"Out of a pure heart." This is the soil in which the heavenly grace grows, and this soil is essential to the purity and beauty of the grace. It is not enough to plant the seed; we must till and nourish the soil.
I. THE HEART IS THE TESTING-PLACE OF WHAT WE LIKE. Here I would give emphasis to the fact that "the good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things." There must be passion in all true life. As Mr. Ruskin truly says, "The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love learning; not merely pure, but to love purity; not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after righteousness. Taste is not only a part and index of morality; it is the only morality. The first and last and closest trial-question to any living creature is—What do you like? Tell me what you like, and I'll tell you what you are." Exactly! So says the gospel. "Out of the heart are the issues of life;" "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." This is a true teaching, and may open up a new view of moral and spiritual life to the thoughtful mind.
II. THE HEART IS THE REVEALING PART OF THE TRUE MAN. You must watch life in its temper and spirit at all times and in all places. You may be deceived by good actions. Men may build almshouses and yet live so as to break hearts; they may be courageous in confronting tyrannies abroad, and yet live impure lives in the indulgence of besetting sins. Think of this. Good actions do not make a good man; it is the good man that makes the good actions. A man may be beneficent and give thousands to hospitals, or brave and rescue drowning men from death, or patriotic and save a nation in perilous times, and yet he may not have the mind of Christ, and his heart may be unrenewed. "A pure heart." We all love pure things—the white marble, the rain-washed sky, the peerless alabaster, the silver wings of the dove. So Christ would have us all desire and seek the pure heart.—W.M.S.
1 Timothy 1:5.—The sense of rectitude.
"And of a good conscience." We here come to the ethical region of rectitude, showing us how complete the gospel is, and how it stands related to the whole of our complex nature. We notice here the connection of "good" with conscience; let us see what it means. May there be another conscience that is not good?
I. THERE MAY BE THE CASUIST'S CONSCIENCE. We see this in the ease of the scribes and Pharisees in the time of our Lord. The simple instincts of justice and mercy were perverted by ecclesiastical routine, and the minutiae of legal ordinations. They overlaid the Law, which appealed to the native instincts of conscience, by their traditions, which did not so appeal, and which were burdensome and troublesome. So in Luther's time the consciences of men were in the keeping of the priests, and an artificial and Jesuitical morality made even immorality sometimes expedient and lawful. Men lost the native instincts of right and wrong in obedience to an artificial and ecclesiastical code of morals; they worried themselves about sins that were no sins, and they lost the consciousness that men may be sinners even when they are obedient sons of the Church.
II. THERE MAY BE THE WORLDLY CONSCIENCE. This makes custom into a god. Conscience is ruled and regulated by what is expedient, or what society expects of men. They are pained at the sin which brings shame before men, but are not disconcerted at desires, emotions, and actions which are evil in the sight of God. It is a wonderful interesting study this—the relation of society to sin. For there are fashionable vices and respectable sins which are heinous in the sight of God, but the conscience is at ease because the spirit of the age does not condemn them. How important, then, it is to keep conscience enlightened by the Word of God and invigorated by the Holy Ghost! The end of the commandment is in the best sense to make you a law unto yourself. It is important to have the Bible in our heads, but it is most important to have Christ enthroned in the tribunal of conscience within.—W.M.S.
1 Timothy 1:5.—The absence of hypocrisy.
"And faith unfeigned." We all dislike shams. Led by Carlyle, the English nation has lately heard many prophetic voices against them. We insist, in art, in dress, in manners, and in religion, on sincerity. Without this nothing is beautiful, because nothing is real. We hate feigned learning, feigned skill, feigned culture, and feigned superiority. The apostle tells us here that faith must be unfeigned. Now, if the end of the commandment is love, the argument is this, that the faith which is to be worked by such a glorious inspiration of charity must be an honest, earnest, real faith.
I. WE MUST BELIEVE IN HUMANITY BEFORE WE CAN LOVE MEN. Believe, that is, that there is an ideal of God in every man; that underneath his depravity and degradation there is a moral nature which may be renewed, and a life which may be transfigured into the glory of Christ. For man's conscience was made to know the truth, his heart to feel it, and his will to be guided and energized by it. If we think of men cynically or contemptuously, then there will be no earnest efforts to save that which is lost.
