LECTURE XV.

THE EXCELLENCIES OF THE DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY. .

1 JOHN IV. S-10.

God is love; in this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

HAVING Considered the general suitableness of the Christian Revelation to the obvious state and wants of man, we come now to point out the excellency of its doctrines; that is, of the leading truths which are made known to us on the authority of the religion. Some of these relate to the being and perfections of the Deity, and others to a stupendous scheme which he has been pleased to reveal for the redemption of man.

Here, then, the propriety of the limits to which we have confined the internal evidences becomes obvious. For of the counsels of the incomprehensible God, what can man, abstractedly speaking, know? Of the various methods of his dealings with his creatures in their fallen state, what can human wisdom, of itself, determine? On such subjects we are silent; and having received the divine communica

tions on the ground of external testimony, we receive the doctrines as converts and disciples, and accept the Revelation itself as an authority for what it contains."

Having done this, we are in a condition to trace out various indications of glory and excellency in the doctrines thus admitted, or rather in certain parts of them; and these indications furnish a source of important subsidiary evidence.

Let us, then, first enumerate, in this view, the CHIEF DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION; and, secondly, point out the particulars in which SOMETHING OF THEIR DIVINE

EXCELLENCY MAY BE PERCEIVED.

In doing this, it will be impossible not to touch on some of the points noticed under the adaptation of Christianity, in its most general sense, to the wants of man; for the doctrines are only the details of that subject. At the same time, a wide distinction in the conduct and results of the argument will appear.b

I. I propose to review the chief doctrines of the Christian religion.

1. The first relates to the BEING, PERFECTIONS, AND PROVIDENCE OF THE ONE LIVING AND TRUE GOD.

The Bible begins here. It teaches us that there is one eternal, self-existing, and all-glorious Being, who created the world out of nothing, and who is the sovereign, the proprietor, the preserver, and the Lord of all things.

The UNITY of this ever-blessed God, in opposition to the idols of the heathen worship; and his GLORIOUS perfections, BOTH ESSENTIAL AND MORAL, in opposition to the vices, and passions, and prejudices, by which the pagan deities were described as actuated, are the first elements of revealed truth.

(a) Davison.

(b) A more serious difficulty arises from the necessity of employing terms and referring to doctrines which suppose a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and some general acquaintance with Christianity in its chief details. This difficulty attends every branch of the internal evidences, but peculiarly the consideration of the doctrines of Revelation. It will be lessened as the student advances in his inquiryand with regard to the great body of young people, whom I have especially in view, and who have been instructed from infancy in the Christian religion, it scarcely exists.

The glory of our God is his HOLINESS-that combination of all his moral attributes, of justice, truth, faithfulness, purity, love, wisdom, which constitutes the perfection of his character; and to which the essential attributes of omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, are subservient. With this is connected the exercise of his ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY, his dominion over all, his doing according to his will, as the prophet speaks, in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; his working all things, as the apostle terms it, after the counsel of his own will.d

The PROVIDENCE OF GOD is that constant operation of his power by which he accomplishes his designs. To this never-failing care nothing is great, nothing little. It more particularly concerns itself with the affairs of men, and orders with a paternal regard the minutest concerns of the church and the world.

The HOLY, JUST, AND GOOD LAW OF GOD, by which his reasonable creatures are ruled, follows,-that law which is the transcript of the divine perfection as to its purity and goodness; and which is as equitable as it is holy; demanding nothing but what man, created in his Maker's image, was adequate to perform, and which he would have found the purest happiness in accomplishing.

Such is the scriptural character of God, not one trait of which was completely known to the Heathen nations. Their deities were worse than ordinary wicked men-full of ambition, malice, cruelty, lust, deceit. One was the God of thieves, another of war, a third of wine. Their histories are histories of crime and chicane, of pride and contention. Their supreme Jupiter is never introduced, but in the form of human folly, with human vices, and engaged in criminal human pursuits.

The Bible is the only book which lays the foundation of religion in the unity, perfections, and sovereignty of the selfexisting Jehovah. The Bible is the only book that introduces the great God speaking in a manner worthy of himself, with dignity, authority, sovereign majesty; whilst his

condescension in using a language adapted to our comprehensions, and borrowed from our manner of perceiving things, only deepens the impression of wisdom and grace which is left upon the mind.

2. From the unity and holiness of God flows the next important doctrine of Revelation, THE GUILT AND CON

DEMNATION OF MAN AS A TRANSGRESSOR AGAINST HIM.

The Bible teaches the extent of human apostacy, by teaching the character of the God whom he has offended and of the law which he has broken. Heathenism had only some faint and partial views of man's sinfulness; it had lost the very notion of sin as committed against the majesty of God. The Christian Revelation opens the whole doctrine, as dependent on the two facts of the original innocency and of the fall of man, which we noticed in the last lectu re-it states, that by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin-it declares that men are corrupt and depraved, guilty and helpless-it details man's weakness and apathy as to spiritual things, the blindness of his understanding, the perverseness and rebellion of his will, the alienation of his heart from God and goodness.

It treats him as a sinner, accountable indeed, and with some fragments and traces of a moral nature, and capable of restoration by the grace of God in redemption; but in himself impotent-unable to offer any atonement for his past offences-unable, because unwilling, to return to his duty to God-without knowledge of divine truth, without strength, without a right determination of the will-without any means of devising or entering upon a way of deliver

ance.

This description of the guilt and folly of man is widely different from that given in any other book, and yet it is the only account verified by experience and the evidence of facts. Every other statement is contradicted by the history of all nations, contradicted by the precautions in every political enactment, contradicted by the daily judgment

(e) Rom. v. 12.

which each man is compelled to form of others. And the more any one will watch his own motives, intentions, imaginations, and desires, the more clearly will it appear to him. that the Scripture gives a far more just account of himself, than he himself could have done.

It is here important to remark, that Revelation did not create this state of misery and guilt; it merely describes it according to the truth of the case, and in order to an effectual cure. The state of things is the same, whether Christianity be true or not. The facts remain the same. Deism and the natural government of God are as much open to objections on this ground as Revelation—but Revelation, finding man in this fallen condition, makes known the cause, declares the extent and consequences of human guilt, and then presents a remedy. And the conscience of every individual, when duly informed of the decisions of Revelation, responds to the charge, and discerns in its own case the truth therein communicated. This doctrine of man's guilt, and of the consequent penalty of God's violated law, is one of the peculiarities of the Bible. Upon this all its addresses proceed-this is the state which is taken for granted, as sufficiently proved by the voice of conscience in the culprit, and the relation in which he confessedly stands to an almighty and infinitely holy Creator and Judge.

3. And thus the way is prepared for the stupendous discovery of REDEMPTION IN THE INCARNATION AND SACRIFICE OF THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON OF GOD."

The grand and all-important doctrine of the Christian religion is this, that God so loved the world, sunk in the guilt and ruin of sin, that he gave, as the free act of his infinite benevolence, his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. A discovery this so astonishing in all its parts, as to absorb and over

(f) See Lect. xxi.

(g) For Revelation makes known a plurality of persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost-of whose mode of subsistence indeed it gives no information, but whose offices in the economy of Redemption it considers essential to every part of that dispensation; whilst the doctrine is so stated as to be in no respect inconsistent with the unity of the divine essence.

(h) John iii. 16.