1 COVENAW..0 Bb GRA : i 
 
 HENRY WALL AC cE 
 
‘ ot thie Chenlagirg, Sy, 
 x s 
 ar? “ry 
 
 ¥ 
 
 y 
 PRINCETON, N. J. ’ 
 Srom ne Siilorary of 
 
 Dr. Sames NeCosh . 
 
 155 
 Wallace, Henry. 
 
 The covenant of grace 
 
4 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 In 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/covenantofgraceOOwall 
 
THE COVENANT OF GRACE, 
 
Patt mit - 
 SLAY CF PRis 
 A cst, wand 
 
 * JAN 141911 » 
 
 2» r> +. — 
 Nero, Geis a ah ONS 
 y SMorgaL SEM 
 
 COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 BY THE 
 iy 
 REV. HENRY WALLACE, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE PRESBYTERIAN 
 COLLEGE, BELFAST. 
 
 Be UN BtUER Ge: 
 ANDREW ELLIOT, 17 PRINCES STREET. 
 187 4. 
 
oe apy etee Printed by Home & Macdonald. 
 
 an 
 
 = 
 
 P- " 
 4 a . 
 
 a ite : é 4 ‘ 
 
 — ad 
 
 bi p f y3 ud 1] 
 ‘ ‘ ‘ / # - i é 5 * 
 ites é hie ' . > 
 J 1 dee | \ se] on 
 } s 
 a of a , ou Tt 
 3 ; : i . 
 \ * oe de ne q oy 3 inf J 7 ‘ie 
 j ‘ et ‘ ’ f 2 
 ; Pr ia “i aM 
 Poy fh Of v vr 4 me t at 
 APIA ei} oe ~ - x 
 ¢ ‘ ~ | 
 Te ad bx oat . 
 1) -& AJ « i 7 \ P ‘ a 
 ‘ £ eh es ‘ he ' j 
 
PB RRB AE TAS USE. 
 
 SOME years ago I preached, in the course of 
 my ordinary ministrations, a sermon on the 
 Covenant of Grace, which was afterwards 
 printed by desire of some members of the con- 
 eregation to which it was addressed. Recently 
 a valued Christian friend expressed an earnest 
 wish for its re-publication in a new form. No 
 wish of that friend could be lightly refused ; 
 and I readily consented to have it re-published. 
 On reading the sermon over with this view, 
 I found it would be necessary to revise it. 
 When I began to revise it, I found it would be 
 necessary to re-cast it. And the end has been 
 a new and much enlarged treatment of the 
 subject, with but little of the sermon recognis- 
 
vi PREFACE, 
 
 able except the doctrine. This is certainly not 
 fulfilling my friend’s wish in the letter of it, 
 but I trust he will regard it as fulfilled in the 
 Spirit of it. 
 A chapter has been prefixed on the Cove- 
 nant of Works. | 
 Hee 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 INTRODUCTION, . ‘ - : : : : I 
 CHAPTER 1. 
 THE COVENANT OF WORKS, : ; : : 9 
 CEA Pie Re LI: 
 THE COVENANT OF GRACE, . 25 
 CHAPTER ILI, 
 CHRIST ABLE TO SAVE TO THE UTTERMOST, ae aS 
 CIA EERELV: 
 SATISFACTION OF DIVINE JUSTICE, . : ORAL 
 CHAPTER EV: 
 
 CHRIST’S COVENANT RELATION TO THE ELECT. . 85 
 
Vili CONTENTS. 
 
 PAG 
 CHA PTI Ray 1, 
 THE INTERCESSION OF CHRIST Ss ’, : é as 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN FULFIL- 
 LING THE COVENANT, . ; : ‘ . a 
 CHAPTER Vibe 
 THE ELECT. CALLED INTO THE FELLOWSHIP. OF 
 THE SON, ; : : ; ; ‘ a 
 
 Gira Pa alias 
 
 THE CERTAINTY OF THE SALVATION OF THE 
 ELECT,™. : : . ; : ; fy ARG 
 
fale RO DsU CLT O:N. 
 
 -|F we were asked to say wherein reli- 
 . gion in its highest and purest sense 
 consists, it may be fitly replied, “In 
 fellowship with God ;” for this com- 
 prehends all that is vital, all the 
 spiritual perfection and blessedness of the pre- 
 sent, and throughout all the future. Fellowship 
 implies peace, friendship, mutual knowledge, 
 mutual good-will, consent and concurrence of 
 judgment and of purpose, with entire sympathy 
 of feeling. This only is true religion,—religion 
 in its purity, in its strength, in its dignity, 
 in its enjoyableness. By creating man in His 
 image, it was clearly the original design of God 
 to fit man for fellowship with Himself, and 
 to bestow that honour upon him. He-has 
 made man capable of self-knowledge, and of 
 the knowledge of God. But the capability, 
 ~and the actual knowledge, we believe, were 
 
 , A 
 
2 THE COVENANT OF GRACE, 
 
 simultaneously possessed in one, and that the 
 first, act of human consciousness. This know- 
 ledge of God and of self we regard, therefore, 
 as the primary data of all man’s thinking; and 
 he was thus started on his career of immortal 
 - thought, in possession of the highest objects of 
 knowledge he was ever to know, and in the 
 most august and honourable relation he was 
 ever to sustain. And these objects and this 
 relation were to employ the powers of His 
 mind and the affections of His heart in their 
 utmost energy with unfailing delight for ever- 
 more. Man commenced life with a mind 
 capable of high converse with the Maker and 
 Sovereign of the universe. This was the dignity 
 _and glory of the first of our race, not laboriously 
 attained by deductive thought, nor by reason- 
 ing from widely extended observation, but 
 bestowed upon him with the original endow- 
 ments of his native constitution. He was 
 placed from the first under the highest civilis- 
 ing influence, in the fellowship of Him “whose 
 understanding is infinite.’ He began his mental 
 life not with the lower, but with the highest 
 objects of knowledge, and the highest subjects 
 of thought. In the possession of this vigour 
 and purity of mind, which such knowledge and 
 such thought demanded, he was competent to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 master the lower departments with which the 
 necessities of his condition or the activities of 
 his mind might impel him to grapple. The 
 knowledge of God and of himself was neces- 
 sarily prior to the blessing wherewith God 
 blessed man. The blessing was thus expressed : 
 “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the 
 earth and subdue it; and have dominion over 
 the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 
 air, and over every living thing that moveth 
 upon the earth.” This blessing implies previous 
 knowledge of God, and of His own nature, with 
 the consciousness of wisdom to devise means 
 for subduing the earth, means suited to his 
 observation of the nature and capabilities of 
 the earth as his destined habitation. That he 
 should exercise “dominion over every living 
 thing that moveth upon the earth,” implied 
 the acquirement of knowledge of their natural 
 history, their habits, and their capacities of 
 service for man. Man was thus impelled to be 
 a close observer and diligent student of nature, 
 that he might exercise an intelligent rule over 
 it. But his life begins with the knowledge of 
 God, the highest and best of the sciences. 
 And this knowledge was of that clear and 
 most satisfying character which is possible only 
 to the most intimate fellowship, when the 
 
4 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 thoughts of the mind and the feelings of the 
 heart are revealed and perceived in their reality 
 and truth. And when man in his intercourse 
 with God receives into his mind divine thoughts, 
 and entertains them and cherishes them until 
 they become his own, and he is conscious that 
 they are influencing his mind and determin- 
 ing his habitual experiences, he has a know- 
 ledge of the mind of God which no amount Ge i 
 speculative thought could ever acquire. And 
 in proportion to the degree in which divine 
 thoughts, that is, divine truths, gain the mastery 
 of the mind, in the same proportion has the 
 soul an experience of a purity and a blessed- 
 ness akin to the divine. It is thus, indeed, that 
 we become “ partakers of the divine nature.” 
 God shewed himself capable of fellowship 
 with man, notwithstanding His infinite great- 
 ness. And He made known to man His 
 disposition to converse with him, and to have 
 pleasure therein, by adapting man’s nature to 
 this “conversibleness of God,” as John Howe 
 expresses it, and fitting man for apprehending 
 4 divine communication, and for responding 
 to it. Upon this fellowship man was to be 
 constantly dependent for his perfection and 
 happiness. He was not to be self-educated, 
 but to be taught of God. Man has never been 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 an originator of thought; he has never created 
 a truth; he has never contributed one item to 
 the sum of existing truth. In his best estate, 
 he is but a discoverer of truth already existing; 
 a decipherer of its symbols, a student of its 
 mysteries. God alone is the source of all truth 
 and of all thought, and the sole communicator 
 ofall. Man is ever dependent upon divine teach- 
 ing for the activity of his mind, for materials of 
 thought, for all the pleasures of intelligence. 
 Fellowship with God was a necessity of man’s 
 nature from the beginning, and will be for ever. 
 Nature itself is a medium of that fellowship, 
 which all men more or less enjoy. There is 
 order, and beauty, and grandeur in the works 
 of God around us. These elements are pleasing 
 to God; they are pleasing also to man. The 
 laws and relations of number and magnitude 
 are original conceptions of the divine mind 
 alone, as also the laws of life, and vision, and 
 motion, and other laws of the universe; and 
 the place of controlling influence assigned to 
 them, shews the value which God attaches to 
 them for His purposes. But they are of high 
 value in man’s estimation also, and necessary 
 to his purposes. Here are concurrent judg- 
 ments between the mind of God and the mind 
 of man; and this is fellowship. But God is 
 
6 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 here the teacher and man the learner, and 
 man’s judgment is not independently formed ; 
 he accepts in such matters the judgments of 
 God. And this kind and measure of fellowship 
 is necessary to the continuance of his life with 
 every comfort and joy of it. And in man’s 
 state of uprightness, this department of fellow- 
 ship would greatly minister to the highest 
 cultivation, the moral and the spiritual, because 
 the moral and spiritual relation in which he 
 stood to God would be ever present in his mind 
 in the observation of nature, and of the opera- 
 tion of its laws. And his main interest in all 
 nis investigations would be to learn more of 
 God, of His mind and will, of His wisdom, and ~ 
 power, and goodness ; and when recording his 
 discoveries, he would weave the record into 
 songs of adoration and thanksgiving. The uses 
 to be made of his discoveries in maintaining 
 his dominion, and in cultivating and beautifying 
 his kingdom, and in adding to the stores 
 of his knowledge, however important, were 
 secondary objects. To learn more of the mind 
 of God with a view to closer conformity with 
 it, and to an ever increasing appreciation of 
 the divine character, to extend his fellowship 
 with God by the appropriation of every truth 
 he discovered, to feed his heart’s devotion with 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 every fresh evidence of the divine goodness, to 
 praise and serve with a clearer intelligence— 
 these were the attractive forces which would 
 draw him to the investigation of nature. Man 
 in his state of alienation from God, is regardless 
 of the moral and spiritual character of God, 
 and has no fellowship with it, and desires none. 
 He feels aggrieved by the purity of God, by 
 the righteousness of His law, by His judgment 
 upon sin, and by the strictness of His claims 
 of service. He does not consent to the law 
 that it is good. He is forward to arraign the 
 justice of God’s moral government. His moral 
 judgments are adverse to those of God; he 
 does not approve them or adopt them, or con- 
 form his own procedure to them. He is not 
 in fellowship with God, in that in which the 
 interests of God and the highest interests of 
 man are at one. He approves and admires the 
 order and laws of the material universe, and in 
 this he is of one mind with God. But this is 
 not enough. It is the fellowship with the moral 
 and spiritual nature of God, with His moral 
 and spiritual life, with His moral and spiritual 
 purposes and laws, which constitutes the spiri- 
 ‘tual life of man. To this high fellowship, with 
 all its elevating and refining honours and ex- 
 periences, redeemed man shall be restored, for 
 
8 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 God’s grace is bringing him nigh, through the 
 blood of the cross. And when he begins his 
 new life with the knowledge of God and of his 
 Son Jesus Christ, he will have an ennobling 
 and purifying fellowship with God through His 
 works. But we have, in the revealed Word of 
 God, a clearer discovery of the character and 
 mind of God than His works afford, and better 
 adapted to man’s condition asa sinner. It is in 
 this Word we must learn “‘God’s conversibleness 
 with man” as a sinner, on what principle and 
 by what means He deals with him in restoring 
 him to fellowship with Himself. 
 
Fo : 
 Swe A 
 See, 
 
 Celi Ack * ora Re 21s 
 THE COVENANT OF WORKS. 
 
 ak is the testimony of Scripture that 
 
 God has, from the beginning, con- 
 ducted His relations with man on 
 the footing of mutual obligation. 
 The relation of Creator and creature 
 placed man at an infinite distance from God, 
 and he must learn from God Himself what the 
 nature of his actual relation to God was to be; 
 how his course of life was to be affected by 
 that relation; whether he was to be free to 
 determine his own course; what his bearing 
 towards his Maker was to be, and what his 
 Maker’s towards him. It was necessary he 
 should definitely understand what was God’s 
 disposition towards him ; what he had to expect 
 from God, and what God required of him; on 
 what terms he was to hold converse with God ; 
 
10 THE COVENANT. OF GRACE: 
 
 and what were his rank and position and 
 business in the world. All this God made 
 known to him in His first recorded communi- 
 cation with man. God expressed to him His 
 goodwill, by bestowing upon him the lordship 
 over the earth and every living thing upon it. 
 At the same time, by this very gift, He asserted 
 His own supremacy as sovereign possessor of 
 all things, and that man had no rights but 
 such as God chose in His goodness to invest 
 him with. Even life was not an independent 
 right, which he could claim to hold in perpetual 
 tenure, unchallenged. Nor could he, therefore, 
 determine for himself what the end and course 
 or manner of his life should be. It was true of 
 man from the beginning, that he was not his 
 own. God signified to him His pleasure that 
 there should be goodwill between them, and 
 that that goodwill should be secured by a bond 
 of mutual obligation. God thus manifested 
 His desire to attach man to Himself in the 
 closest and kindliest union, and that in this 
 union man was to find safety and honour and 
 happiness. God, by thus coming into the most 
 intimate relation with man, sought to win his 
 confidence and love, that he might ever feel 
 that fellowship with God was at once the 
 necessity and the blessedness of his life. But 
 
THE COVENANT OF WORKS. Il 
 
 we must remember that this bond of mutual obli- 
 gation was between a Sovereign and a subject, 
 and embraced other elements besides mere 
 goodwill. There was inequality in the relation. 
 The obligation was imposed upon man by the 
 Sovereign authority, which it was God’s pre- 
 rogative to exercise over His own creature. 
 Life had been bestowed upon man in the divine 
 sovereignty ; and it was for God to determine 
 on what tenure it was to be held, and upon 
 what conditions, and it was for man simply to 
 concur without questioning. The rectitude of 
 God would be intuitively apparent to him; 
 and he knew from the abounding kindness and 
 bounty of God to him, that His rule would 
 neither be arbitrary nor oppressive. He had 
 the consciousness at the same time that he 
 was dependent; that his nature needed the 
 support of superior power; and that it was for 
 his own good that he should be subject to a 
 righteous Governor. His nature was not self- 
 sufficient ; the conditions of his welfare were 
 not within himself, but in the possession and 
 under the control of Him that gave him life. 
 While, therefore, he was authoritatively brought 
 under obligation by God, he would accept it 
 with all the conscious liberty of spontaneous 
 action. The consciousness of moral obligation, 
 
12 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 of responsibility to God as his moral Governor, 
 must be called forth. A general law had given 
 him “every herb bearing seed, which is upon 
 the face of all the earth, and every tree, in 
 which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed.” But 
 a special law imposed a limitation upon this 
 general grant,—“ Of every tree of the garden 
 thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the 
 knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat 
 of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof thou 
 shalt surely die.” Here was a restrictive and 
 stringent law, abridging his liberty, calling forth 
 his sense of obligation, and testing its strength. 
 Here was’ a demand made upon him of un- 
 questioning obedience, in terms so plain and 
 definite as to admit of no second interpretation. 
 And here was the condition upon which his 
 tenure of life was suspended,—“In the day 
 thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” His 
 immortality was not secured to him by a law 
 of his native constitution, but was conditional 
 upon his moral obedience. So long as man 
 was faithful to fulfil his obligation to God, so 
 long God, on His part, guaranteed to him his 
 life, with all its dignity and blessedness, in the 
 favour and fellowship of God. “In His favour 
 is life.’ Death as a penal infliction, death 
 “the wages of sin,” death the loss of divine 
 
PYLE CLOVE NANTIEOLI WORKS. 13 
 
 favour and fellowship, was inevitably to follow 
 upon disobedience. This condition of life 
 would appear to an upright being so righteous 
 and just in itself, so indispensable to the 
 stability and honour of a just government, as 
 to command the unhesitating and cordial con- 
 currence of his intelligent moral judgment. 
 Not only this, but he would see in this right- 
 eous policy of his Divine Ruler the best possible 
 security for his own highest interests, consist- 
 ently with his liberty and accountability, as a 
 free moral being. The highest advantages 
 accordant with the nature he possessed, he 
 enjoyed in the fullest measure for securing the 
 continuance of his life, with all the perfection 
 and happiness of which his nature was suscep- 
 tible for ever. His pure nature had no bias 
 to disobedience ; no contaminating examples 
 were before him, no depraved public sentiment 
 overbore his sense of right ; no imagination of 
 pleasure or advantage to be gained by rebellion 
 against God, could arise spontaneously in his 
 mind. Then he was warned that death was 
 a possibility to him. And that implied that 
 disobedience was a _ possibility. This was 
 sufficient to rouse his utmost vigilance ; and 
 that vigilance required only to guard a single 
 point,—“ abstain from that forbidden tree.” 
 
