We see then how this sting is removed by Christ. He took it upon himself. Sin is its cause. He bore our sins, was made under the law, became a curse, suffered and died, the just for the unjust. He thus discharges the demands of the law against the believing. What then if the wages of sin is death; is not "the gift of God eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ?" What though death in its original nature, be the first, stinging, insupportable stroke of God's wrath revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness? We are delivered from the body, the substance, the sting of this death, thanks be to God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. "His blood cleanseth from all sin." Whoso believeth on him "shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life," for he is "not under law but under grace." 2. Let us consider briefly the extent of this deliverance. It is perfect. It is co-extensive with sin and all its dismal fruits; if sin abounds, grace doth much more abound. The destruction of sin, involves the removal of all its direful effects, the whole ghastly retinue which it brings with it. Christ the second Adam restores us to the primeval perfection, glory and bliss, which we lost by the apostacy of the first Adam. The parts of this restoration are successive and gradual, so that it is not wholly consummated, till the body is raised and glorified at the last day. But it is wholly and forever secured by the first act of true faith. For we are "justified by faith." And whom God justifies, them he also glorifies, and none shall be able to separate them from his love or pluck them out of his hands. With respect to the condemning or penal power of sin, deliverance is perfect at the moment of our union to Christ by faith, and ever afterward: for there is "no more condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." Whatever sorrows, sufferings or calamities visit the believer, they are not a part of the curse and penalty of the law. They are chastisements sent in fatherly love and faithfulness, and not in vengeance; not willingly, but for our profit; for the very purpose of promoting our deliverance from sin. As to sin itself, at the new birth, it receives a mortal blow, by being subjected to a reigning principle of holiness, which is then born into life, and is ever waxing stronger and stronger until death, when it extirpates the last remnant of sin, and the spirits of the just are made perfect in holiness. Although ever dying, sin is never perfectly extinct in this life; it is the heaviest burthen under which the believer groans in this tabernacle; its end is the sweetest part of the deliverance which death brings with itself. With respect to the body, it is not freed from the pains and infirmities in this life, which belong to its frail and perishing nature. Nor does it escape death. It is not renovated and glorified till the last day, when the archangel's trump shall wake from the grave its slumbering tenantry, the dead shall