pensation of Christ himself, and with the efficacy and glory which attended it. It was as if God would show that no legal, no sacrificial, no typical, no ritual dispensation can suffice. He had already shown, before he rejected the world and separated his people visibly from it, that no long-suffering would move it to serve him; and now he would show, that even those consecrated to himself must have that which is more effectual than laws, and sacrifices, and rites, and types, in order to their due service and adequate. enjoyment of him. However long the delay may be, the Son of God must come in the flesh. It had been seen from eternity that there was no other remedy; and everything else was in order to this. 6. At length the Saviour came. Emptying himself of his glory, made of a woman, made under the law-he who, being in the form of God, thought it no robbery to be equal with Godbeing found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.' He gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. For himself, he was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God; for which the two reasons assigned are, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. But his Kingdom, neither limited by the call of Abraham, nor by the institutions of Moses, both of which had been only stages of its development; was to embrace, henceforth, those who loved him, whether Jews or Greeks, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free.' And so he expressly directed, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem: the very mission of his Apostles being, to teach and to baptize all nations. Thus he said directly to Peter, that he gave unto him the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and that whatsoever he should bind on earth should be bound in heaven, and whatsoever he loosed on earth should be loosed in heaven; and he said as expressly to all his Apostles, whatever ye bind or loose on earth, shall be bound or loosed in heaven. And there is recorded in detail, the opening of the Kingdom so long closed to. all except the descendants of Abraham, by the hands of Peter, in the case of the Gentile Cornelius:' concerning which matter, we have Peter's own repeated assurance, that he acted by the express call of God; and concerning the grand truth then realized, we have the general judgment of the Apostles and Elders. Touching the general power to bind and loose, vested in the Apostles-the power to take down all that was temporary in the ancient institutions-to transfer all that was permanent, even from the creation of man, into the new dispensation—and to erect that form of the Kingdom which we have in the Gospel Church State; it is one chief design of one entire Book of the Scriptures (the Acts of the Apostles) to teach us what was done, and in what manner and throughout all the subsequent portions of the New Testament, this is one of the great matters in which the will of God is continually revealed to us. Amongst the last acts of Christ before his crucifixion, was the institution of that sacrament which commemorates his sacrifice in our stead: and amongst his last commands after his resurrection, was that in all nations all his disciples should receive that other sacrament of Baptism, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. That the Kingdom erected in this form, was to be a visible Kingdom, not of this world but wholly separate from itthat the glorified Redeemer was the only Head, King, and Lord of it-that membership in this Kingdom depended on union and communion with the Head and Redeemer of the Kingdom-and that all the members of it are members one of another, by virtue of their being all members of Christ: these are the common and constant doctrines of the Scriptures, which it is needless to prove again in this place. The whole work of Christ discloses, everywhere, the ideas I have been stating. The world so far from receiving him, crucified him. His own knew and accepted him. And what events attended and followed this new and glorious development of God's purpose concerning his Church! What is the silent rejection of the nations in the gift of circumcision to Abraham, or the fearful catastrophe of Egypt at the institution of the Passover, or the slaughter of many nations which signal 2 Acts, xi. 1-18; xv. 7. 3 1 Acts, x. passim. 5 Matt., xxviii. 19; Mark, xvi. 15, 16. ized the establishment of the Jewish dispensation; what are such things, to the crucifixion of the Son of God, and to all that followed it of mercy and of wrath-and to all of both, that is yet to come! 7. It is this Gospel Church which we now behold, with its Sabbath, its Sacraments, its divine Scriptures, its pure faith, its spiritual worship, its holy life, its Elders, its Teachers, its Congregations, its assemblies, its divine Lord! Upon us, after so many centuries, has come this dispensation of the Kingdom of God with power, which succeeded the Ascension of the Lord. The followers of Jesus are gathered out of all nations. The promised Comforter abides with us.' The last days still continue; the last manifestation, and the most complete, of God's grace in saving sinners. And they shall all continue until he whose right it is, shall come and shall take the Kingdom. And while they continue, whosoever will call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved. Here, as in each preceding case, it is a new development of the same Kingdom, as distinct from all that went before, as they were from each other; and here, as always before, the same fundamental characteristics are not only preserved, but are more and more distinct. Assuredly it is more obvious now, than it could have been under any former dispensation, that it is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ; that this Church is not coincident with the world, but is taken out of it; that each successive dispensation as it gives new grace, new duties, and new powers, at the same time makes the Church more distinctly separate, and consecrates it more completely to Christ. Nor does the history of mankind since the establishment of the Gospel Church, permit us to doubt, that the steadfast power with which the providence of God conducts all things, has made the career of his Church the most distinct element in the career of man, and has made the destiny of all things dependent on hers. In the fate of Egypt, in the fate of the nations cut off by Israel, and in the fate of apostate Israel herself, all men may read the fate of all the nations that forget God, and of every power that exalts itself against Christ. 