II. WE MUST BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF CHRIST AND HIS CROSS, OR WE SHALL NOT BE ENTHUSIASTIC IN PREACHING THEM. No doubter can be a good preacher. Men know and feel the power of ardent faith. The arrow will miss the mark if the hand of the archer shakes, or distrusts its weapon. The one great element of success is unfeigned faith—a faith which says, "I believed, and therefore have I spoken." There may be a variable faith, like that of the Vicar of Bray's, which believed anything—Romanistic, Rationalistic, or Evangelical—for the sake of position. But the mask soon drops, anti men, instead of receiving the truth, despise the raise teacher. "We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God," is the essential basis of a true ministry. Such a faith will be touched with enthusiasm like unto his who said, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ Jesus our Lord."
III. WE MUST BELIEVE IN A VITAL SENSE SO AS TO LIVE OUR BELIEF. An unfeigned faith is one that we practice ourselves; one that fills every channel of our being—our ethical life, our philanthropies, our missionary endeavors, our home joys and sanctities. There is a faith which is merely dogmatic—which holds fast the Christian doctrines, but fails to translate them into life. The atonement itself, so august and awful, must ever stand alone as a Divine sacrifice; but its moral effect is to be lived. "We thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead; and that we who live should not henceforth live unto ourselves, but unto him who died for us and rose again." Faith is not to be a waxwork fruit—something artificial and unreal—but the living vine, of which Christ is the root.—W.M.S.
1 Timothy 1:11.—A gospel of glory.
"According to the glorious gospel." These are the words of a true enthusiasm. St. Paul gloried in the gospel. We may read it, however, as in the Revised Version, "According to the gospel of the glory of God." Either way the glory of it fills the heart of the apostle with intense rapture. No good work is done without enthusiasm. The great Italian artists—men like Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, and Michael Angelo—associated heaven with earth in their work, and did it, not for mere pay, but for great ideal results. So also great apostles and reformers, like Paul, Wickliffe, and Luther, were enthusiasts. But all healthy enthusiasm is inspired by reality and truth. Some men have made shipwreck of religion because they lost the compass of the Word of God; and others, dependent on feeling alone, have wandered, being led by the ignis-fatuus of imagination alone.
I. PAUL SEES IN HIMSELF WHAT THE GOSPEL CAN DO. "Take me," he says; "I was before a persecutor, and injurious." What could account for such a change as is embodied in the man who from Saul became Paul? No theory of moral dynamics can stand, that suggests he lifted himself into so great a change. Neither could the Hebrew Church of that age, which was coldly ritual, sterile, and barren. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Christ Jesus might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting." No man can be so ardent about a cure as he who has tried a physician; no man admires the great artist so much as he who has tested his own feeble powers. And now "what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son," had done, and done in Paul: he is a proof of the gospel before he becomes a preacher of it.
II. PAUL GIVES A NEW SIGNIFICANCE TO THE WORD "GLORY." On his lips glory takes a new meaning. He had seen the glories of the Caesars, who raised their thrones on hecatombs of human lives, and filled their courts with unbounded luxuries and lusts. Surrounded by soldiers and courtesans, their glory was in their shame. He had seen the glories of the architects, sculptors, and artists, at Athens, Corinth, and Rome. But the glory of which he spoke was in a life that gave itself—that came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and that on the cross died for the sins of the whole world. It was the glory of goodness, the glory of compassion, the glory of self-sacrifice.
III. PAUL REJOICES TO TELL THE GOOD NEWS OF THIS GLORY. It is the glorious gospel, or the glorious "good news" for all men—Greek and Jew, barbarian and Scythian, bond and free. How simple a thing it seems—"good news!" and yet it is speech that moves the world! Homer is remembered, when the military heroes of Greece are forgotten. Syncs live longer than thrones. This good news was of a Christ who had died, and risen, and was working then in the hearts of men. Paul lived long enough to plant Churches, and to show that the cross could turn men "from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." He could show them not only the root, but the tree; not only the seed, but the flower. It was good news in relation to man himself—to his present history and his everlasting destiny. The gospel had made life desirable, and checked the false euthanasia of Roman suicide; and it had spread a great sky of immortality above men's heads, so that to live was Christ, and to die was gain.—W.M.S.
1 Timothy 1:11.—The nature of God.
"Of the blessed God." Prove that the gospel comes from God, and it must be blessed; for God is blessed in himself. His nature is light, which is always beautiful; and love, which is always beneficent.
