good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am "known of mine. As the Father knoweth me,

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even so know I the Father: and I lay down my "life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, "which are not of this fold: them also I must "bring; and they shall hear my voice; and "there shall be one fold and one Shepherd."— Observe too, how, "when He saw the multitudes," He is said to have been "moved with compassion

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on them, because they fainted, and were scat"tered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." - Observe again, how, in the gospel of this day, we may find a living commentary on the words of Jeremiah; when we read there of our Lord acting the part of the kind shepherd of his flock, preparing for them a pasture in the wilderness, sustaining their bodies with the food needful for this life, and their souls with that spiritual meat which nourishes to the life everlasting. Compare further St. Peter's description of the salvation obtained for us by the perfect righteousness of Christ, as a return to the fold. "For ye

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"were as sheep," he says, "going astray; but " are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop "of your souls."-Refer also to St. Paul's emphatic setting forth of the Righteousness of God, as that which is brought down to man by the incarnation and death of Christ; and more particularly to that passage of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, where he speaks of Christ, as

"of God made unto us wisdom and righteousness "and sanctification and redemption;" and where the Apostle seems almost to lay his finger on the text of Jeremiah now before us. With these divine commentaries to illustrate the meaning of the prophet, (not to cite others bearing on the point,) we may well disclaim those minute criticisms, which would pervert this text from its high evangelical import; and may without doubt read in it the mind of the Spirit revealing to us, in one short mysterious phrase, the perfect Divinity of our Lord and the effectual grace of His Atonement. Well indeed may we hold, with the multitudes whom he fed, that He who thus cares for the sheep, is, "of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world," the Emmanuel of Isaiah, -the Lord our Righteousness, of Jeremiah,— gathering the remnant of his flock out of all "countries," and "bringing them again to their "folds," and "feeding them," that they should" fear

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no more, neither be dismayed, neither be lacking." But perhaps I am dwelling too long on the interpretation of our text; I would pass on to draw out of it that instruction in the faith of Christ which it involves, and apply it to our own spiritual benefit.

The words of the prophet are but a summary of the great truth which the gospel expands to us in its full proportions;-that the work of man's salvation is wholly divine; divine in its first cause ;

divine in the means by which it is wrought; divine in its end. What the prophet intimates is, that salvation is of the Lord, from first to last. The righteousness by which man stands before God, as a sinful being saved by God's mercy in Christ, the righteousness of the gospel, is not the righteousness of man, but of the Lord Himself, who has mercy on us. The stupendous miracle of the Divine Goodness displayed in the redemption of a fallen world, is not, that man can now obtain the utmost perfection, and utmost felicity, of his own

nature.

The gospel scheme of mercy is infinitely more than this. The ground of our pardon, the title of our acceptance, is in the nature of God Himself. As sin has abounded unto the condemnation of man, so grace has much more abounded unto his justification; inasmuch as now, in the merits of Christ, we are blessed with a blessedness belonging to Him; for the Lord himself, Jehovah himself, is become our Righteousness.

It is then to lower the character of the gospel scheme of mercy, to regard the attainment of gospel righteousness as consisting in any thing of ourselves. We must never forget in all that we think and do as Christians, that we are "accepted" only" in the Beloved." We must stand fast in the grace in which we have been called. We must constantly look unto Jesus, as, at once, both "the "Author and Finisher of our salvation." The moment that we abandon this ground,-in whatever way we

suffer any thing less holy to enter into the sanctuary of that Divine Righteousness, which, by the charter of the gospel, is made over to us,-we impair the perfection of our standard of gospel religion and gospel virtue; we substitute a righteousness of another kind for the one perfect righteousness of the Lord the Saviour.

The history of man has shewn how little he is disposed sincerely to cast all his care upon God, and to rest in simple unwavering confidence on the righteousness of God for acceptance. Nothing seems easier to us at the first view, than thus to go to God, renouncing ourselves, and wanting no other assurance but that of His goodness. Practically, however, this is not the case. We hear indeed sometimes Christians professing to hope, that God will be merciful to them in spite of their continuance in sin, and so far taking comfort to themselves from a confidence in the infinite goodness of God. But is this profession and this comfort, any thing more than a flattering of their own souls, a treacherous dealing with their own hearts, —a palliation of the pain of sin,-an encouragement to themselves in a course of sin to which they are committed? Surely if such persons truly relied on the goodness of God, they would see His goodness, not in that false light in which it appears indulgent to sin, but in its real awfulness as it recoils from every thing unholy, and in its proper endearment, as it engages and leads men to repent

ance. Let not such persons, then, be brought forward as instances of the disposition of the corrupt heart to rely on the righteousness and mercy of God. They are instances, rather, of,-what the doctrine of gospel righteousness implies, the hopelessness of sin, the necessary distrust of the sinner in any efforts of his own to emancipate himself from the tyranny and misery of sin,-and of the recklessness of one who feels that the ground is sinking under his feet, and catches at any apparent stay which offers itself, though he knows it cannot support him. On the contrary, that there is a tendency in the heart of man to seek out a mode by which he shall come before God not empty-handed, or as the Apostle expresses it, to go about to establish his own righteousness, is abundantly evident, in various ways;-from the rites of superstition, from the voluntary humility and will-worship which some have practised,— from the punctiliousness of formal observances which some have been found to prescribe for themselves,-from instances again of persons claiming a merit for their exemption from particular errors and sins, thanking God, like the Pharisee in the parable, that they are not as other men are, or compensating, in their own view, their demerits in one way by their supposed merits in another. These and many other forms of the same indisposition to rely on the alone righteousness of God, sufficiently indicate, that the gospel method of sal