sion of his law, the pollution and ruin of the soul, the deep-seated fountain and spring of all evil acts and habits. And this, again, implies guilt, and an exposure to eternal damnation. What instruction could reach this case? Light, however full, and teaching, however profound, could only aggravate the misery of such a state by the revelation of its dreadful importance; whilst the danger would be altogether untouched. But the atonement, connected with this light, entirely alters its character. The revelation of our own corrupt, miserable, guilty, and dangerous state then becomes of the nature of a mercy, because, instead of a perplexity and cause of irritation, it is seen, that, "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." (Eph. i. 7.) Moreover, the higher revelation of God, and his glorious dwelling-place in heaven, surrounded by blessed beings, the happy subjects of his eternal kingdom, when viewed in the light of the cross of our Lord, becomes attractive and joyful. His anger is propitiated, his wrath is turned aside, his throne is a throne of love; he is accessible, even here, to faith and prayer, and hereafter to the disembodied spirit in vision and glory. All other lessons of knowledge are vitally affected by this truth. Place the cross in the centre of the most glowing and exalted pictures of spiritual happiness, and they all become vivid realities; without it, painted baubles. "The blood of the covenant," placed by the side of the most difficult obligations and duties of holiness, makes the whole practicable and easy; whilst its absence from this branch of the truth renders it utterly ineffective. Let the "Lamb that was slain" be present in the darkest scenes of this world, and then the most burdensome crosses, afflictions, privations, and miseries—even to imprisonment and the martyr's grave-are possible, and may be made joyful. If the atonement is not every truth in one, yet it is essential to the value and vitality of every other doctrine.

4. This faith the Apostles sought to establish universally.

They bore the doctrine of the crucifixion into the temple, where Jesus had taught, and performed his miracles; into the hall where he had been arraigned and condemned; to Calvary, where he had died. They proclaimed the efficiency of his blood to wash away sin to the multitudes who had clamoured to shed it, taken pleasure in the agonies of the sufferer, and participated in the guilt of his murder; they preached it, as the means of peace and reconciliation, to the distracted and agitated authorities, the sceptical and divided nation then filling up the measure of its iniquities; and held out hope, through it, of continued mercy from God to his ancient people. But they did not stop at Jerusalem. They confronted the polished philosophers of Athens with the story of the crucifixion, and the doctrine of the resurrection; they entered into the voluptuous regions of Antioch, and turned the hopes and fears of the Christian doctrine

against the tide of sensual dissipation; they nobly met the Cæsars at the head of their martial hosts, with no other weapon in the unequal contest than the cross; they visited the imperial city itself, and planted this tree of life in the midst of its numerous, rich, powerful, but idolatrous population; they built the Christian altar by the side of the fanes of superstition, and challenged its priesthood and its devotees to the trial of the divinity and saving efficiency of the truth they taught; and, repudiating all human distinctions on religious questions, they proclaimed the same "blood of sprinkling" to the slaves of the lords of the world, and the barbarians of the provinces. They trusted not in the natural adaptation of this doctrine for effects;—and yet such adaptation exists;· but they relied on its Divinity. They had received their commission from God their Saviour: this was sufficient for them: it stood in the place of demonstration, as to the fitness of such a doctrine to save the world; and they knew that a commission which bore the sign-manual of the Godhead could neither be untrue nor ineffective.

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The effect was one. It brought all the believers in Christ to salvation. But although the grace was to all the same in character and privilege, and, in its purely spiritual effects, identical; yet the fruits were multitudinous and diversified. The lofty were brought low, and the poor exalted; "the wise in their own conceits were made foolish, and the ignorant and brutish were taught wisdom; the free in pleasure and sin were "placed under the law to Christ," and the enslaved to Satan were made free in the Lord; those who had imagined themselves near, the elect, the chosen seed, the children of Abraham, found themselves afar off, and those who were really so were "made nigh by the blood of Christ;" the selfrighteous, who considered themselves deified by innate virtues, saw their idols dethroned and expelled, and, becoming "poor in spirit, were made rich." In fine, wherever the doctrine of salvation by Jesus Christ was proclaimed in its own unadorned simplicity, there the true Christian faith sprang up in its evidences of divinity and power, irrespective of the nation, the prejudices, the moral state, and the superstition and ignorance of the people.

We linger about the cross: how should it be otherwise? Talk of primitive doctrine! this is primitive doctrine; the first in the order of time, as preached by the Apostles after they had received "power from on high,"-" the promised gift of the Father;" the first in importance in that "analogy of faith" which they so richly, fully, and perfectly taught; the first economically, as the instrument in all their labours to found the church and to convert the world.

The primitive Christians were believers in this grand truth; and their spiritual privileges and immortal hopes rested upon it. By its energizing force upon the mind, and, through that, upon society, all

that we witness in ancient times was wrought. Like a fire, it melted down in its progress all fond conceits, philosophical theories, mythological systems, superstitious worship, and unreal sacrifices; and then planted in their place the temple of God, adorned in all truth and holiness, into which the tribes and nations of the world eagerly pressed to do homage to the "Man of sorrows." Till unmeaning superstitions took the place of the true doctrine of the cross, it was omnipotent. It taught the guilty to find rest to their weary and afflicted spirits; in its mercy and merit, it established an open way of access to God on the one hand, and a medium through which he could display his grace and love on the other; it constituted a channel through which the effusions of the Holy Spirit might be poured forth upon the world; it exerted an ameliorating, softening, and healing influence on human society; it broke down, wherever received, the enmities and ferocities of man against man, by producing a new creation after the image of God; and, moreover, it founded a religious brotherhood amongst men, a new family of God, consisting of all races, kindreds, ranks, and colours. This is faith in the cross;

and these are some of its results.

