and to render themselves accepted, by dependence on the forms of religion; and it was at variance with all the views of philosophy-the pride of the Stoic, confident in his own righteousness; the licentiousness of the Epicurean, justifying his own voluptuousness; and the self-complacency of the sage, relying on his own wisdom. An apostle could go nowhere, where this doctrine would not come in conflict with all the prevailing views in regard to the way in which men might be saved. Yet no one now can be ignorant of the effect of this doctrine, as promulgated by the apostles. This it was which changed the religion of the world; for Christianity made no other advances than as it taught men to renounce every other ground of dependence, and to rely for salvation solely on the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. It had no martial power by which to make its way; it had no influence derived from name and rank to enforce its claims; it had no authority derived from a venerable antiquity on which to rely; it had no gorgeous and imposing forms to enable it to command the respect of those who had worshipped in the Parthenon or the Pantheon; it had no claims to any new discoveries in philosophy. It had but one thing that was new, great, imposing, commanding; and that was the announcement of Christ crucified, and the fact that men everywhere might now be justified by the merits of His atoning blood. Never has any truth on any subject stood more by itself, to make its own way without adventitious aid, than this did in the hands of the Christian apostles; and never before had any simple truth on any subject produced such changes in the world.

(2.) The second fact to which reference will be made, is the state of the world when the doctrine of justification by faith was obscured and almost extinguished in the Church. It soon began to be obscured. Very early the professed friends of religion began to lose sight of it. So strong in the human mind is the love of pomp and ceremony and form; so attached is man to splendour and show in religion as in everything else; so prone is the heart to rely on its own doings, and so reluctant is the sinner every where to depend for salvation on the righteousness of another, that this doctrine gradually died away, and almost ceased to be remembered in the church. Then arose the system which spread night all over the Christian world—the night of ignorance, error, superstition, and crime,—a night deepening for ages, till it terminated in the consummate depravity of the Papacy under Alexander VI. Amid this forgetfulness of the doctrine of justification by faith, or of salvation by simple dependence on Christ crucified, arose the universal respect for

sacred places and orders of men; zeal for splendid temples of worship, and for gorgeous ceremonies; extraordinary veneration for the sepulchres of saints, and for their holy remains; pilgrimages to the Holy Land; the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and of absolution of sins by the imposition of holy hands; the belief that grace was imparted by sacraments, administered by a priesthood; the doctrine that the merits of the saints of other days were garnered up for the benefit of future ages, and placed at the disposal of the Church; the multiplication of sacraments, with saving efficacy attributed to them all; and the belief of a peculiar sacredness attached to ground consecrated to the burial of the dead. All these were features of one great system. They had some relation to Christianity, and had grown in part out of the abuse of its doctrines. But though various, they were arranged evidently under the auspices of one master-mind, and with the same end in view. That was to render nugatory the doctrine of justification by faith, and to substitute in its place the doctrine of salvation by works. It was, indeed, salvation by works connected with the religion of Christ, and was a different system from that of the Pharisee, who expected to be saved by conformity to the law of Moses,-or the Grecian philosopher, who hoped to reach heaven by the purity of his doctrine and his morals, or the degraded Pagan, who relied on the blood of sacrifices,‚—or the man now who relies on his own honesty and fidelity in the various relations of life; but it was essentially the same system. It excluded the simple dependence of the soul on the Lord Jesus for salvation, and substituted in its stead a reliance on human merit.

The effect was seen in the darkness, sin, and corruption of Europe before the Reformation. Every feature of the state of things in the "dark ages" can be traced to an obscuring of the great doctrine of justification by faith. Every advance of society into that deep and deepening gloom was connected with some loosening of its hold on that doctrine, and the substitution of something else in its place, until the hold was entirely gone, and Europe was plunged in total night.

(3.) The third historical fact, therefore, to be referred to, is the effect which the recovery and restoration of this doctrine had on the church and the world at the period of the Reformation. To those who have studied the history of that period, as all Protestants should do, it is unnecessary to say that this was the elementary doctrine-the central view-the starting-point in the whole of that glorious revolution. This was the great truth which dawned on the mind of Luther, and which led to all that

he attempted and accomplished for the restoration of the Church to its primitive purity; and it occupied an equally central position in the view of all his fellow-labourers. Three times was the doctrine of justification by faith brought before the mind of Luther, with the same sort of power which it had when promulgated by the apostles, and with such energy as to rouse all that was great in his soul into life. The first was when he was a monk in his cell. He had found a copy of the Bible, and he began to study it, and to lecture on it. He commenced with the Psalms, but soon passed to the Epistle to the Romans. One day, having proceeded as far as the seventeenth verse of the first chapter, the words quoted from Habakkuk, "The just shall live by faith," arrested his attention. A new thought struck him. A new way of salvation opened before his mind. A new light shone upon his heart; and the words, "The just shall live by faith," seemed never to leave him. The second instance was when he first visited Rome. These words followed him, and lingered on his ear. One of his first impressions was, that he was now in the very place to which Paul had addressed these words in his epistle. Yet in that city how were they obscured and unknown! On every hand were arrangements for being justified by works-by forms and ceremonies, by pomp and pageantry, by the merits of the saints, and by penance. What a total obscuration of the great doctrine which Paul had taught in the letter to the church there, and which he had himself doubtless taught when he had dwelt in that city! The third instance in which these words were brought to the heart of Luther was more impressive still. "One day, wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the pope to any one who should ascend on his knees what is called Pilate's Staircase,' the poor Saxon monk was slowly climbing the steps which they told him had been miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Rome. But while he was going through this meritorious work, he thought he heard a voice like thunder speaking from the depth of his heart—The just shall live by faith!' He started up in terror on the steps up which he had been crawling; he was horrified at himself; and struck with shame for the degradation to which superstition had debased him, he fled from the scene of his folly. This powerful text had a mysterious influence on the life of Luther. It was a creative word for the Reformer and for the Reformation."* It was this truth that wrought out the Reformation;-and whatever there was in that work that is valuable and precious; whatever there was to shed a benign * D'Aubigné.

