haven of eternal rest prepared for the people of God!

God has given us in his Word, through the instrumentality of prophets and apostles, instruction in all things necessary for our temporal and eternal welfare; and he has given us this comfortable assurance also, that "All Scripture is written by inspiration of God." When, therefore, St. Paul declares in the commencement of the text, "We thus judge," he does not tell us merely his own judgment, or inform us of the conclusion of his own mind. No; it is the judgment of an infallibly wise and merciful God, made known by his Spirit to his servant, and "is written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." Let us then, in mercy to ourselves, in compassion to our weaknesses, and to our manifold infirmities, listen to the testimony thus declared by the apostle-a testimony most important in its nature, and most practical in its conclusions-" 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.

From the doctrine of the death of Christ as thus stated, two inferences are drawn, namely, First, The universal state of mankind by

nature and by practice: THEY ARE DEAD"dead in trespasses and sins."

Secondly, The obligation laid upon all those who are "renewed in the spirit of their minds"— upon all those who have been raised "from a death of sin to a new birth unto righteousness," "that they should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose again."

May God, by his enlightening, quickening, and sanctifying Spirit, apply the consideration of these momentous truths to our souls! May he convince us of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, and enable us to surrender ourselves from henceforth as the willing servants of him "who died for our sins, and rose again for our justification."

The deep and universal corruption of human nature is a doctrine exceedingly unpalatable to the generality of the world; yet many who deny this doctrine, either wholly or in part, would be extremely shocked should you cast a doubt upon their Christianity. Speak to them of Christ, and they will profess to believe on him-speak of his atonement, and they will say it is what they depend on. In this general manner, they will apparently allow some of the leading doctrines of the Gospel, when, by

the general tenor of their lives and conversation, they give melancholy proof of being greatly unacquainted with the nature of that corruption, and its awful effects, which nothing less than the death of Christ could either atone for or remove.

"Prepare yourself to hear," says an eminent. writer of the present day, "rather of frailty and infirmity, of petty transgressions, of occasional failings, of sudden surprisals, and of such other qualifying terms as may serve to keep out of view the true source of the evil, and without shocking the understanding may administer consolation to the pride of human nature.” "The bulk of professed Christians," says the same writer," are used to speak of man as of a being who, naturally pure and inclined to all virtue, is sometimes almost involuntarily drawn out of the right course, or is overpowered by the violence of temptation. Vice with them is rather an accidental and temporary, than a constitutional and habitual distemper-a noxious plant, which, though found to live, and even to thrive in the human mind, is not the natural growth and production of the soil.

"Far different is the humiliating language of Scripture. From it we learn that man is an apostate creature, fallen from his high original, degraded in his nature, and depraved in

his faculties-indisposed to good, and disposed to evil-prone to vice, it is natural and easy to him-disinclined to virtue, it is difficult and laborious-that he is tainted with sin, not slightly and superficially, but radically, and to the very core."

Had sin been an evil, slight in itself, and acquired merely from bad example, or from long indulged habits—had it been what man, by his natural powers, could either prevent or eradicate-methinks somewhat a less costly sacrifice might have been found than the only and well-beloved Son of God? But when NO OTHER ransom could be found-when no other atonement could be made-surely we have every reason to conclude our state to have been as helpless as it was hopeless? But perhaps it might be profitable to us more minutely to consider the character of our Lord, his nature, and sufferings, in order that we may more fully understand the nature and desert of sin. The book of God declares, that he who bled and died on Calvary was no other than the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peacenot the highest in the order of created intelligences, but the everlasting God. He, before whose eternal throne angels and archangels veil their faces, while they cry, Holy, holy,

holy Lord God Almighty, which is, and was, and is to come." He it was who came down from this excellent glory, to take upon him our nature, and to die, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God-who made his soul an offering for sin-who gave his back to the smiters, and his face to shame and spitting. Well may we, then, in contemplating his glorious nature, his bitter and accumulated sufferings, conclude, with the apostle, that if "such an one thus died, then were all dead."

In Scripture, various metaphors are employed to point out our lost and miserable state by nature; but none certainly can be more strong and expressive than that employed in the text-it is one which denotes every thing that is helpless, inactive, stupid, and irrecoverable. Was there one spark of natural capability or spiritual goodness in the soul of man, it could not, with either truth or propriety, be applied as it is by the apostle. When we have a friend lying on the bed of sickness, we may still retain, as long as the vital spark remains unextinguished, a hope of his recovery; but as soon as the pulse ceases to beat, as soon as animal life is extinct, we resign every hope, and are fully aware that all the efforts of human power, and all the ingenuity of human skill, could not restore animation to the lifeless