8. We need not be in doubt concerning that sublime future of the Church of God, which is hastening upon us for which 1 John, xiv. 16, 26; xv. 26; xvi. 7. 2 Joel, ii. 28-32; Zech., xii. 9-12; Acts, ii. 16-21. the world is so little prepared, and of which it takes so little thought. It will come in its appointed time-it will not tarry. The whole analogy of all the past dealings of God, and the constant declarations of his word, teach us sufficiently that while the great principles which underlie the whole scheme of his grace and providence, will be preserved in all their fulness, and applied with increased distinctness and force; it might and since he has said so it will be under new and still more glorious forms, that these sublime principles will be exhibited and applied. They who sit calmly and silently by, listening to that wonderful discourse in which Jehovah disclosed to Abraham the nature and extent of his covenant with him, and sealed all his promises with the sacrament of circumcision: must needs make an almost infinite progression, before they can hear and realize those loud hallelujahs, which will fill the universe, when the Kingdom is delivered up on the Lamb's Book of Life. Still it is the very same Kingdom; and the grand principles which distinguished its feeblest beginnings, are the same which will be illustrated in its supreme consummation, and its eternal glory. Forevermore it will be Christ, and his saints, and a Kingdom composed of them. 9. What I have attempted is, to appreciate the fundamental idea of the Church of the living God, and to that end to disclose its elemental principles, and then to trace in an unbroken course, the divine procedure whereby these principles have yielded to us, the Gospel Church as it this day stands before us. The people of God, considered in their union with Christ, and in their communion with each other through their mutual communion with him, on one side; and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of God's Elect, the only Head, Lawgiver, and King in Zion, on the other; these are the two terms upon which the great problem rests. Between them are the will, and power, and providence of God, developing these two elements through a long course of ages, and a succession of dispensations; and the result is the Gospel Church State, a distinct, divine institute. Of this, Messiah is the Prince, and all his brethren, brethren to each other, are the memLers. Separate from the world, its mission is the reconquest of the world. Its end is the illustration of the perfections of God, to his own infinite glory, in the everlasting blessedness of the redeemed. CHAPTER XX. THE NATURE AND END OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD: WITH THE MEANS OF ESTIMATING BOTH. I. 1. The Perpetuity of the fundamental Ordinances of the Church of God.-2. Historical Means of appreciating the Nature and End of the Kingdom of Christ.—3. Practical Means.-4. Prophetical Means.-5. Ethical Means.-II. 1. The Church of Christ is a Kingdom whose Nature is exclusively Spiritual.-2. The peculiar Form of that Spirituality: Sinners saved by Grace.-3. It is an Everlasting Kingdom.-4. It is to be a Universal Kingdom.-5. Witness Bearing for Christ, the special Mission of the Gospel Church.-6. The immediate Object of this is, the Extension and Perfection of the Kingdom itself.-7. Infinite Freedom and Fitness of the Gospel Offer.-8. The Form and Action of the Church in extending and perfecting itself, illustrates its own Nature and End, as well as the Nature of God's Being and Grace.-9. The obligatory Force of the divine Organization of the Church thus developed: Its Relation to Faith and to Morals.-10. Resources of the Church in perfecting and extending herself: These are Marks of her Nature and End.-11. The Position of false Professors and Sects, with reference to the Visible Church.-12. The Relation of the Infant Seed of Believers to the Visible Church. I. 1. I HAVE shown that the entire organization of the Church of God is produced from within outwardly, and has been obtained under the successive and special ordinations of God, by the direction which he gave, from time to time, to the elemental principles which constituted his own idea of his Kingdom. I have also pointed out more incidentally how the Church, under each successive form of it, casting off whatever was peculiar only to the preceding dispensation, has preserved through all dispensations every outward mark responsive to its own absolute nature, which was ever bestowed on it by God. The Sabbath ordained by God. at the creation, and ordained afresh as part of the Moral Law at Sinai, endures in its divine force. The worship of God by bloody sacrifices statedly practised from the fall of man, observed by all the patriarchs, erected into the form of a sacrament in the Passover, and thoroughly incorporated with the daily life of the Church under the Mosaic dispensation; so found its consummation in the |