waters, that send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass;"-that is, blessed are ye who go forth into every land to sow the seed of the Gospel,-he seems to have imagined, that so soon as the Gospel was revealed, so soon as it was preached among all nations, and received by them, then judgment and righteousness should prevail, and peace and everlasting blessedness follow in their train. We know by experience, that the Gospel may be received, and nations may call themselves Christians, and yet judgment and righteousness may not flourish; and, therefore, they must look for a curse from God and not a blessing. Yet ourselves, each of us, if we fulfil what is prophesied of us, so we shall surely reap the blessing which is promised to us. As wherever there is sin, so also will there be judgment, so wherever there is faith and love, there will be peace and blessing;-peace, that none can take away, even "when it shall hail coming down on the forest, and the city shall be low in a low place," even amidst the most fearful scenes of tribulation and misery;-blessing, infinite and eternal, when death shall have removed us from sin and temptation, and shall bring us for ever into the presence of God,

SERMON XXX.

GALATIANS, iv. 7.

Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

I SAID, last Sunday, that the natural part of a Christian minister's office, when he is speaking to a congregation who are strangers to him, is rather to expound the Scriptures than to attempt to enter upon any direct and personal exhortation. Accordingly, I have now taken for my text a verse from that chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, out of which the epistle for the day is taken: a chapter, difficult in itself, and, as such, well deserving to be explained; and, also, bearing upon that great event which our church service especially celebrates at the season of Christmas.

The chapter, like the whole of the epistle, is taken up with enforcing this truth:-that, in our hopes of salvation, we must trust to Christ alone, and must not mix up any thing else whatever with the promises of the Gospel. It does not

follow that our error should be exactly the same with that of the Galatians; indeed, it certainly will not, for their error was to join the ceremonies of the law of Moses, such as circumcision, with the faith of the Gospel. They thought that they could not be saved by being Christians only, unless they were circumcised also, and kept the ceremonies of the law of Moses. Now this error is certainly not ours: we have no thought of practising the ceremonies of the Jews' law; but yet we have very often notions of our own, which are just as mischievous. We will not trust entirely to Christ, nor to the promises of the Gospel, but lay at least a part of our hope on some devices of our own, either on some foolish superstition, or on some false and extravagant opinion of our own goodness, which we think will bear us out in God's judgment.

Still, however, whatever our trust be, it differs from that of the Gospel in this one point,—that it will never give us the feeling of sons or children of God, but will, on the other hand, give us feelings of bondage, such as those that belonged to the law. These two expressions,-servant and son,-although you may not at first understand their whole meaning, do show most exactly what Christians have, and what other men want: real Christians, I mean; for Christians in name only, and not in deed, want it quite as much as other men. St.

Paul says, that although we were to be made sons by and by, yet, till we came of full age, we were kept under the law in the state of servants or slaves; for whenever you meet with the word servant in the New Testament, it means what we call a slave, that is, one who does not serve willingly for wages, but is the very property of his master, and is obliged to work without wages, whether he will or no: thus St. Paul says, "When we were children, we were kept in bondage, that is, kept as slaves, under the rudiments of the world" but that when the full time was come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, in order to redeem us from this state of slaves, and give us the adoption of sons, that is, to adopt us as his children, whereas, we had before been no better than slaves, "And because ye are sons," St. Paul goes on to say, " God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant," (or, "slave,")" but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." You see here, that they are said to have been slaves before they were Christians, in bondage under the rudiments of the world; but that in becoming Christians they obtained their liberty, they were redeemed from bondage by Christ, and adopted as the sons of God and were taught to feel towards God the love of children in return: and, finally, as being the

children of God, they were become his heirs; the heirs, through Christ, of that eternal kingdom prepared for them from the beginning of the world.

It is much to be lamented that so many persons, in reading these verses and others of a like sort, have no distinct understanding of their meaning, and cannot bring them home to their own condition, for their own improvement; nay, it often happens, that persons will use these and other words of St. Paul very freely: they will bring together, in their speeches or discourses, a great number of St. Paul's expressions, and thus will fancy that their language and spirit is entirely scriptural, and will even find fault with others who do not make use of the words of the Apostle so freely, although they are quite as anxious to catch his spirit. But you know that words which we do not understand, be they whose they will,-prophets', evangelists', or apostles',-are to us no better than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal ; we only deceive ourselves and others by using them. We must try to understand what is the meaning of these words :-" slaves," "rudiments of the world," "children of God by adoption, crying, Abba, Father;" and if we do get clearly to understand them, we may then, by God's grace, be able to draw from them some benefit to ourselves.

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First, then, when St. Paul says that the Jews, before Christ came, were in bondage under the