14 THE -COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 The tree of life was to him an ever visible 
 pledge of the divine faithfulness, ever strength- 
 ening his confidence in God. And chief of all 
 his advantages to sustain his steadfastness, was 
 his fellowship with God, the joy and the 
 strength of God’s saints under all dispensa- 
 tions. Q 
 This transaction or dealing of God with 
 Adam is that which is denominated a covenant ; 
 and especially the Covenant of Works; some- 
 times the Covenant of Life, and the Covenant of 
 Nature. The transaction contains within it all 
 the necessary elements of a covenant. There 
 are two contracting parties, God and man. On 
 the one part, God engages that the life which 
 He has bestowed upon man, shall be immortal 
 on condition of man’s obedience to his authority. 
 On the other part, man accepts the condition 
 on which he is to enjoy immortal life, as just 
 and good, and engages himself to obedience. 
 He could not but regard the obedience obliga- 
 tory, without denying the righteous sovereignty 
 of God. He could not but acknowledge the 
 reward to be bountiful, and the penal sanction 
 to be righteous. In truth, every law imposed 
 by divine authority, contains the elements of a 
 covenant; for God binds Himself, in terms of 
 His own law, to reward obedience and to punish 
 
THE COVENANT OF WORKS. 15 
 
 disobedience. And man acknowledges the law 
 to be just and good, and accepts the obligation 
 to obey with the stipulated conditions. Hence 
 iesisathapethe tables on swhich the Ten Com- 
 mandments were written, are called “ The tables 
 of the Covenant.” A Divine promise in like 
 manner involves mutual obligation, and is in 
 reality a covenant ; for when God, by promise, 
 pledges His truth and fidelity to bestow the 
 good expressed in the terms of it, and the 
 person or people to whom it is addressed 
 accept it and rely upon it as their proper 
 obligation, in view of the Divine goodness, 
 there are present the necessary elements of 
 acovenant. Hence God’s covenants with Israel 
 are called “ Covenants of Promise.” To reject 
 a promise, to despise or undervalue the good 
 which it conveys, to feel it to be superfluous or 
 undesirable, adding nothing to the sum of good 
 we already possess, were as insulting to God as 
 disobedience to law. A promise of God, an 
 expression of His good will, a free and spon- 
 taneous tender of a gift, lays man under obli- 
 gation to God as justly as a righteous law,—an 
 obligation to believe His kindness and to trust 
 His faithfulness, with a solemn pledge to employ 
 the gift according to the will of God, and His 
 design in bestowing it. This first covenant 
 
16 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 with man was a covenant of promise,—the 
 promise of eternal life. The life was the pro- 
 mise of the Divine kindness, pledging the 
 Divine faithfulness to its fulfilment. There 
 was therefore a mutual obligation between God 
 and man; so that, whether this solemn and 
 momentous transaction be regarded as a pro- 
 mise, it implies covenant obligation ; or whether 
 as a formal covenant, it includes the promise ; 
 and under both views the life is conditioned 
 upon man’s duty, its forfeiture upon his sin. 
 But in this Covenant of Life God does not 
 treat with the individual man Adam as a private 
 person, whose own personal life and interests 
 alone were concerned. It was with mankind 
 God was dealing. When God said, “Let us 
 make man in our image after our likeness,” it 
 is of the race of mankind He speaks, and not 
 of the man Adam, for He immediately adds, 
 “Tet them have dominion,” &c. (Gen. i. 26). 
 It was not to Adam alone that the command 
 or right was given to be fruitful, to multiply 
 and replenish the earth, and to subdue it; or 
 that the gift of food was bestowed, or of 
 dominion over every living thing. He was not 
 the only person in whom would be found the 
 elements which compose the dust of the ground, 
 into whose nostrils the breath of life should 
 
LHE COVENANT. OF WORKS. 17 
 
 enter, and who should become a living soul. 
 The man with whom God covenanted was the 
 being that was made in the image of God,—an 
 intelligent, holy, spiritual being,—a breathing, 
 living soul, with a body formed of the con- 
 stituent elements of the earth, with the power 
 to subdue the earth, and with the right of 
 dominion over the lower animals, and who 
 should live by food. He was to multiply, and 
 fill the earth with his kind. All this is descrip- 
 tive of the race; for it was not possible for the 
 individual Adam, the solitary man, to subdue 
 the earth, nor to multiply the species. Adam 
 was simply the representative of the race, 
 dignified above all his posterity with the per- 
 sonal possession, from the first moment of his 
 conscious life, of intelligence to know his Creator, 
 susceptible of the sense of moral obligation, 
 when he heard the first requirement of obedi- 
 ence to divine law, to understand the conditions 
 on which his immortality depended, and to 
 estimate the true import of the penalty of 
 disobedience. The whole teaching and tenor 
 of Scripture present Adam in this character of 
 moral and responsible head and representative 
 of the race, with whom, for the whole race, God 
 entered into a covenant of life-—“ As by one 
 
 man sin entered into the world, and death by 
 B 
 
18 THE COVENANTINCI\ GLACE. 
 
 sin; and so death passed upon all men, for 
 that all have sinned.” “By one man’s offence 
 death reigned by one. By the offence of one, 
 judgment came upon all men to condemnation, 
 As in Adam all die,” &c. (Rom. v.) And the 
 righteousness and goodness which invested the 
 first man with this honourable and responsible - 
 function, are conspicuously manifest in the fact 
 that, in the person of Adam, mankind was in 
 its perfection of moral purity, and therefore of 
 ability and liberty. This was the only condi- 
 tion under which moral obligation could be 
 righteously imposed, or under which obedience 
 was morally possible. By this arrangement, 
 therefore, God provided in the very best way 
 for the welfare and happiness of the race, 
 consistently with man’s liberty and responsi- 
 bility. And considering the natural economy 
 by which all men were to enter into life in 
 infancy, it was the only arrangement by which 
 the first infants could enjoy the protection of 
 a settled moral order, and become entitled to 
 its privileges. This view of the first moral 
 bond in human history, is abundantly confirmed 
 by the facts of human life and death. Men 
 have lived generation after generation, dead in 
 trespasses and sins, and generation after genera- 
 tion they have returned to the dust. 
 
LHE COVENANT OF WORKS. 19 
 
 It is worthy of observation that moral 
 obligation, under covenant form, obtains 
 throughout the relations of human society, as 
 indispensable to its stability and order, and 
 to the security of both public and private rights. 
 Federal compacts, formally “signed, sealed, 
 and delivered,” with the sanction of public 
 law, and their conditions enforced by public 
 authority, are the most familiar bonds of social 
 life. Society itself is founded on the marriage 
 covenant. And it is clear that the federal 
 form of moral obligation is a constituent 
 element of the divine moral government over 
 man. It was the form of God’s first act of 
 moral government over man, in which He 
 assumed an obligation to man, and imposed 
 an obligation upon man, binding Himself to 
 man, and man to Himself in perpetual amity. 
 And by the next direct act of moral govern- 
 ment He established a covenant relation, by 
 mutual moral obligation between Adam and 
 Eve, and thus initiated that law of covenant 
 engagement which has been the security of 
 reciprocal rights and interests ever since. And 
 all men accept this class of arrangements in 
 the interests of righteousness and peace, know- 
 ing that no other could be devised which could 
 serve the same end.. All the modes of God’s 
 
20 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 dealings with man are suited to man’s moral 
 nature and condition; and the whole history 
 of the race proves that his social relations 
 acquire and maintain their firmest consistency 
 when dominated by the federal form of moral 
 obligation; that therefore it is of all social 
 bonds the best suited to his moral nature and 
 condition. And this again affords the very 
 strongest presumption that the interpretation 
 is right which regards the transaction between 
 God and Adam, as in its most strict and formal 
 sense a covenant. 
 
 There is still a question respecting the dura- 
 tion of the Covenant of Works, which may be 
 briefly noticed. Was it designed to be per- 
 petual, demanding perpetual obedience as its 
 condition? The Westminster Confession speaks 
 of the condition as “perfect and personal 
 obedience.” The Shorter Catechism mentions 
 “perfect obedience” only; while the Larger 
 Catechism specifies “perpetual” as well as 
 “perfect” and “personal.” Dr Hodges, on the 
 other hand, says,—‘“ The question whether per- 
 petual as well as perfect obedience was the 
 condition of the covenant made with Adam, 
 is probably to be answered in the negative. 
 It seems to be reasonable in itself, and plainly 
 implied in the Scriptures, that all rational 
 
7 COVENANE OF WORKS. 21 
 
 creatures have a definite period of probation. 
 wae itwismtnerctore to be inferred’ that, thad 
 Adam continued obedient during the period 
 allotted to his probation, neither he nor any of 
 his posterity would ever have been exposed to 
 the danger of sinning.” The truth seems to 
 be that the covenant had a design, special and 
 limited, with a temporary obligation; and a 
 design, general and unlimited, and of perpetual 
 obligation. It may be reasonably supposed 
 that when Adam became aware of his relation 
 to God as a subject of His moral government, 
 he would know that his obedience must be as 
 constant and enduring as the government itself. 
 This was a general law to which his nature was 
 constituted to respond. But it was necessary 
 that he should learn that, although by his very 
 constitution he was a law to himself, yet that 
 constitution did not reveal to him the whole 
 will of God, and was not therefore sufficient as 
 a tule and meastrre of obedience. He must 
 learn that duties may be required of him, to 
 which his own nature would not spontaneously 
 prompt; and that he must hold himself ready 
 for special services at the simple expression of 
 the divine will, without reason given. He must 
 be taught to submit to restrictions upon his 
 natural liberty, to limitations of the action of 
 
22 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 his constitutional tendencies and natural de- 
 sires, on the same sovereign authority. In 
 other words, he must learn that he must comply 
 with positive law, as well as with natural and 
 moral. There was nothing in man’s nature to 
 prompt him to abstain from the fruit of the 
 specially prohibited tree. It bears the same 
 description of the other trees of the garden, 
 “pleasant to the sight, and good for food” 
 (Gen. ii. 9, iii. 6). But a positive law separates 
 it from all other trees, and abstinence from its 
 fruit becomes a special obligation. Even under 
 this special form he was taught the general 
 obligation of life-long obedience, under what- 
 soever variety of forms divine law might present 
 its requirements. That there was also a special 
 design with a temporary obligation seems no 
 less true, as is generally admitted. It seems 
 altogether probable that a period of probation, 
 of sufficient duration, and under sufficient variety 
 of circumstances, was allotted to Adam to test 
 his obedience. Perhaps the period could hardly 
 be called definite as to the number of days. 
 It was known to God that man’s trial of his 
 fidelity could only come from one quarter, from 
 the action of a malignant and subtle spirit, who 
 must watch and study these new beings, and 
 the dealings of God with them, and the laws 
 
THE COVENANT OF WORKS. 23 
 
 under which He had brought them, that he 
 might see by what device they were assailable. 
 The probation came to its crisis when the 
 tempter met and conversed with them. It was 
 in this circumstance, meeting with sin and 
 assailed by it, in which their probation truly 
 consisted. It was not necessary that the man 
 should know under what guise the danger 
 should appear. He was warned that there was 
 evil in the world, by the name given to the 
 prohibited tree; but his all-sufficient shield was 
 simple obedience. So long as he abstained 
 from the forbidden fruit, evil could have no 
 power over him. Had he withstood the temp- 
 tation, he would have been confirmed in holi- 
 ness for ever. He would have obtained the 
 knowledge of good and evil in his victory over 
 evil, and have been for ever free from the 
 contamination of it. And the tree having 
 served the design of God, would probably be 
 as free to him as any other tree of the garden. 
 The temporary obligation to abstain from its 
 fruit would terminate with the fulfilment of 
 the condition of the covenant. That which 
 was positive was temporary; that which was 
 moral is of perpetual obligation. This tem- 
 porary character of the positive element in the 
 covenant seems also fairly inferred from the 
 
24 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 fact that, while the whole earth was given to 
 man to subdue it, God clearly confined him 
 to the garden, to dress it and to keep it, and 
 specially subdued that portion of the earth for 
 him, having “made to grow in it every tree 
 that was pleasant to the sight and good for 
 food.” This confinement to the garden we can 
 only suppose to have been temporary, lasting 
 during the period from his creation until the 
 temptation. Dr Hodges had contemplated the 
 covenant with Adam in its positive element, 
 and therefore regarded it as “probably” of 
 temporary obligation. While the Westminster 
 divines, taking the wider view of the moral 
 element, regarded the obedience of perpetual 
 obligation. 
 
TN OTN 
 
 Ce TAG Ee insted 
 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 AD man been faithful to his covenant 
 with God, in resisting successfully 
 the first temptation to sin, his first 
 victory would have been complete 
 and conclusive ; thenceforth God was 
 
 pledged to his protection evermore. But by 
 
 his disobedience, brought under condemnation, 
 alienated from God, with his original righteous- 
 ness lost, dead in sin, and utterly disabled to 
 all that is spiritually good; recovery from his 
 fall, by the resources of his own nature, was 
 impossible, while no provision was made in the 
 covenant for repentance or pardon. Man was 
 thus left as hopeless as he was_helpless,— 
 delivered over to despair. But God was pleased 
 to make a new discovery of Himself to man in 
 his sin and misery, which was withheld from 
 
26 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 him in his uprightness. The covenant of works 
 revealed only one way of God’s dealing with 
 sin and sinners,—namely, by punishment. He 
 was now to shew Himself rich in mercy, and to 
 prove the great love wherewith He loved man, 
 even when dead in sins; and, while confirm- 
 ing the sentence of condemnation,—a sentence 
 of irreversible righteousness, not to be cancelled, 
 but to be inexorably executed,—to provide from 
 the resources of the Godhead a redemption for 
 the sinner, equally characterised by justice and 
 grace. And again this great benefit was to be 
 conveyed by covenant. But man was not ina 
 condition again to enter into covenant with 
 God. He had lost his integrity,—was a covenant 
 breaker, and under condemnation. He could 
 now be no party to a covenant with God, being 
 at enmity with Him. A new covenant was 
 revealed to him,—new as a revelation, but old 
 as eternity itself; new to man as to the parties 
 in it, and as to the mode and conditions by 
 which man should partake of the benefits of it. 
 It is that covenant which is familiarly known 
 as the Covenant of Grace.* 
 
 * The first intimation of the covenant was given immediately 
 after the fall, when an assurance was given that a Deliverer 
 from the power of Satan should be raised up, of the seed of 
 the woman. It was at the same time intimated that the 
 
THE COVENANT OF GRAGE. 27 
 
 It is up to this covenant that the believer 
 traces at once the source and the certainty of 
 his salvation. It is ever a deeply interesting 
 exercise of every intelligent mind to search 
 into the beginnings of things. There is a high 
 degree of pleasure in tracing the mighty river, 
 from where it rushes into the embrace of ocean, 
 back through all its windings, to its obscure 
 birthplace in the dripping rock or the bubbling 
 spring. The historian conducts, with unflagging 
 enthusiasm, his toilsome search in the mists of 
 the past for the origin of a nation, the founda- 
 miucnsat a.city, or the pedigree of a hero. The 
 man of science would discover the foundations 
 of the earth, when they were laid, and where- 
 upon they were fastened. The Christian rejoices 
 in a similar taste for exploring foundations and 
 beginnings. He too has his special science,— 
 a science of high interest to him; and although 
 Deliverer would be.a sufferer; and this fact was to be kept 
 before the minds of all the generations until His appearance 
 for the actual accomplishment of the promised deliverance, by 
 the institution of the sacred rite of sacrifice. ‘‘I will put 
 enmity between thee (the serpent) and the woman, and between 
 thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt 
 bruise his heel” (Gen. ili. 15).- The covenants with Noah, 
 with Abraham, with Isaac and Jacob, the ceremonial dispen- 
 sation, the promises, the national covenants with Israel, all 
 
 being covenants of peace, were streams from the everlasting 
 covenant, testifying to its existence as their fountain head. 
 
28 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 the philosopher refuses to recognise its title to 
 rank with the exact sciences, yet to the believer 
 its principles and conclusions are possessed with 
 all the certainty of the most rigid demonstra- 
 tion. It has discovered to him the origin of 
 the renowned commonwealth, of which he is a 
 free and privileged citizen. It has opened to 
 him the seals of the ancient roll, which records 
 the names of the illustrious lineage to which 
 he belongs. The earnest Christian is a true 
 antiquarian, and delights in deciphering the 
 ancient muniments of his house, in which he 
 has made discoveries of priceless title-deeds ; 
 in which he has read the true principles which 
 determine the right of inheritance, and the law 
 of succession ; and deciphered the seal and the 
 signature which secure the inalienable right of 
 possession for ever. He has been enabled by 
 grace to deduce his own title to his place in 
 the succession, as a joint-heir with Him who is 
 “the appointed heir of all things.” In con- 
 templating this covenant of grace in the light 
 of the divine Word, we shall discover the source 
 of life to man as a sinner, the channel through 
 which it reaches those for whom it is designed, 
 and the guarantee that the life is life everlasting. 
 
 It is the opinion of some theologians, that 
 the plan of salvation is comprehended under 
 
THeELCOVENAN LOR GhA CE. 29 
 
 two covenants, a Covenant of Redemption and 
 a Covenant of Grace; the covenant of redemp- 
 tion being between the Father and the Son, and 
 the covenant of grace between the Father and 
 His people. And this distinction is thought 
 necessary, to avoid the incongruity of repre- 
 senting Christ as at once a party and a mediator 
 of the same covenant. It is also affirmed that 
 both covenants are clearly presented in .the 
 Bible. This distinction seems quite unneces- 
 sary on the first ground; and, as regards the 
 Bible testimony, it seems possible to compre- 
 hend under one covenant all that is alleged to be 
 distributed between two. That one covenant 
 may be termed the Covenant of Redemption, 
 when it is intended to express the design of it, 
 namely, the redemption of sinners. And it is 
 fitly termed the Covenant of Grace when we 
 have regard to the source whence redemption 
 flows. The term Covenant of Grace stands in 
 more strongly marked antithesis to the Covenant 
 of Works, which seems to have determined its 
 more general acceptance, while it embraces 
 everything which is supposed to belong to the 
 Covenant of Redemption, with the particular 
 advantage of keeping prominently before the 
 view the eternal spring of the life-giving waters 
 of redemption. That there should be any 
 
30 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 incongruity in representing the Son of God as 
 at once a party and the Mediator of the same 
 covenant, can only be suggested by limiting 
 the office of mediator to the necessarily narrow 
 sense it bearsamong men. Through possessing 
 the confidence of two parties: at variance, he 
 may persuade the offender to retire from the 
 offensive position he has assumed, and to make 
 such amends as may be in his power; and he 
 may persuade the offended party to accept the 
 proposed reparation, to allow his wounded feel- 
 ings to be conciliated, and the state of amity 
 to be restored. The mediator has effected the 
 reconciliation of the parties at variance. Re- 
 conciliation is the object also of the Mediator 
 of the Covenant of Grace, and thus far there is 
 a coincidence. But there is a wide difference 
 between the modes in which the reconciliation 
 is effected in the one case and in the other. 
 He that mediates between two men at enmity 
 does not put himself in the place of the offender, 
 and allow himself to be treated as the guilty 
 party, while the offender is freed from the con- 
 sequences of his wrong-doing. But this the 
 Mediator of the Covenant of Grace does. “The 
 Lord. hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” 
 (Isa. liti.6). ‘Who his own self bare our iniqui- 
 ties on his own body on the tree” (1 Pet. ii. 24). 
 
THES COVENANT OF GRACE. 31 
 
 “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of 
 the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. iii. 13). 
 That is, He redeemed us by taking our guilt 
 upon Himself, and, therefore, treated as the 
 suilty party, He. bare the penal consequences 
 of our sins. In the Covenant between the 
 Father and the Son, the Son’s place is that of 
 responsible Representative and Substitute of 
 those given to Him of the Father, transacting 
 with the Father for their reconciliation; not 
 simply employing persuasion or entreaty, but 
 engaging in their name, as their Head, to do 
 and to suffer in their room whatsoever the 
 righteousness of God demanded of them. Here 
 the Son is fulfilling the office of mediator and 
 party at the same time. It is not His relation 
 to the Father as.Son which constitutes Him a 
 party in the covenant, but His sovereign and 
 gracious appointment by the Father to the 
 mediatorship, to act for the elect in all things 
 pertaining to God. He did not take this 
 honour to Himself in right of Sonship, but was 
 called of God as was Aaron (Heb. v. 1-5). His 
 Divine nature as Son of God was a necessary 
 personal qualification ; but His calling of God 
 invested Him with the office, which alone 
 entitled Him to act for others. His relation to 
 those for whom He acted, and which constituted 
 
EE: THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 His right to act for them, originated in the act 
 of the Father giving them to Him (John vi. 37), 
 whereby He became “the Head of the body” 
 (Col. i. 18), “the first-born among many 
 brethren” (Rom. viii. 29). It was in this 
 character that the Father brought the Son into 
 covenant with Himself, for the redemption of 
 the elect. It was as Priest, Mediator, Substi- 
 - tute,—placed in official, organic relation to the 
 elect, by the act of the Father,—that constituted 
 His right to be a party in the covenant. And 
 by His faithful fulfilment of all righteousness 
 as their surety in the covenant, He secured for 
 His people a right to His own legal standing 
 with the Father. So far from there being any 
 incongruity between being party and mediator 
 in the same covenant, it was clearly His media- 
 torship that constituted His title to be a party. 
 The covenant between the Father and the Son 
 is the Covenant of Grace for the redemption of 
 sinners; and everything necessary to~ secure 
 that great end is embraced in the Covenant,— 
 even the offer of the blessings of redemption 
 by the gospel, and faith and repentance as 
 necessary means of putting sinners in possession 
 of these blessings. It is quite superfluous to 
 suppose a separate and distinct covenant to 
 provide for the offer of salvation to all men on 
 
THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 the condition of faith in Christ. The covenant 
 between the Father and the Son would have 
 been very incomplete if it had not provided for 
 giving the fullest practical effect to its great 
 and benignant design, and therefore for all the 
 means of whatever kind, and by whatever 
 agency, were necessary thereto: the gift of the 
 Holy Spirit, the written word, its wide circula- 
 tion, the Gospel ministry, the church, the free 
 offer of salvation, the call to repentance, to 
 faith, the regenerative act of the Spirit making 
 the faith and repentance actual ; together with 
 such arrangements and orderings of Providence 
 as may most effectually concur to the one end, 
 all are included in the one Covenant. 
 
