Psalmist, "What wait I for?"-For worldly honors ? They cannot fill the unbounded grasp of an immortal soul. For pleasures? They are unsatisfactory and fleeting. Thousands of dying voluptuaries have confessed their inability to produce happiness, and have bitterly lamented their own folly in pursuing them.— For riches? They are valuable only as applied to the responsible ends for which they were bestowed, but by no means tend to make a death-bed easy, or eternity more welcome. "What then wait I for? Surely my hope is in thee, O Lord." I wait not for any thing mutable or terrestrial. Wealth, and honors, and long life, will not satiate my desires. God shall be my portion forever. I shall be filled with all the fulness of God."

CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE.

FEW errors are more common, or more injurious, than the idea that our Saviour came upon earth to soften down the requisitions of the divine law. We do not perhaps avow the sentiment in plain terms, but does not our general spirit too often prove it to be a latent article of our belief?

The most ostentatious formalist will not assert that he has fully performed that unlimited obedience which God required of Adam before the fall. He sees indeed that the thing is impossible. He even readily acknowledges some trifling imperfections, some casual inadvertencies, some slight mental aberrations. He will not exactly affirm that a wrong thought never once glanced through his mind-that a useless or improper word never once passed his lips-that a selfish, or thoughtless, or otherwise imperfect action never once marked his conduct. He dares not say, that from his very infancy he has loved the Lord his God with "all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength," or that he has loved his neighbor exactly as himself. He trusts, however, that his heart is good, that he has no flagrant crime to answer for, and that his "sins, negligences, and ignorances," are all of so venial a kind as to be easily forgiven.

Without stopping to comment upon the various objectionable parts of this statement, especially the total ignorance which it implies of the nature and extent of the divine requisitions, were we to proceed to ask upon what he grounded his hopes of salvation, which, by his

own acknowledgment, could not be claimed upon the condition of unerring obedience, the answer would probably be," God is merciful: he does not expect men to be angels: he made us, and will allow something for our natural infirmities."

Still, however, this answer, to say no worse, is vague and unsatisfactory. Reasoning upon the principles of natural religion, it may be fairly assumed, that if by being angels is meant being perfect in holiness and obedience, God does expect man to be as holy as an angel, for he originally made him such, and never superinduced any thing to render him otherwise. If by our fall we became incapable of perfect obedience, it is our crime and our misfortune, but by no means our excuse. God made us "very good," and capable of performing all that he required. Our sins and infirmities are entirely self-derived.

The question then still recurs, and must be answered some other way. Natural religion being foiled in its attempts, modernized Christianity enters, and thoughtlessly professes to solve the difficulty. "We live under a lenient dispensation. The obedience and death of Christ have great weight; so that if our conduct be upon the whole moral and sincere, all is well. A few thoughtless amusements, a few venial faults, a few giddy follies of youth, will never be regarded by our Creator as unpardonable crimes."

Now, is it not the obvious tendency of this language to prove that God is too merciful to be just, too attentive to his benevolence to spend a thought upon his veracity? Not being able or even willing to reach the standard of his law, we strive to lower his law to our imperfect practice. But upon what principle of religion, either natural or revealed, do we make the attempt? Admitting that God is originally entitled to universal obedience, whence do we infer that he has relinquished his claim? Surely not from natural reason, and much less from scripture; for though the

Redeemer died to procure pardon for our awful violation of obedience, when by repentance and faith we turn unto him whom we have forsaken, he did not render obedience less a duty. So far indeed from it, he defined its nature, and added new motives and encouragements to its performance. Obedience to God is the original law of our creation. It is an obligation eternal and immutable. The excellency of Christianity consists, not in superseding its necessity, but in making it an object of desire and delight, at the same time that it reveals pardon by the vicarious obedience of Christ Jesus to those who by the decision of natural religion must have been otherwise reduced to despair.

The idea therefore that we who live since the advent of the Messiah are placed under a more accommodating law a law which is satisfied with a partial obedience is evidently derogatory to the unchangeable perfections of our Creator. The peremptory requisitions of God's law are unaltered and unalterable, and so that it is not by pleading our own imperfect obedience, however sincere, but the full and perfect obedience of our Surety, that we can scripturally hope for the blessings of salvation. If a partial obedience had been sufficient, Christ died in vain.

Extremes frequently approach, and it is evidently so in the case before us. The anti-legalist, in his exclusive zeal for doctrines, asserts that Christ entirely abolished the moral law as a rule of conduct: while the nominal Christian persuades himself that he came to soften down its requisitions; that is, abolished it in part. The first, it must be confessed, substitutes the "law of love" in the place of the moral code; but the system of the latter is wholly incongruous and disjointed. If Christ has in any measure lowered the obedience that was naturally due to God, so that a person whose works are allowedly imperfect may be saved by them, because they equal the usual standard of professed Christians, to what degree of absurdity

may not the doctrine be carried? If a mere thoughtless, giddy worlding may expect salvation by this remedial law, because perhaps he has not been guilty of flagrant acts of turpitude, we could not reasonably exclude another who was but one shade worse; and thus we might proceed in the scale of moral depravity, till there was not an individual in existence to whom salvation was not justly due.

It is owing to the frequent, though perhaps almost unconscious encouragement of this serious error, that the great doctrine of the atonement is not more distinctly acknowledged and acted upon by the majority of professed Christians. They think they shall surely arrive at heaven because Christ, they imagine, has rendered the conditions of obtaining it perfectly easy; -so easy indeed, that a baptized person may indulge the "lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," and yet be a Christian amidst all. Not considering the extent and immutability of the law, they perceive not the nature or value of the gospel. They cannot indeed, on account of their acknowledged imperfections, trust entirely to the inexorable 66 covenant of works" under which Adam was created; yet being unwilling to comply with the humbling "covenant of grace," which, while it promises free pardon upon our repentance and faith, makes a holy and obedient heart the indispensable criterion of our having been enabled to accept that covenant, they waver between the two, and endeavor to soften down the irreversible law of our creation by a few qualifying clauses wrested from the covenant of grace.

This conduct is, however, highly unchristian; for our Lord, so far from having come upon earth to render the divine law less strict, expressly pointed out its spiritual and universal nature, and applied it to the very "thoughts and intents of the heart." He did not emancipate us from our allegiance, though he proclaimed remission of sin and punishment to all who