Page images
PDF
EPUB

us a specific service. It is not general and indefinite, or left to our choice as to what it shall be. It is, that we shall serve him; that we shall obey his commands; that we shall seek his glory; that we shall love him, honour him, and treat him as our God; that we shall be penitent for our past sins, and be willing to accept his favour on his own terms; that we shall be serious, religious, prayerful, believing, holy. If this is done, he promises heaven. But it is not done. Those now referred to do not even lay claim to any of these things. One of the last things that they would claim, or that their friends would think of claiming for them, is, that they are religious, or that they act habitually from reference to the will of their Creator. They claim to be moral, honest, true, urbane, kind; but how can this lay the foundation of a claim to the appropriate rewards of piety? How in these things, when they do not even intend it, can they render any service to God which would be the proper basis of his rewarding them in heaven? No more than the day-labourer, the clerk, and the servant, carefully attentive to their own interests, but wholly regardless of the interests of their employer, can expect a reward.

Having thus stated these arguments to show that man cannot by any services which he can render make himself so profitable to God as to merit salvation, or be of so much advantage to His cause as to render an equivalent for the rewards of heaven, it remains only to remark,

(4.) That if he cannot do this by a life of obedient holiness, he cannot by any offering which he has it in his power to make. The reasons for this are so obvious as to make it needless to dwell on them. One is, that no offering which we can make can be of any advantage or profit to God. He is made no richer by any oblation of silver and gold which we can bring him; he has no unsatisfied wants which can be supplied by our ministrations. "If I were hungry," says he, "I would not tell thee; for the world is mine and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" Psa. 1. 12, 13. Another reason is, that all that we possess is his, and we can give to him nothing to which he has not already a prior and supreme right. Every beast of the forest," says he, “is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine," Psa. 1. 10, 11. Another reason is, that nothing that we could offer would be a compensation for our past offences, or repair the evils which we have done by our neglect of duty and by our open sins. "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I

66

come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Micah vi. 6, 7. And how shall a man profit God; how lay him under obligation to save him; how render such service as to be an equivalent for heaven? Shall he flagellate his own body? Yet how will that profit God? Shall he gird sackcloth on his loins, or wear an irritating haircloth garment to torment himself? Yet how will that benefit his Maker? Shall he go on a pilgrimage to some distant shrine? How will his Maker be advantaged by that? Shall he shut himself up in a gloomy cell, and withdraw from the light of the sun and the moon and the stars, and from the society of living men, and doom himself to wretchedness and woe? But will his God be made more rich or more happy by his austerities? Shall he seize upon the objects dearest to his heart, and destroy before bloody altars the lives which his Creator has given? But will it profit God if we kill his own creatures, and pour out their blood before him? If none of these things will do, with what plea of merit can we come before him? How can we render such service as to have a claim on heaven?

In view of this train of thought, two additional observations may be made :

(1.) We see the falsehood of that system of religion which speaks of human merit, of the treasured and garnered merits of the saints of former times. If the principles now suggested are correct, how can there have been any such extraordinary and superabounding merit in past times that it may be available now for men? If there were such treasured merit left by the saints of other days, it might still be a question what claim of right any man has now to distribute it to others; but any such claim of superabounding merit is alike at variance with the Bible and with every just principle of reason. Yet this doctrine is one of the principal supports of the Papacy, and is one of the dogmas that demand credence in our land and of this generation. It will be shown, hereafter, that in Him who died to atone for our sins there is ample. merit to supply all our deficiencies, and that the results of his atonement may be ours. The claim that superabounding merit has been wrought out by the saints, derogates from and almost annihilates this; and the claim that his merits and theirs are lodged in human hands, to be dispensed or withheld at pleasure by a priesthood, is one of the chief supports of the most appalling and terrific systems of spiritual despotism that have ever tyrannized Thanks to Him who has bought us our pardon-the

over man.

disposal of the merits of his sacrifice is committed to no human hands, and can be interrupted by no human power!

