Such are the explicit and intelligible engagements of him whose commands are never far separated from his promises. It cannot then be deemed a becoming part of Christian temper to indulge a scrupulous hesitation in accepting and in acting upon the faith of these declarations. And as there is no real incompatibility or clashing of motives in the Christian system, any delicacy that may be felt, as if the hope of reward might interfere with a due sense of obligation to sovereign grace, must spring from an obscured and faulty perception of scriptural doctrines. The intelligent Christian, on the contrary, when, in simplicity of heart, he calculates upon the promises of Heaven; and when, with a distinct reckoning of the "great gain" of such an investment, he "lays up for himself treasures that cannot fail;" is, at the same time, taught and impelled by the strongest emotions of the heart, to connect his hope of recompense with his hope of pardon. And when the one class of ideas is thus linked to the other, he perceives that the economy which establishes a system of rewards for present services can be nothing else than an arbitrary arrangement of sovereign goodness, resolving itself altogether into the grace of the mediatorial scheme. The retribution, how accurately soever it may be measured out according to the work performed, must, in its whole amount, be still a pure gratuity; not less so than is the gift of immortal life, conferred without probation upon the aborigines of heaven. The zealous and faithful servant who enters upon his reward after a long term of labor, and the infant of a day, who flits at once from the womb to the skies, alike receive the boon of endless bliss in virtue of their relationship to the second Adam, "the Lord from heaven." Nevertheless, this boon shall conspicuously appear, in the one case, to be the apportioned wages of service, an exact recompense, measured, and weighed, and doled out in due discharge of an explicit engagement; while in the other, it can be nothing but a sovereign bestowment. But it is manifest that this doctrine of future recompense, when held in connection with the fundamental principles of Christianity—justification by faith, tends directly to allay and disperse those excitements which naturally spring up with the zeal of active benevolence. The series or order of sentiments is this:—