II.In its relation to the MORAL CONSTITUTING. Its humiliating character.

III.In its relation to OTHER KINDS OF RELIGION. Its transcendent character.

IV.In its relation to THIS LIFE. Its unworldly character.

(H. G. Weston, D. D.)

I. A SYSTEM OF DIVINE POWER.

1. There are three manifestations of Divine power.(1) Material, as seen in the production, support, and order of the universe.(2) Intellectual, as seen in the plan upon which the whole, the vast and the minute, is organised.(3) Moral, as seen in the influence of God's thoughts and feelings upon the minds of His intelligent creatures. The last is the power of the gospel, God's truth.

2. All truth is powerful. But there are three things that make gospel truth peculiarly powerful.(1) It is moral, appealing to the conscience and heart.(2) Remedial, graciously providing for our deeply-felt spiritual wants.(3) Embodied in the living example of God Himself. There then is one reason why Paul was not ashamed of it. Had it been a weak thing, he as a strong-minded man might have blushed to own it.

II. A SYSTEM OF DIVINE POWER TO SAVE. What is salvation? Some persons speak of it as if it were a local change, a transporting of man from one world to another. "But the mind is its own place." Salvation may be regarded as consisting in the restoration of a —

1. Lost love. We were made to be governed in all things by a supreme affection for God, but nothing is more clear than that man is not so governed now. The gospel comes to restore it.

2. Lost harmony. The soul is all in tumult. This cannot be the normal state.

3. Lost usefulness. Our relations to each other and our social instincts and powers are such as to show that we were intended to be useful to each other. But we are injurious. The gospel makes us useful. This is another reason which made Paul glory in it. If it had been a power to destroy, his generous nature would have been ashamed of it. Any power can destroy.

III. A system of Divine power TO SAVE ALL.

1. "The Jew first," because —(1) He has the best opportunity of testing the foundation facts of the gospel.(2) When converted he would become the most effective agent in converting others.(3) It exhibits more strikingly the merciful genius of the gospel. The Jew, the murderer of the prophets and of Christ, etc.

2. The gospel is, like the air and sun, for humanity. Had it been for a sect, or class, Paul might have been ashamed of it.

IV. A system of Divine power to save all ON THE MOST SIMPLE CONDITION. "To everyone that believeth." Man as man —

1. Has this power to believe. It requires no peculiar talent or attainment.

2. Has a strong tendency to believe. He is credulous to a fault. Conclusion: — Who are ashamed of the gospel?

1. Any in heaven? No! They owe their blessedness to its discoveries, and chant the praises of its Author.

2. Any in hell? No! There are thousands there ashamed of themselves for having been ashamed of the gospel.

3. Who on earth? Not the best parents, etc., the greatest sages, poets, patriots and philanthropists. They are to be found in the lower strata of moral life. They are to be found amongst men who ought to be ashamed of themselves.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

(T. Chalmers, D. D.)

1. We can quite understand that to a man of such singular force of character as St. Paul, the "power" of the gospel would be its leading idea. To St. John, it might be its sweetness. And we can follow the current of St. Paul's feelings when he said that he could not be "ashamed" of anything which was so very strong.

2. What we all want is to treat religion more as a thing of "power." We think and speak of it, and act about it, too softly. It is a thing of beauty, poetry, enjoyment, — but would not it be far better if we held it more as a grand fact for vigorous thought, manly action, and practical effort? The piety of the day is too enervated. Hence its watery literature, its feeble hold on the minds of working men, its pettiness, unreality, and small results. There would be less "shame" if there were more "power."

3. I need scarcely say that before the gospel can be this "power," it must be gospel indeed — not a theory, a system of theology, an abstract truth, a diluted joy, something half fear and half hope, but "God's spell."

II. SOME FACTS IN REFERENCE TO THIS POWER.

1. The Christian religion is the only one which has ever had "power" to set in motion real missionary action. Why? The selfishness and sluggishness of human nature is exclusive, and it requires an immense lever to stir it, and nothing in the world has ever been found equal to do it, except the love of such a God as we have in Christ. That, and that only, can "thrust out labourers into the vineyard." We have something to say worth making a mission for — we have a motive which can send us forth to say it.

2. See what the gospel of God does in all lands wherever it is planted — what softening of savagery, what civilisation it carries along with it. True, it may be hindered by the inconsistencies of Christians. But in itself the gospel always grows into an improvement in everything.

3. Look over this world at this moment. There are about two hundred millions of Christians upon the earth — once there were twelve. The increase without war — the great engine of Mahometanism — with very little to please and attract flesh and blood into it, rather with the greatest opposition to all which is natural to us, what "power" lies in that single historical fact!

4. Or let me tell you the experience of every Christian minister. It is when he preaches the full simple gospel that he gets all his success. If he preach morality, or an abstract divinity, or a gospel which is half gospel, he has no results whatever. But Christ carries everything.

5. Or listen to the witness of your own heart.(1) What have been the best hours of your life? The hours when Christ was most to you.(2) Who is the really composed man, but the man who is at peace in his own soul. That man does everything with confidence, and rest is power — "the power of God."

III. WAYS IN WHICH YOU MAY USE THIS "POWER."

1. Perhaps you are a weak character. You long for more strength of mind, and will, and purpose, and for capacity and power to persevere. Now nothing will give what you want but real personal religion — union with Christ, the gospel of Christ in you, and that gospel is "power."

2. Or you may have a habit, and you want to conquer it. Bring Christ to bear upon that habit, have motive enough, make the effort for Christ's sake, because He has loved you, do it to please Him, and show that you love Him. That principle will command all victory.

3. Or, perhaps, there is someone you very much wish to influence, but you cannot move him. Lead him to your object through the peace you bring into his own soul, and Christ will be stronger than the strong one.

4. Or, you are conscious of a want of moral courage in speaking of religious subjects; there is only one remedy, Christ must be more to you, and then you will be able to say, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," etc.

(J. Vaughan, M. A.)

II. IN THE DELIVERANCE IT EFFECTS. It was with a mighty hand that Israel was delivered from Egyptian bondage. No less wonderful is the power demonstrated in the deliverance of man from under the thraldom of sin.

III. IS THE TRANSFORMATION IT PRODUCES.

IV. IN THE MOTIVES IT INSPIRES. Men are actuated by a desire to gain wealth, fame, learning; and what unflagging energy this inspires! The gospel inspires us with a hope of being kings and priests unto God. But love to God and our fellow men is to be the great motive for our actions. This is to be the ruling power of our lives, and this will render us godlike.

V. IN THE UNIVERSALITY OF ITS APPLICATION. "To everyone that believeth." It is the gospel for mankind, and among all nations it has gained its trophies. Its power has not waned. Conclusion: — Its hindrances are in the individual soul. Sin makes the barrier. But the gospel brought home by the Spirit can overcome all. There is nothing in it of which we should be ashamed.

(A. Huelston, Ph. D.)

(W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)

I. THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE IS, THEN, CHARACTERISTICALLY A POWER-BESTOWING RELIGION. It is this which distinguishes it from all other religions.

1. All the significance of the miracles of the Old Testament and the New Testament lies in this, that they are witnesses to a help that lies beyond humanity, but which is extended to humanity. The entire Old Testament is the history of a power not belonging to humanity, and yet working for the benefit of Israel. It is by the power of God that the Israelites are summoned from their bondage, that the waves of the Red Sea part for them, and that one after another victory crowns their campaigning in Palestine. The history is not the history of what the Jews did or Jewish great men did, but of what a power not themselves was doing for them. As this is the Old Testament history, so this is the Old Testament experience of the individual. It reappears in David, in Isaiah, in every prophet.

2. The old doctrine that power belongeth unto God, and that God bestows this power upon His children, reappears in the New Testament, but in a new form. It is now the spiritual helpfulness of God that comes to the front. We speak as though a man's power had greatly increased our power during the past few centuries; but all the power of civilisation is a power that is not our own. We have increased a little our individual muscular power, but the increase is very little, while it is stored in nature, and we lay hold upon it and use it. And I will not go to an orthodox authority, but I will ask Herbert Spencer what this power is in that famous definition: "Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the absolute certainty that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from whom all things proceed." What is this but the old Hebrew Psalmist's "Power belongeth unto God?" And what is the result of all modern science but this: a skill to lay hold on this power that is not our own, and to make it our own by obedience to its laws?

3. Now, the New Testament, as a spiritual appendix to the Old, confirmed by modern science, adds the declaration that there are powers not our own that make for human helpfulness and lift us up in the spiritual realm. The power that is of God is a power unto spiritual salvation. As there is a power to help man in the material and physical world, so there is a power to help him in the realm of virtue and truth. A hopeful man can inspire hope; a weak-willed man can be made stronger in will by leaning upon a man whose will is stronger than his own; there is power in a great heart to fill vacant hearts full of noble, Divine love.

4. And as the individual imparts to the individual, parents to their children, the teacher to his pupils, the pastor to his congregation, so generations impart to other generations. It is not all a fiction, this Roman Catholic idea of works of supererogation stored up, on which men may draw. The world has accumulated a great reservoir of virtue, and we draw on it every day. You are stronger men and women today for your Puritan ancestry, for your Anglo-Saxon blood.

II. SALVATION IS NOT SOMETHING YOU ARE TO GET IN HEAVEN BY AND BY, ON CONDITION THAT YOU DO BELIEVE, THINK, OR EXPERIENCE SOMETHING HERE ON EARTH NOW. That man will be saved from future punishment through faith in Christ is true, but it is not the burden of the Bible declaration. The great good news of the Bible is this: men are saved from the burdens of their present life; from the darkness of their scepticism; from the bondage of their superstition; from inhumanity, weakness of will, and sin, here and now. This universe is stored with great spiritual powers. Do not fight your battle alone; lay hold on those powers and ask their help in the conflict. "There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." What is that? A narrow declaration? Not at all. I find a man trying to lift a great stone, which is too heavy for his strength; and I say to him, Get out your tackle and pulleys, and then you can lift it. Is that narrow? No man can take the fruits of civilisation unless he lays hold on powers other than his own; and no man can take the fruit of Divine culture unless he reaches out and lays hold of powers that are not his own, that make for righteousness.

III. FAITH IS NOT BELIEF. It is not belief in a long or a short creed. Faith does in the spiritual realm that which reason does in the material realm. It is simply reaching out a heart of sympathy and laying hold on the heart of God, and receiving strength that God pours into the children whose souls are open to receive His help. What virtue is there in the mere declaration of an opinion? This is not faith. Faith in Christ is an appreciation of the quality that is in Christ, a sense of His worth, a desire to be like Him, a resolute purpose to follow after Him.

(Lyman Abbott, D. D.)

I. IN THE REVELATION IT MAKES OF WHAT GOD HAS DONE FOR US IN THE WORK OF HIS SON.

1. As transgressors the law held us in bondage, and bound us over to endure the wages of sin in everlasting death. But in the obedience which Christ has rendered to the law, and the satisfaction He has made to its demands, He has opened a new and certain way of life for the guilty. Satan also held us captive, but Christ has overcome him who had the power of death.

2. The influence of this work is displayed —(1) In heaven in the acceptance there of Christ's sacrifice, in His prevailing intercession, and in the continual crowning of the subjects of His redemption.(2) On earth in the increasing testimony that is borne to the glorious redemption, in the providence which causes all things to work together for the good of the redeemed, and in the continual progress of the truth.(3) In hell, in the subjection which it compels Satan to acknowledge to the Lord Jesus.

II. IN THE EXHIBITION OF THE WORK WHICH GOD ACCOMPLISHES WITHIN US BY HIS SPIRIT. Take a view of this as given —

1. In the past history of the Church. Reflect on the progress of the gospel, and the multitudes who have been actually rescued.

2. In the experience of the individual.(1) Who awakens and converts the careless sinner?(2) Who justifies the penitent believer, and gives him peace and acceptance with God?(3) Who carries on in increasing holiness the work thus commenced?(4) Who upholds and preserves to final salvation those who are thus brought to God?(5) Who finally crowns the subjects of grace in glory?

III. IN THE PROPER GROUND FOR HOPE WHICH IT THUS AFFORDS.

1. If you look upon yourselves you find yourselves utterly weak and unworthy; but there is offered to you in the gospel a sufficient and abiding hope.

2. Let the Christ have all the praise for this work of salvation.

(S. H. Tyng, D. D.)

1. If it be base in itself, or shameful in its aim.

2. Though good in itself, and honourable in its aim, if it be weak and powerless to achieve the good it aims at. For example: we are ashamed of a traitor who sells his country for gold; and of a general who, though loyally fighting for his country, ruins its cause through ignorance or incapacity. Paul was not ashamed of the gospel because —

I. IT WAS NOT BASE IN ITSELF, NOR SHAMEFUL IN ITS AIMS. Its facts were true, its morals pure, its doctrine ennobling. Its aim is "salvation." You have seen at a railway station carriages labelled "London," "Edinburgh," etc., signifying that the company engaged to carry the passengers to these places. So the gospel is labelled as intended to carry passengers "unto salvation." Anything short of that would be to fail in its promise. But what is this "salvation"? The common idea is, that when a man dies he shall be saved from hell and have a place in heaven. But salvation implies more than this — deliverance from the corruption of sin as well as from its condemnation; from its power as well as from its punishment — in short, deliverance from sin itself.

II. IT WAS NOT FEEBLE AND UNABLE TO ACHIEVE ITS AIM. Its power is as great as its purpose is good. This is what most of all we need? We know the doctrines of the gospel, the sins it forbids, the duties it requires, the hopes it teaches. But somehow we feel that these things do not influence us as they ought. What we need is power to convince us, to subdue us, to rule over us, to sustain us, power to resist the devil, to overcome the world. In some things the gospel has come to us in power. For example, we believe in the forgiveness of sins through Christ's blood. And that belief has brought us peace from the fear of punishment. But oh I how we long that the words, "Go and sin no more," would "come in power." Behold, then, gospel promises do not speak more truly of pardon than they speak of power for present duty by Christ's living grace.

3. ITS OFFER IS NOT LIMITED TO ANY ONE NATION OR CLASS, but is free and sure "to everyone that believeth." "To as many as received Him, to them gave He power," etc. Everyone who believes on Jesus receives of the Holy Spirit. They receive this power, but they must use it. The power of God is laid up for them in Christ; but out of His fulness they must go on to draw grace for grace.

(W. Grant.)

2. In the text we have three terms, salvation, gospel, and power. The gospel effects the salvation, and the power is the reason why.(1) Salvation must be regarded in the light of the exposition of it given in this Epistle. Three words describe it — justification, sanctification, and glorification. The first is the soul's deliverance from the condemnation and penalty of sin (chaps. 1-5); the second, its emancipation from its dominion as a ruling principle (chaps. 6, 7); and the third, the bestowment upon it of everlasting happiness and glory (chap. 8).(2) The gospel as a record embodies a scheme of truth based upon a series of transactions of transcendent glory, the incarnation of the Son of God, His life, death, resurrection, exaltation, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. As a message of mercy, the truths it records are presented for acceptance as a means for effecting salvation.(3) The power of God. The gospel is —

I. THE PRODUCT OF DIVINE POWER. The transactions it records testify to the power of God in the same way that every author's power is revealed by his works. Power has three qualities, Moral, which indicates the motive, and has regard to the end in view; intellectual, which contrives, and has regard to the means; physical, which executes, i.e., applies the means devised to the end contemplated. Thus, power manifests itself in force, contrivance, and purpose. The Divine operations ever display these qualities. These qualities, however, in the gospel show different degrees of combination from those which obtain in creation — e.g., all physical objects are distinguished by some one particular colour, although all the other hues of light are there. In the light falling upon objects which appear blue, all the hues of light are present, but by the operation of a certain law, the blue alone presents itself to the eye. So in creation physical power prevails, at least to our senses. The multiplicity of its worlds and their vast magnitude divert the mind from the equally glorious, but less obtrusive, manifestations of intellect and beneficence. Now the gospel is a marvellous manifestation of power in its several phases. As the product of God's moral power it is defined as "the exceeding riches of His grace" (Ephesians 2:5). As an exhibition of His intellectual power it is represented as "making known the manifold wisdom of God" (Ephesians 3:10; 1 Peter 1:10). Its manifestations of physical power, instanced in the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus, are described as the working of His mighty power (Ephesians 1:19). But its moral power is its crown and glory. One characteristic will suffice to show this. Its pith and marrow is its provision for the forgiveness of sin, and this is the grandest exercise of moral power possible. "Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity?" So far was the idea of forgiveness from the hearts of men that when they came to create gods they never imagined gods possessed of the power to pardon sin. Does not this prove that the religion which presents this fact to us must be, as regards its conception, absolutely Divine?

II. AN INSTRUMENT OF DIVINE POWER. "The power of God unto salvation." The transactions it embodies were characterised by superlative condescension and self-sacrifice. As such they were replete with power in the two senses of legal merit and spiritual influence — the one frowning the ground of men's reconciliation with God, the other forming the instrumentality for weaning them from sin, for changing their disposition, subduing their passions, and kindling in their hearts the love of Christ. But this is not all. The gospel possesses instrumental fitness for securing justification and sanctification, but in order that these may become experimental realities men must, believingly, accept, as the ground and instrument of their salvation, the transactions it records. Hence powerful influences are necessary to overcome men's indifference and stubbornness. The gospel is the power of God to this end. The transactions it embodies are presented as messages of love. This message is instinct with the moral and Divine power of the transactions which form its theme. No wonder the gospel is called the "word of salvation" — the word which both reveals salvation and opens the heart, by conviction, to its reception.

(A. J. Parry.)

I. IN ITS MOST PARADOXICAL AND YET HIGHEST FORM.

1. Of course, the message was power only as being the record of power; the real energy lay in the Incarnate Word. And Paul's thought is, that high above all other manifestations of the Divine energy, rises that strange paradox, the omnipotence of God declared in weakness. Sinai is impotent, compared with the tremendous forces which stream from the little hillock, where stand three black crosses, and a dying Christ on the midmost.

2. There is the power of God; for material force is not power; nor majesty, which being deprived of its externals becomes a jest; nor the rule over men's wills by iron constraint; nor is the rule of ideas the highest power; but the Divinest force in God is tenderness, and the true signature of omnipotence is love.(1) What a discovery of the depths of the Godhead that is! The world has heard of gods of physical force, lustful, whimsical, benevolent by fits and starts, vengeful when mood suits them; gods apathetic and indifferent, but it never dreamed until this Man came of a God whose power could drape itself in weakness, and was guided by love.(2) What a lesson as to where the true strength and greatness for man lies! We have had enough of the worship of genius; of the beating of drums and singing hosannas over the achievements of poet and philosopher, and artist and scholar. Let us remember that there is a stronger thing in the world than all these, and that is patient gentleness that bows, and bears, and suffers, and dies.

II. IN ITS MIGHTIEST OPERATION. Rome gathered its forces for destruction. And Paul is thinking of the contrast between the devilish use of human strength which generally attends it, and the Divine use of Divine power which dedicates it all for salvation. Salvation is negatively the deliverance from everything that is evil; positively it is the endowment with every good.

