovereign authority, and apprehension of the beauty and blessedness of holiness. In the natural mind the very same acts are the fruit of self-love, desire of esteem, pride of character, self-righteousness. Hence these actions, good in themselves and wisely ordered for the preservation of the frame of society, are so far from being holiness in the eye of the heart-searching God, that they are often direct evidences of enmity to him, in those who perform them; and when the defects of all such obedience are exposed in the light of the holy law of God, the enmity will instantly discover itself. Goode. Law constantly keeps in advance of our performance, and yet condemns us for not keeping up with it. With the august and awful splendor of its purity, it frowns upon our pollution, shames our inconsistencies, threatens our guilt. The farther we go in complying with its demands, the keener our sense of its perfection grows; the higher the standard rises, the clearer the command sounds, and the more hopeless our self-disgust and our agony become. There is no satisfaction there. Just in proportion as we come consciously under law, and law alone, we are wretched. It is warning, and nothing but warning. Paul’s wondrous spiritual insight saw that; and so he says, in his energetic phrase, that sin comes by the law; the strength of sin is the law; when the commandment came, sin revived. That is, by the law, the rule of right, comes a knowledge of transgression. No law, no violation of law—and so no accusing conscience. And the more law, that is, the more clearly you see the command, the more sin. This is logical; and it is experimental. F. D. H. 12. The Christian hath now nothing to do with the law as it thundereth and burneth on Sinai, or as it bindeth the conscience to wrath and the displeasure of God for sin; for from its thus appearing he is freed by faith in Christ. Yet he is to have regard thereto, and is to count it holy, just, and good; which that he may do, he is always to remember that he who giveth it to us is merciful, gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. Bun. 13. In what we call the moral world there is an element which is absolutely, intrinsically, wholly, and always bad. Its very name is, with emphasis, EVIL; we call it also vice, depravity, wickedness, and, in Scriptural language, it is named SIX. It is the Divine Law, amply and spiritually apprehended, that must expose the malignity of sin—displaying the essential nature and principle of “that abominable thing” (to make the true devil stand confessed), while it names or defines, generally and in detail, the things that are sin—the practical forms which it takes in doing its mischief among the creatures of God. It is this law, clearly and solemnly manifested and apprehended, that exposes the true quality of sin—shows it to be exceedingly sinful—its own name being the worst word that could be found to express its quality. J. F. Sin is not something which has penetrated into our nature from the outside; it is not learned like a lesson of evil, nor caught like an infectious disease. It has its springs in the very sources of our being. It can not be torn up by the roots. It can not be treated by any medicine which discipline, or education, or example can supply. There is one power, and one only, which can lay hands on the enemy with whom we are contending; and that power is the power that first made the soul itself. He who stands as it were behind the secret fountains from which our being issues, he and he alone can deal with this awful disease by which we are all afflicted; he and he alone can attack sin in the very citadel of its dominion, and win the victory which we could never win. Our justification must come from him, and therefore must begin with that which he puts into us, that movement of the heart and conscience, which we call faith; and can not come from the regulation and discipline of our habits and our deeds, which is what is meant by works. The regulation of the deeds is excellent, but it is still absolutely and always subordinate. F. T. 15,16. Those sins shall never be a Christian’s bane that are now his greatest burden. It is not falling into the water, but lying in the water, that drowns. It is not falling into sin, but lying in sin, that destroys the soul. If sin and thy heart are two, Christ and thy heart are one. Brooks.—Every child of God knows that he is justified by faith only: and that true faith necessarily begets holiness and good works. Yet in the knowledge of this truth many a gracious soul goes to work quite at the wrong end, and thereby loses both the privilege and comfort of looking as a sinner directly at Christ. The Scripture exhortations show us more what we ought to be than what any attain to. But try the secret workings of thy heart. Dost thou consent unto the law that it is good? Is sin thy grief and burden; and though it prevail again and again, dost thou strive and pray against it? If such be the workings of the heart, be assured that it proceeds from the blowings of the sweet Spirit of grace upon thy garden; and though the fruits and blossoms may be blown off by the nipping blasts of sin and temptation, yet there is life in the root, which will surely sprout out again, and endure unto everlasting life. Hill. 19. The godly man hates the evil he possibly by temptation hath been drawn to do, and loves the good he is frustrated of, and, having intended, hath not attained to do. The sinner, who hath his denomination from sin as his course, hates the good which sometimes he is forced to do, and loves that sin which many times he does not, either wanting occasion and means so that he can not do it, or through the check of an enlightened conscience possibly dares not do; and though so bound up from the act, yet the habit, the natural inclination and desire in him, is still the same, the strength of his affection is carried to sin. So, in the weakest sincere Christian, there is that predominant sincerity and desire of holy walking, according to which he is called a righteous person: the Lord is pleased to give him that name and account him so, being upright in heart though often failing. L.—The Christian has within him both flesh and spirit, yet he is not a double-minded man; he is often led captive by the law of sin, yet it never gets dominion over him; he can not sin, yet he can do nothing without sin. He does nothing against his will, yet maintains he does what he would not. Bacon. 20. It is one great work of the Spirit of God to make us feel this distinctness between us and the evil which is in us. The good and the evil are no longer in a state of blind contradiction, but of distinct, self-conscious opposition. The renewed man knows that he has an adversary, but, for his comfort, he knows also that this adversary is not his very self, but another, so that, if he resist him, he will flee from him; he knows that the power which that other exercises over him is a usurpation, and that it will be a righteous thing for God to cast out him who obtained that power by fraud and violence. T. 21,22. Whoever he may be that is speaking, he says in one verse, “I would do good”; in another, “I delight in the law of God”; and surely these are expressions which never yet came with truth from unhallowed lips, that never could come from any but a renewed heart. Besides, this complaint itself marks the character of him who uttered it. It designates one hating sin in a very extraordinary degree, and striving against it with every power of his soul; and Paul himself was a man of this class. We infer, therefore, that the apostle is describing his own feelings in this passage, and consequently right feelings, exactly those feelings which in a world like this we should expect to find in a partially renewed mind. And he speaks here not merely as a Christian, but as a very experienced Christian; as one arrived at a state of rare maturity in grace, a state in which sin appears to the mind, as it appears to the divine mind, an intolerable evil, a thing so hateful that the very remains of it are not to be endured; they must be got rid of, at all events they must be controlled and counteracted, or the heart will break. And the holiest will be the most willing to take this view, and never so ready to look at it in this light as in their holiest hours. C. B.—Was not this Paul's malady, When I would do good, evil is present with me? But know once, that though thy duty is to eschew evil and do good, yet thy salvation is more surely founded than on thine own good. That perfection which answers justice and the law is not required of thee: Thou art to walk, not after the flesh, but after the spirit; but in so walking, whether in a low or high measure, still thy comfort lieth in this, that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, as the apostle begins the next chapter after his sad complaints. So then mourn with him and yet rejoice with him, and go on with courage as he did; still fighting the good fight of faith. L. It is not to be supposed that Christians ever have any experiences in this world that are wholly pure, entirely spiritual, without any mixture of what is natural and carnal. The beam of light, as it comes from the fountain of light upon our hearts, is pure, but as it is reflected thence it is mixed; the seed, as sent from heaven and planted in the heart, is pure, but as it springs up out of the heart, is impure; there is commonly a much greater mixture than persons for the most part seem to have any imagination of. Edwards. Grace and nature both act in a regenerate man, and both at once. Nature only acts in an unregenerate man. So that, though sin be directly contrary to the Christian's walk, and as regenerate he hates it and can not commit it, yet the old nature in a believer can never love holiness. Hence that continual, never-ceasing war in a child of God between flesh and Spirit, sin and grace, the law in the members and the law in the mind. The law of grace must finally triumph over the law of sin. During this desperate combat all the believer's confidence is in Christ, in whom he is always "complete," and in whom he has such a righteousness as neither the law, sin, death, hell, nor the grave can sully or find fault with. Paul did not talk about the remainder of indwelling sin: his complaints were of "a body of sin," a "law in his members warring against the law in his mind." I feel, by sad experience, that my own nature, which I carry about with me here below, is earthly and selfish; but I know, by infallible truth, that my own nature, which is in Christ, is perfectly pure and holy, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." A believer is imperfectly a new creature in himself: perfectly a new creature in Christ. Hill. 24,25. He complains of himself and he rejoices in Christ almost at the same instant. He is comforted in the very midst of his wretchedness. Nay, in one sense, he owes his comfort to his wretchedness. It sends him to his God. It brings him near that blessed Comforter, in whom is treasured up a ready and full relief for all his sorrows. Look on him as he stands alone, he is "of all men the most miserable"; view him as leaning on his beloved Lord, and there is not a being out of heaven so happy. "Sorrowful yet always rejoicing, having nothing and yet possessing all things," his whole life is a glorious paradox. "I thank God," he says, and says it often, and says it joyfully, "I thank God, through Jesus Christ my Lord. He has given me deliverance. Sin lives in me still, but he does not suffer it to reign." Turn then to the blameless Paul, to him of whom, after his conversion to God, the Holy Ghost hast not left on record one sin or one folly. What says his experience? It tells you that there may be conflict in a pardoned heart; and it tells you more—that there may be in that very heart, amidst all its conflicts, a sense of forgiveness, a triumphant assurance of pardon. It tells you that a man may groan under a sense of sin, and yet look on himself as an heir of glory. C. B. The Progress of Grace.—The awakened soul sees the evil of sin, the spirituality of the law, and the holiness of God. In these views he can behold nothing but wrath and condemnation before him. He resolves upon better obedience. The Spirit discovers to him more and more the law's spirituality. His very best actions fall short of its infinite demands: all he does, all he is, all he has, is tainted with sin. Then the Spirit shows him that the gospel looks for no goodness in the creature, and that it gives a free welcome to all sorts and degrees of sinners, without exception; that, as no holiness foreseen in him could move God to love him and give him his grace, so no sins in him could induce God to hate him and to deny him that grace. In proportion as these discoveries are made to him, all the objections which self-righteousness and unbelief can bring fall, like so many Dagons, before the mighty truth, that “Christ died for the ungodly.” From these views spring a sincere desire of obedience, hatred of sin as such, and desire and purpose to forsake it. Hill. them all hush, takes away the occasion of their working, and lays the soul at the foot of God. Bun.—With patience wait. Though we may not be responsible for moods, we are for the way in which we act under them. When all our endeavor fails, we are to fall back on hope, and when hope begins to faint, there is still left to us “quiet waiting.” So full of resources is the grace of God, that, as each lower deep of trouble opens, a new power in the Christian life can be created to meet it. “Quiet waiting” is that which, in other parts of the Bible, and especially in the New Testament, is termed patience. It is the part of hope to seek the future; it is the duty of patience to rest calmly in the present, and not to fret—to be satisfied to be where God appoints, and to suffer what God sends. It is fitly placed after hope, because it follows it in the natural course of an educated Christian life. Hope belongs to youth; patience is the lesson of maturity. Ker. 1. THERE is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk 2 not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus 3 hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and 4 for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in 5 us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because 7 the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither 8 indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in 9 the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man 10 have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead 11 because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead 12 shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, breth- 13 ren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. TAKE all the guilt of all who believe, past or present, the laver of Jesus’ blood avails to cleanse it away. God is satisfied for it. “There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” “Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Mic. 7: 19). The justification of the believer is not an imperfect work, so that he may be justified to-day and condemned again to-morrow: it varies not with the variations of his feelings: the work on the faith of which justification rests is a finished work; and, therefore, if once recognized as mine, it must eternally clear me from all possible charge. The fluctuations of faith will cause fluctuations in my enjoyment of Christ’s salvation; but the salvation itself is unchangeable. Satan may bring a charge of sin, and succeed in fixing it upon the conscience, through my indistinct apprehension of Christ’s sufficiency; but God brings no charge; and therefore the apostle proclaims that triumphant challenge, “It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?” Therefore, with the impossibility of condemnation of the believer, he declares the impossibility of separation from “the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Here, then, let the tempted Christian take his stand, and hold fast this vital truth, when a daily sense of his hated evil, yet warring in his members, oppresses him, and arrays God in terrors. Jesus has made an end of sin. When it is brought in penitential acknowledgment to the Cross of Christ, that blood, sprinkled upon the conscience, takes it all away. God remembers it no more. Goode. 1. Omit the clause “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” It has probably been interpolated here from verse 4. In sense, at first sight, it fits in well; here, as there, being a distinctive and correct statement of those in Christ to whom there is no condemnation; but on looking further, it clearly appears to be out of place here, since at present the assertion is general, respecting all those who are in Christ, and afterward the distinction is raised, and their true and spiritual character defined. A. No condemnation. At the blessed moment of justification, the sinner is at once admitted to the favor of God. He is accepted as righteous. The law is as fully satisfied with regard to him as if he had never sinned. The righteousness of Christ is now his righteousness. He can no more come into condemnation than Christ can come into condemnation. He is delivered from the guilt and penalty of all his sins. With regard to sins which he may hereafter commit, he is not indeed pardoned; because it would be incongruous to say that sins are pardoned before they are committed; but God has graciously accepted the righteousness of Christ even in respect to these, and in process of time pardon is dispensed. The effect of this grace is to remove all condemnation and all punishment. That sin which has been visited on the Surety will not be visited on us. The afflictions of this life are not legal pains, but fatherly trials and corrections. And death itself, being deprived of sin which is its sting, and the law which is its strength, is despoiled of all its punitive force. J. W. A. 2. There are three great forms of law, to which our immortal being bears an inevitable and eternal relation. These are, first, the Law of God for our government; second, the Law of Sin and Death in our depraved nature; third, the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. Under the first we are, as immortal beings, eternally responsible; under the second we are, if not redeemed by grace, eternally in bondage; under the third we are not in subjection naturally, but may, by divine grace, if we will, be brought beneath its blessed power, redeemed by it from sin for ever. Hath made me free. The work of grace shall conquer the work of depravity; the law of the Spirit of life in Christ shall set free the soul from the law of sin and death. Nothing else could do it, nothing external to the soul, nothing that did not work within the soul as a principle of life. By this new principle introduced, the man is set at liberty to serve God out of love, no longer bound in slavery to the law of sin and death in an evil nature. This is the great deliverance; this is freedom indeed. G. B. C. The spiritual and the vitally eternal are united in Scripture phraseology, whenever it has occasion to speak of the “law of the Spirit of life,” of that “Spirit” which “IS LIFE because of righteousness,” of that “spiritual-mindedness” which “IS LIFE” as well as “peace.” The more you rest upon these profound sayings, the more you will feel that they speak of some mystic intimacy of inward connection, which answers to all that we can conceive of an absolute unity of nature; and that, had we faculties to see these things, we might perceive that a deathless permanence belongs to the spiritual thing inherent in the regenerate mind, if it indeed evidence its genuineness by there abiding and fructifying through the earthly life. W. A. B. 3-5. The gospel is the heir of the law; it inherits what the law had prepared. The law, on its national and ceremonial side, had created a vast and closely woven system of ideas. These were wrought out and exhibited by it in forms according to the flesh—an elect nation, a miraculous history, a special covenant, a worldly sanctuary, a perpetual service, an anointed priesthood, a ceremonial sanctity, a scheme of sacrifice and atonement, a purchased possession, a holy city, a throne of David, a destiny of dominion. Were these ideas to be lost, and the language which expressed them to be dropped, when the gospel came? No! It was the heir of the law. The law had prepared these riches, and now bequeathed them to a successor able to unlock and to diffuse them. The gospel claimed them all, and developed in them a value unknown before. It asserted itself as the proper and predestined continuation of the covenant made of God with the fathers, the real and only fulfillment of all which was typified and prophesied; presenting the same ideas, which had been before embodied in the narrow but distinct limits of carnal forms, in their spiritual, universal, and eternal character. The body of types according to the flesh died with Christ, and with Christ it rose again a body of antitypes according to the Spirit. Those who were after the flesh could not recognize its identity; those who were after the Spirit felt and proclaimed it. T. D. B. There never was a better law than the moral law, nor was legislation ever attended with circumstances better fitted to secure the perfect love and obedience of men. But in that beautifully simple way in which the Bible relates the thoughts of God as of a man, this is spoken of as an experiment that failed, leading the law-giver to devise another expedient. In the words, For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, we have a striking confession of weakness even in the law of God, on account of strength superior to it in the stubbornness of the human heart. But the law of God still holds its place, only there is a gospel added to make the law efficacious; for the expedient resorted to, for the purpose of reaching the transgressor by the atonement, aims to reestablish the law of God as the rule of duty. N. A. 3. Condemned sin. As the crucifixion was not the whole of the sacrifice offered up by Christ for the sins of the world, but only its closing, perfecting act—as the whole of our Saviour’s life was one continual sacrifice for sin—so was it one continual warfare against sin, and victory over sin, and judgment against sin. Hare.—When Jesus came the Sun of Righteousness arose, darkness was scattered, and the light of God’s glory, reflected from the face of his Son, darted its rays through heaven, earth, and hell. The Cross became the center of universal attraction, displayed the perfections of Deity in singular and rare combination, and was the source at once of rapture to angels, of terror to the lost, and of hope to men. The death of Christ is without doubt the sublimest event in the annals of time or the records of eternity. And in what a light does it present the malignity of sin! What a commentary upon its intrinsic demerit and turpitude is furnished in the groans, agony, and anguish of the Son of God! In the Cross it is proclaimed, in living characters, to be the abominable thing which God hates. J. H. T. 4. The law of the Ten Commandments is still the rule of life to the believer. From the law, as a covenant, we are eternally delivered, through Christ. We may plead our title to heaven on the ground of our perfect fulfillment of its righteousness, inasmuch as Christ's fulfillment of it is imputed to us who believe. We may plead perfect exemption from its curse; for Christ has been "made a curse for us." As a means, therefore, of meriting life, we have nothing whatever to do with the terms of it. Eternal life is given us in Christ. But we are therefore "delivered from the law," "that the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us, who walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." The law of Christ is indeed a law of love; but still, this "new commandment" is the "old commandment which ye had from the beginning." Goode.—The apostle represents the same fact and the same truth which provides for the forgiveness of sin as the source and instrument of deliverance from its dominion. It reconciles to God, and it makes like him. It excites love to duty, and loyalty to law; it renders obedience possible and attractive; it supplies motives, aids, and facilities, grace to help and power to pursue, making work pleasant and service song. T. B. 5. The influence of education may develop in a beautiful symmetry the constitutional excellences. It may repress constitutional excesses and correct constitutional vices. It may cultivate the natural sentiments, refine the tastes, exalt and ennoble the temper and tone of the mind, give dignity and grace to the manners, light and authority to conscience, force and principle to character. It may inspire respect and reverence for the rites and solemnities of religion, form religious habits, and fill the breast with high religious veneration. But there are some things it can not do: it can not shed abroad the love of God in the heart, nor displace our natural enmity to God, nor bring the soul under the power of the Cross, nor diffuse through it the spirit of Jesus, nor teach it to live by faith, nor introduce into it any one of those fruits of the Holy Spirit, without which all virtue is reprobate, all religion a name or a delusion, and all check upon native depravity ineffectual and temporary. T. H. S. 6. For the spiritual being, man, the only real life is in goodness. Only so far as we share in the Father's goodness, are we partakers in his life. The measure of our being, as living souls, is precisely the measure of our excellence. In proportion as our actions are in harmony with divine laws, and our familiar frame of feeling with God's will, we live. Herein is the apostolic saying true, "To be spiritually minded is life." F. D. H. In verse 7, for "is not subject . . . neither indeed can be," substitute "doth not submit itself . . . neither indeed can it." A.—While we are saved by believing, yet believing is obeying. We accept Christ by renouncing sin, by subjecting our will to his will, by walking in his steps. The carnal mind, or, more exactly, carnal-mindedness—a state of mind in which the affections and aims are fixed upon the things of this world as the chief good—such love of the world is in opposition to the will of God, and can never be reconciled to the law of God. J. P. T.—The object of the gospel is both to pacify the sinner's conscience and to purify his heart, and what mars the one of these objects mars the other also. The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one, and by the love of what is good to expel the love of what is evil. Thus, the freer the gospel, the more sanctifying is the gospel; and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that he renders back again. On the tenure of "Do this and live," a spirit of fearfulness is sure to enter; and the jealousies of a legal bargain chase away all confidence from the intercourse between God and man; and the creature, striving to be square and even with his Creator, is, in fact, pursuing all the while his own selfishness, instead of God's glory; and, with all the conformities which he labors to accomplish, the soul of obedience is not there, the mind is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed, under such an economy, ever can be. T. C. 8. Cannot please God. The impossibility arises from the enmity. This is the real secret of man's inability for that which is good: it arises not from original constitution, defect of created capacity thereto, but is the deadly and unconquerable aversion of a corrupt heart from all that is spiritual and godly. So that this inability for good, real as it is, instead of being an excuse for man's wickedness, is of its very essence. Goode. 9. The Spirit of Christ. By his sacred signature we are appropriated to Christ, and visibly distinguished from the world. For though the secret and pure influences of the Spirit in the soul are only known to the person that feels them, yet his active inspirations are declarative of his presence and power in the outward conversation. Bates. The Holy Ghost lives in the soul under this dispensation as the Spirit of Christ; we are not to regard him in the mere simplicity of his infinite deity, but as sent forth by the God and man, Christ Jesus, as his; nor is the abiding presence of this holy principle less essentially divine because bestowed and operative under special conditions and a special aspect. On this account he is perpetually described by titles which impress how truly his function is transmissory of perfections that dwell in Christ, and are ours only because his. The Spirit is the “Spirit of the Son,” the “Spirit of Jesus Christ.” W. A. B. Christ is eminently present with us by the presence of his Spirit. He is with us invisibly, but as truly as he was in the streets of Jerusalem or on the shores of the lake of Galilee; and the children of the Spirit see him, contemplate him, cling to him, as did the disciples of old. H. P. L.