tihtavy of t:he t:heolo0ical ^eminarjp 
 
 PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 A. G. Cameron, Ph.D. 
 
 ^^;© 
 
/ 
 
 LIFE B Y^F A^ I T H 
 
 7.^ 
 
 / . 
 
 A SEEMO 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE SYNOD OF NEW-JERSEY, 
 
 OPENING OF ITS SESSIONS, 
 
 RAHWAY, NEW-JERSEY, 
 
 Tuesday Evening, October 21st, 1862. 
 
 BY ALEXAKDEE T/M'GILL, D.D., 
 
 OF PRINCETON, SEW-JERSET. 
 
 l5 
 
 t 
 
 PXTBLISHED BT HEQTJEST OP THE SYNOD. 
 
 PUBLISHED IN THE NATIONAL PREACHER FOR DECEMBER, 
 
 BY W. H. BIDWELL, 5 BEEKMAN ST. 
 
 1862. 
 
»^. 
 
LIFE BY FAITH. 
 
 A SERMO:t^ 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE SYNOD OF NEW-JERSEY, 
 
 BY KEY. ALEXANDEE T. M'GILL, DD. 
 
 ' " The just shall live by his faith." — Habakkuk 2 : 4. 
 
 This was a favorite text with the most gifted and successful 
 preacher that Jesus Christ ever commissioned — Paul the Apostle. 
 Three of his comments upon it have been recognized as the word 
 of God itself, being recorded by the pen of his Spirit : one to the 
 Eomans, another to the Galatians, a third to the Hebrews. To 
 the Romans he preaches it, when the prospect of shame and per- 
 secution among them for the cross of Christ calls forth a declara- 
 tion of Christian courage: "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of 
 Christ ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one 
 that believeth ; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For 
 therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith ; 
 as it is written, the just shall live by faith." To the Galatians he 
 preaches it as part of his conclusive argument for the doctrine of 
 justification by faith : " But that no man is justified by the law in 
 the sight of God, it is evident ; for the just shall live by faith." 
 To the Hebrews he preaches it, when he exhorts them to patience 
 and continuance through a great fight of affiictions : " For yet a 
 little while, and he that shall come will come and will not tarry. 
 Now the just shall live by faith ; but if any man draw back", my 
 soul shall have no pleasure in him." Thus you see, how wide a 
 scope we are warranted to take with this text, by the example of 
 divine interpretation itself. 
 
 In the connection before us, the original place of its occurrence 
 
4 LIFE BY FAITH. 
 
 in Scripture, we discern a shade of meaning still different from 
 any instance of its quotation in the Bible ; and that is, in view of 
 approaching trials of an extraordinary kind, we should live m a 
 peculiar and eminent degree by the exercise of faith. A frightful 
 vision of national calamity, an impending invasion of the Chal- 
 deans, with all its desolating horrors, filled the imagination of the 
 prophet; and like every considerate and godly man, he is con- 
 cerned to know what are his own sins and his own responsibili- 
 ties; what may be his own duty, then and now, in the midst of 
 that trouble, and in the prospect of it: verse 1st: "I will stand 
 upon my watch, to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall 
 answer when I am reproved." In answer from the Lord, he is 
 directed, first, to make a faithful record for the benefit of others. 
 " Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may 
 run that readeth it." Next, to have patience with the develop- 
 ments of Providence concerning the trouble and the deliverance 
 — " though it tarry, wait for it, etc.," (verse 3.) Then it is declared 
 that humility is the only upright attitude of soul, in such circum- 
 stances ; and contrasted with the proud impatience which can not 
 wait for God, in his appointed time, is the meek reliance of the 
 just man — "but the just shall live by his faith." Faith, as the 
 Apostle Paul would gloss it, which embraces the true Messiah and 
 his righteousness, as the ark of safety through all extremities of 
 trial and danger — faith, which holds with invulnerable hand the 
 promises of Almighty Grod, that are all yea and amen in him — is 
 the secret of a just man's perseverance through all calamities, and 
 triumph over all catastrophes. 
 
