our own sight, and little as the remembrance of them may disturb our peace, or mar our happiness, we may rest assured, that the time is approaching when they shall arise in dread array against us, and fill the soul with anguish the most poignant, unless there is a good hope through grace, that our transgressions, which are many, have been forgiven, that by the stripes of the Saviour we have been healed, and that in the fountain opened to the house of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, we have washed our guilt away.

SERMON III.

PRECIOUSNESS OF CHRIST TO THE BELIEVER.

66

1 PETER ii. 7.

"Unto you therefore which believe, he is pre

cious."

pro

THE proofs whereby the Lord Jesus declared himself to be the Messiah, to whom all the phets had borne witness, were numerous and infallible, and his rejection is to be referred to the natural blindness of man's understanding, and to the depraved state of man's affections. 'Light came into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their own deeds were evil." "We know," said one Master in Israel," that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." This candid confession on the part of Nicodemus, proves that there was no want of evidence to set forth the

PRECIOUSNESS OF CHRIST TO THE BELIEVER. 39

exalted character of the lowly Saviour; and it was this sufficiency of evidence which aggravated the guilt of the Jewish people, according to our Lord's own testimony, and rendered them justly amenable to the righteous displeasure of God. "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father."

Το many, indeed, the whole circumstances of the Saviour's eventful life of humiliation became the subject of the most profane mockery. By many of those to whom the gospel was preached, it appeared as idle tales, or as the imposition of designing men; while, in not a few instances, its humiliating statements called forth the fury of its enemies, and exposed its professors not only to the bitterest invective and reproach, but to the most agonizing tortures, and the most cruel deaths. Still, however, it made its way against passion and prejudice, and in spite of opposition the most virulent. No power could arrest its progress-no weapon formed against it could prosper-for the gracious purpose of Jehovah in forwarding man's salvation was not to be frustrated by man himself. The kingdom of Satan was to be overthrown, the kingdom of the Messiah to be established; souls were to be brought to Jesus, and saved from eternal de

The

struction; and hence the similitude of the kingdom of heaven to a grain of mustard-seed was speedily verified; for though in itself the smallest of seeds, "when it is grown it becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." Daily additions were made to the infant church. Strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, heard the glad sound of salvation, and joyfully received the gospel message of peace. To these strangers St. Peter addresses the epistle before us. language employed by him in the text powerfully illustrates the value which they set upon their privileges, as "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people," "redeemed from their vain conversation received from their fathers, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot;" as "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever;" and the importance attached by them to a knowledge of the Saviour is distinctly set forth; "To you therefore which believe he is precious."

Let us advert, in the first place, to the character of the persons here addressed by St. Peter, and whom he styles those who believe; and in

the second, to the estimate which is formed by them of the Saviour's excellency; to such "He is precious."

I. The persons here addressed by the apostle are those "who believe." To form any proper estimate of the value of the Saviour presupposes a full admission of the justice of those claims which he laid to the high dignity of the Son of God. It presupposes the conviction that the Bible which contains the record of his life, of the precepts which he delivered, of the doctrines which he inculcated, and of the miracles which he wrought, is the revelation of God's will to his sinful and accountable creatures,--a conviction which few in a christian land will not express their readiness to admit ; for the number of those who make a bold avowal of infidelity is comparatively small; and could we with justice regard all who name the name of Christ as true believers, and esteem every man as living under the influence of gospel privileges who is outwardly a professor, we might justly view the state of society with far more favourable eyes, and might have abundant cause for rejoicing at the achievements of the cross over the passions and prejudices of mankind. There is a sense, indeed, in which all nominal Christians may be spoken of as believers; but the sense in which