THE K I N G ’ S B US I NE S S
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to have some advantages in the way of overcoming initial difficulties on the heavenly road, or in the way of leading that road subsequently along a loftier range of vision and attainment. The first and primary act of faith, in closing with Christ, may apparently be rendered simpler and easier by substituting for the free and universal gift of Christ to sinners as their Saviour, some vague notion of the Creator’s equal fatherly favor for all His creatures, even apart from; their being converted by His Spirit and reconciled to Himself by the blood of His Son. And there may be a doc trine or discipline of so-called perfec tion, connected with mystical concep tions of the spiritual life; or there may be an assumption and affectation of a humanity less straitened than that of ordinary, old fashioned.godliness; such as may leave far behind the tame and narrow routine of a humble and holy walk with God in the midst of an evil world. But, after all, where, but in the old gospel of the free grace of God in Christ, is a poor tempest-tossed dove to find a resting place for the sole of its foot? Where, but in the ark, is a weary spirit to find safe repose? It is in the gospel that you stand. For It is the gospel alone that can furnish, what is the indispensable condition of your standing securely, the means and method of a thorough healing of the breach, a thorough settlement of the misunderstanding which sin has caused between you and your God. In the gos pel alone, in the gospel system of a free and full justification by grace, through faith in Christ— in Christ as the right eousness o f God— in Christ as the Lord our righteousness— have we guilty man confronted face to face with his Judge, and made to see how in righteousness his guilt is cancelled, and himself re stored to the place and privilege of a child. There alone have we, in the cross of Christ, the Ruler and the crim- ; WILL A MAN ROB GOD?
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The jGospel 1 | wherein W e Stand | ROBERT S. CANDLISH, 1858 | SltlllIllIMllllIllMIllIllIllIlIlllliiïnillIlllMlllIMlillilIllllllllllllllIill“ Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed In vain. 1 Cor. 15:1-2. m t DECLARE unto you the gos- aH pel wherein ye gjfl stand;’’ or have got a stand- *■ ing. This the apostle urges as a recommendation of that old gospel which some among the people to whom he is writing would now, it seems, amend and improve upon. It commanded your assent and consent once; your warm embrace and cordial acceptance; at a time when you, too, were in the best possible circumstances for appre ciating its glorious excellency as a revelation of the character and will of God, and its gracious adaptation to your case, as guilty, lost, miserable sin ners. And it might well do so; you might well be willing to receive it as you did. For in it you have now a po sition which you never otherwise could reach; a position of secure, stable, set tled righteousness and peace; a strong position; a sure habitation;— “ Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jeru salem.” Yes, the apostle virtually says to the Corinthians,— You may be virtually as sured that none of those refinements on the gospel system—-none of those fresh and original exhibitions of it, whether in the new light of a higher philosophy, or on the field of a wider and larger philanthropy, which have a certain at traction for you in certain modes of mind,— none of them have the element of stability; in none of them can you stand at all so safely, or so surely, or so uprightly, as in it. They may seem
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