 However diversified the uses of the text, there is always one 
 subject — life by faith : and all the varieties of its application may 
 be grouped with sufficient unity in this two-fold aspect of the sub- 
 ject: Life by faith in ordinary circumstances, and life by faith in 
 circumstances of extraordinary trial. 
 
 I. Ordinarily, the just man lives by faith. First. As it is the 
 first act of that new spiritual life, which the Holy Ghost produces 
 in the soul. It is that coming to Christ which the Scriptures 
 make anterior to every other gift or exercise of grace. Repent- 
 ance, in the widest acceptation, turning unto God, includes faith as 
 one essential element. But repentance, in the restricted sense, of 
 sorrow for sin, resolution, and amendment, follows the eye, the 
 
LIFE BY FAITH. D 
 
 step, the hand of faith. " Thej shall look on me whom they have 
 pierced, and mourn." The repentance which precedes true faith 
 is but legal, but the agitations of enmity in bonds, throes, and 
 convulsions, which, but for the preventing grace of God, would 
 naturally cry out, at length : " Torment me not, thou Son of David." 
 Grod is pleased with true repentance, as the whole tenor of his 
 word evinces. But " without faith it is impossible to please him." 
 Therefore, if either of these graces may be said to precede the 
 other in the order of nature, and the one is simply indispensable, 
 and the other instantly pleasing, the former is foremost in the 
 movement of renovated life. We persuade the sinner to repent- 
 ance by the word of God, as it contains the law and the Gospel ; 
 enlightening his darkness, alarming his fears, exciting his soul 
 with alternate threatening and promise, to adventure on the mercy 
 and truth of Jesus. But all this implies, of course, that he be- 
 lieves the word. And thus from many a point of view, it appears 
 that the first living act of a determination to be saved is that of 
 believing. 
 
 Second. "We live by faith, as it apprehends the plea by which the 
 condemnation of death is set aside, or as it is a justifying instru- 
 ment. We are said to live by that instrumentality which delivers 
 us and shields us from the operation of death. " If by one man's 
 offense death reigned by one, much more they which receive 
 abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness shall reign in 
 life by one Jesus Christ." The hand therefore which receives this 
 gift of righteousness that comes on us for justification unto life is 
 the implement by which a just man lives. And hence the best 
 'reason for his denoinination "just" — one whom God has justified 
 on account of the righteousness of Christ, imputed and made just 
 by the cleansing efiicacy of atoning blood, sprinkled on his con- 
 science by the Holy Ghost, with that abundance of grace com- 
 municated, which is comprehended in the phrase "eternal life." 
 Along with the ground of justification, is all the grace of sanctifi- 
 cation received by the same hand of faith, in both of which we are 
 said to live by faith, and not upon it. This, in the economy of 
 spiritual life, would be absurd, as for the body, in natural life, to 
 be subsisted on the hand, instead of the aliment appropriated by 
 that member as an instrument. 
 
 Third. We live by faith, as it unites the soul in mystical union 
 
6 LIFE BY FAITH. 
 
 with the Head, in whom there is all the fullness of life — "Christ, 
 who is our life." The articulated member of a glorious body, the 
 engrafted branch of a living olive or vine, the cemented stone of a 
 building, fitly framed and well compacted — under many a simili- 
 tude of striking analogy, and yet inadequate expression, the just 
 man is identified with the Source of all life by the faith which ap- 
 prehends a justifiying righteousness. No matter where we place 
 the mystery of this incorporation as to the order of time, there is 
 conscious vitality and true manifestation only in the actual exer- 
 cise of faith. 
 
 Fourth. We live by faith, as it is in the range of its appropriation 
 the highest and best condition of life. It furnishes the soul with 
 all that makes life valuable and happy. The promises on which 
 it feeds are a continual feast. There is a substance given by it to 
 every thing we hope for. There is a realization in its credit as it 
 looks to the veracity, and faithfulness, and wisdom, and power of 
 God which makes any one, in any circumstances, that the world 
 would think no life at all, exclaim with the Apostle: "I am full 
 — I have all and abound." Life is never stagnant, never destitute, 
 when we have a future to live for. Even the days of our vanity 
 in youth are counted the happiest days of lifetime, because they 
 are both dependent and expectant; (depending, without corrosive 
 care, on a father's provision, and expecting a greater compass of 
 joy in the years of manly fruition. So, and much more, faith 
 makes life a perpetual youth of joyous recumbency on a Father's 
 care of us and plans for us, and buoyant forecast of " an inherit- 
 ance incorruptible, undefiled, which passeth not away, reserved in 
 heaven for us." 
 