I. THIS IS A DESCRIPTION OF THE DIVINE NATURE. Not of some of the attributes of that nature, but of the very heart and center of it. Not the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient; but the Blessed! Look at nature! Study its purity, its harmony, its exquisite adaptations of provision and plenty to the varied wants of all living things, show that God is not a Being of mere power or wisdom, but One whose works are very good, One who wished his creatures to share in his own blessedness.
1. Look at his revelation. Do we want beatitudes? Duty turned to joy? We find the way of peace and rest and joy in obedience to his will.
2. Look at the Christ himself. Blessed within, amid all outward forms of temptation and all endurances of trial. "That my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full."
3. Look at the cross. Designed to make atonement, to reconcile man to God, and so to renew his image within, and to make man understand that separation from God was the root-cause of all his misery. The gospel is not only a revelation of doctrine; it is an unfolding of the Divine nature, into which we may be changed "from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
II. THIS IS THE UNIQUE REVELATION OF THE GOSPEL. False religions give prominence to aspects of power, and merge into dreads. The gospel alone shows that God is Love. And in revealing the blessed nature of God in his Son, it has shown us that evil is misery because it is another nature. Life apart from God is death—death to peace, purity, harmony, holiness. Men have in their experience testified to this. All is vanity apart from him. Over all life may be inscribed, "Nihil sine Deo"—"Nothing without God." So Christ would lead us to the Father, unite us with the Father, and transform us into the likeness of the Father—One who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.—W.M.S.
1 Timothy 1:11.—Trustees of the truth.
"Which was committed to my trust." Here Paul speaks of the preacher of this glorious gospel as a trustee. It is not a gospel of merely personal salvation; it is not designed to awaken only moral and spiritual admiration for its teachings; nor for the culture of immortal happiness, so far as we are ourselves alone concerned.
I. THE GOSPEL IS OURS IN TRUST. Water is sweet, but others are perishing with thirst. The open sky is beautiful, but others are in prison. Peace is restful, but others are in pain. What do you think in earthly matters of fraudulent or neglectful trustees? You rank them amongst the very worst of men. How ninny sons and daughters of the careful and. the prudent have been ruined through the long years by negligent trustees!
II. THE GOSPEL AFFECTS ALL TRUSTEESHIPS. Its spirit is to pervade all that we have and are. Men are coming to see that knowledge, skill, wealth, are not only to be enjoyed for personal gratification, but to be used for the uplifting and bettering of others. These will, and always must be, "our own;" but we are to look also "on the things of others." Do not fence in the park of your life, but act the steward of its beauties and its joys. Rights of possession there are, and yet responsibilities of possession too. Look at Christ.
1. He knew the secret of blessedness, and came to earth to reveal it.
2. He knew the grandeur of human nature, and came to live in it and to restore it.
3. He knew the mastery that evil had over us, and he came to break the fetters.
4. He knew that sin separated us from God, and he came to die, "the just for the unjust, to bring us unto God." Our captains at sea are guardians of life, and bravely do they do their duty. Our soldiers are trustees of a nation's honor, and never have failed in the great crises of her life. And our great citizen-fellowships are trustees of broad rivers, open commons, and the health and well-being of the poor, and have striven to protect their interests. As Christians we are each and all trustees of the gospel. It is no mere ecclesiastical privilege; for, alas! ecclesiastics have too often been trustees only of their own rights, or the rights of their special Churches. We are all trustees of the glorious gospel of the blessed God, and woe be to any of us who shirk our responsibilities or idly neglect our trust!—W.M.S.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON
1 Timothy 1:19.—Human wreckage.
"Some have made shipwreck." Words sound differently to different men. Language is a "word-picture," and we must see the facts before we understand the word. Paul chooses a metaphor applied to character, which is so terrible when applied to disasters at sea. Many a beautiful vessel has arrested the gaze of admiring spectators as she spread her sails to the favoring breeze, and breasted the waters like a thing of life. But, on another shore, her shivered timbers and her shattered prow have been washed up as the wreckage of a once gallant ship, her half-defaced name the only testimony to her fate. So Paul had seen men wrecked on the breakers of self-indulgence, vice, and folly. Paul associated loss of character with loss of faith. "Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having lint away have made shipwreck."
I. SHIPWRECK SOMETIMES COMES AT THE VERY COMMENCEMENT OF THE VOYAGE. The ship scarcely leaves the river before she runs aground. There has been too much self-confidence, and the Divine Pilot has not had the ship in hand.
