We have seen already that at the very commencement of its history the people failed under the law; and this is the one unvarying lesson of all these ages. Under law it was only more plainly marked, as was indeed to be expected of that which was emphatically the "ministration of condemnation." Still the extent of the failure seems after all amazing. I do not even refer to the worship of the golden calf, although it might seem nothing could more show the desperate wickedness of man's heart than this. The very mount which had flamed and quaked in witness to the divine presence bore witness also to this rapid descent into the abominations of the heathen round about, who "changed the image of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things." Judgment being executed, God took up the people the second time; not, as we know, under the same strictly legal system, which it had been proved they could not endure, but under a mingled system of law and mercy.

It was in this way that the tabernacle with its sacrifices and priesthood was added to the law, although God, in the display of perfect omniscience which could not be taken unawares, had instructed Moses as to it before the sin of the people (Ex. 25:-xxxi). And here faith found its provision, and a convicted conscience its pledged forgiveness. These at least, it would be thought, would be prized and welcomed in view of the constant failure which the vigilance of the law detected and condemned. How surpassingly strange, then, that these should have fallen into such utter disuse as God by the mouth of Amos declares they did (5:25-27). "Have ye offered Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun, your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." Thus even Moloch's dreadful altar was preferred to God's, and the gracious provisions of His tabernacle dropped into a forgetfulness hard to realize. The failure of the dispensation was already fixed:"Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the Lord."

Incredible almost would this neglect indeed seem, did not the Word of God itself announce it. And there are testimonies in the history itself which show in a still more striking way the extent of it. Especially is the statement of the book of Joshua (5:2-7) remarkable as showing the complete breach of the covenant with Jehovah on the part of the people. Nothing was more fundamental to this than the ordinance of circumcision. The uncircumcised man-child was to be cut off from his people (Gen. 17:14); and none such could eat of the passover at all (Ex. 12:48). Either these laws must have been disregarded or the passover must have been almost entirely omitted toward the close of the wilderness journey, when no one under forty could have been circumcised at all. For the express statement is, "All the people that came out of Egypt that were mates, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way, after they came out of Egypt. Now all the people that came out were circumcised; but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised." How the patience of the Lord with the people is manifest! but how evident that priesthood and Levitical service must almost have come to an end! If these, as all other of the things that happened to Israel, happened unto them for types (I Cor. 10:n), what admonition would this convey to us!

Moses, even, dies in the land of Moab for his sin; and of all that came as men out of the land of Egypt, Joshua and Caleb alone remained. An entire new generation enter into the land of Canaan, and here a new order of things begins.

For let us notice, with all the patient goodness manifested toward the people, and which God had declared when He took them up at Sinai the second time, He does not simply continue the trial of them in one form throughout. On the contrary, He varies it in many ways. This, on the one hand, makes it a more perfect trial, as is plain; on the other, it repeats again and again the admonition of a watchful holiness which never lapsed into indifference, while mercy warned of the time of long-suffering, however slowly, still surely running out. As we, upon whom the ends of the ages have come, look back upon them, it is blessed to see how, in the various forms of this trial, God presents to us in changing aspects typically His one unchanging theme,-Christ as the justification of His long-suffering patience as of His fullest grace. This, faith might even in those days in measure see, though not in the detailed glories in which we see it. For the voice of prophecy, even in the law itself, spoke of a Prophet to be raised up, a High-Priest of good things to come,-yea, a priestly King greater than Abraham, in whom Levi had once paid tithes. And we can rejoice in thinking how God thus could linger over the picture of Him to whom when at last come He would give out-spoken witness:"This is My beloved Son, in whom I have found My delight."

In the land, then, as I have said, a new order of things begins. Moses had been in the wilderness the representative of the Lord, the channel of the divine communications. In the land, Joshua stands before Eleazar the priest, and the priest it is who communicates to him the word of the Lord. He who is confessedly the leader of the people, and standing in Moses' place, is nevertheless not in the same place of nearness with God. Departure has brought in distance, while intercession based on sacrifice is that on which all depends. The link between God and the people is now the priesthood.

Before they pass over Jordan, all their wilderness history is rehearsed to them, that it may be practical wisdom for their new position, and then they are to take possession of the land which God had promised to Abraham; although not yet do they possess it according to the terms of the covenant with their fathers. They are on the footing of law, and must make good their title to the land by actual victory over the inhabitants of it. "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses." (Josh. 1:3.) Thus the extent of the land, as the Lord describes it to them, they never actually acquire. Only in David and Solomon's time does their dominion extend to the Euphrates, the Abrahamic boundary, while they never properly possess thus far; Philistines, Phoeniceans, Hittites, confine them in fact within much narrower limits. Two and a half tribes they leave on the other side of Jordan, defeated by their own success; just as in Christian times the church has gained by its victories a possession the wrong side of death.

In the land, the Lord delivers their enemies into their hands. But failure is every-where apparent. The sin of Achan, the defeat at Ai, the snare of Gibeon, follow one another in quick succession. They do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, but make gain of their sin by holding them as tributaries, then go after their gods, as the Lord had warned them, and are soon captives in the hands of those they had conquered.

If Gilgal characterizes the book of Joshua, and there the reproach of Egypt-of, their slavery there-is rolled away, Bochim (weeping) characterizes the book of Judges, where they return to a more shameful one. The history shows now their broken unity, the inroad of foreign enemies, the uprising of domestic ones. Again and again they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivers them out of their distress. A judge is raised up, and is the instrument of their deliverance; and as long as he judges, maintaining the authority and holiness of God among the people, the deliverance lasts. But their weakness (which is only their willfulness,) is fully apparent:the judge dies, and once more they wander; there is a new captivity, followed at length (because the mercy of God does not forsake them,) by a new deliverance.

These revivals become, however, more and more feeble and less decisive. At last, the priesthood itself fails utterly, and that when the judge and high-priest arc one. Eli's sons make themselves vile, and he restrains them not. The Lord swears that this iniquity shall not be purged with sacrifice and offering forever. And though He raise up for Himself a faithful priest, as He declares, and will build him a sure house, yet the order is again changed:Joshua stood before Eleazar, but now the priest is to walk before God's anointed (I Sam. 2:35, 3:14.)

In the meanwhile, ruin is complete. The Philistines come up against Israel, and smite them; they superstitiously send for the ark of God to deliver them- the ark of the covenant so often broken! They are again smitten, Hophni and Phinehas slain, the ark is taken; Eli falls backward at the news and breaks His neck, and Phinehas' wife, expiring, gives to her son a name expressive of the people's terrible condition. "And she named the child 'Ichabod,' saying, 'The glory is departed from Israel.'' The priesthood, as the link between God and Israel, had come to its final end. (To be continued.)

2. (Chap. 5:-viii:1.) In, but not of, the world The second section divides into three parts, which correspond to its three chapters:(1) New life as quickening out of the world; (2) as a practical life of faith in the world; (3) the gift of the Holy Ghost as rivers of living water, flowing forth into the world.

