the preaching of this Divine personage, because they had had many prophets and inspired persons to predict this great event. And yet, notwithstanding such intimations, and the assurances contained in their own Scriptures, of a more diffusive scheme of mercy, and of God's intention, in due time, to open the door of faith to the Gentiles, such was their national bigotry, that they could not be brought to believe that the Sun of Righteousness was destined to shine upon any nation but their own. Nay, indeed, the same narrow prejudices seem to have fastened on our Lord's own disciples. For the universality of Christ's kingdom was certainly, for some time, a secret even to them; so that it was not without the miraculous intervention "of a sheet let down from heaven by four corners," and the interpretation given to it, that St. Peter could be prevailed upon to go and convert the good centurion Cornelius, the first fruits of the final conversion of the whole Gentile world.

If, then, the doctrine of Christ's being preached to the Gentiles was a mystery to the Jews, and even in the first instance to our Lord's own disciples, how much more must it have been so to the Gentiles themselves! and this for the reason just mentionedtheir want of any previous preparation for it; more especially when they took into consideration the nature of this preaching itself. Had this preaching

been such as countenanced or accommodated itself to any of their preconceived opinions of religious duty, it had not carried such an air of mystery along

with it but when they saw that its tendency was to supersede their previous belief, and entirely to reform their previous practice; that in point of doctrine it was calculated to recall them from the errors of polytheism and idolatry, and in point of morals to discountenance some virtues, to alter others, and to extend and improve all the rest; and combined together the nature of such preaching with the previous circumstances under which it was made; they could not but be amazed at such a stupendous and unexpected scheme of Divine condescension and mercy. Nor would their wonder cease if they considered the next link of this mysterious chain, or that Christ was believed on in the world. It is not to be denied, indeed, that both Jews and Gentiles ought most thankfully to have received the gracious overtures of the Gospel of Christ; and that, with some exceptions, they did thus receive them; but yet it is certainly a great mystery, and one that can only be accounted for by the inward impulse of the Holy Spirit of God, that this should have been the case, when the same dispensation was generally such at which all their respective prejudices must have immediately revolted; which, for instance, was rendered unpalatable to the Jew, because it invited the Gentile to partake with him of the same privileges; and which was equally ungrateful to the Gentile, because it demanded his adoration of One, who, being by human lineage a Jew, was on this very account an object of hatred and contempt to the nations of the earth; which, to

the former, held not out the triumphant Messiah, nor to the latter the splendid orator, but to both "a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;" which taught the Gentile that the ceremonials of his religion were but so many empty forms of senseless idolatry, and which, to the Jew, by announcing the substance, abolished the shadows of the Jewish Ritual; which, in respect to both, taught many high and mysterious doctrines which human reason could not fathom, prescribed many private and social duties which a corrupt nature could not relish, and proposed but those future and spiritual rewards which the human eye could not see, and which it could not enter into the sensual heart to conceive. These were certainly strong impediments to the belief of the Gospel; and yet, if we turn to the fact, we shall find that the "Word of God mightily grew and prevailed;" and that "Christ was not only preached to the Gentiles, but believed on in the world." And now the Apostle proceeds to tell us, as the last link in the "mystery of godliness," that Christ was "received up into glory." This was a consummation highly necessary to shut up so stupendous a scheme, which, as it opened with Christ coming down from heaven, could only properly conclude with his returning to that blessed place. Such exaltation, with respect to his human nature, was indispensable, as a compensation not only for the low sphere in which He moved when He took upon Him the form of a servant, but also for his ignominious death, when He suffered on the Cross

as a common malefactor. It is true the ignominy of his death was afterwards retrieved by his glorious resurrection; yet still something was wanting to complete his triumph, and that was furnished by his being "received up into glory."

What then remains, my brethren, but that, if ye feel yourselves touched with this general and connected view of your religion, ye learn to be nourished in the true faith of it; that ye learn to entertain an awful sense of the great dignity and even divinity of this religion, when ye see the Father engaged in projecting it, the Son in opening it in Person, and the Holy Ghost in justifying his pretensions, confirmed and authenticated as these also were by the testimony of the blessed angels; that ye learn also to entertain the same sense of it when ye see in it a scheme of universal mercy, intended in God's due time to proselyte all the nations of the earth, and “to bring in universal righteousness,” until the final end and consummation of all things, when this dispensation shall be closed in judgment, and when Christ shall appear as the great Judge of quick and dead; and having, by this last act of sovereignty, completed all the purposes of his mediatorial kingdom, "He shall give up this kingdom to his Father, and God shall be all in all?"

SERMON IX.

66

1 COR. XV. 56.

And the strength of sin is the law."

THE conjunction at the beginning of these words naturally connects them with something that had gone before. Now this we shall find to be the Apostle's assertion in the preceding part of this verse, "that the sting of death is sin;" an assertion immediately deducible from the subject upon which he had been treating in this chapter. For, having established the doctrine of a future state of existence upon the clearest and most convincing arguments, he hath evidently removed every sting of death that may arise from the fear lest it should lead to the utter extinction of our being. But though he hath caused every fear of this kind to cease, he hath not removed, but in fact augmented by this very circumstance, a fear of a different kind, or that fear which a consciousness of sin is so apt to inspire, lest it