pure, how lofty, how correct will be his notions of character, and his taste in morals! How studiously will he aim at conformity in all things to the standard he is thus keeping in his view! How sensitive must he be of his own deficiencies, which are sins; and how vigilantly he will look around him in the scenes of allurement, and the lurking-places of the tempter!" He looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth, and is a doer of the work, and is blessed in his deed."

Secondly;-Such being the nature and uses of the law of God, we shall endeavour, briefly, to illustrate

its extent.

Human laws, being addressed to motives which influence the actions, are moral, and extend to all the actions that injure the temporal interests which the laws were intended to protect. If you do any thing that is proved, in form, to injure the reputation, the liberty, the property, the civil and political privileges, of a member of the same community, you violate the laws of that community, and are liable to the penalties provided by the legislature for that specific case. But accusations are not always true, nor actions well defined: proofs are in many instances imperfect. Human jurisprudence cannot adapt itself to the endless shades and distinctions of conduct. Every crime committed, therefore, is not charged home; every injury sustained is not redressed; every end of justice is not reached. Human laws, the best, and best administered, are confessedly imperfect, and therefore but partially adapted to the maintenance of social virtue and happiness. The principles of education, the discipline of domestic life, and the confidence of friendship, are so many moral laws, contributing, in their measure, to the general amount of goodness and enjoyment. But many principles of education are bad; many plans of domestic discipline are vicious; many alliances of friendship are preserved only by the torpor of the mind, or the absence of those conflicting interests

which draw the whole man into action. Even allowing for these laws all the perfection of which they are susceptible, the guardian of education can only watch the developement of feelings which may have been long cherished; the wisest domestic discipline can but check the excesses of the temper; the most piercing eye of friendship can see no farther than the actions, or, at most, the indications of the countenance, or the style of communication.

Now mark how different the case is with the law of God. It has to do with actions which may never reach the community, never strike the observer of your manners, never incur the frown of parental displeasure, never excite the suspicions of your friend. It includes, indeed, all the other actions, and, by that law, whatever has grieved a parent, or wronged a friend, or injured a neighbour, will, at length, be judged. But this is not all: the thought, the feeling, the wish, the resolution, the regret, the thousand subtle acts of the mind, which have been kept from utterance, by a sense of propriety, the fear or love of man, or a regard to present interests, or to future consequences; these, though approved and cherished only for a moment, are violations of the divine law, and, therefore, sins. Need we prove this? Read the commandment,-"Thou shalt not covet." Read Solomon,*" The thought of foolishness is sin.” Read Jeremiah,+-"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." Read Paul,-"I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me." Read the Saviour's own explanations of the law throughout the sermon on the mount.

Thirdly, The sanctions of the law are to be pointed out.

* Proverbs, xxiv. 9. Jeremiah, xvii. 9, 10. Romans, vii. 21.

The law is not a naked rule, a bare prescription of what is right. It demands obedience. No force is employed; for, in the absence of force consists the distinction between a moral and a physical necessity. But the law is accompanied by sanctions. It addresses our sense of misery, and our love of happiness. These are principles of which we cannot divest ourselves, nor be divested. The benevolence of God renders it certain, that obedience to the law, in its most spiritual extent, is happiness; for, it was in this state of entire conformity to his law that man was made, and he was made happy. In this state the inhabitants of heaven are preserved, and they are happy. In the original righteousness, of which the law is the expression, God himself exists, and he is essentially, ineffably, eternally happy. It is not, then, a matter of simple promise, that happiness shall result from obedience; there is the demonstration in fact, that happiness and obedience are inseparable.

The justice of God renders it equally certain, that disobedience to the law is virtual and essential misery. Perhaps you are not now sensible of this. But whenever you are withdrawn from the excitements of the present state, and launched into yonder world of truths, and spirits, and unchanging destinies, if not awakened to a sense of this truth before you die, you must feel it, in untold and deepening agonies, throughout eternity!

Obedience and blessing, disobedience and the curse, holiness and heaven, impurity and hell; these are the unalterable connexions which constitute the sanctions of the law of God. These solemn sanctions are revealed in various forms and combinations. They occur in arguments, to convince our judgment; in commands, to touch our conscience; in threats, to arouse our fears; in promises, to allure our hopes. They appear in descriptions, to picture on our imagination the awful or the blissful scenes of an endless futurity; and they are illustrated by facts,

to fix the attention and to occupy the memory with the reflections they suggest. There is, therefore, no excuse for sin; "all the world must become guilty before God." "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, I beseech thee, for in thy sight shall no flesh living be justified!"

Fourthly; We are to establish the perpetuity of those obligations under which we are placed by the divine law.

The authority of the moral law is founded in the perfection of God, and extends over all the creatures whom he has rendered capable of obeying it, while that capability exists.

The capability of obeying the law of God consists, it is sufficiently obvious, in a knowledge of its requirements and sanctions, sufficient to direct the choice of the mind, and in having physical power and opportunity to act as we have chosen. To choose in opposition to the requirements of the law, is to contract guilt, even though the power, or opportunity, to carry the choice into execution, should be wanting. Obedience or disobedience lies essentially in the choice; and, when we are at liberty to act according to our inclination, the choice will appear in the conduct.

It has been imagined, on various grounds, and by numerous classes of religionists, that the authority of the divine law is not now in force. The notion has arisen, mainly, from perverted views, as we judge, of two cardinal points in the discoveries of revelation, the total depravity of man, and the exclusive efficacy of the obedience of Christ, in the justification of believers.

1. The depravity of man has been regarded more as a calamity than as a crime. There are certain passages of Scripture which represent men as "dead in sins," "bound by Satan," such as "cannot cease from sin," having a "carnal mind, which is enmity against God," "not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be," "in the flesh, and therefore unable

to please God." "No man," says Jesus, "can come unto me, except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him." Now such passages are, surely, intended, not to excuse, but to aggravate, the depravity and guilt of sinners; describing, as they do, their stubbornness and inveteracy. But they have been misunderstood; for some men will not apply to them the same mode of explanation which they do and must apply to similar expressions in common language. When you say of a profane man, that he cannot speak without swearing; of a drunkard, that he cannot live without intoxication; or of a selfish man, that he cannot do a generous turn; or of a cruel man, that he is dead to every tender feeling; you mean to express, in the strongest terms, the rooted habits of these men, and the criminality involved in the profanity of the first, the drunkenness of the second, the selfishness of the third, the cruelty of the fourth. You have no idea that their obligations to be devout and sober, and benevolent and kind, are, at all, lessened by their criminality. You may thus detect the fallacy of supposing, that the criminality of men, in opposing the law of God, can, in any sense or degree, lessen their obligations to obey that law. In habitual unwillingness to render this obedience, human depravity consists. Human depravity cannot be proved, without acknowledging the permanent authority of the law; for when there is no law there is no transgression, and, consequently, nothing sinful. But the law is the image of God; the image of God is still the only condition in which man can be happy; and, therefore, still the authoritative rule of duty.

2. The assurance that the obedience of Christ is the ground of a believer's justification, is another point, at which men have been led astray, by the same erroneous principle. The gospel has been opposed to the law in a manner never warranted by the Scriptures; the cross of the Saviour exalted on the ruins of his throne; the law depicted in frightful characters, as a most terrific adversary, and the