—No rich, nor beautiful, nor accepted life can be lived by us, except Christ be its inspiration. Hope will not reach up to immortality, except it climb by the Cross. Let not your lives be dead shapes of outward decency—the carved and gilded wood of an ark and a tabernacle deserted by the Spirit—but vital branches, filled with leaping and vigorous currents of holy feeling, on the living vine! “For if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” F. D. H. 10. If Christ is in us, a great part of our original nature with which we were born must be dead. He uses the expressions, dead unto sin, being crucified with Christ, the body must be dead because of sin, and the like, in order to show us that what he means is very great; that he speaks of a great change in us, a change not to be wrought in an instant, nor by any means to be effected without our feeling it, like the various processes of our bodily growth and nourishment, which go on unconsciously within us. T. A.—The Spirit is life. God the Holy Ghost calls us, regenerates us, and sanctifies us in Christ. Christ is his call; Christ is his light; Christ is his justifying sentence. It is in Christ that he creates us as new creatures. He glorifies Christ in our life, and brings us, for the strengthening of our faith, ever deeper into the life with Christ. A. C. 11. The regeneration of the soul in this life, and that of the body in the life to come, are both expressly said to make us “the sons of God,” because the one only completes and consummates the other. And hence it is that Paul in the one supernatural gift finds the source of both the blessings. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” The Spirit which gives the adoption here is the germ of the Spirit which gives the resurrection hereafter; and the resurrection itself is but the adoption made visible in glory. W. A. B.—The glorious, corporeal life like our Lord’s, which is promised for heaven, is great and wonderful, but it is only the issue and last result of the far greater change in the spiritual nature which by faith and love begins here. It is good to be clothed with the immortal vesture of the resurrection, and in that to be like Christ. It is better to be like him in our hearts. His true image is that we should feel as he does, should think as he does, should will as he does; that we should have the same sympathies, the same loves, the same attitude toward God, and the same attitude toward men. It is that his heart and ours should beat in full accord, as with one pulse, and possessing one life. Wherever there is the beginning of that oneness and likeness of spirit, all the rest will come in due time. As the spirit, so the body. The whole nature must be transformed and made like Christ’s, and the process will not stop till that be accomplished in all who love him. A. M. 12. Get thou thy soul possessed with the Spirit of the Son, and believe thou art perfectly set free by him from whatsoever thou by sin hast deserved at the hand of revenging justice. This doctrine unlooseth thy hands, takes off thy yoke, and lets thee go upright; this doctrine puts spiritual and heavenly inclinations into thy soul, and the faith of this truth doth show thee that God hath so surprised thee and gone beyond thee with his blessed and everlasting love that thou canst not but reckon thyself his debtor for ever. “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.” Bun. 13. Spiritual quiet is promoted by the mortification of sin. Sin is the sole cause of all the discord, perturbation, and misery in the universe. The Holy Spirit begins at regeneration a work which is to end in extirpation of all sin. If you catalogue the causes of your discontent, your restlessness, your excitement, your feverish fretfulness, you will find the names to be such as these: Pride, Hate, Envy, Revenge, Anger, Lust, Covetousness, Fear, Inordinate Affection. Till these caged wild beasts are driven out of the soul, there can be no quietness: sanctification drives them out. Therefore, the more a man advances in piety, the more his inward tranquillity ought to increase. The day grows calmer as the sun draws near its setting. J. W. A. 14. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have 15 not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adop- 16 tion, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that 17 we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with 18 Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I 19 reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory 20 which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the 21 manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not will- 22 ingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature 23 itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 24 children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 25 together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of 26 the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the 27 redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: 28 for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then 29 do we with patience wait for it. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we 30 know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession 31 for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth 32 what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to 33 the will of God. UNLESS we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in his mercy and his power, Christ is nothing to us. Ceremonies are nothing, notions are nothing, beliefs are nothing, formal participation in worship is nothing. Christ is everything to him that trusts him. You can begin upon the low step on which you can put your foot, the humble act of faith, and can climb up. If faith, then new birth; if new birth, then sonship; if sonship, then "an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ." But if you have not got your foot upon the lowest round of the ladder, you will never come within sight of the blessed face of Him who stands at the top of it, and who looks down to you at this moment, saying to you, "My child, will thou not cry unto me, 'Abba, Father'?" A. M. A profound Christian truth may be clothed in the language of a heathen proverb: "A divine spirit is within us who treats us as he is treated by us." We may offer our supplications, with no penetrat- ing sense of the necessity of supernatural aid. There may be no childlike consciousness of infirmity which should lead us to cry out for help. The inspired words, often on our lips, may seldom come from the depth of our hearts: "We know not what we should pray for as we ought." We make prayer itself one of the standard subjects of prayer; yet on what theme do our devotions more frequently degenerate into routine than on this? Have we a sense of indigence when we ask for the indwelling of God in our souls? Have we such a sense of need of it, as we have of the need of air when we are gasping with faintness? It is the law of divine blessing that want comes before wealth, hunger before a feast. We must experience the necessity in order to appreciate the reality. A. P. 14. Led by the Spirit. The term here em- ployed refers to an even, constant, unbroken force, acting not less powerfully on the mind because it acts gently and steadily: the leading of a Spirit who abides always at his gracious work on the heart, and does not come and go. Those who are so led, and are willing, in the yielding up and surrender of their hearts, to be so led by this faithful Spirit of God, are called by the noblest of all titles, and share the most exalted of all honors. "They are the sons of God." F. D. H.—What vaunt of faith more sub- lime and beautiful than that which is here expressed? and what privilege on earth can be named at the same time as that of being guided by the Spirit of God, and of being in truth his children? Van O. 15. Abba. The Syriac term for father, the in- sertion of which here beautifully represents the union of Jewish and Gentile believers in their devo- tions, which were dictated by a filial spirit. D.— Father. The sense of fatherhood, which is in the Christian's heart and becomes his cry, comes from God's Spirit. This passage and that in the Epistle to the Galatians, which is almost parallel, put this truth very forcibly when taken in connection. "Ye have received," says the text before us, "the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." The variation in the Epistle to the Galatians is this: "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying (the Spirit crying), Abba, Father." So, in the one text, the cry is regarded as the voice of the believing heart; and in the other the same cry is regarded as the voice of God's Spirit. Every Christian may be sure of this, that, howsoever feeble may be the thought and conviction in his heart of God's fatherhood, he did not work it, he received it only, cherished it, thought of it, watched over it, was careful not to quench it; but in origin it was God's, and it is now and ever the voice of the divine Spirit in the child's heart. A. M.—To call God Father was rare among the saints in Old Testament times; but now, in New Testament times, he is called by no name so often as this. The Lord Jesus first made this name common among the saints, and taught them in their discourses, their prayers, and their writings, so much to use it. By this name we are made to understand that all our mercies are of God, and that we, who are his children by adoption, may take more boldness to pray for great things. I have often found that, when I can say but this word, Father, it doth me more good than when I call him by any other Scripture name. Bun.—A father's love, not content in securing the good of its object, looks for a warm return of the same personal fondness. Is a father satisfied in providing a fortune for his children, and in sending them well abroad, just as a legal guardian might do? A father must have a reciprocity of love or he is not happy. The heart of a father yearns to receive, every day, the undoubted expressions of filial affection. Is then God our Father? The gospel declares it as a fundamental truth; and it shows that this language of sacred affection is to be understood, not in a sense lowered and vague as compared with that which it bears in its ordinary acceptance, but in a sense of incalculably greater intensity and depth. I. T. 18. When the child of God is led to prayer, to the Scriptures, and to Christ—when these become the necessaries of his life and soul—then the Holy Spirit bears witness to his adoption. A. C.—The witness of the Spirit is far from being any immediate suggestion or revelation; but that gracious effect of the Spirit of God in the hearts of saints: the disposition and temper of children appearing in a sweet, childlike love of God which casts out fear or the spirit of the slave. The Spirit of God gives the evidence by infusing and shedding abroad the love of God, the spirit of the child in the heart, and our spirit receives and declares this evidence for our rejoicing. Edwards.—The heart with its love, the head with its understanding, the conscience with its quick response to the law of duty, the will with its resolutions—these are all, as sanctified by Him, the witness of his Spirit; and the life with its strenuous obedience, with its struggles against sin and temptation, with its patient persistence in the quiet path of ordinary duty, as well as with the times when it rises into heroic stature of resignation or allegiance, the martyrdom of death and the martyrdom of life, this too is all (in so far as it is pure and right) the work of that same Spirit. The test of the inward conviction is the outward life; and they that have the witness of the Spirit within them have the light of their life lit by the Spirit of God, whereby they may read the handwriting on the heart, and be sure that it is God's and not their own! 17. Given, the sonship—if it is to be worked out into power and beauty, there must be suffering with Christ. But, unless there be sonship, there is no possibility of inheriting God; discipline and suffering will be of no use at all. A. M.—Along with the dark hours, the days of heavy sorrow, comes the Holy Spirit, whom the Saviour promised to send, and lifts up man's downeast eyes from temporal things to eternal; he raises the fearing heart to prayer, and intercedes for it with unutterable groanings; he purifies, comforts, strengthens it; and through the dark clouds of affliction which surround us, he shows the bright form of the Saviour. Thus in our afflictions is Christ glorified in us by the Holy Spirit. The word of life, which we had so often disregarded or misunderstood, comes suddenly before our soul with wonderful clearness; and the sorrowing heart finds therein, what the glad heart did not seek, a sacred, inexhaustible fountain of life, and that rich, heavenly consolation which this world can not give. Thus, in proportion as a man's temporal life grows dark, his eternal life brightens: through painful experience and bitter grief the Spirit leads him to Him who cries, "Come to me." And he who in his hour of need has once received grace for grace from the Lord's fullness, can not turn away from Him again: he can not but cleave more and more closely to him, and receive his divine life into himself. For he has lost what was perishable, and has gained what is imperishable. His lot is the highest that can befall a man: Jesus Christ is glorified in him. Hossbach. Together. There are seven togethers in Scripture which show the wondrous identification of the Lord Jesus Christ with believers. They indicate the everlasting purpose of God in our redemption, and his plan in effecting that purpose. It is affirmed of us by the Spirit, in the word, that we are crucified together with Christ; quickened together with Christ; raised together with Christ; seated together with Christ in heavenly places; sufferers together with Christ; heirs together with Christ; and that we are to be glorified together with Christ. These seven togethers are seven links of a chain which binds us indissolubly to Christ. An. 19-23. The expression “in hope” should be taken from the end of the twentieth verse and placed at the commencement of the twenty-first; the conjunction should be translated “that” instead of “because”; and the twenty-first verse, connected with the nineteenth, allowing for the intervening parenthesis, would thus read: “The earnest expectation of the creature looketh for the revelation of the sons of God, in hope that the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption,” i. e., death; to which the apostle afterward opposes “the redemption of the body,” or the resurrection into the glorious liberty of the children of God. “For we know that the whole creation,” or every rational creature, “groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they,” i. e., the whole heathen world, “but ourselves,” the believers in the gospel of Christ, “who have received the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, namely, the redemption of our body”—the resurrection, and consequent full revelation, of our dignity and immortal glory as the sons of God. Such is the meaning of this passage, in which the apostle, to give importance to the subject of future glory, represents it as the object of longing desire to the whole rational creation, the various tribes of which are exhibited as lifting up their heads from beneath the bondage of misery and death, and directing an exploring eye and eager hope toward IMMORTALITY, as that alone which could relieve their sorrows and satisfy their desires. They knew not with certainty that there was such a state; their notions were obscure and fluctuating; it was rather a wish than a belief: but it was that which they may be truly said to have groaned after, as what alone could compensate for the sorrows and the brevity of human life. This most striking and beautiful passage has no reference to the brute creation, as groaning under the effects of man’s sin, and from which they will be delivered by a resurrection; no reference to any physical change to be produced during the millennium in the material world, now by a bold figure represented as burdened and pained by human guilt; for what has this to do with the context, or with the design of the apostle, which is to comfort believers under the sufferings of this mortal state? but it relates to that glory, honor, and eternal life, which God has promised to them that love him. J. A. J. 19. By the “manifestation of the sons of God” is meant their being arrayed in the glory of their Lord and Saviour, in the presence of the universe. It is not merely the inherent glory of their perfected humanity; nor the glory of their final triumph over death and hell; nor the glory of the bright abode and the blessed fellowship into which they will have been introduced; but with, and above all these glories, the yet more effulgent glory reflected upon them from their glorified Head and Prince, himself “the brightness of the Father’s glory.” This is to be their “manifestation.” H. A. B. 21. The glorious liberty.** It should be “the liberty of the glory of the children of God”: that liberty which belongs to the state of glorification of God’s children. A.—This is the liberty wherewith the Son makes free. Liberty indeed, measured and regulated by the royal law of liberty, and which is perfected only in a perfect conformity thereto. There is a most servile liberty, a being free from righteousness, which under that specious name and show enslaves a man to corruption; and there is a free service, by which a man is still the more free by how much the more he serves and is subject to his superior’s will, and by how much the less possible it is he should swerve therefrom. The nearest approaches therefore of the soul to God, its most intimate union with him and entire subjection to him in its glorified state, makes its liberty consummate. Now is its deliverance complete; it is under no restraints, oppressed by no weights; it hath the free exercise of all its powers; hath every faculty and affection at command. How unconceivable a pleasure is this! Howe. 23. We wait for the adoption, that is, the redemption of the body. When we shall see Jesus as he is and be like him, when, delivered from the body of sin and death, as the children of the resurrection changed into the likeness of the transfigured Saviour, we shall know as we are known; and in perfect union and communion with the head and all the saints shall evermore serve him. A. S. 24. Saved by hope.** Returning is not the act of a despairing but hoping soul. It is God apprehended as reconcilable that attracts and wins it. This presently draws the hovering soul into a closure and league with him. And thus is the union continued. Howe.—Sincere faith is in reality full of hope. The individual who firmly believes that the blood of the new covenant has been shed for him can not deny to himself the faithfulness of God. And if sometimes the ineffaceable conviction of his own unworthiness, the consideration of that law of the flesh in his members which fights against the law of the spirit, may for a moment obscure his hope, these very things make him recur with redoubled fervor to him who, finding nothing in us to make us acceptable in his sight, has been willing to save us through the faith which he has given. A. V. 25. There are several infirmities that can not be mastered, if hope be not in exercise, especially if the soul be in great and sore trials. There is peevishness and impatience, there is fear and doubting and misconstruing of God’s present hand; and all these become masters, if hope be not stirring; nor can any grace besides put a stop to their tumultuous raging in the soul. But hope in God makes 26. For “infirmities,” read “infirmity,” or “weakness.” The meaning is not here, that the Spirit helps our infirmities, generally; but that he helps in this particular point our weakness, our inability to wait with patience for that which we hope for. A.—The promise of the Father—the culminating gift of the Lord Jesus glorified—the highest of all divine manifestations, he by whom the Father and the Son take up their abode in us—is the Spirit of grace and supplication. In our most languid condition, when the soul cleaves to the dust, he maketh intercession for us, and God knoweth the mind of the Spirit in our sighs and groaning. Conscious of our ignorance and of our utter weakness, we change our very helplessness into a source of comfort; for the Spirit of all knowledge, power, and love is within us—our Paraclete. A. S.—We scarcely utter hyperbole in saying that prayer is the divine mind communing with itself, through finite wants, through the woes of helplessness, through the clinging instincts of weakness. On this side of the judgment, no other conception of the presence of God is so profound as that which is realized in our souls every time we offer a genuine prayer. God is then not only with us, but within us. A. P. If we are perplexed in our prayers, not knowing what to say, ill able to read our own heart’s desire truly; yet if we are really wishing for God’s help, then that vague and indistinct desire for help has one who purifies it, and presents it before God; and if we feel beset with the perplexity of our condition, and find no word of utterance, yet the Spirit of God speaks for us in our very silence, and intercedes for us acceptably. T. A.—Let prayer rest in the intercession of Jesus and in the sighing of the Holy Spirit. The intercession of Jesus rests in the power of his atoning blood. The intercession of the Holy Spirit has its ground in Christ. A. C.—As it is the office of Christ to intercede for us with God, so it is the office of the Holy Ghost to make those intercessions in us which we put up to God. Caryl. 27. The work of the Spirit is in exciting the heart at times of prayer to break forth in ardent desires to God, whatsoever the words be, whether new or old, yea, possibly without words; and then most powerful when it words it least, but vents in sighs and groans that can not be expressed. Our Lord understands the language of these perfectly, and likes it best; he knows and approves the meaning of his own Spirit; he looks not to the outward appearance, the shell of words, as men do. L. 28. AND we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them 29 who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did pre- 30 destinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among 30 many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he 31 called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall 32 we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not 33 his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us 33 all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. 34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is 35 even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate 36 us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or 36 nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day 37 long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more 38 than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. In the experience of the apostle Paul, every child of God will find a description of his own, and also abundant encouragement, guidance, and consolation. Here is a man in Christ Jesus. There is now no condemnation to him. Sin has been judged, condemned, and put away. The Spirit of Christ dwells in him. He is not in the flesh, but the flesh is still in him. He has to mortify the deeds of the body; it is a painful and daily struggle. Besides, he is in manifold afflictions. He is living in a world of suffering. The very creation even groans by reason of bondage. He also groans within himself, waiting for the redemption of the body. This justified one, inhabited by the Spirit, is thus saved only in hope. He has still the conflict with sin amid the afflictions of this time, and he has to possess his soul in patience. Thus he draws nigh to God. But there he feels his weakness. His infirmities overwhelm him. He knows not what to pray for as he ought. Full of want, he is silent. But the Spirit of God helps him. He creates within him deep and believing longings after the eternal blessings, too deep for utterance, but not too great for the Father's response. And now he has reached the highest point. He sees God for us. God loved us from all eternity, and called us according to his promise. All things must work together for good. Beholding this God as he gave up his own Son, he triumphantly asks, "Shall he not with him freely give us all things?" Afflictions and sufferings abound; but in overcoming them we are more than conquerors: not exhausted but invigorated after victory, and perfect in our peace. Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus! Love of God in Christ Jesus! It continues sounding in our hearts as when silver bells have ceased ringing. Love of God in Christ Jesus! A. S. 28-31. Whom God "forechose," them he predestinated to be conformed to Christ, and in order to the accomplishment of that purpose, he "calls" them. We have the full account of "the called according to his purpose," in the twenty-eighth verse. And now the apostle proceeds to show how that image of Christ in them is brought about. "Whom he calls, them he also justifies." These sins that so burden their souls are taken away by the blood of the Lamb having atoned for, and thereby "blotted them out." And the obedience of the "Lord our righteousness" becomes the sinner's obedience, so soon as hearing the call he accepts it, and by faith is in "Christ Jesus," represented both in His act of obedience and of atonement. And meantime the Holy Spirit, who has made the call effectual, and imparted the new life to the dead soul whereby it puts forth this living act of faith, carries on his work of conforming it more and more to the image of Christ, until with death the body of sin drops off and the spirit becomes like Jesus and sees him as he is—thus "Whom he justifies he also glorifies." Now we can see the power and beauty of the apostle's logic—sorrows and affliction can not do other than good to them that are called under such a purpose of grace. For since God hath such an end in view for them, all things that occur, however afflictive now, must work together to that great end—the glory which shall follow. And we are prepared to accept his triumphant conclusion, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" Then spend not your energies in trying to penetrate the dark cloud that hovers around the lofty summit of this theology, and shrouds from mental view the secret purposes of God. Behold the golden link of the pendent chain that gleams here along the level of time—this call of the gospel. Seize hold of that, here and now, that you may be drawn up—justified—to be eternally glorified! S. R. 28. We know. It is not merely a devout wish and hope, but a certain conviction. God comforts with realities. The Spirit reveals things freely given to us of God, and then the soul responds, I believe; or, I know; for faith substantiates the unseen. Faith is the most absolute and certain knowledge. Join, oh sorrowful and doubting believers who love God, the great company of your fellow-sufferers, and say, We know! Hear the apostle Paul. Who ever suffered more? and yet there is no hesitation in his voice. A. S.—Work together.** The bosom of Providence is the great moral crucible in which things work, in which they work together. They assimilate, repel, interpenetrate, change each other; and then leave, as moral result, one grand influence in the main for each character, for each man. The innumerable things that mingle in that crucible, if taken separately, would be seen working to separate and diverse results; as, indeed, they still do in a measure, within the sphere of the all-commanding influence. But the one master influence now rules the whole process, and so combines the specific elements as to perpetuate and increase its own sway. “All things work together,” not in an aimless and capricious manner, for this end and for that, now in one way and now in another, as though a stream should one day flow seaward, and the next back toward its fountain among the hills, but in one volume, along one channel, in one direction, toward one end. A. R.