more the warmth, light, and healing rays of the sun of righteousness to comfort my soul.

When we had lost all by one father, God gave us another to recover it to us with advantage; and our life is now safe in Christ's keeping.

We come from God through the loins of the first Adam, and return through the bowels of the second.

Christ can be nothing but himself in every soul where he comes, loving his own life, doing his own works, rejecting all sin, and seeking only to please God.

It must be so for Christ's sake; there must be a sincere renunciation of all sin for his love who died for me, and because I hope to see his face in heaven to whom I have so great obligations.

Christ's peace is his peace altogether, dearly purchased by him, and given to sinners standing in need of it. If it is to be of my own procuring, and I can have none but by entire freedom from sin, I am undone.

I owe Christ ten thousand thousand times more than I can pay ; and all he requires of me is to accept a discharge, and settle my love upon him; not as any part of payment, but because he knows I cannot otherwise be happy.

If ever we get to heaven, we shall know that we do not sing praises to the Lamb for nothing.

"Who has abolished death" and damna

tion by his death and resurrection, and brought life and immortality to light in the gospel ;" revealing, offering, and conveying it to all that believe and accept it as God's gift, live for it, and rejoice in it, as their portion and inheritance from the Lord.

Christ, by taking our sin upon himself, took it clean away from us; banished it out of the creation, and eternally annihilated it to every believer, who is as far from the charge of it before God, as if there never had been any such thing in the world; and if he did not do this for us, he did nothing; if we have one sin remaining that he did not expiate, we are still under a sentence of death.

The two main pillars of Christ's religion are the depth of sin, and the height of righteousness and none but he could atone for the one, and perform the other.

A thousand saints with all their fortitude, patience and united efforts, could not bear the burden of one sin. What then did Christ endure when all the sins of the world were laid upon him.

"Herein is love,"-superlative, inconceivable, infinite ;-" that he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,❞—without exception of any sins or sinners. Why do I not steadily believe it? Why do I harbour a doubt of it? Why do I ever forget it ?Why am I not always rejoicing in the happy assurance of it?

Some look unto Christ with godly sorrow,

gratitude, love, and a purpose of obedience; some with horrid presumption, and the deceitfulness of a desperately wicked heart, to make him a cover for carnal indulgence; the generality with great coldness and indiffer

ence.

Christ says to man, "live," not for any good he sees in any man; but when he is, and because he is lying in his blood. He can enlighten the dark heart; he can purge the defiled heart; he can bend the stubborn heart; he can fix the inconstant heart; he can quicken the dead heart; he can spiritualize the earthly heart; he can universalize, the selfish heart; he can comfort the sorrowful heart, all cold and icy as it is, he can make it a heart of pure love he can be himself in the heart. Blessed be his name.

O Jesus! my Lord, and my God! my Saviour by thyself, from myself! how wonderful art thou! What should I do but for Christ? Another question completes the character of the Christian, What shall I do for Christ?

God testifies to me, to my soul, that Christ has risen from the dead, and with him, by an indisputable, abiding matter of fact, viz. his sending the Holy Ghost into my heart.

Christ in me will be the same God-devoted, sin-hating, soul-loving, self-denying, suffering, labouring Christ that he is in himself.

Nothing but the blood of Christ can wash

out the foul stains of my life; and that will do it. As sure as sin is death, Christ is life.

Without Christ we should never have known what sin is; without the knowledge of sin we should never have known what Christ is. O, my soul, magnify the Lord, and rejoice in God thy Saviour.

CHAP. VII..

FAITH..

FAITH does not consist in thinking that my sins are comparatively little, and therefore may be forgiven; but in knowing that they are very great, and believing that, though they are never so many and great, past or present, Christ's blood is above them. alli

Nothing but Christ's blood, taking away, and as it were annihilating sin, can quiet an awakened conscience. Repentance implies an abiding self-dislike and self-abhorrence, and can neither destroy the existence, nor extinguish the remembrance, nor heal the smart of past sin; the torment of it can ne

ver die but with a conviction that Christ took it all upon himself.

My sins are many and great, and continually rising up against me; but I must not, I must not make God a liar, deny the Saviour, and grieve the Spirit by refusing his comfort. may have more joy of Christ than I could have had of innocence or any sanctity of my own. O Adam, what hast thou done! O, Jesus, what hast thou not done.

I

The man who has no doubts and fears, has no faith.

Perfect obedience being impossible, it is necessary that all should have some reserve at hand in the want of it; something to support their hope, and give peace to their consciences; sincerity or Christ. But the former can no more be pleaded than perfect obedience; and if faith on Christ, suffering in our stead what we should have suffered, and doing for us what we cannot do, is not our appointed relief, the case of mankind is desperate.

If Christ will take my sins, I may well give him every thing else.

"Fides Christum mihi donat, charitas ex fide me proximo." Luther. That is, Faith gives me Christ, and love from faith gives me to my neighbour.

God grants me forgiveness, not because I have so much repentance, or so much obedience to bring him at the price of it, but of his free goodness, because I want it, and