In the next place, we say that the final acceptance of men on account of faith alone is improbable from all we know of the dealings of God with man in the present world. God has so made man that his good deeds are the cause of happiness to him in the present, and as far as we can see, in all future time. I know of no better, safer, or surer method of learning what is good and acceptable in the sight of God than observing what he does. He certainly rewards good deeds, whether they are acceptable to him or not.

As soon as a man does any thing good, God immediately begins to reward him. He makes others well disposed toward him and inclined to do him good offices. In the sense of their approbation and good offices he is happy, is rewarded. And inasmuch as it is through the operation of that nature which God has made, God rewards him, as it were through mechanism. Not only so. He rewards him in another way by the pleasurable reflections of his own conscience. These begin at once, and as far as we see, can never terminate. As often as they come up they produce happiness, even at the remotest period. This is by the constitution which God has given the human mind, and is therefore indicative, if any thing can be, of his disposition and will.

Now is it probable, we ask, that this order of things will cease, and another be introduced in another world; that God's disposition towards good works will change; that he will cease to approve

and reward them, and introduce another scheme of retribution totally different, depending on faith alone? To me this supposition is entirely improbable. He must entirely change the whole constitution of every individual of the human race. He must make every human being forget every good deed he has ever done, or cease to look upon it with satisfaction. Now to my mind this would be so destroying personal identity, and changing the whole man, as to make us no longer the same persons; and of course the connection between this world and the next would be entirely destroyed. If men are to be raised to another life merely to be entirely changed, not to be judged according to their actions here, but to be treated according to the righteousness which is then bestowed upon them, on account of a quality in them not moral to any great extent, viz: more or less faith, and this not acquired but given, then future happiness becomes a thing entirely arbitrary. That this should be the case we think altogether improbable.

If it be meant, as it may possibly be in some cases, though most unhappily expressed, that no man can be justified by works in the sense of being perfectly innocent, fulfilling the whole law, that there must be mercy in our acceptance, we grant it. That our sins must be repented and forgiven, and our deficiencies pardoned, we do not deny. But that all the good there is in us is to be set aside, and something foreign introduced, that all that we are, have been, and have done, is to cease to

affect our condition and happiness in future, is a doctrine to my mind utterly and totally improbable and incredible; nothing in the whole compass of thought or conception could be more so.

There is a strange delusion in the world as to the nature of righteousness and goodness, as if it were a something distinct from the man who possesses it, and to be transferred like any other possession to another person. It is a quality or attribute of man which he can have only from having acted right in his own person. Goodness cannot be communicated. One man's being good never can make another man good, except through his own free agency. The righteousness or goodness of Christ was a quality of Christ personally. It cannot be transferred to another person any more than his consciousness or his personal identity can be transferred. Neither sin nor holiness are transferable any more than the qualities of gold can become the qualities of stone. God may pardon men and treat them as though they were righteous at the last day. His benevolence might prompt him to do it. But even that would be of no avail. Righteousness cannot in the nature of things be communicated. Pardon would not make them happy. For be it ever remembered that no man, even if God treats him as if he were good, and spreads around him all the means of happiness, can be happy, unless he is good. No man can be any happier than he has prepared himself to be. A bad man could not be happy, even in heaven. The

righteousness then which is by Christ, is that from the very nature of things which he induces men to perform. His office is then, as the Scripture represents, "to purify a people from all iniquity, and make them zealous of good works."

We now turn to the Scriptural argument. And we say, the doctrine of justification by faith alone is contradicted by the whole current of Scripture from beginning to end. If there be one doctrine in the Bible more prominent than the rest it is the doctrine of rewards and punishments, that man is to be rewarded for his good works and punished for his sins. Upon this principle hung the whole Jewish economy, and God's dealings with his chosen people for many centuries. Hear the fundamental law which God lays down by Moses for his treatment of the nation of Israel. "And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God shall set thee on high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field." "Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out." "Though a sinner," says Solomon, "do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know it shall be well with them that fear

God, which fear before him. But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he feareth not before God." It is written in Isaiah, "Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him." "If a man," says Ezekiel, "be just, and do that which is lawful and right;" "hath walked in my statutes, and kept my judgments, to deal truly, he is just; he shall live, saith the Lord." "The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." Would it not appear by this that works as well as faith are a ground of acceptance with God? Could there be a more explicit contradiction of the doctrine that man

is justified by faith alone?

We now come to the New Testament. And there we find the first discourse of our Lord, in its whole drift, to run counter to it. It is often asserted that the law and the Gospel are essentially different in their fundamental principles. Nay, I have heard it explicitly stated that the language of the law is, "Do this and thou shalt live." But of the Gospel, "According to thy faith so be it unto thee." Now, as it appears to me, nothing can be more contrary to fact. The Gospel proposes a law still more rigorous and exacting than the law itself, and insists on an obedience still more minute and universal. It insists not only on all the law demands, but much more.