-as the representative of a covenant which God made with him, and through him with all his posterity.

Certain it is, that, to screen a believer from the vengeance of an immutable law, something more is necessary than the atonement of his past offences, and the derivation of a holy nature from the Saviour. Even after the principle of grace has been implanted, there are the outbreakings of sin which serve to humble and to remind him, that never till death has pulverized his body into atoms, and the resurrection has again assembled them into a pure and holy structure-will he be wholly freed from that sore corruption, which so adheres, and so strives to obtain the victory over him. Still, and at any time after his conversion while he lives in the world, were he treated according to his own deservings would he be an outcast from the favour of that God whose justice is inflexible; and to meet this justice on the ground of acceptance, he must stand before it in another merit than his own, and be clothed upon with another righteousness than his own. Or, to be in favour with God, he stands in need of an imputed as well as of an infused righteousness; and the merit of Christ must be laid to his account, as well as the nature of Christ be laid upon his person. You have no title to cast out with the sin of Adam being imputed to you, if you do not cast out with the righteousness of Christ being imputed to you. The latter screens you from the former, and it screens you also from the guilt of your own positive offences. Without it, even the holiest man upon earth, would stand

before a God of perfect holiness, on a basis of utter insecurity; and with it the greatest sinner upon earth stands on a firmer and a higher 'vantageground, than even had all the innocence and virtue of Adam been both transmitted and ascribed to him. And I willingly consent to have the guilt of Adam charged upon me, if, along with it, the overpassing righteousness of Christ shall be reckoned to me; and let the severities be what they may which lie upon me under the economy of nature and of the law-I see in the corresponding privileges which are freely offered to me under the economy of the gospel, I see in them the fullest and the noblest compensation.

The question of original sin is allied with that of the origin of evil; and a very deep and unyielding obscurity hangs over it how in a universe framed and upheld by a Being, of whom we are taught to believe that He has an arm of infinite power and a heart of infinite goodness-how under His administration, such a monster as evil, whether moral or physical, should ever be permitted to exist, is indeed a mystery, seated too far back among the depths of primeval creation and of the eternity behind it, for us the puny insects of a day to explore or to decide upon. One would think of God, that He would, if He could, banish all sin and wretchedness from that system of things, over which we have always been in the habit of thinking that He has the entire and undivided ascendancy; nor can we at all imagine, how with both the will and the ability of Omnipotence leagued against it, sin should ever have found an entrance,

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or obtained a footing in any of those fair worlds that surround the throne of the universal Father. Yet so it is; and man with all the tone of an indignant sufferer is heard to lift his remonstrances against it—as if he bore the whole weight of an injury, laid upon him at the pleasure of an arbitrary tyrant, who has laid open his dominions to the cruel inroads of a spoiler, who but for Him would have neither had the power nor the liberty of mischief. But without making so much as an attempt to solve the difficulties of a topic so inscrutable, we may at least say, that one thought has occurred, which, more than any other, melts us into acquiescence; and disposes us to look on the rise and continuance of evil, as being indeed some dire though mysterious necessity which overhangs creation-and that is, that, after all, it is not man who bears the whole burden of this dark and awful visitation-Neither is it any other creature beside man. It is the Creator in fact who offers to take upon Himself, the whole burden of it; or at least to relieve our species of it altogether. It is at His cost, and not at ours, unless we so choose it, that sin has invaded the world we tread upon. It is He, the Eternal Son, who went forth to the battle against this Hydra; and who in the soreness of His conflict, bore what millions through eternity could not have borne ; and who, though He had all the energies of the Godhead to sustain Him, yet well nigh gave way under the pressure of a deep and dreadful endurrance; and who, by His tears and agonies and cries, gave proof to the might of that mysterious adversary over whom He triumphed. Yes we murmur

because of the origin of evil. But Christ was the mighty sufferer who hath borne it away from us ; and let us hazard what reflections we may on those who die in ignorance, or who die in infancy—yet, in regard to you who are hearing us, every ground of complaint is annihilated. Christ is offered; and you by confidence in Him, and cleaving unto Him, will reach those happy shores of peace and light and joy, where all sin is for ever banished, and all evil is unknown.

END OF VOLUME TWENTY-SECOND.

Printed by William Collins & Co., Glasgow.