In the acts of the apostles we read of an altar with this inscription, "To the unknown GOD!" St. Paul, taking occasion from this circumstance, tells the Athenians, "Him whom ye ignorantly worship, preach I unto you." In the whole frame of nature, says a truly sublime writer, every heart, every creature, every affection, every action, is an altar with the same kind of inscription, "To the unknown Beauty!--To the unknown Righteousness!--To the unknown Jesus!" This is the eternal standard of truth, order, righteousness and perfection, to which every being in nature ignorantly moveth; this is that which all understandings, all hearts, cannot but admire and adore. But blessed above all beings are those, whose hearts are spiritual altars, with the righteous person of CHRIST engraven upon them by the finger of GOD, flaming with the fire of Heavenly Love, and bearing this radiant inscription, "To the known and experienced Beauty and Righteousness of that JESUS, whom we know; that Word of Life, which our eyes have seen, our ears have heard, our hands have handled, and spiritually embraced!" And this leads me, in the second place, to inquire what we are to understand by CHRIST'S being called "OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." II. Under my first head, I observed to you from Scripture, that GOD created all things "in and by JESUS CHRIST;" and that "without him, was not any thing made that was made." Man, in particular, was "created in the Image of GOD:" CHRIST is "the Brightness of the Father's Glory, and the Express Image of his Person:" and, therefore, man was created in CHRIST. Man in himself, in his outward nature, was but an empty vessel, till the CHRIST OF GOD became his fulness and perfection. His outward form was from the dust of the earth; but his inward spirit was the breath of the MOST HIGH. The Image of GOD, even CHRIST himself, was his first, his sole Righteousness and perfection; the infallible instructor and enlightener of his understanding, the unerring guide and director of his will. The Name by which the SON of GOD was known to him, was "The Lord his Righteousness." Angels themselves know no other Righteousness, than the Righteousness of GOD in CHRIST. The fall of man, or "Original sin," (as our church article with great truth and propriety expresses it) "is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil." We have already seen what this original righteousness was, which man possessed in a state of innocence, viz. that it was CHRIST, "the Lord his Righteousness," in him. This is what Adam lost--This is what CHRIST alone can restore.