 Our Lord has given a statement of His own 
 place in the covenant with His Father, which 
 sheds a flood of divine light upon the eracious 
 and wonderful transaction :—“ All that the 
 Father giveth me shall come to me: and him 
 that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. 
 For I came down from heaven not to do mine 
 own will, but the will of Him that sent me. 
 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent 
 me, that of all which He hath given me, I 
 should lose nothing, but should raise it up 
 again at the last day. And this is the will of 
 
 Cc 
 
34 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 Him that sent me, that every one which seeth 
 the Son and believeth on Him, may have ever- 
 lasting life; and I will raise him up at the last 
 day” (John vi. 37-40). Then noticing the 
 murmuring of the Jews, He says, “ Murmur 
 not among yourselves. No man can come to 
 me except the Father which has sent me draw 
 him: and I will raise him up at the last day. 
 It is written in the prophets, And they shall 
 be all taught of God. Every man, therefore, 
 that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, 
 cometh unto me” (verses 43, 44, 45). 
 
 In this statement our Lord refers the whole 
 matter of redemption, as to its end and means, 
 to the will of God as its originating source. 
 This we may well be prepared to expect, when 
 we remember that the will of God is the sole 
 original force in the universe. It is co-eternal 
 with His existence, not asa latent or dormant 
 potentiality, but as power in living activity, 
 ever determining its own purposes. It is ever 
 sublimely free, sovereign, and independent in 
 its action. There were no eternal co-existences 
 to bias its counsels, to enlarge or limit the range 
 of its purposes, or to influence the direction of its 
 course. It is the sole, sovereign, and efficacious 
 cause of all things, carrying within itself the 
 power and certainty of the accomplishment of 
 
Iii, COVENANT OF GRACE. 35 
 
 Se — — ee, 
 
 its own ends. It is the only cause which could 
 account for the origin of so stupendous an 
 effect as redemption,—an effect implicating the 
 whole moral government of God. It is incon- 
 ceivable that it could originate in any inferior 
 cause, or have any later origin; and no other 
 cause could be capable of certainly determin- 
 ing such an effect. It is not less the living 
 force in every element which is comprehended 
 in the scheme of redemption, operating in each 
 and all the infallible efficacy which issues in 
 the glorious result. The gracious will of the 
 Father is the originating cause of the certainty 
 of eternal life and glory of all whom its precious 
 counsel comprehends. That will commands 
 all the resources of infinite wisdom and power. 
 God wills every end with the consciousness of 
 possessing all these resources for its accom- 
 plishment; and it is impossible to conceive 
 that He should not will the actual and efficient 
 employment of them to ensure its realisation. 
 To will an end implies to will the means, and 
 to will their use and efficacy, if we can suppose 
 means without efficacy. God cannot will to 
 leave His own designs and determinations to 
 defeat and failure. Besides, whatever He wills 
 in regard to the government of moral beings, 
 their relation to Himself, their life and destiny, 
 
 \ 
 
36 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 must be of infallible rectitude, and therefore 
 incapable of change. He cannot will to recede 
 from a righteous determination of His righteous: 
 purpose. It is the will of the Father in sending — 
 His Son, that of all which He hath given Him 
 he should lose nothing, but should raise it up 
 at the last day. What can be imagined to 
 render this purpose less certain of accomplish- 
 ment than any other which the divine wisdom 
 has ever formed? It is the declared will of 
 the Father to bless them, and they shall be 
 blessed. The historic past is not more certain 
 than the determined and promised future. 
 
 It is of great importance that it be under- 
 stood that those given to the Son are sinners. 
 They are not regarded merely as creatures, 
 moral beings, but as fallen, guilty, justly con- 
 demned, and without any ground on which to 
 found a plea in arrest of judgment. The fall 
 reduced the whole race to one common level 
 of sin and misery. They never had any rights 
 but such as by the goodwill of their Creator 
 were accorded them, by promise and covenant. 
 Their breach of covenant forfeited every right, 
 and subjected them to the penalty of death— 
 death in the fullest import, competent to a 
 moral creature to undergo. Separated from | 
 God, from His favour and fellowship, without 
 
LTE COVENANT OF GRACE. 37 
 
 claim to any good from Him, none were dis- 
 tinguished from the whole number by any 
 qualities entitling them to restoration to happi- 
 ness and honour. Nor had any portion of 
 mankind, regarded as the creatures of his hand 
 merely, been distinguished by Him by any 
 preference above any other portion, on any 
 ground whatever. He did not create one 
 portion to happiness and another to misery, 
 one portion to be objects of favour, another to 
 be objects of wrath. As creatures all were 
 alike the objects of the goodwill of their great 
 Creator. It is not in this relation that the 
 predestination of grace has its place. It is not 
 here that mediation enters. It is not for man 
 - asa creature that redemption is needed. As 
 creatures, all men are regarded in Adam in his 
 state of uprightness, as upright as he; and the 
 question of being lost or saved has no per- 
 tinence. It is not as creatures they are given 
 to the Son. It is not until sin enters, that is, 
 it is not until men are contemplated as sinners 
 in the divine mind, that concurrently therewith, 
 the will of God determines how they shall be 
 dealt with. All are guilty alike; all alike 
 condemned. Justice demands the execution 
 of its own sentence upon the whole race. Shall 
 ferakcwetect, upon all? Shall: it take: effect 
 
38 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 upon none? In the one case it would have 
 appeared that there was neither mercy nor 
 compassion for sinners. In the other, that God 
 denied His own truth and justice, and that in 
 the end men fared no worse for their dis- 
 obedience. But the Scriptures teach us that 
 God adopted neither of these alternatives. 
 One would have left no monument of mercy 
 to record in living letters of indelible brilliancy 
 the grace and love of a heavenly Father. The 
 other would have obliterated all trace of a just 
 moral governor. The course actually adopted, 
 saving some and not all, has illustrated the 
 divine character in the majesty of its justice, 
 and in the riches and sovereignty of its grace, 
 ina way to secure the awe and admiration of 
 all holy beings, to the praise and glory of God 
 for ever. That, in fact, some are saved and 
 not all, is acknowledged by all who are known 
 by the term ‘“ Evangelical.” The question is, 
 How was the distinction determined? Was it 
 by God before the world was? or by men for 
 themselves? We believe that our Lord de- 
 cisively determines the question in the passage 
 immediately before us,—‘“ All that the Father 
 giveth me shall come to me.” This is nota 
 hypothetical statement, but absolutely affirma- 
 tive and prophetic. It affirms that there is a 
 
THE. COVENANT OF GRACE. 39 
 
 definite “all” given to Christ by the Father. 
 The word “all” is in the neuter singular, 
 indicating a collective whole; composed of a 
 fixed and determined constituency, admitting 
 neither of increase nor diminution. Of this 
 “al” our Lord affirms, as a matter to. Him of 
 divine certainty, that they shall come to Him. 
 However it may be brought about, they shall 
 come. The necessary agency is provided ; it 
 is in actual operation, it is endowed with un- 
 failing efficiency: and as they come to Him 
 one by one, He will recognise them and not 
 cast them out. And then Christ unfolds more 
 in detail the Father’s will respecting those 
 whom He has given to Him, and His own 
 obligation in relation to them,—“ For I came 
 down from heaven, not to do mine own will, 
 but the will of Him that sent me.” It is to be 
 observed here that Christ is put in possession 
 of His Father's will concerning those given to 
 Him, before He came down from heaven. 
 Therefore they were given to Him while He 
 was still in heaven, while yet they had no 
 existence; for we learn from Paul that they 
 were “chosen in Christ before the foundation 
 of the world.” It follows, too, that the Father 
 had determined in eternity who of the fallen race 
 of man should be saved ; and that then, and for 
 
40 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 this end, He gave them to His Son. And to 
 fulfil the Father’s will, the Son came down 
 from heaven. His Father’s will is strictly 
 defined to Him; there is neither vagueness 
 nor uncertainty in its gracious purpose. It is 
 to be carried out by the Son in the terms of it, 
 and because it is the Father’s will. He comes 
 
 not to do His own will, but as a servant to do » 
 
 the will of His Lord. ‘This is the Father’s 
 will which hath sent me, that of all which He 
 hath given me I should lose nothing, but should 
 raise it up again at the last day” (verse 39). 
 The Father in His glorious sovereignty calls 
 and commissions His Son to execute this 
 purpose of His grace; the Son heartily enter- 
 ing into the design of the Father, and sympa- 
 thising with his ineffable love, freely undertakes 
 to do the Father’s will. The Father's will 
 concerning those given to Him is, that none 
 of them be lost, but that they be raised up at 
 the last day. This will is absolutely and 
 unconditionally expressed ; and the Son absol- 
 utely and unconditionally accepts the solemn 
 charge, for He says, “I came down from heaven, 
 not to do mine own will, but the will of Him 
 that sent me;” this very will, “that of all 
 which He hath given me I should lose nothing, 
 but should raise it up again at the last day.” 
 
TAEVCOGENANE:, OF GRACE. Al 
 
 Here is a definite divine purpose to be realised. 
 The realisation of it is committed to the Son, 
 “For Him hath God the Father sealed” (verse 
 27). The Son accepts the great commission, 
 and avows His responsibility for its complete 
 execution. The Father thus devolves upon 
 the Son the sole responsibility of fulfilling His 
 purpose respecting those given to Him; they 
 must not be lost, they must be raised up at 
 the last day: and for this the Father holds the 
 Son accountable, and the Son freely consents. 
 Here are all the necessary elements of a 
 covenant. The parties are the Father and the 
 Son; the transaction is solely between them, 
 unconditioned by the action of any other parties 
 whatever. The consent of no other parties is 
 necessary; no such consent is possible, for all 
 was settled before Christ came down from 
 heaven. The solemn and wonderful transaction 
 was complete and final. No change in the 
 terms of it, nor in the provisions or conditions 
 of it, nor in the beneficiaries of it ; no extension 
 or diminution of the sphere of its benefits was 
 either morally or formally possible. The very 
 purpose of the covenant was to make sure that 
 none of its beneficiaries should be lost, but 
 that they should be raised up at the last day. 
 With such parties to the covenant, nothing 
 
42 THE COVENANT OF GRACE, 
 
 necessary to the absolute certainty of the end 
 could have been overlooked—nothing unpro- 
 vided for; no unforeseen contingency could 
 arise through all the term of its continuance to 
 render any change necessary. The will of the 
 Father cannot change; the avouched responsi- 
 bility of the Son cannot change. “The 
 mountains shall depart, and the hills be re- 
 moved, but my kindness shall not depart from 
 thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace 
 be removed, saith the LorpD that hath mercy 
 on thee” (Isa. liv. 10). The Covenant of Grace, 
 guaranteed by the reciprocal faithfulness of 
 the Father and the Son, engages for the eternal 
 safety and wellbeing of all for whom its benefits 
 are designed—the “all” given to Christ. It 
 abideth for ever. 
 
 But while the word “all” is employed here 
 to express a definite whole, we are not to 
 suppose that all individuality is merged, and 
 all distinct personal relations and interests lost 
 sight of in the community. That “all” is 
 composed of a multitude of individual souls 
 which no man can number, yet each several 
 constituent of that multitude has his distinct 
 personal relation to the Father and the Son, 
 and is a special object of the eternal interest of 
 both. His individuality is recognised and re- 
 
THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 43 
 
 garded by distinguishing grace; for it is not 
 by an abstract but personal election by which 
 he has his place among the “all” given to 
 Christ. And he, the individual soul, is given 
 to Christ; and for him the Son of God is 
 responsible, to raise him up at the last day, 
 and for him the Surety of the Covenant has 
 freely and lovingly undertaken to accomplish 
 all the gracious will of the Father. The 
 solemn and august transaction between the 
 Father and the Son, would be without the 
 definiteness which distinguishes a covenant, if 
 there were no specified objects to whom its 
 benefits were to be infallibly secured. To will 
 the benefits without determining the recipients, 
 to will a glorious resurrection without specify- 
 ing for whom, would be to deal with abstrac- 
 tions. The Father had definitely before His 
 own mind those whom He gave to His Son. 
 The Son received the roll of their names, that 
 He might know for whom He was undertaking 
 so great a responsibility. That responsibility 
 ‘was limited to those given to Him; for them, 
 and for them alone, and for them individually, 
 without exception, He is responsible to raise 
 them up at the last day. The covenant en- 
 gagement between the Father and the Son 
 was designed to make the salvation and eternal 
 
44 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 glory of the elect “all” sure and certain. To 
 will the eternal wellbeing, as the Son assures 
 us the Father did, and to leave it uncertain, is 
 to express a contradiction. To give them to 
 His Son as the most certain expedient for 
 securing their eternal salvation, and to say that 
 still there is a possibility they may be lost, is 
 to say that the expedient was of uncertain 
 efficacy. The statement of our Lord very 
 unequivocally conveys the idea that the Father 
 had infinite confidence that He was certainly 
 securing the eternal salvation of all whom He 
 had given to Christ. But if, after all, their 
 salvation is still uncertain, His confidence has 
 not been justified. The Son, as we have seen, 
 accepted the commission entrusted to Him in 
 terms of the Father’s will; but if any part of 
 the “all” given to Him be lost, He has not 
 fulfilled the Father's will. He has failed in 
 His own undertaking, and the transaction 
 entered into, pledging the resources of the 
 Godhead to the accomplishment of the divine 
 purpose, is without any certain result in rela- 
 tion to the objects on whose behalf it was 
 originated. And what has been gained by the 
 giving of them to the Son, if, after all, some of 
 them be lost? And those who are finally 
 saved must have had their better destiny de- 
 
LateECOVENANTIEOTV GRACE. 45 
 
 termined and made sure by something inde- 
 pendent of the undertaking of the Son; for 
 that undertaking admitted of no distinction 
 between one portion of those given to Him 
 and another. The eventual distinction, there- 
 fore, could not have been determined by Christ ; 
 so that the saved and the lost of those given to 
 Him, would have proved themselves to be 
 equally independent of His interposition. Our 
 Lord assures us that He accepted a very 
 definite responsibility,—a responsibility from 
 which there could be no release, a responsibility 
 unshared by any other, and impossible to any 
 other,—and the full discharge of it cannot be 
 a matter of uncertainty. It is vain to allege 
 that His office required only that He should 
 do or suffer what the wisdom of God saw 
 necessary, to make it possible for any, or for all 
 men, to enjoy eternal life. He does not present 
 His undertaking as having abstract relation to 
 certain great principles, the satisfying of which 
 would open the way for an honourable peace 
 between God and fallen man. His responsi- 
 bility is directly and explicitly for the safety of 
 persons. Itis not that He was to remove certain 
 impediments, and provide certain facilities, by 
 which a friendly relation might be established - 
 between God and man, if men chose to use 
 
46 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 the advantages thus obtained, and that there 
 Christ’s responsibility ended. The question of 
 man’s action does not arise at this stage. The 
 matter, as yet, is only between the Father and 
 the Son; and it is the Son’s. responsible action 
 alone which is defined and fixed by the formal 
 expression of the Father’s will. What other 
 wills may come up, claiming freedom of action, 
 and with what effect; what other responsibilities 
 may be summoned to action, introducing com- 
 plications and involvements, of difficult or im- 
 possible adjustment, in the judgment of human 
 wisdom, does not yet appear. The single point 
 before us is the responsibility of the Son to the 
 Father. That responsibility is for the salvation 
 of persons, and does not cease and determine 
 until the “all” be raised up at the last day. 
 This transaction between the Father and 
 the Son is the fundamental and controlling act 
 in which the whole history of Redemption 
 originates, which gives coherence and con- 
 sistency to it all,—which pervades it all with 
 its own certainty and conclusiveness; while it 
 demonstrates the perfect harmony of feeling 
 and purpose between the Father and the Son, 
 in relation to the elect. Their love is one and 
 the same. It did not need the interposition of 
 the Son to conciliate the Father’s love. In 
 
THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 47 
 
 —$—$—$—$____—__—_§_y— 
 
 love He chose them to salvation. In love He 
 gave them to His Son, as the only secure and 
 infallible way to bestow upon them eternal life, 
 to which, in His love, He predestined them. 
 In love the Son accepted the charge, and there- 
 fore shall they be raised up at the last day. 
 Their eternal life is secure. There can be no 
 failure on the part of the Father: He is the 
 faithful covenant-keeping God. There can be 
 no failure on the part of the Son: His faithful- 
 ness is Divine and unchangeable as that of the 
 Father, and He possesses all personal qualifica- 
 tion for the work given Him to do. 
 
Cel A, PTB Raglelal 
 
 CHRIST ABLE TO SAVE TO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 HE salvation of sinners is not a matter 
 
 G of grace only, but of government 
 also. The justice of God is concerned 
 
 no less than His mercy, and full 
 
 effect must be given to justicé as 
 
 to mercy. Mercy and truth must meet to- 
 gether ; righteousness and peace must kiss each 
 other. All the moral attributes of God must 
 concur in the salvation of the sinner. One 
 attribute cannot give place to another. One 
 cannot overbear another. Each has its proper 
 sphere and its proper function. One does not 
 interpose to control or arrest the action of 
 another. Two attributes may act in a common 
 sphere towards a common end without conflict, 
 each doing that which is proper to its nature, 
 their concurrence being necessary to the result. 
 
CHRIS TV ABLE TO'SAVE: 49 
 
 Mercy and Truth are very distinct in their 
 nature. The one could not serve the purpose 
 of the other. Love and Justice are distinct in 
 nature and function from each other. Justice 
 is the attribute of government. It defines and 
 distributes rights; it rewards and punishes. 
 These are not the proper offices of Love, or of 
 Mercy. Love contemplates its object with 
 favour, seeks its good, and is ever ready to 
 sacrifice much for its sake. “Love seeketh 
 not her own.” Justice demands and exacts 
 that which is right, even although the exaction 
 cause, or rather be the occasion of, suffering 
 and misery. Mercy seeks the release of the 
 guilty and the miserable. Justice claims that 
 the release shall be morally right. It abates 
 no claim for any end,—it ;cannot change its 
 nature. It has a hold upon every moral being, 
 holy and unholy, and no plea can be sustained 
 against its rights. Justice must concur in the 
 salvation of sinners: its sanction is indispen- 
 sable ; for salvation involves thé moral govern- 
 ment of God. 
 
