(_d_) "Why has faith such power to justify? Because, _carried out to its fullest extent, it implies assimilation_ to its Object." Here again I should be alarmed, if I did not know the writer's general convictions, which are sound enough. But this particular sentence again is in full harmony with Romanist doctrine. And, as a fact, with the Bible open, and with usages of common language before us, it can easily be exposed as a confusion of words and thought. Faith, carried out ever so fully, is just faith still; personal reliance, personal confidence on God in His Word. That reliance is His appointed (and divinely natural) way for our reception of Jesus Christ. For our Justification, it receives Christ in His merits; it does _that_, and that only, and always. For our Sanctification, it receives Christ in His inward power, by the Holy Ghost. But faith is just faith, to the end. (_e_) "We are not _forced_ to receive salvation." Most true. "He enforceth not the will." But do not forget on the other hand to magnify the necessity of grace, "preventing grace," [Act. x.] that is to say, God Himself "working in us _to will_" to receive our salvation. The two sides of truth are both divine. [Phil. ii. 13.] Do not neglect either, whether you can harmonize them or not here below. * * * * * END OF THE LECTURE. Such are some specimens of a Saturday morning's talk in our library. They are taken, just as they come, from notes constructed after the study of a set of some twenty sermons, written, and then commented upon, without the slightest thought that any public or permanent use would be made of the materials thus given. But perhaps the remarks may be in point to some of my readers all the more because of the unstudied nature of the materials. Let me say, before I quite leave this part of my subject, that adverse criticism was by no means my only work this morning in the lecture-room. It was my happiness, on the other hand, to commend thankfully many a clear setting of living truth, and many a sentence of forcible point and of true beauty, happy omens for future years, in which, if it please God, "the torch shall be carried on," bright and clear, when we elders shall be heard no more.[34] [34] Ungracious as it may seem, I must betray one less pleasant confidence of such occasions. Sometimes I have had to note in sermon MSS. a strange neglect of punctuation, and, here and there, a little aberration from received usages of spelling! No Clergyman ought to think such matters beneath his notice. His people, some, if not many of them, will from time to time receive letters or other written messages from him; these ought to be unmistakably the writing of the educated gentleman. Is it too much to say also that _the handwriting_ ought to be clear and easy? It is distressing, certainly to one who has many letters to read daily, to see how _rare_ such handwriting is now. "MY CASES OF OLD SERMONS."