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an end of iniquity, that He trod the wine press alone and that of the people there was none with Him. To Him belongs the whole glory of our atonement. He bore it all, for He looked and there was none to help, He wondered that there was none to uphold; and then did His own arm bring salvation. It cannot be that by any death of ours then, we eke out, as it were, the satisfaction which hath been already rendered for sin; and when Paul says that he fills up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh, it can never be that by any sufferings which the believer can endure, not even by the last and most appalling of them all, he makes good any deficiency in that great act, by which, and by which alone, transgression was finished, and the controversy between God and the sinner, is for ever set at rest.

The meaning then of a believer's death, is not to expiate the guilt of his sin-it is to root out the existence of it. It is not to cancel the punishment, for that is already done-it is to give the finishing blow, as it were, to the crucifixion of its power. It is not inflicted upon him as the last discharge of the wrath of God, after which he is conclusively delivered therefrom. But it is sent to him as a release from the plague and the presence of that corruption, which adheres, it would seem, as long as the body adheres to us. It has not, it would appear, been made part of the economy of grace, that, on our entering within its limits by accepting of the gospel, we are forthwith deli

vered from those ceaseless and besetting tendencies, which attach to our present bodily constitution. This could have been done without death. If a man, on the moment of believing, were just to be suddenly changed, in the way that they shall be who are alive at the last day, and are caught up alive to meet our Lord in the air-then at once would he have been made sinless in the material framework, as well as sinless in the regenerated part of his nature; and without the stepping-stones of a death, and a resolution of his body into sepulchral rottenness and dust, and a resurrection of it free from the taint by which it now is pervaded-without these stepping-stones at all, might he at once have winged his ascent into heaven, and had its gate opened to him-because now, as free from the presence of sin as he was from its penalty. And thus, without passing at all through the dark valley of the shadow of death, might he have been put into immediate preparation for the pure and lofty communions of paradise. This might have been the order of God's administration, but it is not so in fact. He hath arranged it otherwise. He hath thought fit, instead of working a miraculous change on the appetites of the body, to work that change on the principles and desires of the spirit—to renew the inner man, but to perpetuate for a season the outer man. He hath thought fit to make that gospel by which peace is established between God and the believer-still to make it the harbinger, not of peace but of war, among the ele

ments of that moral system which is in the believer himself. There might have been an instantaneous transition, to all the repose and harmony and serene triumph of a virtue, that actuated every faculty of the mind; and met with nothing to thwart or to impede its dictates, in the vile affections of a body that still would grovel, were it permitted, among its own base and sordid gratifications. But this is not the way in which it hath appeared meet unto the wisdom of God, that our translation shall take place from earth to heaven. Like the processes both of His natural and His moral kingdom, this is accomplished not instantly but gradually; and there is a long intervening series of conflicts and exercises through life, and a death and a burial and a resurrection after it, ere the whole body and soul and spirit shall be fully matured for the high fellowships of eternity. And meanwhile, what Christ said of the world, holds true of every individual who receives Him-"I came not to bring peace but a sword." I came to raise an internal war among the feelings and the faculties of those who believe in me. I came to infuse a new principle within the limits of their moral economy, against which all the powers and principles of the old man will rise up in battle-array; and, instead of that harmony within which is felt by the seraph above, and even felt by many a secure and satisfied sinner below-there will be the war of rival tendencies, by which the believer's heart shall be kept in constant agitation; there will be all the

pains and perplexities of many a sore conflict within; there will be an agony so fierce as to have been imaged in Scripture by a crucifixion; there will not, it is true, be unmitigated suffering-there will be a mixture of triumph and of tumult throughout the period of that singular transition which each believer must undergo-of triumph to that spirit which is now made willing, and of anguish to that body which is now made a sacrifice.

You see then, I trust, what that is of sin, which is common here to the children of light, and the children of this world; and what that is which constitutes the distinction between them. While both are alive upon earth, they have both one kind of body; and just as the eye of each takes in the same impression from the same objects standing visibly before it, so are the appetites of each liable to the same inclination from the allurement of the same objects when brought within their reach. The un

happy drunkard, who, at the very sight of his inflaming beverage, is visited with an affection thereunto which he finds to be uncontrollable-suppose him to be made a convert at this moment, there is no change impressed by it upon his organ of taste. The relation that now subsists between his palate and the liquor that has so long and so frequently regaled it, is the same as before-the desire for it is not extinguished; and the physical affinity that now is between the appetite and its wonted indulgence, is not now changed into a physical repulsion. In the act of regeneration, the

bodily affection is not eradicated; but there is infused into the moral system a power for keeping it in check: And, long after that this old man hath become a new creature, we do not see that the propensity which at one time tyrannized over him, is clearly and conclusively done away. It is not rooted out, my brethren. It is only resisted; and all that regeneration has done for him in the world, is to give him that moral force of determination and courage, by which he is enabled to resist it with success. He is now able to control that which before was uncontrollable. Were this and all his other rebel appetites only rooted out; and were he under the dominion of a pure and holy principle, and of it alone, to serve God on earth without a struggle then might he even now be borne aloft on angelic pinions; and placed, without so hideous. a transition as that of failing and sickening and dying, in the city which hath foundations. But no: this, it would appear, is the arena of his discipline for eternity; and it is so, by being an arena of contest. The elements of moral evil are not purged away from his corporeal framework; but there is a spiritual element infused, which, if it cannot destroy the former, will at least subordinate them. The apostle complained of his body being vile; but herein he exercised himself, to keep that body under subjection, lest he should be a castaway. He is like unto a Heathen, in having a vile body. He is unlike unto a Heathen, in having now a spirit within him by which the body is

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