II. SHIPWRECK SOMETIMES COMES AT THE CLOSE OF THE VOYAGE, when the ship is almost home; when from the masthead land was almost in sight. But the watch has not been kept. In the voyage of life we may have the cross on the flag, and the chart in the cabin, and the compass on the deck; but we sleep, as do others, and we are wrecked with the land almost in sight.
III. SHIPWRECK AFFECTS THE VERY HIGHEST ELEMENTS OF OUR BEING. "A good conscience," the sweetest meal to which ever a man sat down! The sublimest music, which no Beethoven or Mendelssohn can approach! The noblest heritage that a Moses could sacrifice Egypt for! A conscience cleansed by Christ's blood, enlightened by the Word of God, and quickened by the Holy Ghost. "A good conscience!" Wealth cannot purchase it, envy cannot steal it, poverty cannot harm it, and naught but sin can denude it of its crown. It is the strength of the confessor's endurance, the luster of the sufferer's countenance, the peace of the martyr's heart. "A good conscience." Wreck that, and all is lost; and the sun of the moral firmament sets in darkness.—W.M.S.
1 Timothy 1:1-11.—Introduction.
1. Sender. "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and Christ Jesus our Hope." It is usual for Paul to begin his letters by taking the designation of apostle. He thus claimed to write, and to order ecclesiastical affairs, under infallible direction. In thus writing to Timothy, who had no special need of being reminded of his authority, he would seem to give an official character to the letter. While he claimed authority, it was, at the same time, as himself belonging to Christ Jesus. Not satisfied with stating to whom he belonged in the authority he exercised, he further traces his apostleship, not, as in previous Epistles, up to its primal source in the will of God, but more immediately to the commandment of God or actual appointment after his conversion. He received his appointment from God our Savior—a designation of God which in the New Testament is peculiar to the pastoral Epistles. It is introduced here as carrying with it the obligation on the part of Paul and Timothy to be the bearers of the Divine salvation to their fellow-men. He also received his appointment from Christ Jesus, whom he thus, the second time in the short space, introduces. By Christ, as acting for God, all appointments are made. The seven stars, i.e. Christian ministers, are held by him in his right hand; and he has the whole ordering of their locality and time of service. In this second introduction of his name he is designated our Hope, i.e. he from whom the appointed have their reward, and in whom it subsists.
2. To whom addressed. "Unto Timothy, my true child in faith." Not according to the flesh, but in the sphere of faith, was Timothy his child. Thus he is accustomed to regard his converts; he is both father and mother to them. We may, therefore, conclude that Timothy, though of godly parentage and with godly influences working efficaciously in him, owed it to Paul's instrumentality that he was converted to Christianity. It was in Lystra, a city of Lycaonia, on Paul's second visit, that Timothy joined him as his assistant. He was his true child, not only in his being his convert, but in his having the evidence of that in his being after the same stamp—like-minded, as he is called in Philippians 2:20; one who seemed instinctively to enter into his views and plans, and therefore, we may say, the ideal of an assistant.
3. Salutation. "Grace, mercy, peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." The insertion of mercy in the salutation is a peculiarity of the Epistles to Timothy. There is invoked grace on him as unworthy, mercy on him as exposed to suffering, peace on him as the result of his being graciously and mercifully dealt with. The Source from which the blessing is invoked is God the lather. It is to the fatherly feeling in God—that which is highest in his nature, and with which redemption originated—that our appeal is to be made for saving blessings for ourselves and fur our friends. In the thought of Christ as the second Source of blessing, Paul finds occasion for the third introduction of the name of Christ. He is thought of as our Lord, i.e. the sovereign Dispenser of the saving blessings in his Father's house, of which there are enough and to spare.