1. Think of the strange audacity of Christianity in calmly proposing to itself such an end as this. People tell us that the gospel idea of men is dark and depressing. Why? but because the gospel can afford to look facts in the face, inasmuch as it knows itself able to overcome all that is evil, and to reverse and supplant it by perfect good. And there is nothing in the New Testament that is more of the nature of a demonstration of its Divine energy than the unruffled composure with which it declares, looking on the ruins that lie round about it, "I have come to set all that right, and I know that I can do it." And it has done it. I do not know any other religion that would not be laughed out of court if it strode forward and said, "I have come here to abolish all evil, and to make every soul of man like God." "Well, then; do it!" would be the simple answer; "and if with your philosopher's stone you can turn the smallest grain of a baser metal into gold, we will admit the claim and believe that the transmutation of the rest is a question of time." Well, Christianity has done it, and there are millions of people in this world today who will say, "One thing I know, there are a great many things I do not know, but one thing I do: whereas I was blind now I see. Look at my eyes if you doubt it."

2. This transforming and saving power is clearly beyond man's ability. It will take God to change a man's relations to the Divine government, and to hold back the consequences which, if there were no God, by the law of cause and effect, would certainly follow every transgression and disobedience. And it needs no less than God to renew the spirit into a loftier life. And the world knows it, and instead of salvation it talks about reformation, restraint, culture, etc.; all very good in their way, but not going deep enough down into the facts of man's condition, not being able to lift him high enough up towards the destined good, to be accepted as a substitute for the Divine idea of salvation. There tower the great white summits of the Himalayas; down at their feet stand palaces, temples, porches for philosophers. Measure the height of the one by the other, and you get an approximation to the difference between human efforts upon human society and the Divine design for every soul of man upon earth.

3. This restoring work of salvation is not only exclusively a Divine work, but is the most energetic exercise of the Divine power. Creation is great and Divine. The new creation, which is restoration to more than primeval blessedness and beauty, is greater, inasmuch as it is accomplished not by a word but by toil, sacrifice, and death, and inasmuch as the result is man more truly and gloriously the image of God than was he over whose appearance angels shouted for joy, and God said, "It is good." It is great to "preserve the stars from wrong," and to keep the most ancient heavens "fresh and strong," but the conception of the Divine power that is gathered from those majestic regions where His finger works is low compared with that which flows from the redeeming work of Christ. God never has done, and never will do a mightier thing than when He sends His Son with power to save a world.

III. IN ITS WIDEST SWEEP.

1. Rome wielded an empire which approached to universality, so far as the world then knew. But Paul has a vision of an empire that overlaps it, as some great sea might a little pond, and sees the Dove of Christ outflying the Roman eagle, and the raven, sin. For to him his Christ is everybody's Christ; and that which changed him from persecutor to apostle can never have a more obstinate block to hew into beauty.

2. The text may seem to narrow the universality which the apostle proclaims, but not really, For to believe is nothing more than to take the power which the gospel brings. Faith is the belt by which we fasten our else still and silent wheels to the great engine, and the power then begins to drive. You would not say that a universal medicine was less universal because it did not cure people that did not take it.

3. Nay! rather the intention and power of the gospel to save everybody can only be preserved by faith being the condition of its operation. For the condition is one that everybody can exercise, and just because men do not get saved by things that belong to classes it comes about that "not many wise, not many noble, not many mighty after the flesh" are saved. The wise man wants a religion that will give culture its proper high seat in the synagogue. The noble does not like to have his robes crumpled by a crowd of greasy jackets going in at the one common door. And so they turn away because they would like to have a little private postern of their own, where a ticket of a special colour would let them and their friends in. Conclusion: Are you exercising this faith, and therefore saved? You can separate yourselves from the power, notwithstanding the Divine purpose and adaptation of the gospel to everybody. And although God wants all of us to come to His heart, you can, if you will, stand apart. You do not need to do much. Putting your hands behind your back, or letting them hang languidly at your sides, is enough. Not to accept is to reject. You can waterproof your souls, as it were, and so lie there as dry as a bone, whilst all around you the dew of His blessing is refreshing others. Christ's power received is life; Christ's power not received is not negatived, but reversed, and becomes death.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

I. "THE POWER of God" — a hint as to the weakness of the law in reference to salvation. This contrast is brought out fully and clearly in chap. Romans 8:2-4, God Himself is powerless to save anyone righteously except through the gracious provisions of the gospel of His Son, whom He accordingly "set forth to be a propitiation," etc. (Romans 3:25).

II. "The power of GOD." He who wins souls in the presentation of the gospel is wielding a power not human, but Divine; and the resulting justification before God is based, not on the righteousness of man, but "the righteousness of God." Here we have another antithesis of the apostle's great theme, which is fully presented in Romans 10:3 and Philippians 3:7-9. The Jews, "being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God." It is only on the ground of merit that law can justify. If, then, a man could merit his acceptance with God, his justification would not be due to the gracious "power of God," but would rest upon his own inherent goodness.

III. The "power of God UNTO SALVATION." This the law could not accomplish in that it was weak through the flesh, But as regards the very opposite result, condemnation and death, it has, indeed, tremendous power (Romans 7:9, 10; 2 Corinthians 3:6, 7). Thus the only hope for man is to pass from under a legal system, which can only justify the sinless, to a dispensation of grace which is clothed with Divine power to "justify the ungodly."

IV. "The power of God unto salvation to EVERYONE who believes." But the Jew, supposing that he had kept the law sufficiently to stand before God in the strength of his own righteousness, very naturally limited the favour of God to legalistic worshippers, and looked upon all others as inevitably doomed to death without mercy. Now the argument of the Epistle, in dispelling this double delusion, enables us to discern the broad contrast between the universality of grace and the exclusiveness of legalism (Romans 3:21-23). We are again and again reminded that this blessedness cometh not upon the circumcision only, but upon the uncircumcision also; that "the same God over all is rich unto all who call upon Him," and that, consequently, "whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."

V. "The power of God unto salvation to everyone who BELIEVES." The contrast between the gospel and the law is the significant antithesis of faith and works so extensively developed in this Epistle. The dictum of the law is, "Do this and thou shalt live." The maxim of the gospel is, "The just shall live by faith." Doing is the ground of legal justification. Believing is the condition of gracious justification. The radical opposition between these, together with the inapplicability of the former to man as a sinful being, undergoes thorough discussion, especially in chaps. 3 and 4.

(Prof. I. B. Grubbs.)

I. JUDGMENT WILL BEGIN WITH THEM (Romans 2:6-10). Why is this? Because they have had more light than any other people. God chose them out of the world to be His witnesses. Every prophet, evangelist, and apostle was sent first to them. Christ said, "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The Word of God is still addressed to them. Yet they have sinned against all this light and love. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," etc. Their cup of wrath is fuller than that of other men. Is not this a reason, then, why the gospel should first be preached to the Jew? They are ready to perish — to perish more dreadfully than other men. In an hospital the physician runs first to the worst case. When the sailors have left the shore to save the sinking crew they first help those that are readiest to perish. And shall we not do the same for Israel? The billows of God's anger are ready to dash first over them — shall we not seek to bring them first to the Rock that is higher than they? Yes, and some of you are in a situation very similar to that of Israel — you who have the Word of God in your hands and yet are unbelieving and unsaved, Think how like your wrath will be to that of the unbelieving Jew.

II. IT IS LIKE GOD. It is the chief glory and joy of a soul to be like God. Too many rest in the joy of being forgiven. We should be like God in understanding, in will, in holiness, and also in His peculiar affections; and the whole Bible shows that God has a peculiar affection for Israel (Deuteronomy 7:7; Lamentations 4:2; Jeremiah 12:7). Shall we be ashamed to cherish the same affection as our heavenly Father?

III. THERE IS PECULIAR ACCESS TO THE JEWS.

IV. THEY WILL GIVE LIFE TO THE DEAD WORLD. A reflective traveller, passing through the countries of this world, and observing the race of Israel in every land, might be led to guess, merely from the light of his natural reason, that that singular people are preserved for some great purpose in the world. There is a singular fitness in the Jew to be the missionary of the world. They have not that peculiar attachment to home and country which we have. They are also inured to every clime; they are to be found amid the snows of Russia and beneath the burning sun of Hindostan. They are also in some measure acquainted with all the languages of the world, and yet have one common language — the holy tongue — in which to communicate with one another. But what says the Word of God? (Read Zechariah 8:13, 23; Micah 5:7)

(R. M. McCheyne.)

(R. Haldane.)

1. Righteousness is a regard to what is right.

2. God is essentially a righteous Being. He knows what is due from each to the rest, and from all to Himself, and also sees and acknowledges what is due from Him to them. The foundation and standard of all righteousness are to be found in His nature and character. He has no desire, and can have no temptation to do that which is unjust. The Judge of all the earth must do right.

3. He loves righteousness in others, and hates iniquity. Whether we rob God or our neighbours, it is alike abhorrent to Him. He shows His love of righteousness —(1) By rewarding it; this He has done among the angels in heaven.(2) By punishing unrighteousness; this He has done among the lost spirits in hell.(3) By seeking the recovery of those who have fallen from righteousness; and this He is doing upon earth through the gospel of His Son.

4. The gospel is not merely a display of mercy, but of righteousness. He could not bestow forgiveness on sinners in violation of righteousness.(1) He must therefore devise some way of satisfying the demands of justice before He can deliver the ungodly from the doom which they deserve. This He has done in the surrender of His Son as a sin offering for the world.(2) He must provide — which He has done through the Holy Ghost — for the restoration of pardoned rebels to personal purity and holiness; and so will His righteousness be displayed and His law magnified in the salvation of a ruined race. Shall we say that His righteousness is the handmaid of His love, or that His love is subservient to His righteousness? Let us not attempt to settle the law of precedence; it is enough for us to know that in the salvation of sinful men both God's righteousness and God's love are resplendently revealed — the righteousness through His love, and the love through His righteousness.

II. THE OBJECT OF THE GOSPEL IS TO RAISE MAN TO RIGHTEOUSNESS.

1. Man was at first made upright. In the enjoyment of this righteousness he possessed life. But by transgression he fell. Instantly his understanding was darkened, his conscience perverted, his heart disordered, and his happiness destroyed. He lost his life.

2. God's purpose in the gospel is to make us again righteous; to deliver us from condemnation and renew our souls in virtue and truth. This is the same thing as to recover us from death to life. By being righteous we live, by being unrighteous we die.

III. FAITH, AS THE INSTRUMENT OF MAN'S RECOVERY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS.

1. Faith is mentioned in opposition to legal works. We might be righteous if we could keep the whole law unfalteringly and unceasingly. But we have not, and cannot do so. Hence we are shut out from works, and shut up to faith. We cannot acquire a righteousness of our own, but must be content to let God give us one.

2. Faith is not to be confounded with feelings. It may lead to certain emotions of the soul, but it does not consist of them. The object of faith is not to be found within ourselves; it lies without.

3. What, then, is faith?(1) It is belief, and nothing more, when it is directed to a doctrinal statement or alleged fact of the past, and then we may call it intellectual or historical faith.(2) But suppose its object to have some immediate and powerful bearing upon our duty and interests; then will our faith necessarily lead to action. Such faith may be called practical or ethical.(3) But the object of faith may be something more than either statements or precepts: it may be a living person. We then have faith in him, or on him, as well as belief about him; our faith takes the form of confidence, reliance, trust. It is through faith in all its forms, but especially through the last one, that we lay hold on the righteousness of God in the gospel, and appropriate it as our own.

4. Faith is a noble and worthy instrument of our salvation. It is not to be disdained as inferior to reason. Rather it is reason's highest and most enlightened exercise. Faith gives reason wings, wherewith she mounts to regions of truth otherwise beyond her reach.

5. Faith is necessary as the means of salvation. It is not an arbitrary condition of salvation, but indispensable in the very nature of things; and, being such, it is all that is demanded, for "whosoever believeth," whatever else he lacks or hath, "shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

(T. G. Horton.)

I. WHAT, THEN, IS THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD?

1. The ostensible meaning might seem to be the righteousness which is an attribute of God. But it cannot be said that this in any special sense is a revelation of the gospel, for it was the great theme of Old Testament teaching. Moreover, it is impossible to see how the revelation of it could constitute a saving power. We can understand how it might awaken conscience and deepen the conviction of sin. But this would only make our condemnation more obvious and inevitable.

2. The righteousness of God, as is evident from the quotation in Habakkuk, as well as from other parallel expressions, is the righteousness of which God is the author, which He provides and bestows, so that the man who acquires it becomes thereby a righteous man. Now, this is precisely what we need.(1) The testimony of the apostle is that the whole world is guilty before God. None, accordingly, is clear in the eye of the law. God cannot count us as anything else than transgressors until we stand guiltless in His sight. The great question is, How can this be accomplished? And the only answer, independently of the gospel, is, By our own efforts or not at all. It is no part of the righteous judge, as such, to assoil the transgressor. It might be a palpable breach of his duty to do so. Hence man has never looked to God alone to clear him. but always to some sacrifice or endeavour of his own, which might cancel or atone for his offence. But no sacrifice could ever assure him that his relation to God had been rendered satisfactory, because he has never received any Divine promise to that effect. The same is true of every effort after repentance or amendment of life. At the best, therefore, one could only hope that such expedients might attain their object. And this hope has been the root and spring of almost all religions. But the gospel shows that the desired prospect is not to be secured by any such means.(2) But what the world could not do for itself God did for it. And if the gospel passes its sentence of impotence upon us, it is only to direct us to its provision of saving grace. This position has been secured by the mediation of Christ, whom God gave to be the Saviour of the world. Every demand of the law was satisfied in His life of obedience. And He gave Himself for us, to bear, as our Representative and Substitute, the penalty of our disobedience, so that everything the law might claim at our hands might be infallibly and fully met. By His resurrection the Divine satisfaction was openly declared, and He passed through the heavens to enter into the presence of God on our behalf. There He appears, the eternal pledge of a righteousness fulfilled, presenting to His Father a humanity clear of every ground of accusation, and securing to everyone who will trust in Him a safe standing in His sight. He is the Lord our righteousness. This, then, is what the apostle means when he says that in the gospel is revealed a righteousness of God.

3. Thus understood, it is not difficult to see how the gospel becomes thereby the power of God to salvation. For —(1) It lays the foundation of fellowship with God. So long as sin is unforgiven fellowship is impossible. Sin compels Him to treat us as offenders. Therefore it is that the broad foundation and starting point of all religion lies in being right with God.(2) Further, if being right with God is essential to fellowship with Him, so also it is fellowship with Him that secures the growth of spiritual life. As the branch must abide in the vine to receive the sap and nourishment that circulates through the tree, we must abide in connection with God to be partakers of His Spirit and power. This it is that enables us to bring forth the fruits of holiness. The expulsive power of the new affection will purge the soul of its fleshly desires. As the soiled and crumpled leaves are pushed off the tree by the rising sap that swells the buds with the foliage of the coming summer, so it will cleanse us from dead works to serve the living God.

II. THE GOSPEL IS THE SAVING POWER OF GOD BECAUSE IT IS FROM FAITH TO FAITH.

1. This righteousness of which the apostle has spoken is not due to our own works, which do not contribute to it anything whatever. When it becomes ours it is due entirely to faith, which appropriates Christ, and by resting upon Him enters into it and invests us with all its prerogatives. "We are found in Him, not having our own righteousness," etc.

2. And just as it is due to faith, so also it is designed to produce faith. The more thoroughly its character is understood, the more perfectly its completeness and satisfactoriness in all points is perceived, the more will faith be confirmed. For if anything weakens faith it is just our not being sure of our rightness with God, or of the foundation on which that rightness depends. On the other hand, if the ground of our acceptance be clearly distinguished and seen in its length and breadth in Christ Jesus, we learn more boldly to appropriate the contents of His salvation. Here lies the secret of its power to transform you and lift you up. There is no other sure foothold for us. But this is sure.

(C. Moinet, M. A.)

1. It is manifest therefore that this "righteousness of God" does not denote —(1) That perfect personal righteousness which is required of us by law. That can exist only where there has been maintained perfect innocence and obedience. But "there is none righteous, no; not one." And therefore, "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified" (Romans 3:9-20).(2) That righteousness which is implanted and perfected in believers by the grace of God. Clearly, indeed, there is such a righteousness, but it is surely not one which is so by faith as to be "not of works," and "without the law."(3) "God's method of saving sinners," nor "that authorised and attested method of justifying the ungodly," which is revealed in the gospel. For how manifestly absurd to declare that "God hath made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made" God's method of justifying sinners in Him!(4) The active obedience or positive righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, as distinguished from His negative righteousness, or innocence, and His sufferings and death. The Scriptures know nothing of such a parting and distribution of the Redeemer's one seamless robe of righteousness. They do not teach that a believer, as such, has a right, in the positive righteousness of Christ, to the rewards of eternal glory. A right, in Him, every believer has to the position and immunities of innocence, but the positive rewards of righteousness are to be conferred on each "according as his work shall be."(5) "The justification which is of God." For that fails to bring out the most central thought of the expression, viz., the ground upon which God saves or justifies. It confounds effect with cause.

2. What then is this "righteousness of God"? It is that one righteousness of Christ which He affected for us in His obedience unto death. To establish valid ground for the justification of the sinner, it is obvious that mere innocence was not enough; nor the most splendid achievements of active righteousness. That which law demands, in regard to an offender, is the endurance of penalty. When that has been endured, the law relaxes its grasp, and sets the prisoner free. Then he goes forth justified, so as that he cannot be again legally touched on account of the offences for which he has already suffered. It is quite true that such a righteousness could never be won for himself by a sinful man; for a sinful act in him induces at once a sinful character, and the fact and guilt of sin go on increasing with the progress of his being. Hence, in the Scriptures, the possibility of any man being justified before God on the ground of his own righteousness, however accomplished, is never once imagined. But these Scriptures do maintain that "as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of One, the free gift (namely, of righteousness) came upon all men unto (or for) justification of life" (Romans 5:18). But that righteousness is preeminently the righteousness of suffering. Therefore it is written that "He was delivered [namely, to suffer unto death] on account of our offences, and [that having so suffered, and thereby earned the legal claim for our discharge, He] was raised again on account of our justification" (Romans 4:25). This, then, we apprehend, is "the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe" (Romans 3:22). It is this which, being conferred upon believers as a free gift of grace, secures for them the legal ground on which they can be justified. To impute this to them is to put them in possession of that which insures for them a full discharge from all liability to arrest, imprisonment, or punishment on account of their own past offences. In Christ, the demand of the law has been met on their behalf. They were arrested in Him, condemned in Him, led forth to be crucified in Him, suffered the extreme penalty of the law in Him, and are now also "made the righteousness of God in Him."

