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obligation to suffer the punishment due to his sins, and is reinstated in the favor of God and the hope of eternal life, is entirely gratuitous; it is not of merit but of grace; not by works but by faith in the promise of the gospel: by the works of the law shall no flesh, be justified in the sight of God. All that is required here is that the sinner should know himself to be a sinner; should feel himself to be such; should so feel himself to be a sinner as to be contrite and broken-hearted; to feel that his sins are hateful and accursed; that holiness is lovely and desirable; and that, despairing of himself, and of every other resource, he should trust in the promise of gratuitous forgiveness which is based upon the death of Christ.

But when the sinner is pardoned, he is at the same time regenerated; he is made a new creature; his mind or inner man is freed from the law of sin, that is in his members, and is constituted the ruling principle, while his flesh or outer man is subjected, in order that he may thenceforward walk after the spirit and not after the flesh, and that the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled by him. See Rom. vi. vii. and viii.

A rule is necessary to direct the moral action of the regenerated man; and that rule is the law of God. The necessity of conforming to this law lies in the nature of things. The moral law is the expression of the moral nature of God. To that nature we must be conformed: we must be in harmony with it; or we must be opposed to it, and at variance with it. To be at peace with God is the source of perpetual felicity. To be at variance with him, is to be at variance with omnipotence, and can eventuate only in our own misery and destruction; it is to dwell with devouring fire, and with everlasting burnings. If the stubble can contend successfully with the flames, then can we be at variance with the author of our being and yet preserve a happy existence.

Paul says, indeed: "The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and for profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers," etc. 1 Tim. 1: 9, 10. But the apostle does not mean that a righteous man is not obliged to obey the moral law, but that he does not need the law with its sanctions of rewards and punishments to incite him to his duty or to restrain him from vice. He is governed by a higher principle than the hope of reward or the fear of punishment; by the principle of love; that love which is the fulfilling of the

law. Rom. 13: 8-10. As a righteous man his life is conformable to the law of God; for the idea of right or of wrong is only the idea of conformity to the law by which we are bound, or of disconformity to it. The moment a righteous man does wrong, he ceases to be righteous. The moment he is inclined to do wrong, the law takes hold of him and condemns him as a sinner. The moment that his love grows cold and ceases to bear him onward in the path of duty, he needs the law to keep him from unrighteousness, and to convince him of sin.

The same law is given as a rule of conduct to the whole intellectual universe. There can be but one moral law, as there is but one moral nature of God. It is variously modified, as to its form, by the capacity of the intelligent creature; but its principles are everywhere and always the same. These are contained in the two precepts which our Saviour represents as the sum of the law and the prophets, viz., Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.-Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. No creature can love God more than with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength; and no creature can lawfully love him less. None can love his neighbor more than himself; but none is permitted to love him less. So the pure spirits of heaven love God. So one angel loves another. This is the cause of the order and the peace of heaven, and the fountain of heaven's bliss.

ARTICLE IV.

BOLDNESS IN THE PREACHER.

By Aaron M. Colton, Theol. Seminary, Andover.

BOLDNESS in the pursuit of any object is true philosophy. Consult the page of the historian, the novelist, and the poet. Who have stamped indelibly the impress of their minds on the destiny of nations? Who have wielded most effectively the Scourge of war, or swayed over the widest realms the sceptre of empire? Who have been most renowned for hazardous en

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terprise, in voyage and discovery, in political revolution, in religious reformation? Who-but the Alexanders, the Columbuses, the Hampdens, the Luthers, and the Knoxes? Whobut men bold in the designs they formed, and bold in the execution of their designs? They have all been men linked to their several determinations by an iron band, not to be severed, except by calamity or death. They have all been strangers to fear and timid wariness; - undeterred by fatigue, or pleasure, or pain; inaccessible to flattery, or frowns, or ridicule; possessing an instinctive sovereignty of mind, that would assert its way through the world, and, in the face of all obstacles, press its own decisions.

There is power in boldness. We bow to a decisive spirit. We do it instinctive homage. The agent may be evil, and then we deplore its mischievous activity. A Caesar's quarrels fill the world with widows and with orphans. We deprecate his doings; but he evinces an energy of mind, from which we cannot withhold our admiration. We are pained that he should have done so much evil. We are tempted to say, it were good for the world had such a man not been born. But the man stands before us, and we look and admire. We begin to philosophize, and are half ashamed of our admiration, and would retire from the sight. But we linger, and turn, and go back to catch one more glance, and our admiration is rife again in spite of our philosophy.

