"For I declared unto you first of all the gospel that which I also recieved, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures:"

"Let us, in the first place, then, make that Gospel, which the apostle states that he had preached to the Corinthians, the subject of consideration. "I declare unto you the Gospel," says he, "which I have preached unto you." The Saxon word "Gospel", like the Greek word of which it is a literal translation, signifies agreeable intelligence, a joyful announcement, good news, glad tidings; and is, in the New Testament, ordinarily employed as a descriptive designation of the revelation of Divine mercy to our lost world, - the divinely-inspired account of the only way in which guilty, depraved, and miserable men may be delivered from sin and its consequences, obtain the Divine approbation and favour, be raised to the true dignity and excellence of their intellectual and moral nature, in the knowledge of God, and conformity to his mind and will, and be made happy in all the variety, and to the full extent, of their capacities of enjoyment, and during the whole eternity of their being, by the free grace of God, and "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."