 Sin is, in a double sense, an offence against 
 God. It is a personal offence, an indignity 
 offered to His person, an insult to His holiness, 
 a contempt of Hiskindness, It is irreverence to 
 
 His fatherhood, a disregard of His love, a wound- 
 D 
 
50 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 ing of His affections. This is-a form of offence 
 of which God often complains of by His prophets. 
 “T have nourished and brought up children, 
 and they have rebelled against me” (Isa. i. 2). 
 “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and 
 men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me 
 and my vineyard. What more could have 
 been done to my vineyard, that I have not done 
 in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should 
 bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes” 
 (Isa. v. 3, 4). “Thus saith the Lord, 1 re- 
 member thee, the kindness of thy youth, the 
 love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after 
 me in a land that was not sown, Israel was 
 holiness to the Lord, and the first-fruits of 
 His increase. . .. Thus saith the Lord, What 
 iniquity hath your fathers found in me, that 
 they are gone far from me, and have walked 
 after vanity, and are become vain. . . . Where- 
 fore I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord, 
 and with your children’s children will I plead. 
 For pass over the isles of Chittim, and see ; and 
 send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and 
 see if there be such a thing: Hath a nation 
 changed their gods, which yet are no gods? 
 but my people have changed their glory for 
 that which doth not profit” (Jer. ii. I-II). 
 “Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord’s contro- 
 
CHRIST ABLE TO SAVE. 51 
 
 versy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: 
 for the Lord hath a controversy with His 
 people, and He will plead with Israel. O my 
 people, what have I done unto thee? and 
 wherein have I wearied thee? testify against 
 me” (Mic. vi. 2, 3). It might be thought, with 
 some plausibility, that such a class of offences 
 may be forgiven of God, as men forgive, out of 
 kindly and generous personal feeling, without 
 the exaction of any compensation, or allowing 
 the claim of any retribution to arise. And this 
 view does prevail, so that the necessity of the 
 atoning sacrifice of Christ is denied. 
 
 But there is another form of offence against 
 God which requires a different mode of treat- 
 ment. God sustains the character of a sovereign, 
 —a righteous moral Governor: and man is His 
 subject, ruled by immutable moral law. Sin is 
 rebellion against His sovereign authority, a 
 denial of His right to reign, an assertion of inde- 
 pendence, a claim of self-government, a defiance 
 at once of His right and of His power. There is 
 personal offence in this; but there is more, and 
 of a different kind. Not that the two forms of 
 offence can ever be separated in fact, nor that 
 offence against the Sovereign is in its nature 
 more heinous than that against the Father. 
 Personal offence may be dealt with by chastise- 
 
52 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. * 
 
 ment, by correction, by conciliation, without 
 dishonour to public law, or danger to public 
 order. But offences against public law and 
 order, if committed with impunity, are destruc- 
 tive of government altogether ; and the pardon 
 of offences, without taking security for the 
 honour and stability of the government, would 
 be equally destructive. The whole human race 
 is up in revolt against God. As a righteous 
 Sovereign, God has pronounced the sentence 
 of death upon all men, “for that all have 
 sinned.” “Cursed is every one that continueth 
 not in all things which are written in the book 
 of the law to do them” (Gal. iii. 10). Men are 
 the subjects of a kingdom ruled by just moral 
 laws,—laws made known to them, and exactly 
 adapted to their nature. The divine law makes 
 no provision for the pardon of the law breaker. 
 It demands, to “all things written in the law,” 
 perfect obedience; the sole alternative is the 
 curse, punishment. It neither speaks of repen- 
 tance nor of remission. It provides no escape 
 for the offender from its judgment. It is under 
 this condition of universal guilt that the Cove- 
 nant of Grace interposes by a Redeemer, on 
 behalf of as many as are given to Him; and 
 for whom He engages, in terms of the Father's 
 will, that none shall be lost, but that He will 
 
CHRIS ABLE (TO-SAVEX 53 
 
 raise them up at the last day. This work of 
 grace is not to be effected by superseding the 
 law, nor by softening its severity, nor abolishing 
 its penalty. On the contrary, it is to be effected 
 by fulfilling the law in every jot and tittle, 
 without any abatement of its strictness. And, 
 besides, the penalty incurred by the breach of 
 the law must be inflicted, according to the 
 sentence. The condemnation is not to be 
 rescinded, but executed. And all this is to be 
 the work of Him who came down from heaven 
 to do it, agreeably to the will of Him that sent 
 Him. When the Father called the Son to the 
 work of redemption, He endowed Him with 
 every needful qualification. “It pleased the 
 Father that in Him should all fulness dwell.” 
 “ A body hast thou prepared me.’ As Son of 
 God, He possessed all Divine attributes. To 
 Him, therefore, all Divine work was possible. 
 ‘ As Son of man, by miraculous incarnation, 
 possessing human nature in spotless perfection, 
 He assumed all human obligation, and was 
 able to discharge it. As “God and man in 
 two distinct natures, and one person for ever,” 
 with the sovereign appointment of the Father, 
 He undertook the great work of Mediatorship. 
 And He undertook it in the consciousness of 
 power to accomplish the design of the Father 
 
54 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 to the uttermost. How hard it is for us to 
 comprehend the magnitude of a work only 
 possible to such personal qualifications as those 
 ascribed to the Mediator! And how shall we 
 estimate the demerit of sin, and the strength 
 of its malignity; the tenacious ferocity of its 
 hold upon human nature, and its wide-spread 
 destructiveness, which required such a Mediator 
 to expiate its guilt and to destroy its power! 
 And how can we understand the greatness of 
 the danger in which sinners are involved, the 
 horrors of that doom which the righteous judg- 
 ment of God has pronounced against them! 
 Deliverance from such guilt and peril may well 
 be called “a great salvation.” No wonder it is 
 ever set forth in Scripture with the most august 
 -accompaniments and surroundings. There is 
 greatness and awe everywhere,—in heaven, and 
 earth, and hell,—the Father, the Son, the Holy 
 Spirit,—angels, good and bad,—mighty signs 
 and wonders,—kings of the earth, and the 
 multitudes of nations,—the whole government 
 of the universe administered by the Mediator 
 in the interests of Redemption. The Son of 
 God becomes incarnate ; the Holy Spirit comes 
 down with power; the heavenly hosts come to 
 the earth to be wondering spectators and willing 
 ministers; the powers of darkness are stirred 
 
CHARISTCABLE TO SAVE, 55 
 
 to a paroxysm of rage; the kings of the earth 
 take counsel against the Lord and against His 
 anointed ; and whatever can be done by men 
 and devils to counter-work this most benignant 
 purpose of grace, is. being done. But all in 
 vain. The great deliverance is entrusted to 
 One “mighty to save.” The Father in calling 
 His Son, as His “righteous Servant,” to under- 
 take this great work, thereby proved His deter- 
 mination that its execution shall be subject to 
 no uncertainty, nor be in danger of any mis- 
 carriage. He has chosen One capable of all 
 Divine work, who can deal with contingencies 
 as with fixed certainties; with free wills, as 
 with fixed laws; with emotional impulses, as 
 with the deliberations of reason, The person 
 of the Mediator attests the surpassing greatness 
 of the work of saving sinners, and of triumphing 
 over sin. Myriads of holy and happy beings, 
 full of love for their great Creator, burning 
 with zeal for the honour of His majesty, would 
 have gladly undertaken any service competent 
 to their nature and powers, and would have 
 felt honoured by the commission. Their pure 
 benevolence would have prompted them to any 
 labour that could have rescued sinners from 
 destruction, And had the task been possible 
 to them, we may well believe that God would 
 
56 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 have employed them in its accomplishment. 
 We are taught that He does employ them in 
 the humbler service of ministering to the heirs 
 of salvation. Had they been competent to 
 fulfil the higher requirement of salvation itself, 
 to satisfy divine justice, to fulfil all righteous- 
 ness on man’s behalf, it is inconceivable that 
 God would not have employed their agency. 
 That He did not, makes it manifest that He 
 regarded created power wholly unavailing, and 
 that none but His own eternal Son possessed the 
 necessary competency to save to the uttermost. 
 And yet men, in utter ignorance of their own 
 helplessness,—thinking themselves spiritually 
 “rich and increased in goods, and having need of 
 nothing, and knowing not that they are poor and 
 wretched and miserable, and blind and naked,” 
 believe salvation to be in their own power, that 
 repentance is all the atonement necessary, and 
 that they can repent when they please. Is not 
 all this delusion exposed and condemned by 
 the fact, that God sent His own Son “to seek 
 and to save that which was lost ;” and that He 
 is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give re- 
 pentance to Israel and the forgiveness of sins” 
 (Acts v. 31). Many have persuaded themselves 
 that God will forgive sins without atonement, 
 merely in obedience to an impulse of mercy, 
 
CHIRTSIRAGLEZTOUSA VE. 57 
 
 excited by a penitent sigh or a tear when life’s 
 last extremity comes; and that there is no 
 need for the elaborate apparatus set forth by 
 our theology, of covenant and suretyship, and 
 expiation and substitution, and imputed right- 
 eousness, to move a loving Father to save His 
 emeneechildren.” “But justice; not less than 
 mercy, must distinguish every incident in the 
 history of redemption. Justice is in its very 
 nature inflexible and uncompromising, and 
 must rule and control the relation between God 
 and man. If the divine government were not 
 conducted upon fixed and immutable moral 
 principles, there could be no security for the 
 maintenance of a righteous moral order in the 
 universe; there could be no confidence among 
 holy beings that loyalty would meet with any 
 better reward than rebellion. The throne of 
 the sovereign is the seat of the judge, and no 
 principle can rule its awards but justice. The 
 judge can know the criminal only as a criminal. 
 Whatever personal or private relations may 
 exist between them, cannot be allowed to sway 
 the judgment. It is public right and not 
 private feeling which must rule in the judgment 
 seat. None are known as children there; the 
 fatherly sentiment cannot come in in arrest of 
 judgment. It is necessary to the personal and 
 
58 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 rectoral honour of God, that public justice be 
 vindicated upon all offenders without distinc- 
 tion. Even upon those given to Christ, involved 
 as they are in the common guilt of their race, 
 must divine justice be vindicated, and yet none 
 of them be lost, but all enjoy eternal life. Is 
 this so very simple a problem that every sinner 
 shall be able to solve it for himself? Before 
 the sinner can claim the right to eternal life, 
 the righteous Judge must pronounce that all 
 the claims of justice have been discharged ; 
 that the wrong done to the divine government 
 has been compensated, righteous obedience 
 fully rendered, and that therefore he is loosed 
 from all the penal consequences of sin, and 
 entitled to a triumphant resurrection. This 
 was morally impossible to the sinner in whole 
 orinpart. This is the work which the Mediator 
 undertakes, and which He alone is able to 
 accomplish, in the letter and in the spirit of its 
 requirements. 
 
 That the possession of a divine nature was a 
 necessary qualification for Mediatorship, may 
 be made apparent from several considerations. 
 In the first place, because none but a divine 
 person can fully estimate the nature and 
 demerit of sin. For such an estimate is only 
 possible to one who can fully estimate the holy 
 
GRAISD ALLE TTOOSAVE, 59 
 
 nature of God; who can judge of the infinite 
 purity of God, with an adequate judgment ; who 
 has experience of infinite holiness, the eternal 
 consciousness of infinite moral perfection. 
 None other can comprehend the nature and 
 demerit, the antagonism of sin, its enmity and 
 opposition to the holiness, and therefore to the 
 very existence of a holy God. None other 
 could comprehend the effect of sin possessing 
 the uncontrolled dominion of the moral universe. 
 To comprehend the nature of sin, it is also 
 necessary to comprehend the whole nature and 
 design of the moral government of the universe, 
 in all its principles, in its whole economy, with 
 all the reasons which determine its operations 
 at every stage, and what its final issues shall 
 be. All this is necessary, that the Mediator 
 may enter upon his work with a thoroughly 
 intelligent appreciation of the conditions which 
 demand it. 
 
 Again, none but a divine person can perfectly 
 understand all the reasons which determined 
 the creation of man, together with all the ends 
 which his creation was designed to serve, and 
 all the relations within which he was to live 
 and act for ever. No other could fully compre- 
 hend the whole nature of man’s relation to 
 God, what that relation imported to God him- 
 
60 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. . 
 
 self, and all which it imported to man and to 
 the universe. And this too was necessary, in 
 order that the mediator might fully understand 
 the conditions for which His work was required. 
 For without a perfect comprehension of all 
 this, he could not understand all the effects 
 which must necessarily follow from the with- 
 drawal of mankind from the moral order of the 
 universe ; nor of restoring any position of the 
 lapsed race to its proper place in that order 
 again. 
 
 Farther, a divine person alone could compre- 
 hend the whole nature of retributive justice in 
 regard to sin, and its true value in a system 
 of moral administration. There is no subject 
 of more difficult comprehension, and none which 
 awakens more vivid sentiments of reverence 
 and awe. It is an essential element in all 
 human governments ; and nothing tests more 
 severely the wisdom and the moral sentiment 
 of a people than the apportionment of punish- 
 ment to crime. That the criminal shall suffer 
 in some form for his crime is a settled principle, 
 demanded by the order of society. This prin- 
 ciple, therefore, is inherent in the divine govern- 
 ment over man. That it shall be so through 
 all human history, until it shall determine the 
 final issues, admits of no doubt. What we 
 
Oe lal OAV EE. 61 
 
 now see in partial and incomplete development, 
 shall reach its perfect maturity in the future, 
 and be declared in the final judgment. He 
 that is to fulfil the office of mediator must have 
 unerring insight into the wisdom and the right- 
 eousness of the whole reason and mode of 
 God’s dealing with sin. This is possible only 
 to a being infinite in wisdom and knowledge, 
 that is, to a divine person. 
 
 It is not less necessary that the mediator 
 should have a perfect knowledge of human 
 nature—its constitution, the working of its 
 power, the forces that move them, and direct 
 them and control them. He must know the 
 whole of its condition under sin, its guilt and 
 condemnation, its alienation from God, the 
 state of its feelings towards God, its aversion 
 and enmity, with all the effects of sin through- 
 out all its powers. He must know by what 
 kind of power it may be acted upon, how sin 
 may be separated from it, by what influences 
 and by what processes he that is dead in sin 
 may stand up in the presence of God a living 
 soul. None but He that made man can know 
 all that is in man, and all by which it is possible 
 to affect him, and to what extent and in what 
 measure he affects other moral beings. It is 
 upon this knowledge the mediator is to act in 
 
62 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 fulfilling his office; for he is not to act as a 
 servant who knoweth not his lord’s will and 
 purpose, but as one who is in his lord’s con- 
 fidence, and knoweth all that he doeth. The 
 mediator is to act with a complete intelligence 
 of all he has undertaken, that He may do all 
 with a complete approval of His Father’s will, 
 from a perfect knowledge of all the reasons 
 which determined it. 
 
 Again, it was necessary that the Mediator 
 should be a divine person, that He might be 
 able to rule the universe ; for this high function 
 was necessary in order to the accomplishment 
 of the work of redemption. It was necessary, 
 because the perfection of the divine moral law 
 must be vindicated where it had been violated, 
 otherwise the sufficiency of the law for main- 
 taining the order of a righteous government 
 could not have been demonstrated. And this 
 was an essential portion of the work of redemp- 
 tion. The Redeemer is not concerned for human 
 interests alone, but for the interests of the 
 divine government also, and for the personal 
 and rectoral honour of the Godhead. And 
 until these interests are vindicated there can 
 be no redemption. It must not appear to the 
 wide universe that the principles of the divine 
 government over man had failed from want of 
 
GORIS ALLE TO. SAVE. 63 
 
 adaptation and of power. The Mediator in 
 His own person, and officially responsible for 
 the righteousness, in other words, for the right 
 legal standing of those given to Him by the 
 Father, must “fulfil all righteousness,” by ful- 
 filling the law. To any mere man fallen and 
 under condemnation, this was a moral impossi- 
 bility. The condemnation was a divine judg- 
 ment, incapable of recall or reversal ; for either 
 to recall or reverse it would imply its original 
 injustice. It must be executed in vindication 
 of the righteousness of God. The execution 
 of the judgment upon the person of the sinner 
 would be his eternal perdition. The death 
 penalty is banishment from the favour and 
 fellowship of God. No created being could 
 ever recover his lost place in that favour and 
 fellowship, from any resources within himself. 
 But no ground of exemption can be pleaded 
 on behalf of any—not even in behalf of the 
 elect. On the Mediator the condemnation of 
 the elect has fallen. Believers therefore are 
 able to say, “Christ hath redeemed us from 
 the curse of the law, being made a curse for 
 us” (Gal. iii. 13). And it is written, ‘There 
 is now no condemnation to them which are in 
 Christ Jesus. For what the law could not do, 
 in that it was weak through the flesh, God 
 
64 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful 
 flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” 
 (Rom. viii. 1, 3), that is, in the flesh of Christ. 
 In relation to the elect, the law had condemned 
 them, that is, pronounced sentence upon them, 
 but the condemnation was completed, that is, 
 executed in the human nature of Christ, and 
 therefore there is no condemnation to them 
 which are in Christ Jesus; their sins are ex- 
 piated by His death. This expiation is declared 
 to be impossible to man himself; for his death 
 under the sentence of the law would have been 
 his utter destruction, and would have effected 
 no expiation. But God sent His own Son in 
 the likeness of sinful flesh, as alone able to 
 bear the condemnation, and not perish under 
 it. This was because of His divine nature. 
 For it is clearly taught by the Apostle in the 
 passage before us, that this constituted a neces- 
 sary qualification for bearing the condemnation 
 of sin. God sent His Son; He was His Son 
 before He sent Him, of His own divine nature, 
 therefore His equal in nature. He was His 
 Son before He assumed the likeness of sinful 
 flesh. His “own Son,” before He became the 
 son of Mary. He is “the only-begotten Son,” 
 Son, therefore, in a sense, inappropriate to any 
 other being whatever, and which exalts Him 
 
GALIST ABLE TOUSAVE, 65 
 
 “far above all principality, and power, and 
 might, and dominion, and every name that is 
 named, not only in this world, but also in that 
 Wiicumicetoncome.}.' (Eph. i721): 0 In! Hin 
 dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” 
 (Col. ii. 9). “‘And ye are complete,’ or filled, 
 or made full ‘in him,’ which is the head of all 
 principality and power” (verse 10). There is, 
 therefore, nothing defective in them who are 
 in Christ in the judgment of God; there is, 
 therefore, no condemnation to them; their 
 guilt is expiated by Christ. But their fulness 
 is dependent upon the fulness of Christ, and 
 that fulness is the fulness of the Godhead, and 
 that “bodily,” in bodily form, corporeally (“a 
 body hast thou prepared me,” Heb. x. 5); in 
 other words, their redemption is effected by 
 the incarnate Son of God. Redemption, we 
 are thus taught, was impossible to either angels 
 or men. By the mysterious constitution of 
 His person, the Redeemer is equally allied to 
 the human and the divine, identified in nature 
 with both, and identified in interest with both ; 
 capable, therefore, of representing God to man, 
 and man to God, and of maintaining all human 
 and divine interests. As mediator, He is able 
 to secure peace between God and man, of 
 
 which peace, the harmony between the divine 
 BD) 
 
