Him who hath thus far helped us: ascribing to His grace the advances which we have made, and imploring Him to bring to an end the good work which He hath begun within us!

But if otherwise, blame not those friends who prayed for your infancy; blame not that ordinance of God, which was, in itself, most powerful to sanctify and to save; blame not the Holy Spirit of God, who, even now, as He hath promised, is warring in your hearts to deliver you; but, blame your own heedlessness, blame your own self-flattery, blame your own obstinacy and hardness in sin, on which these prayers, this baptism, this inward and purifying grace have so long been thrown away! Consider how terrible must their prospect be who (having been replaced by the free mercy of God in the same immortality which Adam forfeited) prefer a continuance in the corruptions of their mortal nature, to that easy service of the Most High, to which He lovingly invites and enables them. And fly, while there yet is time, to the altar and to the grace of the Redeemer, to renew your broken vows, to reclaim your forfeited privileges, and to recommence in His might that spiritual life of holiness, which death cannot interrupt, nor the gates of the grave imprison; but which shall bear us on "from strength to strength," and through successive stages of obedience improved, of faith confirmed, of hope yet nearer and brighter, to that undying happiness whither He hath led the way.

who is the guide of our path, the chief of our warfare, the pattern of our lives, the champion of our salvation, our hope, our strength, our crown, and our exceeding great reward!

Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

THE image conveyed in these words seems to have been a favourite one with St. Paul; he frequently compares the condition and habits of a Christian to the state of those spirits who have shaken off the chains of mortality; who have left behind them, in their coffins, the desires and anxieties of the world, and are now expecting, in the residence of departed souls, the return of their Lord, and their own resurrection into glory. This illustration is remarkably calculated to reconcile the privileges with the duties of a Christian; to establish our salvation through Christ alone, while it preserves inviolate our obligations to personal holiness, to exclude our boasting, and to stimulate and encourage our diligence.

But the use which I now intend to make of this fertile topic is to extract from it still further illustrations of the leading peculiarities of our religion,

and more particularly of that which is its cornerstone and master-key, the vicarious and expiatory nature of the Christian sacrifice.

And, in pursuance of this design, I shall examine first, in what sense we may most reasonably understand those expressions which thus speak of living men as if they were deceased already; secondly, what peculiar advantage this fictitious and figurative death can communicate to those of whom it is predicated; thirdly, what manner of persons those are who are said to partake in the death of Christ; and, lastly, what moral and practical consequences may be further derived from a comparison which is, with St. Paul, so frequent and so favourite.

In the first place, then, it will hardly have escaped your notice that the death which, in all these passages, is predicated of persons yet alive, is predicated of them as a consequence and concomitant effect of the death and sufferings of the Messiah. We are dead in Him, that is, when He died we died also, or were accounted thus to die. It is not said merely that He died for our sakes, for our instruction, for our example, for the establishment of our faith in that doctrine of immortality, which, if He were not the first to discover, He was certainly the first to demonstrate and render familiar to all mankind Though all these beneficial ends, and many besides these, were brought to pass by His innocent death and meritorious sufferings, yet more than this is surely implied in the expression that we are dead in Him; nor am I aware of any manner in which

the action or suffering of one person can thus be placed to the account of another, except when that first person is the substitute or representative of the other.

It is thus that, in the common affairs of life, and in the ordinary language of mankind, we are often ourselves understood to do or suffer whatever is done or endured by another on our behalf, by our procurement, or for our advantage. If a friend pays a debt for us, it is we ourselves who have discharged it. If a substitute serves for us in the army, we ourselves have performed whatever duty the military conscription imposed on us; if our representatives impose a tax, we, that is the whole nation, are supposed to have consented; and when our friends or kindred answer on our behalf in baptism, it is ourselves who, by this means, are understood to become parties to the privileges and engagements of Christianity. If Christ, then, have been in any circumstances of His life or death, the representative of another, that action or passion, whatever it shall have been, may, in this form of speech, be imputed to the person represented; and if, on the other hand, we are declared, as in the words of my text, to have paid the debt of mortality when Christ died, it must be that our Lord in His agony and his bloody sweat, in His cross, His passion, and the rest of those affecting details which are familiar to the devout recollection of every believer, was the representative and substitute of all those who look, through Him, for salvation.