subjected. Both have in them the desires of nature; but the one fights with these desires, and the other fulfils them. Both are lured by solicitations to evil; but while the one is only lured, the other is led by them. He is led away with divers lusts. He is led away with the error of the wicked, and so falls from his stedfastness. The very same evil propensity might offer to lead both; but while the one consents to be so led, the other refuses. He gives himself up to be led by another master. In the language of the apostle, he is led by the Spirit of God, and so approves himself to be one of God's children. He is led by the Spirit, and so fulfilleth not the lusts of the flesh.

You also see what the use of death is to a Christian. It is not laid upon him as a sentence of condemnation. The whole weight of that sentence is already borne. It is not to complete his justification. That is already perfected for ever by the one offering. It is to release him in fact from his warfare. It is to deliver him from the presence of his great enemy. It is to remove from him that load under which he now groans being burdened, and which forced from the holy apostle the exclamation of his wretchedness. It is to assure him who hath fought the good fight, and hath finished his course, that the battle is now ended, and that now the repose and the triumph of victory await him. To the last hour of his life, it is the same foul and tainted body that it ever was; and his only achievement upon it, is not that he hath purified

its nature, but that he hath not suffered it to have the mastery. He has all along been upheld against its encroachments, by the vigour of a counteracting principle within, even of that Spirit which is life because of righteousness. These two have been in perpetual conflict with each other, from the hour of the heavenly birth to the hour of the earthly dissolution; and the way in which it is terminated, is, not by the body in its present state being transformed, but by the body in its present state being destroyed.

The fact of the body being still subjected to death because of sin, is the strongest experimental argument that can be urged for heaven being a place to which sin can find no entry. It is not in the way of penalty that the Christian has to die-for the whole of that penalty has already been sustained. It is not exacted from him as the payment of a debt -for Christ our surety hath paid a full and a satisfying ransom. It is not then to help out the justtification which is already cemplete in him-nor to remove a flaw from that title-deed which we have received perfect from His hand. It stands connected, in short with the sanctification of the believer; and has nought to do with that sentence which Christ has fully expiated, with that legal chastisement which was laid upon Him who bore it all. The whole amount and meaning of it is, that our bodies are impregnated with a moral virus which might be discharged from them, it is certain, by a fiat of the Almighty-even as with those who shall

be found alive on the day of resurrection. But this is not the way in which God hath seen meet so to discharge it. It is by death that the thing is to be done. It is, in the first instance, by the departure of the spirit breaking out of its tainted and leprous prison-hold-and then by the resolution into fragments and into dust, of this materialism that its tenant hath abandoned-and then by the assembling again of all its particles, but without the corrupt infusion that formerly pervaded it-And so the transformation of the whole into what is now called a glorified body-a body like unto that of Christ, and free now even from the tendency to evil. And not till the whole of this change take effect upon it, is it fit for admission to the upper realms of love and purity and righteousness. The justice of God would have recoiled from the acceptance of a sinner, and so an expiation had to be made; and the holiness of that place where God dwelleth, would have recoiled from the approaches of one whose character was still tainted with sin, even though its guilt had been expiated-and so it is, that there must be a sanctification as well as an atonementthere must be a renewal as well as a sacrifice. the one, Christ had to suffer and to die-for the other man has also to die, and so to fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ. And it is indeed a most emphatic demonstration of heaven's sacredness, that, to protect its courts.from violation, not even the most pure and sainted Christian upon earth, can, in his present earthly

For

garb, find admittance therein—that loved and revered as he is by his friends and his family, and little as they see about him of that which is unworthy even of fellowship with angels, still, that even he would be deemed a nuisance in that high and holy place where nothing that offendeth can enter that ere the gate of the New Jerusalem be opened for his spirit, he must leave his tainted body behind him; and ere he walk embodied there, the, framework that he had on earth must first be taken down, and be made to pass in mysterious transformation, through that dismal region of skulls and of skeletons, where the mouldering wreck of many human generations is laid. This death, which even the holiest of believers have to undergo, speaks loudly both to the loathsomeness of sin, and to the sensitive the lofty sacredness of heaven: And oh how should it teach all, who by faith have admitted the hope of glory into their hearts, that, in so doing, they have embarked on a warfare against moral evil-that the expectation of bliss in heaven is at utter variance with the wilful indulgence of sin upon earth-and that, by the very act of embracing the Gospel, they have thrown down the gauntlet of hostility to sin; and they must struggle against it, and pray against it, and prevail against it.

Now this principle of hostility to sin wherewith the believer is actuated, cometh down upon him like every other good and perfect gift from above. All that is evil about him still cometh from himself, and from the vile body by which he is encompassed.

VOL. III.

B

The gracious ingredient of his now regenerated nature, does not extinguish the corrupt ingredient of it. It only, as it were, keeps it down; and, without delivering him from its presence, delivers him from its prevalency and its power. This it is which constitutes the struggle of the Christian life. This is the sore conflict which is carried on through many discouragements, and perhaps some defeats, and at least frequent alternations and variations of fortune. Nevertheless, throughout all the fluctuations of this spiritual history, the seed of blissful immortality is there; the element of a holy and celestial nature is at work; the honest aspiration after God and godliness will never be extinguished. A life of welldoing, and a produce in the fruits of righteousness, will force their way among all the impediments of a vile materialism. These two rival and opposing ingredients will at length be detached the one from the other; and of these the body will become dead because of sin, and the spirit be life because of righteousness.

With an unconverted man there are not two such conflicting elements. The mind and the body are at one. The evil tendencies are given way to. He not only submits to the instigations of the flesh; but, in the language of Scripture, he sows unto the flesh, that is, he devises and deliberately provides expedients for its gratification-laying up for the flesh, as well as fulfilling the lusts thereof. The whole man pulls as it were in one direction; and that is a direction altogether towards the creature, and altogether away from the Creator. He soweth