of Christ's body, on account of the intimate union which subsists between them and him, everything happening to him is, in Scripture, said to have happened to them. Thus the Jews are said to be 'put to death in the body of Christ;' our 'old man' is said to be 'crucified with Christ.' We are further declared to have 'died together with Christ;' to be buried together with him by baptism;' to be dead with Christ from the elements of the world;' to be 'risen with Christ,' and even to be 'circumcised with Christ;' on which account believers of all nations are called the circumcision. These, and similar expressions, St. Paul seems to have taken great delight in, because they make us sensible that Christ became man, was circumcised, crucified, and buried, and rose again to deliver us from punishment, and to procure for us a blessed resurrection to immortality. More especially as Christ suffered, we are said to have been actually put to death in him.” *

"Though I be crucified with Christ," says the Apostle, "nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." St. Paul here signifies, that although in Christ we have all died, yet it is "the body of sin" only that has perished. With him we have undergone "a death unto sin," and through him have obtained" a new birth unto righteousness;" "for being by nature born in sin, and the children

* See Dr. Macknight on Romans, vii, 4, note 2.

of wrath," we have all paid the penalty of transgression, by dying in him who became our substitute unto death, and are "thereby made the children of grace." So that now, being regenerated, through the death of the Lord Jesus, we live, not as "children of wrath" under the curse of the law, but as children of righteousness under the grace of God. Therefore, though we have been "crucified with Christ, we live;" inasmuch as we have put off the old man, to which the sentence of eternal condemnation attached, and have put on the new, to whom the gift of God is promised through faith in the Saviour. "It is not, however, we that live," continues the inspired author of our text, "but Christ that liveth in us;" for, as he elsewhere affirms, it is "He that worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure;" that is, he assists with his holy spirit the operation of our minds, when our hearts are honestly disposed to serve him; and, by so assisting the minds of those who have upright intentions towards him, he virtually directs their actions. But, although he does so direct them, yet, even among the best men, all must know and feel that his directions are but too seldom followed.

In so far then as we "live unto righteousness," and this is the life spiritual which has been obtained for us by the death of the Redeemer since it has secured to us the means of so living-I say, in so far as we live unto righteousness, as we do

so by the special operation of the holy spirit within us, which he who was crucified for us, "has shed abroad in our hearts;"-since, moreover, the Holy Spirit only can render us regenerate; and since it is from Christ that he proceeds and actuates us, Christ may be said to live in us, For we have no spiritual life in ourselves, but what we enjoy through him who restored it to us by that sacrifice of himself, which secured us from spiritual death upon our acting up to the conditions of his second covenant, the covenant of grace, and a covenant of most transcendant mercy. As he has redeemed us unto himself, we are all most especially under his government; and to show the advantages which believers derive from that government, they are called his body, as being animated and directed by him, merely by the influences of his spirit dwelling in them, and enabling them to mortify the deeds of the body. For, "if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness." Here the Apostle affords us the consolatory assurance, that although, being sinners, the punishment of sin, which is death, must befall us, and so our bodies must perish and return to their original dust, which is the penalty due to a breach of the first law, and inseparable from it; still, that our souls shall live for ever in a happy and blessed existence, as the reward of our return to Him who redeemed them from the bondage of sin, in the sincerity of a renewed and

righteous life. If the spirit of him who bore our iniquities be not in us, we are excluded from the blessings of that covenant of grace which he died to establish. At all events, until he dwell in us, which much depends upon our dispositions in preparing our hearts to receive him as their inmate, we can have no part in him, nor he in us; we cannot be "one with him and he with us;" and, consequently, we can have no share in those eternal privileges which he has provided, by his atonement for man, for all such as dwell in him, and work out their own salvation by faith in his blood. If Christ be in us, we shall have this conscious indication of it, that those impure affections and desires, by which we have been governed, will have ceased their tyranny over us; that though we shall still be subject to many failings and errors, the great "body of sin" will, nevertheless, be destroyed within us; so that we shall no longer serve it as slaves, subject to an imperious master, but shall rather be only occasionally vanquished by it as by an enemy, whom we are always anxious to resist and desirous to conquer; that there will be a continual exertion of our reasoning powers, and a fixed determination in our hearts to strive to overcome it; and that, though we fall, it will be more through our own weakness, incautiousness, or irresolution, than from a love of sin, or from any desire to taste of its pernicious enjoyments. In fine, the proof of Christ's dwelling in us will be, that we are

always ready to "crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts."

We come now to the last member of the text-namely, “the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." The life which we now live in the body, after our crucifixion with Christ, is that new life which we have obtained by being "buried with him by baptism into death"; but we can only continue in this new life by fulfilling the conditions, as far as in us lies, of that faith which is enjoined us by Him who so loved us, that he gave himself up to death for us, to free us from the penalties of a broken covenant, and to restore us to the privileges which had been forfeited by transgression. There must, however, be "a death unto sin," before there can be " a new birth unto righteousness." It is not because we have undergone, as it were, a spiritual resurrection, by dying in Christ, and receiving through him a new life in baptism, that we shall continue in it. We may still as certainly bring upon ourselves the awful punishment of eternal death, as if the Redeemer had never died and man had never been justified. "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid!" "for the wages of sin is death," and that as certainly now as during every past generation of the world, and will be so, as long as the world endures. The life which we live in Christ must be pure, spiritual, holy; and where it has not