man who through all the strugglings of remorse, at last gives way to the power of a temptation, has had light enough to forewarn him of sin, and light enough after it hath been committed to reprove himself and that most bitterly because of sin-and yet not power enough for the warfare of a successful resistance, so as not merely to feel what is right but to follow it. He therefore in this instance hath not mortified the deeds of his body; and if such be his habit he liveth after the flesh and he shall die. It is not they who mourn over the sin, that is practically and permanently indulged in; but it is they who mortify the sin that are led by the Spirit; And it is by this, as the consecutive tie which binds the last verse to the present one, that the reason is explained why they who mortify the deeds of the body shall live. They who do so are led by the Spirit; and they who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God, the heirs therefore of what their Father hath to bestow which is life everlasting.

The Scriptures often affirm a harmony between two positions, which the first and natural apprehensions of men would lead them to regard as opposed the one to the other. We are the children of God says the apostle by the faith that is in Christ Jesus. He is my brother and my sister says Christ Himself, who doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. It is through the redemption of the gospel, wherein we obtain a part and interest by believing, that, as Paul says in his Epistle to the Galatians,

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we receive the adoption of sons. It is when through the Spirit we mortify the deeds of the body, that we are led by the Spirit; and, as he says in his Epistle to the Romans, are the sons of God. You will not be disturbed by the utterance of these propositions as if they were contradictory. You know in the first instance, that it is by faith, as by the hand of the mind, that you accept of the offered reconciliation. You know, in the second instance, that it is by the hearing of faith, and not by the works of the law, that the Spirit cometh. You know in the third instance, that the Spirit which so cometh is a Spirit of might and good-will for all holy obedience so that through Him you are enabled to mortify the deeds of the body. And this last is not the cause why you are led by the Spirit of God, but the proof that you actually are led by Him—a proof which, if wanting, might still argue you to be in possession of His ordinary, but not in possession of His sanctifying, and therefore most assuredly not of His saving influences ;-but a proof which having, is to you the best evidence that you are led by the Spirit, and have therefore received from God the seal of being one of His children.

When you adopt one as a son, it is because you design for him an inheritance; and one can conceive something to be given as the token or the acknowledgment of his acquired right thereunto. In the act of hiring a servant, there is often a pledge given by the master; and this assures to the hireling his title to enter at the specified time upon his

employment. Now by one being adopted as a son of God, there is the destination for him of a very splendid inheritance-even one of eternal glory in the heavens. But this is only entered upon at the term of death; and meanwhile, previous to that, there is a pledge or a token bestowed upon him, and this is the Spirit of God which is styled by way of eminence the promise of the Father, and which, agreeably to the explanation which we have now given, is also termed the earnest of our inheritance. This is that grace in time, which is both the pledge and the preparation of glory in eternity; and the best evidence of which is, that, enabled to mortify all those evil desires which would thwart the purposes of a holy obedience, you are thereby enabled to keep the commandments.

But there is a certain style of keeping the commandments, which we fear is not indicative of this grace. It may be done in a scrupulous, fearful, und painstaking way, by one who is under the workings of a natural conscience, and perhaps a terror of everlasting damnation. In this too it is possible, that there may be a certain measure of success-the avoidance of much gross and presumptuous sin, that might else have been indulged in— the penance of many sore and strenuous mortifications, so as that the body shall be starved, and in a good degree subjected, by the mere force as it were of a dogged and stiff determination; and so a kind of resolute sullenness in the whole aspect of the man's obedience, which certainly is of a differ

ent cast, and has upon it a wholly different complexion, from the gentleness and the grace and the good-will which characterise the services of an affectionate Christian. The truth is, that there might be a self-denial and a self-infliction which come through constraint-a drudgery which is rendered at the stern bidding of authority—a reluctant compliance to appease the dread or the troublesome remonstrances of the inner man-Which fall altogether short,-nay are altogether opposite to the temper of those, who mortify the deeds of the body but do it through the Spirit. What is done is done in their own spirit, which is the spirit of bondage; and not in that Spirit which cometh from above, and whereby we are made both to love the service and Him who enjoins it-to look upon God not as a taskmaster, but as a friend, and so to execute His bidding with the alacrity of those whose meat and whose drink it is to do His will-to keep the commandments, not in the spirit of bondage which is unto fear, but in the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Ver. 15. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby ye cry, Abba, Father.'

Had it been under a slavish terror that the work of mortification was gone into, this would have been no evidence of our filial relationship to God. It would have been the obedience of those that were lorded over, and not of those who were led as by the cords of love, as by the bands of a man. Hence

forth ye are not servants or slaves, says Christ to his disciples, but ye are sons; and, conformably to this, the spirit of sons is given unto them. And he appeals to the kind of spirit as being an argument for their being the sons of God-a spirit altogether diverse from that by which many are visited, under their first convictions of sin and of the soul and of eternity; who are pierced, as by an arrow sticking fast, with an agonising sense of their own guilt and of God's uncompromising authority; who are burdened under a feeling that the displeasure of Heaven is upon them; and whose conscience, all awake to the horrors of wrath and condemnation, never ceases to haunt them with the thought, that, unless they can make good their escape from their present condition, they are undone. Now, to make this good, they will set up a thousand reformations; they will abandon all their wonted fellowships of iniquity; they will strenuously, and in the face of every temptation, adhere to all the honesties and sobrieties of human conduct; they will betake themselves to a life of punctuality and prayer; and moreover graft upon their former habit the rigours of devoteeship, the austerities and the forms of Sabbath observation. Thus it is that they will seek for rest, but they will find none. The law will rise in its demands as they rise in their endeavours, and still keep a-head, with a kind of overmatching superiority to all their fruitless and fatiguing efforts of obedience. They will labour as in the very fire and not be satisfied; and all their vain attempts to reach