II. THIS RIGHTEOUSNESS IS REVEALED IN THE GOSPEL, not indeed exclusively, but specially, preeminently, and perfectly. The righteousness itself, in its true ground and nature, had not been before revealed. Indeed, till the Holy One and the Just had given exhibition of it in His own actual human history, it could not be. Yet, even in the Old Testament times, thus much was known, namely —

1. That no man could, in his own right, claim to be legally justified — he had no righteousness which could command that result; and yet —

2. That some men should, through gracious Divine provision, inherit the rewards of righteousness; righteousness should be imputed to them; they should be justified and treated as righteous (Psalm 24:5; Isaiah 45:24, 25; Isaiah 61:10). What constituted that righteousness had not yet been disclosed. It was indeed faintly foreshadowed by those perpetual sacrifices, which could not make the offerers perfect, but without reference to which the plea for mercy could not be successfully urged. This plea failed indeed to supply any solid ground of hope, and yet there was hope, a hope which in some sense was sustained by it (Psalm 51:16, 17). But that hope was ever reaching onward into the coming age, for that One who would make an end of transgression and bring in an everlasting righteousness, and whose name was fore announced as "The Lord our righteousness" (Daniel 9:24; Jeremiah 23:6). But now, in the gospel of Christ, this Hope of Israel has actually come, and accomplished His work of righteousness for sinners.

III. THIS RIGHTEOUSNESS IS HERE REVEALED TO BE FROM FAITH TO FAITH, or by faith for belief.

1. Of faith, or by faith. Men attain possession of it by faith, and by faith only (Romans 4:16). Hence the protest of St. Paul to the "dissembling" Peter (Galatians 2:15, 16).

2. By faith for belief. The righteousness of God, as the ground of justification, is proclaimed to men in the gospel, as being by faith, in order that they may believe and be justified. So the testimony that the faith of Abraham was counted to him for righteousness, had been put upon record, not for his sake alone, but for ours also (Romans 4:23-25). And the whole mystery concerning the righteousness of God is made known to all nations for the obedience of faith (Romans 16:25, 26).Conclusion:

1. A salvation grounded in the righteousness of God must, when clearly apprehended, afford an equal satisfaction to reason, judgment, and conscience.

2. A salvation which is by faith is possible to all.

3. Salvation on any other terms would be impossible.

(W. Tyson.)

(J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

II. The GROWTH of faith. From one degree of faith to another. Advance made in clearness, simplicity, strength.

III. The MANY SIDEDNESS of faith. From one kind of faith to another. From faith which saves to faith for still further blessings. From faith which justifies to faith which sanctifies. From faith of the intellect to faith of the heart.

(T. Robinson, D. D.)

(Prof. J. A. Beet.)

2. Faith is the life of the soul.

3. Christ is the life of faith.

(J. Flavel.)

1. This faith by which the just are to live is to be in continual operation from first to last. The just shall live by faith, and that not at any one stage of their career, but all the way through, from the moment they leave the house of bondage till they plant their footstep on Canaan's happy shore. Faith is not to be exercised only occasionally. It is not to be kept for great occasions, or for dire emergencies. It is to resemble not the rushing torrent of Kishon's brook, sweeping all before it for the time, but the steady flow of Siloah's quiet waters, which make glad perpetually the city of God.

2. Faith as a principle of living is intensely practical. It is not a garment to be worn on Sundays, but the ordinary workday garb, which we are to wear in the farmyard and the field, in the shop and in the marketplace.

3. This principle of faith is exclusive of every other that may compete with it. There is not a word here in favour of living by feeling. Our feelings are too variable to rely on. Such a one must needs live jerkily, inconsistently, uncomfortably. But, behold, I show unto you a more excellent way. The just shall live by faith. That is a form of living which is not liable to the ebbs and flows incident to a state of emotionalism, for faith fixes on a Saviour who never alters, on a righteousness which is always the same, and on a promise which is forever sure. There is another class who are accustomed to live by experience. The same objection applies here. There are so many ups and downs, even in the best experience, that to build upon it is to build upon a quaking bog. The just have more stable comforts, for they live by faith, and faith walks above experience, singing of heaven's brightness when earth is dark around her, and boasting of pardon when sin makes itself felt most consciously. When Ralph Erskine lay upon his death bed one of the bystanders said to him, "I hope, sir, you have some blinks of sunshine to cheer you in the valley." The answer was: "I had rather have one promise of my God than all the blinks of sunshine that ever shone." "The just shall live by faith."

4. The faith here spoken of is applicable to all kinds of living. If the just are to live by faith, the faith must be capable of adjustment to every variety of life that the just may be called upon to lead. "We talk of human life as a journey," says Sydney Smith, "but how variously is the journey performed." Variously indeed. It is a Pilgrim's Progress to us all, but to no two pilgrims is the progress the same.(1) Whether it be high life or life on a lower plane it is to be lived by faith. I have seen a bird on the topmost bough of a tree, and very sweetly he sang. But I have seen another bird perched on the lowest bough of that same tree, and he sang just as sweetly. And so you may put the just person on the uppermost branch or the undermost, but in either position he will live by faith.(2) Whether life be ordinary and commonplace, or exalted and heroic, it is to be lived by faith. Those humble duties of yours — you must look up to Heaven for strength to discharge them with fidelity. Your little cares — you must cast them all on Him who careth for you. It has been beautifully said, that "while God is great in great things, He is greatest in little things." Take to Him, therefore, the ounces of trouble as well as the pounds and the tons. But assuming your life to be lived on a more elevated platform and on a much grander scale — what then? Living by faith is still the rule. If you are summoned to Abrahamic duty, you have need of Abrahamic faith.(3) Whether life is long or short it is to be lived by faith. Length of life is a great blessing, but it is also a great trial. To hold out is often a harder thing than to hold fast or to hold on. How the unjust get on with that problem I do not know, but as for the just — I can speak for them — they live by faith; and there is nothing so strengthening as faith. In the case of short life I do not alter the prescription.(4) May we not add to this, that life at its highest pitch is to be lived by faith. There are periods of inspiration when we are alive at every point in our character, when there is no death in us at all, and we feel forceful, triumphant. We are strong for service, we are brave for endurance. Faith provides the channel by which God's life flows into our life. It is the link between our weakness and His almightiness.

5. But it is time to ask the question, By faith in what?(1) I answer, first and foremost, by faith in God. "Sever my connection with God," says Prince Bismarck, "and I am the man to pack up my trunks tomorrow, and go back to my country residence." The great statesman feels that he cannot occupy his difficult position, unless he has God to fall back upon.(2) Do not the just live also by their faith in Providence? It would be a great mainstay to us if we could only resign all things into God's hands and sweetly rest upon the promise. During the American war a poor coloured soldier came to General Grant in a state of great anxiety and asked him, "How are things getting on, General?" The General's answer was, "Everything is going right, sir." These words acted like magic. They were passed round the whole camp as a watchword, and one soldier might be heard cheering his fellow soldier with the assurance, "Everything is going right, sir." Christian, let that be a watchword with you also. Cherish a stronger faith in Providence.(3) Do we not also live by our faith in prayer?(4) Above all, let us live by faith in the Son of God. When we can trust in nothing else we can trust in Him: and when no comfort can be quarried out of our own hearts, we can always find comfort at the Cross.

(S. L. Wilson, M. A.)

1. Must be of the first importance.

2. Should be constantly preached.

3. Should be unhesitatingly received by the hearer. We will treat the four texts —

I. AS ONE:

1. Life is received by the faith which makes a man just. A man begins to live —(1) By a full acquittal from condemnation and penal death so soon as he believes in Christ.(2) As one raised from out of spiritual death so soon as he has faith in Christ o form of works, or profession, or knowledge, or natural feelings, can prove him to be an absolved and quickened man; but faith does this.

2. Life is sustained by the faith which keeps a man just.(1) He who is forgiven and quickened lives ever after as he began to live, viz., by faith. Neither his feelings, devotions, nor acquirements ever become his trust; he still looks out of himself to Jesus. He is nothing except so far as he is a believer.(2) He lives by faith as to all the forms of life.

(a)As a child and as a servant.

(b)As a pilgrim proceeding and a warrior contending.

(c)As a pensioner enjoying, and as an heir expecting.(3) He lives by faith in every condition.

(a)In joy and sorrow.

(b)In wealth and poverty.

(c)In strength and weakness.

(d)In labouring and languishing.

(e)In life and death.(4) He lives best when faith is at its best, even though in other respects he may be sorely put to it. He lives the life of Christ most blessedly when most intensely he believes in Christ.

3. Hearty belief in God, His Son, His promises, His grace, is the soul's life, neither can anything take its place. "Believe and live" is a standing precept both for saint and sinner (1 Corinthians 13:13).

II. SEPARATELY.

1. Habakkuk exhibits faith as enabling a man to live on in peace and humility, while as yet the promise has not come to its maturity. While waiting, we live by faith and not by sight. We are thus —(1) Able to bear up under the temporary triumphs of the wicked (Habakkuk 1).(2) Preserved from proud impatience at delay.(3) Filled with delight in confident expectation of good things to come.

2. Paul in the text exhibits faith as working salvation from the evil which is in the world through lust. The chapter presents an awful view of human nature, and implies that only faith in the gospel can bring us life in the form of —(1) Mental enlightenment of life as to the true God (vers. 19-23).(2) Moral purity of life (vers. 24, etc.).(3) Spiritual life and communion with that which is Divine and holy. Naturally men are corrupt. The law reveals our death (Romans 3:10-20); but the gospel imparts spiritual life to those who receive it by faith.

3. Galatians exhibits faith as bringing us that justification which saves us from the sentence of death. Nothing can be plainer than the declaration that no man is justified before God except by faith.

4. Hebrews exhibits faith as the life of final perseverance.(1) There is need of faith while waiting for heaven (vers. 32-36).(2) The absence of such faith would cause us to draw back (ver. 38).(3) That drawing back would be a fatal sign.(4) From that drawing back we are saved by faith.Conclusion:

1. What can you do who have no faith? In what other way can you be accepted with God?

2. On what ground can you excuse your unbelief?

3. Will you perish sooner than believe?

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

I. On what may be called HIS SECULAR SIDE.

1. Intellectually. Faith is necessary to mental soundness, and to efficient mental work. First principles must be taken for granted; results of previous workers must be accepted. To be ever digging foundations and discussing axioms not only wastes time, but unsettles and enervates the mind, and incapacitates it for healthy work. The just thinker works from established conclusions to first results.

2. Commercially. All business would be at a standstill but for faith — faith in self, faith in others, faith in success. The distrustful man is unjust to himself and all concerned, and eventually dies in bankruptcy.

3. Domestically. Family life is dead where the members distrust each other, but flourishes in full vigour when there is honest and implicit faith between husband and wife, etc.

4. Politically. Where there is no faith in principles, but only a scramble after place and power, political injustice supervenes and political life dies.

II. HIS SPIRITUAL SIDE.

1. As a religious character.

(1)Faith makes a man right.

(2)Faith keeps him right.

2. As a Christian worker. His is preeminently a work of faith, and only as such can he rightly perform it. He requires faith which —

(1)Lays hold of Divine strength.

(2)Supports him in the midst of discouragements.

(3)Relies on the Divine promise.

(4)Confidently anticipates future results.

3. As a Bible student. Faith —

(1)Accepts its mysteries without questioning.

(2)Transunites its truths into spiritual food. Without faith he is both unjust to the Bible and to himself. Instead of the Word of life it becometh the letter which killeth.

4. As an immortal being. Faith links the future with the present, makes both one, and sets the believer right with both.

(J. W. Burn.)

(Wm. Elliott.)

(A. Maclaren D. D.)

1. Unrighteousness.

2. Impenitence.

II. ITS REVELATION.

1. In the conscience.

2. In the Word of God.

3. In Divine providence.

III. ITS CONSUMMATION.

1. Certain.

2. Terrible.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)

II. Of a JUST God, who cannot but punish sin according to its true desert.

III. Of an OMNISCIENT God, whose eye there is no eluding, who is "greater than our hearts and knoweth all things."

IV. Of an ALMIGHTY God, whose ability to punish no created power can resist.

V. Of an UNCHANGEABLE God, whose nature must continue eternally opposed to sin, whose knowledge no forgetfulness can ever impair, and whose power eternity cannot weaken! "Who knoweth the power of His anger?"

(R. Wardlaw, D. D.)

1. In man it is an exciting passion. It shakes him to the very centre of his being. It is seen in his countenance; sometimes in a ghastly pallor, and sometimes in scarlet fire. Not so in God; it wakes no ripple on the infinite rivers of His being. He is ever of one mind.

2. In man it is a malignant passion. It burns with a desire to make its object miserable. But there is no malevolence in the heart of God. "Fury is not in Me." "God is love"; and all His other attributes are but so many forms of His love. All His threatenings are but love raising its warning voice to prevent His creatures from falling into rum.

3. In man it is a painful passion. The man who treasures anger inflicts a greater injury on himself than he can on the object of his hate. But nothing can disturb the peace of the "ever blessed God."

4. In man it is a selfish passion. Man's wrath is excited because something has occurred which he supposes injuriously affects him in some way or other. There is nothing of this kind in the wrath of God. No creature can injure Him.

II. THE AGREEMENT OF WRATH AS IT IS IN GOD AND AS IT IS IN MAN.

1. Repugnance. Wrath in man raises his whole nature against the offence, or the offender, or both. There is at once a recoil, and an antagonism. Is there nothing answering to this in the wrath of God, in relation to sin? There must. Wickedness is repugnant —(1) To His nature. He is essentially holy, and moral evil in all its forms must be necessarily disagreeable to Him (Proverbs 6:6).(2) To His procedure. The construction of the universe, the moral constitution of souls, the essential conditions of happiness, personal, social, and national, show that God's whole conduct as Creator and Governor is opposed to sin. As wrath in man separates him from his offender, wrath in God detaches Him from wickedness. He has no fellowship with wrong.

2. Retribution. There is in the wrath of man an avenging instinct. There is this retributiveness in the wrath of God. Not as a passion, but as an eternal and unalterable principle. The principle of retribution runs through the whole universe, so that the wrong never fails to meet with punishment. Thus the wicked now and here are "going away into everlasting punishment." Every sin is a step adown. Every sinful feeling is a nest where the furies hatch their swarming brood.Conclusion: This subject —

1. Corrects a theological error. The error is that Christ's death was an appeasement of Divine vengeance. Christ's mission was the effect, not the cause, of God's love.

2. Supplies a terrible warning to sinners. "Be sure your sins will find you out."

3. Urges the necessity of regeneration. The only way to avoid wrath is to avoid sin, the only way to avoid sin is by repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

II. The wrath of God is also revealed from heaven against EVERY SPECIES OF INJUSTICE AND CRIME. Under injustice I comprehend every injury done to character and to fidelity, as it respects promises and engagements; and it may be extended to every mean and insidious art by which another is overreached and circumvented.

III. IN WHAT MANNER THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD ARE MADE KNOWN AND EXECUTED. Man, by the moral constitution of his nature, is susceptible of various and intense punishment; and his corporeal frame subjects him to another species of it. The constitution of things is adapted to the nature of man, and is either adverse or friendly in proportion to his obedience or disobedience to the laws of his Maker.

(A. Stifling, LL. D.)

1. Its exhibition.(1) Men have renounced their Creator, receiving His gifts without acknowledging His kindness, and wilfully withholding from Him both homage and thanks.(2) The renunciation of Jehovah soon led to gross and palpable idolatry. Men must worship something; and when they refused to acknowledge God, they were driven to find substitutes for Him. For awhile they were content to adore the works of His hands; but ere long they set up the works of their own. So low did they sink that they worshipped images of themselves. Nothing has been too mean, or too obscene, for man to worship. He has taken and set up for his god that which he should only have shrunk from in disgust or cast away with shame.(3) With idolatry is connected —

(a)The most reckless profligacy of manners.

(b)Abandonment to every selfish and malignant passion.

2. Its guiltiness. It was wilful. Men had the truth, but stifled it in their unrighteousness; and therefore they were "without excuse." The race began with a sufficiency of Divine knowledge; but it interfered with their bad passions and propensities, and so they resolved to adapt their theology to their base practices. This disposition, started at an early period, was maintained by every succeeding generation. In each age the light diminished; but still in each enough remained to convict the human conscience of wrong. "God left not Himself without witness." Ever since the creation of the world His "eternal power and Divine supremacy" have been displayed in the material universe. Besides which, other means of religious instruction have always been accessible. Once in Judaism, and since in Christianity, God has maintained a testimony for Himself. Hence the wickedness of the world brings with it an infinite culpability.

II. GOD'S ANGER REVEALED AGAINST IT.

1. Its mode. This is various. It was declared of old by the prophets. It was displayed in the great crises of the world's history, as the Deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, and the downfall of Babylon, etc. Besides, there were the acknowledged miseries of life bewailed by philosophers and poets; could these be pondered by the thoughtful without the conviction that God was "angry with the wicked every day"? Above all there was death. Was it not in His wrath that the Almighty consumed the nations? All these evidences of God's anger, backed by the internal monitions of every man's conscience, were patent to all long before the time of Paul, but they had all been cast into the shade by a still mightier and more convincing demonstration furnished by the gospel of Christ.

2. Its burden. The thing revealed is that He hates sin, and is resolved severely to punish those who practise it. Each individual who persists in his iniquity will die, and after death be judged, condemned, and banished into "the outer darkness," etc. So also there is a day of wrath appointed for the world at large. Conclusion: Let the subject —

1. Convince you of sin.

2. Inspire you with salutary fear.

3. Turn you to the gospel of Christ.

(T. G. Horton.)

1. Its nature. It is no easy thing to speak of wrath in connection with God. Among us it is known to be a passion, and seldom a righteous passion. But it is not a passion in God: "Fury is not in Me"; in Him it is principle, the love of order, a determination to maintain equity, a resolution to punish sin. It results, therefore, from the perfection of His nature. The legislator is not angry when he promulgates his laws, nor the judge when he pronounces sentence. But the case is that society cannot be maintained without laws, and laws are nothing without penalties and sanctions. In all well-ordered countries crime is punished; and can it escape in the empire of a Being who is "righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works"? And this we contend to be essential to the very character of God. We could not esteem nor love Him if we supposed that He viewed equally truth and lies, honesty and injustice, cruelty and benevolence.

2. Its dreadfulness. If "the wrath of a king" be, as Solomon says, as "the roaring of a lion," what must the wrath of God be? "Who knoweth the power of His anger? Even according to Thy fear so is Thy wrath." In many cases the evil is far less than the fear; and when the reality comes it is found to be nothing compared with the apprehension. But here the reality will equal, will surpass all imagination.

II. THE REVELATION OF THIS WRATH to our very senses.

1. To our faith. This is done by the Scriptures. There hell is naked before it, and destruction has no covering; there faith beholds the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

2. To the conscience. Thus it is revealed in those uneasinesses and apprehensions which attend the commission of sin. When Joseph's brethren were in the hold, they said one to another, "We are verily guilty," etc. What was there here to remind them of Joseph? Oh, there was enough. Inhumanity deserves and demands punishment, and conscience knows it. And when Belshazzar saw the handwriting his face gathered terror, the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. Why? How does he know but that it is an eulogium upon his character, or an announcement of the raising of the siege, or a prediction of the extension of his reign? There was something within him that foreboded of evil; and the interpreter, therefore, only came in to confirm the exposition of his own feelings. So was it with Herod, who, when he heard of the fame of Jesus, said, "It is John the Baptist."

3. To our senses. All nature abounds throughout with tokens of God's displeasure against sin. And before we dismiss this part of the subject we will observe that, while the existence of this wrath shows us the holiness and justice of God, the revelation of it displays His mercy and His grace too. He would not take you sinners by surprise. He has revealed the wrath before that you may escape it.