(1) Chap. 5:Quickening out of the world. In the former section, the believer was looked at simply as an individual, born of the Word and Spirit, and the Spirit in him for his own personal satisfaction and blessing. We now find the world lying in death and under judgment, and eternal life as that which brings out from death, and delivers from the possibility of judgment. The Lord, by whose word men live, is Himself the Judge; and thus they already have His sentence unto life (10:21-24).

In the beginning of the chapter, the man at the pool of Bethesda is given as an illustration of the powerlessness of the law for salvation, and the deliverance from' it of one saved by grace. But the truth goes beyond the figure. It is not merely impotence, but death, out of which Christ brings the soul; and instead of "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come to thee," the Lord says of His own, "He shall not come into judgment."

Bethesda is a figure of the law as given the second time, not the first, written by the hand of the mediator, and accompanied by the declaration of "The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin;" yet-and here is the impossibility of finding salvation under it-"who can by no means clear the guilty" (Ex. 34:6, 7).

Thus something heavenly, as grace is, is introduced into the law, an opposing element which "troubles" it, as the angel's visit the water here. Yet thus only can salvation be spoken of in connection with it:"If the wicked man turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive" (Ezek. 18:27). But this is still law, useless if there be not strength. The impotent man, type of all of Adam's race merely, has none. Nor does the Lord help him into the pool, but heals by His word:"Arise, take up thy bed, and walk."

This rouses the opposition of the Jews, and brings out the freedom of the recipient of grace from law; for "the same day was the Sabbath." The Lord gives the divine argument, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." How could He rest with man's need so great, as He had rested when creation, come fresh from His hand, was only good? The Son, the Word, here as elsewhere, was only giving expression to the Father's heart. Law could not satisfy that; only the activity of grace could do so.

His claim as Son of the Father brings out all the enmity of man against Him; but all the blessing of the soul depends upon it. Thus alone can He manifest God, all things being put into His hand, and power of life or judgment committed absolutely to Him. So he that hears His word, and believes on Him who sent Him, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment. Dead though he has been, the voice of the Son of God has penetrated with life-giving power; and so shall, at His bidding, the body rise to life or judgment (18-29).

The rest of the chapter dwells upon the testimony God had given to Him; for were it His own witness merely, it would lack the character of truth. John had thus borne witness, though nothing short of a divine one would befit Him. There were His works, and the Father's own testimony:the Scripture they professed faith in as life-giving testified of Him, yet they would not come to Him. One coming in his own name (Antichrist) they would receive. Self-seeking in them it was that hindered faith, and turned their trusted Moses into an accuser.

(2) Chap. 6:Eternal life as a life of faith. In the sixth chapter, we have the practical character of eternal life as a life of faith in the world, sustained by the bread of life, the antitype of the manna. Here also we have an introductory scene, in which first the Lord feeds the multitude, and is rejected as much by the would-be homage as by open denial. In fact, the passover is nigh (5:4). He is going to suffer. He withdraws Himself, therefore, from them to a mountain Himself alone. The disciples go over the sea also alone in darkness and tempest. Here we see the voyage of faith through a contrary scene, closed by Christ's coining again. "Then they willingly received Him into the ship, and immediately the ship was at the land whither they were going."

These things are the introduction to the discourse which follows, in which the Lord mainly insists upon the provision for the life of faith, the "meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you; for Him hath God the Father sealed." It is not only that the life endures, but the meat endures as long as the life does:it has God's seal upon it, the stamp of His approbation, and that which He seals thus abides forever. Christ, as Son of Man, gives us thus the food of an imperishable life';"the bread of God is He who cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world." Here is the human, as in the fifth chapter was the divine, side of this priceless gift. There, the dead heard and lived:here, the perishing sinners of Adam's race receive, and never die. Man's work, to which God calls him, is to believe on Him whom He has sent (10:27-33).

And yet it is the Father's will which alone secures believers, ("All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me;") as it is that which alone secures the continuance of their salvation-"Of all the Father giveth Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day." When the Jews murmur at Him, the Lord repeats yet more emphatically that men must be drawn, must hear and learn of the Father, to come unto Him. But he who cats lives forever; and the bread is His flesh, which He will give for the life of the world (10:34-51).

From this point, the Lord insists also on the necessity of His death. Not only must His flesh be eaten, but His blood be drunk, or there is no life; where these are, there is eternal life, and Christ abides in him and he in Christ. Dependence in intimate relationship characterizes that life:"As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me" (10:52-58).

But this brings out the latent unbelief even in professed disciples. He explains that it is not of literal flesh He speaks:what if they see the Son o Man ascend where He was before? His words are spirit and life. But many draw back and walk no more with Him; so that He turns even to the twelve and asks, "Will ye also go away?" Peter professes the faith of the rest; and the Lord answers that even of these chosen few one was a devil.
(3) Chap. 7:The gift of the Spirit-rivers of living water. The seventh chapter gives a striking picture of the world, in unbelief and enmity to God. The Jews are keeping the feast of tabernacles-the thanksgiving for wanderings passed and rest attained in the land; but they had not rest. The Lord therefore refuses to own the feast by going up to it publicly and at the beginning. His time (though in the world He made, and amid His own,) had not come:it was morally unprepared, and how much had He to accomplish for it! By and by He departs secretly, and in the midst of the feast goes up to the temple and teaches. They wonder at His knowing letters, having never learnt. He declares His doctrine to be of God, to be learnt as such by those who will do His will, and manifested by the glory that it gave to God. He convicts them, on the other hand, of unrighteous judgment, and breaking their own law; and their ignorance of Him as ignorance of Him that sent Him. He warns them then of His departure from them soon, which they interpret of His going to the Gentiles.

The last, the great day of the feast the Lord chooses for His most pregnant word. Men conscious of their need He invites to Him to quench their thirst; and he who believes on Him, not only should find satisfaction, but abundance; out of his belly-the very thing that craves,-should flow rivers of living water. Thus, if rest had not come for men at large, believers should be, in the world, the witness of infinite fullness free to men.

But for this Jesus must be glorified. Not till the work of atonement was accomplished could the Spirit of God thus be in men. Not till the Rock was smitten could the streams flow out. It is a testimony peculiar to Christianity therefore. In Judaism there were partition-walls, and not an outflow.

But this testimony finds out many a thirsty soul, who, realizing his need, realizes the divine character of that which fathoms and meets it. "Many of the people, therefore, when they heard this saying, said, 'Of a truth, this is the Prophet.' Others said, 'This is the Christ.'" But unbelief has ready its excuses, which betray, as ever, only its ignorance:so there is a division because of Him. The officers sent to take Him come back empty-handed, owning the power of His words. The Pharisees can plead as conclusive their own universal unbelief. Nicodemus utters a timid protest. And every one goes to his own house:He who has none, patient though rejected, to the mount of Olives.

"PETER, the Jewish apostle, tells us that Christ "once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." Somehow, this mighty truth, in practical power, has been ignored of late years. The immediate effect of the death of Christ is to bring, in love and righteous-ness, the sinner to God. Confidence, too, is established in the heart. God is known, and becomes the "rock" of the heart, and one's everlasting portion. (Ps. 73:26.)

