conviction of its truth, nothing but an unbounded confidence in the omnipotence of Him in whose name they spoke, could have enabled them to withstand it. Nevertheless, they nobly stemmed that tide; ay, and in the end they gloriously turned it; and that Jesus who expired upon the cross, they preached to every creature as the only, the divinely appointed Saviour; and with that as their single and perpetual theme, regardless of reproach, undaunted by opposition, unmoved by bonds, they steadily and painfully traversed every accessible region, and crossed every encircling sea, until at last the wanderer fainted upon his solitary path, or the martyr, amidst the shouts of thousands, sank beneath the flashing sword, exhibiting thus a strength of conviction, a firmness of purpose, a grandeur of moral heroism, such as the world has rarely witnessed, such as attested their commission to be divine.

And the foremost in that work was the noble and intrepid Apostle Paul. It might have been supposed that in Rome, the magnificent capital of the Cæsars, the metropolis of the world, the proud seat and centre of learning and refinement-it might have been supposed that among the sages and philosophers, the poets and painters, the orators and historians of the Augustine age, among men most likely to take offence at the doctrine of redemption through the blood of the despised and crucified Jesus, Paul would in some degree modify his statements, so as to render them less unpalatable, and by skilful shading adapt his arguments to cultivated tastes. But no; not one jot or tittle would he abate of its humbling articles; not for one moment would he stoop to measures of accommodation or compromise; and, just in proportion as the soil into which the Gospel seed was cast seemed ill-fitted to receive it, was he careful widely to scatter it; and there, where pride and prejudice had their perfect reign, he was the boldest; there, where enmity was the fiercest and defiance the loudest, he was the most clear and emphatic and decided; and oh! if ever the insinuation was made, that although he might be fearless and outspoken in declaring the message of Christianity, in distant provinces and among barbarous tribes, yet, once confronted with all that was learned and all that was distinguished on the earth, he would lower his tone, he would disguise the truth, he would keep in the background what was distasteful, and give prominence to what he believed would be the least revolting;-how unfounded the suspicion let the words before us testify: "I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also.' Why should I shrink from it? Why should I conceal it? Why should I distort it? Why be reluctant to publish it, in all its unvarnished truth and naked simplicity? 'I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.' Despised by men as worthless, it is chosen of God and precious; derided by men as weak, it is an instrument mighty in the hands of the divine Spirit. It is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.""

"Salvation!" That is the design of the Gospel, the great object it has in view, the grand blessing which it brings. It supposes men to be guilty, transgressors of Heaven's high and holy law, condemned by that sentence which saith, "The soul that sinneth it shall die;"'—as certainly doomed to the death which the law denounces as yon wretched criminal, who in a few hours will suffer upon the scaffold, and swing a lifeless corpse upon the gallows tree. Yes, the Gospel deals with men as condemned, undone, ruined, lost. Oh! there is something in that word "lost" which falls on our ear like a very deathknell. Ay, that is the soul's condition when the Gospel reaches it. "Lost!" Lost to God-lost to itself-lost to heaven-lost to hope-lost to purity, to peace, to life, and all that that mysterious word "life" involves in the vast world, beyond this narrow spot of earth, and lost for ever! Salvation! that is the inestimable boon which the Gospel brings, It announces it; it offers it; it points the way to it; it lays bare God's mode of bestowing it; it is efficacious in securing it. It is "the power of God unto salvation;" that through which He manifests His saving power; an instrument in His hands, mighty to save; mighty to deliver men from that condemnation of a broken law and the terrors of a

