Gospel Morality

The true light in which redemption should be habitually contemplated is that of a Divine institute of Holiness. Its immediate end is to restore the union between ourselves and God which sin has broken. It starts out with the great thought that the Happiness of an intelligent and moral creature is not something foreign, not the possession of an outward and separate good, not shining courts nor splendid halls, nor any other princely equipage of state, but the exercise of its own energies in God. To be happy it must be in sympathy with the Author of its being. Upon this lofty eminence the whole scheme is erected, and all its arrangements are directed to the achievement of two results--the removal of those judicial consequences of sin which repel God from the sinner, and of those moral obstructions which repel the sinner from God. Jesus, and the Daysman betwixt them, comes in and lays His hand upon them both. He bears our sins in His own body on the tree, and thus reconciles God to us; He cleanses our hearts by the washing of regeneration, and thus reconciles us to God; and that first friendly interview of the arties takes place at the foot of the Cross when we believe in Jesus. This whole scheme involves the moral system--the system, if you please, of Divine philosophy--upon which the government of God is conducted. It is the ethical system of the universe, and the Gospel is the only means, accordingly, by which we can attain true integrity. In rejecting it we are not rejecting crowns and sceptres; we are rejecting the very essence of virtue, and it is idle to pretend to a profound reverence for rectitude when we disregard the only means by which we can be restored to it. In this moral aspect I am anxious to recommend it to you. All your present excellencies are dead works, and when the influences which now embalm and preserve the corpse are gone, it will putrefy and stink. The first step in real moral improvement is faith in the Son of God. When that step is taken we begin to live; until then we are dead in trespasses and sins.

-- James H. Thornwell