THE

PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE.

JUNE, 1851.

Miscellaneous Articles.

THE SLEEPLESS DEATH.

A TRAGICAL punishment is said to have recently occurred in China. A man, found guilty of a grievous offence, was sentenced to be put to death by being deprived of sleep. Three persons were appointed to watch him, who relieved each other in their work of terror, and thus kept their victim awake. On the eighth day he piteously implored to be put to death, but his sleepless agony was continued until the eighteenth, when he expired.

This terrific incident illustrates some characteristics in the doom of the ungodly.

1. The punishment of the wicked is DEATH. The impenitent are now under condemnation, and are experiencing a part of the penalty of the violated law. "The wages of sin is death." "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." So that there is a death of the soul, feebly but fearfully symbolized by the corruption of that of the body. This is the fearful doom that must seize upon all who leave the world without pardon. It is threatened doom; it is doom that is in process of execution; and it is doom that can be fully accomplished by the avenging power of the Almighty Judge. The sins of men are against the Majesty of Heaven. They are rebellion against a glorious government, contention with everlasting righteousness, opposition to a holy God. Such sins must needs receive punishment. The punishment is the death penalty. Thou art doomed to die, oh offender against law and grace!

2. The punishment of the ungodly is SLEEPLESS death. "The smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever. And they have no rest day nor night." Suffering, with intervals, is comparatively endurable. Its intensity is an element less terrible than its VOL. I.-No. 6.

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eternity. The sinner will call upon the rocks and mountains to crush him from the everlasting wrath of the Lamb; but the body shall be raised incorruptible and powerful to suffer unending anguish. The eighteen days of the miserable, sleepless Pagan, prefigure eternity to the despisers of divine commandments. Unmitigated pain, immortal wo, sleepless death, is the reserved doom of all who live and die "without hope and without God." Alas, is this to be thy doom!

OF VENGEANCE.

3. The punishment of the ungodly is made wakeful by MINISTERS There will be present to the sinner executioners who forbid rest. What are the ministers of sleepless suffering to the agonized Chinese, compared to the executioners of wrath commissioned by divine authority? Conscience is a sentinel that goads to wakefulness the impenitent in hell. "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." The inward anguish of guilt shall eternally prevent slumber, and supply the soul with memories that bring unrest. The fire of God's inflictions adds its consuming vengeance, and blazes forth from without to meet the burning remorse that is within. Who can expect respite with agents of terror, such as these, compassing him about? What an immortality of perdition is in store for them that reject the Lord Jesus Christ! Their doom, besides one of mere punishment, is sleepless punishment, and punishment made sleepless both by natural and supernatural inflictions!

"Whoso is wise let him understand these things."

SALVATION BY GRACE.

SALVATION is by grace from beginning to end.

1. It is a matter of grace that there has been any provision made for the salvation of sinners, for God might justly have left our whole race to perish in their apostasy. This is clear from the very meaning of the terms. For since desert of punishment is included in the very idea of sin, to say that a man is a sinner is to say that he may in justice be punished; or that pardon is to him an undeserved favour. What is true of every sinner is of course true of all. It is therefore true of the whole human family, since all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It was then an act of grace to devise a plan of redemption for man, or to make any provision for the salvation of the guilty. This is a truth which is impressed on the whole surface of Scripture. From the beginning to the end of the word of God, and in every form of assertion and implication, we are taught that it was an unmerited favour that God should interpose to save apostate men. It is represented as a matter of wonder to angels, and to the redeemed themselves, that God should deliver those whom justice condemned to death; that he should

provide a ransom for sinners, and announce to a guilty world the possibility of pardon.

Plainly as this is revealed in the word of God, men not only forget it in its application to themselves, but they construct whole systems of theology, founded on the assumption that providing a way of salvation for sinners was an act of justice. As the fall of Adam has, beyond all controversy, entailed great evils on his race; as men are not only surrounded by temptation, but are frail and prone to sin, it is assumed that it would have been unjust in God to leave them in this condition without providing a way of escape.

In replying to this statement it may be freely admitted, that as. the purpose of redemption was connected with the purpose to admit the fall of man and the continuance of his race, we must not contemplate the permission of the fall, without taking the purpose of redemption into view. But this admission does not meet the difficulty; because the Scriptures clearly teach that on the hypothesis of the fall and the continuance of the race, the gift of Christ and the mission of the Holy Spirit are still acts of sovereign mercy. They are represented as the greatest possible displays of the grace and love of God. The Bible contemplates man as a fallen being; it addresses him as belonging to a race of sinners; it announces salvation to him as an undeserved favour, and it calls upon man to adore the love of God in sending his own Son to die for their redemption. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten. Son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have everlasting life." "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” This truth gives character to the whole economy under which we live. It is recognised and implied in the love of every Christian. He knows that salvation is to him a favour, and not to him only, but to all who are saved. To assume that the mission of Christ was an act of justice would require an entire modification of the Bible from beginning to end; it would require that every Christian's feelings should be the reverse of what they are; it would make silence in heaven. The redeemed could no longer ascribe glory, dominion and majesty to the Lamb, for having washed them in his blood, if his death were a mere act of justice. It must therefore be considered as a fixed point in Christian doctrine, that salvation is a matter of grace; that God was not bound to redeem apostate man; that the gift of his Son, the mission of his Holy Spirit, the institution of the Church, are all proofs of wonderful and infinite love.

