the gospel thought, to whom Christ said, “_One_ thing thou _lackest_.” But as you cannot produce perfection of obedience, all your charity, formality, morality, will avail nothing. You want a justifying righteousness, but you have it not in yourself, nor can you get it from the law. As a “ministration of death,” 2 Cor. iii. 7, it condemns you and denounceth a curse; while justice, like the angel armed with a flaming sword, stands ready to inflict the merited blow, should you pertinaciously dare to touch the tree of life with the hand of merit. But, should you ask, what is to be done, while the balance is suspended in the hand of impartial justice? I answer, Cry for mercy, as an offender, and look to JESUS as a complete SAVIOUR. But take care of blending his merit with your own, or of making a convenience of his righteousness to supply the defects of yours. This would be to aggrandize yourself at the expense of his honor. You must not presume to put Christ’s excellency in the balance with your works, in order to give them the required weight. No. You must, with a self-renouncing hand, first take out all your own works, leaving not one behind in the scale, and then with the hand of faith put in Christ’s work. This will weigh heavy. His atoning blood and perfect obedience will counterbalance the requisitions of law and justice; will give your conscience peace; save you from hell; and introduce you without spot into the presence of the Holy One of Israel. Thus the apostle of the Gentiles was enabled to act, after he saw the ruin of his nature, and the spirituality of the moral law. His own words are a perfect comment on the truth I have just now endeavoured to establish. “Yea doubtless,” says he, “and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung (σκυβαλα offal) that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” Phil. iii. 8, 9.