—Things work together for good, it is said; and work implies time, and a lengthened process, trial and waiting, till, like the harvest from the ground, or the cloth from the loom, the long operation is perfected. To judge hastily of God’s dealings, ere his purposes are wrought out, would be like threshing a half-grown wheat-field, and being disappointed at finding no grain. Things now may seem very much against us; disaster may have met all our plans, and they may lie in the dust, though we made them with prayer for divine guidance. But have we seen the end? Wait for God, and satisfying views will break upon our eyes in the better world, when they are opened to see the reason of God’s dealings with us, and how he has made all work together for our good. Lewis. If we love God, this is the position—surely, although we are not accustomed to apply grand epithets to such things, yet, surely, in sober earnestness, a splendid position—that “all things work together for our good.” If we love him, not in any strained or passionate manner, but with simple childlike love, trusting in his kindly preevidence, looking up in his face, keeping his commandments, talking with him in our busy thoughts and in our daily prayers, filling life with his presence as is the habit of love with its objects, then—all will be well. Will be? All is well. Those working “things,” the strength and pressure of which we never could resist if we met them simply in our own strength, the mystery of which we never could fathom, the darkness of which is sometimes terrible—let them work together and enter into all possible combinations, and expend their last energies, they can produce nothing but good to us. A. R.—To a believing soul there is something wonderfully sweet in viewing all his trials, troubles, afflictions, temptations, desertions, spiritual conflicts, ups and downs of every kind, as ordered of God for his good; decreed to come upon him just at such a time and place as his heavenly Father’s wisdom sees fit and meet! to remain with him just so long, and not a single moment longer than till they shall have answered some salutary purpose for his soul’s good; that, however sore and grievous these things may be to flesh and blood, however thwarting to his own will and wishes, yea, however contrary to what he would judge to be for his spiritual welfare, yet he who “ordereth all things after the counsel of his own will” causeth them to work together for his good; and that they are all the effects and emanations tions of infinite wisdom, infinite love, and infinite power, united to accomplish his salvation in the way that shall be best for him, and most for his heavenly Father’s glory. Hill. The called. No one that knows anything aright of the dreadfully alienated state of our nature can for a moment believe that a condition of the soul in which the love of God should prevail can be produced, created, by any less cause than the sovereign operation of the divine Spirit; in other words, by an effectual “calling.” This, then, is the sacred train and process; the ancient, unalterable intention or “purpose,” fulfilled at length in “the calling according to that purpose,” and this “calling” being an inspiration of “the love of God” into the renewed soul. And this places the soul in a new system of relations with the world and its events, and that the most advantageous one that is possible. J. F. 29,30. Majestic affirmations of assurance, assurance answering to assurance, rising and gathering power as it rolls on, each clause coming with the certainty of a decree, solemn at once and jubilant. F. D. H.—The great perfected mystery of sanctification in Christ itself steps back into the mystery of regeneration and of justification by faith, and that again into the mystery of redemption, and that into the unfathomable depths of the mystery of God’s love. These steps are traced in the forward direct order by Paul’s logic thus: foreknowledge, predestination unto conformity to the image of God’s dear Son, calling, justification, glorification. John in the Apocalypse sets us down at the last step, glorification, without fault before the throne of God. G. B. C. He did foreknow. God’s foreknowledge is not for me, but for himself. While I feel that grace which bringeth salvation and the sanctification of the Spirit in me, I am sealed for heaven; and where is the man who is forbidden to apply for the same blessing? They are quite mistaken who imagine themselves excluded by the divine prescience. I can only know whether I am the choice of God by God’s being my choice, and by having the mark of my election in my regeneration, and the proof of my regeneration in the uprightness of my conduct. I do not desire to search into the divine decrees, but I want to see that the Saviour’s image is engraven on the tablet of my renewed mind in characters indelible as eternity. R. Hill.—Effectual calling is inseparably tied to this eternal foreknowledge or election on the one side, and salvation on the other. These two links of the chain are up in heaven in God’s own hand; but this middle one is let down to earth into the hearts of his children, and they, laying hold on it, have sure hold on the other two, for no power can sever them; if, therefore, they can read the characters of God's image in their own souls, those are the counterpart of the golden characters of his love, in which their names are written in the book of life. Their believing writes their names under the promises of the revealed book of life, the Scriptures, and so ascertains them that the same names are in the secret book of life that God hath by himself from eternity. So, finding the stream of grace in their hearts, though they see not the fountain whence it flows, nor the ocean into which it returns, yet they know that it hath its source, and shall return to that ocean which ariseth from their eternal election, and shall empty itself into that eternity of happiness and salvation. Hence much joy ariseth to the believer; this tie is indissolvable, as the agents are, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. So are election, and vocation, and sanctification, and justification, and glory. Therefore in all conditions believers may, from the sense of the working of the Spirit in them, look back to that election and forward to that salvation. L. 31. The first eight chapters of Romans embrace Paul's great argument of the epie of redemption. It traces human ruin and human salvation until, at 8 : 30, the whole scheme, crowned with glorification, stands like a grand structure, and the apostle commences a pean with, What shall we say to these things? Wheedon.—If God be for us. Our divine ally, the King of kings, is our intercessor; the omniscient Spirit is our teacher; and we are invited to counsel with Divine wisdom, and to stay ourselves on the arm of Creative power. Yet how do we narrow down the magnificence of the divine promises, and compress the hopes, large and grand, offered by the gospel, into some petty and pitiful request, that as we imagine bespeaks Christian humility, but in truth displays unbelief. What! when God is for us, is it not most guilty to hesitate and linger in minor and facile enterprises? The greatness of the God we serve demands on our part a large and manly, a far-sighted and far-reaching faith. W. R. W. 32. The boundless extent of his understanding, which comprehended the full dimensions of sin and of wrath, was the sole cause of Christ's deep and unparalleled distress. It was not the shame nor the torment of the Cross that afflicted him; but his soul, if I may be allowed the expression, was crucified more than his body; his heart had sharper nails to pierce it than his hands or his feet; in his body he felt the rage and cruelty of his murderers, but in his soul he felt sufferings of a more exquisite nature. Then he bore the griefs and carried the sorrows of all his people; then he felt not the sins only, but the wounds also, of every broken heart; the torments of his martyrs, the reproaches of his saints, the poverty, distresses, and persecutions, which any, which all of them, have felt, or shall feel, till the last trumpet shall sound, and he shall come again in his glory. Thus God spared not his own Son; to these inconceivable sufferings was the Lord of life delivered. R. W.—As we are the objects of that love which God hath commended to us in his Son, it follows that no bounds can be set to our happiness—that there is no treasure too rich in the mines of the blessed God, no duration too long in eternity, no communion with the Creator too close, too intimate, too tender, which we have not a right to expect; according to that comfortable, that ecstatic maxim of the apostle: "He who spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" Saurin. 33. When "the everlasting covenant" was planned between the three persons in the glorious and coequal Trinity, it was "ordered in all things, and sure"; all the spiritual seed were then chosen in Christ, their head; and grace was given them in him as members of his mystical body. All the sins that ever they should commit, with every aggravation with which they should be swelled, were taken into the account: payment was then virtually made; and it was actually made when Jesus hung on the accursed tree; and all the powers of earth and hell combined can never charge one sin upon the soul for whom it was so paid and accepted. For "who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Hill.—It is Paul's challenge to the universe. Nay, rather, it is the Holy Spirit's challenge. It is unanswerable even now; for from the first moment that we believed, we were entitled to take it up. It is a challenge which God himself puts into our lips, and he will acknowledge it. In our believing we set our amen to his testimony; and in his giving us this challenge, he is setting his amen to our faith. Nay, not only will he own it, but he will take it up out of our lips, and himself proclaim it through the universe, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of my elect?" Bonar. 34. It is Christ that died for us, to take away our sins, and is risen again for us, to clothe us in his righteousness, and sitteth at the right hand of God ever making intercession for us, that we may be supported under every trial and danger, strengthened against every temptation, delivered from the sin of unbelief and all other sins, girt with the righteousness of faith and crowned with all the graces which spring from faith, and at length may be received into the presence of the Father, into which our elder brother has entered before us. Hare.—It is a point which should move us to great joy and holy pride, that we are so honored above all creatures, yea, above the angels, that we can now truthfully say with exultation: My flesh and blood sitteth at the right hand of God, reigning with power over all, and having all in his hand. This honor hath no creature, nor any angel, but my flesh and blood. Luther.—Thou shalt find life in his death, and that life further ascertained to thee in his rising again. There is so full and clear a title to life in these two, that thou canst challenge all adversaries upon this very ground, as unconquerable while thou standest on it. In point of justifying before God, there can be no answer but this: What have any to say to thee? thy debt is paid by Him that undertook it. Answer all accusations with this, Christ is risen. 35. Is this he that so lately cried out, Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me? that now triumphs, Oh, happy man! who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Yes, it is the same. Pained then with the thoughts of that miserable conjunction with a body of death, and so crying out, Who will deliver? Now he hath found a deliverer to do that for him, to whom he is for ever united. So vast a difference is there betwixt a Christian taken in himself and in Christ. L.—The question may be termed the strongest possible form of denial, and by it must be understood, not our love to Christ, but his to us. The foundation of such conviction can not rest on the attachment and fidelity of his followers. But a firm basis of tranquillity is offered in the love of Christ himself, which in its nature is a free, unconstrained, eternal affection. From this love nothing can separate us, because it is all-powerful, all-embracing, finally all-conquering. That which would separate from him, namely, the power of the world and of sin, can not permanently keep its ground in the heart and life of the Christian, in whom, indeed, the old man yet lives, but as a dying creature. Can words be found to express adequately the consolation which such thoughts impart? Van O. 36. That which makes a man die with true courage and step with holy boldness into the grave is believingly to remember that Jesus Christ died and lay in the grave, not only before us, but for us, and that he hath worsted and conquered that king of terrors upon his own ground, the grave. Caryl. 37. Be humble and depend on the strength of Christ; seek to be furnished with much distrust of thyself and much trust in him, with much denial of thyself and much love to him; and this preparing and training of the heart will prove useful when brought to a real conflict. In all, both beforehand and in time of the trial, make thy Lord Jesus all thy strength; that is our only way in all to be conquerors, to be more than conquerors, through him that loved us. 38,39. Remember this for your comfort, that as you are brought unto God by Jesus Christ, so you are kept in that union by him. It is a firmer knot than the first was; there is no power of hell can dissolve it. He suffered once to bring us once unto God, never to depart again; as he suffered once for all, so we are brought once for all. We may be sensibly nearer at one time than another, yet we can never be separate nor cut off, being once knit by Christ as the bond of our union. Neither principalities nor powers, etc., shall be able to separate us from the love of God, because it holds in Christ Jesus our Lord. L.—It is plainly the design of the whole section to show that the afflictions of the present time are not inconsistent with the justified state of Christians, or with their being the objects of the peculiar affection of God and of Christ. And there is no trace of the supposed transition from God's love to us to our love to God. The love of God in Christ Jesus admits fairly no other meaning than the love of God manifested to us through the mediation of Christ. J. B. AND thus the mighty argument is brought to an end. The remainder of the Epistle is spent in the determination of various points of interest as related to the position of Jew and Gentile, in God's dealings, and in the Church of the time. Meanwhile, however, the great argument is supplemented by the views of God's wisdom and love, and does not reach its final conclusion till chapter 12, where the apostle gathers up all in general exhortations, grounded on this review of God's mercies to Jew and Gentile. A. Paul has shown (chs. 6, 7) that believers are bound up with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection; and that this union, delivering them alike from legal terror and from legal hope, induces new and loving obedience. They become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that in union or marriage to him as their risen Lord and life they may live and bear fruit unto God. So the apostle establishes that sanctification as well as justification is by the grace of God only, not through bondage to the law, but through union to Christ in liberty. Then, in the sublime and animated strain of the eighth chapter, he expatiates on the safety of those who are in Christ, the indwelling and witness of the Spirit of adoption, the hope of glorious resurrection, the security of salvation in the purpose and calling of God, the reality of his act of justification, and the immutability of his love in Jesus Christ our Lord. So ends the first part of the Epistle. Its key-words are those formed from diké—right, righteousness, righteous judgment, just, justify, justification. Apprehending these terms, we grasp the cardinal truth of salvation which the apostle inculcates, viz., that while the law of God condemns, God freely justifies us through faith in Christ the propitiation for our sins, and in union with him as our crucified and buried but now risen Saviour. D. F. is this, that divine grace overcomes the rebellious will, softens the stiff and stubborn heart, and makes it pliant to obedience. This flows from his pure good will and pleasure, without the least motive from the inclinations or endeavors of sinful men. But the other effects of God's mercy require conditions in the subjects that receive them; for he pardons only penitent believers, and glorifies none but persevering saints. Bates. 1. I SAY the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy 2 Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish 3 that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: 4 who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and 5 the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and 6 of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. 7 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, 8 which are of Israel: neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: 9 but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, 10 these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the 11 seed. For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. 12 And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; 13 (for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose 14 of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) it was 15 said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but 16 Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God 17 forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will 18 have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willet, 19 nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the Scripture saith unto 20 Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in 21 thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he 22 mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will be hardeneth. Thou wilt say then 23 unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, 24 who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, 25 Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump 26 to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? 27 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much 28 longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: and that he might make known the 29 riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, even 30 us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? As he saith also 31 in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was 32 not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are 33 not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God. Esaias also crieth 34 concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a 35 remnant shall be saved: for he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: 36 because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Esaias said before, Ex- 37 cept the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like 38 unto Gomorra. WHEN once we understand that the Jews are the types of mankind; when each one of us shall consider what has been done to the Jewish people as if it had been done to himself; when we shall be able to see ourselves in the person of Israel, delivered from Egypt with a strong hand, crossing the Red Sea, miracu- lously fed in the desert, introduced by force of arm into Canaan, alternately rebellious and penitent, hum- bled and elevated, at war with the inflexibility of a perfect law and at the same time the object of ineffa- ble solicitude, it will no longer be possible for us to believe that this people has existed in vain, or that we owe nothing to this people, or that we could have dispensed with it. And then collecting in our mind all these truths at once, each saying to himself: The history of this people is my history, the history of this people is the history of God; this people carried in its bosom, as a mother does, that other chosen and blessed people whom Jesus Christ on coming into the world found ready to receive him; the Jewish peo- ple foretold the great truths which prepare for receiving gospel truth; the Jewish people was the first and necessary propagation of the gospel; the Jewish people at the commencement of Christianity could alone bear witness to Jesus Christ; the Jewish people choosing or rejecting him, is the immortal witness of the Saviour; a Christian after having considered all these things will have no repugnance to repeat, Salvation, my own salvation, is of the Jews! A. V. 1-3. In the close of the eighth chapter of Romans theology reaches its culmination. That is a height where all that the mind can know of God and his ways is seen in the longest perspective and most celestial clearness. But there is flowing in the heart of the apostle a current of sympathy with men, which overbears in another moment all the tide of rapturous anticipation which the view of God's purposes had kindled. "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart—for my brethren." Certainly that is the spirit which all who have the responsibilities of public service for Christ should seek. It is said that Augustine had for his symbol a burning heart. If to a burning there could be appropriately added a suggestion of a bleeding heart, we should have the comprehensive Christian symbol. A measure of the seraphic glow of the eighth chapter of Romans is permitted to us, if our minds are lifted to that; but should not our cry be, that we may never be without the concern, without something of the pang of love for our brother-men, which we see in the ninth chapter? Karr. 3. "I could have wished." J. B. L.—I could wish, if such a thing were possible, to be separated from Christ and bear the curse, in order thereby to rescue my nation. That was out of the question, for only Christ could undertake to bear penal sufferings in the room of others. It displays, however, the magnitude of his love. (Ex. 32: 32, Moses felt the same.) He would willingly have endured anything, however terrible, in order to save them. Barth.—Paul saw a cloud filled with wrath—a black cloud of vindicatory justice affecting the eternal interests of his countrymen—ready to burst upon their heads; he saw many of them sealed up under the terrible judgment of judicial blindness, and this it was which racked his heart with agony, and drew forth his thrilling expressions of sympathy and grief. He envied not the Gentiles; on the contrary, he makes their calling and conversion matters of solemn doxology and thanksgiving to God; but he did lament, deeply and sorely lament, that so many of his countrymen were cut off from the hopes of eternal life. J. H. T. 4,5. Judaism is the parent of Christianity. The new system sprang up on the soil of the old, and could spring up nowhere else. There were "the oracles of God"; there were the Messianic promises, and the aspirations kindled by them, in a form that made it possible for the Messiah to arise, with a full consciousness of his calling, and to be recognized by others. The peculiarity lies in the organic relation of the parts of the earlier Revelation to each other, and the collective relation of the whole of them to the gospel. Hence, the earliest adherents of the Christian faith by whom it was first propagated in the world, its authoritative expounders for all time, were of Jewish extraction. The privilege conferred on the Jews, in the special training to which they were subjected, might, if abused, place them at a disadvantage as to receiving the good news, even in comparison with the nations which had been suffered "to walk in their own ways." "It might be," says Dr. Arnold, "that they were tempted by their very distinctness to despise other nations; still they did God's work—still they preserved unhurt the seed of eternal life, and were the ministers of blessing to all other nations, even though themselves failed to enjoy it." G. P. F.—This people, to whom were intrusted the oracles of God, carries in its mind, solemnizes in its rites, reflects in its manners, the elementary ideas on which the gospel is founded; alone among the nations it believes, seriously and effectually believes, that God is, and that he is the rewarder of them that seek him. These truths, which are the patrimony of this people, it has in its different dispersions carried with it over the world. It has sown them in the land of the heathen. Despised as it was, it has succeeded in accustoming the nations to the idea, the unheard-of idea, of one living and holy God. This was essentially to prepare them for Jesus Christ. And when Christianity, after having collected in Judea all that belonged to it, makes ready to conquer Europe, beginning with the ancient kingdom of that Alexander who conquered Asia, it finds over the whole Roman world advanced posts, citadels, intrenched camps in those portions of Israel, in those Jewish colonies which Divine Providence had scattered up and down upon the earth, and which uniformly became the first Christian Churches. A. V. 5. Who is over all, God blessed for ever.** What is that subtle approach of doctrine injurious to Christ which these words of Paul do not bar out? He called him Christ, to show that he had really become man; he called him "of the Jews after the flesh," to show that his existence does not merely date from his incarnation; he called him "who is" that he might proclaim as in thunder his existence without a beginning; he called him "over all," to proclaim him the Master of creation; he called him God, that we might not be deceived by looking to his sufferings and his outward form, and deny his imperishable nature; he called him "blessed," that we might adore him as the Almighty, and not injuriously regard him as a fellow-servant; he called him "unto the ages," that he might show that he who formed them by a word is in them endlessly proclaimed as God. Proclus. 7,8. The Old Testament is the first chapter of the history of man and the history of God. The experience of the Jews is our experience. It is for us that we see this people alternately gathered together and forsaken, scourged and blest. Not that they are not loved for themselves, and for the fathers' sakes, as Paul says; but in the marvelous guidance of this people God was preparing an immortal lesson for the whole human race. Not only the doctrine preached to the Jewish people, but more especially their history constitutes the treasure of all ages and nations; because as history, it not only teaches, it establishes what God is and what man is, to what extent God's authority is absolute and his law sacred; and, in fine, it establishes the active, determinate, and paternal manner in which God constantly interposes in human affairs. A. V. 13-17. As all that we are comes from Him, so we belong to him without exception or reserve. The senses of our bodies, the powers of our souls, the successive ages of life, thought, feeling, resolve, all are His. He is absolute master of our health, of our fortune, of our very life, and against him we have neither plea nor remedy. Nay, we are bound by the terms of existence to accept with submission all of his appointments. Paul's illustration of the cases of Pharaoh and Esau, as viewed apart from their responsibility, is strictly in point. God's claims, which begin in time, continue in eternity; the grave does not touch them. Escape him: we can not. We must live under a dispensation of his love or a dispensation of his justice. We can nowhere be independent of him. We may now and here choose between a free and joyous service and a punishment which is as certain and as enduring as the being which he has given us. H. P. L. 15. The Israelites, immediately after the giving of the law, had committed idolatry or exposed themselves to punishment. Moses besought their forgiveness. In answer to his prayer, the words quoted here were used. The whole nation deserved punishment. God was determined to inflict it on some and to show mercy to others; and his declaration is, that the reason why any are pardoned, and why these are pardoned, was to be found in his sovereign grace. There was no unrighteousness here. God gave to some what none deserved, and he inflicted on none anything but what all had deserved, and he did this according to the counsel of his own will. J. B.—If God is a sovereign, he is not an arbitrary despot; if he has his purposes in respect to all things—and unquestionably he has—they are formed in view of all-sufficient reasons every way worthy of himself, as a God infinite in his wisdom and his love. He may bless a man who does not deserve his blessing, but he can not punish a man who does not deserve punishment. The sovereign grace of God! What being in the universe does it injure, or what obstacles can it interpose between any man and eternal life? E. M. 16. Many ask questions about election and other doctrines, which do not yet come within their horizon, and therefore can not be explained to them (to a certain extent, true of us all). The ninth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, as Luther said, is the ninth. Learn first the eight chapters which precede it. A. S.