is, to open
the eyes of those who love their Lord and Master with a pure heart,
fervently to the understanding of his mind on the subject of this
little book; for it is not money, time, and talents, that I desire to
see brought into the external service of Christ, as such; but only as
the incense of praise and thanksgiving to Him "who has loved us, and
washed [properly "loosed"] us from our sins in His own blood, and
hath made us kings and priests unto God the Father", from His own
redeemed, yea, the ransomed of the Lord, not the extorted, but
voluntary homage from those hearts which would crown Him Lord of all.
And certainly, any farther statement would be superfluous, if we were
called upon to sit in judgment on the meaning of writers, whose
opinions laid us under no practical obligation, or whose sentiments
were in unison with our whole nature. Here however, the case is
widely different; we have an old nature for this earth, as well as a
new nature for heaven; and therefore, things require to be stated as
fully as may be, that Satan may be stopped at every turn by "it is
written". To admit an opinion--is to admit a truth; and to admit a
truth--is to admit the obligation to act upon it, against our earthly
constitution. And as the admission and reception of the particular
truth now under consideration, strikes at the very root of many of
nature's most fondly cherished feelings, and of many apparently so
amiable, that we scarcely allow ourselves to doubt that they are of
God; it may be necessary to enlarge still more upon the subject, and
show that the reception of this truth prepared the way for the
success of the Apostles, by leaving them free to follow Him who had
called them to be soldiers, and that it will, by the grace of
God,--promised to us as well as to them;--accomplish as great things
in our days as it did in theirs, springing, as it did, and ever will,
from this one source, Christ in us the hope of Glory, dwelling in us
richly in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; yea: in those cases
where the world think we fail, as well as those in which we seem to
succeed: for if Christ and the spirit of His Kingdom be manifested,
we are a sweet savour of Christ unto God, whether they receive our
testimony or reject it; yea, though we preach as Noah did, an hundred
and twenty years, and no man regard us.

II. I come, therefore, secondly, to consider the important bearing of
the Principle, I have endeavoured to es