time, the same sermons and exhortations which they cannot savour or endure are eaten up with eager desire by a number of simple souls who are hungry for the plain bread of life. This is their condemnation, that others profit by what they turn away from and sicken at. In vindicating the measures used for the salvation of men we require to notice that men are plied with—

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II. A VARIETY OF MOTIVES. Motivity enters largely into the divine dealings with man. It is an important element in the economy of our probation. We are so constituted as to be acted upon from without, there being certain springs within us which outward agency may touch, as hopes and fears, and passions, and sensibilities, besides certain intellectual powers on which we pride ourselves. We have an understanding which was made to know and comprehend. This stands related to moral and spiritual truths which it can understand sufficiently for practical purposes. We have a will that was given to hold a lordly position over our actions and faculties. We have outward senses that are as gates to the citadel of our souls. Upon these our Maker acts. He sends us an open letter of instruction and places it close under our eyes, and so seeks contact with us at "eye-gate." Then by sending his messengers to us with words in their mouths he approaches us at ear-gate." To make sure of us he hems us in and encircles us by a compass of motivity which can only fail by our incorrigible and wilful waywardness. If there is one motive which acts better on an individual than another, he is certain under a judicious ministry, to come under that motive at some time. There is a class of motives appealing to self-love, namely, motives of hope and fear. These enter largely into pulpit material, and properly so. They cannot be ignored without dealing falsely with hearers. In this incipient state the loftiest motives act feebly on men, espe cially on depraved men. Renewed characters may be open to them, and even they are but slightly under their influence. At any rate inferior motives act with more force on the mass of depraved characters. We may preach to them for an age about disinterested love to God, due from them to him, and about the native baseness and turpitude of sin. It is not to be expected that they will sur render themselves just because it is right to do so, without the admixture of other motives. We have to take men at the point they occupy, and deal with them accordingly. "Of some have compassion, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire." Jude 22, 23. As there is considerable motive power in death and judgment, and in the doctrine of eternal punishment, it behoves us to blow the note of alarm, and admonish sinners of their danger. "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." 2 Cor. v. 2. We preach about hell in order to keep men out of it, as we preach of heaven in order to get

them into it. Our greatest motive power is the Cross of Christ. The grand expedient of reconciliation through the blood of atonement is a large element in true gospel-preaching. When we overlook Christ in his passion and death, in his resurrection and ascension, and in his priestly offices, we may be charged with preaching another gospel. Oh, for skill to pipe in an evangelical strain! Herein is the condemnation of many unsaved hearers, they have been plied on all sides, and preached to in all styles, and aimed at from every point of the circle of motive. Hearers who are accustomed to a change of ministry, and listen to a variety of voices, some chiding, some entreating, some threatening, and some dealing in promises and invitations, ought certainly to find something saving and efficacious. The gospel pipe is blown in their ears, in its entire compass of sound, from the hoarse blast of alarm right round to the soft and silvery accents of mercy. Say, if after all this, they come short of salvation, where lies the blame? It cannot be in the motivity brought to bear on them, for we have supposed all kinds of motive tried upon them. If every conceivable motive has been brought home to them, the right one must be included. It cannot be in the ministry as being one-sided and of one sort, for we have supposed them to have had a reasonable variety, at least two kinds. They have had a John-ministry, thundering at their conscience, and frowning on their sins, and calling them "to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth." Isa. xxii. 12. Then, if that was not the sort to tell on them, they have had also a Jesus-ministry, a call to joy and gladness. gospel minstrel has piped to them, and blown out the most touching notes about God's love, Christ's blood, and the Spirit's grace. And in the same place where they have sat unmoved, others have wept. Under the same preaching which they have gainsaid and despised, others have been saved and blessed. This is evidence against them. Wisdom is justified. And the means used for their good are redeemed from the charge of insufficiency by every instance of reformation effected under them.

The

Whilst we mourn over the obduracy of those who continue impenitent, let us rejoice in the few conversions we witness, and hopefully persevere in using the means put into our power, not doubting but that yet a better generation will arise, who will more readily lament when they are mourned to, and dance when they are piped to. Pipe, brethren, pipe; pipe of a Saviour's love, and blood, and rising power, and priestly glory. And may God bless your labours.

Amen.

T. G.

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ART. III.—JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.

USTIFICATION by faith is confessedly a doctrine of great and unspeakable importance, being one of the fundamental truths of our holy religion. It formed the most distinguishing tenet of the Reformation, effected by Luther and his associates in the sixteenth century. It is, however, a doctrine which has been seriously misunderstood, grossly represented, and bitterly and variously opposed. The Romish church repudiates it as deadly heresy; the Puseyites and others in the Church of England unite in its condemnation; and all modern Pharisees join in opposing it, as it robs them of the honour of their own salvation, ascribing it to the boundless mercy and grace of God through the merits of Christ. Opposition to this vital truth early began to appear in the Christian church; the Judaizing teachers in the apostolic age were virulently opposed to it, and did all in their power to sap its foundation and to prevent its spread. To answer their objections, and to establish the doctrine beyond successful controversy, were the principal designs of the epistle to the Romans, which may be regarded as a grand and noble treatise on the subject.

Considering the vast importance of the doctrine, it is most desirable that we should clearly understand it, and be fully established in the belief of its truth. To err seriously in reference to it is earnestly to be deprecated, as it would endanger our spiritual and eternal welfare. Hence the propriety of considering the subject in a serious and prayerful frame of mind. In this becoming spirit would we proceed to inquire into the nature of justification. The term justification is pure French, but was originally derived from the Latin. The following definition by Webster may be admitted as pretty correct. "1. The act of justifying; a showing to be just or conformable to law, rectitude, or propriety; vindication; defence. 2. Absolution. 3. In law, the showing of a sufficient reason in court, why a defendant did what he is called to answer. 4. In theology, remission of sin, and absolution from guilt and punishment."-Eng. Dict. That the term cannot have the former meaning in the sacred Scriptures when the justification of a sinner is spoken of, is, one would think, sufficiently clear to all who seriously consider the subject. A sinner is not an innocent person, but a guilty one. He has not only been charged with transgressing the law of God, but this serious charge has been proved against him beyond all possibility of doubt. He is ungodly," and admitted on all hands to be such. Nor can he show " a sufficient reason" why he did that with which he is

charged. No "sufficient reason" can be assigned for having violated the law of God, which is holy, just, and good," it is rebellion against the righteous and beneficent government of God, and cannot be justified. Like the man in the gospel without a wedding garment, the sinner before a righteous tribunal must be "speechless"; having nothing to say in his own defence.

And yet there are a class of divines, and some of them of high respectability, as Dr. Chalmers for instance, who hold that a sinner is justified in the sense of law; the perfect righteousness of Christ being imputed to him, he is looked upon as if he himself were perfectly righteous. "Dr. Chalmers and those of his school," says Professor Finney, "do not intend that sinners are justified by their own obedience to law, but by the perfect and imputed obedience of Jesus Christ. They maintain, that by reason of the obedience to law which Christ rendered when upon earth, being set down to the credit of elect sinners, and imputed to them, the law regards them as having rendered perfect obedience in him, or regards them as having rendered perfect obedience by proxy, and therefore pronounces them just, upon condition of faith in Christ. This they insist is properly a forensic or judicial justification." On the absurdity of this notion Finney is scarcely too strong: "Gospel justification is the justification of sinners; it is, therefore, naturally impossible, and a most palpable contradiction, to affirm that the justification of a sinner, or of one who has violated the law, is a forensic or judicial justification. That only is or can be a legal or forensic justification that proceeds upon the ground of its appearing that the justified person is guiltless, or in other words, that he has not violated the law, that he has done only what he had a legal right to do. Now, it is certainly nonsense to affirm, that a sinner can be pronounced just in the eye of law; that he can be justified by the deeds of the law, or by the law at all. The law condemns him. But to be justified judicially or forensically, is to be pronounced just in the judgment of law. This certainly is an impossibility in respect to sinners. The Bible is as express as possible on this point. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin.' Romans iii. 20."

The notion of the imputed righteousness of Christ as held by Antinomians and by many Calvinists is ably refuted by Finney, but more ably and more fully in the celebrated treatise of John Goodwin on the subject, of which Mr. Wesley published a useful abridgment. The controversy on this point is not so prevalent now as it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and we shall not therefore dwell upon it. Goodwin's treatise on justification, or Mr. Wesley's abridgment of it, may be consulted with advantage by those who wish to study the subject at large. Justifi

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cation, according to the Church of Rome and the followers of Dr. Pusey in the Anglican church, is the being made just, or righteous in character. However plausible this might appear at first sight, it will not bear examination in the light of Scripture, and is in fact, seriously erroneous. It confounds justification with sanctification, or the renovation of our moral nature, and is plainly irreconcilable with the description of the apostle Paul in several important passages, one only of which it may be necessary to quote: "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Romans iv. 5. Here the ungodly is said to be justified, and his faith to be counted to him for righteousness, which could not properly be said if to be justified meant to be made just or righteous in character.

Justification, strictly speaking, is a relative change rather than a change of nature; having reference to our state rather than to our moral character. In the sacred Scriptures, justification means pardon or forgiveness of sins. Take an example or two from the apostle Paul, who, of all the sacred writers, discusses most largely the doctrine of justification. "Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." Acts xiii. 38, 39. Here "forgiveness of sins," and being "justified" are evidently employed synonymously, denoting the same blessing. The celebrated Thomas Scott indeed labours to prove that even here justification means something more than pardon, implying a title to heaven as well as remission of sins; but that the words in connection with the term "justified" proves the contrary seems sufficiently clear. What can be understood by being "justified from all things," but acquitted from all things, or a full forgiveness? Had the apostle employed the term justified alone, without the additional words "from all things," there would have been more plausibility in arguing that he intended something more than forgiveness of sins; but the connecting words, "from all things," shew that the idea of acquittal, or of full forgiveness, and not something higher than forgiveness, was the idea in his mind. In the epistle to the Romans he employs similar language: Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness, without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." Romans iv. 6-8. Here several terms are employed to denote substantially the same thing. The apostle is not attempting to describe several blessings distinct from one another, some higher in the scale of blessedness than others, but the way in which sinners may be pardoned or forgiven, namely, by faith, and not by