they consider that Christ's Sacrifice saves by the mind's contemplating it. This is what they call casting themselves upon Christ,-coming before Him simply and without self-trust, and being saved by faith. Surely we ought so to come to Christ; surely we must believe; surely we must look; but the question is, in what form. and manner He gives Himself to us; and it will be found that, when He enters into us, glorious as He is Himself, pain and self-denial are His attendants. Gazing on the Brazen Serpent did not heal; but God's invisible communication of the gift of health to those who gazed. So also justification is wholly the work of God; it comes from God to us; it is a power exerted on our souls by Him, as the healing of the Israelites was a power exerted on their bodies. The gift must be brought near to us; it is not like the Brazen Serpent, a mere external, material, local sign; it is a spiritual gift, and, as being such, admits of being applied to us individually. Christ's Cross does not justify by being looked at, but by being applied; not by as merely beheld by faith, but by being actually set up within us, and that not by our act, but by God's invisible grace. Men sit, and gaze, and speak of the great Atonement, and think this is appropriating it; not more truly than kneeling to the material cross itself is appropriating it. Men say that faith is an apprehending and applying; faith cannot really apply the Atonement; man cannot make the Saviour of the world his own; the Cross must be brought home to us, not in word, but in power, and this is the work of the Spirit. This is justification; but when imparted to the soul, it draws blood, it heals, it purifies, it glorifies.

7.

With one or two passages from St. Paul in behalf of what I have been saying, I will bring this Lecture to an end. We shall find from the Apostle that the gift of the Justifying Cross as certainly involves an inward crucifixion as a brand or stamp causes sharp pain, or the cure of a bodily ailment consists in a severe operation.

For instance, writing to the Galatians, he says, “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;"1-what Cross? He goes on to tell us; -"by whom," or, rather, by which "the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world,"—that is, the Cross on Calvary, issuing and completed in its reflection on his own soul. An inward crucifixion was the attendant process of justification. This passage is the more remarkable, because St. Paul is alluding to certain bodily wounds and sufferings, as being actually the mode, in his case, in which the Cross had been applied. He says to his converts,-"The Jews compel you to be circumcised, but we Christians glory in another kind of circumcision, painful indeed, but more profitable. Our circumcision consists in the marks, the brands, of the Lord Jesus; which effect for us what circumcision can but typify, which interest us in His life while interesting us in His passion." The saving Cross crucifies us in saving.

:

Again in a previous passage, "A man is not justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith of Christ." 2 Do we conceive this to be a light and pleasant doctrine, and justification to be given without pain and discomfort on our part? so freely given as to be given

1 Gal. vi. 14.

2 Gal. ii. 16, 20.

easily,—so fully as to be lavishly? fully and freely doubtless, yet conferring fully what man does not take freely. He proceeds;-"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." O easy and indulgent doctrine, to have the bloody Cross reared within us, and our heart transfixed, and our arms stretched out upon it, and the sin of our nature slaughtered and cast out!

Again; in the same Epistle, "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." 1 It is remarkable that these three passages are from that Epistle in which the Apostle peculiarly insists on justification being through faith, not through the Law. It is plain he never thought of mere faith as the direct and absolute instrument of it. It should be observed how coincident this doctrine is with our Saviour's command to His disciples to "take up their Cross and follow Him." Our crosses are the lengthened shadow of the Cross on Calvary.

To the same purport are the following texts :-"We are buried with Him by baptism into death.... our old man is crucified with Him."—" Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof."- Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body; for we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

"2

As then the Cross, in which St. Paul gloried, was not 2 Rom. vi. 4, 6; xiii. 14. 2 Cor. iv. 10, 11.

1 Gal. v. 24.

N

the material cross on which Christ suffered,-so neither is it simply the Sacrifice on the cross, but it is that Sacrifice coming in power to him who has faith in it, and converting body and soul into a sacrifice. It is the Cross, realized, present, living in him, sealing him, separating him from the world, sanctifying him, afflicting him. Thus the great Apostle clasped it to his heart, though it pierced it through like a sword; held it fast in his hands, though it cut them; reared it aloft, preached it, exulted in it. And thus we in our turn are allowed to hold it, commemorating and renewing individually, by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, the death and resurrection of our Lord.

But enough has been said on the matter in hand. On the whole, then, I conclude as follows: that though the Gift which justifies us is, as we have seen, a something distinct from us and lodged in us, yet it involves in its idea its own work in us, and (as it were) takes up into itself that renovation of the soul, those holy deeds and sufferings, which are as if a radiance streaming from it.

LECTURE VIII.

RIGHTEOUSNESS VIEWED AS A GIFT AND AS

A QUALITY.

NOW propose to contrast the view of justification

which has been drawn out in the last Lectures with that to which certain writers of the Roman School consider themselves committed by the wording of the Tridentine Decree, into which also some of our writers have virtually fallen, and which, moreover, is unfairly imputed to many of our standard divines. As to the Protestant doctrine, on the other hand, which was a third in the discussion, I cannot go more deeply into what seems to me a system of words without ideas, and of distinctions without arguments. If I am told, in reply, that such a view of it arises from want of spiritual perception,— those who are blind to heavenly objects not understanding heavenly words,-I answer, that, though undoubtedly divine words express divine things, and divine things are hidden from all but divinely enlightened minds, yet this does not tell against a man for stumbling at words which are not divine. Luther's words are his own, reasoned out from Scripture, which every one of us has equal right to do. If I receive the doctrine of the Church Catholic as divine, it is as guaranteed by many concordant witnesses, which converge to one place and