—The Bible teaches that man is a free agent, under personal responsibility; that salvation is provided for all, and freely offered to all; that God desires that all men should repent and be saved; that he uses his word, his providence, and his Spirit to bring them to repentance; that he continues his calls to men who resist his grace, though, as in the case of Pharaoh, his very long-suffering may but harden the sinner's impenitence. It is no positive act of God that hardens him, no divine decree that hinders his salvation, but the sinner's own refusal to submit his will in faith to the righteousness of God. In this respect, the stubborn impenitence of Pharaoh, alike unto divine mercies and judgments, is but the type of the heart of man. Again and again we are told that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. J. P. T.—Conversion and salvation must, in the very nature of the things, be wrought and effected either by ourselves alone, or by ourselves and God together, or solely by God himself. The last hypothesis is built on the strongest evidence of reason, Scripture, and experience. It most effectually hides pride from man, and sets the crown of undivided praise upon the head—or, rather, casts it at the feet—of that glorious Triune God "who worketh all in all." But this is a crown which no sinners ever yet cast before the throne of God who were not first led into the transporting views of his gracious decree to save freely, and of his own will, the people of his eternal love. Zanchius. The great question for me, as one for whom Christ died and to whom the offer of eternal life is made, a being responsible to God and to my own soul for every decision I form and every choice I make in reference to my everlasting interests, is, Am I willing to embrace the offer of eternal life which is placed before me? If I am not, it is not God's purpose, but my own election in opposition to the will and commandment of God, which destroys me body and soul for ever. This is the thought to be distinctly apprehended, and which should be thrown with all its fearful and crushing weight upon the conscience of every man who has not accepted of Jesus Christ. E. M.—In the 16th verse, the showing of his mercy signifies the preventing grace of God in conversion; for in the 18th verse it is said, God shows mercy "to whom he will, and whom he will be hardens." Where it is evident that showing mercy is opposed not to condemning but to hardening; and consequently the intent of the words 19-24. The force of the objection (v. 19) seems to be: "Since God can refuse mercy and inflict punishment on whom he chooses to do so, why does he not will to have mercy on all, so as to make them obedient, and thus put finding of fault out of the case? None can resist his will." The objection is answered in two ways: first, by showing the absurdity and wickedness of man's finding fault with what God does or says (vs. 20, 21), and then by showing that the dispensations objected to were perfectly consistent with divine justice and benignity (vs. 22-24). J. B.—The objection is founded on ignorance or misapprehension of the relation between God and his sinful creatures: supposing that he is under obligation to extend his grace to all, whereas he is under obligation to none. It is to be borne in mind that Paul does not here speak of God's right over his creatures as creatures, but as sinful creatures; as he himself clearly intimates in the next verses. It is the cavil of a sinful creature against his Creator that he is answering, and he does so by showing that God is under no obligation to give his grace to any, but is as sovereign as in fashioning the clay. 22. His wrath and his power.** The two objects which Paul here specifies as designed to be answered by the punishment of the wicked are the manifestation of the wrath of God and the exhibition of his power. The word wrath is used here, as in chapter 1: 18, for the divine displeasure against sin, the calm and holy disapprobation of evil, joined with the determination to punish those who commit it. Though the inherent ill desert of sin must ever be regarded as the primary ground of the infliction of punishment—a ground which would remain in full force were no beneficial results anticipated from the misery of the wicked—yet God has so ordered his government that the evils which sinners incur shall result in the manifestation of his character, and the consequent promotion of the holiness and happiness of his intelligent creatures throughout eternity. C. H. All the godly have this to consider: that they were strangers and enemies to God; and let each of them think, Whence was it that I, a lump of the same polluted clay with those that perish, should be taken and purified and molded by the Lord's own hand for a vessel of glory? Nothing but free grace makes the difference; and where can there be love and praises and service found to answer this? All is to be ascribed to the mercy, gifts, and calling of Christ. L. 25-29. The marked difference between the language used in reference to those whom God treats kindly and those whom he treats severely deserves notice. With regard to the fitting of the vessels of wrath for destruction: they are fitted—how and by whom it is not said, but God did not fit them for the destruction to which he doomed them as fitted for it. In the other case it is divine agency altogether, in fitting them for glory, and bestowing it on them. God dealt with unbelieving Jews as he did with Pharaoh, whom they resembled in their obstinacy. He bore with them long; he offered them mercy, which they contemptuously rejected. When they had fitted themselves for destruction, they were destroyed. On the other hand, God bestows salvation on a portion of men called from the great body of Jews and Gentiles, and fitted by his grace for the enjoyment of it, by being made in faith thankfully to accept it. In withholding saving blessings from certain of the Jews, he does them no wrong; and in inflicting on them severe judgments, he only at last inflicts punishment which had long been incurred. J. B. 30. WHAT shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, 31 have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. 32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the 33 law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; as it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. 1. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. 2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own 4 righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ 5 is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by 6 them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) 7 or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) 8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, 9 the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be 10 saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confes- 11 sion is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall 12 not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same 13 Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. CHRIST is something and does something to every one of us. He is either the rock on which I build, poor, weak, sinful creature as I am, getting security and sanctity and strength from him, I being a living stone, built upon "the living stone," and partaking of the vitality of the foundation; or else he is the other thing, "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to them which stumble at the word." So the gospel of Christ exercises a permanent effect upon us. It is presented to each of us here individually, in the definite form of an actual offer of salvation for each, and of an actual demand of trust from each. The words pass into our souls, and thenceforward it can never be the same as if they had not been there. The gospel once heard is henceforward a perpetual element in the whole condition, character, and destiny of the hearer. A. M. Christ is present to his followers as he is not and can not be to the world; present as an all-permeating Spirit; present as the all-quickening Life; consciously, socially present; so that no explorations of science or debates of reason are wanted to find him, no going over the sea to bring him back, or up into heaven to bring him down; because he is already present, always present, in the mouth and in the heart. In this manner he will be revealed in all men, waits to be revealed in all, if only they will suffer it. The word for every loving, trusting heart is, "I will be manifest in you. Lo, I will be with you always." H. B.—This is the way to lessen our distance from God and heaven, by bringing Christ continually to us on earth: the sky is closed, and shows no sign; all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world; evil abounds, and, therefore, the faith of many waxes cold; but Christ was and is among us—Christ crucified and Christ risen—to make us feel that we may live with God daily upon earth, and, doing so, shall live with him for an eternal life in a country that can not pass away. T. A. 33. Christ comes offered to us all in good faith on the part of God as a foundation upon which we may build. And then comes in that strange mystery, that a man, consciously free, turns away from the offered mercy, and makes him that was intended to be the basis of his life, the foundation of his hope, the rock on which, steadfast and serene, he should build up a temple-home for his soul to dwell in—makes him a stumbling-stone against which, by rejection and unbelief, he breaks himself! A. M. 2. Zeal is an element that will combine with any active principle in man; will give its strength and inspiration in any pursuit or interest under the sun; will profane itself to the lowest, will be the glory of the highest, like fire that will smolder in garbage and will lighten in the heavens. A fatal ignorance in zeal the apostle here speaks of, namely, men's zealously maintaining the sufficiency of a righteousness of their own which God will not accept. A true and divinely enforced knowledge would reveal to them the awful holiness, justice, and law of God—would reveal themselves to them—and then their zeal would go another way. J. F.—The zeal which is acceptable is that which aims at the glory of God and which is founded on true benevolence to men, and which does not aim to establish a system of self-righteousness, as did the Jew, or to build up our own sect, as many others do. A. B. 3-5. The cause of this rejection of the Jews was that they persisted in a false idea of righteousness, as consisting in outward works and rites, and refused the true righteousness manifested to them in Christ, who was the end of the law. The Jew considers righteousness as the outward obedience to certain enactments; the Christian considers righteousness as proceeding from the inward faith of the heart. Whoever has this faith, whether Jew or Gentile, shall be admitted into God's favor. C.— Establish their own righteousness. Thou art industrious from motives of ambition; thou art faithful in thy calling from motives of pride; thou art patient and lowly from the desire of fame; thou avoidest great sins because thou fearest shame and disgrace, and in order that thou mayest yield thyself unhindered to hidden sin; thou concealest from the world thy anger and bad temper, in order to be praised by the world as gentle. Thou givest to the poor that they may praise thee. All thy patience and humility, all thy gentleness and benevolence, all thy faithfulness and industry, give cords and bonds to thy ambition and pride, that they may bind thee more tightly than they could do otherwise. Thou layest aside sins and boastest of the strength of thy virtue. Seest thou not that all thy self-made piety condemns thee? Seest thou not that it is only with sins that thou, a sinner, releasest thyself from sins? A. C.—Is it no unrighteousness that thy whole life should be nothing else but a contradiction to the very design of Christ's dying, a perpetual hostility, a very tilting at his Cross? Is there no unrighteousness in thy obstinate infidelity that denies belief to his glorious truths, acceptance of his gracious offers, subjection to his holy laws? Is it righteous to live as no way under law to Christ? to persist in actual rebellion against his just government, which he died and revived and rose again to establish over the living and the dead? In a word, is it righteous to tread under foot the Son of God, to vilify his blood, and despise his Spirit? Is this the righteousness that thou talkest of? Are these thy qualifications for the everlasting blessedness? Howe. If thou go to Christ with thy own righteousness he will not have thee; for he will have none but lost things, for he came to seek and save that which was lost. As long as thou lookest but to the righteousness of the law, the spirit of Jesus leaves thee, till thou acknowledge Christ for the Saviour of the lost, the justifier of the ungodly, the gracer of the unworthy, and the healer of the sick. Hence it is that Christ leaves sin in his own to humble them; for if they had righteousness of their own they would misken him and his righteousness. And because they will not quit their own righteousness, he gives them an assay of themselves; and when after a proof of their own naughtiness they will not yet submit to him, then he sends crosses, sicknesses, troubles of all sorts, that they may be forced to despair in themselves and come in to Christ's hospitial, there to lie till they be cured of all their sinful maladies. 4. Christ the end of the law. First take us to Christ, renouncing our own righteousness; then draw strength from him, and in his strength bring forth good fruits, and so be renewed; come and get righteousness from Christ; then crave new strength from him (for thou hast none of thy own) to be holy. Upon this order stands the matter betwixt God and his children: that, not finding their own righteousness, they take Christ's, and take new strength from his resurrection, sufferings, and death, and so get power to slay sin. From once they come to Christ, then holiness begins at the heart's roots, by the new power given by Christ. That self-righteousness they would be at holds aye a man proud, but this righteousness God would have them to embrace holds them humble. D. D.—That believeth.** A believer is to do nothing for justification, only believe and be saved; though the law be a rule for every one that believes to walk by, it is not for justification. Always put a difference between justification wrought by the man Christ without, and sanctification wrought by the Spirit of Christ within. Bun. 6,7. The Christian religion does not require us to perform an impossible work, like going up to the throne of God and bringing the Mediator down. It does not require us to go into the abyss, the grave, the regions of departed souls, and perform a work like raising a man from the dead. It demands a task that lies within the proper exercise of human power: an act of simple confidence in Jesus Christ, and a suitable acknowledgment of him before the world at large. A. B. 9. Believe in thine heart.** It is the grand distinction of Christianity that it makes its appeal to faith, and upon that, as a fundamental condition, rests the promise of salvation. It is called (here and elsewhere) the word of faith, the disciples are distinguished as believers, and Christ is published as the Saviour of them that believe. What is wanted is a faith that goes beyond the mere evidence of propositions about Christ, viz., the faith of a transaction; and this faith is Christian faith. It is the act of trust by which one being, a sinner, commits himself to another being, a Saviour. It is not mind dealing with notions or notional truths. But it is being trusting itself to being, and so becoming other and different, by a relation wholly transactional. We commit ourselves to the Lord Jesus by an act of total and eternal trust, which is our faith. The matters included in this act are the surrender of our mere self-care, the ceasing to live from our own point of separated will, a complete admission of the mind of Christ, a consenting, practically, to be modulated by his motives and aims, and to live, as it were, infolded in his spirit. It is committing one's character wholly to the living character of Jesus, so that every willing and working and sentiment shall be pliant to his superior mind and spirit. H. B. 10. With the heart man believeth.** Not with the brain but with the heart—with that kind of faith in which love is a larger element than intellect, and trust is more than assent. This is the faith that completes the whole work of regeneration. It carries penitence deeper down among the springs of feeling. It heightens the blush of shame at living a selfish and worldly life, because it is so alien to the disinterested and devout temper of the Master. It makes the new life a reality, because it founds it in the deepest motives. It changes the whole inner man. It works by love. It enters the invisible, and dwells in the secret tabernacle of a most holy joy. F. D. H.—It is the heart which fixes itself entirely on the love that shines forth in the work of redemption; cleaves without distraction to the sacrifice of the adorable victim; lets the natural impression of that unparalleled love penetrate freely, and develop itself gradually, in its interior. Quickly then are the veils torn away, and the shadows dissipated for ever! How little difficulty does he that loves find in comprehending love! How natural to him does it appear that God, infinite in all things, should be infinite also in his compassion! How inconceivable to him, on the other hand, that human hearts should not be capable of feeling the beauty of a work, without which God could not manifest himself entire! How astonished is he at the blindness of those who read and reread the Scriptures without comprehending the central truth; who pass and repass before a love all divine without recognizing or even perceiving a work all divine! A. V.—Whatever else it has or lacks, the soul, to be saved, must obey an honest purpose. Pretense and falsehood must be stripped off it. It must believe with the affections, heartily. With the heart man believeth unto salvation, before confession is made with the mouth. Get the conviction, which is the fountain, and it will furrow out a channel, and fill it with a stream. Get the new life, the love of God, and it will shape a body as the juices in the germ shape the tree. F. D. H. With the mouth confession is made. The terms of Christian communion are the terms of salvation, and no church has a right to require more for its communion than Christ does for entrance into heaven. C. H.—The things necessary to be believed are reduced in Christ's Church to the smallest possible number and the simplest possible terms. It can not be God's intention, after planting his kingdom on earth by the costly sacrifices of redemption, to keep men out of it by intellectual difficulties. He asks you to believe in him, a living, divine Saviour, and in the personal and historical facts of his mediation, with a very few of the more comprehensive truths closely related to his person, his ministry, and its consequences. Whatever is beyond these is doctrine not essential to membership, or to beginning, but may be learned in the discipline, and by doing the will, afterward. Religion belongs in the heartbeat of a man's affections and the breath of his daily desire. But when the heart has taken it in it will not lock it there and make it a prisoner. It must go abroad again, for the blessing of man and the praise of God. It will put its owner into the Church, not to show himself, but that he may the better become one with his brethren, and with their common head. F. D. H. 12. For the same Lord who is over all mankind, the Lord Messiah, is rich, full of benefits, and ready to communicate them to all, whether Jews or Gentiles, who, believing on him, call upon him, give him divine homage, acknowledge his Lordship by praying to him.** And this is confirmed by another Messianic prophesy (Joel 2 : 32). J. B.—There is a beautiful conception of the character of God involved in the use of the word "rich" in this connection. For he is said to be rich, not in respect of what he has, but of what he bestows. Used of men, the word indicates one to whom much has accrued; but it is used here of God to designate one from whom infinite wealth of blessing accrues to the sons of men. It is for us he is rich; his wealth is ours; we have a marvelous and inexhaustible treasury in him. He is rich unto all that call upon him. They call, and he answers by communications of his wealth. Let us entertain no contracted view of the fullness of blessing that dwelleth in our reconciled God! Let us neither exclude ourselves nor others. G. B. 14. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? 15 and how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet 16 of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they 17 have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. 18 But I say, Have they not heard? Yes, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and 19 their words unto the ends of the world. But I say, Did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I 20 will anger you. But Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me 21 not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me. But to Israel he saith, All 1 day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people. I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture 3 saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my 4 life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thou- 5 sand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present 6 time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no 7 more grace: otherwise work is no more work. What then? Israel hath not obtained that 8 which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (ac- cording as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should 9 not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompense unto them: 10 let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway. 11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through 12 their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gen- tiles; how much more their fulness? CHRISTIAN people are Christ's instruments for effecting the realization of the purposes of his death. Not without them shall the preaching be fully known. Not without the people willing in the day of his power, and clothed in priestly beauty, shall the Priest King set his feet upon his enemies. Neither the divine decree, nor the expansive power of the truth, nor the crowned expectancy of the waiting Lord, nor the mighty working of the Comforter, are the complete means for the accomplishment of the divine promise, that all nations shall be blessed in him. He has willed that we should make known the unsearchable riches of Christ. God reveals his truth, that men who believe it may impart it. God gives the word, that, caught up by those who receive it into an honest and good heart, it may be poured forth in mighty chorus from the lips of the "great company of them that publish it." Christian men! learn your high vocation and your solemn responsibilities. For what did you receive the word of God? For the same reason for which you have received everything else which you possess—that you might share it with your brethren. How did you receive it? A gift, unmerited, that you might feel bound to spread the free divine gift by cheerful human work of distribution. From whom did you receive it? From Christ, who in the very act of giving binds you to live for him and not for yourselves, and to mold your lives after the pattern of his. A. M. 14,15. Seriously reflect how bound up with the very vitals of the true faith is the notion of its diffusion—how therefore they have totally misread Christianity, have misapprehended its rudimentary principles, have probably never received it at all except in speculation, who can acquiesce in an easy, self-indulgent life, without effort in any single shape for its propagation. Let them remember that the one great business of the era is the dissemination of God's truth—that, in one form or other, whether by alms and prayers only or by personal exertions, this business must be carried on by all professing the name of Christ—and that all other works in which man is engaged are only valuable as subordinate agencies, helping more or less remotely toward the end, carrying on that system of things which will result in the establishment of God's kingdom. E. M. G. What we need for the renovation of the human family is the spread of that life-giving doctrine which we find in the Scriptures, and which challenges the abject and the wretched, universally and unex-ceptively, as the heirs of immortality, and as individually embraced in the intention of the gospel. It follows from this doctrine that men, even the vilest, are no more to be contemned, for the Almighty does not contemn them; they are no longer to be forgotten, or despotically abused, or selfishly despaired of, for the Son of God has redeemed them. On the contrary, they must now singly, and at whatever cost, be sought out, instructed, cared for, and succored. I. T. Man is lost, and the Son of God is seeking him; man is lost, and the Son of God is come to save him; man is lost, and the Church is commissioned to go forth in the might of faith and prayer to his salvation. To save the lost! We talk of it, as children talk of the affairs of empires; we see through a glass darkly; our conceptions are low and limited. To save the lost! Tell us, ye damned spirits, what it means. Tell us, Son of God, what it means; what stirred thy soul in godlike compassion to seek the lost? Tell us, ye ransomed and ye faithful spirits who never sinned—tell us, eternity—what is this mighty work of gospel missions? Tell us, O Father, tell thy churches; tell thy ministers; until every slumberer awake, every energy be aroused, and the way of life be pointed out to a perishing race! Kirk. 19. The passage referred to (Deut. 32 : 21) stands in a wonderful chapter, containing an epitome of the anticipated history of the Israelites, from the times of Moses down to “the latter days”—predicting that God would, for the punishment of their sins, withdraw from them the special favors he had bestowed and confer them upon those who had been destitute of them—“the foolish,” the idolatrous—thus making those the objects of their jealousy and envy who had previously been contemned and hated. This threatening was fulfilled when the great body of the Jews, having rejected the promised Messiah, were disowned by God, and when he “visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name.” Such was the state of things when the apostle wrote. J. B. 1. Paul, though the apostle of the Gentiles, never cast off his care for his brethren, and always expressed himself on that subject with the warmest affection; and he alone, of all the writers in the New Testament, hath spoken clearly of the restoration of the Jews: he earnestly wishes for that happy day, and saw it afar off, and was glad. G. T. 2-12. This illustrious race, to which pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, the ordinance of the law, divine service, and the promises; this race, from which Christ is descended, is not destined to be for ever among the nations a deplorable monument of the divine anger. After having seen its diminution, the world will see its fullness. If their diminishing, says the apostle, is our riches, what will their fullness be? When the fullness of Israel shall have returned to the fold, will not Israel again be a prophetic people? Will not the accomplishment of this promise be to itself as a testimony of the divine faithfulness, an admonitor to all nations, and a powerful call upon all to faith and obedience; and will not this people, as marvelous in its restoration as in its fall, be again, and more than ever, a powerful leaven to leaven the mass of humanity? In every case, its fullness will be our joy and consolation. A. V.