nor for the sake of your souls. Let us, then, be found faithful in receiving and maintaining the truths which his wisdom and goodness have revealed, and let us pray with renewed fervor for his Holy Spirit to make them effectual to our salvation, and the salvation of others.

LECTURE XVII.

ON JUSTIFICATION.

WHAT IS JUSTIFICATION?

THE answer given in the Shorter Catechism is, “Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone." In the Confession of Faith, Chapter XI., this doctrine is expressed more fully thus: "Those whom God effectually calleth he also freely justifieth—not by infusing righteousness into them,” (an opinion of the Church of Rome,) "but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience, to them, as their righteousness, but by imparting the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God." This faith, however, which is the alone instrument of justification, is declared "not to be alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love." With this statement agree the Articles of the

Church of England. "We are accounted righteous before God," says their eleventh Article, "only for the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort." full of comfort." We present these ancient symbols, not so much as a matter of authority, though well entitled to regard, as to give a clear and concise view of the subject, and the high importance attached to it by the great and good in other days. I know of no errors which at different periods have troubled the Church either more subtle or more poisonous than those which relate to the doctrine of justification. All the powers of human ingenuity have been set to work to devise some scheme of acceptance with God different from that which is revealed in the Bible. For many hundred years antecedent to the Reformation, men were taught to trust to pilgrimages and penances-to almsgiving to the prayers of saints and the senseless homage paid to their relics-to an ascetic and monastic life-to everything, in short, but to the foundation which God has laid in Zion, the meritorious obedience and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. On no point, therefore, did the great Reformers labor more than to recover and establish the true doctrine of justification by the imputed righteousness of the Redeemer. This they considered as so vital to the Gospel scheme, that Christianity without it was only a smoother way to the gates of perdition. "On this article alone," said the famous Martin Luther,

"stands or falls the Church." Happy would it have been for the Protestant world, had this doctrine been left undisturbed upon the foundation on which it was placed by the Reformers a foundation plainly revealed in the Bible, and full of hope and consolation. But human pride, which loves to plume itself with its own imaginary, merits, could not brook a doctrine which strips

man so entirely of all ideas of personal worthiness, and makes his salvation from first to last a matter of mere grace-the deliverance of a culprit from justly-deserved punishment, while all the good he receives is bestowed wholly out of regard to the righteousness of another. The consequence has been, men have perverted this doctrine. They have taken the crown from the head of Christ, and placed it upon that of a guilty rebel. Instead of laying down the righteousness of the Saviour as the only meritorious ground of justification before God, they have brought in the system of human contrition and human endeavor as making a part, and a prominent part, of that righteousness, on account of which a sinner is to hope for the absolving sentence and final approbation of his Judge. And I lament to state that this spurious notion of justification is to be found not only in churches which are professedly Arminian, and where the sentiment is openly avowed and defended, but in other churches also. The truth is, our fallen nature loves that system which allows to it a part of the glory of our salvation; while it feels a repugnance to everything whereby God is exalted and man is laid low. Hence it comes to pass that, in every country where the Gospel has been preached, a disposition has been shown to reject the righteousness which is of God, and to seek justification as it were by the works of the law. We know it was so with the great body of the Jews in the time of Christ and his Apostles. We know it was so with many in the early Christian churches, which led St. Paul to oppose this error so pointedly and laboriously in his epistles to the churches of Rome and Galatia. So fundamental indeed did he consider this error, that he declared those who received and propagated it as accursed, because they subverted the Gospel of Christ. In the remarks which I shall submit on this subject, I propose to consider:

First. What is implied in our being justified before God.

Second. What that righteousness is, on account of which God justifies us.

Third. What is intended by the imputation of this righteousness.

Fourth. The nature of a justifying faith and its influence in the matter of justification.

Fifth. Wherein it appears that we are justified freely by God's grace.

First. What is implied in our being justified before God. To justify a man in the sense in which the term is often used, both in the Scriptures and in common life, is to vindicate his innocence in a matter where he has been supposed guilty. Thus Job says, "If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me ;" and again, when speaking to his friends, "God forbid that I should justify you," that is, that I should vindicate your conduct, or sustain your cause. We read of Wisdom's

being justified of her children, and of all the people's justifying God. Here, to justify, is simply to declare one innocent, or to vindicate him from some supposed impeachment.

To justify, in the language of human judicatories, is to acquit the accused of the crime alleged, and to declare him rectus or just in the eye of the law. This is a frequent use of the term in the Bible, and perhaps may be regarded as its original and primary use. But in neither of these senses can it be said that God justifies the sinner when he pardons and restores him to favor. He surely does not vindicate the sinner's innocence, or declare him not guilty of the offences he stands charged with in the eye of the law. This could not be done consistently with the truth of facts. These offences exist, and it will remain eternally true that they exist; nor can there a time come in which it will not be equally true that the