66 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 and human natures in His own person, is an 
 everlasting pledge. Only as God can the 
 Mediator comprehend all the interests of the 
 Godhead, and maintain them; and He bears 
 the responsibility of vindicating the violated 
 honours of the divine government, and the 
 salvation of those given to Him must be 
 effected only in consistency with this highest 
 of all interests. But this vindication demands 
 that the sentence of divine justice shall be 
 executed, and all its claims fully satisfied. 
 The public law of the universe must be main- 
 tained in honour; it may not be violated with 
 impunity. Salvation must be effected within 
 the sphere of the divine government, and there- 
 fore agreeably to its laws. The same right- 
 eousness which rules all moral beings, must 
 rule the relations of the Mediator to the 
 government of God, and determine all the 
 functions of His office ; that same righteous- 
 ness which, in its onward and stately march, 
 dispenses shame and honour, reward and 
 punishment, life and death, with impartial and 
 irreversible decision. ‘ Forasmuch as _ the 
 children are partakers of flesh and blood, He 
 also Himself likewise took part of the same, 
 that through death He might destroy him that 
 had the power of death, that is, the devil, and 
 
Caio wa DLL TONSA VE. 67 
 
 deliver them who through fear of death were 
 all their lifetime subject to bondage. For 
 verily He took not on Him the nature of 
 angels, but He took on Him the seed of 
 Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved 
 Him to be made like unto the brethren, that 
 He might be a merciful and faithful High 
 Priest in things pertaining to God, to make 
 reconciliation for the sins of the people” 
 (Heb. ii. 14-17). As representing man to God, 
 and as acting for man in things pertaining to 
 God, that is, the things that arise out of man’s 
 relation. to God, it was necessary He should 
 be man. From this constitution of His person, 
 whatever was competent to God was competent 
 to Him, whatever was competent to man was 
 competent to Him, and whatever was com- 
 petent to the union of the two natures in one 
 person was competent to Him. Possessing 
 this personal meetness for all possible action, 
 He was invested with all authority: “All 
 power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” 
 (Mat. xxviii. 18). “The Father loveth the 
 Son, and hath given all things into His hand” 
 (John “iii, 35). “Father, the hour is come; 
 glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify 
 Thee ; as thou hast given Him power over all 
 flesh, that He should give eternal life to as 
 
68 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 many as thou hast given Him” (John xvii. 1, 2). 
 “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, 
 and revived, that He might be Lord both of 
 the dead and living” (Rom. xiv. 9). “‘ Where- 
 fore God also hath highly exalted Him, and 
 given Him a name which is above every name: 
 that at the name of Jesus every knee should 
 bow, of things in heaven and things in earth, 
 and that every tongue should confess that 
 Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the 
 Father” (Phil. ii. 9-11). The whole adminis- 
 tration of the universe is thus given to the 
 Mediator, as necessary to His execution of the 
 work of redemption. “The Father judgeth 
 no man, but hath committed all judgment 
 unto the Son; that all should honour the Son, 
 even as they honour the Father. For as the 
 Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given 
 to the Son to have life in Himself; and hath 
 given Him authority to execute judgment also, 
 because He is the Son of Man” (John v. 21-23, 
 26, 27). The future and final judgment is 
 committed to Him, that He may deal con- 
 clusively with sin, and determine the ascend- 
 ancy of everlasting righteousness. ‘‘ When the 
 Son of man shall come in His glory, and all 
 the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit 
 upon the throne of His glory: and before 
 
CHRIST! ABLESTO.SAVE, 69 
 
 Him shall be gathered all nations; and He 
 shall separate them one from another as a 
 shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats,” 
 &c. (Matt. xxv. 31-46). 
 
Se 
 
 Ny OMG. “MG © My ‘ ce 
 Ra SONG TA 
 “fs Poe ‘ IN USED AN Oe 
 
 CH Alar Regia 
 SATISFACTION OF DIVINE JUSTICE. 
 
 HE supreme principle of authoritative 
 
 © rule in moral government is justice. 
 Conformity to its requirements is 
 
 essential to the honour and stability 
 
 of government. Where justice has 
 
 been offended and its laws violated, its nature, 
 which consists in awarding to every one his due, 
 can abate none of its claims, whatever be the 
 consequences to the offender. It forbids all 
 escape from its sentence of condemnation, until 
 satisfaction be made for the offence. That 
 which satisfies the original and fundamental 
 claims of justice is conformity to its require- 
 ments, obedience to its laws. But when 
 offence has been committed justice may be 
 satisfied by compensation, which shall be re- 
 garded as an equivalent to the original claim, 
 
WALTISFACTION OF DIVINE FUSTICE. 71 
 
 or in other words, which shall serve the same 
 purpose to the government, so that it shall 
 suffer no ultimate wrong. Were not this the 
 case, in a system of pure justice there could 
 be no escape for offenders at all. In this world, 
 where good and evil, virtue and vice, are to be 
 found together, it is manifest that neither is 
 dealt with on the simple principle of justice. 
 Sin is not always visited with the full retribu- 
 tion which is justly its due. The sinner has 
 much ease and comfort and enjoyment in his 
 life. There are found to be measures of refor- 
 mation possible to the most vicious, which 
 bring instant advantages, personal and social, 
 shewing that the system of Providence compre- 
 hends within it the principle of benevolence as 
 well as of justice. The evil and the good 
 partake together of “rain from heaven and 
 fruitful seasons.” There are manifold restraints 
 upon sin; it is not allowed to do its worst 
 among men, it is not permitted to inflict all 
 _ the mischief and misery to which its nature 
 tends. There are intimations in the providence 
 of God that the power of sin may be overcome, 
 and the sinner may escape the dread judgment 
 pronounced against all unrighteousness. But 
 the clear discovery making it certain to sinful 
 men that there is a way of deliverance from 
 
72 THE COVENANT (OF GRACE. 
 
 all the guilt and power of sin, is reserved for 
 the revelation of the Mediator by the Gospel 
 of the grace of God. And we learn from that 
 Gospel that the great redemption is effected by 
 a sufficient compensation or satisfaction to the 
 justice of God, rendered by the Mediator. 
 There is satisfaction due for service and obedi- 
 ence withheld, for this is by itself positive loss. 
 Then there is the injury inflicted by active 
 rebellion within the sphere of the sinner’s 
 immediate personal action, to be reckoned in 
 the dread account. But the evil done is not 
 - limited to that narrow sphere. Man had an 
 important part assigned to him in the great 
 moral economy of the universe. His action 
 within his assigned sphere was necessary to the 
 harmony of the whole system. He was en- 
 dowed with sufficient native power to fulfil all 
 the requirements of his position; and it re- 
 quired of him perfect fidelity and the unremit- 
 ting activity of all his powers to maintain his 
 place, and to move onward in harmonious 
 accord with the divinely constituted order. To 
 fail not only affected himself, but injuriously 
 affected the system of the universe, by the 
 introduction of discord and disorder. Man’s 
 consenting to the tempter was to unite the 
 forces of human nature to those of Satan, for 
 
eo LOW Of DIVINE FUSLICL. ~73 
 
 the destruction of all moral order, for the defeat 
 of the interests of truth and righteousness, and 
 for the overthrow of the divine government. 
 This also has to be added to the sum of the 
 wrongs done by his sin. Nor is this all: he 
 has insulted the honour of the Divine Majesty, 
 in His truth and His authority, and His 
 goodness. Justice demands satisfaction for 
 all this infinite wrong, if any offender is to 
 escape the condemnation incurred. How shall 
 such satisfaction be rendered? What could 
 be a sufficient compensation for wrongs of 
 such a kind, of such a degree? From what 
 source could it be supplied? Is such a com- 
 pensation possible? It is quite evident that 
 no answer to these questions is possible to 
 human reason. It is not less evident that if 
 such satisfaction be possible, there are no 
 resources in human nature to supply it. For, 
 along with all the other evils which man has 
 wrought by sin, he has utterly disabled himself 
 for all good. He could not regain for himself 
 the place which he has lost in the favour of 
 God, and in the Divine order; and he has dis- 
 qualified himself for worship, for service, for 
 duty, for, fellowship with God. He is simply 
 a criminal condemned to punishment. But 
 punishment is not satisfaction. It does not 
 
74 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 satisfy justice. It is inflicted only because 
 justice is not satisfied, and it continues as long 
 as justice is not satisfied. Nor is there any- 
 thing in its own nature, any moral element, 
 having any tendency to satisfy justice. It has 
 no moral value, for it is involuntary suffering ; 
 and no degree of it, and no duration of it, can 
 satisfy justice, for neither degree nor duration 
 can impart value to that which has no moral — 
 worth in itself. Punishment is the retribution 
 of Divine justice,—the vindication of its insulted 
 majesty upon the sinner. This is its sole 
 purpose in relation to the sinner. The direct 
 and natural satisfaction to justice, is perfect 
 compliance with all its requirements. This is 
 incompetent to the sinner by his own fault. 
 And if there be no way of making satisfaction 
 to justice for sin committed against it, there 
 could be nothing but condign punishment for 
 all sinners, without distinction, for ever. There 
 needs to be satisfaction for the offence which 
 has been offered to justice, if there is to be 
 salvation for the sinner from its sentence of 
 condemnation. There are no resources in man’s 
 nature from which he can make compensation 
 for any offence which he has committed against 
 God. The active service of his whole life— 
 obedience without intermission,—was his duty. 
 
SATISFACTION OF DIVINE FUSTICE. 75 
 
 The intermission of obedience for an hour or 
 an instant could never be made good, for every 
 instant had its own proper work; and it was 
 as impossible to bring up arrears, as to accumu- 
 late a surplus of obedience or of time. But 
 the intermission of obedience was not merely 
 the suspension of service, and therefore only so 
 much loss; there was also guilt incurred. There 
 was at once the loss of obligatory service, and 
 the sin of it, to be answered for. But the 
 Covenant of Works included no provision for 
 
 making good the loss, nor of making amends 
 ' for the sin, on the part of man; neither on the 
 part of God, for dispensing with service, or for 
 forgiving sin. Human nature had no resources 
 from which to make good the loss of service, 
 or make amends for the sin. That covenant 
 provided only one way of dealing with sin, 
 namely, by punishment: It contemplated in 
 the sinner no capacity of redress of wrong, of 
 atonement or satisfaction for sin; but only the 
 one dread capacity of suffering. If, then, there 
 be a possibility of making satisfaction for sin, 
 it is clear it cannot be from the resources of 
 human nature. Even in its perfection, this 
 were impossible; for even a perfect human 
 being,—one that had never fallen,—could do 
 no more than his duty. He could make no 
 
76 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 atonement for the sins of others. The same is 
 true of every moral creature whatever. If 
 deliverance be possible for the sinner; if offended 
 justice admits of any form of satisfaction on the 
 sinner’s behalf, it can only be effected by God 
 Himself. Salvation is therefore purely and 
 exclusively a divine work; and, therefore, by 
 the conditions of the Covenant of Grace, the 
 burden and responsibility of effecting it is 
 laid upon the Son of God,—a Divine Person. 
 Taking human nature into union with the 
 divine, as revelation teaches us, His human 
 nature thereby partakes of the divine person- 
 ality, for the two natures are one Person. This 
 incarnate Son of God, being “holy, harmless, 
 undefiled, separate from sinners,” was personally 
 capable of fulfilling all righteousness, complying 
 with all the positive requirements of the divine 
 law, and of resisting all the power and subtlety 
 ofthe tempter. In this respect He could satisfy 
 all the demands of justice, and could not be 
 turned aside from the path of obedience. But ~ 
 as the Surety of the elect, and answerable for 
 their sin, He must make satisfaction to offended 
 justice, if He be “able to save to the uttermost.” 
 This, we have seen, was impossible to man, or 
 to any creature how highly soever exalted. Is 
 it possible to the Son of God? Let us humbly 
 
SALTISFACTION OF DIVINE FUSTICE. 77 
 
 acknowledge that all reasoning upon the subject 
 is incompetent to us, until we have learned the 
 fact, that He kas satisfied divine justice, on 
 God’s own authority. This is plainly taught 
 in Scripture. It is His proper priestly work to 
 bear the sins of His people; that is, to bear 
 their cuilt, to undergo their condemnation, that 
 sin might be remitted to them. But the law of 
 God is, that “without shedding of blood is no 
 remission” (Heb. ix. 22). “It is not possible 
 that the blood of bulls and of goats should 
 take away sin” (Heb. x. 4). Bulls and goats 
 are not moral beings, and have no relation to 
 justice, and no comprehension of it: they can 
 in no way satisfy it. “But Christ, being come 
 an High Priest of good things to come, by a 
 greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made 
 with hands, that is to say, not of this building ; 
 neither by the blood of goats and calves, but 
 by His own blood He entered in once into the 
 holy place, having obtained eternal redemption 
 Miemeee (ied: ix. 11, )12).4 Lhe “eternal re- 
 demption” is the fruit and the proof of the 
 satisfaction of justice, and the satisfaction is 
 the fruit of the sacrificial shedding of His 
 blood. .There must have been a moral value 
 in the death of Christ, not to be found in the 
 death of the sinner himself. The death of the 
 
78 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 sinner is his destruction, and there is no moral 
 worth in destruction to satisfy offended justice. 
 The superior worth of the death of Christ is 
 ascribed to the spotless purity, and to the 
 dignity of His person. “For if the blood of 
 bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer, 
 sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how 
 much more shall the blood of Christ, who 
 through the eternal Spirit offered Himself 
 without spot to God, purge your conscience 
 from dead works to serve the living God” 
 (Heb. ix. 13, 14). ‘“ Who, being the brightness 
 of the Father's glory, and the express image 
 of His person, and upholding all things by the 
 word of His power, when He had by Himself 
 purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of 
 the Majesty on high; being made so much 
 better than the angels, as He hath by inheri- 
 tance obtained a more excellent name than 
 they” (Heb. i. 3, 4). How, then, we may ask, 
 were the sufferings of Christ more satisfying 
 than those of the condemned sinner to the 
 justice of God? The sufferings of Christ were | 
 voluntary and obediential, and undergone out 
 of regard to the honour of the supreme Moral 
 Governor, and with a direct view to satisfy - 
 offended justice. “Therefore doth my Father 
 love me, because I lay down my life that [ 
 
SATISFACTION OF DIVINE F$USTICE. 79 
 
 might take it again. No man taketh it from 
 me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power 
 to lay it down, and I have power to take it 
 again. This commandment have I received of 
 my Father’”:(John x. 17, 18). Yet His death 
 was penal, judicially inflicted, and felt in all its 
 unutterable painfulness. “Now is my soul 
 troubled, and. what shall I say? Father, save 
 me from this hour: but for this cause came I 
 unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. 
 Then came there a voice from heaven, I have 
 both glorified it, and will glorify it again” 
 (John xii. 27, 28). What must have been the 
 horror of that death, the approach of which 
 was so appalling to the Son of God! Yet He 
 was sustained by the consciousness of personal 
 innocence, that He was fulfilling His Father’s 
 will, that He was accomplishing a design of 
 infinite benevolence and grace; and “for the 
 joy set before Him, He endured, the cross, 
 despising the shame.” But the sufferings of 
 the condemned sinner are purely penal, wholly 
 involuntary,—endured in the spirit of disaffec- 
 tion, with irreconcilable aversion to law and 
 _ justice, and have, therefore, no element of 
 ~ moral worth,—nothing to satisfy justice. The 
 sinner undergoing punishment can render no 
 service and no homage to justice. 
 
80 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 Our Lord’s ability to save depends upon His 
 power, from His own resources, to satisfy 
 justice. And this He is able to do, because 
 He is capable, being divine, of perfectly com- 
 prehending the whole nature of justice in its 
 infinite perfection. He is able, therefore, to 
 comprehend its place and its function in a 
 system of moral government,—its necessity, its 
 claims and requirements, its value, to the moral 
 order which comprehends the relations between 
 the Creator and the moral universe. And He 
 is able to comprehend all the consequences of 
 its violation for ever. Having united Himself 
 inseparably to a class of moral beings, subjects 
 of the divine moral government, He becomes a 
 subject, with all the obligations of a subject. 
 And, as the responsible Head and Substitute 
 of those to whom He has allied Himself, their 
 obligations are His, to be discharged by Him. 
 As a subject, He is able to render a homage to 
 justice, which is the perfect measure due to its 
 infinite perfection. This is gain to justice, 
 beyond what any creature could render. And 
 as He is able to comprehend the whole design 
 of the divine moral government,—its principles 
 and laws, what it is to God, and what it is to 
 all moral beings,—He, as a subject of it, is 
 able to render to it an obedience, intelligent, 
 
SATISFACTION OF DIVINE FUSTICE? 8Y 
 ere a eee ae es yg EG 
 
 perfect, and constant,—the full and complete 
 fulfilment of all its laws. And, moreover, He 
 is able to render an honour to the divine 
 Majesty which is the measure of all the infinite 
 perfection of the Divine nature. Besides, when 
 the laws of the divine government have been 
 violated by the disobedience of those with whom 
 He has identified Himself, He is able to honour 
 the punitive justice of the divine Sovereign, 
 by undergoing the full measure of retribution 
 due to their sin, and without exhausting “the 
 unsearchable riches” of His life. When justice 
 had, exacted all its own, “God raised Him up, 
 having loosed the pains of death: because it 
 was not possible He should be holden of it” 
 (Acts ii. 24). “He was delivered for our 
 offences, and raised again for our justification ” 
 (Rom. iv. 25). It will thus appear that the life 
 and death of Christ served a higher purpose to 
 God and to His government, than the life and 
 death of man. It may be said, therefore, that 
 more homage and more service were rendered 
 by Christ, than could have been due by the 
 elect, for the homage and service due by them 
 were limited by the limitations of their nature, 
 and could bear no proportion to the just claims 
 of the divine perfections. And this is true. 
 
 For when the Son became the Father’s “right- 
 F 
 
82 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 eous Servant,” as well as His people’s Redeemer, 
 He gave Himself wholly and unreservedly, with 
 all His power, to honour His Father and His 
 government throughout the universe; for the 
 interests of the Godhead were to be secured 
 beyond suspicion and reproach, even in the, 
 presence of sin. The obedience of Christ 
 extends further in its influence than in the 
 justification of those given to Him by His 
 Father. There is ever a measureless interval 
 between the honour due to the divine majesty, 
 on account of His own intrinsic perfection, and 
 that which is actually rendered by the highest 
 and holiest of intelligent creatures. The full 
 comprehension of the glory of the Godhead 
 could alone discover or estimate the honour 
 due, and such comprehension would be neces- 
 sary to any who should render the honour. 
 This is altogether incompetent to any creature, 
 and, therefore, God cannot receive the honour 
 due to His name from any mere creature. 
 Neither can His glory as Creator and sovereign 
 Ruler be estimated aright by those whom He 
 has made, and whom He governs, and from 
 whom subjection and honour are due.° The 
 Son of.God, taking into union with Himself a 
 created nature, and, therefore, “the form of a 
 servant,” and owing, as such, obedience and 
 
Sei PaClION OL DIVINE FUSTICE: \ 83 
 
 homage, is able to render the honour to which 
 the Creator and Ruler is justly entitled. And 
 God is thus receiving a revenue of glory from 
 the works of His hands, through “the Word 
 made flesh,” impossible to be rendered under 
 other conditions. And this same “righteous 
 Servant,” as Head of His redeemed, is able to 
 render that honour and love to the divine 
 person and character of the Father, which He 
 never could receive from any but His own 
 equal— His “fellow” (Zech. xiii. 7). He is 
 able to comprehend and to appreciate His 
 infinite worth and loveliness, and to love Him 
 with a love infinitely perfect as the. divine love- 
 liness. This love the Surety of the Covenant 
 bears to His Father, reciprocating the perfect 
 love which the Father bears to Him. And thus, 
 in all respects, the Redeemer, in inseparable 
 union with the elect, fulfils all righteousness, 
 repairs the wrong done to the Father’s personal 
 honour, and to the rectitude of His government, 
 places those given to Him in a perpetual rela- 
 tion of righteousness and peace to the righteous 
 King, secures for them the high privilege of 
 being sons of God, restoring them to loyalty 
 and love; and will signalise the accomplish- 
 ment of His great and gracious undertaking, 
 by raising them up at the last day. ‘Truly 
 
84 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 “He is able to save to the uttermost all that 
 come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth 
 to make intercession for them” (Heb. vii. 25). 
 And in the person of the God-man, the glorious 
 Surety of the Covenant, the Father has an 
 object upon which His complacent love may 
 rest with infinite delight. Perfect in all beauty, 
 elorious in holiness, altogether lovely, there is 
 in Him all that can satisfy the Father’s infinite 
 capacity of loving. And in Him, as the Head 
 of the elect, He can contemplate His redeemed 
 creation with joyful pleasure. His elect are 
 beautified with salvation. They are comely 
 through Christ’s comeliness which He hath put 
 upon them. 
 