III. THE OBJECTS AGAINST WHICH THIS WRATH IS REVEALED.

1. Ungodliness. Ungodliness comprehends all the sins against the first table of the law. The ungodly do not fear God, do not love Him, worship Him, confide in Him. God is not in all their thoughts; they practically say unto Him, "Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways."

2. Unrighteousness. Unrighteousness comprehends all the sins against the second table of the law. Unrighteousness is injustice in your regards and in your dealings with your fellow creatures.

3. All ungodliness, and all unrighteousness — the concealed and the open, the refined and. the gross. You do not worship a graven image, but then you take the name of your God in vain.

IV. THE CLASS OF VICTIMS PECULIARLY OBNOXIOUS TO IT. "Who hold the truth in righteousness."

1. The heathen themselves never lived up to the light they possessed. This is the charge directly brought home against them by the apostle in this chapter.

2. It was not otherwise also with the Jews, they never practised what they knew. This is the charge the apostle brings against them in the next chapter.

3. There is not a man that lives up to his own principles; he does many things which he knows to be wrong, and he omits many things which he knows to be right. The plea of ignorance therefore can only be admitted in the case of idiots. The original is, "who imprison the truth in unrighteousness"; that is, the truth would speak in them, and struggles to be heard; but it is confined, imprisoned. Fashion, the god of this world, the love of fame, the love of money, the love of pleasure, these are the jailers that confine the truth in prison. Saul knew it belonged not to him to offer sacrifice; his conscience told him, therefore, that it was a sin; he struggled hard, but yielded. "I forced myself." Herod knew John and revered him, yet for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he sent and beheaded John. It was the same with Pilate.Conclusion:

1. What then shall we say to the state of many born in a land of light, who have from children known the Holy Scriptures? With what accusing and condemning consciences you have forced yourselves on, you and God only know. I have read of a captain who, when he found his men begin to waver, threw himself on the ground, and exclaimed, "Well, if you will flee, you shall tread me under foot." Conscience has done the very same with regard to some of you.

2. Let me beseech you to practise what you know. Do you believe that covetousness is a sin? Let the conviction go free; be ready to distribute. If you believe it your duty to make a profession of religion, and to join the Church of God, why, then, go immediately and give up yourselves, not only "to the Lord," but "to His people," and be concerned to walk in all the ordinances of the Lord blameless.

3. Is there nothing else revealed from heaven but the wrath of God? We deserve nothing else; but is there no way of escape from it? We have a revelation of mercy and of grace too. Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come.

(W. Jay.)

1. They are ungodly. For, being the creatures of God, they owe to Him perpetual allegiance and service. Those who withhold this violate their moral obligations, and rob God of His due.

2. They are unrighteous. Indeed, it is hardly to be supposed that it could be otherwise. The more completely men are cut off from the fear of God the less regard do they have for the rights and happiness of their fellows. Besides, the claims of God being first and supreme, there can be no true righteousness where those claims are denied.

II. THIS BEING SO, WHAT ASPECT DOES THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOD OF NATURE ASSUME TOWARDS UNGODLINESS AND UNRIGHTEOUSNESS. Is it one of complacency? or of indifference? or not rather of active and resolute antagonism? Paul is not here writing of a revelation of righteous wrath which is to be made at the close of human history, but of one which is present and preparatory. It is made openly and incontestably "from heaven." Not that it comes glistering down from on high as the shaft of livid lightning. When M. Arnold affirms that "there is an eternal Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness"; and when the Psalmist exclaims that "the face of the Lord is against them that do evil," they but set forth, in varied form, the truth that "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven." For heaven is the throne of God; and that throne is but the symbol of His supreme legislative and executive dominion. From that heaven — that throne — the wrath of God is being perpetually revealed —

1. In the human conscience. What but the manifested power of conscience, as an actual revealer of the wrath of God from heaven, gave occasion to the Proverbs, that "the wicked trembleth at the shaking of a leaf," and "fleeth when no man pursueth"? Why fled our first parents, but that conscience had already revealed a coming wrath? Why that whispering, pallid terror in those ten bronzed Bedouins in the Egyptian treasure city? (Genesis 42:21, 12). Why does that agitated man in the temple treasury so vehemently press those officials to take from him his thirty pieces of silver? And why, when he finds that it cannot be recalled, does he hasten away to hang himself? Who knows not that conscience has compelled many a man to reveal secrets of iniquity, from whom no rack or torture could have extorted the disclosure? And though many a guilty conscience becomes so accustomed to its load as to be little incommoded thereby, it requires but that startling touch which Providence may, at any moment, give to cause it to awaken from its slumbers.

2. In the general moral sentiments of mankind — those sentiments as they are exercised in reference to those who invade human rights. It is quite true that, as human nature now is, it is not safe to leave the administration of justice in private hands. Therefore society has combined for the purpose of maintaining private rights by public power. This power for the administration of justice is ordained of God (Romans 13:1-7). And hence the penal laws and all the instruments of punishment are but so many mediums, through which the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

3. In the general course of providence, or of God's own administration of the universe in reference to men.(1) While those vices which terminate upon the individual himself, or which elude the vigilance of society, are subject to the remorse of conscience; and while those which prey upon the general community are repelled and punished by the officers of public justice; those which arise from the perversion or over-indulgence of bodily appetites are sooner or later overtaken and avenged by bodily disease and death. Now all these bear unmistakable testimony to the fact that the face of the Lord is indeed against them that do evil. But have we not also further proof of this in His more general government of nations and the race? Do we not find that so soon as any nation has become morally degenerate Providence has at once planted His standard and "hissed" for the gathering forces which should humiliate and punish that people?

4. In the Scriptures. In the Pentateuch the principles of the Divine government, including the revelation of wrath against sin, are clearly set forth. In the prophets those principles are so expounded and enforced as to warn against misapprehension and perversion; while in the historical books, the principles not only receive abundant illustration from God's actual treatment both of Gentiles and Jews, but the additional information is given, on God's own authority, that such and such calamities which had overtaken particular men and nations were revelations of His wrath from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of the sufferers. By these Scriptures the general truth is established beyond all contradiction, that "verily there is a God who judgeth in the earth"; and that, "though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished."Conclusion: But —

1. It should ever be remembered that this revelation of wrath is but preparatory and predictive. It is neither perfect nor universal. Many criminals remain undetected, and, in this respect, unpunished, and sometimes the innocent are wrongfully convicted and punished. The whole effect, therefore, of the present revelation of the wrath of God from heaven is to remind us that we are under moral government; and that all are hastening onwards towards that day in which "every one of us shall give account of himself to God."

2. And in prospect of that final retribution, this present revelation of the wrath of God from heaven may prove to us what ample and tremendous powers of punishment are provided for the unrighteous and ungodly.

(W. Tyson.)

(R. Wardlaw, D. D.)

1. They are prejudiced against it.

2. They positively hate it.

3. They neglect or misrepresent it.

4. They deny and dethrone it in order to enthrone and exalt falsehood.

5. They revile it.

(C. Nell, M. A.)

I. ALL THINGS DEMAND FOR THEIR PROPER DEVELOPMENT SUITABLE CONDITIONS AND SURROUNDINGS. Truth no exception to this rule. We observe that it requires —

1. An appreciative spirit — love for truth.

2. A receptive spirit — openness to truth,

3. An earnest spirit — zeal for truth. Such, and such alone, attain truth; into such minds only will truth enter or come to anything. This with respect to truth generally. Religious truth requires something more.

4. An obedient spirit (John 7:17; John 8:31, 32).

II. TRUST INVOLVES A MORAL ELEMENT BECAUSE IT DOES NOT CONCERN THE INTELLECT ALONE, BUT REGULATES THE LIFE. The text declares that unrighteousness — sin — represses the truth. This appears from the following considerations: Sin —

1. Destroys the love of truth.

2. Sensitiveness to truth.

3. Zeal for truth.

4. Obedience to truth.Hence it destroys the conditions necessary to the development and progress of God's truth.

III. IT FOLLOWS FROM ALL THIS.

1. That a sinner is disqualified for pronouncing upon Divine truth.

2. That our doubts — all scepticism — are finally referable to a sinful nature in ourselves rather than to any inherent difficulties in the truth itself.

3. That the progress of Christ's religion is hindered not only by outward sin, but by the imperfections and inconsistencies of those who profess it.

(H M. Jackson.)

1. The truth of natural religion, or the dictates of a natural conscience, agreeable to those common notices of good and evil left in man since the Hall.

2. The truth of revealed religion, which comprehends the whole truths of the law and of the gospel also.

II. HOW MEN HOLD TRUTH PRISONER.

1. In others.(1) By putting truth into an ill name, casting reproach and disgrace upon it, on whatever pretences.(2) By resisting and opposing the truth.(3) By an authoritative shutting up of truth. This often follows as a judgment.

2. In themselves. This is what the text mainly aims at. It is kept prisoner —(1) With respect to others, when it is kept back from preventing sin in them. This is done two ways.(a) When it is restrained by undue silence. If the Lord call men to bring it forth, silence in that case is a bond laid on truth. "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words," etc. When is truth held prisoner by undue silence?(i) Negatively, not when one has no sufficient call to bring it forth. "There is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak." And in discerning these times there is much spiritual wisdom. Truth kept in silence, during the proper time of silence, is not kept prisoner, but entertained in its lodging suitable to its character. "A fool uttereth all his mind, but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards." Truth is too sacred a thing to bring forth just to make a show of, and far more to prostitute to men's lusts and humours. There is an unseasonable venting of truth, by which truth and holiness gain nothing, but lose much (1 Samuel 22:10). Our Lord forbids it. "Neither cast ye your pearls before swine."(ii) Positively, when the honour of Goal requires the bringing it forth (Mark 8:38). When the Lord's honour is at stake, truth is like a fire that will seek a vent, and get it in a tender soul. Thus speaks Jeremiah, "His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." And it exposes men to the wrath of God, to hold in truth in that case, for that is to sacrifice God's glory to men's own interests. Again, to hold it in when the good of our neighbour requires it to come forth, is to hold it prisoner, "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him." Where there is any probable appearance of sin's being prevented in others, by means of the coming forth of truth, it is not to be held in, nor can it be so, without the guilt of imprisoning it.(b) When by words or actions, one holding in the truth, leads another into sin. This is to hold truth prisoner with a witness, shutting the prison door with double bars.(2) In themselves several ways. As by —(a) Neglecting, overlooking, and not adverting to it in the management of their hearts and lives. The light shines about them, but they take no notice of it to order their steps by it. This is put the Lord's candle in them, under a bushel.(b) Not obeying truth speaking to them in their consciences.(c) Going on in opposition to known truth, knowing the right and doing the wrong. "They are of those that rebel against the light."(d) By overcoming the truth in their war against it. Many a battle there is betwixt truth in the conscience and a man's lusts, till the man taking part with his lusts against the truth, convictions are murdered, the troublesome light in the soul is put out, and truth is taken and held prisoner, that it can no more disturb the man in the enjoyment of his lusts.

III. TRUTH IS UNJUSTLY THUS TREATED, WRONGLY HELD PRISONER BY SINNERS. This is clear, for that —

1. It is God's messenger to men and His deputy in the soul, over which they have no power and authority. So that one cannot hold it prisoner but in unrighteousness, or in rebellion against the God of truth.

2. It is never guilty of any crime against men, that it should be so treated. Falsehood and lies are ever contrary to men's true interest, but the truth is never so.

3. It cannot be held prisoner but for an unrighteous cause, and in favour of some lust or other.

4. A just God will clear it, and set it free at the cost of those who hold it prisoner. "They shall know, saith the Lord, whose word shall stand, Mine or theirs." If truth prevail not to men's reformation, it will prevail to their destruction.

IV. TO CONFIRM THE DOCTRINE. Consider —

1. A person's treating truth thus is rebellion against God, who is the God of truth and Lord of light. "If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things."

2. It exposes men to severe temporal judgments. It was our first parents holding truth prisoner which brought in the flood of miseries on the world (see also 1 Peter 3:19, 20).

3. It exposes to spiritual judgments (Isaiah 6:8-10; Romans 1:21-23).

4. It exposes to eternal judgments.Conclusion: Consider —

1. The evil of it.

(1)It is ingratitude to God of the deepest dye.

(2)It is direct disobedience to God, a flying in the face of His orders.

(3)It is a rising up against God in open rebellion and war.

(4)It is working against our own interest in favour of Satan and our lusts.It is the putting out of the candle which God in compassion to our darkness has lighted unto us. It is like one travelling through a wilderness of pits, rising up against his guide, binding him and casting him into one of them. Like captives conspiring against their deliverers, or sick men against their physicians, to their own ruin.

2. The greatness of the hazard.

(1)Men so doing grow worse and worse.

(2)It brings on judicial blindness.

(3)It brings on judicial hardness (Isaiah 6:10).

(4)It provokes God to give up with men and to give them over to their own lusts. Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone.

(5)It paves the way to the unpardonable sin (Hebrews 6:1-8).

(6)It is often punished with the prevailing of the spirit of error and delusion (Isaiah 66:3, 4).

(7)It provokes God to remove the gospel from among a people, and to leave them in darkness (Revelation 2:5).

(8)It will aggravate a person's torment in hell.It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. Remember the doom of the servant who knew his master's will, but did it not. As the sharpest vinegar comes of the most generous wine, so the most fierce wrath comes from the despising of truth revealed to one in the gospel.

3. Set truth free, loose its bands that it may reign freely in your hearts and lives. That is —

(1)Resist not truth laid before you.

(2)Slight not nor overlook truth in the conduct of your lives.

(3)Submit to the truth, to the truth in the Word, and to truth in your conscience, as the ruler of your life.

(a)It will set you at liberty. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

(b)The way of truth is the way of holiness and happiness.

(T. Boston, D. D.)

1. Truth in the spheres of science, literature, art, philosophy, is an object worth attaining. But it is not in reference to such truth that Paul writes. Truth, indeed, is one, in whatever you may find it, whether in geological records or in the Bible. It means universally the reality as opposed to that which is not real. Now we want to know what the reality is in everything that comes before our minds. We want the historian to give us the reality as he narrates for us the events of history. So also in the higher matters of religion. The truth about God and His relation to man; truth bearing upon our duties, destiny — this is our supreme want. That which distinguishes us from the brutes is the possession of a religious nature with its moral capacities.

2. It is only as this religious nature grows that the man himself can be said to truly grow; and this growth can proceed only in connection with religious truth, which is its proper food. Take away light and moisture from the plant, and it dies. So our spiritual being can live and grow only in the light and under the vitalising influence of religious truth. Christ assigns two functions to Divine truth in relation to our fallen humanity.(1) A liberating work. Christ says, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." With all the progress of civilisation, and the spirit of civil and political liberty, moral slavery still prevails among every people. And men are not very adverse to it. A very real slavery this; because, while the body may be free, the man himself is fettered by the love of sin and the spirit of worldliness. How shall he be made free? The truth is the only instrument to effect his liberation. "The truth," not any truth. The truths of physical science or of political philosophy, however precious for other purposes, are wholly insufficient for the liberation of a soul from sin and guilt.(2) A sanctifying work. "Sanctify them through Thy Truth." Growth in holiness of character is the great thing — greater than any advancement in culture, than brilliant talents and genius; than the acquisition of material wealth or social rank and power. As we grow in holiness we grow in real greatness and in real happiness.

II. MAN'S CONDUCT IN REFERENCE TO "THE TRUTH." It does not get access to the heart, does not get its rightful power and ascendancy; it is checked, hindered, held back in its design to bless by unrighteousness. In what way? Notice —

1. That sin extinguishes the love and desire for the truth. It does not do so in regard to secular truth. The astronomer in his observatory, the chemist in his laboratory, the geologist among the rocks — each in his own way seeks the truth and desires it. But it is very different in regard to "the truth" as it comes to us in God's Word, and sounds in the conscience. Why?(1) Because it does not offer itself as mere abstract truth, to excite speculative interest; it comes with great demands; it is truth which claims obedience; and it is not so easy always to obey the truth as to talk about it and admire it.(2) "The truth" is a rebuke to a life of sin; and we do not like to be rebuked for that which we know to be wrong.(3) "The truth," again, reveals to man the peril to which a life of sin exposes him. The sinner, therefore, closes his eyes to it. He desires to be undisturbed and at peace in his sin.

2. Sin destroys the soul's sensitiveness to the truth. It weakens the soul's power of moral perception, beclouds the inner vision.

(A. Bell, B. A.)

I. HIS MEANS OF INFORMATION. Conscience; nature; providence.

II. THE EXTENT OF HIS INFORMATION. God's natural perfections, eternity, power, wisdom, etc.; even something of His justice, etc.; but nothing of His infinite holiness and mercy.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)

II. NEVER TOTAL God reveals Himself in the conscience, in nature.

III. A JUDICIAL CONSEQUENCE OF SIN. Sin darkens the heart, eclipses the intellect.

IV. A PRECURSOR OF FINAL JUDGMENT. They are without excuse.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)

II. SUFFICIENT. "That which may be known." God knows best what this is. Enough has been revealed to make us holy and happy; let us be thankful.

III. MANIFEST to reason and conscience. Reason approves the contents of revelation as true, and conscience accepts them as good.

IV. CLEAR. Therefore —

1. Study it.

2. Embrace it.

3. Carry it out.

(J. W. Burn.)

(J. Cumming, D. D.)

(J. Culross, D. D.)

(C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

1. In respect of the fulness of being that is in Him. We sooner find out the sun than a lesser light, the sea than a little fountain.

2. In respect of the ways of knowing Him. We come to a more certain knowledge of God —(1) By way of perfection. We need not fear to say too much of God. If we speak of man's soul, or of an angel, we may speak too much; but of God we cannot speak too much.(2) By way of negation. We can never remove imperfection far enough from God. When we have done our most we must say, God is beyond what finite and limited understandings can lay out.

3. In respect of our relation to Him. We stand nearer related to God than to anything in the world; our souls and bodies are not nearer related than our souls and God (Acts 17:28).

4. In respect of our dependence upon Him, and His conservation of us and cooperation with us. Any man that is in any degree spiritual and intellectual, and not altogether sunk down into sense and brutish affections, seeks in himself foreign suggestions and whispers that direct him better and carry him beyond his own mind and resolves (Job 32:8; 35:27).

II. I INFER —

1. The excellency of religion. It is no stranger to human nature, nor any of the eminent notable acts of it. Man contradicts his own principles and departs from himself when he falls off from God.

2. The use of reason in matters of religion. In religion there is the natural knowledge of God, and the knowledge of the revelation of His will. In the former we are made to know; in the latter we are called to partake of God's counsel. In the former we know that God is and what His nature is; and in the latter we know what God enjoins in order to oar future happiness.

3. That there is no invincible ignorance as to the great rights, viz., that God is to be worshipped and adored, and that there is a difference between good and evil. If a man varies from these laws, he contracts guilt to his conscience, and is condemned by the sense of his own mind.

4. That reason is so far from doing any disservice to Christian faith, that it fits men to receive it. For man in the true use of his reason, knowing that he hath not performed his duty to God, reason puts him upon deprecating God's displeasure, and to think that God, who is the first and chiefest good, will certainly be ready to commiserate the case of him who repents and returns to duty. And this is gospel, that Jesus came into the world to confirm. And taking up the Bible and finding that "God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself," Reason says, "This is that I did expect: I did believe such a thing from the first and chiefest good; and now I am assured of it by the gospel."

