the grave, and no hope animates, no pleasing reflection cheers him. The only consolation he receives, or rather the only relief of his anguish, is in grasping the treasures he must shortly quit. Is he a debtor to the flesh? III. We shall examine the claims of the flesh by the aspect they bear on our future interests. Before we engage in the service of a master, it is reasonable to inquire into the advantages he stipulates, and the prospects of futurity attendant upon his service. In the ordinary concerns of life, we should consider the neglect of such an inquiry chargeable with the highest imprudence. Dreadful is it, in this view, to reflect on the consequences inseparably annexed to the service of corruption. "If ye live after the flesh," says the apostle, "ye shall die."* "The wages of sin is death." And to demonstrate the close and unavoidable connexion subsisting between them he adds, "If ye sow to the flesh, ye shall of the flesh reap corruption." It is not an incidental connexion, it is an indissoluble one, fixed in the constitution of things. "Lust, when it is conceived, bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." If we live in the indulgence of carnal appetites, if we comply habitually with the dictates of corrupt nature, the word of God has assured us of what will follow: "The end of these things is death."|| "Let no man deceive you with vain words; for because of these things cometh the wrath of God on the children of disobedience."P "Be not deceived, God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap.”** For this reason we can never be debtors to the flesh, to live after the flesh; the very reason assigned in the clause immediately following the text. We can never be under obligations to obey such a master, who rewards his services with death,-death spiritual and eternal. The fruits of sin, when brought to maturity, are corruption: his most finished production is death,—and the materials on which he works the fabric of that manufacture, if we may be allowed so to speak, consist in the elements of damnation. To such a master we can owe nothing but a decided rejection of his offers, a perpetual abhorrence, and an awful fear of ever being deceived by his stratagems, or entangled in his snares. * Rom. viii. 13. † Rom. vi. 23. Gal. vi. 8. ** Gal. vi. 7. » James 1. 15. XI. ON THE CAUSE, AGENT, AND PURPOSE OF REGENERATION. AMES i. 18.—Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures. In this chapter the apostle endeavours to fortify the minds of the professors of Christianity, under the various trials and persecutions to which their religion exposed them, by assuring them of the happy fruits, in their spiritual improvement, they might expect to reap from them here, and the more abundant reward which awaited them hereafter. "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience."* Lest any might be induced to relax in their vigilance, under an idea that the circumstances of their trial were too arduous, and that if they shrunk in the combat they might excuse themselves from the consideration of its being disproportioned to their strength, and that they were therefore, in fact, tempted of God, he takes pains to repel this insinuation, and to show that the success of any temptation whatever is solely to be imputed to the unbridled corruption of the human heart. It is, he tells us, "when a man is drawn away by his own heart's lust, and enticed," that he is "tempted;"t this sinful corruption has its origin in his own heart only; nor is in the smallest degree to be imputed to God, as though he impelled to it by a direct agency, or so ordered things, in the course of his providence, as to render it unavoidable. The sum of his doctrine on this head appears to be this, that all evil is from ourselves, and from the disordered state of our hearts, on which temptation operates; while, on the contrary, all moral and spiritual good is from God, and "cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." The communications of grace are emphatically denominated "good and perfect gifts," by way of asserting their immeasurable superiority to the blessings which relate to the present life; and of these gifts St. James affirms, that every one of them "is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." Their origin is truly celestial: they are not capable of being communicated, like the good things of this life, by one human being to another; they are, strictly speaking, divine donations, which can only proceed from above. As a further illustration of the proposition he had been laying down, he introduces the words of the text: "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." These words instruct us in the cause, the instrument, and the end of the renovation of Christians. I. The cause is "the will" of God;-God operating by a free and spontaneous agency. His grace imparted in regeneration must be * James i. 2, 3. VOL. III-E † James 1. 14. James i. 17. acknowledged to be grace the most free and unmixed, the fruit of his sovereign will, in opposition to any necessity of nature to which it may be ascribed: for though the nature of his agency cannot but be consonant to his character, though the fruit of his Spirit cannot but be most pure and holy, yet he was under no necessity to interpose at all. That the effect of his special operation on the hearts of the faithful should be sanctifying is unavoidable; but his operating at all by his Spirit in the restoration of a fallen creature is to be ascribed solely to "his own good pleasure."* It is of his own will, as opposed, not only to a necessity of nature in him, but to any claim of merit in the subject of this his gracious agency. No previous worthiness of ours, no attractive excellence in us, engaged his attention, or induced him to exert his power in our renovation: for whence could this arise in a creature so fallen and corrupt as to need so thorough a renovation? Or how, since "every good and perfect gift cometh from above," can it be supposed to subsist previous to, or apart from, his donation? In the context the apostle has been strongly insisting on it, that the beginning of all moral evil is to be ascribed to man; the beginning of all good to the Supreme Being; and it is in supporting this assertion he introduces the words of the text, "Of his own will begat he us." No signs of virtuous and laudable conduct had ensued to procure the communication of divine grace, agreeable to what another apostle observes in his epistle to Titus: "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost."t The production and maintenance of religion is styled, by the same writer," the good pleasure of his will." II. The instrument of this renovation is "the word of truth." In infusing the principle of divine life into the soul, God is wont to employ the gospel as the instrument, styled, with the utmost propriety, "the word of truth:" not only on account of the infallible truth and certainty of all its declarations, but on account of its high dignity and excellence, as a revelation from God, it is "the truth;" to which whatever is contrary is imposture, and whatever is compared to it insignificant. It falls not within the limits of this discourse to illustrate at large the manner in which the word of God produces a saving change: two circumstances may suffice to establish the fact. The first is, that where the light of the gospel is unknown no such beneficial alteration in the character is perceived, no features of a renewed and sanctified mind are to be traced. The second is, that among those who live under the light of the gospel, the reality of such a change is less or more to be perceived, in proportion to the degree in which the gospel is seriously attended to and cordially received. Every person who is deeply influenced by religious considerations, and enabled to live a holy and spiritual life, will acknowledge his deep obligations to the gospel; and that it is to its distinguishing discoveries he is, under God, .Phil. ii. 13. ↑ Titus iii. 5. 