 Fifth. We live by faith, as it is a principle essentially indicative 
 of life, active, operative, and fruitful. It works. "Faith, without 
 works, is dead." Apprehending for its own, such a robe as the 
 imputed righteousness of Christ, it will ever appear " exalted" in 
 it, and adorned with it, " even as a bridegroom decketh himself with 
 ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with jewels," It must 
 combine in the tissue of its own life all the vitalities and activities 
 to which the Scriptures any where attribute our salvation. Some- 
 times this will be ascribed to benevolence: "Come ye blessed of 
 my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you, for I was an 
 hungered and ye gave me, etc." Sometimes to hope : " We are 
 
LIFE BY FAITH. 7 
 
 saved by hope." And sometimes to believing : "He that believeth 
 shall be saved." Now, to which of these three does our salvation 
 really belong — love, or hope, or faith ? It is evident, not to one 
 of them alone, but to all of them together. Faith is first, indeed, 
 but it is the train which fills the temple ■ — the fruits of the Spirit 
 in blended beauty, which make us " all glorious within, and ac- 
 cepted in the Beloved." We must ever try ourselves by this 
 touchstone of genuine life. There is far less danger in that one- 
 sided piety, which works for salvation with fear and trembling, 
 than that other one-sided piety which would believe it out, with 
 barrenness of speculation in the soul ; attempting eternal life at 
 our ease, by the magic of resorting with sound but heartless 
 thought to the grace of a living Saviour. How many perish be- 
 hind the batteries they build, to level human merit in the dust ! 
 How many, on the credit of their faith, indulge once more in sin 
 — a little one — extenuated by every circumstance, and atoned for 
 at any rate by the secret salvo, that they have a ready recourse at 
 any time to the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanseth from all 
 sin, thus magnifying the virtue of his cross, and the riches of his 
 grace, only to make the precious fountain of the Saviour's blood a 
 laver of convenience for the filthy washing of lust and sloth ! 
 Show us your faith by your works, or you are dead and perishing. 
 
 II. Such being the constitution and economy of a just man's 
 faith in ordinary circumstances, let us now see how it survives in 
 circumstances of extraordinary trial. 
 
 First. The first of these to be considered is, that which oppressed 
 the mind of the prophet, when this text was uttered — calamity; 
 • that which exceeds the bounds of ordinary affliction. The word 
 of the Lord, by the mouth of Ezekiel, defines it as " a sword — a 
 sword sharpened and also furbished ; it is sharpened to make a 
 sore slaughter, it is furbished that it may glitter ; terrors by rea- 
 son of the sword shall be upon my people ; smite, therefore, upon 
 thy thigh. Because it is a trial, and what if the sword contemn 
 even the rod ?" — the rod being the emblem of ordinary affliction. 
 It is a time when the righteous and the wicked are involved in a 
 common tribulation ; when the scourge slayeth suddenly, and He 
 who dispenses all events will " laugh at the trial of the innocent" 
 — rejoicing in the power of his own arm to chastise a sinful nation. 
 
8 LIFE BY FAITH. 
 
 and the faith of his own followers to outlast the sorest vials of his 
 fury. 
 
 War and famine, pestilence and earthquake, early conspired to 
 impeach the objective faith of Christianity, and occasioned, on the 
 part of its defenses, the best achievements of literature among 
 the Fathers. But the refutation of pagan infidelity has never 
 sufficed to deliver the grace of faith from all confusion and per- 
 plexity, when God arises to " shake terribly the earth, and bathe 
 his sword in heaven." It is still hard to explain why one event 
 happeneth to all, when a particular providence has in charge the 
 safety of God's own children ; harder to explain why the increase 
 of his seed, as pillars of the land and salt of the earth, does not 
 preserve its foundations from being destroyed ; and, upon the 
 other hand, why the ship of the commonweal is actually driven 
 with the tempest, and dashed by the billows, for the sake of 
 Christians themselves, that, like Jonah, may be asleep in their 
 unfaithful departure from God. 
 
