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people have always been in covenant with God. The gospel is, indeed, presented in the form of a covenant. The Messiah seals it as his covenant-"the new," the better," "the everlasting covenant." He is himself both the covenant, and the Mediator of it, as he is himself the victim, the altar, and the priest. We are said to be "in Christ;" but before we are in him, we must come into him by covenant. He is the oath of God accomplished, and we take the vow; God is the covenanter, Christ the covenant, and we the covenantees; we are reconciled to God through him. He sealed the covenant with his own blood. The Lord's supper is the pledge of it. But he will have us to die, to be buried, and to rise again for him, as he died, was buried, and rose again for us. Hence the institution of Christian baptism. We must pass through the solemn sign, and must lie with him in the grave and rise with him to a new and better life. These are outward signs of an inward and true and real covenant with the Lord, by and through which we individually, each one for himself, are made partakers of the fulness of the blessings of the gospel of Christ. Every covenant propounded by God to man since his fall is based upon sacrifice. No intercourse between God and rebel man can be instituted upon any other principle. Every Divine stipulation is a stipulation of mercy dictated by a pure benevolence, a Divine philan-, thropy, and based upon such a sacrifice as inflexible justice and immaculate purity can approbate and acquiesce in. There is no covenant of redemption based upon human effort or human merit. All God's overtures are the offspring of pure, unmerited favour. The conditions propounded are not merely to justify God before the universe, though that must be always secured; but benevolence requires that man should believe what God says, feel in harmony with all his requisitions, and obey from his heart every precept. The conditions of believing what God says and of doing what God commands, are all conditions of grace, of justice, and of pure benevolence. God, with all reverence be it spoken, can make no sinful man happy in any other way than the gospel propounds. Our duty, our honour, our interest, and our happiness are equally consulted and secured in accepting the covenant of life through the obedience unto death of God's beloved Son. This we do by obeying from the heart the precepts of righteousness and mercy delivered to us by the holy Apostles. Thus we enter into covenant with

God, we become his, and he becomes ours the instant we obey from the heart the Apostles' doctrine.

Before closing, for the present, the whole subject of covenanting, we may add that there are times, occasions, and circumstances requiring us, or, at least, making it expedient for us, to stipulate private and personal covenants with God—indeed, times when communities may and ought to enter into covenant with one another and with the Lord. We can adduce good examples for such transactions from the history of the age of revelation. Individual men and communities of good men may, and indeed in some cases ought, to enter into a covenant with God. Jacob, on his way to Padan-Aram, is one case of this sort; and Nehemiah and the reformers of his time are another case in point. But of these we cannot now speak particularly.

CHAPTER VII.

FLESH AND SPIRIT-LIBERTY AND NECESSITY-NEW INSTITUTION.

It was observed in our chapter on "Covenants of Promise," that those vouchsafed to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were finally engrossed and developed in two grand social institutions, called "the Old and New Covenants." Each of these had its own peculiar provisions, precepts, promises, and mediator. Moses mediated and administered the one; Jesus the Messiah mediates and administers the other.

These great institutions are very improperly called, on the title-page of our Bibles, "the Old and New Testaments." "Testaments are of no force," said Paul, "while the testator lives." Whether a true or false version of the original, this, certainly, is a true saying. The last will and testament is made valid and obligatory by the death of the testator. But neither God nor Jesus Christ made two last wills or testaments. Hence the titlepage of the apostolic writings usually printed "THE NEW TEStament of our Lord and SavioUR JESUS CHRIST," is every way inadmissible. First, a new testament of Jesus Christ implies that there was an old one! Is this a fact? Again, if there be two testaments of Jesus Christ, the last one only is valid, ac

cording to the proper meaning of the word, and the reasoning of the Apostle. But does any one believe that Jesus Christ made first one will, and then changed it, making it void, by a second-or last will and testament! Yet all our Bibles published "by authority," perpetrate this great mistake, this palpable aberration from propriety. Translate it "the covenant of Jesus Christ," or "a new covenant administered by Jesus Christ," and we speak rationally, scripturally, and intelligibly. God has given to mankind in the Bible two great covenants, the first administered by his servant, Moses, the second by his Son, Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord. The former is the old, the latter the new covenant. By a figure of speech very common, the Jewish writings are called the old covenant, because they contain it, and grow out of it; and by the same figure, the Christian Scriptures are called the new covenant, because they contain it and originate from it.

These two grand social institutions, it was also remarked, are but the development of two great promises made to Abraham; one concerning his natural, the other concerning his spiritual offspring. One of these promises is "I will make of thee a great nation, and will bless him that blesses thee, and curse him that curses thee." The other promise is—“In thee,” that is, “in thy seed, shall all the families of the earth be blessed." One family exhausts the first covenant, while the second unites in one community all the faithful of all the families of the earth. The first promises to all its subjects, all worldly and temporal blessings; the second guarantees to all its subjects, spiritual and eternal blessings.

