The blessings of eternal life are everywhere in the Bible placed upon conditions; and it would be singular indeed if the Lord should place before us so great a blessing making it conditional, and yet these conditions be such that we could not understand them, nor know when we were complying with them. And in thinking upon this subject of late, we have been struck with the beauty and simplicity of the plan of salvation. The reader will pardon a few thoughts upon a subject with which he is already so familiar. The Lord has made mankind two offers of life. The first by the law. Had Adam and his posterity always been obedient, they would have obtained eternal life upon that condition alone. But men, having sinned, broken the law, and so lost all claim to life upon that ground, another offer of life is made them, and that is through Jesus Christ. Now does this second offer release mankind from the condition of the first? We answer, No: it only proposes to repair the failure which man made while depending upon the law alone. Thus, all mankind have sinned, as the Apostle assures us, and come short of the glory of God, and on the ground of obedience have lost all claim to eternal life; but Christ has died for us, and what does he propose to do? Remove the law out of our way and release us from it? No; but simply to repair the failures which man has made in rendering obedience to it. He proposes to forgive our sins and reconcile us to God, to cancel our past transgressions, and bring us into a position as though we had never broken God's law, and give us a disposition to render him obedience in the future; and if availing ourselves of this glorious offer of redeeming love, we so live that in the final account a broken law shall have no claims upon us, our title to life is indisputable and complete. Thus the law and the gospel are inseparably connected in the great scheme of our redemption. We can do nothing without Christ; and yet the righteousness of the law must be fulfilled in us in order to our salvation; as the apostle says, "That the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." Rom. viii, 4. Thus the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus are set before a guilty world as the way and passport to eternal life; and we can understand the expressions of the apostle, that by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified; and yet that the doers of the law (and they only) shall be justified. How it is that a plan so simple should be misapprehended, and teaching so plain as the Bible gives on this subject, should be misunderstood, so that people will array the law and the gospel in opposition to each other, as though the latter superceded the former, is beyond the limits of our comprehension.