tain of your salvation lives, and he lives for ever; and he gives you this animating assurance, and it is animating indeed! "Because I live, ye shall live also." Agreeable to this cheering declaration of the Lord Jesus, is the reasoning of the Apostle with which he endeavoured in the text to strengthen and comfort the Christians at Rome. "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." These words. point out to us,

I. THE STATE OF ENMITY BETWEEN GOD AND

MAN:

II. THE MEANS BY WHICH GOD AND MAN ARE RECONCILED: and,

III. THE FINAL SAFETY OF THOSE WHO ARE RECONCILED.

I. WE NOTICE THE STATE OF ENMITY BETWEEN GOD AND MAN:- 66 we were enemies."

What Saint Paul here asserts of himself and the Christians at Rome,-"We were enemies,"-he asserts of the Christians at Colosse; "Ye were sometimes enemies in your minds by wicked works."4 But this state of enmity to the blessed God, was not confined to the Romans or the Colossians; it was 4 Col. i. 21.

3 John xiv 19.

and it is still the state of all by nature. In this epistle to the Romans, the depraved and wretched condition of mankind after the fall, is described in affecting terms. They were alienated from God, having no hope, and "without God in the world." When our blessed Lord made his appearance, the immoral state of the world was such as called louder than ever for some remedy. Not only had mankind, generation after generation, sunk deeper and deeper in sin; but all their philosophers, with all their boasted philosophy, had not been able to discover the source or the remedy of the wickedness and wretchedness which had overspread the earth. The heathen nations, having forsaken the true God, invented and worshipped false gods; and, as if to aggravate the guilt of their idolatry, and more grossly to insult the God of holiness, they chose for their gods some imagined heroes or creatures whose lives had been stained with abominable actions; and whose corrupt examples were most congenial with the depraved mind of man. This was the state of the gentile world.

Nor were the Jews, with all their advantages, free from the errors and rebellion against God, in which the heathen world was so deeply involved. Their history too presents to us a melancholy picture of man's depravity, perverseness, and wretchedness. Though possessing the oracles of God, signalized

by privileges, by judgments, and by mercies; fenced and guarded on all sides with salutary laws, monitions, and directions, their hearts were bent upon backsliding from God; and they walked frowardly in the ways of their own hearts. So that, whether we view the land of Canaan,-the land of God's peculiar people,--or the surrounding nations, the truth of the apostolic declarations everywhere meets us: "Destruction and misery is in their ways;"s "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God:" "the way of peace have they not known:" "the whole world lieth in wickedness."6 world was deluged with iniquity: the people wandered and perished in thick darkness; and, by their horrid advancement in transgression, they seemed to dare the arm of Omnipotence,-they seemed to bid defiance to the God of heaven and earth, and presumptuously to ask, as the impious king of Egypt once asked, "Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?"

The

It was in this deplorable condition of moral darkness, rebellion, and ruin, that the Lord Jesus found mankind when he laid aside his glory and came to redeem them. "The Sun of righteousness" arose on a benighted world; but the world neither perceived his glorious splendour nor felt his quickening influence. Nay more, "he came 61 John v. 19.

5 Rom. iii.

7 Exod. v. 2.

He

to his own, and his own received him not."8 came to lead them back into the fold from which they, like wandering sheep, had strayed. But what kind of entertainment did he meet with from the very people to whom he came on an errand of mercy and love? Did they hail and receive him as the expected Messiah, their glorious deliverer? Did they render to him that gratitude, love, and obedience which his mission as their Saviour, and his exalted personage as the God-man, demanded from them? No. His lowly appearance, his humbling doctrines, his holy commands, his just reproofs and spotless life, condemned their principles and their practice, and called into full exercise the pride, the enmity, and the deep malignity of the human heart: they "crucified the Lord of glory."

My dear friends, allow me here to observe and to press upon you the observation; whatever external modification the human character may undergo through education or association, this is an eternal truth, recorded by an inspired apostle : "The carnal mind is enmity against God,"9 not simply at enmity, but enmity itself. Carnal or unrenewed men in all ages exhibit their hostility to the ways and authority of God; and they are content with any notions, doctrines, precepts, or

8 John i. 11.

9 Rom. viii. 7.

examples, which neither condemn nor thwart their carnal views, desires, and interests.

If, however, they be faithfully told that all the parade and pomp of their religious profession, all the imagined and boasted excellency of their morality, all the loveliness of their disposition,-and all the bland refinements of their social habits;that all these will not justify them before God,will still leave them in his sight but unrighteous and condemned,-if these humiliating truths be pressed upon them, then the pride and the enmity of the heart will soon appear. If they be told that in order to be accepted of God they must renounce all confidence in their own righteousness, and must place themselves in the humble posture of a transgressor of God's holy law, and must receive Christ as their Saviour, and his righteousness as their own and instead of their own; if you further press upon them the reasonable duty of making to God an entire surrender of their hearts and lives, and the necessity of forsaking every sin,—if you press home upon them these truths of the gospel,-then man's natural enmity "to the glorious gospel of the blessed God" will soon be manifest. It will soon be evident that the "carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." The doctrines of the gospel are

1 Rom. viii. 7.