2 Thess. i. 11. Gal. iii. 1 indebted for the renovation he has experienced. "Being born again," saith St. Peter, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." III. We are directed to the consideration of the end proposed by this regenerating influence, "that we might be a kind of first-fruit of the creatures." In the Jewish law, which was, in all its essential parts, a perpetual shadow of the gospel, the first-fruits of the earth were commanded to be dedicated in the temple, and presented by the priest as an offering to God: "The first of the fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God." In the performance of this part of religious duty, an affecting form of words was prescribed, expressive of the humility and gratitude of the offerer. When a vineyard was planted, the Israelites were forbidden to partake of the fruits for the first three years, during which it was to be looked upon as uncircumcised and impure: "And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of. But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal."§ In allusion to this the apostle observes, the design of Christianity is, that being received into the heart as a renovating principle, we may become in a spiritual sense what the fruits presented in the temple were in a literal,-" a certain first-fruits of his creatures;" in which representation he meant probably to include the following ideas :— that we should be dedicated to God as holy persons, separated from every unclean use; that we should be distinguished as the most excellent part of his creatures, as the first-fruits were ever considered as the best of the kind; and that our dedication to God should be a pledge and [earnest] of the universal sanctification of the creatures. 1. This representation denotes our solemn dedication to God as holy persons, as persons set apart for his use and service. Christians are not their own, and the method by which God claims and appro priates them to himself is that of regenerating grace. The principle of regeneration is a principle which prompts men to devote themselves to God. They in whom it is planted "present themselves a living sacrifice,"|| as "a reasonable service;" they present all their faculties and powers to him; their understanding, to be guided and enlightened by his truth; their will, to be swayed by his authority and to be obedient to his dictates; their hearts and affections, to be filled with his presence and replenished with his love; the ↑ Exod. xxxiv. 26. 1 Pet. i. 23. "Thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name there. And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous. "And now, behold, I have brought the first-fruits of the land which thou, O Lord, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord thy God." Deu axvi. 2, 5, 10. Lev. xix. 23, 24. Rom. xil. 1. members of their body, to be instruments of his glory sacred to his use; their time, to be employed in the way which he directs, and in pursuit of the objects which he prescribes, and no longer according to the dictates of inclination and caprice. They feel and cheerfully acknowledge the obligations they are under to regard him as their God, their owner and their Lord, through the Redeemer. They deprecate the thought of considering themselves under any other light than as those who are "bought with a price;"* that as God was highly honoured by presenting the first-fruits in the temple, since it was an acknowledgment of the absolute right over all things inhering in him, and whatever was possessed was held at his pleasure, so he is much more honoured by devoting ourselves, in proportion as the offerer is superior to the gift, in proportion as a reasonable creature is superior to unconscious matter. They gave themselves," says St. Paul, speaking of the Macedonians, "first to the Lord;"† they gave themselves immediately to Jesus Christ as the great High-priest and Mediator, to be by him presented with acceptance to the Father, just as the basket of first-fruits was put into the hand of the priests to be laid upon that "altar which sanctifies the gift." It would have been great presumption for an Israelite to present his fruits without the intervention of the priest, as they were to be received immediately from his hands; so in our approaches we are to come first to the Mediator, and in his name to devote ourselves to God: "No man cometh to the Father but by him."§ 66 Though we are infinitely unworthy of the acceptance of so great a King, yet when we present ourselves we offer the noblest present in our power, we offer that which has an intrinsic excellence far beyond the most costly material gifts: we offer what has a suitability in it to the character of God; that which is immaterial to the "Father of lights," and that which is spiritual to the "Father of spirits." If he will deign to receive any tribute or acknowledgment at the hands of a fallen creature, as he had demonstrated his readiness to do through a Mediator, what can be deemed equally fit for this purpose with the solemn consecration of our inmost powers to him, in love, adoration, and obedience? A soul resigning itself to him, panting after him, and ambitious of pleasing him in all things, is a far more excellent gift than the numerous peace-offerings which Solomon, surrounded by a whole nation, presented at the dedication of the temple. Under the gospel he makes little account of other offering: the fruit which he demands is the fruit of our lips. By the Lord Jesus, therefore, "let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.' When the fruits were dedicated the grant was irrevocable. The right to them passed fully and for ever from the offerer, so as to make it impossible for him ever to resume them again. Thus when we have dedicated ourselves to God the act is irrevocable; we must never pretend the least right in ourselves any more; we are to consider ourselves entirely the Lord's. * 1 Cor. vi. 20. James i. 17. |