It is a common notion that there is an essential difference, amounting even to a contradiction between the law and the Gospel. GOD is supposed—as if He were an imperfect Being changing His ways capriciously—to have suspended the Covenant of Grace which He had made with Abraham, from the time of Moses to that of CHRIST, and to have given the Jews in its stead a Covenant of Works, which He well knew they could not keep, and under which, therefore, they were sure to be destroyed: or, if He accepted any of them under the law, then, it is said, that inasmuch as their obedience was of course imperfect, He must have been content with less than He had required, and have disregarded His own decree, “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Nay, more than this: that He dispensed for a time with the merits of CHRIST’S atonement and the finding of salvation through Him, and dealt with man on his own merits, and rewarded him for an imperfect obedience. But now, it is urged, all this is once more changed. The law, having served its purpose of showing men that they could not obey GOD in the letter, having concluded them all under sin by disallowing the things they were prone to, and requiring what they could not do, having disappointed and balked them in their efforts to obtain salvation by it, and so caused them to abandon its observance in despair, and to inquire for another way of salvation—thus being a schoolmaster to lead them to CHRIST—has now been wholly repealed; so that we have nothing more to do with it, being brought out of bondage into liberty, and what we find forbidden or required by it, is not forbidden or required by us _because it is in the law_, but may be done or left undone, notwithstanding what the law says, unless some eternally moral principle, independent of Jewish sanctions and restrictions, would be thereby violated! I have put this in plainer and stronger words than any of yourselves probably would use, or are accustomed to hear: but I have not exaggerated the matter. In proof, let me ask, Are there not many who think the rehearsal of the Decalogue out of place in the Communion service? who object to moral preaching as savouring of the obsolete law? who talk about the “filthy rags” of their own righteousness, as if they were something wrong in keeping in the law? who believe that CHRIST is glorified most when they do least? who boast of a liberty to use or use not ordinances and means of grace? who reproach others with being, for instance, Sabbatarians? who speak of the GOD of the New Testament almost as if the GOD of the Old Testament were another Being, of different attributes, enacting different laws? And even among those who have not distinctly set the law and the Gospel in opposition, is there not a vague notion that somehow the Old Testament does not concern us Christians, and that our way of salvation is different from that of the Jews, and much easier to follow? O how do such persons reconcile with their notions