—The fullness of the Jews is the fullness of blessing which shall belong to them when they return to God and embrace his Messiah. The conversion of the Jews will, directly or indirectly, do more for the advantage of the Gentiles than their unbelief has done. J. B. It was to the Jew the Redeemer came as the Saviour; it was to him those words of life and love had been originally spoken; it was in his villages and cities he had wrought such unparalleled exhibitions of superangelic power in healing thousands of his diseased and dying; it was for him, at first, that incarnate Son had been revealed in his all-perfect life; in his hands were those Holy Scriptures; they described the suffering and the all-glorious Messiah; and it was his rejection of this Christ that culminated in the cry, “Crucify him.” From that hour he reaped as he had sown; murder, assassination, intestine war, open revolt, marched through the land, and flooded his cities with blood. Peace, quiet, he knew no more. He ripened in every attribute of evil, until the legions of Rome trod him down beneath their iron heel; the temple lay in ruins, and the remnant of the people, escaped from the edge of the sword, were sent forth as the monuments of divine wrath to fulfill his prophetic words in their dispersion over the earth. To-day men point to the Jew as prophecy fulfilled; to-day this fated and trodden people exist—exist, after eighteen centuries of plague and war, and racks and fire, and disabilities—exist still, distinct from all nations. They have drunk the cup even to its dregs, but there is to dawn—is dawning—a brighter day, the day of the fuller gathering in of the Gentiles, when this long-cursed people shall come forth, no more to shout, “Crucify him,” but with a penitent heart and streaming eyes, to cry, “My Lord and my God.” The past is seen is known; the Messiah they have longed and hoped for is he, the crucified one; and when this fact dawns upon them, then to him shall the gathering of the people be. Hasten, O Lord, that hour of gladness; that hour when Jew and Gentile, no longer Jew and Gentile, shall with one voice crown Jesus as their king. S. W. F. 13. For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine 14 office: if by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might 15 save some of them. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what 16 shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit be holy, the 17 lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the 18 branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and 19 with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; boast not against the 20 branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say 21 then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief 22 they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: for if 23 God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. 24 Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but 25 toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut 26 off. And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able 27 to graff them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, 28 and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, 29 which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree? For I would not, 30 brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own 31 conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be 32 come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion 33 the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is my covenant unto 34 them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for 35 your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the 36 gifts and calling of God are without repentance. For as ye in times past have not believed 37 God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: even so have these also now 38 not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God hath con- 39 cluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. 40 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable 41 are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the 42 Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be 43 recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: 44 to whom be glory for ever. Amen. THE burst of exultation uttered by the apostle in the closing verses is the conclusion of a chain of reasoning which is carried on uninterruptedly from the 9th to the 11th chapter. The exclusion of the Jews from the blessings of God's kingdom, in contrast with the reception of the Gentiles, presents an apparent problem in God's government. By the light of Scripture and experience he gradually comes to the conviction that this mode of action is in no degree at variance with God's faithfulness, since his ancient promises were only to the true, the believing Israel: even less with his holiness, since the rejection of Israel is merely the righteous punishment of their unbelief; and least of all with his truth, mercy, and grace, since the fall of Israel was the receiving of the Gentiles, and should afterward be followed by their rising again. Thus the whole divine scheme passes in broad outline before his eyes. He discovers what men regard as evil brought through a higher hand to good. God has—behold the result of his hallowed meditation!—concluded the whole world, both Jew and Gentile, under sin, in order that he in his own good time may have mercy on all. But now, when the apostle's eye has beheld this light, he can no longer restrain his exultation. From the dazzling summit of faith he gazes into a depth which causes him to sink down in adoration. It is a depth, first of riches, that is to say, of grace, which thus has mercy on sinners without distinction; then of wisdom, which chooses the best means for this highest aim; lastly, of knowledge, which is here determinate prescience, which in the repose of eternity has foreseen and foreordained all, in order that in the fullness of time it may come to pass. The conclusion from this can only be, the origin, the progress, the end of all salvation was foreordained by God in Christ: "For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things, to whom be glory for ever. Amen." Men in all ages praised this exultant expression of Paul's, as one of the most beautiful and sublime in all his epistles. It is the epitome of faith, as often as it glances on God's guidance both of individuals and of all within the sphere of redemption. Van O. AGE has followed age, and the Jews remain to this hour spread over the face of the earth, a fearful and affecting testimony to the truth of God's word. They are without their sanctuary, without their Messiah, without the hope of their believing ancestors. But it shall not be always thus. They are still "beloved for the fathers' sake." When the "fullness of the Gentiles shall come in," they too shall be gathered. They shall discover in our Jesus the marks of the promised Messiah, and with tenderness proportioned to their former insensibility shall cling to his Cross. Grafted again into their own olive-tree, all Israel shall be saved. It was through their fall that salvation came unto us Gentiles. And "if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?" What ecstasy! the Gentile and the Jew taking sweet counsel together, and going to the house of God in company; the path of the swift messenger of grace marked in every direction by the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. J. M. M. 17,18. The Church of God is here spoken of under the figure of an olive-tree, a tree remarkable for its beauty, fruitfulness, and usefulness. This mystical olive is represented as growing out of the root of the patriarchs of the Israelitish people, with whom, as believers, the covenant was made that God would be their God and the God of their seed. The Jews are considered as the natural branches, being descendants of these patriarchs; and, till Christ came, the true members of the Church of God were to be found almost exclusively among them. The rejection of the greater part of that people in consequence of unbelief is represented as the breaking off of a portion of the natural branches, and the conversion of some of the Gentiles as the grafting into the mystical olive of a number of branches of a wild olive so that they become partakers of its root and fatness—so that they are so connected with Abraham as to be blessed with him. The conclusion drawn is (v. 18) that the converted Gentiles should not think contemptuously of the Jews, whether converted or unconverted, for the Gentiles were much indebted to the Jews, and owed everything to that society which had the Jewish patriarch for its root. J. B.—The Christian Church was no new thing in the earth; it was the continuation of the one body which began to be formed when first the seed of the woman was announced, and was afterward more fully developed under the Abrahamic promise; and yet more fully developed when the ascended Christ shed down his Spirit, first on Abraham's sons, and then on the far-off Gentiles. When Gentiles come into the Church they are accounted as Abraham's seed, for "they that be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham"; they are the wild branches grafted into the good old olive-tree, which has never been uprooted nor cast away. The New Testament Church gets its sap, its vitality, from this connection; and New Testament saints are what they are by reason of their being made "partakers of the root and fatness of the olive-tree." Bonar. 21. Lest he also spare not thee.** They were broken off because of unbelief, and thou standest through faith, but yet only because and in so far as thou believest. The loving care of God calls loud and long, but not for ever; a time may come when he must give up nations and individuals to their own blindness, because, however powerfully he urges, he constrains no one to be saved who stubbornly refuses to profit by the work of his redeeming love. Van O. 22. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God.** The Jews who had so long been a barren branch on the olive-tree of his Church—putting forth, indeed, the leaves of religious profession, but no fruit of true holiness—God had cut off and cast away. The Gentiles—originally "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise"—he had inserted, as a new wild graft, into the cultivated olive-tree. These two contrary dealings are traced up to their source in different attributes of the Most High; the one testifies to his severity, the other to his goodness. It is this essential character of the divine being which forms the basis of the great doctrine of the atonement. God presents us in the atonement with the highest illustration of both his attributes. He may be conceived as standing by the Cross of the Lord Jesus and pointing to it in exemplification of his character, as set forth in the text, "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God." E. M. G.—In most cases the goodness is illustrated by one kind of events, and the severity by another, but in Christ's work the same event of his death displayed the two sides of God's character alike and at once, and thus pardon was never offered to the guilty without a loud protest against sin. T. D. W. Christ's gospel gives out the forgiveness of sins; and the tone of encouragement, of mercy, of loving-kindness to sinners is ever predominant. But yet there is another language, which is to be found alike in the Old Testament and in the New; a language not indeed so common as the language of mercy, but yet repeated many times; a language which we also need as fully as it was ever needed, and of whose severity we can no more spare one title than we can spare anything of the comfort of the other. T. A. 25-32. God's object has been not to reject any, but to show mercy upon all mankind. His purpose has been to make use of the Jewish unbelief to call the Gentiles into his Church, and by the admission of the Gentiles to rouse the Jews to accept his message, that all might at length receive his mercy. C. 25. Gentiles come in.** Let us celebrate the beginnings of our blessed hope with exulting hearts; for from this time forward we begin to enter into an eternal inheritance, and the secrets of Scripture, speaking of Christ, have been laid open to us, and the truth, which Jewish blindness does not receive, has carried its light into all nations. Leo. 26-28. The meaning of the prophecy still remains veiled to the unhappy posterity of Jacob; but the time will at length come when, the veil being taken away, they as well as we will clearly comprehend the words. A. V.—Take up a volume of the history of any country, at any age since the fall of Jerusalem, and you find the Jews just as we now find them—dwelling in the seclusion of their own communities. "The restless feet" of this ancient people of God are pressing every inhabitable region of the world. They are met in every city, in every mart of business, in every climate, among people of every language. Amid all their sufferings and wanderings, in harmony with prophecy, they have remained a distinct and peculiar people. With neither a country nor a nation that could be called their own, they have uniformly preserved a distinct nationality. Though they have looked upon the mightiest revolutions among the Gentiles; though they have been moving among extensive migrations, from east to west, and from north to south; though they have been dwellers in different empires while in their ascendant, supremacy, and decline; though we have seen them passing through all those political and civil convulsions which have destroyed every nation around Judea, except the Persians alone, who restored them from their Babylonish captivity—yet for eighteen centuries they have remained, in all essential features, the same. They maintain the same laws, and have continued to preserve their own and their old identity. L. T. T.—The Jews exist not only as a monument and a miracle; Jewish mind has exerted a powerful influence on the world. In money power, the Jews hold in their hands the destiny of kingdoms and empires, whose governments become bankrupt and their sovereigns turn beggars at a Hebrew's nod. Among the most distinguished scholars and men of science, we find the Jews prominent. The most renowned in astronomy have been Jews, as the Herschels in England and Arago in France. Of Christianized Jews are Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Schleiermacher, Gesenius, Neander, Niebuhr, and others, whose learned treatises, Biblical criticisms, didactic theology, and general sacred literature, are found in the library of every theological student. An. 29. Are without repentance.** Read "can not be repented of." A. 32. The man who thoroughly understands this single verse has the key to the whole Bible. The doctrine of the Bible has these two fundamental articles: The Misery of Man—The Mercy of God. The text mentions them both, and sets them over against each other. "God hath concluded them all in unbelief"—here is man's misery; "that he might have compassion upon all"—here is God's mercy. Monod.—To sinners of every kind, to us all, to the whole world, the man of God cries in the Scriptures, "God hath concluded all in rebellion, that he may have mercy upon all." With him there is no respect of persons, no respect of sins; he stops not at some shades of difference; he does not apply to us our own vain measures; for the original crime is equal in all; and since he has included all in rebellion, he includes all in mercy. The amnesty is for all equally; but it must be accepted just as it is offered; not as a right, but as a gift; not as an abandonment of the principles of the divine government, but as the price of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as a return for the ransom he has paid and the pledge he has offered. A. V. 33. It was the destiny of Israel, after a brief period of prosperity, to separate into rival dynasties, to run through a course of much iniquity, to despise constant, reiterated warnings, and at length to merge in utter ruin, undestroyed indeed, but preserved only as a monument of God's abiding vengeance. But mark the unsearchable depths of the purposes of Providence! These national misfortunes brought in universal blessedness. Israel fell to prepare the salvation of mankind; and the "rest," which the Lord God denied his people, was denied only that an everlasting rest might be secured to his spiritual people for ever! Well might the apostle, who was chosen as the chief laborer in this extension of the kingdom of God, exclaim when he contemplated that great revolution, "Oh! the depth of the riches, and the wisdom, and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" W. A. B. 34. If none hath been his counselor, it is plain that none can know his mind till he shall be pleased to reveal it; nor even then can it be known any further than it is revealed. To supply what is concealed, with conclusions drawn from the reasonings of our own minds, would be the height of presumption: We must take his counsel as it lies before us in the record he hath given us, without adding to it or subtracting from it. R. W. mind of man contrived to give it, so that in some forms of Christianity you can hardly at all recognize the original draught, as it came from the divine mind! What follies, fancies, superstitions, licentious doctrines, have founded themselves—not justly of course, but with a most perverse ingenuity—upon the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament! It would be interesting to consider every heresy which has hitherto arisen, and see how in each case it has been a caricature of some one point of Christian truth—an exaggeration by which the fair proportion of the faith, of which Paul here speaks, has been distorted, and a single passage of Scripture or a single class of passages brought into undue prominence. E. M. G. 36. The Cross is the center of the world's history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Jesus was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history. All the generations that went before him, though they knew it not, were preparing the way of the Lord, and heralding the advent of him who was the desire of all nations and the light of men; and all the generations that come after, though they know it not, are swelling the pomp of his triumph and hastening the time of his crowning and dominion. The tangled web of human history is only then intelligible when that is taken as its clew, "From him are all things, and to him are all things." A. M. 1. I RESEECH you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies 2 a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye 3 may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every 4 man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members 5 have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one mem- 6 bers one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, 7 whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, let us 8 wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on ex- hortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he 9 that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that 10 which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another. "WE offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies"—this is our sacrifice, daily and continually to be offered; our spiritual sacrifice, not of brute creatures which know not God, but a reasonable sacrifice of our reasonable minds, of our fancy, our imagination, our judgment, of all the faculties which God has given us to know truth and to know him; and a holy sacrifice of a penitent heart washed in Christ's blood, of a believing heart, a self-denying, an obedient, and a loving heart; and yet again a lively sacrifice, a sacrifice of living powers and feelings and hopes. And our bodies, too, with all their various senses and powers, we sacrifice to God; a living sacrifice, not to be destroyed or dishonored, but to do God active service. Our bodies so fearfully and wonderfully made; our eyes, our ears, our busy tongues, our active feet, that vigor which youth feels in all its frame, and which makes the very sense of life a pleasure—these we offer and present to God. T. A. The true, divine idea of religion is a life begotten of grace in the depths of the human soul, subduing to Christ all the powers of the soul, and incarnating itself in a patient, steady, sturdy service. It is the doing of the will of the Father which entitles us to a solid assurance of our redemption by the Son. Doing this will, not preaching it, as something which ought to be done; not indolently sighing to do it, and then lamenting that we do it not; but the thing itself, in actual achievement, from day to day, from month to month, from year to year. Thus religion rises on us in its own imperial majesty. It is no mere delight of the understanding in the doctrines of our faith; no mere excitement of the sensibilities, now harrowed by fear and now jubilant in hope; but a warfare and a work: a warfare against sin and a work for God. And so our thoughts, our cares, our aims get shifted away from ourselves to a worthier center. We look not within ourselves, but above us, for the guiding word; while the roots of our Christian hope are nourished more by our duties than our joys. It is character that is required of us; laid, indeed, in grace, and imperfect at the best, needing to shelter itself behind the perfect righteousness of Christ, and yet a piece of solid moral masonry, to be carried on and carried up by a life-long toil. And this, too, not for our own sake, but for Christ's sake, and because God so wills it. Our own spiritual comfort, the sure fruit of a careful walk with God, though an incident, is not to be the end of our endeavors; but all we do is to be out of simple loyalty to redeeming love. Mere obedience to conscience is but a pagan virtue, which, in the highest sphere, is not a virtue at all. Virtue, for us, is obedience to God in Christ. Painstaking it will be, that there may be no blot upon the life; self-denying, as against our indolence, our appetites, and our passions; asking only for duty, though we knew it were asking for martyrdom—and all for Christ. Such is the will of God concerning us; and only he who does it should reckon himself a child of God. R. D. H. THE twelfth of Romans, placed at the beginning of the Epistle, would have been as cold and uninspiring as the ten commandments on the tables of stone; standing where it does, every precept is moistened with tears of divine pity and the blood of redemption; and to the soul that has learned with Paul "the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God," every word that expresses the will of the Lord Jesus is richer than gold and sweeter than honey. An.—He that gives rules of life without first fixing principles of faith offers preposterously at building a house without laying a foundation, and he that instructs what to believe and directs not a believer how to live doth in vain lay a foundation without following out the building. But in this Epistle we find our apostle excellently acquitting himself in both these. He first largely and firmly lays the groundwork in the foregoing part of the Epistle; now he adds exhortations and directions touching the particular duties of Christians. 1. The first thing to be done with a soul is to convince it of sin and death, then to address and lead it in to Christ, our righteousness and life; this done it should be taught to follow him. This is Christianity, to live in Christ, and to live to Christ; to live in him by faith, and to live to him in holiness. The exhortation that begins this chapter hath in it the whole sum of Christian obedience fitly expressed and strongly urged; and in that are all particular rules comprised. One said well, "The best way to understand the mysterious and high discourse in the beginning of Paul's Epistles is to begin at the practice of these rules and precepts that are in the latter end of them." The way to attain to know more is to receive the truth in the love of it, and to obey that you know. L.—One must first be cleansed, and then cleanse others; first be instructed, then instruct; become light, then enlighten; draw nigh to God, then lead others up to him; be sanctified, then sanctify; have hands, then lead by the hand; save prudence, then give counsel. No one is worthy of our great God, both sacrifice and high priest, who has not first presented himself to God as a holy, living sacrifice, nor exhibited that reasonable service which is well-pleasing to him. Greg. Naz. The whole tone of our New Testament religion is searching and high. It allows no laxities and no apologies. It is satisfied with nothing less than entire consecration. The piety it asks is both active and ardent, warm and constant, ever burning and ever advancing. It summons into the master's service every power, every energy, every affection, every hour of life. F. D. H.—The absolute unselfish oblation of the whole man—mind, heart, and will—as a sacrifice to Christ, out of thankful regard to his dying love, is the living sacrifice, the reasonable service, with which God is well pleased. To keep back anything is to deny our Lord. He asks only the heart, but he asks it all. And in gracious souls he has it. It is his. He has bought it with his Cross and passion, and carries it away in triumph; embracing in almighty arms the ransomed one, who desires no other master, and is happy to be borne away captive by him, whose commandments are not grievous, whose yoke is light, and whose service is freedom. J. W. A. 2. Conformity to the world does not consist in joining in the pleasures with which God who made the world has filled it. It does not consist in pursuing the occupations by which the work of the world is done. It does not consist in allowing proper play to the natural impulses. All these things, though they can be made worldly, yet are not worldly in themselves. By being conformed to this world, the apostle plainly means the molding of the life and character by the system which prevails around you, and not by the higher teaching which reaches your heart and conscience. The world has another voice which does not come from God at all, and which speaks to our weakness, to our folly, to our vanity, to our love of popularity, to our fear of offending. And this is the voice which we are tempted to make our guide, and even to enthrone above our own consciences. Those who begin with the world almost always end with the flesh, or sometimes with what is worse still. They begin by talking lightly of serious faults because they are common, because they are not thought much of, because the temptations to them are great. And such invariably, if they do not repent, go straight on from mere laxity of judgment to downright indulgence in fleshly sins. And hence conformity to the world does the same kind of mischief now that idolatry did long ago. It leads by a direct and rapid course to a low moral standard, to stifling the higher nature, to a weak and perhaps a positively corrupt form of religion, and to a degradation of the life and character. F. T. We must avoid as much as in us lies all such society, all such amusements, all such tempers which it is the daily business of a Christian to subdue, and all those feelings which it is his constant duty to suppress. Some things, which are apparently innocent and do not assume an alarming aspect or bear a dangerous character—things which the generality of decorous people affirm (how truly we know not) to be safe for them; yet if we find that these things stir up in us improper propensities—if they awaken thoughts which ought not to be excited—if they abate our love for religious exercises, or infringe on our time for performing them—if they make spiritual concerns appear insipid—if they wind our heart a little more about the world—in short, if we have formerly found them injurious to our own souls, then let no example or persuasion, no belief of their alleged innocence, no plea of their perfect safety tempt us to indulge in them. It matters little to our security what they are to others. Our business is with ourselves. Our responsibility is on our own heads. Others can not know the side on which we are assailable. Let our own unbiased judgment determine our opinion; let our own experience decide for our own conduct. H. More.—I have found nothing yet which requires more courage and independence than to rise even a little, but decidedly, above the par of the religious world around us. Surely, the way in which we commonly go on is not that way of self-denial and sacrifice and cross-bearing which the New Testament talks of. Then is the offense of the Cross ceased. Our slender influence on the circle of our friends is often to be traced to our leaving so little difference between us. J. W. A. 3. To every man. This is more pressing than if he had said simply, to you, or generally, to you all. Thus we ought to speak, and thus ye ought to hear. We to speak, not as telling some unconcerning stories, but as having business with you; and you to hear, not each for another, as you often do, “Oh! such a passage touched such a one,” but each for ourselves. Not to think more highly.** The first particular the apostle recommends is that gracing grace of humility, the ornament and the safety of all other graces, and which is so peculiarly Christian. Somewhat philosophers speak of temperance, justice, and other like virtues, but these rather to swell the mind with conceit and confidence of itself than to dwell together with self-abasement and humility. But in the school of Christ the first lesson of all is self-denial and humility. It is written above the door as the rule of entry or admission, Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. And, out of all question, that is truly the humblest heart that hath most of Christ in it. L.