SERMON IX.

THE STATE IN WHICH THE GOSPEL FINDS MAN.

MATT. xviii. 11.-"The Son of man is come to save that which was lost."

ALL men, with exceptions too few to be taken into the general account, have some scheme of salvation. The exceptions relate to the very few cases where individuals are in a state of despair; or where, either from physical disease, or from some perverted view of the truths of religion, they have abandoned all hope of happiness in the world to come. With these very few exceptions, there are none who do not expect to be happy beyond the grave. The proof of this is plain. It is found in the composure with which men look at eternity; the indifference which they manifest when warned of a coming judgment; the cool and unperturbed spirit with which they pursue the things of this life, whether they are serious things or mere trifles; the unconcern which they evince when told of eternal sorrows. It requires the utmost strength of human hardihood when a criminal looks with no paleness of the features, and no trembling of the limbs, on the gibbet where he is soon to be executed ; and no man could look on eternal sorrow with a belief that it is to be his own, and be unmoved. When we see men, therefore, wholly unconcerned about their eternal state; men, though professing to believe that there is a place of future woe, wholly unalarmed and unmoved, the fair inference is, that not one word of the statements about future woe is believed, and that they have some secret scheme by which they hope to be saved at last. Either by works of righteousness which they have done ; or in virtue of the native amiableness of their character; or because they have done no injury to others; or because they believe that it would be wrong for God to consign them to an eternal hell; or because they confide in what they regard as the illimitable compassion of God, they expect to be saved, and, therefore, give themselves no trouble about it. It is not, it cannot be human nature to believe that eternal pain is to be our portion, and still to sit unmoved. Still less can men believe this and be cheerful and gay. Every man, therefore, must have some secret scheme by which he hopes to be saved.

Yet, there can be but one method of salvation that is true. If the Christian plan is true, then all others are false; if they are true, then that is false. If there are other schemes by which man can be saved, then there was no need of the Sacrifice on the cross, and the scheme proposed in the gospel is an imposture. The admission, then, that the Christian religion is true-an admission which sinners often so readily and so thoughtlessly make-is a condemnation of all other systems, and shuts out all who are not interested in the plan of the gospel from all hope of heaven.

On this account, if on no other, therefore, it cannot but be a matter of importance to know what the plan of salvation proposed in the gospel is. The previous discourses have been designed, in part, to prepare the way for this by considering certain states of the mind in regard to religion; by removing certain difficulties felt by men on the subject, and by stating certain presumptive claims which Christianity has on the attention of men. It seemed proper to do this before attempting to show specifically what the plan of salvation revealed in the gospel is; and having done that, the way is now prepared for a more definite statement of the scheme of salvation proposed in the gospel, or the mental process through which a sinner passes when he embraces the plan. In doing this, I wish to take out this scheme from all others, and to show what it is, so that a man who asks what he shall do to be saved, may understand what, according to this scheme, is to be done; what is required of him; what hindrances he will meet, and what encouragements will be held out to him: what, in one word, according to this scheme, is the method by which God proposes to bring a sinner to heaven.

I begin, of course, with a consideration of the state in which the gospel finds man; and the general statement which I make on this point is, that God's plan of saving men is based on the fact that the race is by nature destitute of holiness. If this were not so, there would have been no necessity for the scheme. Men would have possessed full capability of saving themselves. If men before or since the promulgation of this plan had any elements of holiness in their character, or any traits which could by their own skill be wrought into a texture of righteousness; or if there was remaining in the human soul any germ of goodness which could by culture be developed into holiness; or if there was any slumbering spark of piety that needed only to be uncovered and fanned into a flame, then the design of interposing in the manner revealed in the gospel would have been unnecessary, and would not have occurred. For then all that would

have been needful would have been to leave the race to themselves, with only such moral encouragement as would stimulate them to effort, or with such aid as would enable them to unfold the germ of piety in the soul, as they now cultivate the intellectual powers, or as they cultivate a plant from a seed sown in a garden. This is very far from being the gospel scheme.

But it is of the last importance that we should understand what is meant when it is said that God's plan of saving men is based on the fact that the race is destitute of holiness. There are things which men try to do in religion which they cannot do, and are, therefore, not required to do; there are instructions given to men seeking to be saved, which the nature of the human mind forbids any one to follow, and which ought not to be followed; there are statements made on this point which no man can believe to be true, hard as he may try to think them true, and much as he may endeavour to blame himself because he does not; there are acts for which a man thinks he ought to condemn himself, when after all his struggling he cannot work himself up to feel one particle of guilt; and there are doctrines which men are sometimes taught that they ought to believe, which are so obviously and palpably false, that in trying to believe them they become disgusted with the entire system, and renounce the whole together. After all the efforts which men make to credit absurdities, there are things which the human mind can believe, and those which it cannot; there are things which we can repent of, and those which we cannot. In a certain state of mind, and under a certain kind of teaching, a man often works himself up into a belief that he ought to feel guilty, when he cannot; and often blames himself in this respect, when he ought to feel that he is acting perfectly right. And so, on the other hand, there are cases where a man resists the conviction of guilt when he ought to feel it, and does just as much injustice to his own nature by refusing to be penitent, as he did in the other case by trying to repent. How, then, is a man who wishes to be saved to regard himself on this point? What is he held to be guilty of? what not?

