[Shew by your lives what the proper tendency and effect of grace is. We are told that " the grace of God which bringeth salvation, teaches us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live righteously, and soberly, and godly in this present world." Shew then, by all your dealings with men, what true righteousness is: shew, by your perfect self-government in all your tempers, dispositions, and habits, what true sobriety is: and shew, by the spirituality of your minds and the heavenliness of your lives, wherein true godli- ness consists. This will recommend the Gospel more effectually than all the encomiums that can be lavished upon it, and will operate more strongly to convince men of its excellence than all the arguments that can be urged. Let it be seen then, that whilst you magnify and extol the grace of God, you are the truest friends of good works ; for that, though you exclude them from your foundation, you display them in your super- structure, and, in fact, raise them higher, and of a nobler quality, than any other people in the universe.]
Rom. xi. 1 1, 12. / say then, Have they [the Jeios] stumbled that they should fall ? God forbid : but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Noiv if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness ?
" THE ways of God are in the great deep, and his footsteps are not known :" they are utterly inscrutable to us : " as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are His ways above our ways, and His thoughts above our thoughts." We cannot see the end of any one of his dispensations. Who could ever have con- ceived the designs of God in suffering Joseph to be sold into Egypt ? Yet did God intend by that dis- pensation to keep the whole Egyptian nation from perishing by famine, yea, and the very persons who sold him thither. No less mysterious are his dealings with the Jews : they are cast off: they are led captive of all nations : yet are they suffering for the good of all the people amongst whom they dwell ; and