—A false, imaginary perfection makes way for too many real imperfections. Christ has been disparaged in all manners by this infidel fervor; disparaged in his nature, his dignity, and holiness. There is not one of those schools which, by stretching certain cords to excess, have not in an equal degree slackened others which ought to have been kept stretched. There is not one of those schools whose progress has not been marked by the destruction or weakening of some one of the fundamental truths of religion or morality. A. V. To think soberly. A low self-esteem doth not wholly take away the simple knowledge of what gifts and graces God hath bestowed on a man, for that were to make him both unthankful and unuseful. He that doth not know what God hath freely given him can not return praise to God nor make use of himself for God in his station. The apostle’s caution intimates a sober, humble reflection on the measure God hath given a man, which he not only allows but requires; and himself gives example of it in his own present expression, declaring that he speaks these things through the grace that is given to him. In this dependent notion of freely given, a man shall never be puffed up by any endowments, though he see and know them; yea, the more he knows them thus, will be the more humble still, as being the more obliged. L. 4-8. The second constituent of Christian duty is reciprocal justice and kindness between man and man, like the harmony and helpfulness which the Creator has established between the several members of a living body. Mark how the hand comes to the defense of the eye in its weakness; and how the eye with its sight, and from its elevated position, keeps watch for the welfare of the lowly, blind, but laborious and useful foot. The mutual helpfulness of these members is absolutely perfect. Such should be the charity between brother and brother of God’s family on earth; such it shall be when all the sons and daughters are assembled in the many mansions of the heavenly home. In the remaining portion of the Epistle, Paul labors with all his might to stimulate practical charity, in one place reducing the whole law to one precept, to one word—Love. After devoting so much attention to the roots, he will not neglect to gather the fruit. Arnot. 6. The gospel, as taught by our Lord and his apostles, is pure, transparently clear, radiant alike with the glory of God and the happiness of man—of that there is no doubt; yet what twists has the 8. In the scheme of evangelical charity the principle which actuates the giver is of paramount importance. “He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity.” The gospel rejects alike the tax which is reluctantly paid by fear, the bribe which is given to silence importunity, the sacrifice which is offered to a vain ostentation, and the price which is intended to purchase a place in the divine favor, or as a ground of justification before God. The only offering which it accepts is that which originates in a principle of love and obedience to Christ, and which hopes and asks for divine acceptance through him alone. And having made its appeal at the Cross, having provided and plied him with the grand motive of redeeming love, it will accept nothing which overlooks the constraining influence of that principle. J. H. 9. The duty here meant and commanded is, that we love one another, and our love must be unhypocritical and sincere; such as, though it may consist with, yet doth not wholly consist in civilities of expression and behavior, but a real benevolence of soul and good will to all—a love disposing readily to forgive evil and do good upon all occasions. Cleave to that which is good. This expresses a vehement and inseparable affection; loving and rejoicing in all the good thou seest in others; desiring and seeking after all the good thou canst attain unto thyself; such as will put thee and keep thee most in mind of thy home, and the way thither, and admonish and reduce thee from any declining steps. 10. In honor preferring one another. Putting all possible respect on one another; for though a man may see the weakness of those he converses with, yet he ought to take notice of what is good. All have something commendable, and none hath all; so the meanest may in something be preferable to the highest; and Christian humility and charity will seek out for that. L. 11. Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient 12 in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; distributing to the necessity of saints; given 14 to hospitality. Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them 15 that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. 16 Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own con- 17 ceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. 18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, 19 avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is 20 mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, 21 give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. CARRY holy principles with you into the world, and the world will become hallowed by their presence. A Christlike spirit will Christianize everything it touches. A meek heart, in which the altar-fire of love to God is burning, will lay hold of the commonest, rudest things in life and transmute them, like coarse fuel at the touch of fire, into a pure and holy flame. Religion in the soul will make all the work and toil of life, its gains and losses, friendships, rivalries, competitions, its manifold incidents and events, the means of religious advancement. Lofty or lowly, rude or refined, as our earthly work may be, it will become, to a holy mind, only the material for an infinitely nobler than all the creations of genius—a pure and godlike life. To spiritualize what is material, to Christianize what is secular—this is the noble achievement of Christian principle. If you are a sincere Christian, it will be your great desire, by God’s grace, to bring every gift, talent, occupation of life, every word you speak, every action you do, under the control of Christian motive. Caird. Where true piety exists, fidelity to man is transmuted into worship before God. This is the great truth which sanctifies all human life. Broken up as life is into myriads of little, insignificant acts, it is hard sometimes to redeem it from contempt. It becomes a holy thing, when we realize that, with the heart unreservedly given to God, even the most trivial duty becomes an act of worship. Glowing with the warm affection by which it is inspired, it glides into the frame of devotion itself; which, as grateful incense, goes up to heaven from the altar of God within the heart. Our worship consists not only in formal acts of praise and prayer, when we bow before God in the sanctuary, or kneel at his feet in the closet; but in the workshop, in the counting-room, in the office, everywhere, and in the hourly transactions of common business, the whole life becomes a sacred chant. The ten thousand little obediences are the sweet notes which compose it, rising above the din of this poor world, and mingling in the universal psalm of praise that is heard before the throne. Duty is felt in all its sacredness, and a soft radiance beams upon the path of the most obscure and patient of the Lord's saints upon the earth. B. M. P. 11. The words seem to imply that religion is not so much a duty as a something that has to do with all duties; not a tax to be paid periodically, but a ceaseless, all-pervading, inexhaustible tribute to him who is not only the object of religious worship but the end of our very life and being. It suggests to us the idea that piety is not for Sundays only, but for all days; that spirituality of mind is like the act of breathing, like the circulation of the blood, like the silent growth of the stature, a process that may be going on simultaneously with all our actions—when we are busiest, as when we are idlest; in the church, in the world; in solitude, in society; in our grief, and in our gladness; in our toil, and in our rest; sleeping, waking; by day, by night—amid all the engagements and exigencies of life. For you perceive that in one breath, as duties not only not incompatible but necessarily and inseparably blended with each other, the text exhorts us to be at once "not slothful in business," and "fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Caird. Suffer the mind to revert to the thought that what we are about to do is the task assigned to us in the order of God's providence, that it is a task which he will inspect, and that it must be executed as well as we are able in order that it may meet his approval. Do the work under the eye of your heavenly master, and look up in his face from time to time for his help and blessing: an internal colloquy with him ever and anon, so far from being a distraction, will be a furtherance. For no work can in any high sense prosper which is not done with a bright, elastic spirit; and there is no means of keeping the spirit bright and elastic but by keeping it near to God. And never think of your work as a distraction or a hindrance to piety. Think of it as contributing to healthfulness and cheerfulness of mind, as a steady and sobering influence, preventing those extravagances into which without it the mind might run. E. M. G.—There is many a secret sin that is best contended against, not by first thinking about it and then resisting it—for, while you think about it, it takes the form of a temptation—but by crowding our days so full of duty that the tempter will find no treacherous door open. Work is chaste. Work hallowed by prayer is chaster still. Have no fears that God will not help. F. D. H. Fervent in spirit. The fervor whereof the apostle speaks hath religion, or the service of God, for its object. Love to God is the principle, the law of God is the rule, and his glory the end, of all its operations. The fervent Christian is habitually on the stretch to answer the great purposes for which he was made and redeemed; his understanding is employed in searching out the mind of God so far as it regards the conduct of his creatures; his will is firmly and resolutely determined to perform whatever shall appear to be his duty; his affections are inspired with holy life and vigor; in consequence of which his executive powers are all ready to perform their several parts: the tongue to speak, the hands to give or to do what is required, and the feet to run in the way of God's commandments. In short, the whole man is engaged in the service of God, so that religion becomes his constant and most delightful occupation; he counts nothing too much to be done or too hard to be endured for the enjoyment of that God whom he most ardently loves and to whom he is entirely devoted. This is to be fervent in spirit. R. W. True manly strength in religion is nurtured at the mercy-seat and at the foot of the Cross. The world has already half destroyed us when we are too busy to pray. Better forego food or rest, especially better forego any amount of profit, than learn to live without communion with God. The man of business, who from morning till night scarcely redeems a moment for stated reflection, must, by stern resolution and self-denial, gain some hour to hear God speak and to speak to God, or he will inevitably shrink and wither down into the every-day worldly professor, who is bold at a bargain and cowardly in faith, earnest on week-days and half asleep on the Sabbath, indefatigable in trade-labors and unheard of in operations for Christ's kingdom or his poor. J. W. A.—Believer, the more worldly business lies upon thy hand the more need thou hast to keep close to thy closet. Much business lays a man open to many sins, many snares, and many temptations. Brooks.—Most businesses have wide gaps; all have some chinks at which devotion may slip in. Be we never so urgently set or closely intent on any work, be we feeding, be we traveling, be we trading, be we studying, nothing can forbid that we wedge in a thought concerning God's goodness, and a word of praise for it; that we reflect on our sins, and spend a penitential sigh on them; that we desery our need of God's help, and dispatch a brief petition for it. Barrow.—Often a man in the multitude and pressure of his avocations exercises a more God-pleasing humility and real waiting upon God than in highly favored moments of elevated devotion. Beng. 12. Wilt thou resolutely strive against slothfulness? Then rejoice in hope—in the hope of that glory which is the portion of the true Christian. Wilt thou be and remain fervent in spirit? Then be patient—that is, at once enduring and resolute—in tribulation. Patience strengthens the power out of which true zeal is born; and, in order to do much for the kingdom of God, we must have learned to suffer, if need be, for his sake. Wilt thou, finally, serve the Lord uprightly in thy work? Continue instant in prayer. To work and pray are not to the Christian two opposite things; far less does the one exclude the other—they flow together incessantly in higher unity. Persevering, believing prayer alone will give thee enjoyment, courage, and strength for the daily service of the Lord, even in a post which perhaps thou wouldst not have chosen for thyself. The hidden power of the prompt, busy hand lies in the constantly bowed knee. Van O.—If afraid of fainting, yea, if at the point of fainting, prayer revives the soul, draws in no less than the strength of God to support it. And what, then, can surcharge it? Oh! acquaint yourselves with prayer, and by it with God, that, if days of trouble come, you may know whither to go and what way; and, if you know this way, whatever befalls you, you are not much to be bemoaned. L. 15. Rejoice, weep.** This indeed is a characteristic trait that distinguishes the Christian faith from every religious pretension that was ever set up. It is not one-sided, as being all for melancholy or all for mirth—not stoical or epicurean. It has as many sides as our life has, goes with us wherever we can go, and only asks that it may consecrate everything with its blessing. F. D. H.—I am obliged to great thankfulness to God for the mercies of this life which he has shown to my friends. That which promotes their joy should increase mine. Nature and grace teach us to be glad, when our friends are well and prosper. Do good to men's bodies if thou wouldst do good to their souls. Say not, "Things corporeal are worthless trifles for which the receivers will be never the better." They are things that nature is easily sensible of; and sense is the passage to the mind and will. Dost thou not find what a help it is to thyself to have at any time any ease and alacrity of body; and what a burden and hindrance pains and cares are? Labor then to free others from such burdens and temptations, and be not regardless of them. If thou must "rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep," promote then thy own joy by helping theirs, and avoid thy own sorrows in preventing or curing theirs. Box. 16. Mind not high things.** In order to escape the perils of a false elevation, to avoid falling either into the snares of the flesh or the snares of pride, aspire to things higher than all those to which the world unjustly gives the name of high things. Neither to the right nor to the left, but upward! Upward! in the practice of all the duties which God has given you to fulfill. Upward! in simple love to him who has loved you, diligently seeking his glory while despising your own. Upward! in the exactness, not the scrupulous and legal, but the tender and zealous exactness of Christian obedience, in humility truly humble, and that childlike simplicity which so admirably accords with enlightened reason in the intelligent but docile acceptance of the gifts which God has given, and the truths which he has taught you. A. V. 17. All that is required of us is that we should not suffer our resentment of injuries to carry us beyond the bounds of justice, equity, and Christian charity; that we should not recompense evil for evil, or repay one injury by committing another; that we should not take fire at every slight provocation or trivial offense, nor pursue even the greatest and most flagrant injuries with implacable rancor; that we should make all reasonable allowances for the infirmities of human nature, for the passions, the prejudices, the failings, the misapprehensions of those we have to deal with; and, without submitting tamely to oppression or insult or giving up rights of great and acknowledged importance, should always show a disposition to conciliate and forgive; and rather to recede and give way a little in certain instances, than insist on the utmost satisfaction and reparation that we have perhaps a strict right to demand. P.—It is not manhood but childishness to be quieted with striking the thing that hurts us. Though enemies be not worthy to be loved by us, yet malice is unworthy to be lodged in us. 'Tis true, the precept of loving enemies is contrary to unsanctified nature. But God alone knows how to punish our enemies without passion and inequality. It is our duty to weary persecutors with patience. A Christian must not, like the flint, seem to be cool but be fiery when struck. He that takes up fire to throw (though against his enemy) hurts himself most. To be kind to the kind argues civility; to be unkind to the unkind argues corruption; to be unkind to the kind argues devilishness; to be kind to the unkind argues Christianity. Jenkyn. 18. Lieth in you.** The emphasis is best laid on the word you. Not a mere repetition of the first clause, "if it be possible," but further insisting on that thought, as if in answer to the suggestion, "I would but somebody else will not." A proverb says, "It takes two to quarrel": keep peace on your side. O. E. D.—Remember that, when any man reviles you, it is not the tongue that gives you the opprobrious language that injures or affronts you; but it is your own resentment of it as an injury or affront that makes it such to you. Epictetus. 19. The second injury, done by way of revenge, differs from the first that provoked it little or nothing but in point of time; and certainly no one man's sin can procure privilege to another to sin in that or the like kind. If another hath broken the bonds of his allegiance and obedience to God and of charity to thee, yet thou art not the less tied by the same bonds still. By revenge of injuries thou usurpest upon God's prerogative, who is the avenger, as the apostle teaches. This doth not forbid either the magistrate's sword for just punishment of offenders, or the soldier's sword in a just war; but such revenges as, without authority or a lawful call, the pride and perverseness of men do multiply one against another: in which is involved a presumptuous contempt of God and his supreme authority, or at least the unbelief and neglect of it. L.—20. Coals of fire. That fiery coals signify benefits is manifest by the words of Solomon which the apostle here reciteth. Benefits may properly be called coals of fire, for they inflame the heart with love, which was before cold and inactive. Luther. 21. When we meet with an opposition which frets and irritates us, Christian prudence counsels us to pray that the temptation may be removed; and in particular that our self-love and injured feelings may not weaken our love for our neighbor. But this prudence, if it counsels nothing further, is not prudent enough. If the same feeling which disposes us to pray does not dispose us to pray for our enemies or opponents, it is difficult to believe that it is a movement of charity. Charity can not be thus arrested. Its nature is to overcome evil with good, and this means not merely that it does not render evil for evil, but that in return for evil it renders good. It would not be charity if it did less. To pardon truly it is necessary to do more than pardon. Evil must be overcome by good; and after the example of God himself, where the offense has abounded, grace must much more abound. This is to say that pardoning, sparing, loving, all are secured in the person offended only when he prays for the offender. A. V. 1. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: 2 the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resist- 3 eth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the 4 power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: for he is the min- ister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him 5 that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for con- 6 science' sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending 7 continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom trib- ute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. 8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled 9 the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neigh- 10 bour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of 11 the law. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for 12 now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. 13 Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and 14 wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. If, indeed, God's kingdom were shining around us in its full beauty; if every evil thing were driven out of his temple; if we saw nothing but holy lives and happy, the fruits of his Spirit, truth, and love, and joy; then we might be less anxious for ourselves; our course would be far smoother. What evil thoughts would not be withered and die long ere they could ripen into action, if the very air which we breathed were of such keen and heavenly purity! It is because all this is not so that we have need of so much watchfulness; it is because the faults of every one of us make our brethren's task harder; be- cause there is not one bad or careless person among us who is not a hindrance in his brother's path, and does not oblige him to exert himself the more. Therefore, because the day is not bright, but overclouded, because it is but too like the night, and too many use it as the night for all works of darkness, let us take the more heed that we do not ourselves so mistake it; let us watch each of us the light within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble; let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ. To put on Christ is a truer and fuller expression, by far, than if we had been told to put on truth, or holiness, or goodness. It in- cludes all these, with something more, that nothing but itself can give—the sense of safety, and joy unspeakable, in feeling ourselves sheltered in our Saviour's arms, and taken even into himself. Assur- edly, if we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof. T. A. 2. For "damnation" read "condemnation"; punishment for that disobedience, not eternal perdi- tion, being meant. A. 1-7. It is conscientious subjection that is spoken of; free, willing, hearty; not forced or constrained. It is to proceed from respect to the authority enjoin- ing obedience, and not from a mere dread of the consequences of disobedience. W. S.—Christian- ity sees in the body politic not an arbitrary human invention; in the magistracy, not a mere slavish creature of the sovereign will of the people, but a divine ordinance for the administration of eternal justice, which punishes evil and rewards good; for upholding the majesty of law; for maintaining or- der and security both of person and of property; and for promoting the public weal. The state is moral society resting on law; the Church, the same resting on the gospel. The one is necessarily limited and national; the other, catholic and universal. The former looks to temporal welfare; the latter, to eternal. But each promotes and protects the other. As to the particular form of government for a state the apostles give no directions. As all power and authority come from God, so also does the power of the civil government, be it an absolute or a limited monarchy or a republic, be it an aristocracy or a democracy. In virtue of its elevation above the temporal and earthly, Christianity may exist under all forms of civil government, and will always favor that which most corresponds to the historical rela- tions and wants of a nation, and which is, therefore, relatively the best. Of course, however, in this point also, it tends steadily to improvement and to the highest possible perfection; to the abolition of hurtful laws and institutions and the introduction of good; to an organization under which the power is judiciously distributed, the rights of the individual as well as of the commonwealth best preserved, and the moral ends of the race most efficiently promoted and most surely attained. P. S. Christianity refused to be mixed up with any political system, or to bind those who followed it down to any form of political union, as it had re- fused to bind them down to any particular form of religious union. Leaving itself perfectly free, it could therefore enter as a spirit of good into any form of government. All its fundamental ideas— the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of all men in Christ, the equality of all men before God, the individual responsibility of every human soul, the surrender of all things for others, the one necessity of salvation for all alike, emperor and peasant—are spiritual ideas which bear an easy translation into political ideas, and which, gathering strength, have proved the ruin of many tyrannies. S. A. B.— Above and beneath all civil constitutions—the foun- dation of their stability, the dome of their protec- tion, their corner-stone, their wall of defense, their genial and sheltering sky—is the religion and gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Virtue is loyalty. Good- ness is patriotism. The best citizenship is the best Christianship. The best legislator is the truest and wisest man. Character is the strength of the state. They are the friends, the ornaments, the defenders of the country and its constitution, who will not swerve from its three original, immortal ideas— Faith, Freedom, Fraternity. F. D. H. 5. The subjection here required is not absolute and unlimited. In obeying the constituted authorities—thus runs the exhortation—a man should, properly speaking, obey God only, whose minister the magistrate is, and whose sword he bears. And hence obedience to an earthly ruler must be measured and limited by the obligation to the heavenly. P. S.—The limits of every duty must be determined by its reasons, and the only ones assigned here, or that can be assigned for submission to civil authority, are its tendency to do good; wherever therefore this shall cease to be the case, submission becomes absurd, having no longer any rational view. But at what time this evil shall be judged to have arrived, or what remedy it may be proper to apply, Christianity does not decide, but leaves to be determined by an appeal to natural reason and right. R. Hall.—No command to do anything morally wrong can be binding; nor can any which transcends the rightful authority of the power whence it emanates. What that rightful authority is must be determined by the institutions and laws of the land, or from prescription and usage, or from the nature and design of the office with which the magistrate is invested. The right of deciding on all these points, and determining where the obligation to obedience ceases, and the duty of resistance begins, must, from the nature of the case, rest with the subject, and not with the ruler. The apostles and early Christians decided this for themselves, and did not leave the decision with the Jewish or Roman authorities. Like all other questions of duty, it is to be decided on our responsibility to God and our fellow-men. C. H. 8-10. The whole sum of the law is love: love to God and love to man; these two contain all, and the former of the two contains the latter; love to God is the only true principle and spring of all due love to man, and all love that begins there returns thither likewise and ends there. The engaging the whole mind and soul to the love of God does not engross it so that there should be no kind of love communicable to man; on the contrary, it is to refine it that it may flow forth the purer and better. All love should be once called in to God, to be sublimated and purified there, and then set in its right channel and motion, so as man be loved in him and for him; and so to love man is to love God, that love taking its rise from him and terminating in him; and in this circle is the proper motion of celestial divine love. L. This love is exercised in obedience to the authority of God's word. It is a principle, not merely a feeling; it is cultivated and exercised as a duty, not yielded to merely as a generous instinct; it is a submission to God's command, not merely an indulgence of constitutional tenderness. J. A. J.—Remember that love fulfills obedience, and does not abolish it any more than faith abolishes the law; that he who loves obeys joyfully, but still obeys; that he obeys better than before, but still obeys. Nothing, no attainments of the spiritual life, however sublime, can abolish obedience; and the spiritual life can not be advancing when obedience is on the decline. The proof of progress is better obedience. A. V.