Gaeta a bake a, 
 
 CHRIST’S COVENANT RELATION TO THE ELECT. 
 
 sidering the relation between the 
 Father and the Son in the Covenant 
 of Grace, and the responsibility of 
 the Son arising out of that relation. 
 It is needful, farther, to consider the relation 
 which the Son bears to the elect, arising out of 
 the act of the Father in giving them to Him. 
 We learn that they were “chosen before the 
 foundation of the world ;’ and chosen zz Christ 
 before the foundation of the world (Eph. i. 4). 
 Christ was therefore chosen before the founda- 
 tion of the world to sustain to them a special 
 relation, with a view to their special good. 
 They are from the beginning contemplated as 
 sinners,—guilty, condemned, corrupted, helpless. 
 They are never regarded as capable, by any 
 
86 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 independent action of their own, of regaining 
 their lost place in the divine favour, nor as 
 competent to secure their own interests. The 
 fundamental condition of any holy being main- 
 taining his holiness, is his maintaining his place 
 in the favour and fellowship of God. When 
 he has lost that place, the condemnation that 
 expels him from the presence of God delivers 
 him to corruption, and without the power of 
 self-restoration. In this condition the Father 
 gave them to the Son, laying upon Him the sole 
 responsibility of their restoration. Collectively, 
 in God’s eyes, they are the Church, and Christ 
 is their Head. He is, as Mediator, organically 
 united to them, He and they constituting to- 
 gether a corporate body, capable of corporate 
 responsibility and of corporate action, and with 
 inseparable interests. And as no community 
 is capable of associated action except through 
 a responsible head, so Christ, as Head of those 
 given to Him, acts for them in all matters 
 pertaining to their relation to God. He alone, 
 by virtue of His perfect righteousness, and as 
 Surety of the Covenant, has the right of access 
 to God, to appear in His presence for them, 
 and to transact with the Father the business of 
 their salvation. As they were partakers of 
 flesh and blood, He also took part of the same, 
 
CHRIST’S RELATION TO THE ELECT. 37 
 
 born of a woman, made (or born) under the 
 law, He identified Himself with them, and He 
 made their interests His own, that He might 
 place them on a sure basis of righteousness for 
 ever. But if Christ was under the law, as they 
 were under the law,—not only under obligation 
 to obey, but subject to its penalty,—how could 
 He have more right of access to God than 
 they? Does not the judgment awarding penalty 
 separate the soul from God? The answer to 
 this is, that His chargeability did not arise 
 from personal sin, for He was “the Holy One 
 and the Just,’ but from a covenant arrange- 
 ment, to which His Father was a party. The 
 imputation of the guilt of others was the 
 Father’s act; He freely assumed it, in com- 
 pliance with His Father's will, from zeal for 
 His Father’s honour, and in vindication of the 
 righteousness of His government. He assumed 
 all this dread chargeability also in fulfilment of 
 the Father's purpose of grace, and in love to 
 those beloved of the Father. In all these ends 
 He was in fellowship with the Father, and in 
 Him the Father was well pleased. He had 
 right {of access to God, for in all His under- 
 taking He sought not His own glory, but the 
 clory of Him that sent Him. He did not 
 assume the personal character of those given 
 
88 ITHE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 to Him, but their legal standing in the divine 
 government. Even with their guilt imputed to 
 Him, and bearing its penalty, He was “ per- 
 sonally holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from 
 sinners.” 
 
 his covenant relation between Christ and 
 His people is represented’ as being from 
 eternity, when as yet there was none of them. 
 Is this to be regarded as altogether ideal, 
 seeing that those for whose benefit the cove- 
 nant was made had no existence? The actual 
 parties to the covenant had real existence, and 
 therefore were competent to provide before- 
 hand for the eternal perfection and blessedness 
 of those to be created, and whose sin was not 
 yet a fact. And the revelation of the covenant 
 as being made “before the world began,” proves 
 that the great plan of redemption was wholly 
 divine, that men were not parties to the devis- 
 ing of it, and that the whole responsibility of 
 the execution of it was laid upon the Son of 
 God, man being only the beneficiary. Besides, 
 it must be taken into account that by the law 
 of their creation they could have no contempo- 
 raneous existence until the completion of the 
 work of salvation in the resurrection at the last 
 day. They were to come into being with the 
 successive generations of men, extending 
 
CHRIST’S RELATION TO THE ELECT. 89 
 
 through many ages, and at no point in their 
 actual history could He have borne an actual 
 relation to all. In whatever generation He 
 might appear as the actual representative, it 
 could be only actual to that generation, and 
 not to those preceding, nor to those following. 
 A common actual relation to a common Head 
 at any point in their history was impossible. 
 The relation of Christ to His people as a com- 
 munity, to be of full legal effect as responsible 
 for their redemption, must have been before 
 the world began. The Father's appointment 
 of Him to the office of Mediator was an eternal 
 reality. By the Father’s will, those given to 
 Christ were to sustain to Him an organic rela- 
 tion; they have, therefore, their legal corporate 
 existence in Him for all purposes of public 
 responsible action in their relation to God. 
 Besides, with the responsible Head alone would 
 the Father treat, for to Him alone had He 
 given the necessary authorisation to act, so 
 that their actual existence would not have 
 made the official action of their Head more 
 real than their predestined. Christ’s official 
 Headship is the same, responsibly, before the 
 world began as after His relation to any of 
 the elect became actual, by their existence and 
 His incarnation; and His eternal transaction 
 
9o THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 with the Father as real as that relation itself. 
 Hence eternal life “was promised before the 
 world began” (Tit. i. 2,) for the promise »was 
 embraced in the covenant; it was made to the 
 Son as the pledge of the reward of the comple- 
 tion of His work.’ It was His by covenant 
 right, and therefore all the promises, having 
 their origin in the one promise of eternal life, 
 are said to be “in Him,” for “all the promises 
 of God in Him are yea, and in Him amen, 
 unto the glory of God by us” (2 Cor. i. 20). 
 It is because they are in Him that they are 
 yea and amen, that is, “sure to all the seed” 
 (Rom: “iv...16): Hence ‘also it ‘is thatgeaeeaes 
 hath saved us, and called us with an holy 
 calling, not according to our works, but accord- 
 ing to His own purpose and grace, which was 
 given us in Christ Jesus before the world 
 began” (2 Tim. i. 9). The gracé was given to 
 its objects in the person of Christ as their re- 
 presentative, before the world began. What- 
 ever is promised to Christ or is given to Christ 
 is promised and given to Him only in His 
 official and responsible relation to those given 
 to Him, and is the joint inheritance of all. 
 They are thus regarded, before the world began, 
 as a spiritual community organised under a 
 public responsible Head, in inseparable union 
 
Csi hE LATION. TO LARELECT. 91 
 
 with whom they are the heirs of the promise of 
 eternal life. -Any organic existence of the elect 
 under a responsible Head apart from this 
 arrangement, would be impossible until the 
 Resurrection; but their resurrection to eternal 
 life depends upon the arrangement of the cove- 
 nant, and cannot therefore precede it. It thus 
 pleased God to take covenant security—security 
 the most perfect which His wisdom could devise 
 and His authority could command, the security 
 of the divine nature in the person of His Son, 
 that beyond the possibility of failure, His 
 beloved, the objects of His grace, should be 
 rescued from destruction, and “inherit the 
 kingdom prepared for them before the founda- 
 tion of the world.” By choosing His people in 
 Christ, and by giving them to Christ, He has 
 made them together with Christ partakers of 
 His indivisible love—a love which can no more 
 cease towards any of them than towards Him. 
 How precious are these words of our blessed 
 Lord, in which He addresses His Father on 
 their behalf—“ And the glory which thou 
 gavest me, I have given them ; that they may 
 be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou 
 in me, that they may be made perfect in one. 
 ... Father, I will that they also whom thou 
 hast given me be with me where I am, that 
 
92 LTHE COVENANT-OF GRACE. 
 
 they may behold my glory which thou hast given 
 me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of « 
 the world... . And I have declared unto them 
 thy name, and will declare it; that the love 
 wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, 
 and Tin them” (John xvii) 23, 24, 26) 
 love of the Father, of which the Son as Mediator 
 is the special object, is the same love of which 
 the elect are the objects. It embraces alike 
 the Head and the members in this eternal and 
 inseparable unity. 
 
 From all this it will appear that those for 
 whom Christ was responsible in terms of the 
 Covenant of Grace, were those only who were 
 given to Him; and that His headship, in its 
 spiritual and gracious sense, is strictly confined 
 to them. He is not the Head of the human 
 race, as Adam was. He is not the second 
 Head of the race, as some designate Him, 
 His partaking of human nature does not con- 
 stitute Him head of the race. Adam had a 
 natural headship as ancestor of the race. 
 Christ sustains no similar relation to the race ; 
 He was a member of the race, a descendant of 
 Adam according to the fleshh Had Adam 
 retained his integrity, he would have possessed 
 the right of magisterial authority over his 
 posterity. Had Christ been Head of the race, 
 
GORISE SS RELATION TO THE ELECT, 93 
 
 simply on the ground of His partaking of flesh 
 and blood, He would have been entitled to 
 have ruled the world as a supreme earthly 
 sovereign. But He did not appear as a sove- 
 reign, “but took upon Him the form of a 
 servant,” and acknowledged Czsar’s jurisdic- 
 tion by paying tribute. When one said unto 
 Him, “Master, speak to my brother that he 
 divide the inheritance with me; He said unto 
 him, Man, who made me a judge ora divider 
 over you?” (Luke xii. 13). “If my kingdom 
 were of this world, then would my servants 
 fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews ; 
 but now is my kingdom not from henee ~ 
 (John xviii. 36). His human nature did not 
 possess the right of sovereignty. His divine 
 nature was the seat of His personality, and as 
 God-Man He ruled the universe. As Mediator 
 He is “the Head of all principality and power 1 
 (Col. ii, 10). He “is gone into heaven, and is 
 on the right hand of God, angels and authori- 
 ties and powers being made subject unto Him ” 
 (1 Pet. iii. 22). He has the dominion over all 
 these powers, and therefore is Head over them. 
 But this is not the sense in which He is Head 
 of the church ; He is responsible for its eternal 
 safety ; He is not responsible for principalities 
 and powers. He is not responsible for all men. 
 
94 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 But He avows His responsibility for “as many 
 as the Father has given Him,” that none of 
 them be lost, but that all be raised up at the 
 last day. The church is His body, dependent 
 upon Him for its spiritual and eternal life. It 
 “grows up into Him in all things which is the 
 Head, even Christ: From whom the whole 
 body, fitly joined together and compacted by 
 that which every joint supplieth, according to 
 the effectual working in the measure of every 
 part, maketh increase of the body to the edify- 
 ing of itself in love” (Eph. iv. 15, 16). “ Hus- 
 bands, love your wives, even as Christ also 
 loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that 
 He might sanctify and cleanse it, with the 
 washing of water by the word, that He might 
 present it to Himself a glorious church, not 
 having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but 
 that it should be holy and without. blemish ” 
 (Eph. v. 25-27). These and like portions of 
 Scripture express the actual effects which 
 flow from Christ’s Headship to as many of 
 those given to Him as are called in every 
 successive generation. But these blessed 
 effects do not flow to all mankind. Those 
 given to Christ are not co-extensive with 
 the race. His Headship as “Prince of the 
 kings of the earth” (Rev. i. 5); as “ King of 
 
moe he ATION LOSTHEVELECT.A9§ 
 
 kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. xix. 16), is that 
 of dominion only, in which sense He is “ Head 
 over all things,” and rules all things, so as to 
 subordinate all to the interests of “the Church, 
 which is His body, the fulness of Him that 
 filethe all in) all” (Eph. i. 22, 23). He is not 
 united to kings and lords and all things, as one 
 with them, but this is His relation to His 
 Church. He rules His Church as its only 
 King; but He is the Church’s Head, as the 
 source of spiritual life to all the menibers, and 
 for them He engages, according to His Father's 
 will, that none of them be lost, but that all shall 
 be raised up at the last day. They are chosen in 
 Christ that they should be “holy and without 
 blame” (Eph. i. 4), elect “through sanctifica- 
 tion of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling 
 of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet.i. 2). All 
 this renewal of nature, this holiness and blame- 
 lessness, they derive from their relation to Him 
 as their Covenant Head. From the headship 
 of Adam they derived sin and death; from the 
 Headship of Christ, holiness and life. “As 
 by one man’s disobedience many were made 
 sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many 
 be made righteous” (Rom. v. 19). The obe- 
 dience of Christ does not cover the whole extent 
 of the disobedience of Adam, for then the 
 
96 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 whole race would be “holy and without blame,” 
 for this is the distinctive character of those 
 chosen in Christ before the foundation of the 
 world, and of whom He is the living and life- 
 giving Head. If He were the Head of the 
 race, the same effect would be secured to all, by 
 the terms of the Covenant of Grace. If He 
 were the covenant Head of the racé, and 
 responsible to His Father that none should be 
 lost, what meaning could be attached to the 
 expression, “all which He hath given me;” or, 
 “that He should give eternal life to as many 
 as Thou hast given Him;” or, “chosen in Him 
 before the foundation of the world”? Why 
 this distinction made by God before the world 
 began,-if it does not teach that there asa 
 portion of the race given to Christ, and a 
 portion not given to Him; a portion of which 
 He is the Head, and a portion of which He is 
 not the Head; a portion of whom He has 
 received’a charge that they shall not be lost, 
 and a portion for whom He bears no such 
 responsibility ? Mysterious and awful as the 
 fact is, it is clearly a fact of revelation, that 
 from eternity, in view of the guilt of the whole 
 fallen race, God made a distinction between 
 one portion and another, assigning to His own 
 Son the charge of the eternal salvation of a 
 
CA RISTS RELALION TO LCTHE ELECT. 97 
 
 portion as objects of grace, and leaving the rest 
 to the retribution of justice for their sin. And 
 this distinction is illustrated to us by the case 
 of Jacob and Esau. “When Rebecca also had 
 conceived by one, even by our father Isaac (for 
 the children being not yet born, neither having 
 done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, 
 according to election, might stand, not of works, 
 but of Him that calleth), it was said unto her, 
 The elder shall serve the younger. As it is 
 written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I 
 hated” (Rom. ix. 10-13). Here is a distinction 
 between two brothers, twins, on a level of the 
 most perfect equality, determined by election - 
 before they were born, without reference to 
 foreseen personal character as the ground of 
 distinction, that ground being expressly dis- 
 claimed,—“ not of works, but of Him that 
 calleth.” The reason of the distinction is 
 inscrutable by man,—it lies in “the purpose of 
 God according to election:’ it is solely “of 
 Him that calleth.” And this case is evidently 
 given as an example,—an individual specimen 
 of personal election by the sovereign grace of 
 God. Can this be impugned as unrighteous, 
 to make a distinction by grace, where there is 
 none in nature nor in character? “What shall 
 we say then? Is there unrighteousness with 
 G 
 
98 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I 
 will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, 
 and I will have compassion on whom I will 
 have compassion. So then it is not of him 
 that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of 
 God that sheweth mercy” (verses 14, 15, 16). 
 This is where it becomes us to leave a matter, 
 into the great depths of which there is no 
 searching. “O the depth of the riches both of 
 the wisdom and knowledge of God! How 
 unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways 
 past finding out.” : 
 
att Ag tele. Rea Viel, 
 
 THE “INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 
 
 ‘ NTIMATELY connected with Christ's 
 atonement and satisfaction, is His 
 priestly action of Intercession. “Who 
 
 is he that condemneth ? It is Christ 
 
 that died, yea rather, that is risen 
 
 again, who is even at the right hand of God, 
 who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 
 viii. 34). “This man, because He continueth 
 ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Where- 
 fore He is able also to save them to the utter- 
 most that come unto God by Him, seeing He 
 ever liveth to make intercession for them” 
 (Heb. vii. 24,25). His priestly office is per- 
 petual. “He is passed into the heavens.’’ 
 “For Christ is not entered into the holy places 
 made with hands, the figures of the true; but 
 
100 LHL. COVENANT: OF GRAGE 
 
 into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence 
 of God for *us” (Heb. ix. .24). ~ SF 
 ~Representative and Advocate of His people 
 before the Father, having “entered in once 
 into the holy place,” “a minister of the true 
 tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, and 
 not man.” This is prefigured by Aaron’s 
 entering “within the veil” on the great day of 
 atonement, when he was commanded to “take 
 a censer full of burning coals of fire from off 
 the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of 
 sweet incense beaten small, and to bring it 
 within the veil; and he shall put the incense 
 upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of 
 the incense may cover the mercy-seat that is 
 upon the testimony, that he die not” (Lev: 
 Xvi. 12, 13). At the same time he was to take 
 the blood of the sacrifice, and sprinkle it with 
 his finger upon the mercy-seat eastward, and 
 before the mercy-seat. The incense, typical of 
 Christ’s intercession, is in close connection with 
 the sacrificial blood, the type of Christ’s atone- 
 ment. As His people’s “High Priest, who is 
 set on the right hand of the throne of the 
 majesty in the heavens,” He bears their 
 names and their judgment upon His heart 
 before the Lord continually. He has entered 
 into the holy place by His own blood, that 
 
Vee PINEEROLSSION, OF SCARIST. ~) 401 
 
 is, by the virtue of His own sacrifice; and 
 on the ground of that sacrifice being accepted 
 of His Father, He is entitled to ask and to 
 receive, on His people’s behalf, whatsoever 
 they need for the support of their spiritual 
 life, for their deliverance from temptation, for 
 their faith and patience under trial, for their 
 fidelity in duty, for their comfort in sorrow. 
 Even their daily bread is His care, and all their 
 wants are supplied through His intercession. 
 The believer is thus kept under a continual sense 
 of dependence upon his glorified Redeemer, and 
 of nearness to Him; and is ever proving His 
 tender care and compassion, and rejoices in his 
 dependence upon One whom the Father heareth 
 always. His intercession also is necessary to 
 the calling and conversion of the elect, for in 
 every part of the work of redemption the 
 Father is to be glorified by the Son; and in 
 every part of it He acknowledges His depend- 
 ence upon the Father, and His accountability 
 to Him. Everything necessary for the well- 
 being of the elect is given as the Redeemer's 
 reward for finishing the work which His Father 
 gave Him to do; and it is the law of the 
 Father, that whoever would receive must ask,— 
 a law from which the Mediator is not exempted, 
 for to Him the Father says, “Ask of me, and 
 