Boldness in a bad cause is power; in a good cause is greater power. Moral goodness has more sublimity than moral evil, and strikes the imagination more strongly. Besides, moral goodness has an attractive grace—a charm of loveliness, which moral evil has not. A bad man excites our admiration by evincing lofty resolve. A good man reinforces an equal admiration, by enlisting in his favor the best sentiments of the heart. As a sublime moral spectacle, Luther on his way to the Diet of Worms strikes us with greater power than Hannibal scaling the Alps, or Leonidas in the pass of Thermopyla.

Christianity is unsurpassed as a field for the display of heroic virtue. As an enterprise, never was one so noble in the conception; so arduous in the execution; so momentous in the contemplated results. There is in it a moral grandeur—an intense sublimity, infinitely transcending all the aims of martial heroism.

It is not the recklessness, the impudence, the blunt obstinacy

of the warrior, that is demanded of the Christian ;-but the boldness of firm conviction, full persuasion, conscious honesty of aim, intense zeal in a good cause-boldness baptized into the christian spirit, and subjected to the christian principle-christian boldness, but boldness still, striking, intrepid, effective.

Boldness befits the preacher's office. In determining proprieties of conduct, a distinction is to be made between the offcer and the man. The distinction is made, the world over, in secular affairs. What virtues more noble and useful, can adorn the man, than compassion and forgiveness? But a compassionate and forgiving judge, if not a solecism in speech, is an absurdity in morals. The neighbor, the citizen, may exhibit all the graces and charities of a kindly nature. His example may be attractive as "the sweet influences of the Pleiades ;" beautiful as a flower blown in its native bed., But let these very graces, excellent as they are in their appropriate sphere, be transferred from the man to the judge, and the virtue becomes a vice, and what was beauty, is now a blemish. The sentinel on duty forsakes his post in the hour of danger. It would, he says, be arrogance in him to contend against superior skill and numbers. Is he not a modest man? He is a coward. Modesty is not to be the crowning excellence of the soldier on the field of battle. Bravery becomes him there. John Jay, the citizen, is a pattern of all the milder virtues. His is the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. But is John Jay, the ambassador, characteristically retiring and distrustful of his own opinions? The British Cabinet are his superiors in age, experience, wisdom. Shall he then from modesty submit the Treaty entirely to their better discretion? By no means. His pretensions to equality with them, extend not beyond his office. In that office he is their equal. His country chose him, not them, to be its representative. But is he not a man; and does not modesty become a frail, erring man? He is an ambassador. He is called to act as the representative of his country. But is he not fallible? His country chose a fallible man, and knew they did so. But might not the choice have fallen on an abler and better man? That is his country's concern, not his. They saw fit to select him for the trust; and it becomes him, not in any manner to apologize for their act, not to impeach, but to vindicate the wisdom of their choice. Apply this distinction to the preacher, and you sweep away at a breath, every objection to boldness in his pulpit exhibitions. In all the relations of private life, let

him exhibit those graces, which adorn the private life. In the pulpit, let him be bold. God hath seen fit to place him there. The preacher occupies a place of higher trust, and more momentous responsibility, than any other on earth. He stands there, not as a mere brother of his congregation, but as the ambassador of Christ. He is to speak, not his own message, but a message from Christ; not in his own name, but in the name of Christ. He is to speak as one having authority. He speaks in Christ's stead. Let him speak "boldly as he ought to speak."

Why should not the preacher be bold? Shall he be timid through fear of his hearers? His call to the ministry, his credentials, his message, are not theirs to give, or take away. His high aim is not to gratify their tastes, or flatter their vanity, or humor their prejudices; but to save their souls. Their opinions are not the rule of his duty, nor their favor the test of his fidelity. He stands accountable for his stewardship to no human tribunal. "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth." "It is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment; yea, I judge not mine own self:"-" he that judgeth me is the Lord." The preacher's crown of life, the prize of his high calling, depends on no human caprice. It is laid up for him in heaven.

But boldness commends itself to the better judgment of the hearer. Is the hearer a trifler? Timidity will not win him. Boldness may rebuke him. Is he a man of sense and candor? Boldness will not offend him. He will make the distinction between the officer and the brother. His self-respect, at least, will prompt him to place the preacher upon the basis of his office. It is assumed, in every step the hearer takes toward the house of God, that the preacher is to address him in the name and by the authority of Christ. Shall the preacher ascend the pulpit, and there take it upon himself to utter the sentiments of Holy Writ as his own mere opinions or advice? He could not be guilty of greater arrogance. He could not give his hearers a greater insult. No! It is due to them, that he demean himself as the servant of Christ; that he exhibit to them not advice, but authority; not opinions, but decisions; not the words which man's wisdom teacheth, "but the word of the Lord, which abideth forever." Boldness in the preacher as the servant of Christ, is modesty in him as a man.

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