This truth of being brought now to God is not to be regarded as a mere abstract statement, nor to be accepted as a cold, doctrinal point of scriptural truth. It is a present, blessed, joyous fact,-one full of richest consolation to the afflicted saint, and of immense moral power in moments of human weakness. Is any thing, great or small, a difficulty to God? Can any power of evil prevail against God's elect? Can our poverty make too many or great demands upon His grace-the grace and love of Him who gave His Son to die? Like Israel of old, we are a people without resources; in the desert, too, without one spring of blessing; in the wilderness, without a path through it But Israel's God is ours. He is our resource; our springs are in Him; He is our Shepherd and Guide. God with us all along the way and in our midst is faith's grand answer to every human need and sorrow.
W.S. (Scotland.)

THE DIVINE ACCOUNT OF CREATION.
It must be self-evident that the Creator alone can answer the questions How? and Why? which the human mind from earliest infancy gives utterance to, as to our and other worlds. Neither man nor angel-themselves the subjects of creation -can, in the nature of things, supply the needed information. Man can guess, conjecture; angels never do ; every act and thought of theirs has certainty impressed upon it, for they are "hearkening unto the voice of His word" (Ps. 103:20.)

Now God has communicated to mankind, through Moses, an orderly and succinct account of creation within the compass of thirty-four verses in the fully inspired and most venerable document in existence-the book of Genesis. The style is so simple that a child can understand; yet so majestic in its very simplicity,-so Godlike the utterances, as to carry conviction to the intellectual faith of the civilized world. The manner, too, in which "creation's story" is told stamps the narrative as of God. Man would have given labored arguments and ingenious proofs in truth of his assertions. But not so God. His spoken or written word is enough, and the spiritual instincts of all say so also. Hence, we have no reasoning, argument, nor proof advanced. Who does not fail to see how worthy, how suitable in God, how unlike man?

Let us note a few of the verbal and other peculiarities of this interesting narrative. The first three verses of chap. 2:complete the account of creation commenced in the first verse of the Bible; this gives us in all thirty-four verses. The name of the Creator-"God" ("Elohim"-plural) occurs just thirty-four times. "Jehovah," "The Almighty," "Most High," etc., are titles. "The LORD," or "Jehovah-God," expressing moral relationship to the creature, occurs in chap. 2:eleven times, when man was in innocence; while in chap, 3:, which shows man in sin, it is equally insisted upon, occurring nine times. The circumstances in which the creature may be placed, or in which he may be found, never touch, nor weaken, in the least degree, his direct responsibility to God. That truth, so vital to all, and which neither grace, government, nor law can ever set aside, having been established in those two chapters, the relationship-title alone is used by the Spirit in chap. 4:"The LORD," or "Jehovah, "is found ten times. It is interesting to observe that Satan is the first to deny the moral relationship of the creature to God; the woman followed suit (see 10:I and 5 of chap. 3:for the former, and 5:3 of same chapter and 5:25 of chap. 4:for the latter).

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The third word in the Bible, which gives name and character to the first of the sixty-six books of the Bible, is used in some interesting connections. "In the beginning was the Word" (Jno. 1:i) refers to eternity; "In the beginning God created" (Gen. 1:I) refers to the primal creation of the universe; "From the beginning" refers to the incarnation of Christ (I Jno. 1:I); "The beginning of the gospel" (Mark 1:I) refers to the commencement of the public ministry of our Lord.

Thus we have eternity, creation, incarnation, and public service of Christ, each used in association with this word. "God created" then matter is not eternal, nor has it been produced by evolution. "Created:" certainly pre-existing material is not supposed. The primary meaning of the word "create" is allowed by all to signify the production of what in no sense previously existed. The popular phrase is not so far astray in thought as it. may be in expression-"something out of nothing." But we greatly prefer the apostle's explanation in Hebrews 11:3-"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made [or, had not their origin] of things which do appear."

"The heavens and the earth" is an expression for the universe. The "heavens," not heaven. In the first thirty-five verses of the Bible, we have nine occurrences of the word heaven, or heavens; but in all those various instances of the word, it is in the dual number in the original-two heavens, not the plural three or more.

The first verse of the Bible is a comprehensive statement of weighty truth. Those ten English words rest the human brain, and scatter, like chaff before the wind, the speculations, the baseless theories of ancients and moderns, and sets creation upon a ground worthy of it, for no world has a moral history such as ours. Yet, as to number and magnitude, there are other worlds beyond human ken. They are, says Herschel, "scattered by millions, like glittering dust, on the black ground of the general heavens." But in our planet, small as it is compared to Saturn or Jupiter, the grandest counsels of eternity, the most magnificent facts of time, have their accomplishment. Here Christ lived, walked, wept, loved, and died. Here the voice of Him who, in majestic tones, said, "Let light be, and light was," uttered on the cross the morally grander words," It is finished," and bowed His head in death for sin.

The first verse of the Bible is an absolutely independent statement. It is in no wise a summary of what follows. The when? God created is undefined in Scripture, and incapable of solution by science. The first and subsequent dates of Scripture refer to man and his history in responsibility on the earth. (Gen. 5:3.) The antiquity of the globe is alone known to the Creator, and probably to angels. (Job. 38:7.) That the heavens and the earth were created in light, beauty, order,- yea, perfection itself, should not, we suppose, require proof." God is light" and would necessarily create according to His nature. "His work is perfect" is the sure testimony of Scripture, and that whether in the moral or physical worlds. (Deut. 32:4.) Here, several questions suggest themselves to inquiring minds, to all of which we can only reply, We know not. When did God create? How long did the heavens and earth abide in their perfection? Was it Satan who brought the earth into the ruin and desolation as witnessed in 5:2 of the Bible? We know he effected the ruin of man. How long did the earth exist as a ruin till acted upon by God? In the primal creation of ver. I, man had no place, nor had he existence in the material ruin of ver. 2. Man, having no existence then, could have no responsibility or blame in the desolation which overtook the primeval earth. We are glad to accept facts from whatever quarter they reach us, be the source infidel or Christian; but we are chary in accepting the statements of science. We do not fear for the Bible, for the God who made the stones wrote the Bible, and it is an ABSOLUTE IMPOSSIBILITY that there can be a conflict between the facts of science and inspired statements. Man has not been found fossil in any strata formed previous to the historical period, and never will be, while the state of the rocks clearly enough demonstrates that there were many and successive creations of animal and vegetable life before man was created. W.S. (Scotland.) (To be continued, D. V.)

written when I learned the sweetness of

"Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

My God, my soul enraptured is
With love and grace divine
Which brought me from my lost estate
And made me wholly Thine.

My cup with blessing Thou hast filled–
I can but Thee adore,
And from Thy ceaseless love to me
My cup doth oft flow o'er.

No effort now to worship Thee-
New life the heart expands,
And praise flows forth to Thee, my God,
And glory to the Lamb.

My heart has treasured up Thy love-
So vast, boundless, and free,
My raptured soul with joy exclaims,
My springs are all in Thee !