—Love as obligatory is the law of our being. In substance, and as expressing his inmost nature, Love is the one imperative word uttered by God in the Bible. It is also the one imperative word uttered by Him through the constitution and conscience of man, and in the coincidence of these two utterances we find a perfect proof that both are from Him. Law and love! These are the two mightiest forces in the universe. Law is stern, majestic, and the fountain of all order. Love is mild, winning, the fountain of all rational spontaneity, that is, of the spontaneity that follows rational choice. Love without law is capricious, weak, mischievous; opposed to law, it is wicked. Law without love is unlovely. The highest harmony of the universe is in the love of a rational being that is coincident with the law of that being rationally affirmed; and the deepest possible jar and discord is from the love, persistent and utter, of such a being in opposition to his law. It is because there is in the Divine Being this harmony of law with love that He is perfect. It is because this harmony is required in the divine government that that is perfect, and no philosophy for the regulation of human conduct can be both vital and safe in which that same union is not consummated. M. H. 9. The term neighbor includes every creature of God that needeth a blessing and can be blessed. Thus doth Christianity set the heart of man to throbbing along with the heart of everlasting love, in behalf of all that wear his form, and circulate life currents filled by the same heavenly Father. Thus does it create a spirit in man which sends him abroad with both hands full of all that can bless and endow human existence. Under the gospel, man is not all inhumanity to man. Heart does meet heart; does warm and grieve at the call of sorrow and need; if another be burdened, feels itself the pressure; if he be delivered, exults in the emancipation. White. 11. Our salvation nearer. The best thoughts we can have about the future life are thoughts that make us better men now—more fit to live under the eye of God, and in daily intercourse with our neighbors, just where we are—kinder and purer at home, more just and honorable in business, more reverent and humble in prayer, more charitable in our judgments of each other. Unless we are very thoughtless indeed, there can not fail to be a strong and salutary influence breathing on us continually by remembering this: that we are so near, one day's march nearer every night, to a world that is all love and all life, without selfishness and without death, and that world eternal. The prospect itself, if we realized it, would shed some new sanctity over the life we are living. F. D. H. 12. The night. A picture of the Christian's present state. In comparison with other men he is in broad day; and so he is in comparison with his own former condition. But here the apostle is not thinking of other men, nor looking back to our own natural state: he is looking forward; he has a glorious eternity in view; and as he contemplates that, he feels that he and his fellow-believers are all still in darkness, that night with its shadows is still overspreading them. The day. Brightness and beauty and happiness are all connected in our minds with the word, and all the pleasant visions the word calls up in our minds are embodied and realized in heaven. Now this day, the apostle says, is near: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." He speaks like a man who has long felt himself benighted in the world, and who sees at last the morning breaking. "Now," he says in the preceding verse, "is our salvation nearer than when we believed," than when we first believed; time has brought it nearer. He looks on himself and his fellow-believers as standing on the very verge of God's kingdom. C. B. Holiness, under the name of light, is by the apostle spoken of as the Christian's armor. Put on, saith he, the armor of light, in opposition to the works of darkness. Strange armor! that a man may see through. A good man's armor is, that he needs none: his armor is an open breast. Likeness to God is armor of proof, that is, an imitation of him in his moral goodness, which holiness as a general name comprehends. A person truly like God is secure from any external violence, so far as that it shall never be able to invade his spirit. He is in spirit far raised above the tempestuous, stormy region, and converses where winds and clouds have no place. Howe. 13. It is a common saying that the night is without shame, and this is in a measure true; for men often do those things in the night which they fear to do in the day, lest their acts should be discovered and they brought to shame and punishment. Therefore the apostle says, Let us walk honestly as in the day. Luther. 14. What is the wedding garment? Some say it is the imputed righteousness of Christ, some that it is the imparted righteousness of Christ, others that it is holiness of character. I consider it to consist of all three together. "Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ" is possessing his righteousness imputed, his holiness imparted, and his example imitated. He first makes the robe, and then fits us to wear it. R. Hill.—Dress relates to the form or figure of the body, character to the form or figure of the soul—it is, in fact, the dress of the soul. On the ground of this analogy it is that the Scriptures so frequently make use of dress to signify what lies in character, and represent character, in one way or another, as being the dress of the soul. As character is the soul's dress, and dress analogical to character, whatever has power to produce a character when received is represented as a dress to be put on. Thus Paul, conceiving Christ to be the soul's new dress, or what is nowise different, its new character, says, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ." Christ is to be a complete wardrobe for us himself, and that by simply receiving his person we are to have the holy texture of his life upon us, and live in the infolding of his character. We must put on Christ himself, and none but him. We must put him on just as he is, wear him outside, walk in him, bear his reproach, glory in his beauty, call it good to die with him, so to be found in him, not having our own righteousness, but the righteousness that is of God by faith. Cover us in it, O thou Christ of God, and let our shame be hid eternally in thee. H. B. Make not provision for the flesh. Once in Christ, your necessary care for this natural life will be regulated and moderated by the Spirit. And for all unlawful desires of the flesh you shall be rid of providing for these. Instead of all provision for the life of the flesh in that sense, there is another guest and another life for you now to wait on and furnish for. L.—When Christ is really put on, the world falls off, and the lusts of property, and fame, and power, and appetite, subside or fall away. The effect runs both ways under the great law of action and reaction—as the old man is put off that the new may be put on, so the new put on still further displaces the old. And so if there be any overmastering temptation which baffles you, and keeps turning you off in your endeavors, and boasting itself against you, here is your deliverance—raise no fight with it in your own will, as you always have done when you have failed, but simply turn yourself to Christ alone: let your soul be covered in by the power of his grace upon you. H. B. 1. HIM that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one be- 2 lieveth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that 3 eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: 4 for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own 5 master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him 6 stand. One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. 7 Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth 8 it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. 9 He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the 10 Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. 11 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we 12 live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, 13 or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he 14 might be Lord both of the dead and living. But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why 15 dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of 16 Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every 17 tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. 18 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a 19 stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. I know, and am persuaded by 20 the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him that esteemeth any thing 21 to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now 22 walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. Let 23 not then your good be evil spoken of: for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but 24 righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serveth 25 Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men. Let us therefore follow after the things 26 which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another. For meat destroy 27 not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth 28 with offence. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy 29 brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. Hast thou faith? have it to thyself 30 before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. 31 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is 32 not of faith is sin. We want this bond of unity between the dead and the living to throw a purifying and ennobling influence into our present daily life, to save it from sinking, as our life is so terribly tempted to, into a besotted mammonism, an insane frivolity, or a miserable selfishness; to make it a noble and ever more perfect preparation for what is to come. We want this constant "power" of a practical connection between the two worlds, to keep the present from being a mere carnival of the senses, a place to eat and dress and sleep in, as well as to keep the future from being a sentimental phantasy or a dead blank. We are tempted hourly—nobody denies it—to unclean transactions, to covetousness and bad temper, to envying and evil speaking, to indolence, impatience, and unbelief. Now, one of the great powers by which we are to struggle against these successfully, and finally overcome, is the certainty of a day when Christ—who is life to those that love him, and whose eyes are like a flame of fire to those that are untrue to him and unrighteous to each other—shall appear. The new man in him is to be put on immediately. Even in these self-seeking earthly streets the Christian is to walk unselfishly and unblamably, his pride humbled, his temper controlled, his motives godly. Whatever is done in word or deed is to be done in the name and spirit of the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, by those that are on the way to meet him. F. D. H. 1-6. Those Christians who still clung to superstitious distinctions between meats and days should be treated with indulgence by the more enlightened, and all should treat each other with charity, and forbear from condemning one another, whether Jews or Gentiles, since Christ had received both into his favor as their common Lord. C. 3. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not. That is to say, beware of the fancied superiority to the weaknesses and narrowness of your more scrupulous brother which is prone to creep into the hearts of the more liberal and strong. It may be that what you call over-scrupulous timidity is the fruit of a more earnest Christian principle than yours, and that what you call in yourself freedom from foolish scruples is only the result of a less sensitive conscience, not of a more robust Christianity. Let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth. Judge not from the height of your superior self-denial your brother who allows himself what you avoid. Your besetting sin is self-righteous condemnation of those who perhaps, after all, are wiser as well as wider than you, and who in their strength may be able to walk as near to God on a road which to you would be full of perils. Let us all remember, besides, that a thing which to ourselves is no weight may yet be right for us to forsake out of true and tender brotherly regard to others who, weaker than we, or perhaps more conscientious than we, could not do the same thing without damaging their spirits and weakening their Christian life. "Him that is weak in the faith receive." Him that is weak in the faith help. And in all these matters indifferent, which are weights to one and not weights to another, let us remember, first, for ourselves, that a weight retained is a sin; and let us remember, next, for others, that they stand not by our experience, but their own; and that we are neither to judge their strength nor to offend their weakness. A. M. 4. It was well and wisely said by Augustine that they were most likely to be uncharitable toward error who had never learned by their own experience how hard it was to arrive at truth. They who are so happy as to have arrived at truth, whose hearts and minds have been opened to receive the wisdom which is from God, they know how many are the ways to error on either side; how truth is for ever mixed with error, and error with truth; and they would rather dwell thankfully on that truth which their neighbor holds than be extreme to note his errors. T. A. 5. Persuaded in his own mind. Man must deny his self-will, but only in order to regain his will in a sanctified and refined state, which he subordinates only to that of God, that he may be the organ of the divine will, which is the only true freedom of a created spirit. But whoever denies his own will, in order to become the will-less organ of another man, denies the image of God in the dignity of his own free personality, turns himself from being a free servant of God into a servant of man, and gives to the creature the honor due to God alone. Every Christian must be a living organ of the Deity, a temple of the Holy Ghost, one taught of God, acknowledging only one Lord and Master. N.—Men are for ever acting without being fully persuaded in their own mind; and that in various ways. The mischief of this is great and manifold. It makes men either, as so many are, wholly without depth and earnestness—living and acting, as it were, quite at random, and without an interest in anything but their own comfort or enjoyment—or else it makes them obstinate and unjust, persisting doggedly in their own ways and their own notions, without being able to render the least reason for either; or, lastly, it makes them insincere and sophistical, beguiling themselves and others with a show of reason, attacking other men's opinions and maintaining their own. It is evident that there must be attained a state of mind where men could be fixed and earnest, yet not obstinate or unreasonable, having opinions and principles dear to them as their very life's blood, and yet being all the while fair and teachable, ready to hear and to be convinced, and to make all just allowance for others. And this state would be his and his only, who, according to the apostle's words, was to be fully persuaded in his own mind. T. A. Another external hindrance which deterred the heathen from Christianity was the variety of opinions and sects into which Christians were divided. "How can we look for truth among you," they said, "since you are not of one mind among yourselves about your religion?" Chrysostom thus replies to this objection: "If we professed to follow human reasonings, thou mightest be perplexed; but if we say that we believe the Scripture, and this is simple and true, thou mayest easily come to a decision. Whoever agrees with it, he is a Christian; whoever opposes it, he is very far from being one." The heathen rejoins: "But if some one comes and says, This stands in Scripture, but thou sayest something different; and so the Scripture is interpreted arbitrarily, and our minds are distracted." "But hast thou not reason and the power of judgment given thee by God?" is Chrysostom's reply. N. 6. The Christianized Jew, though he admitted that "Christ is the end of the law to every one that believeth," that in Him all the scattered rays of type and prophecy converge and are for ever lost—yea, rather, are fixed and eternalized—yet still could not resist his tendency to preserve some fragments of the old preparatory creed, and incorporate them into the spiritual religion of Christ. The abstinence from peculiar meats, the observance of peculiar days, and others of the formal traditions of the synagogue, he was loth altogether to resign, though he could not altogether justify. W. A. B. 7. None liveth to himself. God never meant religion to terminate on itself. He enlightens to enable us to shine, and we very much doubt if there be any force in all nature, or any gift or any work of God, that is self-contained or non-communicative. Certainly he is not, for he is always giving to all. Not so his Son, who said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive"; not so the Holy Ghost, who is ever giving light and joy and peace; not the angels, who are all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation. Nor in nature do we find anything great shut up in self. Not the sun, or moon, or stars, whose beams fill every land; not the sea, whose broad expanse gives forth the vapors that water the earth; not the rivers, that give back their gathered wealth to the sea; not the land, that gives its harvests; not the air, that forms the vital breath of all things. And when God shines into man's heart to give the light of his glory, shall man hide the light? This were to convert into a possession what God ties up as a trust, and bids us use for the creature's good. J. Hall.—That which a man is—that sum total made up of the items of his beliefs, purposes, affections, tastes, and habits, manifested in all he does and does not—is contagious in its tendency, and is ever photographing itself on other spirits. He himself may be as unconscious of this emanation of good or evil from his character as he is of the contagion of disease from his body, or, if that were equally possible, of the contagion of good health. But the fact, nevertheless, is certain. If the light is in him, it must shine; if darkness reigns, it must shade; if he glows with love, it will radiate its warmth; if he is frozen with selfishness, the cold will chill the atmosphere around him; and if corrupt and vile, he will poison it. Nor is it possible for any one to occupy a neutral or indifferent position. In some form or other he must affect others. N. M. 8. They, and they only, live unto the Lord who realize his authority and do everything he enjoins, as an act of willing and cheerful obedience, as a part of that homage they owe to their Master, who make his approbation their governing aim, and his glory their supreme end in all that they do, and who are wholly resigned to his wise, righteous, and loving disposal. R. W.—We are no more to die to ourselves than to live to ourselves. Our Lord Jesus hath purchased to himself a dominion over both states, of the living and dead; and, whether we live, we must live to him, or die, we must die to him. It is the glory of a Christian to live so much above the world that nothing in it may make him either fond of life or weary of it. Howe.—Unto him, as Christians, we are called upon to live; he who is the principle of our spiritual life is also made the object of it. Unto him, as Christians, we are called upon to die; he who died for us is made the object of our death likewise, that, as "our life is hid with Christ in God," so, "when he who is our life shall appear, then we also may appear with him in glory." No reserve is admitted in the statement of our profession. We live and die to Christ; our whole nature, in all its aspects and positions, is offered to him as one solemn and perpetual sacrifice. "Bought with a price," we are delivered to him as his own spiritual property in this world; "we are Christ's, and Christ is God's"—so that, as it were, through him, as man, we pass into the very presence of the supreme divinity, enter within the verge of that ineffable nature with which he connects us, and catch upon our weak and shivering humanity the beams of the everlasting light of God! W. A. B. 9. Lord of dead and living. How strikingly, with a single touch, is the glory of Christ here pictured to us! No dominion can be imagined which in extent surpasses his. Even the mightiest monarch, although he had at last conquered the whole world, yet only sways his scepter over the living. The dominion of Christ embraces not only the visible world but also the invisible; it is one and the same law which is obeyed on this side of the grave and on yonder. His right to reign over both is founded on this double and irrevocable fact of his death and resurrection. Van O. 10. While each should enjoy his own opinion, and turn neither to the right hand nor to the left in the discharge of duty, he will find it no part of his duty to condemn those who may not be able to see as he does; no part of his duty, for things not essential, to set at nought and judge his brethren, because both he and they are equally answerable to the Judge of all. R. T. We shall all stand. Earth must fade away from our eyes, and we must anticipate that great and solemn truth which we shall not fully understand until we stand before God in judgment; that to us there are but two beings in the whole world—God and ourselves. The sympathy of others, the pleasant voice, the glad eye, the smiling countenance, the thrilling heart, which at present are our very life—all will be away from us when Christ comes in judgment. Every one will have to think of himself. Every eye shall see him; every heart will be full of him. He will speak to every one; and every one will be rendering to him his own account. Newman.—God governs this world, governs you and me, down to the very depths of our being. And we possess the power of choosing right and wrong: right by the grace of God, and wrong by our failing to use that grace; and as responsible for such a power we shall be summoned at last before the judgment-seat of Christ. Abp. Thomson. 12. Woe to you if you do what others think right, instead of obeying the dictates of your own conscience! woe to you if you allow authority, or prescription, or fashion, or influence, or any other human thing, to interfere with that awful and sacred thing—your own responsibility! “Every man,” said the apostle, “must give an account of himself to God.” 14. “To him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” In other words, whatever may be the abstract merits of the question—however in God’s jurisprudence any particular act may stand—to you, thinking it to be wrong, it manifestly is wrong, and your conscience will gather round it a stain of guilt if you do it. F. W. R. 15. Destroy not. How destroy him? Evidently by inducing him, through force of example, to do what his conscience condemned. This abstinence to which the strong Christian should submit for the sake of the weak, however, was not to be perpetual. When there was no danger of his doing injury to his weak brother, the stronger and more enlightened Christian was free to act as he pleased. 16. Let not your good be evil spoken of. In one sense it is impossible to avoid such evil speaking. The best deeds of the best Christians may be misrepresented, and their kindest actions may be attributed to the meanest, if not the worst, motives. Paul and his fellow-laborers in the gospel had an ample experience of such speaking at the hands of those who “falsely accused their good conversation in Christ.” These words, therefore, must refer to evil speaking of a different sort. They teach that a Christian must not use what is good in itself, or what may be good to him, in such a manner, or under such circumstances, as to give occasion of evil speaking in regard to it. In the enjoyment of those good things which God has placed within his reach, he must take heed that he does not bring reproach on his good confession. The rule is one which is neither hard to be understood nor difficult of application, if he has a simple and honest desire above all things to please the Lord. And if Christian people would keep this brief precept in mind, they would be saved from much of the perplexity which they sometimes profess to feel in regard to various popular or fashionable amusements. Forsyth. 17. Earnest desire of holiness is holiness in the germ thereof. Soon shalt thou know, if only thou wilt follow on to know, the Lord. But sanctity is not the work of a day, but of a life. Growth in grace is subject to the same law of gradual and imperceptible advance as growth in nature. Be but true to your convictions. Do but follow the instigations of the Spirit. Follow him in darkness and light, through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report, and in due time the new creation shall dawn within thee, and the fair fabric of God’s spiritual kingdom shall be built up step by step—“righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” E. M. G. 19. It is the ordinance of God that Christians should be often asserting the things of God to each other, and that by their so doing they should edify one another. Church-fellowship, rightly managed, is the glory of all the world. No place, no community, no fellowship is adorned with such beauties as is a church rightly knit together to their head, and lovingly serving one another. Bun. 20,21. There are some things which are right or wrong in themselves. They depend on the positive enactments of God and on the eternal distinctions of things, and can not be compromised, modified, or disregarded. There are other things, however, which may be regarded as matters of personal comfort, convenience, or gratification. They are clearly right in themselves, but they may be so connected, or there may be such associations in regard to them, or others may entertain such views of them, that indulgence in them by us will be an injury to others. It may shock or pain them as if we were doing wrong; or, acting on our example, they may be led further than we would go, and fall into sin; or they may be led by our example to do that which they now regard as sin, and which would be sin to them. In such a case the course which we are to pursue becomes clear, and it is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby a brother is offended, or is made weak. A. B. There is no self-denial deserving the name that is not willing to give up any privilege of the palate or the passions rather than endanger the least or lowest of God’s children. And then, if it is demanded, “Why should I be deprived of the lawful use of some agreeable thing merely because some less guarded, less experienced, or less coolly constituted neighbor will abuse it?” we will leave the ground of justice altogether and come upon that of magnanimity and of privilege. We will ask, not what we have a right to do, but what is to be gladly chosen because it is right to be done. In the estimates of God and eternity, the generosity that shields a human heart from shame will stand above a genial style of hospitality. Not till comfort shall become the creed of Christendom, can free living be the testimony of faith. . . . Too little, too little, will there appear in that day of any positive achievements of ours for God and his truth, proportioned to our opportunity. But at least let it not be found that, when some frail fellow-creature was inclining to baseness and to ruin, any frivolity or unconcern of ours made his downward way easier and swifter; or, if any other soul was struggling up into light and victory, that our faithlessness discouraged him, our inconsistencies confused him, our self-love drew him back. 22. Hast thou faith? have it to thyself. There is no impersonal character, no pardon by proxy, no collective salvation. The work is for each. "Repent" is for each. "Take up the cross and come after me," is for each. The apostolic view of practical Christianity as a "calling" individualizes, first, the Christian principle as having a place distinct from all other principles, and, secondly, individualizes the Christian life as having all its awful obligations, its joys and sanctions, centered upon each personal conscience and heart. F. D. H. 23. For "damned," "condemned." In hardly any place where this terrible word is used is its use justified, or is the meaning to be referred to a future life. A.—The very duties of religion, if self be the soul of them, are nothing but guilt. Where there is faith, there is humility; but where there is not faith, there is nothing but pride and self-deceit. Therefore, whatsoever is not of faith is sin. G. B. C.