is finished." To these declarations the Father "set to his seal" when he raised him from the dead; on which account it is, that his resurrection forms so leading an article in the statements of the gospel, and by consequence, objectively, in what the apostle calls "the belief of the truth:" "The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that is, the word of faith which we preach,-that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved:"-" Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him," (i. e. that his faith, namely Abraham's, was imputed to him for righteousness,) "but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification:"—"If Christ be not risen, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins."§ The reason is, that Christ is represented as having "died for our sins:" but if he was not risen, his death had been no atonement, and the guilt of their sins remained unexpiated.-4. The belief of the perfect gratuitousness of salvation, as bestowed in his name and on his account alone.-The "record" or testimony, as explained on the preceding proposition, evidently con * 2 Thess. ii. 13. † Rom. x. 8, 9. § 1 Cor. xv. 17. Rom. 4. 23-25. tains this "This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." "For Grace is the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord."* essential to the gospel. It enters into its very essence. It is not believed at all, unless it be believed as a scheme of grace. It cannot exist without its grace, any more than the sun can exist without his light, or God himself without the essential properties of his nature. Take away gratuitous favour as the source of all blessing to sinners, and you take away the gospel. You leave nothing that can entitle it to the designation of "glad tidings of great joy." Such, then, is the testimony.-I do not consider myself as having at present to do with those lax theologians, of the Socinian and other kindred schools, who, in order to stretch the line of comprehension to a convenient length, are wont to insist, that nothing more was required to constitute a Christian of old, and that nothing more ought to be required now, than the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ,-the promised Messiah,-the Saviour of the world:-leaving an almost interminable latitude of charity, in regard to the meaning of the terms, and consequently of the propositions expressed by them. No matter, according to this latitudinarian system, whether he was God * Rom. vi. 23. equal with the Father, or a mere man ; no matter what was the nature of the work which, as the Christ, he was commissioned to execute,-whether to teach and exemplify virtue, or to make atonement for sin ;-no matter whether his salvation be by works or by grace; -no matter whether there be a Holy Ghost, or whether his influences be necessary for the illumination and conversion of sinners :-no matter what your belief may be on such articles as these; if you are only ready to confess that Jesus is the Christ. This is infantile. It is to make faith the belief of names, not of things,-of titles, not of truths,-of what Jesus should be called, not of what he is, or of what he hath done; the belief in fact, of little that is worth believing, or that can have any salutary influence, when believed. I admit the belief to be sufficient, that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God:"—but I insist upon it, that, in order to the belief of this being the belief of scripture doctrine, the terms and propositions must be understood in their scriptural sense. Otherwise, surely, the faith must be vain. It becomes the faith of no more than that certain words are in the Bible; not the faith of what these words were meant, by the God who dictated them, to convey. It is with faith in, or (which is the same thing) the belief of the testimony, that eternal life is connected. I should deem it unnecessary to enter into further proof that these two phrases are equivalent in mean ing, were it not for the unhappily mystical conceptions of faith which are so extensively prevalent. The word is in the lips of many, whose minds appear to have no definite or intelligible notion attached to it. They speak at times as if it were something more than belief, though they cannot tell exactly what ;-or even as if it were something different from it, according to some antecedent, and, according to others, consequent. -Were I to announce the proposition that we are justified by believing,—there would in many minds be no feeling produced, but one of satisfied acquiescence in the statement; whereas, were I to put the proposition in the form-we are justified by belief,-I am greatly mistaken if some at least of the same minds would not be startled, as if something had met their ear which sounded rather new :-" Eh! what said you?-by belief! I am not used to that word :—wouldn't it be better to say by faith?"-To such a degree are we the creatures of words. The very circumstance of any one being thus startled,-of his jealousy for orthodoxy being thus awakened,—by such a departure from the mere sounds to which his ear has been habituated, is sufficient to show that he has not been thinking discriminatively,—that he has not been analyzing his mental conceptions,—that his mind has been, too indolently, and to a degree of which he has not been aware, reposing on words rather than on things. If any two words can convey the same meaning, surely belief and believing do. Why, then, should the use of the former startle, and not that of the latter? Merely because the ear has become accustomed to the participle, but not to the noun. A different noun has been sub The stituted for it,—namely, faith. And it is with this noun that the mysticism alluded to has been associated : -so that we may not infrequently hear persons say, when we have stated the testimony of the Gospel,"That is all good-very good-if we had but faith to believe:". -as if faith and believing were different, and the one were necessary to the other :—whereas they are one and the same; and there would be as much sense in saying-If we could but believe to have faith' -as in saying, If we had but faith to believe. expression, however, serves, along with not a few others, to show, that in such minds there is a conception of faith, as if it were a kind of abstract principle' or state of disposition, distinct from the simple mental act of believing. I know few impressions more unfortunate than this; because it tends to disconnect faith from the record or testimony, which is its object. And the truth is, that faith is incapable of any subsistence in the mind, except as regarding a testimony. It derives its very being from the existence of the thing believed. If the object be taken away, the faith cannot, in the nature of things, remain. The cessation of the one must be the cessation of the other. There can no more be faith without something believed, than there |