Now we cannot become acquainted with Christianity without perceiving that after the transition has been made from the old economy to the new, there is a service. This transition is signified by images expressive of the total change that is made in our relations and circumstances, when we pass from Nature to the Gospel-as the dissolution of a first marriage, and the entrance upon a seconda dying and a coming alive again-a release from one master, even the law, who formerly had the dominion over us, and an engagement with another master, even God, under whom we are to bring forth the fruit that is lovely and acceptable in his sightall marking the very wide dissimilarity that there is between the two states, and that when we have crossed the line of separation between them, we have indeed got into another region, and breathe another atmosphere altogether from what we did formerly and yet there continues to subsist a service performed no doubt in a different spirit, and in a different manner from what it was before, but still a service. And indeed it is quite manifest, from the apostolical writings, that the life of a Christian is expected to be all in a glow with labour and exertion, and manifold activity-not spent in the indolence of mystic contemplation, but abounding in work, and work too persevered in with immoveable stedfastness, and emanating from a zeal that ever actuates and ever urges on to the performance of it. This is the habit of a disciple upon earth, and it would appear to be his habit even after he is transported into heaven: "There thy servants serve thee." So that whether we look to those years which are preparatory to our entering upon the inheritance of glory, or to the eternity in which the inheritance itself is enjoyed; still we find that under the economy of grace there is a busy, strenuous, and ever-doing service. It is not in fact by exemption from service, but by the new spirit and principle wherewith the service is actuated, that the economy of grace stands distinguished from the economy of the law. We are delivered from the law, not that we should be delivered from the service of obedience, but that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. The first remark that we offer, in the way of illustrating this distinction between the new and the old economy, is, that there is indeed a very different spirit between two men, one of whom works, and that most incessantly, from the love that he bears to the wages, and the other of whom works, and that just as incessantly, from the unconquerable taste and affection which he has for the work itself. It is conceivable that the servant of some lordly proprietor, is remunerated according to the quantity of game which he fetches from the woods and the wastes of that ample domain over which he expatiates and that, under the dominion of a thirst for lucre, from morning to night he gives himself up to the occupation of a hunter. But it is conceivable of another, that the romance and adventure and spirit-stirring hazard and variety of such a life are enough to fasten him, and that most intently, throughout all the hours of the day, on the very same enterprise: and thus, with a perfect likeness in the outward habit, may there be in the habit and desire of the heart a total and entire disThe service is the same, but the spirit And this may similarity. just hold as true of the commandments of a heavenly, as of an earthly master. The children of Israel, looked to the decalogue that was graven upon tablets of stone, and they knew that on their observation of it depended their possession of the land of Canaan, the prosperity of their seasons, and the peace of their habitations from the inroad of desolating enemies. The love they bore to their inheritance, is love quite distinguishable from the love they bore to that task which formed the tenor upon which they held it—and it may just be as distinguishable in him who seeks to purchase, by his obedience, the heavenly Canaan set forth to us in the gospel, and who thinks of this Canaan as a place of splendour and music and physical gratifications, who looks onward in fancy to its groves and its palaces, or who, as it stands revealed in perspective before him, on the other side of death, figures it at large as a place of general and boundless enjoyment, where pleasure ever circulates in tides of ecstacy, and at least there is a secure and everlasting escape from the horrors of the place of condemnation. A love for the work, and a love for the wages, are here two different affections altogether, and to reduce them to one, you must present heaven in its true character, as a place of constant and unwearied obedience. The Israelite toiling in drudgery at the work of his ordinances, and that for the purpose of retaining his pleasant home on this side of death; or the formal Christian walking the routine of his ordinances, and that for the purpose of reaching a pleasant home on the other side of death: either of them breathes a totally different spirit from the man who finds the work of obedience itself to be indeed a way of pleasantness and a path of delight to him-who, without the bidding of his master at all, would, at the bidding of his own heart, just move his hand as his master would have him to do-who is in his element when engaged in the work of the commandments, and to whose renovated taste and faculties of moral sensation, the atmosphere of righteousness is in itself the atmosphere of peace and joy. The services of two men may thus externally be the same, and yet, the spirit that animates the one and the other may just be as different, as sordidness and sacredness are wide of one another. And a difference of spirit is every thing to him with whom we have to do. He sits at the head of a moral empire; and affection and motive and design are mainly the things of which he takes cognizance; and discerner of hearts as he is, it is the desire of the heart upon which he fastens his chief attention; and in his judgment it is indeed a question most decisive of character, whether this actuating desire be love to the work of righteousness, or only love to wages distinct from the work. To serve in the first of these ways, is to serve in the newness of the spirit. To serve in the second of them, is to serve in the oldness of the letter; and the substitution of the one for the other, is that great achievement which the gospel personally and substantially makes on every man who truly embraces it. It forms as essential a part of that covenant which God makes with the believer as does the forgiveness of sin. "This is the covenant, that I will put my law in his heart." When it only stood graven upon a table of stone, obedience was an affair of labour. But when the law is graven on the fleshly tablet of the heart, obedience is an affair of love. It is every thing to God whether his service be felt by us as the drudgery of a task, or as the delight of a congenial employment-whether we painfully toil while it is doing, and are glad when it is over-or are pleasantly carried along, through all the steps of it, as of a work that we rejoice inwhether it be our hope that, after the keeping of the commandments there will be a great reward, or it be our happy and present sensation, that in the keeping of the commandments there is a great reward. It is this which distinguishes the service of our heavenly from that of our earthly master. With the latter, after the work cometh the payment, and the doing of the one is a distinct and separate thing from the enjoyment of the other. With the former, after the work done now, cometh more work; after the business of using aright a few talents, cometh the business of ruling and of managing aright many things; after the praises and the services of the church below, come the higher services, and more ecstatic praises of the sanctuary above; after the uprightness and the piety of our present lives, cometh the busy obedience of that everlasting land, which is called the land of uprightness: and how totally different then must the newness of the spirit be from the oldness of the letter; when, as with the one, the work is gone through from the mere impulse of a subsequent reward, which selfishness may seize |