would have been wrought, and that for the very purpose of upholding us in the very sin which made our redemption necessary?

To use the term dead in a forensic meaning, is not a gratuitous or unauthorised interpretation on our part. We have the example of Paul himself for it, in that memorable passage of first Corinthians, where he says, that "we thus judge, that as Christ died for all, then were all dead"-not personally dead-not dead in regard of affection for what was sinful; but dead in law-dead in respect of that sure condemnation, which, but for Christ, would have been fulfilled upon all-not executed but on the eve of execution: and whether the Saviour prevent the accomplishment of the sentence, or revive and restore them after it, the argument of the apostle is the same. Christ by dying, and that to preserve them from dying, did as much for them, as if He had brought them back again from the chambers of death-as if He had put life into them anew, after it was utterly extinguished-as if He had placed them once again within the limits of God's family; and given them a second standing on the platform of life, from which sin had before swept them off. It is making Christ the author of our life, which He is as effectually by preventing its extermination, as He would have been by infusing it anew into us after it was destroyed; and the practical lesson comes out as impressively in the one case as in the other -even that we should give up the life to Him

who thus has kept or who thus has recalled it, or that we should live no longer to ourselves but to Him who died for us and who rose again.

We trust you may now perceive, how impressive the consideration is on which we are required to give up sin under the economy of the gospel. For sin we were all under sentence of death. Had the sentence taken effect, we would all have been outcasts from God's family. Sin is that scandal which must be rooted out, from that great spiritual household over which the Divinity rejoices-so that on its very first appearance, an edict of expulsion went forth; and men became exiles from the domain of Almighty favour, just because they were sinners. It is conceivable that the sentence might be arrested, or that it might be recalled; but it were strange indeed, if, after being doomed to exile because they had been sinners, they should cease to be exiles and be sinners still. Strange administration indeed for sin to be so hateful to God, as to lay all who had incurred it under death; and yet when readmitted into life, that sin should be permitted, and what was before the object of destroying vengeance should now become the object of an upheld and protected toleration. Every thing done and arranged by God-bears upon it the impress of His character. And it was indeed fell demonstration of His antipathy to sin, under the first arrangement of matters between Him and the species, that, when it entered our world, the doom of extermination from all favour and fellow

ship with God should instantly go forth against it. And now that the doom is taken off-think you it possible, that the unchangeable God has so given up His antipathy to sin, as that man, ruined and redeemed man, may now perseveringly indulge, under the new arrangement, in that which under the old arrangement destroyed him? Does not the God who loved righteousness and hated iniquity six thousand years ago, bear the same love to righteousness and the same hatred to iniquity still? And well may not the sinner say-if on my own person such a dreadful memorial of God's hatred to sin was on the eve of being inflicted, as that of everlasting destruction from His presence-if the awfulness of such a vindictive manifestation was about to be realised on me individually, when a great Mediator interposed; and, standing between me and God, bare in his own body the whole brunt of His coming vengeance-if when thus kept from the destruction which sin drew upon me, and so as good as if rescued from that abyss of destruction into which sin had thrown me, I now breathe the air of loving-kindness from Heaven, and can walk before God in peace and graciousness-Shall I again attempt the incompatible alliance of two principles so adverse, as that of an approving God and a persevering sinner; or again try the Spirit of that Being, who, in the whole process of of my condemnation and my rescue has given such proof of most sensitive and unspotted holiness?

There shall be nothing, says God, to hurt or to

It is in con

offend in all my holy mountain. formity to this, that death is inflicted upon the sinner; and this death is neither more nor less than his expulsion from the family of holiness. Through Jesus Christ, we come again unto mount Zion, which is the heavenly Jerusalem; and it is as fresh as ever in the verdure of a perpetual holiness. How shall we who were found unfit for residence in this place because of sin, continue in sin after our readmittance therein? How shall we, recovered from so awful a catastrophe, continue that which first involved us in it? or again take on that disease which has already evinced itself to be of such virulence, as to be a disease unto death.

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LECTURE XXX.

Romans, vi, 3—7.

"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin."

V. 3, 4. THE original meaning of the word baptism is immersion, and though we regard it as a point of indifferency, whether the ordinance so named be performed in this way or by sprinkling -yet we doubt not, that the prevalent style of the administration in the apostle's days, was by an actual submerging of the whole body under water. We advert to this, for the purpose of throwing light on the analogy that is instituted in these Jesus Christ by death underwent this sort of baptism-even immersion under the surface of the ground, whence He soon emerged again by His resurrection. We by being baptized into His death, are conceived to have made a similar translation. In the act of descending under the water of baptism to have resigned an old life, and in the act of ascending to emerge into a second or a new

verses.