to us, by the body of Christ ; yea, we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were heldf." And this effect is produced by the law itself; as he also tells us in the chapter preceding our text : " I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto Godg :" that is, the law so utterly con- demns me, that I can have no hope from it whatever, and am forced, whether I will or not, to renounce all dependence upon it, and to live no longer as one who hopes to earn life for himself, but as one who seeks only to honour and glorify his Redeemer. Hear the account which St. Paul gives of this matter in another epistle. Speaking to those who had believed in Christ, he says, " Ye are not come unto the Mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of the trumpet, and the voice of words ; which voice they that heard, entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more : but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and Church of the first- born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abelh." In a word, the moment we believe in Christ, " we are no longer under a schoolmaster," or, as it is elsewhere said, " we are no longer under the law, but under grace1."]
2. We are brought into possession of all spiritual and eternal blessings —
[" We are justified by faith k;" we are "justified freely from all things, from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses1:" Our " sins, whatever they may have been, are put as far from us as the east is from the westm :" " nor shall they ever more be remembered against usn." Nor is this all : we are brought into the very family of God, and " made the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus0." Nor are we children only, but children of full age, who are " no longer under tutors and governors," but already admitted to the most intimate communion with our God, and enjoying, as far as in this world we can enjoy, the inheritance prepared for usp.
And here we cannot but call your attention in a more especial manner to the means by which all these blessings are secured. It is again and again said, that they become ours
f Rom. vii. 1— G. S Gal. ii. 19. h Heb. xii. 18—24.
' Rom. vi. 14. k ver. 24. l Acts xiii. 39.
m Ps. ciii. 12. n Heb. viii. 12. and x. 17.
0 ver. 26. P Gal. iv. 1 — 7.