influence on literature, liberty, and morals; whatever there was to spread pure religion over Switzerland, or Germany, or England, or ultimately over our own land, and then by a reflex influence on Asia Minor, on Palestine, on the palmy East, on dark Africa, and on the islands of the sea, is to be traced to those moments when this text broke with so much living power on the soul of Luther-" The just shall live by faith." It became with him an elementary truth, that the doctrine of justification by faith was the "article of the standing or the falling Church"the very joint or hinge (articulus) on which the whole depended.* To that doctrine we owe, in its various developments, all that we value in this Protestant land, and all that distinguishes us in religion from what Europe was in the days of Alexander VI. and Leo X.; and there is not an interest of religion, liberty, or learning, which has not been moulded by it more than by any other single cause. Our modes of worship; our readiness to spread the Bible; our freedom of discussion; our general diffusion of intelligence; our untrammelled press; our separation of religion from the state; our societies for the spread of the gospel ; our blessed and glorious revivals; our deliverance from superstition, and from the tyranny of a priesthood, and from the corruptions and abominations of the monastic system, and from the debasement of penances and pilgrimages, are all to be traced to the power of this single truth that blazed with such an intensity on the soul of the poor Saxon monk. Such being some of the facts in the case, let us,

II. In the second place, inquire why this doctrine has this importance and power. This will be seen if we can trace its connexion with what undeniably it has been everywhere united to-a religion of deep spirituality, of simplicity of worship, of deadness to the world, of freedom of opinion, of liberal views, and of great and cheerful sacrifices for the good of mankind. There are but two systems of religion on the earth: the one is that of self-righteousness; the other, that of salvation by the merits of Christ ;-the one, that of men who attempt, in various ways, to justify themselves before God; the other, that of those who seek to be justified through the righteousness of the Redeemer. The bearing and importance of the latter, in contrast with the former, is the point now before us.

(1.) This doctrine of justification by faith has a power of reaching the soul, and of calling forth every active energy of our nature, which the other system never can have. It leaves the impression that the soul is of vast value; that religion is of * "Articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ."

inestimable importance; that the grand purpose of living should be religion. The reason of this, which may not at once be apparent, is, that it finds the soul in such a state, wherever it is embraced, that it arouses all that is thrilling, and vast, and momentous in the soul itself, and in its hopes and relations. The language which the doctrine of justification by faith addresses to each individual is this: You are a lost sinner. You have no righteousness of your own. You never will have any. Your heart is by nature depraved, and your whole past life has been evil. In all that you have done, you have done nothing to merit the favour of God, or even to commend yourself to his approbation. All your righteousness is as filthy rags.

All your outward forms of religion—your fastings, penances, and vows; your amiableness of character, your honesty, your integrity, your pride of birth and station, are all to pass for nothing before God in the matter of justification. Nor can you hope of yourself to do anything more in the future that will commend you to God than you have done in the past. No form of religion, no flood of tears, no framing of the life by an outward law, no acts of self-denial, no fastings, prayers, or almsgivings, can wipe away the deep stains of past guilt on the soul, or constitute an expiation for what you have done. In, this state you are near the grave, and just over the world of woe. A moment might cut you off from the land of the living, and from the possibility of being saved. In this state you are wholly dependent on the sovereign mercy of God. You may be saved, but not by works of righteousness of your own. You may be saved, but it must be by renouncing all dependence on your own righteousness for ever. You may be saved, but it must be wholly by the merits of another. Kings, sages, philosophers, priests, poets, warriors, knights, senators, judges; the gay, the accomplished, the rich, the poor, the vile, the bond, the free,-all lie on a level before God. You may be saved, but it will only be by making up the mind to a willingness to be saved in the same way as the vilest of the species, and to stand before the throne clothed in the same robes of salvation that shall adorn the most debased and downtrodden of the human race.' Now it is easy to conceive, even for those who have not experienced this, that such a religion must have the elements of great power of some kind. It can make its way only by sufficient power to crush the pride of man; to bring down his lofty thoughts; to humble him in the dust; and then to impart life where there has been none. There is nothing negative and tame about it. It has living energy through all this process. No man reaches the position of self