he commanded his Gospel to be preached to the whole world, this was the declaration which was to be universally and in- variably made; " He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved ; and he that believeth not, shall be damned."]
To justify what is here said of faith, I proceed to shew,
II. Why it has this great pre-eminence above all other works —
In some respects, faith is inferior to other graces : as the Apostle says, " Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity6." There are, however, some points of view in which faith rises above every other grace, and may, in a pre-eminent degree, be called, " The work of God."
1. It is that for which Christ himself " was sent"
into the world —
[He was sent, no doubt, to redeem the world by his own most precious blood. He was sent " to die for us — He, the just, for us the unjust, that he might bring us to God." But, in executing this office, he was to become the one object of faith and hope to the whole world. He was lifted up upon the cross, precisely in the way that the brazen serpent was erected on the pole in the wilderness. The serpent was to convey healing to those only who looked to it as God's appointed instrument for that end : and the Lord Jesus must in like manner be looked to, in order to a participation of his bene- fits; as he says by the prophet, " Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth f." This our blessed Lord pointed out, with very extraordinary fulness, in his discourse with Nicodemus. He repeated it again, and again, and again: " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so shall the Son of man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son, that whoso- ever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. He that believeth on him is not condemned : but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed
in the name of the only-begotten Son of God He
that believeth on the Son hath life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life ; but the wrath of God abideth on himg." If we believe not on him,' we defeat, as far as respects
e 1 Cor. xiii. 3. f Isai. xlv. 22. s John Hi. 14—18, 30.