relation to God and Christ. To them it is solemnly dedicated in the laver of regeneration. It is part of the consecrated instrumentality which they condescend, in furtherance of their purposes, to employ. It is rightfully the member of Christ. which should be swayed as He lists and moved at his bidding. It is the temple of the Holy Ghost whereon God has set the mark of his consecration, separating it from all profane uses, and claiming it for his own especial service. Be warned, then, ye unclean livers, of the awful character which, when viewed in the light of truth, your sin assumes. In its essence it is the sin of desecration. It is an alienation of sacred instruments from the service of God, and an employment of them for profane and degrading uses in the service of the Flesh. It is the sin of that impious monarch who converted the golden and silver vessels of the sanctuary into wine-cups for his unhallowed revelry, the sin of those miscreants who plied their merchandise and pursued their unlawful gains in the very temple precinct. And ye know how such a sin moved the holy indignation even of Him who was Love; how with severe animadversion, aye and with severer stripes, He vindicated the honour of God's house of prayer. And ye know, too, that the sacred fabric which ye desecrate is not doomed to destruction or your annihilation, (in which case the memory of offence might be swept away in the crumbling wreck of a perishable mass of matter)—that it is destined to be raised in incorruption, and to abide for ever, a standing monument throughout the ages of eternity of its use in the ministry of God or of its degradation in the ministry of sensuality. We entreat you, on your knees, in your closet, the prospect before you of death and judgment, to ponder these things. Weigh ye your sin in the Balances of the Sanctuary, tremble, and repent! LECTURE IV. THE GENERAL RESURRECTION AFFIRMED BY SCRIPTURE, AND GROUNDED IN REASON. 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. IN describing that proceeding of Divine grace which, more than any other part of God's dealings with his creatures, might seem to partake of the nature of an arbitrary arrangement, St. Paul expressly states that God worketh" all things after the counsel of his own will* " (κατὰ τὴν βουλὴν τοῦ θελήματος αὑτοῦ.) Hooker has well remarked the peculiarity of the expression. A wide distinction is to be drawn between working "according to the will," and working "according to the counsel of the will." Were we informed a Eph. i. 11. See Appendix to Lecture IV. Note A.. that the procedures of Divine Grace were conducted simply after God's will, there might be room to imagine in them something of caprice. But the inspired statement that God "worketh all things after the counsel of his own will" precludes any such notion, if indeed, consistently with reason and reverence, such a notion could be formed. In all that God does there is a counsel. The movements of His will are regulated, not by caprice, but by some intrinsic reason deeply seated in the nature of things. It is one thing to assert, that at the root of all which God does there lies such a reason-quite another thing to maintain that the reason is always discernible by ourselves. In many cases the counsel upon which a particular arrangement is based may be totally unfathomable by the utmost reach of our created understandings. In other cases it may be in some measure discovered to us (but only partially and obscurely) by the help of analogies drawn from our own ways and our own thoughts. Of the latter kind is the counsel on which is based the arrangement of vicarious expiatory sacrifice. Something of the deep reasonableness of this arrangement we may discern by considering the requirements of justice among ourselves, and the compromise which, on any other plan, must have been made of certain |