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eternal life. Can even the most accomplished saint indulge a thought of offering payment for it? Let it be that you have obtained full pardon and absolution for past offences, that you can display a fair catalogue of good works, the wholesome fruits of a pure faith, and acceptable to God as a proof that your religion is real, substantial and consistent, still what claim can you assert for their sake to the glories of eternity? You have done all those things which were commanded you-What then? Still you are unprofitable servants; you have done that which was your duty to do'. Do you found a claim to heaven on this? Does the faithful servart of an earthly master, who has watched his commands and executed his will through a long series of years, conceive himself entitled to the fortunes of a son, and to be advanced to the possession of his master's inheritance? He indulges no such unreasonable expectation. And yet God, of his overflowing bounty, dealeth with us as with sons. What conclusion then can we draw, but an acknowledgment in all humility and thankfulness, that we shall enter into the joy of our Lord solely through his free, unmerited, unbought goodness, and not on account of any works or deservings of our own 2.

It remains that I should point out the sure, neverfailing connexion between God's free grace and man's holiness. But time will not now allow it. And

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no one, who listens weekly to the exhortations addressed to him from this sacred place, can suspect me of a wish to weaken those solemn and affecting obligations which bind every Christian to holiness of life. It is indeed our glorious office to proclaim that God, for Christ's sake, is willing to justify the ungodly'. But God has also fixed another seal on this foundation, and he who for a moment loses sight of it, errs concerning the truth: "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ, depart from iniquity"." And now, my brethren, with the sacred elements spread before you, I solemnly warn you, in the name of him whose commission I bear, not to despise the gracious invitation which the Evangelical Prophet has been addressing to you, "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." You hear the royal terms proposed. Christ and the preachers of his Gospel delight to represent Gospel privileges under the figure of meat and drink. The picture affords instruction at once to the learned and the ignorant; it tells us that spiritual life cannot be maintained without the support of grace; that we are to labour for it; that we perpetually want new supplies of it; that by means of it we gradually grow up into the perfect Christian man; and that as food is delightful to the bodily sense, so

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are God's good gifts to the soul, whose senses are exercised to discern spiritual things. Hence we observe the wisdom with which bread and wine are selected as the elements to be received in the Lord's Supper; they evidently set forth before your eyes Jesus Christ crucified among you, and beseeching you, as it were from the cross, to partake of those benefits which his body broken, and his blood poured out have procured for you; benefits, the smallest portion of which, no price that man could pay will ever purchase. All that is required of you, is a humble, penitent, thankful, willing heart, eager to receive them as a free gift, not as a debt. Search your own bosoms, and if you find such feelings springing up therein, quench not the smoking flax; rather cherish it by lighting up the flame with a coal kindled at the altar, that it may purge away all your dross, and purify your soul for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

SERMON II.

THE FREE GRACE OF GOD.

SUNDAY AFTER THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER.

ISAIAH lv. 1.

"Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."

IN a late discourse on the words of this evangelical invitation, I endeavoured, and I trust not unsuccessfully, to show that no other terms could have been of any benefit to us. That pardoning and sanctifying grace, that the blessings of time and of eternity, cannot be purchased by us either wholly or in part; and consequently, if we ever attain to them, it must of necessity be from the free, unmerited bounty of the Giver of all good. Here the argument might rest as sufficiently made out. If we are satisfied that God's blessings cannot possibly be bought, we may be well assured that the

method of obtaining them as a free gift must also be a method for promoting holiness. Holiness is an agreement of our character and our will with the moral character and the will of God; and the Allwise most certainly adopts such a method of distributing his favours as will bring his creatures to the nearest possible likeness of himself, will make us most worthy of those favours, and most fitted to enjoy them.

It is however expedient that we should more closely contemplate this inseparable connexion between God's free grace and man's holiness, because the denial of it is one of the most common calumnies levelled against Gospel truth. The fairest and most perfect work of art is most easily defaced; a trifling alteration of words will degrade the most sublime poem, and make it an object of ridicule. And the corrupt wit of man has, ever since St. Paul's time, been equally successful in misrepresenting the consoling doctrines which the ministers of Christ are authorised to preach. When we proclaim free and compleat pardon to every sinner who will eagerly approach to receive it, when we propose heaven itself as a free gift through Christ, we have been calumniated, as if we encouraged men to persevere in immorality, in ungodly and unrighteous works, with the assurance that God's grace would be most triumphantly displayed in the forgiveness of such accumulated crime; as if we taught men "to continue in sin, that grace might abound." Thus St.

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