—He that doubteth. In every undertaking our first care should be to have a clear conscience. Rectitude is a sacred and awful thing; and, as its eternal laws should never be despised by open and deliberate transgression, so the very possibility of invading them by rashness and imprudence should fill us with constant vigilance and unceasing caution. J. H. T.—Misgivings and doubts and scruples are intended to make us think, but not to make us waste all our energy on thinking; they are intended to make us pause, but not to make us stop; they are intended to make us repent, but not to make us give up everything else to fruitless sorrow. And if we can not attain peace or light all at once, we must not, for all that, complain, lag, or despair; we must simply obey and wait. F. T. 1. We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please our- 2 selves. Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification. For even 3 Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached 4 thee fell on me. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learn- 5 ing, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Now the 6 God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according 7 to Christ Jesus: that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father 8 of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to 9 the glory of God. Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the 10 truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers: and that the Gentiles might 11 glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the 12 Gentiles, and sing unto thy name. And again he saith, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his peo- 13 ple. And again, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud him, all ye people. And again, 14 Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; 15 in him shall the Gentiles trust. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in 16 believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. 17 And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, 18 filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. Nevertheless, brethren, I 19 have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the 20 grace that is given to me of God, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the 21 Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be ac- 22 ceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. I have therefore whereof I may glory through 23 Jesus Christ in those things which pertain to God. For I will not dare to speak of any of 24 those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word 25 and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that 26 from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. 27 Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build 28 upon another man's foundation: but as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they 29 shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand. For which cause also I have been 30 much hindered from coming to you. But now having no more place in these parts, and 31 having a great desire these many years to come unto you; whensoever I take my journey 32 into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on 33 my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company. But now I 34 go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints. For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and 35 Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath 27 pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things. 28 When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by 29 you into Spain. And I am sure that, when I come unto you, I shall come in the fulness 30 of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers 31 to God for me; that I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judæa; and that 32 my service which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints; that I may come unto 33 you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed. Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen. SELF-PLEASING always tends to meanness of character. It is clean against all that we understand by nobleness, magnanimity, courage, honor. It is against all the public virtues, such as patriotism, benevolence, and the charities of life. It always inflicts injury and misery upon others. Self-pleasing is enormously difficult to the self that is always seeking to be pleased, so difficult as to be ultimately quite impossible of realization. More and yet more must be had, until more is not to be had. Better and yet better, and, alas! better will not come. And Christian people ought to be constantly and watchfully on their guard against this thing. There is, absolutely, no one whom it will not beset. The vivacious will have it presented to them in forms of excitement and amusement, which, if indulged in, will draw them away from the important duties of daily life, as well as from some of the severer duties of Christian service. The quiet and retiring will have it presented to them in forms of sloth and ease—they will think that it can injure no one, and no precious interest, that they should take their rest. The busy will have it presented to them in the forms of avarice, and ambition, and fame, and honor; in fact, all the vices and all the faults are but different dresses which that protean character, the old self, puts on as it goes up and down the world, murmuring, “We ought to please ourselves!” Beware! brother; sister; young disciple; old disciple—beware! lest, unwittingly, ye fall into that soft and easy habit of pleasing self. Please the higher self and welcome. Please your conscience. Please the love that lies sleeping in you, deep, and vast, and far. Please the powers, and the sensibilities, and the activities of the Christian life; and then, not you alone, but angels and God himself, will be pleased. But as to pleasing that other self, that second you, that meaner creature you sometimes find yourself lapsing into, all danger and all soul-death lie that way. It is surely no irreverence to follow the figure that has been given us, and say, “Let that man be crucified.” Put fresh nails into the hands and the feet. Pierce that cold black heart with the soldier’s spear. The dear Christ died in his love and purity, and rose again, and revived, that that dark man of sin might die for ever. A. R. 1. The world abounds in wretchedness which can neither help itself nor make compensation for the help of others, and which appeals for relief to those who are able to render it. Here we have the law of unrequited or gratuitous service—the strong must serve the weak. Human need creates a lien on the ability to relieve it. Every man is debtor, as much as in him is, to use his superior power, of whatever kind, in uncompensated service to those who need. And the greater the power to serve, the greater the proportion of this kind of service that is due—preëminent ability, preëminent service; greatness, great service. Here we reach the Christian principle of stewardship—that men hold property and all means of influence, not for selfish ends, but in trust for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom and the promotion of the best interests of man. J. H. The strong virtue that can go on its own way without being shaken by any ordinary temptation too often forgets the duty due to the weakness close to its side. By stern treatment of faults which were yet much struggled against, by cold refusal to acknowledge any except plainly successful efforts, by rejecting the approaches of those who have not yet learned the right way, but are really wishing in their secret hearts to learn it, those who are strong not unfrequently do much harm to those who are weak. F. T. The ignorant and prejudiced, the contracted and infirm, generally expect that their weakness, ignorance, and infirmity (under other and of course finer names) are to give the law to the strong and to the free; and that no one ought to do either what they can not do or will not. Certainly it is the duty of the strong “to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please themselves”; but also it is the duty of the weak to become strong, and not to need to be pleased by being allowed the selfish luxury of putting restraints on the liberty of others. T. B.—Rather trying are the infirmities of the weak. Very tiresome is a continual touchiness in a neighbor, or the perpetual recurrence of the same faults in a pupil or a child. But if by self-restraint and right treatment God should enable you to cure those faults, from how much shame and sorrow do you rescue them, from how much suffering yourself! In this form of effort there can never be total failure; in trying to cure the patient, the physician heals himself. In combating his bad temper, you are obliged to conquer your own; and, in order to expel from that other sullenness, self-indulgence, petulance, you are compelled to go to God, and beg for your own spirit a larger supply of sweetness, generosity, long-suffering, and all those noble radiant attributes which in the contest with depravity make the sun-like Christian more than conqueror. Hamilton. 2. “Good to edification” means good in the spiritual sense; the building up of the character in spiritual life. It is not that one Christian man is to yield to another simply because he wishes it. It is this: that a man in yielding must exercise an enlightened benevolence, and have a view to the real and lasting good of the person with whose desires, or wishes, or tastes, such compliance is made. And he, my neighbor, will see that I am yielding for Christ’s sake. He will see that it is the yielding of strength; that it is the yielding of love, in which all strength lies; and that will be to him like a very presence of Christ, and will do more to correct his errors, and supply his deficiency, and corroborate his feebleness, than the clearest statements and the firmest reasonings can do. A. R. 3. Some of the Roman Christians considered the meat that had been offered to idols unfit for Christian use, while others of them could partake of it without scruple. But, not contented with enjoying their own liberty, they set themselves to indulge in mutual recrimination. The one class considered the other unconscientious, while these retorted on them as weak-minded. It is a quarrel that, in some shape, has turned up ever since. The apostle Paul belongs unmistakably to the one side, that which saw no conscience in the matter, but he is not devoured by a zeal to bring all to his own mind. He sees that there are things infinitely more important than uniformity. Charity is greater, and liberty. Those who can not eat must believe in the good faith of those who can, and they who have no scruples must refrain from taunting those who have. Then from the whole controversy he rises to this great principle, which lifts the thing out of the local and temporary, and gives it a worldwide and permanent interest. In our intercourse with our fellow-Christians or fellow-men, we are not to make our own pleasure, but the pleasure of our neighbor, our chief end. This is the example set by Christ, our great Master: “He pleased not himself.” The violation of this principle has produced more unhappiness and sin than many other things that seem at first sight more deadly—has broken up the communion of the Church and the comfort of the social and family circle. Ker. Even Christ. As the brightness of the Father’s glory, he discloses the love of God appearing under human limitations in service and sacrifice. As the ideal man, he reveals in service and sacrifice the image of God perfected in human character. The character expressed and developed in loving service is the highest and noblest type of character. Jesus reveals the divine in the human, and the human in its ideal perfection. That ideal is found in his life of service; he came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. The conception of greatness by ministering is the conception of manly strength and power to serve, of resources given without impoverishment. So we assent to the words of Jesus, seeing therein our highest dignity: “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord.” J. H. 4. The words should stand, “that through the patience and the comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope.” The verse is sometimes read as if “patience” were one thing by itself, and “comfort of the Scriptures” another by itself. But the two go together: it is “patience of the Scriptures and comfort of the Scriptures,” i. e., patience and comfort, both arising from the Scriptures, produced by their study. A.—The New Testament is to us and our successors the same precious inheritance its gospels and epistles and prophecies were to the first believers; with this only difference: that as prophecy gathers to fulfillment, as the shadowy outlines of prediction begin to fill and flush with the vivid colors of fact, the story of Christ the Redeemer and of the human heart as acted on by Christ—the Bible history of man—becomes still more authentic and still more valuable. Truly, “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope.” W. A. B.—We need no voice from heaven in order to make us happy. There is enough in the Bible to cause every heart in this wretched world to burn with joy. We are told of pardon for the guilty, sanctification for the polluted, rest for the burdened soul, salvation for the lost, Christ for a Comforter, heaven for a home. And we are told of these things for this express purpose: to give us consolation. C. B. 6. A grand end to live for. How many are the strong yet most tender, the common yet most sacred ties that bind us to it, no man can tell. We have more reason for living to God’s glory than any angel has. He made us, has preserved us in life and provided for our wants; to us he has been merciful and gracious, besides being abundant in goodness and in truth—having borne with us, pitied us, spared us, loved us, and, not sparing his own Son, redeemed us, as well, by his gracious Spirit, and called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. And so the warmest love to God should burn in human breasts, and in the heavenly choir the highest notes should be sung, not by angels, but those whom Jesus has redeemed to God by his blood out of every kindred, and nation, and people, and tongue. T. G. 13. We rejoice because our future is filled with hope—the hope of the glory of God. Joy comes then from hope; hope from the God of love; hope sure and steadfast; hope that maketh not ashamed; everlasting hope. Glory is ours in prospect—the glory of the new heavens and earth, the glory of resurrection, the glory of the kingdom, the very glory of Christ. And it is all ours, simply as those who have known and believed this free love of God. Hence the apostle's prayer, "The God of (the) hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing." Bonar. —There is "peace in believing." To the man of intelligent, heartfelt, yet childlike faith in the testimony of Jesus Christ, the principles and promises of that testimony are what the facts of nature are to the philosopher—absolute certainties, in which the mind may rest. He never is the subject of doubt, while his views of things are conformed to the disclosures of this testimony, and his feeling and course are in harmony with its requirements. In resting upon this word as the ultimate ground of certainty, in taking from it his ends, his rules, his motives, his encouragements—all the powers and elements of his nature work in harmony with each other; his conscience, his intellect, and his heart draw together. What the mind perceives to be taught here as true, conscience approves as right, and the heart loves as good. The man has never yet been found who felt that he was doing wrong in submitting himself in a spirit of implicit faith to the truth of Jesus Christ. His submission has always been the source of his peace; a peace as deep and refreshing and satisfying as his faith has been strong and decided. E. M. 16. The apostle represents himself as "acting the part of a priest in reference to the gospel of Christ," and in the exercise of this office laying on the altar of God the converted Gentiles as a sacrifice acceptable to God. In plain language, the design of his apostleship was, that the Gentiles, being converted by the faith of the gospel through his instrumentality, and by the agency of the Holy Ghost, might devote themselves to God as his peculiar property. J. B.—The doctrine of Christ concerning the Holy Ghost (John 14-16) can be no other than this: that, after the body of Jesus should be removed from the Church, he should still continue to carry on the spiritual work of renewing, sanctifying, and saving souls—which is his eternal ministry—the Church itself thus becoming the body of his Spirit, that visible, but he indwelling, yet manifest still in the fruits of holy love and life; that, in thus acting on the spirits of believers in answer to prayer, the Son and the Father who sent him are together united in counsel and one in purpose; and that the agent by which they thus move and draw and change the heart is the Holy Spirit, but also known as the Comforter, the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, and the Holy Ghost. F. D. H. 19. "So that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ." These words import that Paul had come to the confines of Illyricum, and that these confines were the external boundary of his travels. Paul considers Jerusalem as the center, and is here viewing the circumference to which his travels had extended. Illyricum was the part of this circle which he mentions in an epistle to the Romans, because it lay in a direction from Jerusalem toward that city, and pointed out to the Roman readers the nearest place to them to which his travels from Jerusalem had brought him. Illyricum adjoins upon Macedonia. If, therefore, Paul traversed the whole country of Macedonia, the route would necessarily bring him to the confines of Illyricum, and these confines would be described as the extremity of his journey. The account of Paul's second visit to the peninsula of Greece is contained in Acts 20:2. Paley. 24. Into Spain. Clement, the disciple of Paul, mentioned Phil. 4:3, writing from Rome to Corinth, expressly asserts that Paul had preached the gospel "in the east and in the west"; that "he had instructed the whole world [i. e., the Roman Empire, which was commonly so called] in righteousness"; and that he "had gone to the extremity of the west" before his martyrdom. Now, in a Roman author, the extremity of the west could mean nothing short of Spain, and the expression is often used by Roman writers to denote Spain. Here, then, we have the express testimony of Paul's own disciple that he fulfilled his original intention of visiting the Spanish peninsula, and consequently that he was liberated from his first imprisonment at Rome. C. 1. I COMMEND unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cen- 2 chrea: that ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in what- soever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself 3 also. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Christ Jesus: who have for my life laid 4 down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the 5 Gentiles. Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my wellbeloved Epæne- 6 tus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ. Greet Mary, who bestowed much labour 7 on us. Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellowprisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. 8 Greet Amplias my beloved in the Lord. Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ, and Stachys 9 my beloved. Salute Apelles approved in Christ. Salute them which are of Aristobulus' 10 household. Salute Herodion my kinsman. Greet them that be of the household of Nar- 11 cissus, which are in the Lord. Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labour in the Lord. 12 Salute the beloved Persis, which laboured much in the Lord. Salute Rufus chosen in the 13 Lord, and his mother and mine. Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, 14 and the brethren which are with them. Salute Philologus, and Julia, Nereus, and his sis- 15 ter, and Olympas, and all the saints which are with them. Salute one another with an holy 16 kiss. The churches of Christ salute you. Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which 17 cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid 18 them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by 19 good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. For your obedience is come 20 abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise 21 unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil. And the God of peace shall bruise 22 Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. 23 Timotheus my workfellow, and Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater, my kinsmen, salute you. 24 I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord. Gaius mine host, and of the 25 whole church, saluteth you. Erastus the chamberlain of the city saluteth you, and Quartus 26 a brother. 27 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Now to him that is of 28 power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according 29 to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is 30 made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of 31 the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: to God only 32 wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen. In this Epistle is treated in the most masterly manner everything that belongeth to the Christian life. Whatever it most concerns a Christian to know: law, gospel, sin, grace, justification, Christ, God, good works, faith, hope, charity; all wherein true Christianity consisteth; how it becometh a Christian to conduct himself toward his neighbors, whether good or bad, strong or weak, friends or enemies, and toward himself—all this is to be found here in such perfection, that it is impossible to wish anything more or better. So rich a treasure is it of spiritual wealth, that even to him who has read it a thousand times something new will be ever presenting itself. Its study, beyond every other, is found useful; and the longer and the more deeply it is pondered, its excellences grow upon you, and it appears to be constantly becoming more delightful, more valuable, and more copious than itself. Luther. 1-15. These chapters of salutations, which you perhaps have been wont to pass over at a bound as possessing no general interest, present a study as attractive as it is instructive, by enabling you to penetrate into the private life of the apostle and into his personal relations. Monod.—At the time when Paul wrote, there were many Christian laborers in the great city—men and women well known to the apostle, and beloved for the truth's sake, and for their work's sake. They do not seem to have been as yet organized in one church-body. So we read in this chapter of churches, or groups, in various private houses. D. F. We see woman in the early church already in a position of trust and high usefulness: a position, let me observe, which she retains in the Roman Catholic communion to this day, in conjunction with various conditions opposed to Christian freedom and our Lord's commands, but which, owing to those conditions having been justly repudiated by the Reformed Churches, she has very generally lost among ourselves. One of the gravest problems of our own and of the coming age will be, to bring in female help to the work of the Church, and woman into an accredited position in her service, without any admixture of the "votal" element; without any permanent obligations to poverty, to what is called "obedience," to what is mistaken for "chastity." Another matter of interest in this chapter is the examples which it gives us of the refined delicacy and courtesy of the great apostle. "To whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles"; "which were in Christ before me"; "Salute Rufus, the elect in the Lord, and his mother—and mine"; i. e., his mother, whom I also love as a son. Yet another point of interest is this. On the southern side of Rome, as you approach the gate now called the Porta San Sebastiano—not far from the Arch of Drusus, under which Paul passed as he entered the city with the brethren—is a garden containing the "columbarium" or "pigeon-house" of the "family" of Nero. These "columbaria" are so called from their containing a number of small recesses like pigeon-holes, in which are deposited the ashes of the dead, and that the "family" of a Roman prince or noble comprehended all who lived in his court, his relatives, freedmen, and slaves. And with thus much explanation, we may repeat the result of our own researches in the columbarium of the family of Nero. Among the names inscribed on the memorial tablets there, we found Tryphæna (v. 12), Tryphosa (v. 12), Hermes (v. 14), Hermas (v. 14), and Junias (v. 7). A. 20. The whole history of the world is interwoven with the doings of him whom Scripture calls "the serpent," "the God of this world," "the wicked one," "the devil," "the prince of the power of the air," "the accuser of the brethren," "the adversary." He is a living person, originally connected with heaven, now with earth, once associated with angels, now with men, full of malice, a murderer and a liar, a deceiver. His dealings first with Eve and then with Christ are the two great specimens of his nature, his tactics, and his aims. The first promise announced a battle between him and the seed of the woman. This battle has been going on without intermission between him and Christ and between him and the members of Christ's body. With them it is warfare, with the rest of mankind it is friendship. The warfare has been fierce as well as long, open as well as secret, outward as well as inward. In all his assaults and stratagems he has to a certain extent succeeded, but always in the end been baffled. It is to this ultimate baffling or bruising that the apostle here alludes. Bonar.—With so many hints given us in the Holy Scriptures that we wrestle not with flesh and blood alone, but with angels and principalities and powers of darkness—that there are devices of Satan of which it becomes us not to remain ignorant—that the great adversary goeth about seeking whom he may devour; with the command laid upon us, Resist the devil, and he will flee from you; with the promise given, The Lord shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly; should we not be ever acting on the conviction that our souls are the sphere of an unseen conflict, in which rival spirits of evil are struggling for mastery? W. H. The Victory of the God of Peace.—It is as the God of peace that he wins the victory for us, and bruises Satan under our feet. It is as the bruised one that he bruises. He whom Satan smote is he who smites Satan. The God of peace has made peace; and, having made peace by the blood of his Cross, he proceeds to destroy all that had once marred the peace, all his enemies and ours, giving us complete victory and triumph. It is on the basis of the reconciling blood, the peace-giving work on the Cross, that the operations against Satan are carried on. It is under the banner of the God of peace that we fight. He is our captain, and the peace which he has made is that which secures the victory to us. We overcome by the blood of the Lamb, the blood that has made our peace. Bonar. 21. These Epistles are extraordinary productions, and it is inconceivable that any man should introduce them into the world by the fiction of addressing them to a church, and should connect such admirable sentiments with the details of their peculiar difficulties, and with salutations addressed to many persons by name. Let any man read the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (which is almost entirely made up of greetings and salutations), and ask himself if it is possible that any man, writing a letter for the purpose of deception, could have written it. Observe his particularity. Not only does Paul himself salute many persons, but Timotheus, his work-fellow, is joined with him, and Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater, his kinsman, and Tertius, who wrote the Epistle, and Gaius, his host, and Erastus, the chamberlain of the city, and Quartus, a brother. M. H. 26. For the obedience of faith. Faith and reason have their limits; where reason ends faith begins; and if reason will be encroaching upon the bounds of faith, she is straight taken captive by infidelity. We are not fit to follow Christ, if we have not denied ourselves; and the chief piece of ourselves is our reason. We must yield God able to do that which we can not comprehend; and we must comprehend that by our faith which is disclaimed by reason. Bp. H.