August 1886

In taking up the lessons of the dispensation of law, we must carefully distinguish-two different and, in many respects, contrasted elements. As a trial of man, which, in the highest degree, it was, we have already seen it to be the working out (in a divine way, and therefore to a true result) of an experiment which was man's thought, not God's. God could not need to make an experiment. Man needed it, because he would not accept God's judgment, already pronounced before (as a fallen being) he had been tried at all, in the proper sense of trial; "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil, and that continually." God's way of acceptance for him had been, therefore, from the beginning, by sacrifice, in which the death of a substitute covered the sinner before Him, closing his whole responsibility naturally in the place in which he stood as a creature.

The "way of Cain" was man's resistance to the verdict upon himself, and so to the way of grace proclaimed. God then undertook to prove him, taking him on his own ground, and bidding him justify his own thoughts of himself by actual experiment.

But this is only the law on one side of it. It was what made it law, and gave its character to the whole dispensation. Yet underneath, and in spite of all this, God necessarily kept to and maintained His own way, and to the ear of faith told out, more and more, that way of His, although in "dark sayings," from which only Christianity has really lifted off the vail. Thus, and thus alone, a sacrificial worship was incorporated with the law, and circumcision, "a seal of the righteousness of faith," remained as the entrance into the new economy.

First, then, let us look at the law as law, and afterward as a typical system.

As law, or the trial of man, we find him put in the most favorable circumstances possible for its reception. The ten commandments appeal, at the very outset, to the fact of the people having been brought out of the land of Egypt; it was He who had brought them out who bade them"have no other gods" before Him. He had made Himself known in such a way as to manifest Himself God over all gods, His power being- put forth in their behalf, so as to bind them by the tie of gratitude to Himself. How could they dispute His authority, or doubt His love? His holiness, too, was declared in a variety of precepts, which, if burdensome as ceremonial, appealed even the more powerfully on that account to the very sense of the most careless-hearted. There were severest penalties for disobedience, but also rewards for obedience, of all that man's heart sinlessly could enjoy. The providence of God was made apparent in continual miracles, by which their need in the wilder-ness was daily met. Who could doubt, and who refuse, the blessing of obedience to a law so given and so sanctified?

A wall of separation was built up between them and the nations round; and inside this inclosure the divinely guarded people were to walk together, all evil and rebellion excluded, the course of the world here set right, all ties of relationship combining their influence for good; duty not costing aught, but finding on every side its sweet, abundant recompense. Who (one would think) could stumble? and who could stray?

Surely the circumstances here were as favorable as possible to man's self-justification under this trial, if justify himself he could. If he failed now, how could he hope ever to succeed?

That he did fail, we all know-openly and utterly he failed, not merely by unbidden lusts, which his will refused and denied, but in conscious, deliberate disobedience, equal to his father Adam's, and that before the tables of the law had come down to him out of the mount into which Moses had gone up to receive them.

The first trial of law was over. Judgment took its course, although mercy, sovereign in its exercise, interposed to limit, it. Again God took the people up, upon the intercession of Moses-type of a greater and an effectual Mediator. Man was ungodly, but was hope irrecoverably gone? Could not mercy avail for man in a mingled system from which man's works should at least not wholly be excluded ?

Now this, in fact, is the great question under law, rigidly enforced:it is easily allowed that man must fail, and be condemned. He does not love his neighbor as himself, still less love God with all his soul and strength. Is there nothing short of this that God can admit, then? He can show mercy; can He not abate something of this rigor, and give man opportunity to repent, and recover himself?

And this is the thought that underlies much that is mistaken for the gospel now. A new baptism may give it a Christian name, and yet leave it un-regenerate legalism after all. For this-only correcting some mistakes-is what the second giving of the law takes up. It is an old experiment, long since worked out, an anachronism in Christian times. "The law is not of faith; "these are two opposite principles, which do not modify, but destroy, one another.

A second time the tables of the law are given to Israel; and now, along with this, God speaks of and declares the mercy which He surely has." The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, for giving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." It is the conjunction of these two things that creates the difficulty. We recognize the truth of both, but how shall they unite in the blessing of man? This doubt perplexes fatally all legal systems. How far will mercy extend? and where will righteousness draw the line beyond which it cannot pass? How shall we reconcile the day of grace and the day of judgment? The true answer is, that under law no reconciliation is at all possible. The experiment has been made, and the result proclaimed. It is of the law thus given the second time, and not the first, that the apostle asserts that it is the "ministration of death" and "of condemnation."

One serious mistake that has to be rectified here is, that the law can be tolerant to a certain (undefined) measure of transgression. It is not so. It is not on legal ground that God "forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin." The law says, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them." If on other ground (in this case, as ever, that of sacrifice,) mercy can be extended, and even forgiveness,-if man be permitted to cancel the old leaf and turn over a new, yet the new must be kept unblotted, as the old was not. "When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness," he must do "that which is lawful and right," to "save his soul alive." And thus the commandments, written the second time upon the tables of stone, though now by the mediator's hand, were identical with the first. Here, the law cannot give way by a jot or a tittle, and therefore man's case is hopeless. The law is the ministration of condemnation only.

That was the foreseen issue, and the divine purpose in it, and God, to make that issue plain, (that man might not, unless he would, be a moment deceived as to it,) lets Moses know, as the people's representative, that Hfs face cannot be seen. He does indeed see the glory after it has passed- His back parts, not His face. God is unknown:there is no way to clear the guilty, and therefore none by which man may stand before Him.

Thus the law, in any form of it, is the "ministration of condemnation" only. That it was the "ministration of death" also, implies its power, not to produce holiness, but, as the apostle calls it, "the strength of sin." His experience of it-"I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." Forbidding lust, it aroused and manifested it."Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of lust"-thus "deceived me, and by it slew me."

Of this state of hopeless condemnation and evil, that physical death which God had annexed to disobedience at the first was the outward expression and seal. In it, man, made like the beasts that perish, passed out of the sphere of his natural responsibility and the scene for which he had been created, and passed out by the judgment of God, which cast, therefore, its awful shadow over all beyond death. The token of God's rejection of man as fallen is passed upon all men every where, with but one exception in the ages before Moses. Enoch had walked with God, and was not, for God took him. That made it only the plainer, if possible, what was its significance. It was actual sentence upon man for sin, and all men were under it as sentenced, not under probation.

If God, therefore, took up man to put him under probation, as in the law He manifestly did, He must needs conditionally remove the sentence under which he lay. "The man who doeth these things shall live in them" meant, not that he should die, and go to heaven, as people almost universally interpret it, but the contrary-that he should recover the place from which Adam had fallen, and stay on earth. Faith in Abraham, indeed, looked forward to a better country-that is, a heavenly. But the law is not of faith, nor was Abraham under it. Faith, owning man's hopelessness of ruin, was given in measure to prove the mystery of what, to all else, were God's dark sayings. To man as man, resisting God's sentence upon himself, the law spoke, not of death, and a world beyond, which he might, as he listed, people with his own imaginings, but of the lifting off of the sentence under which he lay-of the way by which he could plead his title to exemption from it.

