SERMON VII.

MARK i. 15.

-The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at band: Repent ye, and believe the Gospel.

THESE words have a peculiar claim to the regard of Chriftians; not only as they are the first on record, which the Founder of our faith employed, when he entered upon his ministry; but, what is of more effential concern, as they comprize the substance of what he came to teach. They announce the arrival of that spiritual State, which had long been foretold in all preceding Revelations ; The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: And they propofe to mankind the conditions of acceptance into that fpiritual State; Repent ye, and believe the Gospel.—To each of these two claufes I mean to affign a separate difcourfe.

The Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, as it is indifferently ftyled by the Evangelifts, is a conftitution very different

from

from the kingdoms of this world, being founded immediately by the power of God, and being modelled on the polity of Heaven. A kingdom of this kind originally fubfifted on the face of the earth. When Almighty God had finished his creation of the world, " he saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good." The last of all his works, as the crown of the whole, was Man; for he was made in the image of God, that is, in the fashion of his own moral goodnefs. And while he resembled him in holinefs, he also partook of his happiness. Thus the Kingdom of Heaven was indeed on earth, and Man was immediately under the government of God.

But though a scene of happiness, it was yet a scene of difcipline to man. In that free converfation, which he held with heavenly Natures, it was fignified to him, that if in a temporary ftate of trial he conformed himself entirely to the will of God, he should be tranflated to a place of fuperior happiness in heaven itself, the more immediate feat of the divine prefence, and the fulness of beatitude. For the exercise of his faith and the test of his obedience one plain prohibition was enjoined. Among all the fruits of paradife, which were freely given him to enjoy,

he

By

he was reftricted from the tafte of one. the feductions of an Enemy he was prevailed upon to violate the exprefs command of God. By which fatal act he broke his allegiance to his heavenly King, and incurred the penalty denounced on his difobedience; he was degraded from that image in which he was lately made; he was expelled from paradife; he was deprived of a communion with Heaven. The Kingdom of God was now withdrawn from the earth. The earth itself on his account loft its primitive beauty and order. The Foe of God and Man ufurped a tyrannic fway therein and fin and mifery entered into the world. For the confequence of his guilt did not fall upon our first Progenitor alone; but the taint of his corruption extended to all his posterity.

Yet fallen as he was from his first integrity, God would not abandon him to the fatal confequence of his tranfgreffion. In the midft of judgment he remembered mercy. Even when he pronounced the threatened fentence on the guilty Pair, he would not overwhelm them with the feverities of his wrath. In the depth of their forrow for their lapfe from innocence, he gave them the promise of confolation in one of their offspring, who, not without fome facrifice on

his

his part, fhould bruise the head of their malignant Foe, [fhould reconcile to God the fallen race of men, fhould reftore them to the image in which they were created, and should reestablish for them the Kingdom of Heaven.

This however was not to take place till a long term of time had intervened; during which mankind might be convinced by long experience, of the weakness of their reafon, the deficiency of their powers, their ftrong propensity to evil, and their deplorable condition without God in the world.

In a diftant age God felected Abraham from a degenerate and corrupted race, to maintain among mankind fome memorial of their Creator, and to keep alive in his house. hold fome image of the heavenly Kingdom.

In the energy of his faith he fhewed himfelf worthy of that celeftial choice. For the firmness of his allegiance to his divine King he was distinguished as the Father of the Faithful, and the Friend of God. To him were given those feveral promises, which were afterwards repeated to Ifaac and to Jacob, that he would make him a Father of many nations, and would multiply him as the stars of heaven; that with them he would establish a perpetual Covenant, and would give them

an