In the answer to these questions, I shall, first, state to you what you are not to regard yourselves as guilty of; and then, secondly, what is to be regarded as the real state of the soul by nature in respect to God and religion. I can most conveniently, and with no want of respect for you, use the style of direct address.

(1.) First, then, you are not held to be guilty of the sin of Adam, nor is repentance for that, in any proper sense, to enter

into your repentance if you are saved according to the way of salvation provided in the gospel. I do not mean by this that you are not involved seriously in the consequences of his apostacy— for, except in the notion of personal guilt in the matter, I would go as far as any man in holding that you are so; but that you are not to regard yourselves as personally blameworthy on account of what he has done, and that you need not try to feel, and that you are not to reflect on yourselves if you cannot feel that you are. If a man ever does work himself up into the belief that he is guilty, or blameworthy, or responsible for the sin of Adam, it is simply a delusion of his mind: harmless in some respects, but hurtful so far as he supposes that any piety grows out of it-for no true religion grows out of a falsehood, and so far as it tends to modify his views of the character of God. In a sound and healthy state of the mind, it is impossible that a man should feel guilty or blameworthy for any sins but his own. He may be affected in his person, character, happiness, or property, and in some sense in his reputation, by the sin of another; he may greatly regret it, and may weep over it as a calamity, and may feel himself humbled by it on account of his relation to the offender; but he can never feel in regard to it as he does in regard to his own sins; he can never weep for it as he does in view of his own personal guilt. God, in the constitution of the human mind, has fixed bounds on this subject more impassable than are those which restrain the ocean. You feel guilty for your own sins; you do not, you cannot for the sin of another. The feeling with which you regard your own sin, and the feeling with which you regard the sin of another, are as distinct as any two classes of feeling possible, and they can never be confounded, and they are not to be intermingled in a plan of salvation. I believe that the Bible does not hold you to be blameworthy, or responsible, or in the proper sense of the term guilty, for the sin of Adam, or of any other man. I am certain that your conscience does not hold you thus guilty. It is a simple matter of fact that you cannot make yourself feel guilty of that, however much you may try to, and however often you may be told that you must. The act was his act, not yours; the disobedience was his, not yours; the responsibility was his, not yours. It took place nearly six thousand years before you were born: you were not there; you had no agency in it whatever-and you cannot make yourself feel personally guilty for it, and are not to try to do so in the matter of salvation. You may lament it—may feel its effects-may weep over those effects; but you are not to lament this, to feel this, to weep over this, as a personal crime

for you cannot do it. That is a separate feeling-limited and bounded as distinctly as any feeling which the mind ever has, and never going outside of the consciousness of personal criminality. I shall endeavour to show you that you have enough to lament and weep over, without attempting to burden yourself with this. Settle it, then, as an elementary principle in the way of salvation, that repentance must be limited to personal guilt, and that you can feel condemned only for your own sinsnot for the sin of another.

(2.) You are not to suppose that it is necessary in order to salvation, that you should feel that you are as bad as you can be. I am saying that the plan of salvation in the gospel is based on the idea that the race is destitute of holiness:—but I am not saying that it is based on the idea that the sinner is as bad as he can be, or that it is necessary to true repentance that he should suppose that he is. I do not know that it could be affirmed of any one of our race that has yet lived, that he was in all respects, at all times, and in all his relations, as wicked a man as he could have been, any more than it can be affirmed of any one, the Saviour excepted, that he was in all respects, and at all times, as good as he could be. I am sure that this is not true of the great mass of those to whom the gospel is preached, and who do exercise true repentance: and I do not mean to say to you, therefore, that in order to be saved, it is necessary that you should feel that you are as bad as you can be. It is simply not true. You might be much worse. You might be more profane, more sensual, more proud, more irritable, more covetous. You might have deeper feelings of malignity against God, and deeper hatred for man. You might be openly corrupt as well as corrupt at heart; and you might be more corrupt at heart than you are. There are in the soul of the most abandoned man some remains of decency-I do not say of holiness-that might be obliterated, so that he would be worse than he is; there is in the most debased and wretched female, now an outcast, some lingering of a generous and noble feeling-I do not say of love to God-that might be quenched, so that she would be more depraved than she is. It is true that under deep convictionunder very highly wrought feeling-and when the floods of remembered guilt come rolling over the soul, the sinner does sometimes feel that he has been as bad as he could be, and that all the past in his life has been the blackness of the deepest criminality with nothing to relieve the picture. But this is the prompting of feeling-perhaps an unavoidable feeling in the case-it is not the conviction of the sober judgment. And it