Thus the issue of the trial could not be in the least doubtful. Every grey hair convicted him as, under law, ruined and hopeless. Every furrow on his brow was the confirmation of the old Adamic sentence upon himself personally:and the law, in this sense also, was the ministration of death, God using it to give distinct expression to what the fact itself should have graven upon men's consciences. It is this (so misunderstood as it is now) that gives the key to those expressions in the Psalms and elsewhere which materialism would pervert to its own purposes:"For in death there is no remembrance of Thee; in hades [it is not "the grave"] who shall give Thee thanks?"

God would have it so plain, that he might run that reads it, that upon the ground of law, spite of God's mercy (which He surely has), man's case is hopeless. "By deeds of law shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin."

Yet, God having declared His forgiveness of iniquity, transgression, and sin, the second trial by law could go on, as it did go on, for some eight hundred years, till the Babylonish captivity. Then the legal covenant really ended. The people were Lo-ammi, a sentence never yet recalled.
As law simply, then, the Mosaic system was the, complete and formal trial of man as man, all possible assistance being given him, and every motive, whether of self-interest or of gratitude to God, being brought to bear on him, the necessity of faith almost, as it might seem, set aside by repeated manifestations of Jehovah's presence and power, such as must force conviction upon all.

The issue of the trial, as foreseen and designed of God, was to bring out the perfect hopelessness of man's condition, as ungodly, and without strength, unable to stand before Him for a moment. But then, the truth of his helplessness ex-posed, the mercy of God could not permit his being left there without the assurance of effectual help provided for him. In this way, another element than that of law entered into the law, and the tabernacle and temple services, taking up the principles of circumcision and of sacrifice, of older date than law, incorporated there in a ritual of most striking character, which spread before the eye opened to take it in lessons of spiritual wisdom which in our day we turn back to read with deeper interest and delight the more we know of them.

The language of type and parable God had used from the beginning. As yet, He could not speak plainly of what, these bear abundant witness, ever filled His heart. Unbelief in man had damned back the living stream of divine goodness, which was gathering behind the barrier all the while for its overflow. In the meanwhile, the Psalms-the very heart of the Old Testament-declare what faith could already realize of the blessedness of "the man whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered." Faith tasted and declared, as the apostle could take up such words afterward, to show, not the blessedness of keeping law, but of divine forgiveness. "It shall be forgiven him" was indeed said, with perfect plainness, in connection with that shedding of blood for man, which testified at once to his utter failure, and of resource in God for his extremest need. It was not, and could not be, perfect peace or justification that could yet be preached or known, but a "forbearance," of which none could predict the limits. Still, faith had here its argument, and, in fact, found ever its fullest confidence sustained.

Very striking it is, when once this dealing of God with faith is seen, how the very burdensome-ness of the rigid ceremonial changes its character, and becomes only the urgency of an appeal to the conscience, which, if entertained, would open the way to the knowledge of the blessedness of which the psalmist speaks. These continual sacrifices, if they did indeed, as the apostle urges, by their frequent repetition, proclaim their own insufficiency, nevertheless, by the very fact, became continual preachers, in the most personal way, to the men of Israel, of their ruin, and of its sole remedy, and how the constant shedding of blood would keep them in mind of that divine commentary, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood ; and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make atonement for your souls:for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." (Lev.17:11.)

How striking, too, that circumcision, which was clearly before the law, was express!
– the only way by which even the Israelite-born could claim Jehovah as his covenant-God, or keep the memorial feast of national redemption! For, as the apostle says, it was " the seal of the righteousness of faith" not law-keeping, as the covenant of which it was the token was "of promise"-the promise of an "almighty God," when in Abraham, almost a hundred years old, all natural hope was dead forever. To walk before that omnipotent God in confessed impotence, trusting and proving His power, was that to which he was called. As yet, there was no law to saddle that with conditions; and in memory of this, in token of its abiding significance, the Gentile "stranger" could still be circumcised, with all his males, and keep the passover as an Israelite-born.

How tender, too, the goodness which had provided that whoever of Abraham's seed should turn to the history of his forefather after the flesh, should find written there, and of this very depositary of all the promises, such plain, unambiguous words of divine testimony as these:"He believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness." Of no other was this in the same way written. What hand inscribed it there, just when it should speak most plainly, and to those most in need? Just where, on the incoming of Christianity, I should be ready with its unmistakable testimony to the central principle of Christianity itself. Such is the prophetic character of the inspired Word. The same presaging Spirit who dictated to Peter in men's thoughts, the first authority in the church those two doctrines which are the death-blow of ritualism, new birth through the word of the gospel, and the common priesthood of all believers (1 Pet. 1:23-25; 2:5-9), recorded by Moses this testimony as to Abraham. Blessed be God for His infinitely precious Word!

It was in connection with law that all the books of the Old Testament were given, and Israel, as is plain, were they to whom all was committed. It seems, therefore, here the place to speak briefly of their general character as affected by this. There are certain things, at least, that one may indicate as of special importance, in view of many things around us at the present time.

In the first place, it was not yet the time for that "plainness of speech" which, as the apostle says, belongs to Christianity. This we have already seen, but it is not superfluous to insist on it still further. The vail between man and God necessitated a vailed speech also-not, indeed, altogether impenetrable to faith, but requiring, in the words of Solomon, "to understand proverb and strange speech,* the words of the wise and their dark sayings." *Not, as in the Authorized Version, "interpretation, "interpretation," but " what needs interpretation*." Even as to man himself, while his trial was yet going on, there could not be the full discovery of his condition. We have not yet the New-Testament doctrine of "the flesh," nor of new birth, although there was that which should have prepared an Israelitish teacher for the understanding of it when announced. Election was only yet national, not individual, and therefore to privilege only, not eternal life. Adoption, too, was national:the true children of God could not yet claim or know their place as such. No cry of "Abba, Father," was or could be raised. The heirs differed not as yet from servants, being under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. (Gal. 4.) As to all these things, there were preparatory utterances, and all the more as the ruin of man came out, therefore, in those prophetical books which fittingly closed the canon of the Old Testament.

Even the types had in them the character which the apostle ascribes to the law:"having a shadow of good things to come, but not the very image of the things." The unrent vail, the repetition of the sacrifices, the successional priesthood, as he points out, had all this character. They were the necessary witnesses that the "law made nothing perfect,"-that under it "the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest." Of these was the intermediate priesthood of Aaron's sons, which was the provision for a people unable themselves to draw near to God ; which, with all else, the Judaizing ritualism of the day copies, and maintains as Christian. The apostle's answer to it is, "By one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified, Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us; for after that He had said before, . . . ' Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say, His flesh, and having a High-Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith." (Heb. 10:14-22.) Sin put away, and distance from God removed, ritualism, in all its forms, becomes an impossibility.

