A Series of Lecture Sermons Author:Hosea Ballou Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON. I. TIMOTHY, i. 15. '' Thit it a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation. Thai Christ Jesvs came into the world to save sinnert ; of whom I a... more »m Chief." The subject on which the Apostle was speaking, and which led him to make the important declaration contained in our text, is worthy of special notice. Under a deep sense of the goodness of God, the grace which he had received in the Lord Jesus, the distinguished and important station in which he was placed by the great Captain of our salvation, it was impossible for him not to take a most humiliating retrospective view of his past life in the Jews' religion, while an enemy to Jesus, a blasphemer, and a persecutor of the church. All these weighty considerations having their natural operations on his mind, seemed to present, in full view, before his mental vision, the great and glorious errand on which the Lord Jesus was sent into our world. If it could have been so, that the Apostle, while engaged in the ministry of Jesus, could have retained nis former confidence in his own righteousness, and had been of the opinion, that he was a favorite of heaven, that he was enlightened into the knowledge of the gospel, and even put into the ministry because his former conduct had merited these favors, it is evident that such views could never have led him to make the statement found in ur text. Confirmed in such a persuasion, he would nave preached a Saviour for the righteous, yea, for the righteous only. He would have despised the least intimation of the salvation of sinners. He would, no doubt, have looked on such intimation, as an heresy of a most dangerous tendency. But the case with the great Apostle of the Gentiles was very different. He had been led to see, that, not as a righteous man, but as the chief of sinne...« less