 And there was never, since the world began, a problem for our 
 faith to solve, so hard as that which tries American believers at 
 this time. We trusted that this model and mighty republic had 
 been it, which should have redeemed»,the world from the curse of 
 despotic rule, and the turbulence of incessant revolution. We 
 trusted that a mission of millennial glory had been the reserve for 
 which the bright evangelization of this continent was long prepar- 
 ing, and that the tie of the nation's heart with British nationality, in 
 its aims of enlightened faith and freedom for the whole race, which 
 had just been restored, was the very league that God's anointed 
 would ordain to guarantee the world's salvation. But, alas ! how 
 suddenly and horridly has all this hope and trust been dashed to 
 pieces 1 The most peaceful realm beneath the sun has become al- 
 ready the most bloody battle-ground on the face of the earth. 
 And Edomitisli envy, aristocracy, and greed, all at once forget the 
 league they courted, and cry out against the hated republic : " Eaze 
 it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof." Hostile camps, which 
 frown defiance at each other with sucli a bitter hate, that scarcely 
 a sentinel can live between them, are hostile prayer-meetings also ; 
 and the Lord of Hosts himself is held by a wrestling faith, which 
 seems strong enough on each side to remove mountains. Faith 
 
LIFE BY FAITH. 9 
 
 against faith fights, as if even Christ were divided, and the ele- 
 ments of this fratricidal strife would go up to mingle in the censer 
 which burns in the most holy place of the highest heavens. 
 
 How can faith live through this deadly duel? How escape the 
 ruin of a house divided against itself? Or persevere, when all the 
 promises on which it lives and feeds are made themselves a com- 
 mon object of rapine and plunder ? 
 
 Hard as the problem may be to reason, there is no great diffi- 
 culty to the exercise of faith ; it never claims that prayer must be 
 answered in the very form, and at the very time, the anguish of 
 the heart may dictate, and feels that prayer is well requited, when 
 faith alone is strengthened, and some other boon of visible or in- 
 visible mercy is given, as much better for our best welfare, as 
 God's wisdom is greater than ours. Blind and bewildered as we 
 are, in all the calculations of sense, there is chart enough in the 
 volume of inspired and uninspired history, to guide us in believ- 
 ing. " Shall I go up again to battle against the children of Ben- 
 jamin my brother?" said the weeping multitude of the children 
 of Israel, when they asked counsel of the Lord, after having lost 
 twenty-two thousand men before the gates of Gibeah, notwith- 
 standing all their own overwhelming advantages. " And the 
 Lord said, Go up against him." Faith obeyed ; and was again de- 
 feated, with the loss of eighteen thousand men, who all drew the 
 sword. Again they came to the oracle of God, with weeping and 
 fasting, burnt offering and peace offering, and said : " Shall I yet 
 go out to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother, or 
 shall I cease ?" " And the Lord said. Go up, for to-morrow I will 
 deliver them into thy hand." 
 
 Such was the agony of faith in that great civil war, which deso- 
 lated the Hebrew commonwealth in the morning of its greatness. 
 Such the piety and persistency of its life, until a peace was con- 
 quered by the extermination, almost, of one tribe in Israel : yet 
 the beauties of Old Testament religion follow that war with a 
 brighter effulgence than ever ; as the spirit of inspiration has^iven 
 its pages to our faith. We have Euth, and Samuel, and David, in 
 quick succession, we have the magnanimity of all the tribes, effac- 
 ing the rancor of Benjamin, by taking the first of their kings from 
 this diminished tribe ; and excepting the sin of asking for a king at 
 all, we have all the lustre of that theocratic empire in the sequel ; 
 
10 LIFE BY FAITH. 
 
 its consolidation, its renown, its greatest benefit and blessing to 
 the nations of the earth. 
 