In the second place, as the law dealt with man here and now, and did not relegate the issue of its own trial to another time and place, where its verdict could not be known by men in this life; the earth is that upon which man's attention is fixed, and that whether for judgment or reward. There are hints here also of the fuller truths which the New Testament unfolds; but manifestly there is no promise of heaven to the keeper of the law, nor even threat of hell-that is, of the lake of fire-to the transgressors of it. Judgment there is, and eternal judgment, but death is rather the stroke of it-the horror of this shadowing the eternity beyond. Job speaks of resurrection, and the prophets also, though in them it is only applied figuratively to national restoration ; yet this shows they held it as admitted truth. Outside of the Old Testament we learn, from the epistle to the Hebrews, that the patriarchs expected "a better country-that is, a heavenly," but we should not know it from Genesis. Faith penetrated, in some measure, it is clear, the "dark sayings," and found all not dark. A recognized body of truth was received by the Pharisees, which embraced, not only resurrection for the just, but of the unjust also, and spoke, not merely of hades, but of Gehenna also-the true "hell." This only makes the more remarkable the constant style even of the prophets. The confounding of judgments upon the living, by which the earth will be rid of its destroyers and prepared for blessing, with the judgment of the dead at the "great white throne," is one of the errors under which annihilationism shelters itself most securely.

On the other hand, this earthly blessing, still further confused by Israel being (as commonly) interpreted to mean the Church, has been by current "adventism" made to take the place of the true Christian expectation of an inheritance in heaven. And this, too, has linked itself with annihilationism in its extremest and most materialistic forms. We must keep the stand-points of the Old and New Testaments-of Israel and the Church, earthly and heavenly-clear in our minds, and there is no difficulty. "My kinsmen according to the flesh" says the apostle; "to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Rom. 9:3,4.) All of these for them earthly blessings. Christians are "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. 1:3.)

If this should seem at all to take the Old Testament away from us who belong to another dispensation, we must remember two things:first, that if it has not so directly to do with us, it has, most assuredly, with Christ no less on that account. His glories run through the whole; history, psalm, and prophecy are full of Him. But what reveals Him is ever of truest blessing for the soul. Oh to be simpler in taking in all this, in which the Father gives us communion with His own thoughts of His Son!

And then, when we look at the typical teaching, now fully for the first time disclosed, when even the things that happened to the favored nation, and are recorded in their history, "happened to them for types," we find what is in the fullest way ours-"written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come." (I Cor. 10,11.) How wonderful this! and how sad to think, on the one hand of the disuse, on the other of the reckless abuse, of that precious teaching!

We have now to look at the history of the age of law.

"And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth."(John 1:14.)

But what attractiveness there would have been in Him for any eye or heart that had been opened by the Spirit! This is witnessed to us by the apostles. They knew but little about Him doctrinally, and they got nothing by remaining with Him-I mean, nothing in this world. Their condition in the world was any thing but improved by their walking with Him; and it cannot be said that they availed themselves of His miraculous power. Indeed, they questioned it rather than used it. And yet they clung to Him. They did not company with Him because they eyed Him as the full and ready storehouse of all provisions for them. On no one occasion, I believe we may say, did they use the power that was in Him for themselves. And yet there they were with Him,-troubled when He talked of leaving, and found weeping when they thought they had indeed lost Him.

Surely, we may again say, What attractiveness there must have been in Him for any eye or heart that had been opened by the Spirit or drawn by the Father! and with what authority one look or one word from Him would enter at times! We see this in Matthew. That one word on the Lord's lips, "Follow Me," was enough. And this authority and this attractiveness was felt by men of the most opposite temperaments. The slow-hearted, reasoning Thomas, and the ardent, uncalculating Peter, were alike kept near and around this wondrous center. Even Thomas would breathe, in that presence, the spirit of the earnest Peter, and say, under force of this attraction, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him."

Shall we not say, What will it be to see and feel all this by and by in its perfection! when all, gathered from every clime and color and character of the wide-spread human family,-all nations, kindreds, people, and tongues are with Him and around Him in a world worthy of Him! We may dwell, in memory, on these samples of His preciousness to hearts like our own, and welcome them as pledges of that which, in hope, is ours as well as theirs.

The light of God shines, at times, before us, leaving us, as we may have power, to discern it, to enjoy it, to use it, to follow it. It does not so much challenge us, or exact of us; but, as I said, it shines before us, that we may reflect it, if we have grace. We see it doing its work after this manner in the early church at Jerusalem. The light of God there exacted nothing. It shone brightly and powerfully, but that was all. Peter spoke the language of that light when he said to Ananias, "While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy power?" It had made no demands upon Ananias; it simply shone in its beauty beside him or before him, that he might walk in it according to his measure. And such, in a great sense, is the moral glory of the Lord Jesus. Our first duty to that light is to learn from it what He is. We are not to begin by anxiously and painfully measuring ourselves by it, but by calmly and happily and thankfully learning Him in all His perfect moral humanity. And surely this glory is departed! There is no living image of it here. We have its record in the evangelists, but not its reflection any where.

But having its record, we may say, as one of our own poets has said –

"There has one object been disclosed on earth
That might commend the place:but now 'tis gone:
Jesus is with the Father."

But though not here, beloved, He is just what He was. We are to know Him as it were by memory; and memory has no capacity to weave fictions; memory can only turn over living, truthful pages. And thus we know Him for His own eternity. In an eminent sense, the disciples knew Him personally. It was His person, His presence, Himself, that was their attraction. And if one may speak for others, it is more of this we need. We may be busy in acquainting ourselves with truths about Him, and we may make proficiency that way; but with all our knowledge, and with all the disciples' ignorance, they may leave us far behind in the power of a commanding affection toward Himself. And surely, beloved, we will not refuse to say that it is well when the heart is drawn by Him beyond what the knowledge we have of Him may account for. It tells us that He Himself has been rightly apprehended. And there are simple souls still that exhibit this; but generally, it is not so. Nowadays, our light, our acquaintance with truth, is beyond the measure of the answer of our heart to Himself. And it is painful to us, if we have any just sensibilities at all, to discover this.

"The prerogative of our Christian faith," says one," the secret of its strength is this, that all which it has, and all which it offers, is laid up in a Person. This is what has made it strong, while so much else has proved weak; that it has a Christ as its middle point, that it has not a circumference without a center; that it has not merely deliverance, but a Deliverer,-not redemption only, but a Redeemer as well. This is what makes it fit for wayfaring men. This is what makes it sunlight, and all else, when compared with it, but as moonlight; fair it may be, but cold and ineffectual, while here the light and the life are one." And again he says, "And oh, how great the difference between submitting ourselves to a complex of rules, and casting ourselves upon a beating heart,-between accepting a system, and cleaving to a Person! Our blessedness-and let us not miss it-is, that our treasures are treasured in a Person who is not for one generation a present Teacher and a living Lord, and then for all succeeding generations a past and a dead one; but who is present and living for all." Good words, and seasonable words, I judge indeed, I may say these are.

A great combination of like moral glories in the Lord's ministry may be traced, as well as in His character. And in ministry, we may look at Him in relation to God, to Satan, and to man. As to God, the Lord Jesus, in His own person and ways, was always representing man to God as God would have him. He was rendering back human nature as a sacrifice of rest, or of sweet savor, as incense pure and fragrant, as a sheaf of untainted first-fruits out of the human soil. He restored to God His complacency in man, which sin or Adam had taken from Him. God's repentance that He had made man (Gen. 6:6.) was exchanged for delight and glory in man again (Luke 2:14). And this offering was made to God in the midst of all contradictions, all opposing circumstances, sorrows, fatigues, necessities, and heart-breaking disappointments. Wondrous altar! wondrous offering! A richer sacrifice it infinitely was than an eternity of Adam's innocency would have been. And as lie was thus representing man to God, so was He representing God to man.-(From "The Moral Glory of the Lord Jesus Christ" by J.G.B.)