I. CHARGE DEVOLVED ON TIMOTHY. "As I exhorted thee to tarry at Ephesus, when I was going into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge certain men not to teach a different doctrine, neither to give heed to fables and endless genealogies, the which minister questionings, rather than a dispensation of God which is in faith; so do I now." The time of the journey into Macedonia would seem to be after the first imprisonment at Rome, beyond the period included in the Acts of the Apostles. This brings the date of the Epistle well on to the close of the apostle's life. If this is correct, then Paul's confident anticipation of never again being in Ephesus was not verified. For it is here mentioned as his point of departure for Macedonia. He would have taken Timothy with him; but there were manifestations in the Church at Ephesus which necessitated him to leave him behind. There were certain persons not otherwise characterized, who taught a different doctrine, i.e. different from the gospel as preached by Paul. It could not be called a different gospel as in the Galatian Churches; it was rather something taught by itself which tended to frustrate the ends of the gospel. It was a giving heed to fables and endless genealogies. We come upon incipient Gnosticism here, of which we have already seen traces in the Epistle to the Colossians. This is best known as Eastern mysticism in contact with Christianity. But there seems reason to believe that there was a prior contact of Eastern mysticism with Judaism in the form of Essenism. This has many elements in common with Gnosticism; the peculiarity is that it is Jewish materials that are thrown into the mystic form. A great feature in Gnosticism is the interposing of intermediate agencies, to account for the creation of the world, supposed to be evil, so that God could not come into immediate contact with it in its creation. What were afterward known as eons or emanations, in the Epistle to the Colossians are called angels. Here the interminable genealogies found in rabbinical speculations are associated with the intermediate agencies. God created a being at a certain remove from himself, with a name which they were in a position to give. This being created another at a further remove from God, who also was named. The object was to come down to the name of one who was bad enough to create the world; but it was difficult to know where to stop. Upon these genealogies ingenuity was exercised; but, as there was nothing of the element of certainty in them, they only ministered questionings or disputings as to the names. What Timothy was to direct his efforts to was to set forth the dispensation of God which is in faith, i.e. the Divine order of things, as seen partly in creation and specially in redemption, in which faith can lay hold on certainty. "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear." By filth also we understand that Infinite Love has in Christ Jesus provided a full atonement for our sins.
II. THE END OF THE CHARGE. "But the end of the charge is love." The link of connection is the charge to be given by Timothy to the false teachers. The thought which follows is, these teachers missing the aim of what is charged on them. We have here, then, not the end aimed at in others, as the end of the physician is health (which is Ellicott's idea), but plainly the end aimed at in what is charged on the teacher. The words are suitable to one who is receiving a charge. "What is the end of what I charge on you?" says the giver of the charge; "it is that you have your being filled with love." This is the qualification of the healer of the body: he must be thoroughly interested in the recovery of his patients. So it may be said to be the main qualification of the healer of the soul: he must be thoroughly interested in the spiritual health of those who are committed to his care.
1. The love of the teacher must be associated with pure elements. "Out of a pure heart." He must have, mingled with his affection, and giving character to it, an antipathy to sin in every form, to unreality, to superficiality; am a passion for holiness in every form, for reality, for depth.
2. The love of the teacher must be associated with conscientiousness. "And a good conscience." He must have, in the first place, a conscience that faithfully witnesses to his duty, to the methods he should follow in his work, to the forms of service his love for the people should take. And he must have, in the second place—which is also included in the scriptural idea of a good conscience—the approval of his own mind, the consciousness that he is using all diligence in carrying out his ideas of duty, in following his methods, in his endeavors to be serviceable.
3. The love of the teacher must be fed from the highest Source. "And faith unfeigned." His faith brings him into contact with an invisible Savior, by whom he is elevated in his whole spirit as a teacher, at the fountain of whose love his love is fed, and not only in intensity but in all that it needs of purity and direction. Only his faith must be unfeigned; for if it is not in his life, if it is only as a mask, then he can only come into contact with his own imaginings, by which certainly he cannot be elevated, from which source his love cannot properly be fed.
III. THE END MISSED. "From which things some having swerved have turned aside unto vain talking; desiring to be teachers of the Law, though they understand neither what they say, nor whereof they confidently affirm." The end was missed by the false teachers. They did not hit the purity of motive, conscientiousness, unfeignedness of faith, that should have given character to their affection. Being thus incapable of profitable discourse, they "turned aside unto vain talking." They gave themselves out to be "teachers of the Law," i.e. the Mosaic Law, especially the Law of the ten commandments, afterward referred to in detail. But they were doubly disqualified. They were confused in what they said. They were, therefore, different from the teachers of the Law who were opposed in the Churches of Galatia. For these were not chargeable with incoherencies; they knew well enough what they said in seeking to subvert Christian liberty. We are rather to think of mystical interpretation of the Law. They were further disqualified in not understanding their subject, viz. the Law; the confidence of their affirmations being in proportion to the extent of their ignorance.
