ness which constitutes our meetness for the same. Such are the points brought before us at this time: may we attend to them with a seriousness and diligence in some measure corresponding with their importance. We must confine our observations to that righteousness, the necessity of which is insisted on in the text. This is two-fold-First, a righteousness ensuring our admission into the kingdom of heaven; and, Secondly, a righteousness at once evidencing the legitimacy of our claims, and, at the same time constituting our meetness for that inheritance of the saints. I. We may consider our Lord as speaking in reference to a righteousness connected with our title to heaven. Where then may such a righteousness be found? Not amongst the Scribes and Pharisees of our Saviour's time. Righteous they were truly, in their own esteem; and, in the estimation perhaps, of a misjudging world; they were strict observers of outward ceremonies, and scrupulously exact in their attendance on religious ordinances: they avoided gross immoralities, and maintained the appearance of decency and sanctity in their conduct; they made long prayers, and tithed their mint and anise and cummin;* in a word, they trusted in themselves that they were righteous:— but, their profession was hyprocisy, their religion a mere delusion, and their refuge a refuge of lies. When, in the confidence of their self-righteous hopes, they ascended up, as it were, to the very gate of heaven-they found it closed against them, and themselves "shut out into outward darkness; for they were "weighed in the balance and found wanting;"+ And our Lord, in the words of the text, points at them as a beacon, to warn others of the rocks on which they made shipwreck of their eternal hopes. And is such an admonition needless at the present time? Are professors in the present day, in no danger of imbibing the spirit, and treading in the footsteps of the Scribes and Pharisees? Is a spirit of legal * Matt, xxiii. 23. + Dan. ix, 27. ity and self-righteousness at length wholly banished from the christian church?— Is it entirely eradicated from every heart in the present assembly? O that such a hope could be reasonably indulged. But to cherish such a hope without sufficient ground would be to deceive myself, and endanger the salvation of many. I must suppose the very reverse; I am compelled to fear that some who now hear me, were they to express their feelings and sentiments, would utter the language of the young ruler-" What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life"?§ To such we can only reply, "If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments;" but, remember, your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. If they attended to the outward letter-you must keep these commandments in their most spiritual sense, and in their strictest application. If they regarded some of them, you must keep them all. If they observed a pecu § Matt. xix. 16, 17. liar strictness at particular times, you must maintain an undeviating course, and continue faithful unto death. In a word, if you would entitle yourselves to heaven by your own doings-you must be enabled to say even in a dying hour, taking your stand on the margin of eternity, surveying your career from its first commencement, while each of the divine precepts passes one by one in review before you; you must, I say, be enabled to affirm"All these have I kept from my youth." But suppose, in that momentous period your own conscience should misgive you, and you be found to lack one thing; even this would be sufficient to shake your confidence, to darken your brightest prospects, to render your salvation, on the ground of your own righteousness, impossible, and to seal your everlasting perdition. For what can be more decisive than the voice of scripture upon the point in question? On the one hand it declares "That he that doeth these things shall live by them:"+ while on the other hand + Rom. x. 5. it is written, "He that keepeth the whole law, and yet offendeth in one point, is guilty of all." For "cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.§❞ Once more we repeat the enquirywhere is such a righteousness to be found; a righteousness sufficiently meritorious to ensure to us the divine favour, and to secure our entrance into the kingdom of heaven? Alas! our search must continue fruitless, so long as our eyes are directed to sinful man, for surveying, at a glance, the whole race of Adam; it must be confessed, that "there is none righteous, no not one." Death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;" therefore by the deeds of the law, shall no man living be justified.". Nothing could possibly be more humiliating than the language of the prophet Isaiah, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags; and we all de fade as a leaf: and our iniquities, like the Jam. ii. 10. § Gal. iii. 10. |