But the centre of attraction, or the principle of association in these two communities, differs as radically as do the blessings stipulated in each of them; so that connection with the one community secures no interest in the other. The flesh of Abraham is the centre of attraction in the one, while the faith of Abraham is the centre of attraction in the other. All the privileges, rights, interests, and immunities in the one are fleshly and temporal; all the rights, interests, and immunities in the other are spiritual and eternal. A person being the son of Abraham by the flesh gives him no interest whatever in any of the blessings of a son of Abraham by faith. Neither does a Gentile's being a son of Abraham by faith, give him any interest whatever in any of the covenanted blessings of a son of Abraham by blood.

Every thing in these two institutions is consistent with their respective centres of attraction or principles of union. Blessings and curses, temporal and fleshly, are the rewards and sanctions of the one; while blessings and curses, spiritual and eternal, are the rewards and the sanctions of the other. The ordinances attached to the first covenant are called "carnal," while those appended to the new are "spiritual.” The inheritance of the first covenant was worldly. Its blessings were in the basket and in the store, in the flocks and herds, in fruitful seasons and abundant harvests, in oil and wine, in milk and honey, in victories and triumphs over their national and personal enemies. Their tabernacle and their temple, with all that appertained to them—their altars and lavers, their tables and candlesticks, their censers and incense, their gold and their gems, their priests and victims, their blood and water, their oil and wine their music and their dance, their trumpets and their cymbals, their feasts and their fasts, were all of the same sensible, fleshly, and worldly character, suited to a carnal, worldly, and unregenerated nation; every citizen of which, good or bad, was a member of the church: for the church and the nation of Israel, were not only commensurate, but identically the same. Their suspensions were mere temporary separation from the public assemblies, and their great excommunication was death according to the law.

Still, under that national and worldly, or politico-religious institution, there were persons who had faith in the promised Messiah, and spiritual illumination; who saw the promised blessings afar off, and embraced them, and walked with God. But they were sanctified and saved by the grace and spiritual provisions of another institution—the kernel that was in the shell of those outward symbols. For "the law was a shadow," or faint adumbration of "good things to come;" not, indeed, "the exact image of them," but a general outline, through which those "led by the Spirit" were inducted into the holy of holies of that sublimely allegoric representation. Still, the good and the bad worshipped in the same sanctuary, came up to the same festivals, observed all the same rites, and shared in all the national blessings and calamities.

They had, indeed, legal sacrifices, a legal repentance, and a legal remission of sins. The sinner came to a priest, as great a sinner as himself. He carried his lamb, his kid, or his calf, to

the altar. He laid his right hand upon its head, confessed his sin, and killed it. The priest piled its flesh upon the altar, poured out or sprinkled its blood, while the fire of heaven consumed it. This done, the legal penalty only was remitted. It did not strengthen the heart, nor “make him perfect who did this service, as pertained to his conscience." Hence, their sins were again "remembered every year," in the annual atonements. And even the most faithful and believing amongst them only received a final and plenary remission of sins, by reason of the ransom then prospective "for the redemption of the transgressions" under that covenant, that they who were then called might with us partake in the blessing of the eternal inheritance. The Jewish institution, and the people under it, were alike carnal. "Carnal ordinances," says Paul, "were imposed on them until the time of reformation." They had letter and symbol, but they had not the spirit nor the reality. They had, indeed, the word addressed to the ear, and the picture to the eye; but that which was spoken they neither understood nor obeyed; and that which was a type they could not read, “for they could not see to the end or meaning of that which is now abolished." Paul, that greatest of commentators, most aptly calls it letter, and type, and shadow, while with him the new covenant is "spirit, and righteousness, and life." The letter killeth, while the spirit giveth life. It is also called "the ministration of condemnation," while the gospel is called "the ministration of righteousness." The former, indeed, was gloriously introduced, but much more gloriously the latter.

Still, we must enter the sanctuary of the Lord through its own portico. The new covenant always presupposes the knowledge of the old. The reader of the apostolic writings is supposed to have read or learned from Moses and the Prophets. The gospel presupposes the law. It was a school-master to introduce the Messiah to our acquaintance. It is all letter and type; but we receive the spirit through the letter, and the reality through the type. "The law was given by Moses, but the grace and the reality, or the truth, came by Jesus Christ."

As the body to the spirit, so stood the Jewish to the Christian institution in many prominent points of view. As the spirit dwells in the body, so the gospel dwelt in the Levitical institution. When that died, the spirit, or that indicated by all its ordinances, alone survived. So that while that religion sancti