uprightness of God in correcting the sinner for his folly, and then to point him to Christ, the ransom which God has provided, where he can be gracious unto him, and deliver him from going down into the pit.

When Moses passed under this discipline he expected nothing but destruction, till Christ was exhibited to his faith, and God called him to the fellowship of him. "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men."

Those, who never knew any thing of this severity of God, never rightly knew any thing of his goodness. God gave Israel the law first, and then ordered a mercy-seat to be made. He disciplined them with blackness and darkness, storm and tempest, and spoke to them in the secret place of thunder; and after that pointed them to Christ by a sacrifice, and to the voice of mercy from off the mercy-seat; and he does the same now. "Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond, of the covenant," Ezek. xx. 36, 37. God's pleading against the sinner in the law, is to teach him the need of an advocate; passing under the rod, is feeling the terrors of the law; and going into the bond of the covenant, is the enjoyment of God's eternal love in Christ Jesus, which neither life nor death shall ever separate us from.

David, under this severe discipline, sunk into the horrible pit and into the miry clay; and would have sunk into the bottomless pit to all eternity, if God had not led him to Christ, which he calls 'the Rock higher than I, where God put a new song in his mouth, fixed his heart, and established his goings.

The generality of converts in our days escape this teaching of the Father; they get married to the second husband before the first is dead; they tell us they were drawn by love, they dwell on high, their place of defence is the munitions of rocks, they see the King in his beauty, and the land which is very far off, Isa. xxxiii. 16, 17. But God says, "Thine heart shall meditate terror." Such converts begin in the Spirit, and end in the flesh; they are not God's blessed ones. For, "Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law, that thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked." And why is the man blessed that is thus chastened with terrors, and taught to know the terrible majesty of God, and his own sin and condemnation out of the law? Because, to such a weary and heavy laden sinner, God gives his promised rest by faith in Christ Jesus, till the pit be digged up for the wicked. Here he quits his yoke and his burden, and in Christ finds rest, an easier yoke, and a lighter burden. Under this teaching David had fainted,

unless faith had been wrought in his heart; "I had fainted, unless I had believed."

This chastening of the Father is called our judgment; "When we are chastened we are judged of the Lord, that we might not be condemned with the world." We are judged by the law, and condemned to death; then led to Christ, to believe in him for righteousness; and so pass from death to life, and never more come into condemnation. And thus our judgment by the law drives us from it, and from the wrath to come, revealed in it, to embrace the refuge set before us, which is Christ; where we find life for the dead, and righteousness for the ungodly; and thus, as David says, "Judgment shall return unto righteousness, and all the upright in heart shall follow it."

But it may be asked, why does God appear so terrible in his law? Because every sinner has broken it, and is cursed by it; and because God does not appear in Christ in this dispensation, but out of Christ and unreconciled, and, as Paul says, a consuming fire: and he that drives the saint to this law, drives him into the fire, where Christ profits him nothing. The law, in the hand of God, is our schoolmaster until Christ is revealed; but when faith in him comes, we are no longer under the schoolmaster. And to this agrees the Saviour; "Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father

cometh unto me; and him that cometh I will in no wise cast out." And his counsel to such is, Abide in me, for the reasons above mentioned.

Let us now see what poor sinners learn by this teaching. Job learnt the need of a surety. He knew God would not, could not, hold him innocent, because he possessed the iniquities of his youth. He said God had sealed up his transgressions in a bag; and that God was so just and wise, that in judgment he could not answer him one word in a thousand; and therefore begs him to put him in a surety, and to lead him to his seat, where he might be delivered for ever from his judge.

David, under this teaching, turned his feet to God's testimonies; he made haste, and delayed not, to keep the commandments; but found that no flesh could be justified this way, and therefore prayed God not to enter into judgment with him, in the great day, on the footing of the law: and entreated Christ to be surety for his servant for good. Here David learned the extent of the killing commandment; and, when he found Christ, he found the end that the law aimed at. "I have seen an end of all perfection; but thy commandment is exceeding broad." And, being pardoned and justified by faith in the surety, and in his righteousness, and so delivered from legal bondage, and upheld by a free spirit, he pronounces the blessedness of such a man. "Blessed is he whose

transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit is no guile." Thus the psalmist learnt to sing both of mercy and of judgment; and Paul learnt the terrors of the Lord in the law, and his eternal love in Christ. Hence it appears that the moral law is found in the hand of God the Father: but the scripture never says it is in the hand of Christ, as too many assert; for I have already proved that it is no part of Christ's sceptre, which comes not from Sinai, but out of Zion. But ministers and their converts, in our days, have found out quite another way, and an easier method, of salvation; for this is, in their esteem, the rant of an antinomian: however, I know it is God's way, and the good old way.

Thus Christ is the end of the law for righte ousness, the end that the law looked to for a perfect obedience; the end which the Father looked unto to have it magnified; the end that justice looked to for satisfaction; and the end that every self-condemned sinner must look to for righteousness, if ever he be saved. Christ has obeyed the law perfectly, and by the obedience of that one shall many be made righteous. He has appeased the wrath of God, and opened a way for his love to be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us; he gives us his holy Spirit to make us holy, and teaches us by his grace to love one another: by which four things the righ