loving him, but it is the happiness of loving him, and knowing ourselves to be loved by him. It is dwelling on and in his high perfections. It is giving him our perfect sympathy, and receiving his. It is knowing him as the infinite God, and yet as an affectionate Father, as a friend, that sticketh closer than a brother. It is the assurance which the heart draws, from his love in giving his Son, and perhaps from some more special and personal tokens of that love, that he will never leave us nor forsake us, that he will never cease to love us, with a love which will be, and must be, our satisfying, and filling, and delighting portion through all eternity. It is the joy. ful and confident anticipation of the day, when the mystery of God shall be accom. plished, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and when the children of God shall be glad, and rejoice for ever in the new heavens, and the new earth which their Father shall create. It is the discovering, that all the works of creation,-all events,-time and space,-eternity and infinity,-every thing is full of that God who loved us, and gave himself for us; and who,

ingiving us himself, freely gives us all things. This is the good that a soul gets by believ ing the gospel; and is it not enough, or shall we still ask, whether we are warranted to expect pardon and eternal life, because we believe the gospel? Does not such a question indicate a radical mistake as to the meaning of the gospel? Is it not the question of a man who sees nothing in the gospel itself to satisfy him, and therefore supposes that there must surely be something else to accompany it, in order to make it that desirable thing which it is said to be? Is it not the question of a man who considers his belief of the gospel nothing else than a meritorious submission of his reason to the authority of God,—a submission which is to be rewarded by some mark of his approbation?

And now, I ask the candid reader, whether this expectation of receiving some reward for believing the gospel is not very like the common view of the doctrine of justification by faith? If justification be pardon, or a judicial act of God, imputing Christ's righteousness to a sinner,—and if this act has no existence, until he believes

the gospel, then justification is not received by faith, but bestowed on account of faith. It is a recompense for believing; and men are not blessed in the gospel itself, but on account of their belief of it. Whereas if jus! tification means a sense of pardon through a propitiation, or, as it is called in the Epis tle to the Hebrews, ix. 9-14, the being made perfect as pertaining to the conscience, and having the conscience purged from dead works, then all is simple; for we can have no difficulty in seeing that a sense of our own personal pardon and acceptance must arise out of a belief, that a propitiation has been made, by the holy love of God, for the sins of the whole world, This justification is truly and intelligibly by faith, for it is a state of mind which necessarily and naturally results from a belief of the love of God, revealed in the great atonement ac complished by the obedience of Jesus Christ unto death for the sins of the world. If we understand and believe that the atonement of Christ was indeed an atonement for the sins of the whole world, we must see our our own personal acceptance contained in it, that is to say, we must be justified by this as you in bibda to two dau no!

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boyansi ter a noveshher faith, and we shall also be sanctified by it, But if we do not understand the atonement of Christ,—if we do not see in it such an expression of forgiving love, and such a satisfaction to justice as may engage our confidence, and purge our consciences,-then our belief in the atonement can do us no good,-it does not justify us, it does not comfort nor strengthen us, it is a well to us without water. And in this way, when no comfort is derived from the atonement itself, an endeavour is made to draw comfort from the belief of the atonement as an act of which God is supposed to have promised acceptance, and a special blessing. I see no such promise in the Bible. There are exceeding precious promises to those who trust in God, and wait on God; but the promise of pardon, as the reward of faith in any thing, seems to me a mere human invention, in direct opposition to the whole tenor of the gospel.

It is evident, from Rom. v. 1, that justification is necessarily connected with peace of conscience,-" being justified by faith, we have peace with God,"-but pardon, unknown or unbelieved, will not, and

cannot give peace of conscience. Justification, then, is not pardon simply, but pardon known and believed, pardon implied in and inferred from a gift greater than pardon. Rom. iii. 20, "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." The knowledge of sin, or the sense of sin, is placed in direct antithesis to justification, which therefore ought to mean a knowledge of pardon, or a sense of pardon. The deeds of the law in this passage ap

pear to me to mean the expiatory and purifying rites of the law. And when the Apostle says of them that no flesh shall be justified by them, for by the law is the knowledge of sin, he means to express precisely the same idea which is more fully explained in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chap. ix. and x., viz. that these rites were intended rather to keep up a sense of sin than to give a sense of pardon. They removed ceremonial pollution, but they could give no peace to the conscience, except by referring the worshipper to that great sacrifice of which they were only shadows. The law, in its addresses to those