COLLECTED AFTER SERMONS AT One fourth of Collection for Missions after Sermon by Ison Green, by Rev. B. P. Blakeney, Incumbent Idle Lenton by by Yeovil, by Rev. M. W. Foye, M.A. Ashbourn do. do. COLLECTED AFTER MEETINGS AT 6 12 6 Bermondsey Brighton Burslem Bowden Cheadle Clapham Clifton Cheltenham Congleton Dover Epsom Grantham Guildford Hanover-square Rooms, (Anniversary Meeting) Horsham Halifax Hammersmith Ison Green Ipswich 2 7 0 6 1 BRITISH REFORMATION SOCIETY. ANNUAL SERMON, Preached at St. John's Episcopal Chapel, Bedford Row, on Wednesday Evening, May 15th, 1850, BY THE REV. HUGH M'NEILE, D.D. "These all, having obtained a good report, through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.”—Heb. xi. 39, 40. THIS passage of Scripture is a Pisgah height from which we may discern, with much clearness, the true unity of the true Church of God. It invites us to look back, and to look forward; to commemorate, and to anticipate to commemorate those servants of God who have fought the good fight of faith, and have fallen asleep in the Lord; and to anticipate the perfect number of all those who have been, all those who are, and all those who shall be faithful and true. There have always been protesters on the earthalways a Reformation Society among men. This chapter contains a list of some of its leaders in the earliest ages, and gives a brief biographical sketch of several of them. The apostle, having opened the great principles of the Gospel as they are set forth in the Old Testament types, shews the practical power of the Gospel as it is illustrated in the history of the Old Testament saints. For this latter purpose, he cites by name Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses, and Rahab; and then, apparently impatient of the delay of these descriptions, he bursts forth at the 32nd verse, "And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephtha; of David also, and of Samuel, and of the prophets: who, through faith, subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." And he winds up this splendid passage in the language of my text :-" And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." 66 The words invite us to four considerations:-I. Who are these of whom he speaks- "these all?" II. What he ascribes to them: having obtained a good report through faith." III. What he denies them: " they received not the promise." IV. The reason that he assigns for this: "God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." I. There appears to be little doubt that the persons here spoken of are the Old Testament believers-all of themnot only those mentioned by name in this chapter, but those whose history is more comprehensively alluded to. The whole text seems to require this; and it is made more precise by the circumstance that the same general description of them in the second verse, before any were named, is repeated in the passage of my text: By faith the elders obtained a good report." Then, after the enumeration, he says: "These all having obtained a good report through faith." 66 True religion was always the same, in every age of the world that is to say, in the substance and vital saving truth of it, however the outward expression of it may have varied. By those who so identify saving religion with the outward ordinances connected with it under the Christian dispensation as to represent them inseparable, an attempt has been made to shew that the Old Testament believers had an inferior religion-inferior in the truth revealed to them in life, inferior in the salvation |