SUNDAY, May 27.  A very heavy rain comes up to-day about meeting time.  We nevertheless have forenoon and afternoon services in the meetinghouse.  Stay all night at Brother Michael Basehore’s.

MONDAY, May 28.  Gather at the meetinghouse.  Organize.  Take in questions:  discuss some of them.  Fine, delightful day.  Stay at Brother Emmanuel Arnold’s.

TUESDAY, May 29.  Get through with the business at three o’clock.  Brother Quinter and I come to Jonesborough, where he delivers a sermon in the Presbyterian church.  Subject, Rom. 1:17.  TEXT.—­“The just shall live by faith.”

This text was Luther’s sword.  With it he slew more of the enemies of the Reformation than Samson slew of the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.  The text readily suggests two questions.

 I.  Who are the just?

II.  What is faith?

These two questions being clearly answered, the grand copula, upon which the meaning and force of the text depends, is readily understood as to the quality of the life which it involves.  It evidently means a good life, a holy life, an obedient life, a humble life, a pure life out of a pure heart.  It means that the just or righteous shall live a life conformed in all respects to the character of that state of heart in which love to God holds dominant rule, and subordinate love to man prompts to a life of vital charity.

I. Who are the just? The just, in the sense of the text, are those who are righteous, and who desire to grow more and more righteous in God’s sight.  Men may be righteous in their own sight, and very unrighteous in God’s sight.  And precisely the reverse of this:  they may be great sinners in their own sight, and just or righteous in God’s sight.  This last state was Paul’s experience when he pronounced himself “the chief of sinners.”  He felt that he was righteous or just in God’s eye; but in his own eye, enlightened by the Word and Spirit of the Lord, he was vile.  This consciousness gave vent to many exclamations such as these:  “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Again:  “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing.”  On the other hand, the Pharisee, who stood praying in the temple was righteous in his own view of himself, and “thanked God that he was not as other men”—­a sinner like unto them, he meant, of course.  This line of thought suggests another question: 

How are men to become righteous or just? “For the scripture hath concluded all under sin.”  This same apostle tells us that “we are justified [made righteous] by faith; ... for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.”  Probably no passage of Scripture has been subject to worse misconstructions than this one.  It has been made to teach that a mere declaration of faith in Christ procures the instantaneous forgiveness of all sin, passes the sinner out of death into life, makes him