coming wrath-mighty to deliver men from the misery of the curse, and the practice and the love and the dominion of sin. And how? and why? "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is wrriten, The just shall live by faith." What is this "righteousness of God" which the Gospel reveals, and which makes it divinely efficacious in saving men? That is the question: what is this righteousness? A more important word is not to be found in Scripture; and the meaning of that word is the key to the whole of the epistle before us. Sometimes "righteousness of God" in Scripture, means the Divine attribute of justice-God's holiness, rectitude, love of truth. But that is not the meaning here; for the Gospel does not reveal the justice, so much as it reveals the mercy of God; and it derives its saving power, surely, not from disclosing to us that perfection of the Divine nature which is irreconcilably opposed to sin, and draws the sword against the sinner, but from disclosing that which is the shield and the security of the sinner. But "righteousness," besides meaning justice, equity, means also, conformity to law, that obedience, that complete and meritorious excellence which the law requires; that which, when it is rendered, makes a man just, or righteous in the eye of the law, so that he can stand in the judgment; that which fulfils and satisfies all the demands of justice and of law, so that he can claim acquittal and reward. And such a righteousness the Gospel reveals. Man has it not in himself; he has lost his righteousness, he lies under condemnation and curse; but God has provided a righteousness for him, which, being placed to his account, he is acquitted from guilt, he is "justified," in the Scripture term, he is freed from condemnation, and receives a title to eternal life. And what other righteousness can be meant than the righteousness of God's Incarnate Son, the obedience and sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ,-His perfect conformity to the Divine law,-all that He did and all that He endured, in life and in death, as the substitute and the surety of guilty men? That is the righteousness which it is the grand design of the Gospel to reveal, and to offer to all sinners as the ground and the reason of their pardon and their acceptance with God, and their receiving and enjoying all the blessings of salvation. Such is the meaning of the remarkable expression, "the righteousness of God." It is the obedience of the Son of God to the law in its demands of precept and of penalty-His conformity, in life and in death, to all the claims of justice. And to understand any thing else by it, when spoken in connexion with the Gospel of our salvation, is to darken the Scriptures, to cloud the apprehension of truth in the minds of men, and to corrupt the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. To that righteousness is the eye of the sinner ever to be directed; on that righteousness, he must, by faith, continually rest; on that righteousness must he live; and in that righteousness must he die; in that righteousness must he appear before the judgment bar; and in that righteousness must he stand for ever rejoicing in the presence of a righteous God."

"But why," you ask, "is this peculiar title given to the work of Christ? Why is His conformity to the law in all its requirements, whether of precept or of penalty,— His obedience to its commands, and His endurance of its curse, designated here, 'the righteousness of God?"" I answer, first, to distinguish it from man's righteousnessfrom the sinner's fancied righteousness. Every man has some kind of righteousness on which he builds his hopes; that is, every one who believes in a God, in a judgment, and in eternity. Conscience tells us all that we must have some plea to offer at the bar of Divine justice; and I question if ever a man looked death in the face without an inward conviction that if he would meet the God that made him in peace, he must present to Him a righteousness-some kind, at least, of obedience to that law under which God has placed him, a law engraved in such deep characters upon the human heart, that even the most degraded heathen are said to bear its trace and show its work. "Their conscience," says the Apostle, "bearing them witness, and their thoughts meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." And hence it is that every man has a righteous

