DISCOURSE FIFTY NINTH.

ROBERT WALKER.

THIS eminent divine of the Scottish Church, was born at Canongate, in 1716, and received a regular education at the University of Edinburg. He was ordained, in 1738, minister of Straiton; and in 1746 was transferred to the second charge of South Leith. In 1754 he was called to be one of the ministers of Edinburg in the High Church, which position he filled with distinguished ability. In the month of February, 1782, he was seized with a fit of apoplexy; and though recovering to some extent, he at length suddenly died in April, 1783.

Dr. Blair, who was the colleague of Walker, speaks of him in high terms, representing him as a man of deep piety, solid judgment, and powers of the most correct taste, which gave elegance, neatness, and chaste simplicity to his discourses. Walker's sermons have received the highest commendations from the ablest divines of all countries. They may perhaps be regarded as among the safest models for the study of young ministers. Doctrinal and evangelical, they are at the same time highly practical, always logical, perspicuous in style, completely ingrained with happy Scriptural quotations, and conveyed with a manly, forcible eloquence, and a devout, earnest spirit. Walker possessed the faultless beauty of Blair, without the elegant frigidity of his thoughts, which, as Foster says, "became cooled and stiffened to numbness in waiting so long to be dressed." The sweet invitings of the compassionate Saviour have seldom been set forth in a more charming, yet faithful manner, and in a more winning and affectionate spirit, than in the fol'owing discourse.

THE HEAVY LADEN INVITED TO CHRIST.

"Come unto Me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."MATT. xi. 28.

It was prophesied of our Lord long before His manifestation in the flesh, that He should "proclaim liberty to the captives, and the

opening of the prison to them that are bound." And lo! here He doth it in the kindest and most endearing manner, offering rest, or spiritual relief, to every "laboring and heavy laden" sinner. "Come unto Me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

In discoursing from which words, I propose, in dependence upon Divine aid:

First. To open the character of those to whom the invitation is addressed;

Secondly. To explain the invitation itself, and show what is included in coming to Christ. After which I shall endeavor, in the Third place. To illustrate the gracious condescending promise with which our Lord enforces the call: "I will give you rest.”

I begin with the character of those to whom the invitation is addressed. They are such, you see, as "labor, and are heavy laden;" that is, who feel the unsupportable load of guilt, and the galling fetters of corrupt affections, and earnestly long to be delivered from both; for these were the persons whom our Saviour always regarded as the peculiar objects of His attention and care. By our fatal apos tasy, we forfeited at once our innocence and our happiness; we be came doubly miserable, liable to the justice of God, and slaves to Satan and our own corruptions. But few, comparatively speaking, are sensible of this misery! The bulk of mankind are so hot in the pursuit of perishing trifles, that they can find no leisure seriously to examine their spiritual condition. These, indeed, have a load upon them, of weight more than sufficient to sink them into perdition; but they are not "heavy laden" in the sense of my text. Our Saviour plainly speaks to those who feel their burden, and are groaning under it; otherwise the promise of rest, or deliverance, could be no inducement to bring them to Him. And the call is particularly addressed to such, for two obvious reasons:

First. Because our Lord knew well that none else would comply with it. "The full soul loathes the honey-comb." Such is the pride of our hearts, that each of us would wish to be a saviour to himself, and to purchase heaven by his own personal merit. This was the "rock of offense" upon which the Jews stumbled and fell: they could not bear the thought of being indebted to the righteousness of another for pardon and acceptance with God; for so the apostle testifies concerning them. "Being ignorant of God's righteousness, they went about to establish their own righteousness, and did not submit themselves unto the righteousness of God." And still this method of justifying sinners is opposed and rejected by

every "natural man." He feels not his disease, and therefore treats the physician with contempt and scorn: whereas the soul that is enlightened by the Spirit of God, and awakened to a sense of its guilt and pollution, lies prostrate before the mercy-seat, crying out with Paul when struck to the ground, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" It was therefore with peculiar significancy, that our Lord introduced His sermon upon the Mount by adjudging the kingdom of heaven to the "poor in spirit," placing humility in the front of all the other graces, as being the entrance into religious temper, the beginning of the Divine life, the first step of the soul in its return to God.

Secondly. The "laboring and heavy laden" are particularly distinguished, because otherwise, persons in that situation, hopeless of relief, might be in danger of excluding themselves from the offer of mercy. If there was only a general call to come to the Saviour, the humble convinced soul, pressed down with a sense of its guilt and depravity, might be ready to object, Surely it can not be such a worthless and wicked creature as I am, to whom the Lord directs. His invitation. And therefore, He "who will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax," doth kindly encourage them by this special address, that the very thing which to themselves would appear the greatest obstacle in the way of mercy, might become the means of assuring them that they are the very persons for whom mercy is prepared.