(2.) This subject is one of direct practical interest to all. If we are ever saved, there will be a good reason for it; for nothing is merely arbitrary in the matter of salvation. There are but two ways possible of being saved-the one by our own merits, the other by the merits of another. If in regard to the latter there are no merits of the "saints" on which we can rely; no merits of parents or pious friends of which we can avail ourselves, then the merits of the Lord Jesus constitute the only foreign dependence which we can have. The whole question is then just this:-Do we rely on our own merits for salvation, or the merits of the Redeemer? Here the world is divided; the Christian, on the one side-the Pagan, the Mohammedan, the infidel, the moralist, on the other. This single question separates the inhabitants of the globe into two great parties never to be united. But if the principles in this discourse are correct, the question may be put to every man—to his reason, his conscience, his heart-whether he has any merit on which he can rely as a ground of salvation. Has he done anything for which the equivalent is to be found in the rewards of an eternal heaven? Has he so deserved the rewards of life, has he rendered such service to his Maker, that he can stand at the final bar, where we all must soon stand, and claim an admission to heaven? Can he demand it as a right that heaven's portal should be thrown open to him, and he be welcomed there? If so, on what ground? What is the basis of the claim? Religion? The unconverted sinner makes no pretension to it. Repentance? He has never shed a tear over his sins. The love of God? He has no spark of love to that glorious Being in his heart. Sacrifices in his service? He has made none. An honest endeavour to do his will? He has never made this the rule of his life. What is the service which he has rendered? What has been the life which he has led? What is the state of his account with God? What is the condition of his heart? Oh, let him look at the broken law of God, His violated sabbaths, His rejected gospel, His grieved Spirit, His neglected word; let him look at his own life of thoughtlessness, selfishness, and vanity, his neglect of prayer, his pride and opposition to God; let him look at the sins of childhood and the worldliness and wickedness of riper years; let him look at the times when God has called and he has refused, when the Saviour has stretched out his hands and he would not regard it; let him look at his broken vows and promises the times when he resolved that he would be a Christian if he reached a certain period of life, the solemn covenant which

he made when he was sick, that if God would spare him he would be His;-let him look at these things, and then see whether he has a claim to an admission to heaven, and whether he can be received there because he has been profitable to God. Oh, if you saw these things aright, you would hail with transports of unspeakable joy the announcement which we make to you, that there is One whose merits can cancel all your sins, and give you a title to salvation. Then, oh! with what joy would you, as thousands have done before you, cast away the " rags of your own righteousness," that you might be clothed in the robe that is "made white in the blood of the Lamb!"

SERMON XXXIII.

WHAT IS MEANT BY THE MERITS OF CHRIST.

JOHN i. 16.-"And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace."

66

THAT is, all we who are Christians, or who are Christ's real followers. In the fourteenth verse of this chapter it is said of the Lord Jesus, that he was "full of grace and truth." In the Epistle to the Colossians (ch. i. 19), the apostle Paul says of him that "it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell :” that is, with particular reference to the salvation of men, for he immediately adds (ver. 20), " And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself." These expressions all refer to an abundance or fulness of grace in the Lord Jesus as sufficient for all that would be saved by him, or such as would supply all their want of personal merit when they appear before God; and as there is in us a total want of merit towards God, the sense of the whole must be, that we can be saved only by the merits of Christ. I propose to endeavour to explain what that merit is.

In the previous discourses on the subject of justification, I have endeavoured to demonstrate that man cannot justify himself before God. In the last discourse I aimed to prove that man has no merit of his own on which he can rely for salvation, or that he can do nothing which will make eternal life a fair equivalent or compensation for his service, or which will bring the Almighty under an obligation of justice or equity to save him. I propose now to show that there is One who has ample merit which can supply all our defect, and which may be so available to us as to secure our salvation.

There are few phrases in more common use than the merits of Christ; few declarations that are repeated more frequently by ministers of the gospel and others, than that men can be saved only by His merits; and few things that are more frequently uttered in prayer than that we plead His merits only for our salvation. The frequency with which this expression occurs, and the bearing which it has on the general subject now under consideration, makes it proper that we should attempt an explanation of it. Common as the use of it is, a formal attempt

« PreviousContinue »