Is this the peace of God -this strange, sweet calm?
The weary day is at its zenith still,
Yet 'tis as if beside some cool, clear rill,
Through shadowy stillness, rose an evening psalm,
And all the noise of life were hushed away,
And tranquil gladness reigned with gently soothing sway.

It was not so just now. I turned aside
With aching head, and heart most sorely bowed;
Around me, cares and griefs in crushing crowd;
While only rose the sense, in swelling tide,
Of weakness, insufficiency, and sin;
And fear, and gloom, and doubt, in mighty flood rolled in.

That rushing flood I had no strength to meet,
Nor power to flee:my present, future, past,
My self, my sorrow, and my sin I cast,
In utter helplessness, at Jesu's feet;
Then bent me to the storm, if such His will.
He saw the winds and waves, and whispered, "Peace;
be still!"

And there was calm !O Saviour, I have proved
That Thou to help and save art really near;
How else this quiet rest from grief, and fear,
And all distress? The cross is not removed ;
I must go forth to bear it as before,
But, leaning on Thine arm, I dread its weight no more.

Is it indeed Thy peace? I have not tried
To analyze my faith, dissect my trust,
Or measure if belief be full and just,
And therefore claim Thy peace. But Thou hast died:
I know that this is true, and true for me,
And, knowing it, I come, and cast my all on Thee.

It is not that I feel less weak, but Thou
Wilt be my strength; it is not that I see
Less sin, but more of pardoning love with Thee,
And all-sufficient grace. Enough! And now
All fluttering thought is stilled ; I only rest,
And feel that Thou art near, and know that I am blest.

F. R. H.

We now come to look at the efficacy of atonement-that is to say, its connection with redemption. For redemption is not, in Scripture, what it is for many, a thing accomplished for the whole world. No passage which hints at this even can be produced from the Word. Redemption was, for Israel, the breaking of Pharaoh's yoke. The redemption of our body is accomplished in resurrection (Rom. 8:23). "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace" (Eph. 1:7). Such statements sufficiently show us that redemption is an accomplished deliverance, that it involves, not a salvable state, but a salvation, which "the world as a whole never knows. And redemption is "through His blood" shed in atonement:it is that in which the proper efficacy of atonement is declared. "Not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, . . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" ( Pet. 1:18, 19).

A difficulty which has divided Christians comes in here. If redemption is by atonement, and atonement-the "propitiation "of 1 John 2:2,-is for the whole world, how is it that in fact all are not redeemed ? The answer to which is given by some that atonement is only conditionally efficacious, and this is plainly the only possible one if such texts as that just cited are accepted in their natural sense. The alternative is only to explain, as all strict Calvinists do, the "world," as simply the elect among Jews and Gentiles. But this is not what "the whole world "means. What would the very persons who urge this think, if when the same apostle in the same epistle says, "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness," a similar limitation were maintained? "We" and "the whole world" are no more contrasted in the one case than "ours" and "of the whole world" are in the other. Or again when Paul declares that "whatsoever the law saith it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth might be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God," if it were contended that this meant any thing less than all men, who would admit it?

Take 1 Tim. 2:1-6 as another statement. Prayer is enjoined for all men, for God our Saviour "will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth; for there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." Here, the "all men" must be consistently interpreted throughout.

So the gospel which Paul preached to the Corinthians was that "Christ died for our sins" (1 Cor. 15:3), as the doctrine of his second epistle is that "He died for all" (5:14). Only on this ground, indeed, could the gospel be sent out, as it confessedly is, to "every creature," or could it be spoken of as "the grace of God which bringeth salvation to all" (Tit. 2:2).

Only a provision actually made for all could fulfill the fair meaning of such texts as these; and we may not bring into them any doctrine of election, to limit them. They are the testimony of the desire of God's heart for all. They are the assurance that if men die unsaved, the responsibility of their ruin is with themselves alone. They are the encouragement to implicit confidence in a love that welcomes, and has title to welcome, all who come by Christ to God.
But while these texts seem very clear, and the sufficiency and applicability of the atonement are in words allowed by some who contest even the meaning of them, there are others which to many occasion difficulty in regard to a "propitiation for the sins of the whole world." These are the texts which speak of substitution in the strict sense.

Substitution is not found as a term in Scripture, but the fact of it is abundantly found. Every victim whose blood was shed in atonement for the sin of him who offered it was a real substitute for the offerer. It has been objected that the word for "substitution" does not occur in connection with the Levitical sacrifices or the Lord's work; but that the "Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for [άvτι-instead of] many" is said in both Matthew and Mark, while in 1 Tim. 2:6 we have the word άvτιλυτρov -a ransom-price. But, as I have said, the doctrine is there where the term is not. If the Lord were "made a curse for us," how could this be but as representing us? If He "bare our sins in His own body on the tree," what else was this but substitution ? And there is much of similar language elsewhere, as we shall see. In fact, the difficulty of which I have spoken arises from the way in which it is every-where pressed that our Lord's work for us was of true substitutionary character.

For while in a certain sense, the Lord might be said to be a ransom in place of all, it is evident that where faith is not and while it is not the ransom is as if it were not. And there are expressions thus as to the sacrifice which to faith and only faith could apply. Take one from Isaiah 3:"The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Here, faith speaks, and the words are surely not true of any other than believers. But then comes the difficulty:was there, then, when Christ died, some special work needed and undergone for the sins of believers?

The same question might be asked, perhaps even more pointedly, with regard to 1 Pet. 2:24:"Who Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree." For this "bearing" surely speaks of the removal of them from before God's sight. Would it be possible, then, to say of the world that He bare their sins in His body on the tree ? Surely not, or they would most certainly be saved. He could not have borne their sins and they yet have to bear them. A strict and proper substitution assuredly necessitates the removal of responsibility from the one for whom the substitute assumes it. It results, therefore, that a substitute for the world the Lord was not.

And the language of Scripture is everywhere in accord with this. It does speak of propitiation for the sins of the whole world:it does not speak of their sins being "laid on" or "borne" by Christ. These two things have been confounded on the one hand, and made into a doctrine of limited atonement, or of substitution for all. On the other, where the distinction has been noticed, it has been taken to imply that on the cross there was a work for all and a special work for the elect beside-a double atonement, as it were; that it was a propitiation for all, a substitution for the elect. In other words, the Arminian atonement and the Calvinistic atonement are both considered true, and to be found together in the work of Christ. But this leads to much confusion and misreading of Scripture, much manifest opposition to it.

It has led some to speak of salvation as a thing wrought out eighteen hundred years ago,-not simply the blessed work which saves, but actual salvation. Faith serves as a telescope to see what existed before we saw it, and what it had nothing to do therefore with producing. The sins of believers were thus dealt with and removed before they were committed, and people find peace by faith, but are not justified by it. All this is in complete opposition to the Word; yet it is a just consequence of the doctrine of a substitution for the elect, and their sins borne when the Lord Jesus died.