Let this, then, encourage every weary, self-condemning sinner. The greater your guilt appears in your own eye, the greater ground you have to expect relief if you apply for it. Mercy looks for nothing but an affecting sense of the need of mercy. Say not, If my burden were of a lesser weight, I might hope to be delivered from it; for no burden is too heavy for Omnipotence: He who is "mighty to save," can easily remove the most oppressive load; "His blood cleanseth from all sin," and "by Him all who believe are justitied from all things." This great Physician did not come to heal somc slight distempers, but to cure those inveterate plagues, which none besides Himself was able to cure. Whatever your disease be, it shall neither reproach His skill nor His power, and all that He requires on your part is a submissive temper to use the means He prescribes, with a firm reliance upon their virtue and efficacy. If you are truly convinced that your guilt is so great, and your corruptions so strong that none in heaven or on earth can save you from them but Christ alone-if you are groaning under the burden of sin, and can find no rest till pardoning mercy and sanctifying grace brings

you relief, then are you in the very posture which my text describes, and I may warrantably say unto you what Martha said to Mary, "Arise, quickly, the Master is come, and calleth for thee." And this is His call, "Come unto Me." Which is the

Second thing I proposed to explain. Now, for understanding this, it will be necessary to remind you of the different characters which our Lord sustains; or, in other words, the important offices which He executes as our Redeemer. These, you know, are three, to wit, the offices of a Prophet, of a Priest, and of a King; in each of which the Lord Jesus must be distinctly regarded by every soul that comes to Him. Accordingly, you may observe, that in this gracious invitation He exhibits Himself to our view in all these characters; for to the condescending offer of removing our guilt, He immediately annexes the command, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me."

Such is our misery by the fall, that we are not only become the objects of God's righteous displeasure, and liable to that awful punishment which was the penalty of the first covenant, but our nature is wholly diseased and corrupted; so that "in us, in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing." Our understanding is darkened, filled with prejudices against the truth, and incapable of discerning spiritual objects: "For the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to Him; neither can he know them, be cause they are spiritually discerned." Our will is stubborn and rebellious, like "an iron sinew," which no force can bend; so inflexible in its opposition to the Divine law that it is called in Scripture "enmity against God;" and all our affections are wild and ungovern. able, deaf to the voice of reason and conscience, in perpetual discord among themselves, and wholly alienated from God, in whom alone they should unite and center. Such a Saviour, therefore, was neces sary for our relief, as could effectually remedy all those evils, and not only redeem us from wrath, but likewise prepare us for happiness, by restoring our nature to that original perfection from which it had fallen.

For this end, our Lord Jesus Christ, that He might be in all respects furnished for His great undertaking, was solemnly invested by His heavenly Father with each of the important offices I have named; that our understanding being enlightened by His Divine teaching, and our will subdued by His regal power, we might be capable of enjoying the fruits of that pardon, which, as our great High Priest, He hath purchased with His blood. Now in all these characters the Scriptures propose Him to our faith, and we do not

comply with the invitation in my text, unless we come to Him for the proper work of each office, and embrace Him in the full extent of His commission, that "of God He may be made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption."

It is true, indeed, that the soul, in its first approach to Christ, doth principally regard Him as a priest or a sacrifice; and therefore faith, as it is employed for justification, or pardon, is emphatically styled "Faith in His blood." To this God looks when He justifies the sinner; He views him as sprinkled with the blood of atonement, and therefore to the same blood the sinner must necessarily look upon his first application to Christ. When the criminal under the law fled to the horns of the altar, he considered the temple rather as a place of protection than of worship. The authority of a teacher, and the majesty of a king, are objects of terror to a self-condemning sinner, and by no means suit his present necessity. Christ, as suffer ing, and "bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," is the only object that can yield him relief and comfort; for where shall be find the rest of his soul but where God found the satisfaction of His justice?

Nevertheless, though Christ upon the cross be the first and most immediate object of faith, yet the believer doth not stop there; but, having discovered a sufficient atonement for his guilt, he proceeds to contemplate the other characters of his Redeemer, and heartily approves of them all as perfectly adapted to all his necessities. He hearkens to His instruction, and cheerfully submits to His yoke, and covets nothing so much as to be taught and governed by Him. The ingenuity of faith speaketh after this manner: Seeing Christ is my Priest to expiate my guilt, it is but just and reasonable that He should be my Prophet to teach me, and my King to rule over me; that as I live by His merits, I should also walk by His law.

O blessed Jesus! saith the soul that comes to Him, Thou true and living way to the Father! I adore Thy condescending grace in becoming a sacrifice and sin-offering for me: and now, encouraged by Thy kind invitation, I flee to Thee as my only city of refuge; I come to Thee "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked"-I have no price to offer Thee, no goodness at all to recommend me to Thy favor: "laboring, and heavy laden," I cast myself at Thy feet, and look to Thy free mercy alone for the removal of this burden, which, without Thy interposition, must sink me down to the lowest hell. Abhorring myself in every view I can take, I embrace Thee for my righteousness; sprinkled with Thy atoning biood, I shall not fear the destroying angel-justice hath already