102 THE COVENANT ORiGRACE 
 
 I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheri- 
 tance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for 
 thy possession” (Ps, ii. 8). And to Peter He 
 said, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith 
 fail; not” (luke xxii. 31, 32). The Fathers 
 the source of all blessing, and the Son is the 
 medium through whom all passes to the objects 
 of the Divine favour, and all is given to the 
 Son at His intercession. And every blessing 
 thus asked for by Christ is made effectual for 
 its end. When He asks for the conversion of 
 one redeemed by His blood, the whole agency 
 by which it is to be brought about is provided 
 and set in motion, and made certainly effectual, 
 for all is put into the hand of the Holy Spirit, 
 who never fails in his mission. For every part 
 of the work, what is done for the sinner, and 
 what is done zz him, is wrought by a Divine 
 person, whose work is ever certain and effica- 
 cious. The gift of the Spirit is in answer to 
 the intercession of Christ: “I will pray the 
 Father, and He shall give you another Com- 
 forter (or Advocate), that he may abide with 
 you for ever; even the Spirit of truth (John 
 xiv. 16,17). And the Spirit makes effectual 
 application of Christ’s work to the soul, by His 
 own Divine energy, so testifying of Christ and 
 of His work, as to elicit the exercise of true 
 
THE INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 103 
 
 saving faith. By this intercession of the Son, 
 the relation between the Father and His peo- 
 ple is maintained, a relation of peace, for they 
 have acceptance in the Son's acceptance, peace 
 in the Son’s peace. And they are ever to know 
 and to acknowledge that every blessing they 
 receive through Christ comes from the Father. 
 Our Lord says in His prayer to His Father— 
 “ Now they have known that all things whatso- 
 ever thou hast given me are of thee” (John 
 xvii. 7). Christ is the Depositary of every 
 blessing of grace; it is His by covenant right, 
 His to bestow; He receives it to bestow ; and 
 in bestowing He still maintains his right in it, 
 and his control over it, that he may make it 
 certain to be the blessing it is designed to be. 
 Every such blessing is a link binding us to 
 Christ in bonds of sweetest dependence, and in 
 Him binding us to the Father. No gift of 
 grace in the possession of the believer ever be- 
 comes separated from its source, so that he 
 should feel himself an independent possessor. 
 Every such gift makes him more dependent, 
 demanding an increase of faith that the gift 
 may serve its end, keeping him ever looking to 
 its source. The gift comes from the grace of 
 the Father; at the intercession of the Son, it 
 passes to the elect. In them, by the operation 
 
104 ITHE COVENANT.OF GRACE. 
 
 of the Spirit, it becomes fruitful ; it is returned 
 with the usury of thanksgiving and praise 
 through the Son, presented by Him to the 
 Father; and thus, by this ladder of Interces- 
 sion, the fellowship of the saints with the 
 Father and the Son is maintained evermore. 
 We are given to understand that this Inter- 
 cession of Christ is not to be regarded as asking 
 by petition, as of one in want to one rich, nor 
 as of an inferior asking gratuitous boons from 
 a superior. It is conducted on the ground of 
 rightful claim on the part of the Intercessor to 
 every good thing for which He makes request, 
 for all are the purchase of His work of Redemp- 
 tion. Thus He prays, “Father, Z wail that 
 they also whom thou hast given me, be with 
 me where I am: that they may behold my 
 glory which thou hast given me; for thou 
 lovedst me before the foundation of the world” 
 (John xvii. 24). By stating His will, or putting 
 it in the form of request, He reverently intimates 
 to His Father that what He asks has become 
 His to receive, according to the conditions of 
 the Covenant; that the time has come when it 
 is needed by some of the redeemed, and He 
 prays that now it may be given. He asks as 
 an equal from an equal, in whose custody 
 something is held until it be asked for. This 
 
Ride IN PCL SS LONG OL] CHRIST. (105 
 
 appears from the word which Christ employs, 
 as also from the word which He abstains from 
 employing, when He says, J gray, in the original 
 Greek. Archbishop Trench says, “It is note- 
 worthy, and witnesses for the singular accuracy , 
 in the employment of words, and in the record 
 of that employment, which prevails throughout 
 the New Testament, that our Lord never uses 
 aire) OY airetodos Of Himself, in respect of that 
 which He seeks on behalf of His disciples from 
 God; for His is not the fetztion of the creature 
 to the Creator, but the veguest of the Son to 
 the Father. The consciousness of His equal 
 dignity, of His potent and prevailing interces- 
 sion, speaks out in this, that often as He asks, 
 or declares that He will ask, anything of the 
 Father, it is always égar%, éewrjow, an asking, that 
 is, upon equal terms (John xiv. 16; xvi. 26; 
 XVii. 9, 15, 20), never airéw or alrjow.* The 
 Father recognises the right, and bestows upon 
 Him whatsoever He asks. All the purchased 
 blessings of the Covenant are therefore sure to 
 as many as the Father has given to the Son. 
 The Redeemer is, by right of His priestly 
 office, the only One entitled to appear in the 
 presence of God, and to present pleadings and 
 requests at the mercy-seat. His people have 
 
 , * New Testament Synonyms. 
 
106 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 no such right. The Father knows them only 
 in the Son, in whom he has chosen them. Only 
 the High Priest has the right of entrance within 
 the veil. ° But this right He holds as their Head, 
 and on their behalf ; and on the ground of His 
 right and of their union to Him, they have the 
 privilege in His name of making their requests 
 known unto God. “Ye have not chosen me, 
 but I have chosen you and ordained you, that 
 ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that 
 your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye 
 shall ask of the Father in my name, He may 
 give it you” (John xv. 16). But the Father 
 first gives to the Son, and the Son gives to the 
 elect. Therefore, He says, “ Whatsoever ye 
 shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the 
 Father may be glorified inthe Son. Ifye shall 
 ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 
 xiv. 13, 14). To ask in His name is to plead 
 His covenant right to receive from the Father 
 all things of which His people are in need. 
 They claim no personal or independent right 
 to anything, not even to ask of the Father, for 
 the right to ask belongs only to the Mediator, 
 no other having the right of approach to the 
 Father but He who has entered within the veil 
 by His own blood. The privilege of prayer to 
 the children of God is enjoyed only because 
 
Bre ee TOR CIS SION OR. CHRIST. (107 
 
 they are united to Christ, and thereby interested 
 in His intercession. “ And another angel came 
 and stood at the altar” (no doubt the Angel of 
 the covenant, the High Priest), having a golden 
 censer; and there was given unto Him much 
 incense, that He should offer it with the prayers 
 of all saints upon the golden altar which was 
 before the throne. And the smoke of the in- 
 cense, which came with the prayers of the 
 saints, ascended up before God out of the 
 angel’s hand” (Rev. viii. 3, 4). “ Hitherto,” 
 says our Lord to His disciples, “ have ye asked 
 nothing in my name; ask and ye shall receive, 
 that your joy may be full” (John xvi. 24). He 
 thus gives to His people the high privilege of 
 receiving in answer to prayer, in right of His 
 Priesthood, whatever by the conditions of the 
 Covenant of Grace He is entitled to receive on 
 their behalf. Their prayers in His name mingle 
 with His intercession, and derive their efficacy 
 from it. All the treasures of the covenant are 
 theirs, “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” 
 Well therefore may they have confidence that 
 “their God shall supply all their need accord- 
 ing to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” 
 (Phil. iv. 19). 
 
 We may only farther observe of the interces- 
 sion of Christ, that it is constant and perpetual ; 
 
108 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 it is never intermitted, and will continue for 
 ever. The Mediatorship of Christ will never 
 come to an end. It was needed to bring 
 sinners nigh to God; it is ever needed to keep 
 them nigh. They have no standing before 
 God, but in the Mediator; they are complete 
 in Him, and only in Him. They never acquire 
 such a personal righteousness as will make 
 them independent of imputed. They owe their 
 justification, their place in the divine favour, 
 and in the divine government, to their union to 
 Him, and to Him in His office of Mediator ; 
 and to maintain their place His mediation is 
 ever necessary. In the heavenly Jerusalem 
 He is still the Lamb. “And I saw no temple 
 therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the 
 Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had 
 no need of the sun, neither of the moon to 
 shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, 
 and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Rev. xxi. 
 22, 23; xxii. 3). The human nature of Christ 
 is indissolubly united to the divine, and indis- 
 solubly unites Him to His people. It is the 
 perpetual visible evidence of His mediatorship, 
 the testimony that it shall never cease. He is 
 “a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.” 
 “This man, because He continueth ever, hath 
 an unchangeable Priesthood. Wherefore He 
 
BENG AOL SOL ONO CHRIST. 109 
 
 is able to save them to the uttermost that come 
 ‘unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to 
 Makewitercession for them’. (Heb. vii.117, 
 24, 25). Upon the continuance of His Priest- 
 hood depends the eternal salvation of His 
 erect? 
 
CoHICA (PT aR aay ote 
 
 THE. AGENCYSOF ‘THE HOLY -SPIRTT iN ae 
 FILLING THE COVENANT. 
 
 S we have seen in a former chapter, 
 our Lord stated His own obligation 
 in regard to those given to Him by 
 the Father, that it required of Him 
 that none of them should be lost, 
 
 but that all should be raised up at the last day 
 
 (John vi. 39). At the same time He farther 
 
 unfolded the will of God respecting them, and 
 
 under another aspect,—“ And this is the will 
 of Him that sent me, that every one which 
 seeth the Son and believeth on Him, may have 
 
 everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the . 
 
 last day” (verse 40). This expresses their 
 
 personal relation to the Son, and their personal 
 obligation in regard to Him, as they come into 
 
Pievinve( herhit HIOLY SRInIT. Wil 
 
 existence. They are not to be translated, 
 passively and unconsciously, to their resurrec- 
 tion glory by the hand of their surety. They 
 are to have a conscious and voluntary relation 
 fomiiine whey are to see’ Kim, to ‘come sto 
 Him, to believe on Him. They are given to 
 Him as sinners; they must feel themselves to 
 be so. He is presented to them as the Saviour 
 of the lost, giving eternal life to every one that 
 seeth Him and believeth on Him. They must 
 know themselves to be lost and without power of 
 self-restoration ; and they must recognise Him 
 to be the only and the all-sufficient Redeemer. 
 ‘The sinner and the Saviour must be brought 
 face to face, and such a union formed between 
 them as shall bring the saving power into 
 effectual action. They do not know themselves 
 as given to Christ, they do not know Him in 
 their unbelieving state as their Head and 
 Surety. If they were addressed as “elect,” 
 they could not recognise themselves under that 
 designation. And if Christ were announced 
 unto them as the Head of an elect people, it 
 could awaken no response in their minds,— 
 neither confidence nor hope. But if He be 
 proclaimed as the Saviour of Sinners, although 
 they do not know themselves as elect, they 
 know that any proclamation addressed to 
 
112 THE COVENANT: OF GRACE, 
 
 _ sinners, claims their instant attention, and the 
 very name of Saviour tells at once of danger 
 and deliverance. They must see this Saviour, 
 this Son*of God, whom the Father has sent to 
 seek and to save that which was lost. But 
 seeing is here used of the perception of the 
 mind, and signifies knowledge of Him. We 
 must know whom we believe (2 Tim. i. 12). 
 “They that know thy name shall put their 
 trust in thee” (Ps. ix. 10), We must know 
 the Saviour’s name, that is, who and what He 
 is, before we shall put our trust in Him. His 
 name is that which He is, as we learn from 
 Exod. xxxiv. 5-7. “The Lord descended in 
 the cloud, and stood with him (Moses) there, 
 and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And 
 the Lord passed by and proclaimed, The Lord, 
 The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long- 
 suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 
 keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity 
 and transgression and sin, and that will by no 
 means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of 
 the fathers upon the children, and upon the 
 children’s children, unto the third and fourth 
 generation.” His name is that which He is, 
 and that by which He desires to be known. 
 To see the Son is to know what He is,—what 
 characterises Him, what constitutes His dis- 
 
Peeve LAE HOLY "SPIRIT. bis: 
 
 tinction from all other beings, for thus only 
 can the sinner see whether He is warranted in 
 entrusting his soul’s eternal interests to His 
 keeping. In such a matter as this there must 
 be no hazard ; we must have no misgivings, no 
 lurking doubts about the personal character- 
 istics of Him who is called the Saviour of 
 sinners. His marked characteristics, which dis- 
 tinguish Him from every being in the universe, 
 are, that He is the eternal Son of God—that 
 He-is also Son of Man,—that He combines 
 these two natures in one person, and that there- 
 fore whatever is possible to God, and whatever 
 is possible to man in sinless perfection, and 
 whatever is possible to the combined action of 
 both natures in one person, is possible to Him. 
 It is thus His person must be set before the 
 sinner, that seeing Him he may believe, and 
 feel that such a Saviour is entitled to a con- 
 fidence unreserved, undivided, and eternal. 
 For the elect’s sake He must be thus made 
 known, for they must see and’ believe in order 
 to eternal life, for they are sinners. They do 
 not come forth on the stage of time, in the 
 conscious dignity of an eternal relationship to 
 the appointed Heir of all things, neither with 
 the equipments and attendance of princes enter- 
 ing upon their inheritance ; but in poverty and 
 H 
 
114 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 degradation, in guilt and misery. The “all” 
 given to Christ is resolved into its individual 
 constituents, and the season of their responsi- 
 bility is come; they are under obligation to 
 believe, that they may have everlasting life and 
 be raised up at the last day. The end and the 
 means are inseparably linked together in the 
 divine order in Providence. The same order 
 obtains in God’s gracious dealings with His 
 elect. The end which He designs for them is 
 everlasting life. The means are the mission, 
 the incarnation, the life and death of His own 
 Son, His resurrection, ascension, and interces- 
 sion. Here is a whole class of means of divine 
 agency, and for the employment of which the 
 Mediator had the sole and unshared responsi- 
 bility. But He was not only responsible for 
 the means; He was responsible for the end 
 also, namely, to raise up those given to Him at 
 the last day. It belongs to Him to make sure 
 that the means shall be certainly efficacious. 
 But the Father’s will which the Son came down 
 to accomplish, embraced another class of means 
 also necessary to the end,—means by the active 
 agency of those for whose sake the end was 
 designed, and for whose sake the means proper 
 to the Mediator were undertaken and executed. 
 These means are expressed by “seeing the 
 
BOnvOYP OR Hr TIOLY SPIRIT. . Tu" 
 
 —— 
 
 Son” and “believing on Him;” and only those 
 who see and believe shall have everlasting life, 
 and be raised up at the last day. Still the 
 Son is responsible for the whole issue; He 
 must lose nothing of all which is given to Him, 
 He must raise it up at the last day. Whatever 
 therefore is necessary to this issue, it apper- 
 tains to Him to provide, for if He have not 
 control of the means, He cannot control the 
 end. He has “power over all flesh,” that He 
 may “ give eternal life to as many as the Father 
 has given Him” (John xvii. 2). This power is 
 power over all the springs of action in all flesh, 
 that He may influence the will and the purposes 
 of men, and direct their action in the line of 
 that issue for which He is responsible. Here 
 then is a point where the responsibility of the 
 Saviour and the responsibility of the sinner 
 meet. They are concurrent obligations, and 
 both necessary to the end, according to the 
 will of the Father. Once more then, in dis- 
 charge of His obligation, the Redeemer brings 
 divine agency into action in the production of 
 this new class of means, and in securing their 
 efficacy. The sphere of their action is alto- 
 gether different from that of the first class. 
 In this case it is within the sphere of the con- 
 sciousness of the elect sinner, where alone it is 
 
116 LHE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 possible for the responsibility of the sinner to 
 meet with the responsibility of the Redeemer. 
 How then does the Redeemer secure the action 
 and the efficacy of the means that have their 
 sphere in the activities of the mind of the 
 sinner? By engaging the Holy Spirit in the 
 work. As Redeemer, the whole “fulness of 
 the Godhead,” all its infinite resources, dwell in 
 Him (Col. ii. 9), and are at His disposal for 
 the ends of His Mediatorship. The condition 
 of the sinner’s mind is that of enmity against 
 God. Enmity has no natural tendency to 
 become love. The will goes with the enmity, 
 and strengthens and impels it. Natural con- 
 version, therefore, that is, conversion from 
 enmity to love, by the resources of human 
 nature, is an impossibility, moral and meta- 
 physical. And yet to a nature in that very 
 state of enmity, there ‘attaches a responsibility 
 to love God which cannot be separated from it. 
 It is a law of its existence, and cannot cease, 
 not even when the sense of it is dead, and all 
 power to discharge its obligation has been lost. 
 “The carnal mind is enmity against God ; for 
 it is not subject to the law of God, neither 
 indeed can be” (Rom. viii. 7). But the re- 
 sponsibility is neither terminated nor suspended, 
 by inability to be subject to the law of God, 
 
reve OTe hi he HOLY SPIRIT.  1i7 
 
 for the inability is not inherent in it by the 
 - law of its creation, but has been guiltily induced. 
 God is justly entitled to claim from man all 
 the love and service which his nature was 
 fitted to render by its original constitution. 
 This very inability is an element of man’s guilty 
 and degraded condition, which rendered the work 
 of redemption necessary, and which specially 
 rendered it necessary that the Divine Spirit 
 should Himself enter into the mind of the sinner 
 with renewing power, to “shed abroad the love of 
 God in the heart,’ and thereby to kindle his. 
 It is the Spirit that testifies of Jesus, that pre- 
 sents to the soul the person and work of the 
 Redeemer in such clear and satisfying evidence 
 as to elicit the faith that embraces Him. It is 
 He that convinces of sin, that guides into all 
 truth, that leads the children of God, that 
 revives within them the sense of sin and of duty 
 and responsibility, and maintains it. It is by 
 the agency of this Holy Spirit of promise that 
 the Son fulfils the will of His Father in bringing 
 the elect to see and believe, that they may have 
 everlasting life. And when He enters into the 
 heart He finds it “ dead in trespasses and sins.” 
 It is not a state of inaction and mere passivity 
 that He finds there ; neither is it a condition 
 of mere passive inability or helplessness which 
 
118 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 the word “dead” might seem to express. 
 There is a state of active opposition to the 
 whole design of the Spirit’s mission. This is 
 expressed by the terms “t¢respasses” and “sins,” 
 for these imply activity—active opposition to 
 God and to holiness. “To be carnally minded 
 is death,” or to mind the things of the flesh is 
 death; but that implies activity in seeking to 
 please the flesh. Death, therefore, in its moral 
 signification, expresses the withdrawal of the 
 soul’s affections from God, the withholding of 
 all its activities from His service. “She that 
 liveth in pleasure, is dead while she liveth” 
 (1 Tim. v. 6). She is active in pleasing herself, 
 but she is dead to all desire of pleasing God. 
 The whole of the activity of the natural powers 
 of the sinner being engaged in opposition to. 
 God and His law, and enlisted in the service of 
 His enemy, are dead to God. The negative 
 term znabziity, therefore, very inadequately ex- 
 presses man’s actual condition of mind when 
 the Holy Spirit begins His gracious work. 
 He finds enmity and energetic resistance, and 
 no element in the soul to sympathise with His 
 holy purpose, or to lend its concurrence. He 
 finds noble powers degraded and dishonoured 
 by servile subjection to base passions, pursuing 
 unworthy aims, “spending their strength for 
 
