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IV. BENEDICTION.

It only remains now that we say a word or two on the parting benediction, "Peace be with you all that be in Christ Jesus. Amen." It is the all but uniform practice of the Apostles, both to begin and end their epistles with prayers and benedictions. Peter began his epistle with the prayer, "Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied;" and he ends with the prayer, "Peace be with you all that are in Christ Jesus." The Apostles exemplified their own precepts to pray always; to pray without ceasing. To pray for Christian brethren is one of the most natural modes of expressing Christian affection; as Christians are taught of God1 to love one another, they are also taught of God to pray for one another.

"Peace" is a word expressive of whatever is necessary to happiness. Peace be to you, is just equivalent to, May you be happy. When the man is happy, the mind is tranquil. The unhappy man has a disturbed, unquiet, agitated mind. The import of the wish, "Peace be with you," depends on the views of the person who utters it. In the mouth of a well-informed Christian it means, May you have all the happiness which flows from possessing, and knowing that you possess, that favour of God which is life, that lovingkindness which is better than life; from the conscience being sprinkled with the blood of atonement; from the heart being renewed by the Holy Ghost; from the mind being fixed in the belief of the truth; from the faith of the exceeding great and precious promises; from the hope of the salvation that is in Christ with eternal glory. May you "want no good thing." May you be "kept in perfect peace." May "the

peace of God keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." May "the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means." This prayer the Apostle presents

1 Θεοδίδακτοι.

2 Phil. iv. 7. 2 Thess. iii. 16.

for all the elect strangers, as being "in Christ Jesus," so closely related to Christ Jesus as to be, as it were, identified with him, having fellowship with him in his death, his resurrection, his new life, his honours, his happiness; living in him, animated by his spirit, walking in him, sustained by his grace, imitating his example, regulated by his laws, his living images, his "epistles seen and read of all men.”

This is an expression of the love of a Christian man to Christian men, and is a wish that they may enjoy in abundance Christian happiness. It is they only who are in Christ Jesus that can enjoy the peace which the Apostle here invokes. There is no peace of this kind to them who are not in Christ Jesus. To all who are not in him there is condemnation: "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." It is they who believe in Christ, and who are thus united to him, that can enter into peace. To quote once more the devout Archbishop, from whom I part with reluctance as from a pious accomplished friend, who has been my instructive and delightful companion during my leisurely journey through this most fertile region of the word of inspiration, and to whom I am much indebted for turning my attention to some of its more recondite beauties, and for gathering for me, and for you, some of its sweetest flowers and richest fruits: "They that are in Christ are the only children and heirs of true peace. Others may dream of it, and have a false peace for a time, and wicked men may wish it to themselves and to one another, but it is a most vain hope and thought; but to wish it to them who are in Christ Jesus hath good ground. All solid peace is founded on him, and flows from him." All who are in Christ have peace. Being justified by faith, they have peace; but the Apostle's prayer is, that their peace may be multiplied, preserved, increased; that their peace may be as a river, and their happiness as the waves of the sea; that they may grow in holy happiness till they become perfectly happy; because perfectly holy, having the peace of God; because having the purity of God, "peace, quietness, assurance for ever."

The peculiar expression, "Peace be with you all who are in Christ Jesus," seems to intimate that there might be among them some who were not in Christ Jesus. It was so in the primitive age as well as now. All were not in Christ who bore his name. To those men continuing in that state, there is, there can be, no peace, no true peace. They may, they do, say, Peace, peace to themselves: but the Christian minister dares not say, Peace to them. He wishes, O how eagerly! their salvation; but he expects this only in the destruction of their false peace. His call to them is, "Let sinners in Zion be afraid;" and his prayer to God is, that he may disturb their peace, shake them with salutary terror, chase them out of all the refuges of lies in which they are so apt to seek and find shelter, and never allow them to be at peace till, "being justified by faith, they have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;" never know what hope is, till they "have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before them in the gospel."

The Apostle concludes his benedictory prayer with the emphatic Hebrew word, Amen, expressive at once of desire and expectation. May it be so.' 'It shall be so.' He could not but wish it; for he loved them: and he could not but expect it; for it is one of those promises which "are all yea and amen in Christ Jesus to the glory of God by us." "The Lord will bless his people with peace."1

And now, brethren, I have finished these Expository Discourses on this important and interesting part of Divine truth. It is more than sixteen years since I commenced them. Of those who witnessed their commencement, many are in another, not a few of them, I doubt not, in a better world. We must soon go to them in the grave. Oh! let us see that we shall also go to them in heaven. It is in a very high degree improbable that I shall ever deliver to you again so long a series of discourses; a solemn reflection both

1 Psal. xxix. 11.

to me and to you. It says to me, "Make full proof of thy ministry;" it draws to a close; "work while it is called today; the night cometh when no man can work." "Prepare to meet thy God." "The Judge standeth before the door." Make up thy account; thou canst not long continue a steward. And to you it says, "To-day, if ye will hear my voice, harden not your hearts. Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation."

My work in composing and delivering these discourses, and yours in listening to them, are over; but there remain the improvement which ought to be made, and the account which must be given. The first will, I trust, follow; the second certainly shall. It is by attending to the first that we will be prepared for the second. For this, as for all means of religious improvement, we must erelong give account. O that it may be given with joy, and not with grief! "The Lord grant" that both the teacher and the taught may, notwithstanding all that has been wanting and wrong in the manner in which they have performed their respective parts, "the Lord grant that we may find mercy of the Lord in that day."

1 2 Tim. i. 18.

Amen.

NOTE A.

"Explodatur figurata, admittatur literalis expositio."-PEARSON de Succ. Rom. Episc.

"Babylona proprie accipio pro celebri illa Assyriæ urbe."—

BEZA.

"Cur Babylon in Italia potius, aut in Egypto quam in Mesopotamia, sit quærenda, causam non video."-WETSTEIN.

"Multi ex veteribus Romam ænigmatice putarunt notari. Hoc commentum Papista libenter arripiunt, ut videatur Petrus Romanæ Ecclesiæ præfuisse. Neque enim deterret eos infamia nominis, modo sedis Apostolicæ titulum prætexere ipsis liceat; nec Christum magnopere curant, modo Petrus ipsis relinquatur. Quinetiam modo, retineant Cathedram Petri nomen, suam Romam in profundis inferis collocare non recusabunt. Atque vetus illud commentum nihil habet coloris."-CALVIN.

NOTE B.

"Osculo sancto, osculo vero, osculo pacifico, osculo columbino, non subdolo, non polluto."-BEDA. "Non adulatorio sicut Absolon osculabatur populum, non simulatorio sicut Joab Amasam, non proditorio sicut Judas Dominum, non impudica sicut mulier adultera juvenem, sed osculo sancto, quod est caritatis signum et ejus fomentum."-LYRA.

"The fraternal kiss with which every one, after being baptized, was received into the community, by the Christians into whose immediate fellowship he entered-which the members bestowed on each other just before the celebration of the communion, and with which every Christian saluted his brother, though he never saw him before-was not an empty form, but the expression of Christian feelings; a token of the relation in which Christians conceived themselves to stand to each other. It was this indeed which, in a cold and selfish age, struck the Pagans with wonder: to behold men of different countries, ranks, stages of culture, so intimately bound together; to see the stranger who came into a city, and, by his letter of recognition (his Epistola formata'), made himself known to the Christians of the place as a brother beyond suspicion, finding at once among them, to whom he was personally unknown, all manner of brotherly sympathy and protection."-NEANDER. Gen. Hist. of the Christ. Relig. and the Church. TORRY'S Translation, vol. i. sect. iii. p. 347.

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