pensation of the gospel, God hangs the communication of his blessings in Christ. These blessings are entirely of his own providing, and the gift of his free grace to men. On their part nothing is to be done, either in respect to the purchase of salvation, or the acquirement of a title to the benefits it affords. They are all contemplated by God as sinners, in condemnation and ruin; and salvation can come to them no otherwise, than as the sovereign gift of God, which it is theirs merely to receive, by embracing in faith the word of promise, which makes offer of its riches. Works, therefore, are completely excluded from any share in the matter of our reconciliation with God. "We are saved, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to the mercy of God;" and eternal life, the sum of all the blessings of salvation, is the "gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

In this manifestation of grace and merey to the sinful, it is of course necessary, that there should be a ground of righteousness, rendering it consistent with the holiness of the divine government to confer such favour on the guilty. Were there not that, God would be found, not only indifferent to sin, but even the friend and patron of sinners as such; and the maxim, so abhorrent to a pious mind, "of sinning because grace doth abound," might justly be charged against the scheme of the gospel. There is a righteousness, however, laid as the foundation of all the free and undeserved grace, which is exhibited in the gospel to sinners,-a righteousness so glorious and complete, that God shows himself to be just, at the very time that he justifies the ungodly; and not only the mercy, but also the faithfulness and justice of God, the very attributes most opposed to the sinner's claim, are now pledged for the security of the believer's salvation, (1 John i. 9.) From the very nature of the case, this righteousness could not be man's; no such worth could possibly attach to any obedience of his, even were he able perfectly to keep the law's requirements; it must be truly and properly divine; it must be, and is, "the righteousness of God" himself, fulfilled in behalf of sinful men, by his own eternal Son. Hence the gospel is at once the glad tidings of God's grace exhibited to the guilty, and "the revelation of his righteousness unto all, and upon all them that believe." And when it ascribes so much to the mere exercise of faith, making the possession of pardon, peace, and eternal life to depend on that, it is not as if faith were in itself so pregnant with merit, that it would be a righteous thing for God to reward its exercise, even in sinful men, with such vast recompenses of blessing, but because faith has a work of such infinite excellence and worth in Christ, to receive and rest upon. So that when God justifies the ungodly through faith, it is no fiction, but a great and blessed reality, which constitutes the ground and reason of the procedure. He does not capriciously dispense with a work of righteousness, which from the very first was declared to be the only channel, through which fallen man could return to enjoy the favour and blessing of Heaven, but only takes the execution of that work into his own hand, magnifies his law to the uttermost by

the wondrous humiliation and obedience unto death of his dear Son; and thus the way of reconciliation being laid freely open for transgressors, he is ready to receive to his kingdom and glory, all who are disposed to own his work of righteousness, as the ground of their confidence and hope toward him.

But if this be the case with sinners under the gospel, if their faith is accepted for righteousness, only because it has a work of infinite efficacy and worth to embrace in Christ, must not this also have been the case with Abraham? When he believed the word of promise, and his faith was counted for righteousness, must he not in like manner have apprehended the righteousness of God, hereafter to be revealed in Christ? Yet how obscurely is Christ referred to in the word of promise, by the belief of which Abraham was said to be justified? And how hard, if not impossible, must it have been for the patriarch to draw from that promise, any clear and definite views of the Messiah's work? These questions are more easily put than answered, and it scarcely falls within the line. of our present inquiry, to enter on the formal discussion of them. That simply respects the principle, on the part of man, which connects him with the condition, privileges, and hopes of an elect seed; and that this principle is faith in the word and promise of God, not any worth or excellence in man himself, the whole history of Abraham renders clear as noon-day. It is certain, besides, for we have it on the authority of Christ himself, that he saw in faith the day of Christ, rejoicing in the prospect, and must consequently have understood, more or less clearly, the purposes for which Christ was to appear. To inform his mind, and guide his views in this respect, he had not only the word of promise given individually to himself, but the aid also of all former revelations, and especially of the institution of sacrifice, which, as we have already seen, involved the prospect of a suffering Mediator. But how far the light he possessed actually carried him in these anticipations of the future, must still be to us a matter of doubtful conjecture; and whatever it was, it could not be allowed to enter into the record of his history, nor, if we could descant on it with the utmost fulness and certainty, could it have formed any part of the typical matter of this portion of sacred writ. The work of Christ's faultless and suffering obedience, which was to display the righteousness of God, and constitute the ground of a sinner's acceptance, though it might be faintly descried by the eye of faith before it was accomplished, yet remained till then in great measure a secret, and is hence called the hidden wisdom of God," and "the mystery hid from ages and from generations," (1 Cor. ii. 7; Col. i. 26.) Nothing more, therefore, could be expected concerning it in the early promises made to Abraham, than a general and covert reference. And if by any special revelation not recorded, he obtained a clearer insight into the work of Christ, than could possibly be derived from such a reference, or from the ordinary means then furnished to the church, his distinction in that respect could not be reckoned among the typical things in his condition. For in so far as Abraham might

