thine anointed,"-is just a prayer that God would regard us through the light of his Son's sufferings and death: so that all our sins may be buried to the view of his justice under his atoning sacrifice, and that the light of his reconciled countenance may alone extend to us, as it is now lifted up upon the person of the Redeemer himself. Were an enemy to present himself before one whose vengeance he had righteously incurred, and to introduce himself by taking his son and making him a shield during the interview, would not regard for the son, and the desire to abstain from injuring him, cause the sword to fall from the father's hand, and to suffer the foe, closely entrenched behind him, to escape with impunity? Thus there is "no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus;" not because they are physically united to him, but because they are spiritually and morally blended with his sufferings and death-because he has set his love upon them, and given them his Spirit and his promises. They are a spiritual Israel, with whom God will carry on every communication through the mediation and intervention of Christ alone. Even the law is now given to them as a new commandment; new, as no longer enforced by the penalty of a curse, but commended and sealed by the Holy Spirit, who teaches them to love much because they have had much forgiven to them, and to render obedience to it as the due and becoming expression of their faith and gratitude. In Christ the thunders of Divine justice may pass over their heads, in their progress to an alienated and rebellious world, but they shall never touch them; and amidst the consternation and havoc of the day of righteous vengeance, when the enemies of God shall be overwhelmed with anguish and dismay, they shall enjoy perfect peace and unbroken security.

This great Prophet, in comparison with whom even Moses in his most gracious aspect was but a feeble type, is now this day made known to you, and offered to you, as he was by Peter and Stephen to the Jews. And shall any after their example blindly and impiously reject him; and despising his grace and salvation, brave a conflict with Omnipotence, or dare to stand and await the decisions of infinite righteousness? Does not your heart condemn you? And the more you allow yourselves to know God as he truly is, are you not convinced that you are altogether vile and sinful before him? Let the voice of his law be heard in your hearts; and has it not a condemning power which destroys your every hope and overwhelms you with anxiety, trepidation, and grief? What does it testify? Is it not that the wages of sin is death, and that this penalty is incurred by every one who continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them? Take home these truths, as you ought to do, as the sure word of God, who cannot lie, and where is your strength or your confidence ? Do you not feel that you need a Saviour? Are you not desirous

And in

to acknowledge that your burden is more than you can bear? the spirit of fear which agitated the Israelites at the foot of Sinai, are you not prepared to say, "Let not God speak with us, lest we die?"

The law is a schoolmaster to bring you to Christ; and none can feel its power in their hearts without being drawn to desire a Saviour. If there be any, therefore, who cannot feel Christ to be precious-any to whom an offered salvation has no value-they will find upon examination that this arises from their not knowing the power of the law. They do not realize their guilt and their demerit as in the presence of an infinitely holy and righteous God; and hence the necessity of connecting with a call to believe a call to repent, and of pressing upon sinners a conviction of their ruined state, in order to interest them in the reception of the great salvation. Meditate, then, with profound and heartfelt concern upon your state as transgressors before God. Can you behold him in the brightness of his holiness, and the avenging purity of his righteousness, and not die? Have you a day revealed to you in which you must stand before his awful presence, with all your guilt and all your iniquities revealed; and ought not the prospect to overwhelm you with grief and apprehension? And with what deep earnestness should you now look to Jesus, and make him your covert from the storm, and your hiding place from the tempest? In him you have salvation and strength. But beware of trusting to an insufficient repentance, and to an inadequate faith. Entreat of God that, in his infinite mercy, he would give you grace both to repent and to believe to the saving of your souls; for there are none, so long as they are left to themselves, who can attain to this, seeing that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And in every age, what multitudes, is there not reason to fear, have perished because they have never sought to be savingly converted and united to Christ? Seek, then, as those who know their own ignorance and deceitfulness, and impenitence, and unbelief, that God by his Holy Spirit would work in your souls that repentance which is unto life, and that faith which is effectual to the salvation of the soul.