 History hardly affords us another parallel so near to our condi- 
 tion ; unless it was when the Puritans under Cromwell, and the 
 Presbyterians of Scotland were marshaled against each other, and 
 each camp was like a Bethel, for praying and preaching. Terrible 
 tribulation followed that quarrel, at the restoration of Charles the 
 Second, which it speedily accomplished ; and both parties were pun- 
 ished, until the whole theater of their unnatural and unseemly 
 feud became a threshing-floor, on which almighty wrath seemed 
 intent on crushing liberty, religion, and morals in a common de- 
 struction. But at length " an handful of corn," thrust out in the 
 extremities of persecuting violence, and trampled in the ground by 
 Claverhouse and his dragoons, came up to " shake like Lebanon," 
 giving to Great Britain the principles of her best revolution, and 
 to America the seed of ours, and to the world a rich inheritance ot 
 regulated freedom. 
 
 As a believer in Christ, I can not despair of my country. I can 
 not see why we should be slow of heart to believe that this baleful 
 distress which fills us with so much grief and dismay, is only an- 
 other agony upon the threshing-floor, in which pestilent theories of 
 civil government shall be crushed out forever, and pestilent evils 
 of social and domestic life shall be uprooted safely, or girdled till 
 they die ; and a new growth, of deeper root, and loftier hight, and 
 wider shade, shall be the future of our chastened life as a nation. 
 
 However this may be, faith has enough on hand, without a 
 moment for speculation, to engage the intense activity of this hea- 
 venly grace. Like Noah, when warned of God and moved with 
 fear, the just man will be employed in preparing an ark for the 
 saving of himself and his house. Instead of returning to the 
 world at each interval of relief and hope, with eager and animated 
 chase of its gains or its honors, he will by all means make sure of 
 the " covenant," and hide himself only there, and take his children 
 there, and see that it is repaired and finished as God has directed. 
 To tfiis ark he will gather all the institutions of God, which are 
 the only hope of our land. He will no more allow the cause of 
 Missions at home or abroad, the cause of Education, or that of a 
 sanctifying Literature to perish, or be imperiled in this " over- 
 flowing scourge," than Noah would have left one or all of his sons to 
 
LIFE BY FAITH. 11 
 
 perish with the world of the ungodly. He will search out his own 
 sins, and those of his house, and those of his church, that more 
 than any others, endanger the nation in which she is enabosoined ; 
 and provoke the Mediator in his kingdom, to join his eyes of fire, 
 with the ministers of destroying providence, to scourge the Church 
 and the world together. Lukewarmness, the loathsome sin of 
 Laodicea; contentment with outward order and immunity from 
 scandal, the sin of Sardis; want of love among ourselves, and love 
 of the world, strong enough to efface the distinction of God's own 
 people, and to invade even the pulpit with its maxims an4 policy — 
 these the man of faith will mortify, as the tempest of judgment 
 approaches. 
 
 Second. Another trial is that of reproach for the faithful mainten- 
 ance of truth and holiness. This is one, however, which is ordi- 
 nary, instead of extraordinary, just as often as the spirit of heroic 
 consecration dares to rise above the level of an average conform- 
 ity, or pass beyond the circle of common expedients, in aggression 
 upon darkness and sin ; or stand like " a brazen wall" and " a de- 
 fensed city," against the rage of prejudice and passion in times of 
 excitement. Times like the present are full of peril to any form 
 of uncompromising Christianity. Uuregenerated nature, always, 
 when stirred to its lowest depths by the pressure of public woe, 
 rages against the barriers of a pure faith ; in proportion as it stands 
 up to witness for God, when his hand is stretched out, in contro- 
 versy with men. And we, of" this sect which is everywhere spo- 
 ken against," may look for obloquy to come in the tumults of pub- 
 lic disorder — for the bigot and the latitudinarian, the skeptic and 
 the fanatic, the voluptuary and the demagogue, to say to each 
 other, " a confederacy" — as often as the standard of this camp 
 goes forward among the tribes of Israel. 
 
