[Be it so ; you are not to be saved by good works : but is there no other motive that you can find for the performance of them ? Do you feel no obligation to Him who sent his only- begotten Son into the world, that you might live through him? When you know that God has " ordained that you should walk in the daily exercise of good works," have you no desire to please him ? And when you know that this is the only path in which it is possible for you ever to arrive at your Father's house, will you wilfully turn aside from it? If gratitude will not constrain you, will you be insensible to fear? But further, it is by your works that men will judge of your principles : and, though they represent the doctrines of grace as leading to licentiousness, they will expect to see you more holy than others ; and if they are disappointed in this, they will cast the blame upon your principles, and upon the Gospel itself. Will you then put a stumbling-block in the way of others, and cause " the name of your God and Saviour to be blasphemed ? " No ; " you have not so learned Christ, if so be ye have heard him and been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus." See then that ye abound in every good word and work ; and " put to silence the ignorance of foolish men by well-doing."]
Eph. ii. 12, 18. Ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and ivithout God in the world : but noiv in Christ Jesus ye ivho sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
THERE is scarcely any thing which has a greater tendency to impress our minds with exalted views of the grace of God, than to compare the guilt and misery of an unconverted state, with the purity and happiness into which we are brought by the Gospel of Christ. As a shipwrecked person, viewing the tempest from a rock on which he has been cast, feels a solemn and grateful sense of the mercy vouchsafed unto him ; so surely must every one, who " looks unto the rock whence he has been hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence he has been digged," stand