THE BIBLICAL REPOSITORY AND CLASSICAL REVIEW. THIRD SERIES, NO. XIV.-WHOLE NUMBER, LXVII. APRIL, 1848. ARTICLE I. INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. By Rev. ROBERT BAIRD, D. D., New York. Ir is Christianity alone which can give the noblest freedom. In the language of its glorious Author, this wonderful truth was uttered: "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 3 Christianity comes to man like an angel of mercy, bearing in her hands the double gift of pardon and holiness. She brings to him a full and complete atonement for his sins, and secures the renovation of his soul. It reveals a Savior who suffered and bled on the Cross for our transgressions, and a Holy Spirit to renew and purify our hearts. How wonderful, and yet how simple! How simple, and yet how philosophical is the plan of salvation which the Gospel contains! What could be better adapted to the wants of humanity? What could better commend itself to enlightened reason, when revealed, although its discovery far surpasses all human intelligence? "Repentance toward God, and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ," are the terms upon which salvation becomes ours. But what a repentance! Not only does it imply a confession of sins, but a heartfelt hatred and a sincere renunciation of them, together with a restoration of our affections to the ever-blessed God. And what a faith! Not simply an intellectual assent to the truth of the Gospel, but such a belief of it as "works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world." Such is the religion of the Gospel,-presenting to our acceptance a Divine Victim, on which our faith may lay her hand in THIRD SERIES, VOL. IV. No. 2. 1 confidence and peace; and bringing to our help a Divine Spirit, who can regenerate our hearts, enlighten our understandings, and make our wills to coincide with the will of the infinitely wise, beneficent, and holy Ruler of the universe. What a religion! How gloriously does it exhibit the character of the everblessed God, whom it sets forth as a just God, and yet a Savior! And how admirably adapted to man, securing to him both the pardon of his sins, and the restitution of the image of God to his heart-saving him from hell, and fitting him for heaven! Well, indeed, does the Gospel deserve to be called a glorious Gospel. Compared with Christianity, how inadequate to the wants of man appear all other religions which the world has ever seen; how vain and worthless even! But let us contemplate the influence of this blessed religion upon the character of the individual man: and here we scarcely know at what point to begin, or where to end. It 1. The Gospel, when it is truly received into the heart, annihilates the guilt which binds the sinner to that eternal punishment due to his transgressions, and announces to him that there is "no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." brings him into a state of favor with his Maker, and enables him to look with joy and confidence upon the face of his once offended Savior and Judge; it takes away the fear of hell, and fills the soul with the hope of heaven. O blessed liberation from the danger of being eternally lost! O blessed assurance of everlasting life! What but the Gospel can work such a transformation in the state and prospects of him who was before overwhelmed in condemnation! 2. The faith which saves, gives a blessed emancipation to "them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage." The fear of death! Next to the dread of the wrath of God, it is the most widely-spread and overwhelming of all the fears which mankind ever experience. Who has not trembled at the thought of death? Who has not shrunk from its cold embrace? What heart has not quailed before the mysterious gloom which hangs around the dying bed? Who has not dreaded to enter into the unseen and eternal world, of whose position, inhabitants, modes of existence, sources of joy or pain, we have no knowledge, and scarcely anything more than vague conceptions; for none, of all who have entered it, have returned to tell us anything about it. Ah, there is enough here to make the stoutest heart to fear, and cause the firmest knees to tremble, and smite one against another. But blessed be God, the glorious Gospel of His Son can overcome even this. Yea, it can not only overcome the dread of death, but it can make death itself the messenger, sent down by our Heavenly Father, to conduct the soul to the regions of everlasting blessedness. It can make those who |