 Faith, in such a trial as this, probably the hardest of all, to the 
 fortitude of its heavenly temper, will seek above all things to ex- 
 perience the power, sweetness, and consolation of every thing in 
 our profession, for which we are denounced or derided ; will wake 
 into life and beauty every hated feature of our testimony, and 
 without plan or apology, concealment or accommodation, fix an 
 eye on the authority of Jesus, and his example ; " who for the joy 
 that was set before him endured the cross and despised the shame." 
 We have seen already, how it was to the Hebrews, when they were 
 
12 LIFE BY FAITH. 
 
 '' a gazing-stock, both by reproaches and afflictions," that the great 
 Apostle administered the text, where he tells them, they "have 
 need of patience," and exhorts them : " Cast not away therefore 
 your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward." (He- 
 brew 10.) 
 
 Third. Another trial is the return of infidelity — extraordinary, in 
 that no completeness of defeat can prevent its returning invasion. 
 It is the only thing under heaven that never dies out, beneath the 
 light of demonstration against it — even boasting itself as "the 
 ISTemesis of faith ;" and being born of night, will indeed ever seek to 
 reverse the day with its shadow ; even when " the light of the moon 
 shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be 
 sevenfold as the light of seven days." It is sure to watch its op- 
 portunity, in times of public disorder, when religion fails to sub- 
 due the passions of men, and providence appears to disappoint the 
 faith of the just; in order to unsettle hope and confidence in God, 
 because his ways are not our ways. It exchanges persecution, and 
 ridicule, and learned seclusion, and rhetorical flourish, and philo- 
 sophical doubt, forms which have all in turn been exhausted; and 
 now becomes Tractarian to the masses, courting the enthusiasm of 
 ignorance, as it streams through the- workshops, the camps, and 
 the trains of foreign immigration. 
 
 We may have to meet it in terrific forms — true as it is to noth- 
 ing, but the venom with which it began the assault on " this Gali- 
 lean." We must meet it in these new forms of activity and ag- 
 gression. Faith, in this trial, goes on with her march of intellect, 
 her work of education, lifting higher its standard, and keeping her 
 sons in the van of all human learning, and at the same time, with 
 equal concern, she will repair that old redoubt of bluff and simple 
 piety, from which the most unlettered of men may exclaim, " One 
 thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see" — and the most 
 learned repeat, "Let God be true and every man a liar." Child- 
 like faith is a giant, more than a giant; it has a sling and a stone, 
 before which every giant must fall, to be dispatched by his own 
 sword. 
 
 Fourth. Another trial is apostasy — extraordinary, because it has 
 been ordinary so long and so immovably. Like infidelity, it is 
 always on the alert, in times of confusion and trouble, when the 
 foundations of the earth are out of course ; the sort of times in 
 
LIFE BY FAITH. 13 
 
 which it began to erect that vast incorporation, which for many 
 centuries has been making merchandise of the souls of men. Clos- 
 eted with civil power in the councils of the nation, and speeding 
 on public errands, as if it were the soul of patriotism itself. Popery 
 is the same political religion it has always been, and in nothing so 
 unchangeable as its ambition to bestride the state. It has always 
 clambered up on the existing temporal power, no matter on what 
 side of the question ; the first to chant a Te Deum in Charleston 
 when Fort Sumter fell, and the first to rally the masses of New- 
 York to avenge that fall. " Popery is dead at heart and living at 
 the extremities," says a great writer of this age. It is living in 
 these extremities, with power and policy of sufficient portent to 
 make us keep in mind the martyr declaration of Bishop Latimer, 
 whose blood was spattered on its fangs : " Once I thought that 
 Popery would never return into England ; but now I find, it was 
 not faith, but fancy." 
 
 Faith sees in the promises of God, a determinate time, when this 
 great Babylon will sink, as a mighty millstone in the sea ; and, 
 without the help of curious computations on the one hand, or po- 
 litical combinations on the other, " waits for it" — never discour- 
 aged, that it tarries so long; and never secure and relaxed when 
 this "Man of Sin" appears to droop, as if destined to perish in a 
 gradual decrepitude. Rather, the just man's faith will wait for 
 the overthrow of this great apostasy, from the hight of that pros- 
 perity which sits a queen, and "glorifies herself and lives deli- 
 ciously" — with instantaneous and astounding interposition of Al- 
 mighty God — " her plagues shall come upon her in one day — for 
 strong is the Lord God thatjudgeth her" Till then, the faith 
 which lives, in the exercise of vigilance that never sleeps, and 
 eSbrts that never slacken, will cry out in sympathy with " souls 
 beneath the altar" on high — "0 Lord ! how long?" 
 