PerNG LOR ALOR Y SPIRIT. 5/119 
 
 that which is not bread, and their labour for 
 that which satisfieth not.’ Strength Godward 
 there is none. Strong for evil, but powerless 
 for good ; to change the evil nature by force of 
 nature is impossible. The Apostle teaches us 
 that this is the work of divine power, when he 
 speaks of “the exceeding greatness” of the power 
 of God “toward them who believe, according to 
 the working of His mighty power which He 
 wrought in Christ when He raised Him from 
 the dead, and set Him at His own right hand 
 in the heavenly places” (Eph. i. 19, 20). The 
 power that raised Jesus from the dead is the 
 only power that can convert the soul of a sinner 
 to God. Even when Christ is set before the 
 sinner, he is powerless to come to Him in faith. 
 This our Lord teaches when He says, “No 
 man can come to me except the Father which 
 hath sent me draw him ; and I will raise him 
 
 up at the last day” (John vi. 44). “ All that 
 
 the Father giveth me shall come to me” 
 (verse 37); but no man can come except the 
 Father draw him. The Redeemer, therefore, 
 is to interpose responsibly only for those 
 whom the Father gives to Him, and draws to 
 Him. Taking the statements of the 39th and 
 44th verses of this chapter, we feel ourselves 
 awed by the absolute sovereignty of the grace 
 
120 THE COVENANT: OF GRACE. 
 
 of God, offering to the sinner no ground for 
 trust, no light for hope. He may say to him- 
 self, “Who are they that are given to Christ ? 
 How can I know whether I am? I cannot 
 come to Him except the Father draw me. 
 How may I know that He will.’ The sinner 
 may perplex himself with questions to which 
 he can find no answer; let him, therefore, 
 postpone for the present, the consideration of 
 the sovereignty of grace in giving unknown 
 persons to the Son and drawing them to Him, 
 and fix his thoughts upon this plain and 
 intelligible revelation of the gracious will of 
 God—“ that every one which seeth the Son 
 and believeth on Him, may have everlasting 
 life.” This is the side of the will of God which 
 ‘is presented to human gaze, and which addresses 
 itself to human obligation, and with which the 
 sinner has immediately to do. And in like 
 manner the “drawing of the Father” has a 
 luminous side turned to human observation : 
 for it is added in verse 45, “It is written in the 
 Prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. 
 Every man, therefore, that hath heard, and 
 hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.” 
 We have the Father's teaching in the written . 
 word, “the record that God gave of His Son.” 
 “And this is the record, that God hath given us 
 
BaeVvOL OM THE HOLY SPIRIT. 121 
 
 eternal life, and this life isin His Son” (1 John 
 v. 10, 11). By the teaching of the word con- 
 cerning His Son, the Father “ draws” the sinner 
 to Christ. “He that believeth on me hath 
 everlasting life,” our Lord affirms in the 47th 
 verse, John vi. The actual believing, therefore, 
 becomes evidence of being given to Christ, and 
 of being drawn by the Father. Those given 
 to Christ shall be raised up at the last day, 
 those believing in the Son shall be raised up 
 at the last day, those drawn to Christ by the 
 Father shall be raised up at the last day. 
 They are all thus identified as one and the 
 same. The sinner is ever prone to begin 
 his speculations on religious matters at the 
 wrong’end. He would begin with the link 
 in the chain which hangs upon the divine 
 sovereignty, away out of his sight, but he shuts 
 his eyes to the link reaching to the earth, 
 attaching itself to his own responsibility to see 
 and believe. With the statement in the 39th 
 verse of this most pregnant passage, Christ alone 
 is responsibly concerned. With the declaration 
 of the Will of God, in the 4oth verse, every 
 sinner who hears it is responsibly concerned, 
 and at his peril he disregards it. It is with the 
 seeing, that is, with knowing Christ, and be- 
 lieving on Him, O man, that you are concerned; 
 
122 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 and it is to lead you to this, to draw you to 
 Christ, that He is preached to you in His 
 person and offices. You need not concern your- 
 self with the past eternity at present. This 
 world is the place of your conscious life. Your 
 concern lies in the present, and in its relation 
 to the future. Your conscience has no respon- 
 sibility upon it for anything done in the counsels 
 of the past eternity, nor with any of its sovereign 
 decrees. Past days and hours of your past life, 
 gathering guilt and sin, and heaping up wrath 
 against the day of wrath, concern you. Your 
 conscience has to do with a present load of 
 guilt, and this concerns you. It is no concern 
 of the sinner to speculate upon his possible 
 relation to God or to His Son, “before the 
 world began ;” but it is his pressing concern to 
 consider the actual relation in which he stands 
 to God now, of which he is told, with startling 
 plainness, that it is a relation of enmity, and 
 that he is “condemned already.” This is the 
 doctrine for the sinner,—“ Him that cometh to 
 me, I will in no wise cast out.” ‘This is the 
 will of Him that sent me, that every one which 
 seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may 
 have everlasting life.” Let him put this to the 
 proof, and it will be the key that will open to 
 him the secret of the Covenant. All doctrines 
 
AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 123 
 
 are not for all alike. Some are not suited to 
 every condition of mind. Our Lord taught 
 His disciples as they were able to bear it. ‘The 
 doctrine of Election is no medicine for the 
 sinner’s ailment; it is the cordial of the saint, 
 for strength and joy to him. When the soul 
 has been drawn to Christ by the divine teaching 
 of the Word and Spirit, when it has seen and 
 believed, it is its high privilege then, if it has 
 the light and the strength to avail itself of it,— 
 for some have not,—to take those gracious facts 
 of his life, and trace them up to their eternal 
 source, in the electing love of the Father. 
 This gracious love of the Father is no new 
 born feeling, neither dating from the sinner’s 
 birth nor from his conversion, but is everlasting 
 as is His love to the Son, therefore fixed and 
 immutable, not waxing and waning with the 
 strength and the weakness of faith, nor changing 
 with the many fluctuations of Christian ex- 
 perience. It is the constancy of that love in 
 Christ Jesus, which secures “the life, walk, and 
 triumph of Faith.” 
 
OB? 
 
 CoH ASP ATE ey ol al ae 
 
 THE: ELECT CALLED INTO THE FELEOWsraie 
 OF -THE SON. 
 
 HE Covenant of Grace provides the 
 
 G 2) only security for the restoration to 
 holiness of any portion of the fallen 
 
 race of man. And it has effectually 
 
 provided for this, as we have seen, 
 
 by committing the whole work of Redemption, 
 in all its parts, to divine agency,—that agency 
 which is ever infallibly effective. The agency 
 of the Son was of infallible efficacy to secure 
 the certainty of everlasting life, and a glorious 
 resurrection, to as many as the Father had 
 civen to Him, for it is impossible to doubt that 
 He accomplished all His Fathers will. And 
 it is not less certain that the Divine agency of 
 the Holy Spirit is equally efficacious, within 
 
ee ae 
 
 Bie OL CALLED: 125 
 
 His own sphere of action, in the hearts of the 
 elect. His proper office is to sanctify them,— 
 to “work in them both to will and to do of 
 God’s good pleasure,” to bring them “to be 
 conformed to the image of God’s dear Son.” 
 God “has chosen them before the foundation of 
 the world, that they should be holy and without 
 blame.” Their election attains its end through 
 “sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience 
 and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” 
 
 “God hath from the beginning chosen them to 
 
 salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit 
 and belief of the truth. Whereunto He called 
 them by His gospel, to the obtaining of the 
 glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. ii. 
 13, 14). Thus carefully does God guard this 
 doctrine ‘against the imputation of immoral 
 effects,—_they may not continue in sin because 
 grace abounds. They are elected unto holiness, 
 and holiness is the evidence of their election. 
 They are “called unto holiness” by the opera- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit, and the work of the 
 Spirit within them witnesses at once to their 
 adoption and their election; and without this 
 sanctifying work of the Spirit, they can have 
 no ground for believing themselves elected, for 
 it is the sole evidence of election, as it is the 
 sole evidence of justification. “They are pre- 
 
126 ITHE COVENANT OF, GRACE, 
 
 destinated to be conformed to the image of the 
 Son ;” and in order to this conformity, they 
 are called into “the fellowship of the Son” 
 (Rom. viii. 29; 1 Cor. i. 9). To be in fellow- 
 ship with Him, is to be of one mind with Him, 
 to concur with Him in His purposes and prin- 
 ciples of life, in His hatred of sin, in His 
 love of holiness; in His love to His Father, 
 in His zeal for His Father’s service; in His 
 love to sinners, and in His soul’s travail for 
 their salvation. Their faith keeps them ever 
 in His presence, He dwells in their heart by 
 faith, He is entertained in their thoughts, they 
 revere and admire His character, they imitate 
 it, and so put on Christ Jesus the Lord. By 
 much consideration of His revealed mind, they 
 grow in the knowledge of Him, of His thoughts 
 and will, and the feelings of His heart. By 
 daily experience of His watchful and tender 
 care, of His most loving patience and long- 
 suffering, of His supporting and restraining 
 grace, of the love that will not let the back- 
 slider go, but pursues him and brings him 
 back, chastened and repenting and humbled, 
 to walk in the bitterness of his soul for many a 
 day,—yet not without some sweetening infusions 
 of gracious consolation, and of many precious 
 tokens of love, bringing peace and joy. He 
 
Ti BEL EGCT GALLED. 127 
 
 maintains for Himself such an interest in the 
 believer’s soul as keeps Him ever present to 
 faith. And by such proof of Him, and walking 
 with Him, the believer becomes conformed to 
 Him, and the fellowship and the likeness 
 advance together. The work of the Spirit is 
 manifest by “the fruit of the Spirit, which is 
 love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, good- 
 ness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. v. 21). 
 This is fruit ever to be found where the Spirit 
 dwells, never elsewhere. The elect are called 
 to be saints, and “how can they that are dead 
 to sin live any longer therein?” They learn to 
 walk “worthy of the vocation wherewith they are 
 called.” In fellowship with their living Head, 
 they become “the light of the world,” “the salt 
 of the earth.” They are Christ’s witnesses to 
 the ends of the earth, holding forth the word 
 ‘of life. Christ liveth in them; and “the life 
 which they live in the flesh, they live by the 
 faith of the Son of God, who loved them, and 
 gave Himself for them” (Gal. it. 20). They 
 know no sufficiency for any good, but in the 
 erace of Christ; no power for good, but in 
 His strength. They presume, not upon their 
 election,—for they know that the ground of it 
 was not in themselves, nor in anything foreseen 
 in them; but in that sovereignty of the grace 
 of God, of which He hath given no account, 
 
128 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 but that it was “according to the good pleasure 
 of His will,” “according to His own purpose 
 and grace.” There they leave the solemn 
 mystery adoringly and humbly, joyfully acknow- 
 ledging that by the grace of God alone they 
 are what they are. And believing that the 
 grace that chose them, and called them to faith 
 and repentance, will never change toward them, 
 ‘they seek diligently to requite their Father’s 
 love with love, His faithfulness with faithful- 
 ness; and so to employ all His gifts, that He 
 may receive His own again with usury. In 
 the faith of the covenant engagement of their 
 Redeemer on their behalf, that they “should 
 be holy and without blemish,” they engage 
 themselves in a perpetual personal covenant, 
 to be “obedient children, not fashioning them- 
 selves according to the former lusts in their 
 ignorance; but as He which hath called them 
 is holy, so shall they be holy in all manner of 
 conversation.” And in that same faith alone, 
 and abjuring all trust in gifts or graces or 
 attainments of theirs, they are enabled to say, 
 “We are persuaded that neither death, nor life, 
 nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor 
 things present, nor things to come, nor height, 
 nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
 to separate us from the love of God which is 
 in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. viii. 38, 39). 
 
area ev lotro LX: 
 
 THE CERTAINTY OF THE SALVATION OF 
 THESE LECT, 
 
 HE Covenant of Grace is ordered in 
 all things and sure. Its design is 
 the salvation of sinners. All things 
 in it have been ordered, have been 
 adapted to this end, by their nature 
 
 and their arrangement, so as to produce the 
 
 designed effect. The design is pregnant of its 
 consequences, and they shall come to the birth, 
 and there is strength to bring forth. Redemp- 
 tion is Realy, a transaction between the 
 
 Father and the Son in the councils of eternity, 
 
 originating with the Father, undertaken by the 
 
 a It contemplates the complete deliverance 
 
 of its objects from guilt and danger, from utter 
 
 sinfulness and helplessness; and the accom- 
 
 plishment of it in all its parts is confined to the 
 I 
 
130 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 divine agency of the Persons of the Godhead. 
 This renders the issue of the design of salvation 
 as certain as the issue of the design of creation. 
 There is infinite certainty that the design of 
 sovereign grace shall be accomplished. J¢ zs 
 certain that all for whom the Father designs 
 eternal life are given to Christ. J/¢ 7s certain 
 that in giving them to Christ, His declared 
 purpose was that none of them should be lost, 
 but that all should be raised up at the last day. 
 it ts certain that the Father knew the Son to 
 be able to accomplish His will, and that He 
 would not fail to do it. /¢t zs certain that the 
 Son undertook the work which His Father gave 
 Him to do, in the consciousness of possessing 
 all divine power and authority—that He had 
 the command of all the resources of the universe, 
 created and uncreated, to secure the fulfilment 
 of the gracious design. And 7¢ zs certain that 
 He held Himself accountable to His Father 
 that of all which He had given Him nothing 
 should be lost, but that He would raise it up 
 at the last day. There is no possible element 
 of failure, no element of uncertainty. Can the 
 result be uncertain? There are some would 
 have us believe that there is a contingency 
 which may prove mightier than all this array — 
 of divine certainties, namely, the possible re- 
 
THE ESALVAMION OF THE ELECT. 131 
 
 fusal of salvation by the sinner himself. Surely 
 a covenant ordered in all things would not 
 have left such a contingency as this unprovided 
 for,—a contingency which otherwise would 
 have rendered the whole design of grace abor- 
 tive. But here again we have ¢hese certainties : 
 First, it was the declared will of the Father 
 that all given to the Son should, by seeing the 
 Son, and believing in Him, come to Him, and 
 enter into conscious personal relation to Him. 
 Then it is certain there was some cause in 
 themselves why they could not come to Him— 
 some fatal inability. For our Lord says, “ No 
 man can come to me except the Father which 
 hath sent me draw him.” And it is certain 
 that this inability was to be overcome by hearing 
 and learning of the Father, so that the Saviour 
 says, “ All that the Father giveth me shall come 
 tome.’ Here iscertainty. The winning of the 
 sinner’s consent is the work of the Holy Spirit. 
 Regeneration, the imparting of new life to dead 
 souls, is the Spirit’s work, divine work. Sancti- 
 fication, the maintaining and fostering and 
 maturing the new life, is the work of the Spirit. 
 He will not fail to accomplish the work assigned 
 to Him. There is the same certainty that He 
 will bring them to see the Son, and to believe 
 in Him, as that the Son died for their sins, and 
 
132 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 rose again for their justification. They shall 
 come to Him, and He will in nowise cast them 
 out. Of all these certainties none are found 
 to have their cause in the sinner himself. They 
 are all traced to the redeeming work of the 
 Son, to the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, 
 and ultimately to the electing grace of the 
 Father. This fact is an offence to the pride of 
 man. He would like to have some share in 
 determining the certainty of his own salvation. 
 He would make the efficacy of the Redeemer’s 
 proper work depend in some measure upon his 
 own work. He would make the efficacy of the 
 operation of the Spirit depend upon his own 
 will. He does not want the Redeemer to do 
 the whole work of justifying righteousness. 
 He claims to have some righteousness of his 
 own, entitled to count for something in the 
 matter of his justification; as he claims also 
 to have some good within him prior to the 
 operation of the Spirit, and without the active 
 concurrence of which, the action of the Divine 
 Spirit would fail of its efficacy. The determi- 
 nation of the certainty of salvation would thus 
 be made to rest ultimately upon the sinner 
 himself. Every divine element in the work of 
 redemption, both in that which is proper to the 4 
 Son, and in that which is proper to the Sprite 
 
tne SALVATION ORT AE ELECT: 1133 
 
 is stamped with divine certainty ; but the sup- 
 posed elements of human contribution must 
 introduce uncertainty, and the result must be 
 uncertainty. All the certainties of the universe 
 are divinely determined. And when God would 
 give certainty to His purpose of grace, He 
 sent His eternal Son and His eternal Spirit to 
 accomplish His will. Is the sinner, then, 
 passive in all this? Has he no meritorious 
 share in his own salvation ? no spiritual power, 
 no power of will to co-operate with the Holy 
 Spirit in his own regeneration? He is not 
 merely passive; he is opposed, and offers 
 strenuous resistance. He cannot obey the 
 divine law, for he is dead in trespasses and 
 sins. But when the Spirit imparts the new. 
 life in regeneration, his whole soul is stirred 
 into spiritual activity. He is not borne away 
 to heaven against his will, nor in a _ condi- 
 tion of passive, easy unconcern. It is the will 
 of the Father that the elect sinner believe in 
 the Son; and faith, relying upon the grace of 
 the covenant alone for all his salvation, brings 
 every power of the mind, and every affection 
 of the heart into lively action. He that-is in 
 fellowship with Christ cannot be slothful. He 
 has been awakened to a sense of his obligation. 
 He has great work to do; he has a fierce war 
 
134 THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 
 
 to wage. He has to contend unto blood striv- 
 ing against sin. And now that he has begun 
 to experience the power of divine grace, he 
 begins to feel his own helplessness, to confess 
 it, and to ask of God to come for his help. 
 Now that he knows that it is “God that worketh 
 in him, both to will and to do of His good 
 pleasure,” he sets himself in good earnest to 
 work out his own salvation, that is, to use 
 all appointed means for the furtherance of 
 his personal sanctification. He is thus put 
 upon searching the Scriptures for more light 
 and guidance, upon more watchfulness, upon 
 self-distrust, and the “ fear and trembling” that 
 belong to it ; upon persistent urgency in prayer, 
 upon self-denial, and the faithful fulfilment of 
 every duty. He is impelled to give all “ dili- 
 gence to make his: calling and election sure,” 
 that is, a matter of certainty to himself. And 
 this diligence consists in “adding to his faith 
 virtue ; to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge 
 temperance, and to temperance patience, and 
 to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly 
 kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. 
 For if these things be in him and abound, they 
 make him neither barren (rather, idle) nor un- 
 fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. i. 5; viii. 10). 
 
Peo LAN IONIOG TAL ELECT. 135 
 
 When God worketh in the believer, He stirs 
 him up to work, and keeps him working this 
 inward work of personal holiness, that he may 
 be neither idle nor unfruitful in the outward ~ 
 work for God, in the church and in the world. 
 He must be steadfast, immoveable, always 
 abounding in the work of the Lord, “for as 
 much as he knows that his labour is not in vain 
 in the Lord” (1 Cor. xv. 58). God employs 
 him in work which shall be certainly successful, 
 and so he worketh cheerily, singing as he works. 
 He knows that the end, “the resurrection of 
 life,’ was made a divine certainty from the 
 beginning. “We know that if our earthly 
 house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we 
 have a building of God, an house not made 
 with hands, eternal in the heavens.” “For this 
 corruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal must put on immortality. So when 
 this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, 
 and this mortal shall have put on immortality, 
 then shall be brought to pass the saying that 
 is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” 
 
 THE END: 
 
ie 
 
 its 
 
 ee - Bdinburgh: 
 — Printed by Home & Macdonald, Green 
 
 r 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Librar 
 
 1 1012 01020 0428 
 
 . 
 
 8: 
 
 taal