Be convinced, in conclusion, that you cannot draw near to God at any time or in any circumstances with acceptance, but through Christ, and in dependence upon his merits and righteousness. It is to show that you neither know God, nor glorify him as God, to presume that you can approach to him, or in any manner transact with him, but through the great Mediator. Avail yourselves, then, continually of the mediation and intercession of him who has been ordained to this end, and in whom the guiltiest may find acceptance. Put away all confidence in yourselves, or in any works or services which you can do. Seek even for your best actions pardon and acceptance through the Lord Jesus Christ. If the high

priest of Israel presumed to enter into the holiest of all without blood, it was under the penalty of death. What a solemn and impressive warning is this to us, to guard against all self-sufficiency and presumption in drawing near to God, and ever to come to him through the shed blood of the great Mediator. And what a call does it present to the constant, habitual exercise of humble, realizing, relying faith. Rejoice then in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in yourselves; and, knowing that he is ordained to be a mediatorial prophet, draw near through him as infinitely able and willing to save you. Let all your prayers and thanksgivings be offered up in his name; let all your works be performed in the hope of finding acceptance through his merits; and commit to him the keeping of your souls both for time and for eternity. "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."-Amen.

SERMON V.

LOT'S FLIGHT FROM SODOM. *

BY THE LATE REV. ROBERT JEFFREY, GIRTHON.

"And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wite, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. And, while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain: escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed."-GENESIS xix. 15-17.

"Abram

In a previous part of this inspired book, we are told that dwelled in the land of Canaan, and that Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent towards Sodom. But the men of Sodom were wicked, and sinners before the Lord exceedingly." Gen. xiii. 12, 13. The cry of their depravity had gone up to heaven, and, because their sin was so very grievous, the righteous God determined, in the exercise of his justice without mercy, "to set them forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." In the preceding chapter, we are informed by the infallible historian that "three angels appeared to Abraham," and renewed the promise, repeatedly made to him since he left Ur of the Chaldees, of a son to be born of Sarah "in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed," and pointed out the exact time when this promise was to be fulfilled. Having executed this part of their commission, "the men rose up and looked toward Sodom; and Abraham went with them to bring them on their way.” The patriarch being the chosen instrument for accomplishing the Divine purposes, and the Lord knowing "that he would command his children and his household after him, and that they would keep the way of the Lord, and do justice and judgment," revealed to the father of the faithful his designs respecting the guilty inhabitants of the neighbouring district, among whom his pious nephew was then sojourning. Influenced by that

The author of this discourse died in March 1844. On the morning of the day, and a few hours before his death, he ordered this sermon to be forwarded as his contribution to the Free Church Pulpit. He was a firm and faithful adherent to the principles of the Free Church, and within half an hour of his death, after having spoken of his own church and congregation, he said with peculiar energy, "I feel my affection increasing towards the GLORIOUS CAUSE, which is the cause of God, founded upon a rock Next to the salvation of my own soul, the prosperity of the Free Church lies nearest my heart, and I know it will prosper."

No. 5.-SER. 5.

love to the souls of men, whatever may be the enormity of their conduct, which the grace of God awakens in every heart that has been the subject of its convincing and converting efficacy, Abraham, though but "dust and ashes, takes upon him to speak unto the Lord" in behalf of the condemned criminals, over whose heads the sword of Almighty vengeance was now suspended, and pleads their cause with a warmth, increasing as he proceeds in his entreaties, and more energetically expressed in proportion to the favourable reception given by "the Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious," to his supplications. The corruption of the objects of his solicitude, however, was universal and complete. There were not ten of the reprobate community "that did understand and seek God. They were all gone aside, they were altogether become filthy; there was none that did good, no not one." Ps. xiv. 2-4. The believer convinced, on authority which he could not question, of the universality of the moral disease, and satisfied that "the Judge of all the earth would do right," ceased to intercede when there was no hope of pardon, and "his prayer returned into his own bosom." "And the Lord," that is, the mediator, the messenger of the new covenant, "went his way as soon as he had left communing with Abraham, and Abraham returned unto his place."

The doom of the sinners being now sealed, and the day of destruction at hand, Jehovah, "according to the counsel of his will, whereby for his own glory he hath fore-ordained whatsoever comes to pass," directs his ministering spirits to separate the clean from the unclean, the wheat from the tares, and to "deliver just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked (for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds)," before He, "turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah unto ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly." 2 Peter ii. 6-8. The cup of their iniquity was now filled up to the very brim; it is in their hands, it is raised to their lips, and the lowest dregs thereof they must wring out and drink. Not another day for repentance, not another offer of mercy. It is come, it is come, the end is come; snares, fire, and brimstone, furious storms." And the men said unto Lot, hast thou here any besides? thy sons-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place for we will destroy"-says the Son of God in the human form-“ we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it." Gen. xix. 12, 13.

The proof of divinity which the patriarch had so lately witnessed, as