 Such is an imperfect view of true faith, in its habits of ordinary 
 exercise, and in situations of critical and extraordinary trial. How 
 admirable its constitution ! How rich its resources, what consola- 
 tory evidence does it afford us, that this life of faith is an imper- 
 ishable principle ; and that there is in any fainting extremity of its 
 nature, a quenchless vitality, which may be called on to revive 
 and "strengthen the things that remain and are ready to die." It 
 is first in order ; every other grace in the soul implies the prece- 
 
14: LIFE BY FAITH. 
 
 dence of this faith, and must be lost — hope herself must give up 
 the sure and steadfast anchor, before this inner and ultimate life of 
 faith can be destroyed. It is justifying; and stands in the pres- 
 ence of God on the ground of a satisfaction, so infinite in value, as 
 to guarantee the protection of that very justice which was arrayed 
 against us. Justice herself expires, before the just man's faith will 
 die. It is uniting ; and lives in mystical incorporation with Christ 
 himself, in the fullness of him who is "alive for evermore and hath 
 the keys of hell and death." Sooner maty the keys be stolen and 
 pulsation cease from the hand which holds them, than the vital 
 cord between that glorious Head and the meanest member, to 
 whom he gives eternal life, can be dissevered. It is realizing; and 
 so diffuses light and breath to all other sensibilities of human life, 
 that a visible existence will go out, before a soul of life like this 
 expires. It is fruitful ; and " herein is my Father glorified that ye 
 bear much fruit." Sooner than a fruitful faith will die, God would 
 relinquish his glory. All its ordinary properties prove, it is death- 
 less — that the just man lives by faith, and lives forever. 
 
 And amidst calamities the most dreadful, it rides above the 
 waves in an ark of safety. Amidst reproach and scorn the most 
 bitter, it realizes the honor which C4»meth from God, and despises 
 the shame which cometh from man. Amidst infidelity the most 
 virulent, and apostasy the most signal and sear, it overcomes by 
 the blood of the Lamb and the testimony it holds. All these ex- 
 treme hostilities it smiles at with defiance ; and when flesh and 
 heart would faint and fail, finds in God the strength of our hearts 
 and a portion forever. 
 
 Have you such a faith, my brethren ? Not in conscious com- 
 petency now, for every form of diversified trial and firm endur- 
 ance — for as your day is, your strength shall be — but in that 
 "spirit of your minds," which takes you always and immediately 
 to Jesus ? It is time, surely, to know what manner of spirit we 
 are of — when the judgments of God are abroad over all this broad 
 land. Already it is a Bochim. And God only knows how soon 
 every house may be mourning a first-born, and more than a first- 
 born. The end may be worse than the beginning. Famine, pes- 
 tilence, anarchy, may tread upon the heels of war. "Wicked am- 
 bition and vile corruption, at the North, may bring upon us fiery 
 trials, in the very triumph which crushes out a wicked rebellion 
 
LIFE BY FAITH. 15 
 
 and a vile Confederacy at the South. And if none of these things 
 be coming, death is at hand ; the Judge is at the door ; unchangea- 
 ble eternity is near. Oh ! let us see to it, that we now live and 
 stand fast in the Lord ; so that over us the second death shall have 
 no power. " Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he Com- 
 eth shall find so doing." 
 
 Perishing sinners, will not you beg that it may be given you, 
 on the behalf of Christ, to believe on his name ? Without another 
 moment's delay, will you not plead that God would fulfill in you 
 " the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with 
 power " ? "He that believeth not, shall be damned." " He that 
 believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life ; and he that believeth 
 not the Son, shall not see life ; but the wrath of God abideth on 
 him." 
 
ICI