Christ in dying for him a sacrifice upon the cross, doth not?

Accordingly, when a true penitent is once convinced of his guilt before God as a selfish, proud, perverse, unreasonable creature; when he discovers the obligations he has been violating all his life; and when he beholds the Savior nailed to the accursed tree, putting himself in our stead, transferring all our iniquities to himself, dying the just for the unjust, and made sin for us; and when he finds gradually a relief from the agonies of his own conscience by faith in this mysterious transaction; he experiences a new kind of life; the blessed Spirit renews him in the spirit of his mind; and of this new life the characteristic is love to the great Author of it.

And ought there not to be, and is there not, an energy, a power, a transcendent influence in the love of Christ in proportion to the infinite excellency of his person and the depth of his sufferings for us, which carries away the soul, which makes difficulties easy, which inspires a holy dedication of every power to his service, which tears us away from the fetters of a debased selfishness, and makes us love our neighbor as a part of our love to "Him who died for us and rose again?"

Yes, my brethren, as selfishness has robbed our Maker of his right over us, and brought on a love of self, even to a contempt of God-amorem sui usque ad contemptum Dei-so Christ tears us from ourselves by a kind of violence, declares war with this self-love, and brings into its place a love of God, even to a contempt of self-amorem Dei usque ad contemptum sui. The Spirit of God overturns the throne of selfishness, and then shows us something of that ravishing beauty which is alone capable of satisfying the vast capacities of the soul and swaying the sceptre there. So that the penitent, constrained before by self-love, now

gradually learns to say," the love of Christ constraineth" me; it constrains me, inciting me against myself; it constrains me, carrying me above myself; it constrains me, detaching me from myself; it constrains me, uniting me to God; it constrains me, not less by the movement of a holy hatred to self, than by the transport of a holy affection for God.'

What then can be so exalted and powerful as this motive which Christianity employs! It is as superior to all human motives as the end proposed is more elevated than human projects. It has the stamp of divinity upon it. The same mighty af fections which bind us to the throne of God, unite us in love with our fellow creatures.

III. Shall we then pause here, in order to form, with our apostle, that deliberate judgment which connects the motive with the end of our Lord's Death and Resurrection? Yes, we pause, because our text teaches us to do so. We pause, because if the apostle interposes an act of judgment between the end and the motive, there must be some important reason for it. Yes; there is this of peculiarity in religious affections, that they listen to all that is calm in argument, as well as follow all that is warm in impulse. This is the proper check upon self-deception, upon hasty emotions, and mere movements of the passions, which are neither permanent nor holy.

And what deliberation does the apostle take? "Because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him that died for them and rose again."

1. This judgment, then, reposes on the fact of man's state as a sinner. The state of man was such as required the sacrifice of the death of Christ. If

1 Bossuet.

men had not been dead, lost, condemned, absorbed in selfishness, and exposed to the wrath of God in consequence, it would not have been needful that Christ should have "died for our sins, and risen again for our justification." "If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." But if one died for all, we infer, we judge, we deliberately conclude, that previously to that act, all were dead; dead in trespasses and sins; dead in selfishness and alienation from the life of God; dead and cut off from the sources of life, purity, and joy in God; dead and without spiritual affections or communion with God, but on the contrary under his just wrath and condemnation.

This is the key to all the other parts of the subject. The whole end of Christianity and all the motives it employs, depend, in point of effect, on our making the practical confession of the apostle our own; depend on our feeling personally and individually that in our natural state we are selfish, blind, disordered creatures, and dead before God. This is the first step in the judgment.

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2. The second follows, laying down an important distinction; pointing out a broad transition from one state to another, from death unto life, from the condition of those who were dead in selfishness to that of those who live to God; "We thus judge, that if Christ died for all, then were all dead and that he died for all, that they which live." There are then those who live; there are those who are quickened by the power of the Holy Ghost, who are raised up together with Christ, who partake of a new life with its appropriate perceptions, feelings, hopes, fears, joys, sorrows. These stand in contrast with their own former selves, and with all who still remain in the state of death in which Christ found the whole human race. Here an important, an all-important transition is

noted. We can never feel the commanding motive which Christianity employs, till we know something of the state of heart to which that motive is addressed. This is the second part of the act of judgment. As in the first creation, Adam, till God "breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living soul," was a mass merely of limbs, and form and external features, without any power of performing the actions of a reasonable creature ; so the fallen, selfish heart of man, dead to spiritual things, feels nothing of the interior life of love to God and man, till the blessed Spirit imparts a new and divine principle. Notions, forms of religion, creeds, knowledge, profession, will never do instead of this spiritual life which only can give to all their excellency and force.

3. A solemn obligation of fulfilling the design of this great change, is deduced as the conclusion of the whole: "We thus judge that they that live, should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him that died for them and rose again." It is quite clear, then, that the mark and evidence of those who have thus "passed from death unto life," is exactly this, that they no longer live the selfish life they once did, but fulfil the obligations of that death of Christ which is the source of their pardon, and the motive to their new obedience. They judge that this was the express end of the death and resurrection of Christ. This is not an accidental, but direct conse quence. It is not a hasty resolve, but the result of a calm deliberation on the mysteries of redemption, and the obligations of the life they have received thereby. It is the very scope and design of the whole vast undertaking of Christ; enjoined by it, inseparable from it.

If such, then, be the high end which Christianity proposes to herself, such the exalted motive, and

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such the deliberate judgment which connects the two, then allow me, in application,

To direct your attention to an emphatical word in the text, on which I have not hitherto fixed your notice. The word HENCEFORTH, intervenes between the two main branches of the text; "that they which live, should not henceforth live unto themselves." This marks an era, a memorable time in the life of man. This erects a barrier between two periods of life: the one past, when we lived unto ourselves; the other future, when we live unto Christ, and to our brother for Christ's sake. Where shall we then, put this, henceforth?" Can it be truly said of us, that though we once lived a worldly, sensual, formal life like others; though we once were dead in selfishness and folly, in pride and appetite, in forgetfulness of the soul and eternity; yet God has been pleased, to bring us to spiritual life, to rescue us from the gulf of sin and misery into which we were sinking deeper and deeper, and to teach us to know ourselves and our Savior; and that we are now aiming by the constraining power of his love, to live unto him? Can we say this? Then put the "henceforth" there; that is the remarkable period. From that time— whether imperceptibly brought on as to the specific effect, as reason and conscience were matured, by the grace of God resting on the due use of the sacraments, education, and other means of grace; or more distinctly marked off by some stroke of affliction; or occasioned by the recurrence of solemn addresses from Holy Scripture; or dated from our preparation for the affecting rite of Confirmationwhatever was the mode of the divine operation, the change is to be dated from the time that we began to live "unto him that died for us and rose again." Continue then in your course. Run the heavenly