IV. USE OF THE LAW. "But we know that the Law is good, if a man use it lawfully, as knowing this, that law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for man-slayers, for fornicators, for abusers of themselves with men, for men-stealers, for liars, for false swearers, and if there be any other thing contrary to the sound doctrine." The apostle begins by laying down a proposition about the Law which no one would be disposed to controvert. It was a boon from Heaven if used according to its intention. In the next proposition he indicates the intention of the law as coming under the intention of all law. His position is, that law is not made for a righteous man. "Let us think of the relation in which a good man stands to the laws of his country. In one sense, indeed, he is under them; but in another and higher sense he is above them, and moves along his course with conscious freedom, as if he scarcely knew of their existence. For what is the object of such laws but to prevent, under severe penalties, the commission of crime? Crime, however, is already the object of his abhorrence; he needs no penalties to keep him from it. He would never harm the person or property of a neighbor, though there were not a single enactment in the statute-book on the subject. His own love of good and hatred of evil keep him in the path of rectitude, not the fines, imprisonments, or tortures which the law hangs around the path of the criminal. The law was not made for him." As truly can it be said that the Law of the ten commandments is not made for the Christian, who is the righteous man. For he is justified by the faith of Christ, i.e. he is regarded as having fulfilled the whole Law in Christ. What more, then, has the Law to do with him? And further, so far as he answers to the conception of a Christian, he is sanctified by the faith of Christ. He is in Christ as the Source of his holiness. He has got beyond the discipline of the Law, inasmuch as he has got it already in his heart. Thus does the apostle take the ground from under the would-be teachers of the Law, whose position would be that the Law mystically interpreted was necessary to putting the crown of perfection on the Christian. The Law is made for unrighteous persons, of whom many classes are mentioned. These are grouped with reference to the two tables of the Law. Under the head of breakers of the first table, i.e. the unrighteous toward God, are given six classes in pairs. There are the lawless and unruly. With aggravation, they refuse to be under law, making their own pleasure their law. There are the ungodly and sinners. They have thrown off all awe of God. There are the unholy and profane. Instead of being consecrated to God, they trample on holy things. If the division of commandments had been followed, the classes would have been deniers of God, idolaters, the profane, sabbath-breakers. Generally, it is disregard of what is Divine that is brought out under this head. Under the second head, of breakers of the second table, i.e. the unrighteous toward man, are given eight classes. Six of them in pairs. Here the division of commandments is followed. There are murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers. "Smiters" is preferred by some. These are the breakers of the fifth commandment with the greatest aggravation. Next by itself stands the class of man-slayers. These are the breakers of the sixth commandment. There are fornicators and abusers of themselves with men. These workers of abomination are the breakers of the seventh commandment. Next by itself stands the class of men-stealers. The apostle puts the man-stealer as the most flagrant of all breakers of the eighth commandment. No theft of a man's goods can be compared with that most atrocious act which steals the man himself, and robs him of that free will which is the first gift of his Creator. And of this crime all are guilty who, whether directly or indirectly, are engaged in, or uphold, from whatever pretence, the making or keeping of slaves. There are liars and false swearers. These are the breakers of the ninth commandment. He does not go on to the breakers of the tenth commandment, hut concludes with the greatest inclusiveness, "And if there be any other thing contrary to the sound doctrine" (i.e. not morbid, as the teaching of the mystical interpreters). The apostle's position is that the Law is made for all these unrighteous persons. But for things being in an abnormal state there would not have been the writing down of so plain duties in the Ten Commandments, especially in the form, "Thou shalt not." The Law is made for sinners, in being intended to hold up before them a proper representation of righteousness, by which, if they are convicted, they should also feel shut up to the righteousness which is by filth. Has the Law, then, no use for the Christian? Only in so far as he is not Christianized. It is of use in keeping him under grace as the source of his security and happiness. And it is of use in so far as it holds up a representation of righteousness that reaches beyond his attainment. The truth is well brought out in one of the symbolical books of the Lutherans. "Although the Law was not made for the righteous (as the apostle testifies, 1 Timothy 1:9), yet this is not to be understood as if the righteous might live without law; for the Divine Law is written upon their hearts. The true and genuine meaning, therefore, of Paul's words is, that the Law cannot bring those who have been reconciled to God through Christ under its curse, and that its restraint cannot be irksome to the renewed, since they delight in the Law of God after the inner man. But believers are not completely and perfectly renewed in this life; and though their sins are covered by the absolutely perfect obedience of Christ, so as not to be imputed to believers to their condemnation, and though the mortification of the old Adam and the renovation in the spirit of their mind has been begun by the Holy Spirit, yet the old Adam still remains in nature's powers and affections."