2. If it be a matter of grace that salvation is provided for fallen man, the application of that salvation is also a matter of grace. If God was under no obligation to save any, he may surely determine whom he will save. When therefore it is said that salvation is of grace, it means that its application, no less than its provision, is an unmerited favour. God has from the beginning acted as a sovereign in this matter. He has sent the knowledge of salvation to

some nations, and has withheld it from others. For ages this knowledge was confined to one people. Since the advent, it has been extended to many. After having been enjoyed by one age and people, it has been withdrawn and given to another. In all this we can only say, "Even so Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight."

What is true of nations, is no less true of individuals. If it is a matter of grace that the Jews and not the Greeks, that Europe and not China, has received the knowledge of redemption, it is no less a matter of grace that Paul and not Judas, that you and not your neighbour, that one man and not another, is made a partaker of this salvation. This is a truth sustained by every kind of evidence of which it is susceptible. The right of God to make this discrimination is included in the admission that the gift of Christ is an act of love. If God is under no obligation to save any sinner, he is under none to save you. I have no right to complain, should he allow me to reap the full recompense of my sins, though he pardons others around me. Favours never can be claimed as matters of right. And we must either maintain that the death of Christ is no favour, or admit that its benefits may be dispensed when and where a sovereign God sees fit. He goes forth among the children of men, and says to one, Live! and he lives; to another he is silent, and he dies. Having forfeited our lives by transgression, we cannot but be at his mercy. "Salvation is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." Every passage in the Bible which speaks of regeneration, repentance, or faith, as the gift of God; every declaration that it is not for works of righteousness which we have done, but by his mercy he saveth us; every assertion that we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works; every time it is said that salvation is of grace, lest any man should boast; every thanksgiving of believers for their conversion, and every echo that has ever reached our world from the songs of the redeemed in heaven, express or imply the same great truth.

Though we are less competent to trace the dealings of God with individuals than with nations, yet as far as our own observation can extend, it confirms the doctrine that the application of salvation is a matter of grace. We every day see the careless arrested, and those who are afar off brought nigh, so suddenly, so unexpectedly to themselves and others, as to make it impossible to account for the change on any other ground than the sovereignty of divine grace.

If we appeal to the experience of the believer himself, we find there the intimations of the same truth. When he looks back upon his life, he finds that it has been ordered of God; that the place of his birth and education, the various and complicated circumstances which combined to influence his character and decide his destiny, were beyond his own control; that in many cases some apparently trivial circumstance has determined his whole subsequent career.

If he looks within his own breast he finds that the thoughts of God and eternity have come and gone, he knows not how, that sometimes the Bible would have to him a meaning and a power it never had before; that sermons, with nothing to distinguish them from other discourses, would rivet his attention and fasten on his conscience; he sees that he has been selected from a crowd of associates whom he wished to be like, restrained, excited and guided by an influence which he is sure was not from himself, so that he remains a wonder to himself, and a monument of the distinguishing mercy of God. His whole external and internal experience forces him to say from the heart, "By the grace of God I am what I am." In no one respect does the experience of all Christians so perfectly agree, as in the conviction that their conversion was not of themselves. This conviction is expressed in their confessions, their prayers and their praises, whatever may be their speculative opinions on the subject. "Not unto us, not unto us, O Lord, but unto thy name be all the praise."

3. If the providing a way of salvation at all, and if the application of that salvation to some and not to others be of grace, so also are the terms on which salvation is offered. That is, our justification is no less of grace than our regeneration. The gospel teaches us that all that is necessary for the justification of sinners has been already performed by Christ. He has fully satisfied the demand of the law, by his obedience and death. The ground of justification is therefore fully laid; nothing more need be done, or can be done, for his righteousness is perfect and infinite in value. If this is so, then we have nothing to do and are required to do nothing, as the ground of our pardon and reconciliation with God. This the Scriptures teach, when they say we are justified freely by his grace, we are justified without works, or that God justifies the ungodly. In these and similar passages they deny that any merit or excellence in the sinner is either in whole or in part the ground of his acceptance with God. And when they state affirmatively what that ground is, they say it is the death, the righteousness, the obedience. of Christ. Such are the declarations of Scripture; and the more any man is enlightened to know his own heart, and the spirituality of the law of God, the more distinctly does he see that it must be so. He sees that if any thing in the way of merit were required of him, it never could be rendered. He feels therefore that unless justification be perfectly free, at least as far as the meritorious ground of acceptance is concerned, he never can be justified.

But besides this, which is generally admitted at least in words, our justification is further of grace, inasmuch as there is no preparation necessary; nothing which the sinner has to do to authorize him to accept the offered righteousness. This is a point with regard to which there is almost always more or less misapprehension in the mind of the inquirer. He can understand that the ground of justification which, according to Scripture, can be nothing less than a perfect righteousness, must be sought out of himself, but