Now the true subject of investigation at this point, is,

II. WHETHER IT HAS PLEased AlmighTY GOD TO MAKE OUR DOCTRINES AND ORDINANCES THE MEANS OF PRODUCING A LIVING FAITH, IN AGREEMENT WITH THAT OF PRIMITIVE TIMES.

It is scarcely necessary to remark here, that this has been regarded as a vital question from the beginning. Directly or indirectly, the whole principle and plan of Methodism, in its origin, progress, and standing, turns on the doctrine of faith. Not "the faith," as articles of religion merely; which view of the case has usually occupied the attention of controversialists in their debates as to whether they and others were true churches, or the contrary. This point has not been neglected. The truth has been regarded as essential, as the foundation of the church, and also as the only authorized means of the spread of religion. But, in union with the desire to secure the fundamental doctrines of Scripture, a main object, and indeed the chief and leading purpose of all that has been attempted, has been, the spread of a living and experimental faith, with its fruits and results. It has ever

been held as an axiom not to be controverted, that when the doctrines of Scripture are proclaimed, and acted upon, by a professedly Christian church, in their own legitimate spirit, they must be sanctioned by the blessing of God, accomplish the end for which they are given, and lead, as a consequence, to the spiritual life and salvation of all who believe. For the sake of distinctness, it may be remarked,

1. That Methodism was originated, and its distinctive characteristics were created, by the experimental adoption of this principle.

The leading features of this great religious movement, in the beginning, related to certain assigned effects of faith. It was a successful attempt to carry out, into living reality, the blessings which are found in the word of God to be connected with its descriptions of "the belief of the truth." The point from whence its operations began was the present, conscious, divinely attested, salvation of man by faith. This doctrine was the seed of the harvest which followed, the germinant power whence it grew, and has hitherto been the leaven of its increase and the means of its prosperity. Unlike most other revivals of religion, it had not its rise in an attempted reformation of existing creeds, or in the formation of ecclesiastical canons and church-orders, but in preaching the cross of Christ, and a vehement invitation to lost sinners to "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."

The case of the Founders of Methodism personally, is, in this point of view, deeply interesting.

It is known that the two Wesleys obtained evangelical faith about the same time, and under peculiar circumstances; moreover, that though their ministry did not originate in this change, or at this period, for they had received holy orders some time previously, and exercised their ministry most laboriously,-yet the spiritual work of God, of which they were the instruments, took its rise from this circumstance, and began with the personal faith and experimental enjoyments of these two eminent servants of God. No sooner had they attained justification and assurance, than they began to proclaim them abroad, as "upon the house-top," to all within the sphere of their influence. Learning, purity, zeal, self-denial, charity, and ministerial labours, of the most gigantic nature, distinguished these eminent men before; but, being destitute of these blessings, they had no power for usefulness, beyond a general impression and service rendered to an ecclesiastical system.

The elder of the brothers, and the leader of the work, has traced his own case in the most graphic and touching manner. On his return from America he says: "It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country, in order to teach the Indians the nature of Christianity. But what have I learned myself in the mean time? Why, (what I least of all expected,) that I who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God. 'I am not mad,' though I thus speak; but I speak the words of truth and soberness;' if haply some of those who still dream may awake, and see that as I am, so are they." "This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth,—that I am fallen short of the glory of God; that my 'whole heart is altogether corrupt and abominable;' and, consequently, my whole life; seeing it cannot be, that an ' evil tree' should bring forth good fruit;' that alienated' as I am from the

life of God,' I am a child of wrath,' an heir of hell; that my own works, my own sufferings, my own righteousness, are so far from reconciling me to an offended God, so far from making any atonement for the least of those sins which are more in number than the hairs of my head; that the most specious of them need an atonement themselves, or they cannot abide his righteous judgment; that 'having the sentence of death' in my heart, and having nothing in or of myself to plead, I have no hope, but that of being justified freely, 'through the redemption that is in Jesus' I have no hope, but that, if I seek, I shall find Christ, and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith?'

"If it be said, that I have faith, (for many such things have I heard, from many miserable comforters,) I answer, So have the devils, -a sort of faith; but still they are strangers to the covenant of promise. So the Apostles had even at Cana of Galilee, when Jesus first manifested forth his glory;' even then they, in a sort, believed on him but they had not then the faith that overcometh the world.' The faith I want is, 'a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the favour of God.' I want that faith which St. Paul recommends to all the world, especially in his Epistle to the Romans; that faith which enables every one that hath it to cry out, I live not; but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' I want that faith which none can have without knowing that he hath it; (though many imagine they have it, who have it not ;) for whosoever hath it, is freed from sin,' the whole destroyed' in him he is freed from fear, having through our Lord Jesus Christ, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.' And he is freed from doubt, having the love of God shed abroad in his heart, through the Holy Ghost which is given unto him;' which Spirit itself beareth witness with his spirit, that he is a child of God."

body of sin is peace with God

Speaking of his views and state at the time above referred to, he again remarks: "In my return to England, January, 1738, being in imminent danger of death, and very uneasy on that account, I was strongly convinced that the cause of that uneasiness was unbelief; and that the gaining a true, living faith, was the one thing needful' for me. But still I fixed not this faith on its right object: I meant only faith in God, not faith in or through Christ. Again: I knew not that I was wholly void of this faith; but only thought, I had not enough of it. So that when Peter Böhler, whom God prepared for me as soon as I came to London, affirmed of true faith in Christ, (which is but one,) that it had those two fruits inseparably attending