nected the new community, was belief in Jesus as the Messiah, that is, the Anointed of God, a divinely authenticated teacher, and spiritual head. The relation to God into which a man was brought by believing in Christ, was very similar to that which was borne to him by the seed of Abraham. He who was born a Jew, was considered as bound to keep the law of Moses. And the moment a man believed in Christ, that moment he was bound to obey the Gospel, to become a Christian in heart and life. For to believe in Jesus, was to believe in him as a teacher sent from God, the founder of a new religion. The moment then, that a man believed that Jesus was sent by God, that moment all that he commanded had the authority of God. What he did therefore, afterwards, in violation of his commandments, had a more aggravated guilt than what he had done before, because it was not only in violation of the law written in the heart, but of an express and explicit declaration of the Divine will. The instant then that a man believed in Jesus as a messenger from God, that moment, from the very nature of things, he became subjected to his authority, was in fact a subject of his spiritual kingdom.

As soon as Peter confessed his faith in Jesus as the Messiah, "Thou art the Christ," Jesus recognised him as his first convert, the corner stone of the

new community, whose common cement, whose principle of association should be belief in him. Under the old dispensation a peculiar character is supposed to belong to the children of Abraham, and one of especial holiness and sanctity. "For he," says Paul, "is not a Jew, that is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew that is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not of the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God."

But belief in Jesus as the Messiah, or as a teacher sent from God, was not only the bond of their association, but the instrument of their spiritual renovation and final salvation. For he who believes in Jesus, and acts up to his conviction, must necessarily become his disciple, because the very capacity in which Jesus appeared was as a religious teacher. He who obeys Christ, is spiritually renovated, is a child of God, and, of course, is saved here and hereafter.

Such is the view taken of this subject by the Apostle John in the introduction to his Gospel: "He came to his own, and his own received him not." To the Jews, of course, whom divine revelation had before separated from the nations of the earth. "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of

the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." That is, though rejected of the Jews, Jesus, or God through Jesus, formed a new community, who though not born of the stock of Abraham, became the sons of God, by believing in Jesus as the Messiah.

This fact, that the believers in Jesus are the children of Abraham, and therefore the children of God," is the principal point of Christ's conversation with Nicodemus. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." The true children of God are not the lineal descendants of Abraham. They are his spiritual children, who are spiritually renovated by my religion, they are the true children of God, rather than those who are descended from Abraham after the flesh." You have acknowledged the intellectual tie by which the members of the new community, the kingdom of God, are to be bound to me and to each other, that of faith, in saying, as you have said, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him." To complete the work it is necessary for you to be baptized, and publicly join the

new society, and then become spiritually mine, by becoming a true Christian.

It may seem strange why so much stress is laid upon baptism in the New Testament. "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved." It would seem unreasonable that in a spiritual religion, such as Christianity, baptism should be made apparently, though a mere ceremonial duty, a condition of salvation. The reason of this is, that when most of the world were idolaters and all wicked, baptism was the means of bringing men under the spiritual influence of Christianity, into the society of the followers of Christ, subjecting them to the transforming power of its worship, instructions, and ordinances, and withdrawing them from the contaminating influence of their former companions and habits of life, enlisting their sense of character and feelings of attachment, with new and purer associations. That is, to be a true Christian, a man must become so by belief, profession and practice.

That God should form a new community which should be bound to him and each other by a new principle, that of faith instead of natural descent, like the posterity of Abraham, was to the Jews a great stumbling block. Holiness and sanctity had so long been associated in their minds with circumcision and abstinence from certain meats and ceremonial pollutions, so long confined to the stock of Israel,

that they found it exceedingly difficult to believe that any one else could be acceptable in the sight of God. It was with the greatest difficulty therefore, that the Jews, who were converted to a belief in Christ, could be persuaded to allow the Gentiles to enter the Christian church without submitting to the laws of Moses; and to persuade them to abandon their own peculiarities, was next to impossible. To bring about this amalgamation, was the great burden of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, and especially of that to the Romans, which is indeed almost a treatise on this very subject. The arguments and analogies he uses display the most subtil ingenuity.

To abase the pride of the Jewish part of the church in their law, and to destroy all confidence in themselves on account of it, and consequently all desire to bring the Gentile converts under it, he goes on to show in his Epistle to the Romans, that both Jew and Gentile are sinners in the sight of God; that the law, by increasing their light, increased the guilt of the Jews in all their transgressions, and that they, notwithstanding their privileges, were exceedingly wicked. In proof of this position of the sinfulness of the Jews, he goes on to quote from their own Scriptures: "What then, are we better than they? No, in no wise for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles that they are all under sin, as it is written, There is none right