apprehend and rest upon the prospective work of Christ, his faith in that respect was not typical of the Christian's, but that very faith itself. It was not an exhibition of the same principle on a lower stage of development, or in reference to outward and temporal objects, but an exhibition of it in the highest sphere, in the spiritual or Christian line of things. As a believer he was, and only could be, a type of future believers, in respect to the two lines of promise, a numerous and blessed offspring, and the inheritance of the land of Canaan,-which were the immediate objects of his faith, and in his case the peculiar tokens of divine favour. Abraham received these distinguished proofs of electing love, as gifts of free grace, having simply to embrace in faith the word of promise, that they might become his; and in like manner now, the word of blessing and promise, on which God's people are permitted to rest, as it is the offspring on God's part of sovereign grace, so on theirs it is to be received in faith, and by faith alone do they enter into the possession of its riches.

In considering, then, the transactions of Abraham's history in a typological point of view, there is no necessity, as seems generally to be imagined, for our making out the perfect identity of his faith and ours, as to the objects contemplated and realized. The real identity is to be sought in the principle, which in both cases alike connects the individual with the favour and blessing of God, however this may be expressed, whether in outward or inward, in temporal or spiritual things; and that principle in Abraham of old, as of the children of God now, is simply and exclusively faith. The same principle was certainly possessed and manifested by Isaac, though it by no means so strikingly appeared in the transactions of his life, as it had done in those of his father. For having been so clearly marked out, even before his birth, as the child in whom the purpose and election of God were to stand, there was scarcely room in his case for any remarkable display of the principle, or for its acquiring that singular and conspicuous place, which it appeared to hold in the life of Abraham. But in the history of Jacob, it again re-appears in full magnitude, though under circumstances considerably different from those, in which it had been exercised by the father of the faithful. Jacob knew his election of God to a higher standing than Esau's; and the language which foretold this, was such as to imply that the respective positions of the two brothers was to be characteristic, not simply of two members of one family, but of two diverse families, the one only of which should attain to distinguished favour and blessing. In seeking to realize and secure the distinction for himself, Jacob was far from acting a brotherly and an honourable part. He had faith in the word of promise, and in this stood the essential difference between him and Esau, who had no faith, and no spiritual discernment to apprehend the higher things of God, but was simply a man of gaiety and pleasure, a lover of the world, and of the things of the world. The faith of Jacob, however, though it lifted him up into fellowship with God, and filled him with intense long