5. Since the great things of religion and conscience are committed to reason to keep and secure, why should we think the reason of a man may not be trusted with those things that are of lesser moment.

III. THE IMPIOUS AND PROFANE ARE THEREFORE WITHOUT EXCUSE. There is a natural sense of Deity in every rational soul; and this is fundamental to all religion. The eternal power and Godhead are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. If men are ignorant, it is through their own fault; either through the neglect of their own faculties, or through an inobservance of the great effects of God in the world, which show and declare what He is. To pursue the argument a little further. The Scripture doth thus represent the state of man's creation that the proper employment of mind is to inquire after God (Acts 17:27). God did never intend that reason should ever be adjudged to be a hewer of wood or a drawer of water, but for observance of God and attendance upon Him. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." A candle is a thing first lighted, then lighting; so that mind is first made light by Divine influences, and then enlightens a man in the use thereof to find out God, and to follow after Him in creation and providence. And we find degeneracy is thus described: "They have no fear of God before their eyes." "Without God in the world." And it is the fool's sense that "there is no God." There is therefore no plea for want of the sense of Deity.

1. No invincible difficulty lies upon any man but that he may come to the cognisance of a God. Not the difficulty of —(1) Ignorance; for we are made to know there is a God.(2) Impotency; for every man may use his natural parts and powers.(3) Foreign impediment; for it is a transaction performed within a man's self. If anyone be devoid of all sense of Deity, I declare it is the malignity of the subject upon a three-fold account. First, because of the nearness of God to us. Secondly, because of the sagacity of our faculties. And thirdly, because of the nearness of light of knowledge.

2. There are invitations everywhere afforded us to acts of acknowledgment and taking cognisance of God.(1) The communications of God awaken us. All we have and are is by a voluntary communication from God. We are nowhere but receivers.(2) The very principles of man's make do incline him to God. All things move to their centre, and God is the centre of immortal souls. Caesar's money was no more properly his than mind is God's; for it bears His impress. The soul of man, ally ways by violence torn off from God, is like leaves fallen off from the trees, that wither away; but in God, who is their centre, they have rest, perfection, and quiet.(3) If we consider the whole creation about us, they contribute, by way of object, to God's glory; for they have not ability to do it by way of efficiency. And this is the sense of the Psalmist. For mind in man is to see and observe the wisdom and power and goodness of God.

3. To speak a little more home, and only to the Christian world. There is God's superadded instrument, the Bible, which contains matter of revelation from God whereby also our natural notices of God are awakened and enlivened. Being disposed by the two former arguments, this Book gives further assurance. So that here are my three arguments.(1) The language of our own souls within.(2) The impressions of the Divine wisdom throughout the whole creation, and objective acclamations of all creatures, carry us strongly on to the knowledge of God.(3) Holy Scripture comes in to the pursuance of these, to repeat and reinforce them, so that he must needs be of a stupid mind, or a havocked conscience, or dissolute in his life and manners, that lives in the midst of so many arguments, and doth not spell out God and understand the audible language of heaven and earth.Conclusion: Note —

1. The infinite patience of God to endure men of stupid minds, havocked consciences, and profligate lives (Hebrews 12:3).

2. The business of the Day of Judgment is very easy on God's part, but very sad on degenerate men's part. For God's work is prepared to His hands; all sinners are self-condemned.

3. The greatness of the work of reconciliation. A man must be made whole in himself, or else he cannot be kept out of hell. A man cannot be at ease until all that he hath sinfully done be undone, and until right judgment hath been renewed which hath been violently forced, and regular life and conversation be restored. Now these are the materials of regeneration.

(B. Whichcote, B. D.)

(P. Hiller.)

(J. Pulsford.)

I. Even THE HEATHEN read it there. The mythology of Greece, in its purer and earlier stage, was but an expression of the sights they saw and the lessons they read therein. In Homer, the earliest of Greek poets, we see throughout this cheerful piety. St. Paul himself appeals to the holy lessons which the Greek poets had learnt from the works of God. "We are all God's offspring"; "God giveth us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness"; and, in my text, he argues with the Romans that God was manifest even to the heathen, because "the invisible things of Him," etc. Many an age had intervened between the early Greek singers and the late Stoic philosophers; yet in them, too, we find exactly the same feeling to the works of God. "All things," says Marcus Aurelius, "come from that universal power. Everything harmonises with me which is harmonious to thee, O universe! Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring." Is not this the language in every age of natural piety? And if, in all ages, it has been thus that the best and wisest have interpreted the universe, is not that alone a proof that God meant it to be so interpreted?

II. THE SCRIPTURES leave us in no doubt upon that matter. Read over Psalm 104, which has been called the natural theology of the old Jews. It is eminently refreshing, at all times, to turn from the wordy strifes, and petty jealousies, and miserable interests of earth, to these sweet and wholesome truths of natural theology. When God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind to console his sorrows, to revive his sinking faith, He points him to the sweet influences of the Pleiades and the bands of Orion, etc. And is it not thus in our Lord's own sermon on the Mount? Did not our Lord speak there of the fowls of the air and of the lilies of the field? And does He not draw parables from the simplest objects of nature? Why should He have done so if it were not to show us that this universe is a parable of God?

III. GOD'S TRUE SAINTS IN ALL AGES have not been unmindful of the lesson. They have ever regarded nature as a revelation of God's awfulness and goodness, of God's care and love. When St. Anthony was asked how he could exist without books, he replied that to him who read the two books of Scripture and of nature no other teaching was necessary. Take the medieval saints. St. Bernard said that the oaks and beeches of Clairvaux had been his best masters in theology. St. Francis thanks God "for our brother, my lord the sun, and for our sister, the moon, and for the jocund strength and irresistible brightness of our brother, the fire, and for the sweet, chaste usefulness of our sister, the water." Take the outburst of our own Milton, "These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good," etc.; and the sweet hymn of the poet-statesman, "The spacious firmament on high," etc.; and the touching story of the dying Livingstone, revived into the effort which saved his life by seeing there, in the African desert, the little tuft of moss, and thinking that if God could water that little beaming moss, and keep it moist with the dew and bright with the sunshine, He surely would care for him.

IV. And this also has ever been the attitude of all TRUE SCIENCE. It is the attitude of Bacon, praying that after labouring in God's works with the sweat of his brow, God would make him partaker of His rest and Sabbath. It is the attitude of Faraday, worshipping Sunday after Sunday in his little, quiet Dissenting chapel. It is the attitude of Linnaeus falling on his knees under the open sky to thank God for the unspeakable beauty of fields, golden in the sunshine with a summer gloss.

V. And such, also, is THE INTUITION OF GENIUS. The great poets, painters, musicians of this and the close of the last century, seem to have been specially commissioned to interpret nature to man. Who that has heard the thrilling jubilance of the "Creation," has not seen, as it were, a new door opened into heaven — has not been drawn nearer to the presence chamber of God? To Wordsworth it was given to make others feel that "the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." To Turner it was given to perpetuate the most transient glories of nature, and the scenes he painted became an apocalypse of the splendour and the meaning of the world. The greatest thing which Ruskin's writings have done for us has been to show us how all creation testifies to its God, and that we miss the happiness which His mercy has provided when we fail to trust Him, and to learn of Him as we drink in the delights of the hearing ear and the seeing eye. Conclusion: Believe me, it is often the most humble and obvious arguments which are most irresistible; and the simple earthwork stops the cannon ball which shatters the buttress into dust. Once when the great Napoleon was sailing to Egypt, he sat on the deck with a circle of distinguished savans around him, who were openly boasting of their infidelity. He listened in silence; but as he rose to leave them, he raised his arm towards the starry canopy of night, and he asked them the simple question, "It is all very well to talk, gentlemen, but who made all those?" And if this natural conviction has been shaken in some minds by the pride of science, it has, as we have seen, been simultaneously intensified in others; and that is why the great painters, and poets, and musicians have not only saved many of us from being crushed by the revelations, or inflated by the discoveries, of science; but, pouring on every realm of nature a flood of Divine illumination, they have opened our eyes to beauties before unnoticed, and filled our souls with melody, which heaven only can excel.

(Archdeacon Farrar.)

II. WHEREVER WE SEE ORDER, WE SEE AN EVIDENCE OF MIND.

1. When we see that changes have been produced through which there runs a principle of order, we are compelled, by the very constitution of our nature, to say, Here is not only a power which causes these changes, but one which has intelligence.(1) "One day at Naples," says a French writer, "a certain person in our presence put six dice into a box, and offered a wager that he would throw sixes with the whole set. I said that the chance was possible. He threw the dice in this way twice in succession; and I still observed that he had succeeded by chance. He put back the dice into the box for the third, fourth, and fifth time, and invariably threw sixes with the whole set. Then I exclaimed, 'The dice are loaded!' and so they were. And when I look at the order of nature, and consider that there is but one chance which can preserve the universe in the state I now see it, and that this always happens in spite of a hundred millions of other possible chances of perturbation and destruction, I cry out, 'Surely nature's dice are also loaded'"; which is just saying that order is due to intelligence.(2) Or suppose you come upon a quantity of type lying in confusion. You say these types have been thrown together by accident. But close beside this confused mass you find a form of types, which are so placed as to make words, and the words sentences, and the sentences a continuous story. What would you be constrained to conclude? That it was the result, not of chance, but of intelligence.(3) Or let us take this building. There you have window, doorway, wall, roof, forming a structure in which you see unity, order, and beauty. All this, you know, is the result of intelligence, and any man who would try to persuade you that as much order and beauty can be produced by mere blind force acting on matter, might as well ask you to give up using your reason altogether.

2. Now, when we turn to nature, we find order everywhere. There may be much in the world of which we do not know the precise use, except that of ornament. The architect who planned this building designed much which was not needed, except to please the eye. And so, in the works of nature, we find precisely the same thing. As Professor Le Comte puts it, "The law of order underlies and conditions the law of use"; and he illustrates this in the following way.(1) He goes back to the period when fishes were the only representatives of the vertebrate plan of structure. This machine, as he calls the fish, was a swimming machine, fitted for locomotion in the water. Ages pass away, and then reptiles appear; but there is no new organ created to enable them to crawl upon the land. The swimming organ is so modified as to become a crawling one. Ages again pass away, and then birds are introduced. Here again the same order is modified, and becomes a wing which enables them to move in the air. Ages again pass away, and at last man appears on the scene. What is wanted now is not a fin, nor a wing, but a hand; and this is obtained by another modification of the same organ. "And thus, in the hand of man, in the forefoot of a quadruped, in the paw of the reptile, in the wing of a bird, and in the fin of the fish, the same organ is modified for different purposes."(2) Dr. M'Cosh arranges order under four heads — number, time, colour, and form. Take —(a) Number. You find seven bones in the vertebrae of the neck of all mammalia, whether the neck be short or long.(b) Colour. Seldom or never are the two primary colours, blue and red, found on the same organ, or in contact on the same plant. Every dot in the flower comes in at the proper place, every tint and shade and hue is in accordance with all that is contiguous to it.(c) Form. All minerals crystallise in certain forms, and every living object, though composed of numerous parts, has a definite shape as a whole, and a normal shape for each of its organs.(3) But take a wider view. Sweep the universe with your eye, and you will everywhere find order. "Our own planet is so related to the sun and moon that seed time and harvest, the ebb and flow of tides, never fail. The countless millions of suns and stars are so arranged and distributed in relation to one another, or in accordance with the profoundest mathematics, as to secure the safety of one and all, and to produce everywhere harmony and beauty" (Prof. Flint). Now can you think of that universal order and beauty without thinking of a mind behind it to which they are due?

3. But all this, we are told, is the result of evolution, in which force is revealed but mind dispensed with. But evolution only describes a process, and does not account for it. It is not enough to point to force as the explanation; it may account for change, but not for order. Force throws no light upon the evolution of protoplasm now into a fish, now into a bird, and now into a man. The prevalence of order is the "reign of law"; and the "reign of law" is the reign of mind.

III. IN THE ARRANGEMENTS AND ADAPTATIONS TO ENDS WHICH WE FIND IN MATTER WE HAVE ALSO THE EVIDENCE OF MIND.

1. Take the simple illustration of a rude hut. The materials are so placed and adapted that you have not only order, but a useful end; you have a contrivance, an evidence here of design, and this means that you have here a proof of mind. Or take the steam engine. There you have iron, water, coal, and fire; but observe how they are arranged. The iron is so disposed as to furnish a receptacle for the water, and a chamber into which coals can be put and lighted. You have also cylinders, pistons, connecting rods, and wheels. And then the connection of all the parts is such that, when the coals are lighted, the water is changed into steam, which gives motion to piston, rod, and wheel, and sends the engine along its track, or propels the vessel over the ocean. No mere shaking of coal, iron, and water, for any period, however lengthened, and by any forces, however mighty, could ever have resulted in forming such an engine. No union and adjustment of them, such as we have, could have been brought about by mere chance. This adaptation and arrangement of different elements of matter, so as to accomplish this end, the production of motive power, required mind, ay, and vastly more of it than the construction of a rude hut.

2. Now, let us turn to the works of nature, and we shall see that whether we look to earth, or ocean, or sky, or man, we meet everywhere with arrangements for distinct ends, which reveal the highest intelligence, and not only constrain belief in the Divine existence, but rouse to admiration and praise.(1) We take this globe, which revolves around the sun. There are two forces acting upon it, which balance each other — the one tending to draw it towards, and the other to draw it away from, the sun. If the first of these had been greater than it is, the earth would have been drawn into the sun and destroyed; and if the second had been stronger than it is, then, just as a stone slung round the head flies off when the string is let go, so the earth would have rashed from its orbit into darkness and ruin. In this adjustment of forces, then, which preserves our world, do we not see the manifestations of a controlling mind?(2) We take the book which the geologist has opened. The great convulsions it records prove to have been but the birth throes of a world fitted for the varied necessities of the living creatures which inhabit it. The coal and the iron, for example, which, more than anything else, have contributed to human civilisation and comfort, have had their strata tilted up by these, so that man could reach them. The disposition of land and water; the elevation, slope, and direction of the mountain ranges; the scooping out of the valleys; the elevation of vast plateaus; the formation of the lakes; the streams; the oceanic currents — all these affect the temperature, rainfall, and vegetation.(3) Turn to the atmosphere, which is essential to life.(a) Its chemical elements are being constantly abstracted in the vital processes of vegetable and animal; but what the one consumes the other supplies; and so, by this and other arrangements, the balance of elements in the air is maintained, otherwise it would become unfit to support life.(b) Look at it us the medium for the diffusion of light and heat and sound. If we had no atmosphere, then, while every object on which the sun's rays fell would dazzle us by its brightness, everything else would be in the deepest darkness. Nor could we hear, for the air is necessary to the transmission of sound. Nor could the heat of the sun's rays be retained and diffused without an atmosphere.(4) From dead matter let us turn to organic or living matter. Take vegetable life. When a certain cycle of existence has been passed, vegetable growths die; but before they die they make provision for the continuance of their species.(5) Let us ascend to a higher region. The structure of the human body. "How complicate I how wonderful is man!" The writer of one of the old Hermetic books called "The Divine Poemander" puts the argument from man's structure in this way: "Consider, O son, how man is made and framed in the womb; and examine diligently the skill and cunning of the workman, and learn who it was that wrought and fashioned the beautiful and divine shape of man. Who circumscribed and marked out his eyes? Who bored his nostrils and ears? Who opened his mouth? Who stretched out and tied together his sinews? Who hardened and made strong the bones? Who clothed the flesh with skin? Who divided the fingers and the joints? Who flattened and made broad the soles of the feet? Who digged the pores? Who stretched out the spleen? Who made the heart like a pyramid? Who made the liver broad and the lungs spongy and full of holes? Who made the belly large and capacious? Who set to view the more honourable parts and hid the filthy ones? See how many arts in one matter; and how many works in one superscription, and all exceedingly beautiful, and all done in measure, and yet all differing. Who hath made all these things? What mother? What father? Save only God that is most manifest — that made all things by His own will." Now, "Who in the world is a verier fool," as Jeremy Taylor puts it, "than he who is an atheist?...Can anything in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance for blind force when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects and no cause; an excellent government and no prince; a motion without an immovable; a circle without a centre; a time without an eternity; a second without a first; a thing that begins not from itself, and therefore not to perceive that there is something from whence it does begin, which must be without beginning; these things are so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must needs be a beast in understanding who does not assent to them; this is the atheist. 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.'"

(A. Oliver, B. A.)

(R. W. Emerson.)

1. By the works of nature.(1) Every effect must have a cause. You see the picture of a flower or a bird, and you ask at once, Who drew it? You behold a statue, and you inquire, Who was the sculptor? But how much more is a real flower, bird, man, the proof of a Creator!(2) The same conviction is only confirmed when you observe the adaptation of means to ends. The plant is designed to be stationary, and accordingly its roots are firmly fixed in the earth. The bird was designed for locomotion, and hence in its wings we find a perfect apparatus for transporting it from place to place. Man was intended to govern all creatures, and accordingly he is endowed with an understanding that renders him capable of doing so: the human understanding — the most wonderful of the works of nature — cannot be accounted for, but upon the ground of the existence of an Infinite Mind. Vegetation was to be sustained, and hence roots have so many mouths to extract nourishment from the soil, while their leaves are for lungs to inhale from the atmosphere those gases that are congenial and to exhale those that are unwholesome. Vegetation was to be propagated, and hence every plant is made to produce its own seeds; and in the work of sowing them, winds, waves, and animals, are all made to do their part. The construction and furnishing of this world were intended mainly to promote the welfare of the human family — and how admirably is this object accomplished! Do our lungs need air? Nothing is so free. Do we need food to satisfy our hunger? It springs up all around us. Do we require water to slake our thirst? Its limpid currents murmur at our feet. Do we want clothing to defend us against the changes of the seasons? It grows in our fields, or is brought to our doors upon the backs of the bleating flocks.

2. In providence.(1) Which connects vicious habits with disease, disgrace, and poverty, and a virtuous life with health, wealth, and honour.(2) Which leads to the detection and punishment of crime, and which pursues every criminal with the scorpion lash of self-condemnation.(3) As exerted in favour of that best and purest system of morals, the Christian religion.

3. In the Scriptures. Here we have the portraiture of His moral character.

4. To the soul by His Spirit.

II. IMPROVEMENT. This doctrine lies at the foundation of all religious truth. This established, and the most important inferences follow.

1. To the impenitent hearer. If there is a God, He is your Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer; and you are under infinite obligations to serve and obey Him.

2. To Christians this doctrine is the source of great consolation. If there is a God, the Christian's hopes are all safe; death loses its terror, and the bright visions of heavenly bliss are a glorious reality.

(N. Rounds, A. M.)

(J. Arrowsmith.)

(A. G. Jackson.)

II. THE PERSONS CHARGED WITH THIS SIN. The old heathen philosophers, who "professed themselves to be wise." Their great title was σοφοί, and the word of applause, still given to their lectures, was σοφῶς. was the first who brought σοφὸς down to φιλόσοφος, from a master to a lover of wisdom, from a professor to a candidate. These grandees and giants in knowledge looked down upon the rest of mankind, and laughed at them as barbarous and insignificant, yet blundered and stumbled about their grand and principal concern, the knowledge of their duty to God, sinking into the meanest and most ridiculous instances of idolatry — having confessed a God, and allowed Him an infinite power and an eternal Godhead, they yet denied Him the worship of God. Had the poor vulgar rout only been abused into such idolatrous superstitions, it might have been detested or pitied, but not so much to be wondered at: but for the stoa, the academy, or the peripaton to own such a paradox; for an , or a , to think their Eternal Mind, or Universal Spirit, to be found in the images of four-footed beasts; for the Stagirite to recognise his gods in his own book, "De Animalibus," this, as the apostle says, was "without excuse."

III. THE CAUSE OR REASON OF THEIR FALLING THIS SIN: their holding of the truth in unrighteousness.

1. What was the truth here spoken of? There were these six great truths, the knowledge of which the Gentile philosophers stood accountable for: as —(1) That there was a God; a being distinct from matter, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, good and holy. And this was a truth written with a sunbeam, clear and legible to all mankind, and received by universal consent.(2) That this God was the Maker and Governor of this visible world. The first of which was evident from the very order of causes; and the second followed from it; for that a creature should not depend upon its Creator in all respects (among which, to be governed by Him is one), is contrary to the common order and nature of things. Besides all which it is also certain that the heathens did actually acknowledge the world governed by a Supreme Mind.(3) That this God was to be worshipped. For this was founded upon His omnipotence and His providence.(4) That this God was to be worshipped by virtuous and pious practices. For so much His essential holiness required.(5) That upon any deviation from virtue and piety, it was the duty of every rational creature to repent of it. The conscience of every man, before it is debauched and hardened by habitual sin, will recoil after the doing of an evil action, and acquit him after a good.(6) That every such deviation rendered the person liable to punishment. And upon this notion, universally fixed in the minds of men, were grounded all their sacrifices.

2. These truths they held in unrighteousness.(1) By not acting up to what they knew. As in many things their knowledge was short of the truth, so almost in all things their practice fell short of their knowledge. The principles by which they walked were as much below those by which they judged, as their feet were below their head. By the one they looked upwards, while they placed the other in the dirt. For they neither depended upon God as if He were almighty, nor worshipped Him as if they believed Him holy. For the proof of which go over all the heathen temples, and take a survey of the absurdities and impieties of their worship, their monstrous sacrifices, their ridiculous rites and ceremonies. And then so notoriously did they balk the judgment of their consciences, in the plainest duties relating to God, their neighbour, and themselves; as if they had owned neither God nor neighbour, but themselves.(2) By not improving those known principles into the proper consequences deducible from them. For surely, had they discoursed rightly but upon this one principle, that God was a Being infinitely perfect, they could never have been brought to assert or own a multiplicity of gods. Nor could they have slid into those brutish immoralities, had they duly cherished these first practical notions and dictates of right reason. But they quickly stifled and overlaid those seeds of virtue sown by God in their own hearts, so that they brought a voluntary darkness and stupidity upon their minds (ver. 21).(3) By concealing what they knew. For how rightly soever they might conceive of God and of virtue, yet the illiterate multitude were never the wiser for it. Socrates was the only martyr for the testimony of any truth that we read of amongst the heathens. As for the rest, even Zeno and Chrysippus, Plato and Aristotle swam with the stream, leaving the poor vulgar as ignorant, vicious, and idolatrous as they first found them. And thus I have shown three notable ways by which the philosophers held the truth in unrighteousness. This disposed them to greater enormities; for, "changing the truth of God into a lie," they became like those who, by often repeating a lie to others, come at length to believe it themselves. They owned the idolatrous worship of God so long, till, by degrees, even in spite of reason and nature, they thought that He ought so to be worshipped. But this stopped not here; for as one wickedness is naturally an introduction to another, so, from absurd and senseless devotions, they passed into vile affections (ver. 24, etc.). God knows how far the spirit of infatuation may prevail upon the heart, when it comes once to court and love a delusion.

IV. THE JUDGMENT, OR RATHER THE STATE AND CONDITION PENALLY CONSEQUENT UPON THE PERSONS HERE CHARGED BY THE APOSTLE WITH IDOLATRY: "they were without excuse." The last refuge of a guilty person is to take refuge under an excuse, and so to mitigate, if he cannot divert the blow. It was the method of the great pattern and parent of all sinners, Adam, first to hide, and then to excuse himself. But now, when the sinner shall have all his excuses blown away, be stabbed with his own arguments, and, as it were, sacrificed upon that very altar which he fled to for succour; this, surely, is the height and crisis of a forlorn condition. Yet this was the ease of the malefactors who stand here arraigned in the text; they were not only unfit for a pardon, but even for a plea. An excuse imports the supposition of a sin, and —

1. The extenuation of its guilt. As for the sire itself, we have already heard what that was, and they could only extenuate it on the ground either of ignorance or unwillingness. As for unwillingness, the philosophers generally asserted the freedom of the will, which, in spite of the injury inflicted by sin, has still so much freedom left as to enable it to choose any act in its kind good, as also to refuse any act in its kind evil. This is enough to cut off all excuse from the heathen, who never duly improved the utmost of such a power, but gave themselves up to licentiousness. The only remaining plea therefore must be that of ignorance, since there could be no pretence for unwillingness. But the apostle divests them even of this also (vers. 19, 21).Conclusion: Note —

1. The mercy of God to those to whom He has revealed the gospel, since there was nothing that could have obliged Him to it upon the account of His justice; for if there had, the heathens, to whom he revealed it not, could not have been thus without excuse.

2. The unspeakably deplorable condition of obstinate sinners under the gospel. The sun of mercy has shined too long and too bright upon such, to leave them any shadow of excuse.

(R. South, D. D.)

I. THE FIRST SILENCE. Whatever was the occasion of Satan's sin, the text gives a clue as to its nature. "The first estate" of the fallen angels was doubtless one of extensive knowledge. In their present condition what craft, what subtlety do they display! And yet angels were made to live even in His unveiled presence — to know Him, to love, serve, and glorify Him. But from some unrevealed cause, their knowledge did not beget humility, their surprising privileges did not ensure gratitude; whilst standing before "the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity," they were "lifted up with pride," and rebelled against Him. And God, who created them and had blessed them, spared them not, and "they are without excuse; because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful."

II. OUR FIRST PARENTS. Their nature was one degree lower than that of the angels. They were created after the image of God in holiness and happiness. What bounds could have been fixed to that mind which held daily converse with God? What privileges were there! The body and soul united in blissful harmony, and both united in the God of love! But notwithstanding, impiety and ingratitude were the sin and ruin of Adam! He credited the word of "the father of lies" before the word of the God of truth. Ambition made him forget his privileges. And "they were without excuse, because that," etc.

III. THE HEATHEN. The apostle proves that though they are ignorant of the revelation of grace (and they will not be condemned for rejecting that which was never offered to them), yet they cannot be ignorant of the revelation of nature. The present awful and ruinous state of the heathen has arisen from the depravity of human nature; the love of sin, and consequent hatred of holiness. They abused their privileges, "loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

IV. THE JEWS. What nation was ever so blessed as they! Raised from obscurity to The dignity of a theocracy, they passed on from one degree of glory to another, till the Lord of glory appeared as "the King of the Jews." And notwithstanding all this, impiety and ingratitude were the sin and the ruin of Israel.

V. NATIONS PROFESSING CHRISTIANITY. Have we not known God. Are we not blessed by Him with extraordinary and peculiar privileges? To what modern nation has God revealed Himself so signally as the God of love has unto us? And how great our temporal prosperity, and our influence and power over the whole world! Such are our privileges. And what use do we make of them? If we "know God," by what national acts do we "glorify Him as God"? Does He receive the glory due unto His holy name in the calm deliberation of our senators? Is His Word alone the acknowledged and the supreme rule of faith and practice? Is truth and piety upheld and protected, and are falsehood and idolatry trampled under our feet? Alas! if our candlestick were removed, we are "without excuse, because that," etc.

(G. A. Rogers, M. A.)

I. WANT OF REVERENCE. "They knew God," but "they glorified Him not as God."

1. Many never think of God. Whether there is a God, or not, makes no practical difference to them; if we could prove that there were no God, they would feel easier in their consciences. "Well," says one, "I do not care much whether there is a God or not; I am an agnostic." That is a Greek word, is it not? And the equivalent Latin is "Ignoramus." I could not bear robe an "ignoramus or an agnostic about God! I must have a God. He is to me as necessary as food to my body, and air to my lungs. The sad thing is, that many who believe that there is a God yet go from the beginning of the week to the end of it without reflecting upon Him at all.

2. Have no right conceptions of God. The true conception of God is that He is all in all; and unless we treat Him as such, we have not treated Him as He ought to be treated.

3. Some who think of God a little, but never offer Him any humble, spiritual worship. Do not imagine that God can be worshipped by anything which is merely mechanical or external, but which is not from the heart.

4. There are those who do not obediently serve Him — for they are the servants of themselves; and there is no master more tyrannical than unsanctified self. But, remember, if the Lord be God, and He made us, we are bound to serve Him.

5. They do not trust Him. The place for man is under the shadow of God's wings, but you run to your neighbours as soon as ever you are in difficulties.

6. They did not seek to commune with Him. It is a very sad business when a boy who has been at home with his father and mother for years has never spoken to them.

7. They do not want to be reconciled to Him.

II. WANT OF GRATITUDE. I cannot say anything much worse of a man than that he is not thankful to his benefactors; and when you say that he is not thankful to God, you have said about the worst thing you can say of him. I will prove ingratitude on the part of many.

1. God's law is despised. God has taken the trouble to give us this map of the way, and to direct us in the only right road; yet some have gone directly in the teeth of it; in fact, it looks as if the very existence of the law is a provocation to them to break it.

2. God's day is dishonoured. God has, in great mercy, given us one day in seven wherein to rest, and to think of holy things. He said, Take six, and use them in your business. No, we must have the seventh as well."

3. God's book is neglected. Was there ever such a book, so full of wisdom, and so full of love? But there are many who do not take the trouble to read it. A father's love letter to his son, and his son leaves it unread!

4. God's Son is refused. Ingratitude, thou hast reached thy utmost limit now.

5. God's deliverances are forgotten. Some years ago I spoke with a soldier who rode at Balaclava; and when he told me so, I took him by the hand; I could not help it, though he was a stranger to me. The tears were in my eyes, and I said, "Sir, I hope that you are God's man after such a deliverance as that." But I did not find that he had given his heart to Christ. Over there is a man who has been in half a dozen shipwrecks; and if he does not mind, he will be shipwrecked to all eternity! One here has had yellow fever. Ah, sir, there is a worse fever than that on you now I

6. God's providences are ignored! Some of you, from your childhood, have had all that heart could wish. Should God not have some gratitude from you? But one says, "I have had good luck." Here is unthankfulness to God indeed, when you ascribe His gifts to "good luck." "Well, you know, but I have been a very hard-working man." I know you have, but who gave you the strength for your work?

7. God's Spirit is resisted.

III. THIS IRREVERENCE AND INGRATITUDE WERE AGAINST KNOWLEDGE. "When they knew God." Notice —

1. Knowledge is of no use if it does not lead to holy practice. It was no good to them to know God, for "they glorified Him not as God." So, my theological friend, it does not matter what you think, or know, unless it leads you to glorify God, and to be thankful.

2. Knowledge will increase the responsibility of those who are irreverent and ungrateful. Whatever excuse might be made for those who never heard of God, there was none for these people.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

2. Our age is preeminently one of criticism and reconsideration. Every theory of science and theology is being put into the crucible. We have no anxiety about the final issue. Nothing will be lost but the dross. But this fact should not become a couch on which our indifference reclines, but rather an inspiration to us to defend the truth. Between the Bible representation of God and the God of much modern thought there are sad discrepancies. Error can change its form without disappearing. If heathens have had a god made with their own hands, modern thinkers have one cast in the mould of their wild imaginations. They may revolt at the idea of bowing before an idol; but they conceive a Deity lacking the qualities essential to the nature of Jehovah, such as righteousness, justice, and grace.

3. There are many reasons why we should seek to have right conceptions of God.(1) Our belief will effect our life. Souls become assimilated to the object of their worship. The voluptuous worshipped Venus, etc. False and faulty conceptions of God cannot do other than result in the false and faulty character.(2) There is an equally close connection between character and work. Our work will never be better than we are.

I. FALSE CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. The most prevalent of these are —

1. Pantheism which teaches that the universe is God, and that God is the universe. This, of course, denies His distinct existence, and affirms that God has neither intelligence, consciousness, nor will. He is not a personality who can say "I," or be addressed as "Thou." What a man would be without faculties and without consciousness, that, say they, is God without the universe. The destiny of the human soul, according to Pantheism, is its absorption into the Infinite. And, as we may well suppose, its effects have been, and still are, disastrous. It destroys all distinctions between good and evil, for they are alike the operations of God. Sin is no barrier to intercourse with God. Self is deified, for the soul is part of the Divine essence. The drapery and sophistry of this form of religion deceive the imagination and captivate the minds of some. But there will come a time when all hearts will be sick of it. The heart yearns for a personal Father to whom it can carry its burdens and tell its griefs. But that Father is not found in Pantheism, but in the personal, self-existent, glorious God of the Bible.

2. The mechanical conception of God is very different, but little less revolting. According to this "God is" — as Carlyle has worded this theory, "an absentee, sitting, ever since the first Sabbath, on the outside of His creation seeing it go." God is only present in the world by the agency of law, and law acts through the agency and tendencies of matter; while the Lawgiver Himself is, to use Martineau's words, "a remote and retired mechanician, inspecting from without the engine of creation, to see how it performs." Those who thus believe seem to leave the character of God with no other perfection than that which belongs to a great first cause, or an Almighty contriver "too vast to praise, too inexorable to propitiate, with no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm to save." They believe in law, and that is all they do believe in. Poor mortals! We are fed, preserved, and nurtured from the cradle to the tomb by machinery. We do not hesitate to pronounce this conception of God to be false. The world is not a mere machine. Natural law is but the omnipresent expression of God's will. Law does not govern, but God — by means of law. Instead of God being "an absentee," "He is not far from any one of us," etc.

3. The poetic view of God has been propagated, by sentiment and imagination, influenced and guided largely by an unsanctified heart. A few of God's attributes are admired, but the stern integrity of His nature is forgotten. With these dreamers God is not principle, but sentiment. As to how the great Lawgiver is to act towards a broken law these visionaries never trouble themselves. The King of kings may reign, but He certainly does not govern. But such conception is false. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still lives, and, as ever, He has thunderbolts as well as tears. He awards and avenges. Holiness and heaven, sin and hell, He has linked together with indissoluble chains. The Judge is not lost in the Father nor the Father in the Judge.

II. FAULTY CONCEPTIONS OF GOD, i.e., defective, fragmentary.

1. Perhaps there are few of us but have faulty conceptions of God.(1) This can be partially accounted for by a consideration of our constitutional peculiarities. Most of our minds are ill-proportioned, and, as a consequence, we are apt to see only isolated fragments of God's character. We may believe in God as revealed in Scripture, and yet, certain elements of our nature being more susceptible of impression, we are apt to conceive of God as possessing only those attributes and qualities that interpret themselves to our nature. One man is overstrung with nerves; to him God is all joy — one eternal summer. But to another man "whom melancholy has marked for her own," God exhibits the hues of His own feeling. Men, whose natures are full of stern severity, are apt to view God only as a mass of spiritual strength. But there are those who revolt at this stoical conception of God, for in them the pathetic, tender, benevolent elements largely predominate.(2) Our individual experiences have a determining force in this matter. To the Christian whose life has been one of signal success and joyous prosperity, God is the hero of a thousand battles, never once disappointed in His expectations or frustrated in His purposes. To others, life has been a melancholy blank — a series of unfinished, unsuccessful enterprises. Such are apt to forget that "the Lord reigneth," and that "out of evil He still educeth good."

2. How are we to avoid these mistakes?(1) Let us labour after a growing likeness to God, for God only becomes real to us as His nature is unfolded within us.(2) In our testimony for God, let us endeavour to meet every phase of human want. The needs of human souls, the conditions of human life, are infinitely various, and it will expand, ennoble, and enlarge our conceptions of God if we endeavour to show that God's character is adapted to the necessities and wants of all.(3) Above all, we should constantly study Him who is "the image of the invisible God." The person of Christ reflects the Divine nature; His ministry the Divine mind; His death the Divine heart; His resurrection the Divine power. In the life and death of our Redeemer, justice, wisdom, love, and power, mingle their beams and shine with united and meridian splendour. There they form a glorious covenant rainbow, made up of the effulgent light of the Eternal, and tears of the Redeemer's grief.

(W. Williams.)

1. Negatively.

(1)Not as if we made Him glorious (Exodus 15:11).

(2)Nor as if we added anything to His glory.

2. Positively.

(1)To acknowledge His glory (Psalm 19:1).

(2)To admire it.

(3)To live up to it.

(4)To speak of it.

II. WHAT IS IT TO GLORIFY GOD AS GOD?

1. To acknowledge Him to be God.

(1)To be what He is in Himself — a Spirit, Almighty, all-wise, etc.

(2)To be what He is to us. Our —

(a)Maker (Genesis 1)

(b)Preserver (Acts 7:28).

(c)Governor (Psalm 75:6; Matthew 10:29, 30).

(d)Redeemer (Psalm 47:41).

2. To fear Him as God.

3. To hope in Him (Psalm 27:1; Psalm 46:1, 2) as an all-wise, almighty, all-gracious and all-faithful God.

4. To rejoice in Him (Philippians 4:4) as reconciled in Christ, and a soul-satisfying God in Himself.

5. To desire Him as one without whom we cannot but be miserable, and in whom we cannot but be happy.

6. To love Him as the chief Lord in Himself (Luke 18:19), and as the fountain of goodness in His creatures.

7. To worship Him only, and in spirit and in truth.

8. To serve Him alone, in all things, so as to do all to His glory (Isaiah 42:8; 1 Corinthians 10:31).

III. HOW DOES IT APPEAR TO BE A SIN NOT TO GLORIFY GOD AS GOD?

1. God here accuses the Gentiles of it, and blames them for it.

2. Not to glorify God as God is not to glorify Him at all.

IV. WHO ARE GUILTY OF THIS SIN?

1. Such as do not acknowledge there is a God (Psalm 14:1).

2. Such as do not know the Lord they acknowledge.

3. Such as know Him, but do not glorify Him.

4. Such as glorify Him, as they think, but not as God and these are —

(1)Such as have not right apprehensions of Him.

(2)That have not right affections for Him.

(3)That do not perform right worship and obedience to Him.Conclusion:

1. You know God; you know that He is an all-knowing and all-powerful God, that He is the chiefest Good, most merciful and gracious, and that He will bring all things into judgment, and yet you do not live up to this knowledge, and therefore do not glorify Him as God.

2. Examine whether you have not been guilty of this sin, humble yourselves for it, and then reform it. Consider —(1) The glory of God is the first thing that ought to be prayed for (Matthew 6:9).(2) Remissness in this is denounced (Malachi 2:2) and punished (Acts 12:23: Romans 1:24).(3) Unless you glorify God your religion is vain.(4) To glorify God is the glory of heaven.(5) Glorify God and God will glorify you (1 Samuel 2:30).

(Bp. Beveridge.)

(R. Wardlaw, D. D.)

I. Is it because HEAVEN DOES NOT BESTOW FAVOURS ON MEN? There can be no gratitude without favours. What has God given us? Existence, the world, His blessed Son. Were He to withdraw from us all that He has given, we would have nothing left, and be no more. Ingratitude to man is bad; but to God it is infinitely worse, for the greatest favours we receive from men are only borrowed from Heaven, and are mean, and few in comparison with what God bestows.

II. Is it because THOSE FAVOURS ARE DESERVED? Great favours have not power in themselves to generate gratitude. The recipient must feel that he has no claim whatever to them. He who gives me that which I feel to deserve will fail to inspire with thankfulness by that act.

III. Is it because GOD IS NOT FREE IN THEIR BESTOWMENT? If I know that a man is constrained to bestow a favour, his gift will fail to inspire me with thankfulness. I care not how valuable his gift, nor how greatly it may serve my interest; the feeling will destroy the possibility of gratitude.

IV. Is it because HE IS NOT DISINTERESTEDLY KIND IN GIVING? If in the man who bestows on me a favour I discover indifference or selfishness, I can feel no thankfulness, however valuable the gift may be. Conclusion: Ingratitude to God is not only without all reason, but against all good reason. It is the basest of all vices, and lies at the root of nearly all the evils of life. "As the Dead Sea," says an old author, "drinks in the river Jordan, and is never the sweeter, and the ocean all other rivers, and is never the fresher, so we are apt to receive daily mercies from God, and still remain insensible of them, unthankful for them. The rain comes down from heaven in showers; it goes up but in mists."

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

I. HAS THANKFULNESS TO GOD BEEN IN ANY PROPORTION TO THE BENEFITS RECEIVED? Has it ever been a common experience, lively and quick? Has it acted to promote obedience? The children of unnumbered kindnesses — have these blessings of God that have watched you from youth up to this hour, and that have flowed through all the channels of your life, ever brought forth in you a profound sense of recognition? Is not what the apostle describes applicable to us? But let us more in detail look into this matter. Let us look at —

1. A man's own organisation, and inquire in what way he is wont to receive that ass comprehensive and complex gift of God. It is no small thing that we have an organisation that brings health and strength. There are many that are born to misfortune. They carry organised suffering with them. That, for the most part, is not our condition. The separate elements that go to constitute this gift of our organisation are marvellous. If the eye could keep a journal of all the pleasures that it has brought to us no tongue could measure our obligations. If the ear could give its account of pleasures issued; if not a single sense merely, but the whole of our body, could rise up and bear witness to God's goodness in its organisation, what a complex series of services from God to us would be exhibited! And yet, are not life, and health, and strength, more frequently a reason of indifference? All the senses that God has put together to create the most noble thing made under the heaven — we take them as a gift, of course. We arrogate to ourselves personal beauty, if we are handsome; personal strength, if we are strong; personal skill, if we have a hand to execute. We take all these sovereign gifts of God, not with thanksgiving, not as if they brought us nearer to Him in sweet obedience, not as benefits received, but to set us apart from Him and His service.

2. The gifts of God expressed in the human mind and disposition. We are neither thankful for the casket nor the jewels that God has put within the casket. Indeed, the more men have, usually, the less apt are they to be grateful. Men are apt to become vain, arrogant, worldly, and foolish in the possession of their mental gifts and powers. We carry about, in reason, in imagination, in hope, in love, in sympathy, in everything that goes to make up the human disposition, that wonderful gift of God, the human soul, from the cradle to the grave, and scarcely think to thank God or to love Him for His benefaction.

3. Our social advantages. It is no small thing to have been born in a Christian land. How many of us find occasion for real thankfulness in this? It is no small thing to have been born of Christian parentage — to have been put into this life through a right gate. Have you ever made it an object of thought? Our honourable connections are matters of no small moment, as they stand intimately related to our happiness. The position we are permitted to occupy in society we are apt to ascribe to our own skill and work. But there is not a man living that has really achieved the social advantages which he has. There is a providence in them. And all that which we have of repute, ease, influence, consequence by reason of our social connection — does not this tend to puff us up? How many men requite God by being to others exactly what He is not to them! God bridges the way from His heart to ours by kindnesses without number. We look down upon men less favoured than we, and seem to say, "Stand thou there: come not near to touch our robes."

4. Our relations to the gifts of God in nature and in human society(1) No one can enough appreciate the wonderfulness of God's bounties of love registered for everyone that has an eye to see and an ear to hear in the fulness of nature. Everywhere God makes Himself known to those that have a heart sensitive to His presence. The whole globe is a sacrament, and time is full of the most solemn lessons and the most momentous truths. And yet we let day after day, and year after year, pass over our heads, and our constant thought is — what? That the winter is severe; that the day is inclement; that the rain incommodes our party or mars our pleasure.(2) The successes of life, by which men attain livelihood and the respect of men, are gifts of God, and not the less subjects of gratitude because they depend upon our activity, since our activity again depends upon God's being ever present with us. God invites us to all the bounties of nature, and we are more vain of their skill to reap them than thankful for the bounties themselves.

5. The work of God in providences toward every one of us. There are gifts of prosperity and gifts of adversity; there are sparing mercies in sickness and danger to us, and, what comes nearer to a sensitive nature, to others. The providence of God that attends our daily walk is marvellous to him that has an eye to discern all its details, and wisdom to comprehend its full meaning. But we walk through the day, the year, often without a thought, or scarcely a reminiscence.

6. God's spiritual dealings with us. The gift of Christ, that richest and Divinest of all gifts, and the premise through Him of eternal life, and of help in every time of need; the gift of the Holy Ghost; His mindfulness of every feeling in us, though we are mindless of any feeling in Him — in all these spiritual blessings, gratitude and thankfulness are the exception, and not the rule.

II. THE SIN OF THIS.

1. There is no one thing that you admit to be a fairer measure of character and life than this principle of gratitude; and when you take it and measure your course of conduct, not toward an inferior, or an equal, or a mere superior, but toward God — the highest, the noblest, the most disinterested, and the best being that ever lived — no man, not even the purest, can help feeling that he has lived a life of ingratitude. God's wonderful bounties have come before you unrecognised. You have made yourself selfish through God's kindnesses. You have made yourself proud through His goodness. The very things that were meant to draw you to God have built around you walls of separation between yourselves and God.

2. It does not need that men should lay to their consciences the charge of theft, of crime. There is no offence anymore guilty than this. If there be a single soul that says, "I need no repentance, no change of heart: I am not a sinner," I lay this charge upon him, and he cannot resist it, We cannot receive from our father and mother a love token and not know it; but from Christ we can. We cannot take a poor gift from a fellow's hand without feeling a sentiment of honour and requital; but from God's hand we take royal bounties without any such consciousness. Ah! when Christ takes His own heart, His sacrifice, and His love, and brings it to us and makes it a present, is there no requital, are there no thanks due? When God requires the service of our life and the fulness of our heart, is it an exacting requisition? Does the mother expect too much when she demands that the child she has reared shall love and serve her? If you have given your time to nurse the sick, is it too much to expect that when they come to health they will kindly remember you? If a man is about to be destroyed, and you step between him and his peril and rescue him, is it strange that you should expect at least kindness and love from him? The untutored savage would never forget such a benefactor. It requires Christians, men educated in the knowledge of the death of Christ, who died that they might live, to refuse to requite service with gratitude.

(H. W. Beecher.)

II. OUR DEFECTIVE VIEW OF HIS PROVIDENCE. Our acknowledgment of the agency of God in some instances becomes a means of diminishing our sense of His agency in others. The facet is God more distinctly reveals to us His agency in some instances that we may learn to recognise it in all. The very idea of a particular Providence arises from our imperfect conception of the Divine agency. For, if we saw the agency of God as it is seen in heaven, we should discover that His providence is as distinct, as minute in one case as another. Thus men call it a "providence" when they receive some unexpected deliverance or blessing. But they do not call a loss, or a disease, a providence. But it is certain that on this point the views of God differ most widely from our own; and when we shall be able to form a true conception of the goodness of God we shaft discover mercy where we once discerned only severity, and shall thank God for trials and sufferings as the most signal instances of His providential care.

III. MEN DO NOT CONSIDER THEMSELVES INDEBTED TO GOD EXCEPT FOR PECULIAR OR DISTINGUISHING MERCIES. For the mercies they share in common with others they think little gratitude is due. But do the diffusiveness and extent of the bounty of God form any just cause of unthankfulness? What would you think of a child who should say, "I am not indebted to my parent; for he feeds and clothes and takes care of my brothers and sisters as well as of myself"? The fact is, that the very extent of those blessings we share with others demands additional gratitude, for such mercies are the most valuable. Compare such a gift as light with any petty comforts granted to an individual. All private mercies may be compared to the dew which fell only upon the fleece of Gideon. But general mercies are like the dew of heaven descending on the general surface of nature, refreshing the thirsty fields, and clothing them with verdure and beauty. Surely the blessing cannot be lessened to me because others also are blessed.

IV. THE VERY NUMBER OF THE MERCIES OF GOD TENDS TO DIMINISH OUR GRATITUDE. Examine the common feelings of mankind: is it not evident that some extraordinary instance of the bounty of God excites more gratitude than the more valuable mercies of every day? The constant enjoyment of our senses, the nightly refreshment of sleep, make scarcely any impression; but if a sense, apparently lost, is restored, then we feel much gratitude to our Benefactor. The name disposition is seen in other cases. If a parent gives to his children something new and unexpected, they are more thankful than for their daily food and clothing. Thus, also, although the unexpected bounty of a friend may at first excite thankfulness, yet, if repeated every day, it is received with diminished gratitude, and at length the withholding of it is resented as an injury. If it be urged in reply that this springs from a principle in human nature, surely it is no excellent principle, but argues a depraved nature and a corrupt heart. From the same depravity it arises that the very feeling of obligation is attended with pain, especially where the debt is large. Men love to be independent, and therefore hate an obligation.

V. A PREVALENT VIEW OF GOD'S CHARACTER AS A JUST AND HOLY RATHER THAN AS A KIND AND COMPASSIONATE GOD.

(J. Venn, M. A.)

I. THE CORRUPTION OF HUMAN NATURE. The facts enumerated are such as to manifest —

1. Corruption in principle evincing itself by corruption in practice. Had there been in the human heart any liking to the true God, the difficulty would have been to forget not to remember Him. Those whom we love we are fond to think of. Has this been the case with men in regard to God? Has it not rather been, in everyone point, precisely the reverse? And if it be in human nature to forget and depart from the living God, must it not be emphatically corrupt?

2. Idolatrous defection is here associated with practical wickedness as its inseparable concomitant. Does not the state of the heathen world bear ample testimony to its truth?

3. And observe further — the connection, in the way of reciprocal influence, between impiety and immorality. Immorality in the life is the natural consequence and evidence of impiety towards God in the heart, while the love of sin inspires the wish that God were other than He is.

II. THE NECESSITY AND THE VALUE OF REVELATION. How early did this necessity appear! (Genesis 6:5, 11, 12; Joshua 24:2). And yet men talk of the sufficiency of the light of nature, while the experience of every age plainly contradicts this. Never was an experiment more completely tried, and on every trial the great general result has been uniformly the same. Take the most enlightened nations in the most enlightened times. Have they, in these circumstances, excelled others in their views of God and in moral goodness? Frequently, indeed, they have even been worse. Even the philosophers had defective and erroneous views of Deity, of the way of obtaining His favour, and of morals. All that is good in any of their systems is to be found in the Bible along with infinitely more and infinitely better. Yet the Bible must be discarded and their conjectures substituted! Because they had a dim taper, we must seek to quench the sun! No; blessed be God for this heavenly light! But for it we too should have been sitting in the region and shadow of death — "without God and without hope in the world."

III. HOW INEXCUSABLE MUST THEY BE WHO, POSSESSING SUCH A REVELATION, REMAIN, NOTWITHSTANDING, IGNORANT OF GOD! But alas! the same principles of corruption which make men willing to forget God amidst His works of creation and providence, make them unwilling to receive the truth concerning Him when set before them more directly in His Word.

1. If the heathen be "without excuse," what shall be said of those who shut their eyes against this superior light, and while it shines around them continue to walk in darkness?

2. How inexcusable, too, and how deeply criminal must they be who still "hold the truth in righteousness"! Here is the Bible. You have a general knowledge of its contents. You profess to believe them. Yet, withal, they have no proper influence upon your hearts and lives. What if the righteous God, in His just displeasure, should give you over to "a reprobate mind"? Beware of imagining that the mere possession of revelation constitutes you Christians. The mere having of the Bible can do no good if its important truths are disbelieved or neglected.

IV. THE GUILT OF IDOLATRY, IT IS TO BE FEARED, ATTACHES TO MANY WHO LITTLE IMAGINE THAT THEY ARE AT ALL CHARGEABLE WITH ANYTHING OF THE KIND. The spirit of idolatry is the alienation of the heart from God; the withholding from Him, and the giving to other objects, that homage and those affections to which He alone is entitled. Every man's idol is that on which his heart is supremely set. Ambition, wealth, power, learning, etc., are all idols if served irrespective of God.

V. WHAT AN IRRESISTIBLE MOTIVE IS HERE PRESENTED TO MISSIONARY EXERTIONS! Whose spirit is not stirred within him with the emotions of indignant zeal in beholding the world "wholly given to idolatry." To suppose a Christian indifferent on such a subject is to suppose a contradiction in terms — a Christian without piety, without mercy, without benevolence! Think how the glory of God is trampled under foot; how Satan reigns triumphant; how large a proportion of the world is still in the condition here described!

VI. LET CHRISTIANS MAKE IT MANIFEST BY THEIR WHOLE CHARACTER THAT THE CONNECTION IS AS CLOSE BETWEEN TRUTH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS AS BETWEEN ERROR AND WICKEDNESS. Let your profession of the faith of the gospel be adorned by a conduct uniformly consistent with its pure nature and its holy influence.

(R. Wardlaw, D. D.)

2. In respect of the heart, ingratitude was first transformed into darkness, and then into monstrous and degrading fetishism. The ungrateful heart did not stop short at not thanking God, it degraded and dishonoured Him by changing Him into His opposite.

(Prof. Godet.)

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

(Prof. Godet.)

I. IT LEADS A MAN TO GO BEYOND THE LIMITS OF HIS OWN POWERS, and to meddle with matters too high for him, OR ELSE TO REFUSE TO BELIEVE IN ANYTHING WHICH HE CANNOT UNDERSTAND OR GRASP.

1. In either case this ends in folly. For the wisest and the most ignorant are on a par when they speculate upon subjects which transcend human thought, or over which God has been pleased to place an impenetrable veil.

2. He who believes in truth taught by nature and revelation is wiser than the so-called philosopher, who declines to receive anything but what his human intellect and finite powers can explain or fully grasp.

II. IT LEADS A MAN TO DISPENSE WITH THE HELP to be derived from the labours, remarks, or suggestions OF OTHERS, AS WELL AS TO ADVANCE THE MOST ABSURD OPINIONS, and to maintain them with the most inveterate obstinacy for the sake of notoriety.

III. IT MAKES A MAN TOO WILLING TO ACCEPT HIS OWN CONCLUSIONS without sufficient and searching examinations.

IV. IT IGNORES GOD'S LAW THAT THE TEMPLE OF DIVINE KNOWLEDGE MUST BE ENTERED ONLY BY THE GATE OF HUMILITY.

(Biblical Museum.)

(Prof. Godet.)

(Prof. Godet.)

(C. Neil, M. A.)

(Prof. Godet.)

(C. Neil, M. A.)

(R. Wardlaw, D. D.)

1. As professing to be what it is not.

2. As deceiving him who trusts in it.

II. EVERYTHING OPPOSED TO GOD IS A LIE.

III. EVERYTHING IS A LIE which —

1. Disappoints man's hopes.

2. Fails to satisfy the cravings of his immortal soul.

IV. THAT LIFE IS A LIE which is not —

1. According to God's will.

2. Directed to His glory.

3. The realisation of His enjoyment.

(T. Robinson, D. D.)

2. This extraordinary contrast prompts the question, How and why is it so? What has become of the idolatrous propensity which once appeared inseparable from the corruptions of the human heart? There might be less cause to propound this question if a corresponding change had taken place among the heathen. But the heathen world is as idolatrous as ever. Is it because we are too civilised? If by this we mean intellectual refinement and cultivation of the taste, we have only to remember Greece. Or if a civil and political wisdom, military force, and practical sagacity, then look at Rome!

3. Since none of these solutions explain why idolatry is now so rare among ourselves, it may not be without its use to inquire whether, after all, we are so free from idolatry as supposed. Let us then inquire what is idolatry. We must reject the etymological definition which would restrict it to the worship of images. Then they who adored the host of heaven, who invoked the winds, bowed down at the fountains, whispered their devotions to the air, and called upon the mountains, are excluded from the catalogue. On the other hand, idolatry is not to be resolved into a purely spiritual act, the preference of some other supreme object of affection to our Maker. This, though the soul of all idolatry, is not the whole of it, and exists now just as much as in ancient times. Covetousness is idolatry, but idolatry is not covetousness. What imparted to the ancient Paganism its distinctive character, and gave unity to it, was the worship of nature. However they might differ in their symbols, rites, theology, or ethics, they are all reducible to this.

4. This view does not exclude a vast variety of forms and of gradations. The lowest stage, above that of mere stupid fetishism, may be described as the religious worship of particular natural objects or their artificial representatives, rising from the shapeless stone to plants, to trees, from the meanest brutes to the most noble, from the clod to the mountain, from the spring to the ocean, from earth to heaven. A still more intellectual variety would be that which, instead of individual sensible objects, paid its adorations to the elements or mysterious powers of nature. By a still higher act of philosophical abstraction some worshipped Nature itself, τὸ πᾶν, including all the objects which have been already mentioned.

5. These views as to the essential character of ancient heathenism derive at least some countenance from the solution which they seem to afford of the disappearance of idolatry. On this hypothesis, if on no other, it may certainly be said that there is still a strong taint of idolatry perceptible.

I. IN OUR LANGUAGE; for to what strange accident can it be owing that in common parlance and in current literature there should be so constant, so instinctive an aversion to the name of God as a personal distinctive appellation. Can it be reverence? Alas! this explanation is precluded by the levity with which the same men often make that venerable name the theme of jests and the burden of imprecation. No; the name seems to be shunned because it means too much. Not only is the grand and simple name of God exchanged for a descriptive title, such as Supreme Being — or an abstract term, the Deity — but still more readily and frequently is God supplanted by a goddess, and her name is Nature. It is Nature that endows men with her gifts and graces, that regulates the seasons and controls the elements. Whatever explanation may be given of this, it is still an odd coincidence that this darling figure of speech or philosophical formula should so exactly tally with the spirit and language of idolatry considered as the worship of nature.

