the performance of which, a man may recommend himself to the favour of God? Those who believe this, believe their own vain imagination, and not the Gospel. A man who is honest in his belief of that which he professes to believe, is certainly free from the charge of deceit and hypocrisy; but his honesty will not convert a lie into a truth; it cannot make that good news, which is not good news; it cannot change the import of the Bible, or the will of God. "Understandest thou what thou readest ?" was Philip's question to the Eunuch; and it is a question which each reader of the Bible should put most jealously to himself; for, as it is said in the parable of the sower, "when any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart."

The Jews believed in the Divine authority and inspiration, by which Moses spoke-they had much more reverence for his name and honour than the great bulk of professing Christians have for the name and honour of the Saviour and yet He who knew the thoughts of the heart, declared that they did not believe Moses; "for," says Jesus Christ, “had ye beliey. ed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me; but if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" He does not mean here, to question their belief that God had indeed spoken by Moses; but to deny their belief of Moses's meaning. They did not understand Moses, and therefore they could not

believe him--they believed their own interpretation of his law, not his own meaning in it.

I may understand many things which I do not believe; but I cannot believe any thing which I do not understand, unless it be something addressed merely to my senses, and not to my thinking faculty. A man may with great propriety say, I understand the Cartesian system of vortices, though I don't believe in it. But it is absolutely impossible for him to believe in that system without knowing what it is. A man may believe in the ability of the maker of a system, without understanding it; but he cannot believe in the system itself, without understanding it. Now there is a meaning in the Gospel, and there is declared in it the system of God's dealings with men. This meaning, and this system, must be understood, before we can believe the Gospel. We are not called on to believe the Bible merely that we may give a proof of our willingness to submit in all things to God's authority, but that we may be influenced by the objects of our belief. When the Apostle of the Gentiles gives a reason why he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, he does not say because it is a message from the King of kings; he does not found its importance simply on the authority of the promulgator of it, but in a great measure on its own intrinsic and intelligible value-" For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believeth,” Rom. i. 16. Salvation here signifies healing, or deliverance, not from the condemnation, but from the influence of sin. His reason for not

He is

being ashamed of this Gospel then was, because it was the mighty instrument which God had prepared for healing the spiritual diseases of men. The great importance of the object to be attained by the publication of the Gospel invested it with its high dignity. But he does not leave his Roman disciples here; he explains to them, how this great object is attained-he tells them what it is in the Gospel which produces this effect" for," continues he in the 17th verse, "herein is revealed God's plan of justification by faith." Righteousness, through this Epistle, almost without exception, signifies the mercy of God manifested in pardoning sinners for the sake of the atonement of Christ. afterwards at much pains to demonstrate to them, that the belief of this mercy has, from the very nature of man, that healing influence which he had ascribed to it. I may remark here, that the passage of Malachi, in which the Messiah is predicted under the figure of the Sun of Righteousness, or forgiving mercy, bears a striking resemblence in meaning to the verses which have been quoted from the Epistle to the Romans. The Apostle represents justification, or the remission of sins, as the prominent feature and characteristic of the Gospel, and to this he ascribes the whole of its healing or salutary power, and the prophet's eye, in like manner, is caught by the absorbing glory and brilliancy of this plan of redemption-he sees from afar a new manifestation of the Divine character rising on the dark world. Many and diversified are the high attributes of that character; but as the

different rays of the natural light, when combined, appear but one brightness--so the many rays of that spiritual light, when combined, appear but one Sun of Mercy-and the beams which this Sun shoots forth, are pardons, which heal the hearts they enter.

In order then to the believing of the Gospel, { it is necessary that the plan of justification by faith should be understood; because this is the prominent feature of the Gospel, and because the benefits bestowed by the Gospel, are communicated to the soul through the knowledge of this doctrine.

What is the difference between knowledge or understanding, and faith? Our understanding of a thing means the conception which we have formed of it, or the impression which it has made on our mind, without any reference to its being a reality in nature independent of our thought, or a mere fiction of the imagination: And faith is a persuasion, accompanying these impressions, that the objects which produced them are realities in nature, independent of our thought or perception. This persuasion of reality accompanies all the different modes in which our knowledge is acquired, as well as the testimony of others. When an object is presented to my eye, the impression which it makes upon me is accompanied by the persuasion, that the object which produced it is truly described by the impression which it has made, and that it is a reality independent of myself. When a proposition in mathematics is demonstrated to me, a persuasion accompanies my un

derstanding of it, that these relations of quantities are fixed and unalterable, and altogether independent of my reasoning. When the generous or kind conduct of a friend meets my difficulties, my impression of the fact is accompanied by a persuasion of the reality of that generosity or kindness, as qualities existing in my friend's heart altogether independent of my thought or feeling on the subject. When I hear through a channel which appears to me authentic, of some melancholy or some joyful event, there is an accompanying persuasion that there is a real cause for joy or sorrow.

Faith, then, is just an appendage to those faculties of the mind by which we receive impressions from external objects, whether they be material or immaterial. It stands at the entrances of the mind as it were, and passes sentence on the authenticity of all information which goes in. Now as faith is merely an appendage to another faculty, is it not evident that its existence and exercise, with regard to any particular object, must depend on the existence and exercise of that faculty to which the object is addressed? A man born find has no impressions from light, and therefore he can have no faith with regard to such impressions. He has not the slightest conception of what is meant by a coloured body, and therefore he cannot believe in a coloured body. He may believe that bodies have a quality which he is incapable of perceiving, but what that quality is he does not know, and therefore cannot believe in it. Faith is the persuasion that the impression on the