could not be satisfied with his own sin-offering or peaceoffering, unless he was thus assured that he belonged to a redeemed and purified society. In like manner there is no sure peace and freedom for the conscience of any one man under the New Covenant, while he thinks only or chiefly of peace and freedom for himself. The sin which he supposes he has cast aside will appear again; it will seem to him as if it was not the blood of sprinkling, but his own momentary act of faith, which had purified him from it. But if we believe that Christ has taken away the sins of the world, we are led to a deeper and safer foundation upon which our hopes may rest. For then we see beneath all evil, beneath the universe itself, that eternal and original union of the Father with the Son which this day tells us of; that union which was never fully manifested till the Only-begotten by the Eternal Spirit offered Himself to God. The revelation of that primal Unity is the revelation of the ground on which all things stand, both things in heaven and things in earth. It is the revelation of an order which sustains all the intercourse and society of men. It is the revelation of that which sin has ever been seeking to destroy, and which at last has overcome sin. It is the revelation of that perfect harmony to which we look forward when all things are gathered up in Christ; when there shall be no more sin, because there shall be no more selfishness; when the law of sacrifice shall be the acknowledged law of all creation; when He who perfectly fulfilled that law-the Lamb that was slainshall receive blessing, and honour, and glory, and power; when the confession of His Name shall be felt and known to be the confession of the Father of an Infinite Majesty in whom He delighted, and of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, who proceedeth from Them, and with Them is worshipped and glorified for ever. SERMON XIII. CHRIST'S SACRIFICE THE PEACE-OFFERING FOR (Lincoln's Inn, 2d Sunday after Trinity, June 25, 1854.) EPHESIANS II. 11-18. Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.' : THE name Atheists-' without God'-which St. Paul here bestows on the Ephesians, before they became Christians, is the very one by which they and the other heathens described the Jews, and still more the Chris tians. The absence of all visible images was conclusive evidence to the idolaters of the second century, and probably also of the first, that the disciples of Jesus had renounced all worship and believed in nothing. That the charge should be reversed, that those who acknowledged a multitude of gods should be spoken of as having no God, and this in a letter addressed to the inhabitants of a city with an illustrious temple, and an image that was said to have fallen down from Jupiter, is very startling. The word is made more pointed and remarkable by that which accompanies it: they were without God in the world.' The world had seemed to them full of gods. It comprehended, of course, not merely the earth upon which they trod, but the firmament, the sun, and moon, and stars, whatever seemed necessary to complete the order, whatever ministered to the wants of those who dwell on this planet. Each grand object that men beheld denoted a god; was probably the habitation of a god. Every hill had its own ruler; every river and fountain had some one who had caused it to spring forth, and who presided over it. Could men who thought this be without God? Had they not rather an excuse for saying that those who emptied the universe of its celestial character, who denounced the worship under hills and green trees, merited that stigma? The Apostle, who had declared in the Epistle to the Romans, that through his countrymen the name of God was blasphemed in all lands, knew what pretext there was for this opinion; how much Jews had actually done to shake the faith of other people, giving them nothing in the place of it. He knew, by still more terrible evidence, what a deep-rooted Atheism there was in the hearts of some who were sons of Abraham, and were signed with the sign of his covenant. He knew it, for he had felt it; he had been conscious of Atheism,of something more than mere negative Atheism. There had been in his spirit such a horror of God, such a wish to be rid of Him, as he could never have ascertained, by mere observation or discourse, to exist in any human creature. And what made this discovery more dreadful to him was, that the very aspect of the Divine Being from which he shrunk, was that in which it was the glory of his country to present Him. A mere power he could have faced; it was from the Righteous King and Lawgiver, of whom the commandments spoke, that he could have wished the mountains to hide him, even if they crushed him. But if it were so, why did he speak of the Gentiles as being without God? Why did he treat it as a great calamity of theirs that they were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel? Because, brethren, it was through this tremendous experience that the Apostle was brought to understand what manner of Being it was who had revealed Himself to his fathers, and why they had testified so continually, He is a God nigh, and not |