II. But this coincidence may, in some, be the effect of classical studies, and need excite no serious alarm if confined to the fanciful creations of romance or poetry. But we find these analogies also IN REAL LIFE AND ITS LEAST IMAGINATIVE WALKS. The compulsory dependence upon seasons and weather often takes the form of an extreme anxiety, a breathless watching of the elements, a superstitious faith in something quite distinct from God, and a constant disposition to invest this something with an individual existence and with personal attributes; although it may prove nothing with respect to any formal belief, it certainly presents another strange approximation to the spirit and the practice of the old idolaters. The fisherman who feels himself to be the slave of the winds and tides, without a thought of God as his Creator, is not so very far removed from the old Greek or Phoenician, who sacrificed to Ocean ere he launched his bark. The mariner who spends whole nights in whistling for the wind, may do it from habit or in jest; but he may also do it with a secret faith, by no means wholly different in kind from the emotions of the ancient pagan, as he poured out his libations to Eolus, or his prayers to the particular wind of which he stood in need. The social and domestic superstitions which have lingered in all Christian countries, as to signs of good and evil luck, and the methods of procuring or averting it, are the relics of a heathenism which we sometimes look upon as finally exploded.

III. But objection may be made to sweeping influences from the errors of the vulgar. Well, admitting that the uninstructed multitude must always embrace errors, some of which may accidentally resemble those of heathenism, let us ascend again into the region of intellectual cultivation IN REFERENCE TO SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION. The philosophical explorer often looks upon God's place as empty, or as filled by another — yet the same — viz., Nature. No one supposes that astronomers ever formally adore the stars, or geologists earth, or chemists the elements, or botanists trees and flowers. But let the evidence that some of all these classes recognise a Nature, quite distinct from God, by whose mysterious virtues these effects are all produced, and whose authoritative laws are independent of His will, be gathered from the language, actions, and feelings of these votaries of science, and then it will appear whether the prophets and the high priests of material wisdom are or are not in heart and practice worshipped of nature.

IV. Another class adore nature as the source of sensible and imaginative pleasure. These are the worshippers of BEAUTY. The voice that whispers in the trees or roars in the tornado may, to some ears, be the voice of God; but they may also utter other inspirations, and bring responses from another oracle. Instead of calling us to God, they may but call us to themselves, or to the place where nature sits enthroned as God. This form of idolatry has all the aid that art can yield to nature. The idolater of nature cannot but be an idolater of art. The high art of the ancients was a part of their religion. It was nature that they represented, beautified and worshipped. The gradual return in modern times to this view of the arts, and the impassioned zeal with which it is pursued, is one of the most startling analogies to heathenism that can be produced, and threatens, more than any other, to result in an exterior resemblance corresponding to the essential one described already. It may no doubt be said that this apotheosis, both of art and nature, has resulted by reaction from the barbarous and unscriptural contempt, especially of God's material works. This is in some sense true. But the idolatry itself springs from a deeper and remoter source. As long as man retains the sensibilities which God has given him, and yet remains unwilling to retain God in his thoughts, the voice of nature will be louder than the voice of God.

V. From the agreements which have now been traced, it may reasonably be expected that the principle of this idolatry will also avow itself IN DOCTRINE. It has done so already in the pantheistical philosophy of Germany. Conclusion: From all this it becomes us to take warning, that whatever we do we do with our eyes open, to see to it that we incur not the reproach, "Ye know not what ye worship," and to see to it that we are not led into idolatry by any specious figments or delusions, lest we be constrained to take up the lament of those confessors in the times of heathen persecution, who, though proof against all menace and persuasion, were at last miserably cheated into sets of worship at the altar of an idol, when they thought themselves kneeling at the altar of their God.

(J. A. Alexander, D. D.)

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

1. In His benevolent feelings. God is love. Benevolence always gives pleasure to the mind. There is a selfish benevolence, which is a happy feeling so long as it continues. There is also a pure, disinterested, and universal benevolence, which yields a purer, higher, and more lasting satisfaction to the mind. And such is the benevolence of the Deity. His benevolent feelings, therefore, must be a source of pure and permanent felicity.

2. In expressing His benevolent feelings. There are emotions which are not productive of any external act. Good men have a thousand affections which they never could express by any external actions, but God is both able and disposed to express His benevolence. He diffuses as much happiness among His creatures as His mighty power, guided by His unsearchable wisdom, can produce. And all these expressions of His goodness are extremely gratifying to His benevolent heart. He makes Himself happy by making His creatures happy. Do parents feel peculiar satisfaction in expressing their love to their children? So does the kind parent of the universe.

3. In beholding the effects of His benevolence. As He loves to promote the happiness of His creatures, so He loves to see the happiness which He bestows and they enjoy.

II. GOD IS PERFECTLY AND FOREVER BLESSED. This blessedness is —

1. Without the least alloy, or mixture. It is as pure as His perfect benevolence, from which it flows. God is love, and in Him is no malevolence at all. Though the benevolence of saints in this life affords them some real happiness, yet it is mixed with many painful feelings, which arise from the mixture of their selfish with their benevolent affections. But all the affections of God's heart are uniform and harmonious.

2. Uninterrupted. There are many things which serve to interrupt the happiness of saints in this imperfect state. But there is nothing to interrupt the pure and unmixed felicity of the Divine Being. He never finds any difficulty in the way of extending His benevolent regards to any of His creatures, who are always in His sight and His reach. He never sees a good to be done which is out of His power to do. He never sees an evil to be removed which it is out of His power to remove.

3. Unlimited. The happiness of created beings never can be unlimited. Their finite natures will forever set bounds to their enjoyments. But the blessedness of the Deity can admit of no limitation. This is evident from the great scheme which God formed from eternity. Among all possible modes of operation which stood present to His omniscient eye, His infinite wisdom chose the best, to give the most free, full, extensive expressions of His perfectly benevolent feelings. Among all possible things to be done, He determined to do all those which would diffuse the greatest sum of happiness through the universe. And by forming this scheme which would give the most unlimited indulgence to His benevolent feelings, He laid a foundation for His own unlimited felicity and self-enjoyment.

4. Everlasting. He is blessed forever. He can never see any reason to alter His designs, and therefore it is certain that He never will alter them. He can never meet with any insurmountable difficulties in carrying His designs into effect, and therefore He will infallibly accomplish them. And if He does eventually accomplish all His purposes, His joy will be full. He was blessed in forming His benevolent designs; He has been blessed in carrying them on; He will be blessed in bringing them to a close; and He will be blessed in contemplating them, through interminable ages.

III. IMPROVEMENT:

1. If the blessedness of God essentially consists in the benevolence of His heart, then we may clearly understand what is meant by His acting for His own glory. His creating the universe for His glory, means His creating it for His own most benevolent and perfect blessedness.

2. If God's blessedness, which consists in the gratification of His benevolence, be His glory, which He seeks in all His works, then His glory and the good of the universe cannot be separated. His acting for His glory is acting to express His pure benevolence to His creatures, in promoting their highest happiness. It is impossible that God should promote His own glory to the highest degree, without promoting the highest good of the universe.

3. If God means to gratify His own benevolence in all His conduct, then we may be assured that He never has suffered, and never will suffer anything to take place but what will promote the greatest good of the whole system of moral beings. Since He has caused both natural and moral evils to exist, we may be sure that no more shall exist than He sees necessary to promote His benevolent purposes. As He designs that the wrath of man shall praise Him, so the remainder of wrath He will restrain, or not cause to exist.

4. If it be God's supreme design to make Himself and His creatures as happy as possible, then we have reason to rejoice that He is absolutely sovereign. If any of His selfish creatures could guide or stay His hand, they would not suffer Him to seek His own happiness, nor the greatest happiness of the universe, but constrain Him to promote their own private, personal, selfish happiness.

5. Since God places His highest happiness in promoting the highest happiness of His creatures, we have solid ground to believe that He will fulfil all His great and precious promises to believers. He has inseparably connected their happiness with His own.

6. We learn from what has been said that none can be miserable, in time or eternity, but those who are unwilling that God should promote the highest good of the universe.

(N. Emmons, D. D.)

1. On the far-off confines of all this blessedness, is there not the smoke of a torment that ascendeth up forever and ever? Whilst there is one world of guilt and pain, can God's great pitying heart be quite at rest? Well, do not suppose that the ratio between good and evil will always be what it was when Christ spoke of the few that were saved, or even what it is now. Evil will shrink to ever-diminishing proportions in the uncounted centuries yet to be. In the quiet night the heavens breathe their wealth of dew upon the fields and moors and forests, but you can scarcely find the dewdrop that has distilled itself into the cup of the nightshade. For many a hundred miles the trellised vines spread their proud clusters before the sun, You may travel for days before you find the one vine that has been smitten with mildew. Uncounted suns glitter through the Milky Way. The astronomer may search for months before he can find the sun whose light has been quenched. And so evil will be lost in the prevalence of good, and God's blessing prove itself measureless.

2. But does not this view run counter to that of the Good Shepherd who left the ninety and nine to seek that which was lost? Yes, if the lost one could still be brought back. But I know of no law of beneficence that compels the Shepherd to tarry in the wilderness when the wanderer fights the hand that seeks to guide it back, or rushes into thickets where it is impossible to follow it. I know of no law of beneficence which compels the Shepherd to sit down by the carcase of His lost sheep, like Rizpah by the bones of her son, and rend the air with incessant lamentation. God would be untrue to the claims of the saved if He were so full of regrets for the lost few, that He could not rejoice with infinite gladness over the saved multitudes.

3. But was not God the Father of these lost ones, and can a father be perfectly blessed whilst a single child remains in uncancelled sin and abiding torment? But what is it that haunts the mind of the parent? The sense of possible failure in himself. "If I had guided more wisely, spoken more softly, prayed more faithfully, sympathised more ungrudgingly, possibly the issue might have been otherwise." But no thought akin to that can be awakened in the Divine mind. Whatever suffering convulses the world of impenitence, He has not contributed to it. In respect of the damned He has the blessedness of knowing that He has done for them all that infinite love and patience and resource could.

4. But He might have withheld the freedom through the misuse of which these men have damned themselves. Yes, but that would have been to create a vast negative hell of privation and frustrated gladness, in place of a limited positive hell of incurable perversity and woe. If God does all that His great heart can devise, and all that His mighty hand can achieve, and if what He has done issues in the sanctity and blessedness of a vast preponderating majority, God is without qualification infinitely blessed.

II. Contemplate God's blessedness from the standpoint of THE PRESENT. That is much more difficult. How are we to reconcile God's blessedness with suffering and sin? If a mother lay in a trance, conscious of all that was going on around, but unable to move, and heard the cry of pain from her little one, could she be blessed? And God seems to be blessed? And God seems to be present in every scene of human woe. The human parent is spared the pain of looking upon the actual circumstances of the child's profligacy. But God is looking with unveiled eye upon every offence. One hot summer morning, long before daybreak, I wandered through the streets of a Japanese city. The houses are built of thin board, and the rooms separated by paper partitions only. I cannot describe the strange sensations that took possession of my mind. I could hear the tick of every clock, the very breath and movements of the sleepers. And I thought, Is it not thus with God as He walks through this world of ours? How can He be perfectly blessed? The least sensitive man in our midst could not bear it for an hour. Is not God's present relation to pain a qualification of His blessedness?

1. No; for He is ever exercising a ministry of pity and healing. A nervous woman in the presence of disaster is brought by the excess of grief to the verge of madness; but commit to her some trifling ministry of help, and she becomes calm as an angel. The people whose lives are employed in mitigating pain are always the happiest. And so the blessedness God realises through His secret ministry to sorrow, protects Him against the shadow that the spectacle of widespread suffering might otherwise cast upon His gladness.

2. God's blessedness can suffer no eclipse from contact with pain, because it is His will to make it the vehicle for the manifestation of conspicuous tenderness. How many cynical people have only felt the sympathy and affection of their kind in the hour of affliction? Although the human heart in its perversity may make of suffering a curse, it is God's will to make it a point in our wilderness lives at which sweet, secret springs of Divine and human sympathy shall arise and blend with each other, and create magic balm and beauty and freshness. When God's purpose is accomplished, He makes His servants glory in their tribulations; and when men glory in their tribulations God glories with them, and in that case His blessedness is not impaired.

3. God's blessedness is not overshadowed by human pain, because by it He is teaching us sympathy with each other, and conformity to His own pattern of beneficence. God very often does not help and heal because He wants us to do it. God is blessed in the very pains of His creatures, when they teach His people to be full of kindness.

4. God looks upon pain from the standpoint of that wider epoch when sorrow and sighing shall have fled away,(1) Pain so viewed cannot darken His gladness. What a little thing the pain and sickness of your childhood is, when you look at it through the vista of years! Pain is nothing when passed, and, regarded from the standpoint of the Eternal, it is as though it were passed already.(2) So with death — so sad, solemn, unknown to us, it is a very different thing as God sees it. Some time ago a young lady was operated upon who had been blind from her childhood. The operations themselves were not painful, but the terror created by the returning power of sight was excruciating. She wished to remain in blindness. She felt as though she were always standing upon the brink of a precipice. But the doctor felt no remorse. He knew that his patient would by and by rejoice in the faculty of sight. So when death takes the scales from our sight, the revelation is full of terror. But the beneficent issue of the process is more than a counterpoise to its pain. The work of death does not embitter the blessedness of God. By and by death, like pain, will be no more.(3) And so with sin, which would otherwise be a qualification of the Divine blessedness. It is in the hearts of parents that the sweetest joys as well as sharpest sorrows are to be found. The father, by his relation and process of loving his children, has given to those children a strange power of wounding him through their disobedience. But the very same love attunes his nature to gratifications that may reach him through the conduct of dutiful and loving children. God looks upon the race in Jesus Christ, and in regard to their future. He may see the prodigal in his unholy riot. That is the fleeting image of the moment. He sees the restored prodigal welcomed back within the household. That is the reality that abides. He may hear the music to whose seductive strains the prodigal is listening in the haunts of harlotry, and that is the murmur in the sea shell. He hears also the music and gladness in the homes whose vacant places have just been filled again, and that is the pealing anthem of an everlasting ocean. In that anthem the faint murmurs in the shells that strew the shore are swallowed up and forgotten. There are terrible contingencies connected with the gift of free will. But we must never forget the profound theology in the simple parable of the marriage feast. God will find countless recipients for the bounty His great love has made ready; if not amongst Pharisees, then amongst publicans; if not amongst Jews, then amongst Gentiles; if not in the men of this generation, then in uncounted generations yet to come.

III. Realise God's blessedness in relation to THE PAST. We go back to the epochs when the worlds had not issued upon their courses. How can we reconcile the Divine blessedness with solitude? There can be no blessedness without beneficence, and no beneficence without a relation.

1. Well, the beneficence of character that was the spring of all after triumph and achievement was there. The righteousness and purity and love that were exercised in the relations to be afterwards constituted, were already living and conscious forces. And God could not be morally perfect without being infinitely blessed in Himself.

2. More still: the Son, who was to be the instrument for the accomplishment of all the Father's vast and holy and loving purposes, was already a willing instrument in the Father's bosom. And in the life of that Son every soul was reflected that was to be afterwards united by faith to Him as its Saviour and Head. Literary artists sometimes identify themselves with the creatures of their imagination. They have shed tears over their pains and reverses, and been in ecstasies over the good fortune to which they thought fit to bring them at the breaking of the clouds. And the mind of God has been peopled from the beginning with the forms of those who were afterwards to be, not the figures of a romance only, but profound realities upon the platform of human life and action. And towards all these, the Divine love has been pouring itself out from everlasting. Conclusion: But it may be asked: "Does not this view of the eternal blessedness of God preclude the possibility of sympathy? How can the eternal God enter into the fleeting sorrows of time? Can He grieve for us in our grief and shame? Does not the vast perspective in His vision seem to exclude every trace of affinity and sensitive relation with our mortal life?" Just as the human eye has different focal lengths, and can adjust itself to the different degrees in which light may be diffused, so the Divine mind can mysteriously combine into one the view of life opening itself at the standpoint of time, and that other view opening itself at the standpoint of eternity. Indeed, in the Person of Jesus He has given us proof of the fact that He can bring Himself under the conditions of time, looking at sorrow and sin from our own levels, and transcending all human brotherhood and friendship in the perfectness of His sympathy.

(T. G. Selby.)

1. The expression plainly assumes God's having been known, and that the cause of corruption and loss of the original knowledge was entirely of a moral nature. This will appear —(1) From the word itself — "they did not like. Inability: whether arising from the want of evidence, or opportunity to observe, or capacity to understand it, is not alleged. The word clearly expresses the voluntariness of the defection, the indisposition to keep the knowledge as the true cause of the loss of it.(2) From the consequence which followed in the Divine procedure: God gave them over to a reprobate mind," etc., is clearly judicial. Nothing of this description could ever be inflicted on account of mere deficiency of intellect, but must be connected with the disposition or state of the heart.

2. The true character of God it is impossible that corrupt creatures should relish. As a creature in love with sin, he wishes to believe that God is "such an one as himself." In this way idolatry becomes an evidence of the deep and universal depravity of the human heart. This view of the case accords well with the character of the "gods many and lords many of the heathen world." Men love sin; and they make their gods sinners, that they may practise evil under their sanction and patronage. The worship of their gods is such as might be anticipated from their characters. They consist, not merely of the most senseless fooleries and extravagances, but of the most disgusting impurities, and the most iron-hearted cruelties.

II. THE CONSEQUENCES are clearly represented in vers. 26 and 28, as bringing upon them the just displeasure of a forgotten and insulted God.

1. "God gave them over to vile affections," "to a reprobate mind." God is not represented as infusing any evil principles; but simply as leaving them to the unrestrained operation of the principles of evil already in them. What an awful curse this was, will sufficiently appear from the portrait in the passage before us. The various evils are represented as "not convenient" — not becoming — against all propriety and all law; and as abounding — personal and social life being "filled" with them. The description shows the fearful length to which the corrupt affections of "a reprobate mind" will carry those who are given up to their unchecked dominion. We are not, it is true, to suppose all the evils enumerated to exist in individual characters. Many of them are of such different kinds that they could not exist together. It is with nations as with individuals. Some of the features of the picture may appear with more or less of characteristic aggravation or diminution, according to particular circumstances. But of the general state of the Gentile world, at that time and still the outline here drawn, hideous as it is, is not overcharged, but faithful to nature and to fact.

2. The displays of "eternal power and Godhead" in the works of God rendered men's forgetfulness and ignorance of Him "without excuse." In like manner, the wickedness here described was also rendered inexcusable by what is stated in ver. 32. The judgment originally pronounced by Jehovah against sin was death. Of this tradition could not fail to carry down some remembrance, and tradition had the assistance of natural conscience. And while the sentence of death was thus engraven on the memories and consciences of sinful men, the early and singular institution of animal sacrifices spoke the very same language. And so did the regular fulfilment of the original sentence against sin — "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"; together with all the judgments by which the Supreme Ruler manifested His displeasure against sin. Men, then, knew, and ought to have kept in mind, "the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death." Yet, instead of this, they cast off all restraint. Instead of "striving against sin" they strove to rid their minds of every check to the commission of it.

(R. Wardlaw, D. D.)