that their benefit is just as certainly to be realiz ed, as it has had a place in the measures of God's administration. The very same perfections which invested it with all its excellence and all its capacity, are pledged to secure their participation in whatever good it was intended to communicate. And we may as well think of its utter annihilation, as of their failing to experience that saving efficacy which necessarily belongs to it. The two things are but parts of one whole-both resulting from the same sovereign decree, linked together by indissoluble ties, and terminating in triumphs as real as is the mercy of God or the misery of man. The Lord "shall redeem Israel." No dubiety hangs over their redemption. Not one of them shall be lost. Neither their own perverseness nor the machinations of their enemies can possibly defeat that purpose which embraces their deliverance. And nothing can occur to detract in the very least degree from the certainty of all that blessedness to which they are ultimately destined. For it is the same unerring wisdom, the same Almighty power, the same inflexible rectitude, and the same unchanging faithfulness that laid and executed the plan of redemption, to which the Great Being in whom all these attributes centre bids us look, for carrying it out into the practical results which it was intended to produce, in rectifying the disorders of our fallen

state, and bringing us back to the state which we primarily occupied in the universe of God.

And while we can rest our belief of this truth on the simple fact, that the plan of redemption as to its inherent sufficiency, and its actual application to the individuals whose interests it comprehends, is one and indivisible, and in neither department susceptible of change, or liable to be frustrated, there is this additional reason for taking that view, that God has promised that it shall accomplish all his good pleasure concerning an apostate world. He has not left us to reasoning or to inferenceand far less to speculation and conjecture. He has declared in explicit terms, and in oft repeated statements, that the gospel shall have its full effect in the salvation of his people-that they shall be brought out of all the tribes, and kindreds, and people, among whom they are scattered, to feel its power and to enjoy its blessings-that it shall be effectually applied to each one of them in whatever corner or in whatever age of the world his lot may be cast—that without a single exception, and beyond all controversy, and in spite of all difficulty and opposition, they shall be rescued from the wretchedness of their condition as sinners, and restored to the purity, and honour, and happiness of their primeval state. The mouth of the Lord hath spoken this; and shall he not perform it? The assurance is given by him for whom it is

impossible to lie or to deceive-to whom truthfulness is as essential as his existence itself-and who, in the history of his church, has already "magnified his word above all his name;" and on that assurance, therefore, we may rely with as implicit confidence, as we can rely upon the continuance of his being, and the stability of his throne.

Nor does this certainty attach merely to their redemption in general. It may be applied to their redemption as to all the various particulars of which it is composed. "He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities." "Iniquities" is a term of comprehensive import-implying every evil that is connected with, or results from, the first apostacy of man. He who has committed iniquity is under the wrath and curse of God. But his guilt or obligation to punishment does not stand alone-it is allied to the moral corruption of his nature; and his guilt and moral corruption combined, entail upon him, either by judicial sentence or by natural consequence, the manifold temporal distresses and the more awful miseries of eternity to which he is subjected and doomed as a transgressor. Now the gospel does not propose to relieve him from any particular portion of the judgments that thus burden his fate-it proposes to relieve him from them all; it is competent to do so, and it will do so. The

deliverance may not, and it will not be accomplished all at once: but sooner or later it will be realized in every the minutest circumstance. In the end, not one penalty will be left unremitted; not one moral stain uneffaced; not one painful feeling unremoved. Sin, in all its aspects, in all its influence, and in all its effects, shall be totally and for ever taken away. As those to whom this privilege belong, acquire a title to it in its most unqualified sense while sojourning upon earth, so when admitted into heaven, which is its ultimate object and issue, they shall leave behind them every thing that has tarnished its purity or marred its enjoyment, and not a single vestige of evil, of any kind, shall be either felt or feared by them, as they rejoice in the undisturbed possession of it through everlasting ages. And this minuteness of their redemption is not more a result from the constitution and provisions of the gospel scheme, than it is the subject of specific declaration and faithful promise on the part of Him by whom that scheme has been revealed; for you cannot condescend on the most inconsiderable ingredient in that cup of sin and sorrow of which it is their fate to drink, to which there is not a corresponding assurance in that word on which we are taught to hope, that it will be wholly abstracted and

destroyed, either in this world or in that which is to come.

We have said that the redemption here spoken of includes deliverance from all the evils in which sin has involved its victims. But it is evident from the context that it has a special reference to that branch of redemption which is denominated forgiveness. Indeed in other passages of Scripture, redemption and forgiveness are used as synonymous; for example, "In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." And in the passage before us, the Psalmist, after having intimated strong, and humbling, and distressful convictions of guilt, consoles himself with the belief that "with God there is forgiveness," and takes encouragement to hope for it, from its being announced in the divine word, as a gift ready to be bestowed on those who ask it in the appointed way. And cherishing this belief himself, and the hope founded upon it, he calls upon Israel to entertain the same sentiments, and of course to expect the same blessing. "Let Israel hope in the Lord"—“ for he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities," or, he shall forgive Israel all his iniquities.

Now it is obvious from this that the doctrine of forgiveness, being the instantaneous fruit of Christ's death, not to be sought for, because it is already received, is not true: for if it were true the language and conduct of the Psalmist would be in

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