our evil, unless we watch for it everywhere, and fear God's judgment upon it, and believe that it is as great and as abiding as His word, and as the death of His Son declares it to be. May God's Holy Spirit therefore convince us of sin; convince us of what it is, and what it will bring us to; that so we may fear God indeed, and be of a humble and contrite heart, and feel the need of salvation, and so learn to believe in truly, and to love our Saviour.

April 18, 1841.

SERMON VIII.

THE DEATH OF SIN.

ROMANS, viii. 10.

And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

It would be vain to deny that in this verse, as well as in many other parts of the chapter from which it is taken, and which was read as the second lesson this afternoon, there is much and great difficulty. Whenever it is read, it is one of those parts of the Scripture which the mass of the congregation cannot be expected fully to understand. I do not mean only a congregation such as ours, where so many may be supposed unable to understand it owing to their youth; but it is true no less of congregations generally. Yet here as in other similar instances, while a common hearer may meet with much which he cannot understand, yet

he will also meet with much which he can; nay, I think that with moderate attention the general purpose of the chapter may be made out clearly, although the meaning and application of every particular passage may not be so. It will not be hard, I think, to perceive that the apostle is urging strongly the necessity of being ourselves like Christ if we would hope to be redeemed by Christ. It is evident that he dwells much on the difference between the flesh and the spirit, saying that the flesh is death, and that the spirit is life. Farther, it would I think be plain also, that by these terms, flesh and spirit, were meant something of the same sort with sin and holiness; so that the object of the chapter would be to show that however much God has done for us, yet we shall not really be benefited by it, unless we are such as God would have us to be, that is, spiritual and holy.

Yet, again, it is evident that there is in the chapter something more than this. It is not merely a warning that if we walk after the flesh we shall die. Other language there is in it, not of warning but of the highest encouragement, of encouragement so great that, as is well known, some have supposed it to do away with the necessity of all warning, and to inspire Christ's people with complete assurance. For the apostle, at it is said, sets before us the golden chain of God's grace, of which each link is by God's almighty power fast joined

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to the others, and the first link is God's foreknowledge, and the last is man's salvation. For so it runs: "Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son; and whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified." So that the apostle may well add, "What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?"

Thus the chapter seems to contain two different kinds of language, which appear, it may be, hard to reconcile; and so we are tempted, according to our dispositions, to choose either the one or the other exclusively; to make this description of the golden chain of God's grace every thing or nothing. But if we believe that in this chapter as in other parts of Scripture, there was at work a greater wisdom than man's; that He to whom all things are known, and to whom those truths which to us appear at variance are seen to be in divinest harmony, willed that there should be put before his church this very chapter as it stands, and not the first part of it only, nor yet the latter part of it only, then neither should we pass by either part of it, but try to learn the lesson of the whole, satisfied that in that lesson, and not in either part of it singly, we shall find the very truth of God.

There is a cloud

Do I then mean to say that I could understand myself, or expound to others the very exact form of this truth? That I could explain exactly how far we should follow one part of the apostle's language and how far the other? God forbid that I should be so presumptuous. over the things spoken of in this chapter, which, as I believe, no human eye can fully penetrate; there will remain statements to be comprehended as it seems to me only in part, and which we should do very wrong to interpret as containing no more than we can comprehend or render intelligible to others. In the meanwhile, this most remarkable chapter, containing things so removed above our full comprehension, is yet rich in instruction, not for the learned only and for those whose faculties are the highest, but for Christ's people generally, for the uneducated, and for the young. What though a part of the moon's orb is dark, yet that side which is light is a light for us, we can all see to walk by it. When I chose my text from this eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, I thought that the whole chapter spoke the language which we here most needed, which we might fit to that very course of exhortation which I have been lately following, with respect to our breaking or keeping our vows in baptism.

For those vows, as we know, engaged us to renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh, to