ness of some kind or other in which he hopes. He feels that he needs one; ay, and he contrives somehow to find one. I have read of a famous infidel who, when dying, had his windows flung open towards heaven, and, looking upwards, exclaimed "I give back this soul into the hands of its Maker unspotted as it came from Him." Wretched delusion of a miserable man! Nevertheless, there was conscience, bearing testimony to a great and momentous truth. Rousseau was miserably deceived in fancying that his soul was righteous; but he felt, and rightly felt, that, going to the bar of God, he needed a righteousness. He felt that the great moral Governor of the universe, having placed him—a rational, a responsible being-under a law, could not fail, when they met, to ask him for His fulfilment of that law. He deluded himself with the imagination that he had fulfilled the law, and that he was rendering his soul back to God pure as he received it. There he was wrong; but he was right in deeming this to be his duty, right in believing this to be God's demand. And so it is that every one who thinks of God, who thinks of a judgment-seat, who thinks of a coming eternity, cannot do so without looking out for some righteousness. Some men, casting their eyes anxiously about, perhaps, in times of sickness, when the shadows of death seem to be already stealing over the chamber in which they lie, find their righteousness in their natural dispositions. Oh! they have been kind, and gentle, and ingenuous, and harmless, and generous, and sincere, and with that righteousness they will go to the bar of God. Some, again, place their hopes in the fact that they have maintained a character without reproach in the world, and, in their intercourse with their fellow-men, have been just, and sober, and temperate, and liberal, and benevolent; and that is their righteousness. Others, again, seek for it in their strict observance of the rites and ceremonies of religion, or in their careful performance of its outward duties. They have been baptized; they have been admitted members of the visible Church of Christ; they pray; they hear the Word; they read the Scriptures; they receive the sacrament; and in some way or other they observe the Sabbath-day; and that is their righteousness. Others mainly look to acts of charity, to their good intentions, to the circumstance that they have always meant well-have often felt sorrow when they did wrong; that they have submitted, it may be, to penances, and self-inflicted austerities, and have always attempted to make some compensation for their offences; and that is their righteousness. And some, again, console themselves with the belief that they have not been very wicked; that they have not been as other men, "extortioners, unjust, adulterers, covetous, ambitious, proud;" and that is their righteousness. And others, that they have suffered for their religion, such as it is, have been jeered at, and reproached, and persecuted, for their creed or their profession; and that is their righteousness. Perhaps the merits of Christ are called in, to combine with all or any of these, to furnish out the righteousness of others still. And, indeed, the shapes and forms are endless which man's own righteousness assumes. Now, in opposition to all these, God comes forth and says-" Here, in the work of the Lord Jesus, is my righteousness." All others are delusions; this is a reality. The one, God's righteousness, is a perfect robe, fit clothing for a prince; the other, man's righteousness, is mere tatters, a very beggar's garb. The one is a robe that not only enwraps, but adorns the soul that wears it; the other "rags," unable to clothe its nakedness" filthy rags" that pollute, that defile, instead of adorning it. The one, "God's righteousness," is like some strong hiding-place from the wind, like some firm covert from the tempest, - -a safe inviolable sanctuary; the other, man's righteousness, an imaginary refuge, an altar to whose horns it is vain to cling, and where God, finding the sinner, will say to justice, as did Solomon of old to Joab, "Go, fall upon him," and slay him there. Man's righteousness-that which the sinner would in vain offer to God as a ransom for his soul; God's righteousness-that alone which God will and can accept for justification of life.

But, secondly, the work of Christ is termed God's righteousness, because it was God

who devised, and provided, and accepted it, as the ground of a sinner's pardon and acceptance and salvation. God devised it; therefore it is His righteousness. He planned it all out in the councils of eternity before the world began. God provided it; and therefore it is His righteousness. When man had cast away and trampled in the dust the righteousness which God gave him in creation, when he stood naked and defenceless before the Lord, a trembling culprit, without even a fig-leaf to cover his guilty and polluted soul, God did not leave him thus. He announced the provision of another covering for him, of a more glorious righteousness still. It was "witnessed by the law and the prophets;" and "when the fulness of the times was come," God fulfilled His ancient promise, and "sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made nnder the law," to obey that law in the room of man who had broken it, and to endure the penalty in the room of man who had incurred it; and in every step of his arduous way and work God upheld and supported His beloved Son, until upon the cross He could say, “It is finished!"-the righteousness is perfected: and then God put His seal upon it; that is, He solemnly and judicially accepted it; He declared his satisfaction with it; for He raised up Christ from the dead, He glorified his Son Jesus; He declared that the debt was paid for; He set the Surety at liberty; He declared that his work was honourable and glorious—for, as a reward, and in token of his satisfaction, He exalted Him to His right hand in high and heavenly glory, a Prince, a Saviour, to give repentance and forgiveness of sins.

Oh dear friends, what security is there here for a soul that feels it is without a righteousness, and looks out for such a one as God will approve? What a security to have revealed in the Gospel, God's own righteousness; that which God Himself has provided, accepted, and approved; a righteousness set before him by the very Being with whom he has to do; a grand discharge provided by the great Creditor himself; a plea put into his lips by the righteous Judge of all!