ings after the peculiar manifestations of divine love, was defective in this respect, that it did not lead him to rest in childlike confidence on the faithfulness of God to verify his own word. And so, grasping at the boon before him with undue haste, he fell into the grievous error of one, seeking to compass a righteous object by unlawful means, and provoked a vengeance which imbittered much of his future life, and threatened for a time to bring him to an untimely grave. This fall of Jacob was probably permitted, and was certainly overruled for the purpose of bringing prominently out, the absolute freeness with which God confers the gifts of grace and the alone necessity of faith to connect man with these, coming as they did, to him through faith, not only in the absence of great virtues, but when stained with the guilt of flagrant sins. For when does Jacob first personally receive the assurance of God's love, and formally enter on the covenant-relation, which had been held by his father Isaac, and his grandfather Abraham? It is while reaping in bitterness of heart the fruit of his unrighteous and crooked policy,-obliged to flee from the deadly revenge of Esau, and to seek an asylum in a foreign land,--and so oppressed by feelings of remorse for what was past, so forlorn and desolate in spirit, that as one cut off from the common sympathies of men, and the pleasant intercourse of society, he could not think of presenting himself, at the close of his day's journey, in the village of Bethel, but laid himself down at the outskirts beneath the open canopy of heaven, with nothing but the naked earth for his couch, and a stone for his pillow. That moment of deepest abasement, darkness, and depression, was the very one which the Lord chose for imparting to Jacob the richest manifestations of his favour, and confirming to him the covenant made with his fathers. And why precisely that? Not, unquestionably, because the Lord looked with indifference upon the sin of Jacob, or approved of the dreadful fraud which he had practised on his aged father; but simply for the purpose of rendering it more clear and manifest, that the blessings of the covenant were wholly of grace, that the deepest guilt and unworthiness could not exclude from them, if only there was a proper feeling of abasement in the heart, and a spirit of faith to embrace the proffered goodness of Heaven. At such a time all sense of merit must have been utterly banished from the mind of Jacob, and it was not possible for him to contemplate God in any other light, than in that of a most gracious benefactor, and himself, an undeserving recipient of divine goodness.

The very nature of the method or channel of communication which was employed in the vision at that time presented to the eye of Jacob, indicated the presence, on his part, of unworthiness, and the absence of all claim but that of faith, to the blessings of the covenant. When the covenant was fully ratified with Abraham, and he walked in the dignity of his divine calling, the angels of heaven held free and familiar intercourse with him, and the Lord of heaven himself conversed with him as one converses with his friend. But when Jacob was to be received from his sin-polluted

and oppressed condition, he was made to feel as at a distance from the presence and angels of God; a ladder reaching from heaven, to the place where he lay, establishing a medium of communication between the two distant regions, on which the angels of God ascended and descended, and at the top of which the Lord appeared in person and confirmed to him the covenant. All was of God's merciful and gracious providing-the medium of communication itself, the heavenly beings who condescended to use it, and the tidings of love, by which peace was restored to his troubled bosom; and in that bosom itself there could be room only for delightful surprise, for believing wonder. When the patriarch thus saw the bed of remorse, desertion, and gloom, on which he lay, transformed as by divine magic into the presence-chamber of God, and the highest ministers of grace holding court around him, a miserable alien from his father's house, how natural for him to exclaim, "How dreadful is this place! Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." More than at any other period of his history, he must have felt "unworthy of all the mercy and the truth which the Lord was showing to him;" and never could a soul have been more ready to confess, that what now so vastly distinguished him. from others, was entirely "of grace through faith."

This is one of the leading ideas symbolized by the action in Jacob's vision. It spake of a fellowship between heaven and earth, between the holy beings who minister in God's presence and sinful men, when they become children of the covenant; but a fellowship so maintained, as clearly to imply, that it was the very reverse of being due to man's desert, that it was the result of sovereign grace, prevailing over man's unworthiness, and requiring merely faith in him to receive the goodness so freely vouchsafed. The same idea is brought out in the reference made by our Lord to this vision, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.". He places himself in the condition of the ladder that appeared to Jacob, and asserts himself to be really what that ladder was symbolically, the true medium of communication between the region of God's presence and the tabernacles of sinful men. And that such a mediator should be needed to open heaven, and replace men within the bosom of God's elect and blessed family, bespoke in the most significant manner, the guilty and alienated condition of men by nature, their utter impotence. to recover, as of themselves, the honours they had lost, and the impossibility of their obtaining an interest in the blessings of the everlasting covenant, any otherwise than through faith in the unspeakable gift of God.

How precious, then, is faith as a principle in God's spiritual government! And how infinitely important to have it really formed in the hearts of men! Other things are necessary afterwards, but this at the very outset, and the whole building of a work of grace in the soul, and of a redeemed church in the world, waits on faith as its only foundation. "As many as received Christ, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe