moreover, as we well know, had proceeded to the most vicious excesses of the passions; had brought to maturity the corruption of human nature; and were sunk in the lowest depths of moral degradation.

Now if we examine the connexion in which the text stands, we shall find this engrossment of the mind by the objects of the present life directly and powerfully contrasted by the governing principle of conduct which distinguishes the man who is in Christ Jesus, and become a new creature. Having asserted and vindicated his claims to be received as an

Apostle of Jesus Christ, St. Paul expresses the earnest desire, entertained by himself and his fellow-labourers in the Christian ministry, of that "life and immortality” which the Saviour had "brought to light by the Gospel." The whole strain of the chapter from which the text is taken bespeaks a prevailing solicitude with regard to the invisible and eternal world, and a comparative indifference to the interests of the present state. "We walk by faith, and not by sight." "We are confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all

appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." He instructs us, moreover and especially, that a man who is "in Christ," the "new creature," is actuated to the restraint of his depraved propensities by a constraining principle of gratitude to Christ-by the reflection that the immortality which awaits him is not only a condition of existence above all human worthiness to claim, not only a pure donation of the Deity, but the result and purchase of the humiliation and sufferings of the Son of God:

"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." "Therefore," he almost immediately adds, "if any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Of what nature those old things were which had passed away, we are informed in the Epistle to the Colossians and elsewhere: -"But now, ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the

new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him."*

We have seen, then, that the first converts to Christianity, by the powerful succour which it brought them, surmounted the inordinate, corrupt propensities of human nature, and escaped from the bondage of the passions by which, in common with their fellow-creatures, they had been enslaved and degraded. Their previous unacquaintance with the Gospel, indeed, was no ground of acquittal or justification before God: but it was his merciful purpose to apply an effectual corrective to the depravity of our nature-to establish a most gracious constitution, which, including large communications of knowledge, the application of extraordinary motives, and the presence of a supernatural aid, should be abundantly adequate-(always assuming man to be a responsible agent, and his state probationary) — abundantly adequate to change the governing principles of mankind, and transform the aspect of the moral world. We do but paraphrase the following language of Holy Writ:-"The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent."+

* Col. iii. 8.

† Acts xvii. 30.

But the light and efficacy of the Gospel were not to be restricted to the age in which it was originally promulgated were not to illumine the path of the Apostles and their contemporaries only, and to disappear with the splendour of their virtues: on the contrary, as their Master had been an example of a resurrection of the human body from the grave, they were themselves to be the first-fruits of a resurrection which was to pass upon the human spirit, from a "death of trespasses and sins" to a life of holiness and peace. They were the earnest only of an abundant harvest. The "Sun of righteousness," which at length had risen "with healing in his wings," was not again to withdraw his beams; but was set in the moral firmament, to give light to all succeeding generations; and is still shining in meridian strength to inspire and sustain the regenerated life of man. Whatever may have been the lot of other ages and nations, no fatal catastrophe has happened to intercept his rays to this people-to replunge us into the gloom of Jewish prejudice, or Pagan superstition-to renew the vices of an unchristian state-to resuscitate" the old man." The instruments of sanctification have de

* Mal. iv. 2.

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scended to us from their first possessors; and we enjoy, as our heritage, "all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.”*

The change wrought in the earliest Christians, therefore, would instruct us, we apprehend, to account "the man in Christ Jesus to be a "new creature," with relation to the dispositions and conduct of mankind when unenlightened by the Gospel, and unaided by the Spirit of God. It would not incline us to expect, far less to desire, that individuals who, at no former period of their lives, had been ignorant of Christianity, should experience and manifest a change in their principles and conduct; should become experimentally new creatures, different from themselves at a former period. It would rather incline us to infer that an early initiation into a knowledge of the Gospel would obviate the necessity of such a change; would anticipate and suppress the inordinate force of the passions; and impart a right direction to our earliest thoughts, and springing affections-thus overruling the original bent of our nature, constituting us new creatures from the birth of our reason, 2 Pet. i. 3.