And once more, thirdly, it is called God's righteousness, not only because God devised it, and provided it, and accepted it, but because God himself wrought it out in the person of his co-equal and co-eternal Son. Who is the Lord Jesus Christ? Immanuel, God with us; and this is perhaps the highest ground for the title which is thus given to it of God's righteousness, that God Himself accomplished and wrought it out. It differs, therefore, entirely from the righteousness of men and of angels; for that is the righteousness, not of a creature; it is the righteousness of the Creator. "I, the Lord," says he, "have created it." It is as much the work of God as is the world itself. By His Son, we are told, He made the world; and by His Son He wrought out this righteousness. It is God's, therefore, in this highest, this most mysterious sense, that it was the obedience of One, and the suffering of One, who was God; of One who, having for this very purpose taken upon Himself a created nature and become manifest, visible in the flesh, did in that flesh accomplish this righteousness, a righteousness without a parallel; the only obedience ever rendered to the law on earth, and rendered by God Himself-an obedience strictly Divine; a righteousnesss at once human and Divine-human in the matter of it, Divine in the Author and the infinite excellence of it; human, inasmuch as it was the true and proper obedience of a man, born of a woman, made under the law; Divine, inasmuch as the man was the very fellow of the Lord of Hosts, the Creator of all worlds, God over all, blessed for ever. "Surely," shall one say, "in Jehovah have I righteousness;" not only from Him, but in Him. It is His own work; it is His very work. "This is the name whereby he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness." And thus is the glory of the expression of the text complete, "the righteousness of God." It stands forth the grand central word in Divine revelation. It not only tells us what alone it is that God will accept as the sinner's plea, in opposition to all the inventions of men; but it tells us why this righteousness is so worthy to be accepted for the justification of all that put their trust in it. It is, as the Apostle calls it, "the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." Well,

then, may Paul exclaim, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith."

This is the grand discovery of the Gospel. Where else is this discovery of a Divine righteousness to be found? Human philosophy never dreamed of it; human reason never approached it. Some dim conceptions of the Divine mercy have been formed by the human mind, but Divine righteousness,-God's own obedience to the law, that on account of it sinners might be forgiven, this it never entered into the heart of man to conceive. It is therefore pre-eminently a righteousness "revealed;" and it is the glory of the Gospel that it reveals it; that it manifests it, and fully discloses it. It was the glory of Columbus that, with daring genius, he pierced the night of ages and disclosed to his wondering followers another world. It was the glory of Newton that, with sagacious and philosophic mind, he penetrated the secrets of the heavens, unlocked the cabinet in which lay hid the greatest of nature's laws, and laid open those forces which at once rule the motions of the spheres and bind into one harmonious family the remotest stars that spangle the nightly sky. But oh! what were such disclosures in comparison with that which the Gospel makes, when it "reveals the righteousnes of God," a righteousness that opens to our lost and ruined race a new and better world than earth contains, a happier existence than earth e'er knew-a righteousness that sheds around the Christian, not the glories of the starry firmament that shall one day pale its fires and depart as a scroll, but the light and blessedness of heaven itself, immortal as the soul of man, eternal as the throne of God! Well did the Apostle say, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it it written, The just shall live by faith." And this, while it constitutes the glory of the Gospel, imparts to it its divine, its saving power. And why? Because the law of God, infinitely dishonoured by sin, this rightousness infinitely magnifies. Because the law of God, denouncing death upon transgressors, this righteousness completely satisfies. For man's rebellion, it offers to that law divine obedience; for man's unholy life, it offers to that law Christ life, wondrously holy, divinely pure. It thus removes every obstacle interposed by justice and the law out of the way of man's salvation, and opens up a channel, deep and broad, down which, forth from the fountain, full and overflowing, of the Godhead, might roll into our guilty world a tide of Divine benevolence and saving mercy. And only let a man become possessed of this righteousness, only let a man be able in very truth to say, "This Divine righteousness is mine; it is the robe in which my soul is arrayed, it is my plea for pardon, for acceptance, for eternal life,"-I say, only let a man become possessed of that righteousness, and the Gospel will prove itself to be to him "the power of God unto salvation." He shall be pardoned, and accepted, and receive a title to eternal life.

Do you ask, How you can obtain it? In what way you can became possessed of it? I answer, no price on earth can purchase it; "the merchandize thereof is better than the merchandize of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold." It is "without money," it is "without price." It is the free, the unmerited gift of God. It is offered to you, each one of you, in the Gospel of God's Son. It is urged upon your acceptance in its