Yet He did bear their sins upon the tree, and Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of us all. "Ours"? Whose, then? and how does this differ from the doctrine just repudiated? The answer is very simple. These words are the language of faith,-of believers; and of believers as such only is it true. He bare the sins of believers on the tree, and this is equivalent to what we have been saying-that the efficacy of atonement is conditional. It is conditioned upon faith, and His bearing the sins of believers is a complete negative of universalism in all its phases. Only their sins arc borne, although the atonement is for the sins of the whole world; and the duty and responsibility of faith are therefore to be pressed on every creature. The sins of believers were really borne eighteen hundred years ago; but only when men become believers are their sins borne, therefore. The very man who to-day believes, and whose sins were borne eighteen hundred years ago, not only could not say yesterday that his sins were borne, but they were really not borne yesterday, although the work was done eighteen hundred years ago. But it was done for believers, and only today is he a believer. The work of atonement only now has its proper efficacy for him:he is justified by faith.

All this is perfectly simple. It is transparently so, indeed. What has clouded and disfigured it ? On the one hand, the importing into it the doctrine of election, which is never done in Scripture; on the other, the thought that our iniquity being laid upon the Lord meant the putting away of so much sin for so much suffering,-so many actual sins of just so many persons being provided for, and no other. But this would make propitiation for the world impossible, and destroy, as we have seen, if consistently followed out, justification by faith. The simple meaning of the texts appealed to involves no such difficulty.

The Lord Jesus, then, was the Substitute for believers, and thus made propitiation for the sins of the world, its efficacy being conditioned upon faith. He stood as the Representative of a class, not a fixed number of individuals,-of a people to whom men arc invited and besought to join themselves, the value of the atonement being more than sufficient and available for all who come. The responsibility of coming really rests, where Scrip-always places it, upon men themselves.

Now, if it be asked, What is the issue of this invitation ? Do any become of the number of His people really except in virtue of a divine work wrought sovereignly in their souls? it is true, none do so. "To as many as received Him, to them gave He right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12,13). Such is the decisive statement of Scripture. Men are born again to be children of God; and the new birth is not of man's will:the moment we speak of it, we speak of that which assures us that man's will is wholly adverse. For to be born again is never a thing put upon man as what he is responsible for:it is, in its very nature, outside of this. And "Ye must be born again "is the distinct affirmation that on the ground of responsibility all is over. "How often would I . . . ! and ye would not," is the Lord's lament over Israel; and it is true of man in nature every where. Terrible it is to realize it, but it is true.

Man is bidden to repent and believe the gospel. There is no lack of abundant evidence. It is the condemnation, that "light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." They refuse the evidence that convicts them, and refuse the grace that would save them. "As in water face answers to face, so the heart of man to man." That he needs to be born again shows that God must work sovereignly, or the whole world perish. So it is quickening from the dead and new creation. These terms all witness to the utter ruin of man, as they do to the omnipotent grace of God in conversion.

These terms speak all of a new life conferred, and with this life the condition required in order to efficacious atonement is accomplished; there is "justification of life" (Rom. 5:18)-justification attaching to the life possessed. The last Adam is made a quickening Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), after have gone down to death and come up out of it; and the life He gives brings those who receive it into a new creation, of which He is the Representative-Head. To these He is Kinsman-Redeemer, according to the type (Lev. 25:48). The new relationship is their security and entrance into full blessing, to which His work is now their absolute title.

It is here that election does come in; not to limit the provision, nor to restrict in any wise the grace that bids and welcomes all, but to secure the blessing of those who otherwise would refuse and forfeit it as the rest do. The grace to all is not narrowed by the "grace upon grace" to many. The universal offer means and is based on a universal provision, and a provision of exactly the same character for all alike, in which God testifies that He hath "no pleasure in the death of him that dieth," but "will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth." It may be asked, as it has been asked, Of what avail is a provision for all which saves not one additional to the elect number? The answer which Scripture would give is, "What if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith [or faithfulness] of God without effect? God forbid." The salvation of men is from God; the damnation of men is from themselves. This all the pleadings, warnings, offers of God affirm. And grace refused is still grace, and to be proclaimed to His praise.

The last Adam is thus the Representative-Head of His people, as in His atoning work He was their Substitute before God. "Upon the seed of Abraham"-that is, believers,-" He layeth hold." This affirms the work to be for all, conditionally upon faith:and for believers unconditionally. "The righteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all; and upon "-or "over," rather, as a shield or sheltering roof,-"all them that believe."

II.

THE LIFE AS COMMUNICATED, WITH ITS ACCOMPANIMENT IN THE BELIEVER.(Chap. 2:23-17:)
The life now manifested in the person of the Word made flesh is in the second part of the gospel displayed as communicated to man, in its various aspects, and with all its wondrous accompaniments as they are found in the believer in Christ. These arc given in regular and perfect order, beginning with new birth in the third chapter, and ending in the thirteenth and four chapters following with the apprehension of the Father and the Son, communion and the fruits in which it issues. Of this part there are four sections, which successively give us, first, chap, iii, iv, the two divine gifts which are fundamental to Christianity-eternal life and the gift of the Holy Ghost; secondly, chap, 5:-vii, the position in which believers are thus placed in relation to the world; thirdly, chap, 8:-xii, the bringing to God in the power of resurrection; and lastly, chap, 13:-xvii, the practical fruits for walk and testimony.

I. (2:23-4:) Life in the Spirit,

There are, in the first section, two distinct but related parts. The first, new birth, the absolute prerequisite to the other, the gift of the Holy Ghost. The one forms the vessel, the other fills it:the one sets right the affections, the other satisfies them.

(I) 2:23-3:New Birth. The last three verses of the second chapter belong evidently in subject to the third, to which they form an important introduction. The condition of man is shown, not in the case of enemies or rejecters, but of those convinced and orthodox in belief, to whom yet as alien in spirit the Lord could not commit Himself. Convinced by miracles, the glory of Christ was yet unseen by them; there was no link of true faith, no response of heart. In Nicodemus' case, while he takes similar ground to theirs-that of the miracles, yet he comes to Christ, showing personal need. The Lord insists on the necessity and character of new birth, man being naturally only "flesh;" a birth which the Word and Spirit unite to produce. Until this is accomplished, man, Jew or Gentile, does not live; and this life is in the sovereign gift of God alone.

But Israel rejected the testimony of One who spoke with perfect knowledge, even when He testified in the line of their own prophets-of earthly things. And He had more to communicate. How would they receive what would have no authority but His to commend it to them? how would they believe when He spoke of heavenly things? Moreover, not for testimony only had He come, but, as antitype of the brazen serpent, to be lifted up, made sin for sinners, that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have eternal life, God having so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son for that purpose. "After these things came Jesus and His disciples into the land of Judea, and there He tarried with them, and baptized." Baptism is burial, and thus the Lord confirms the testimony of the cross as to man's condition. It is life man needs as dead; eternal life that he receives.

The heavenly things the Lord has not yet declared ; for as far as He has yet gone, another is permitted to testify with Him. John expressly says of himself, "He that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth," and yet he bears witness of the Son, and of eternal life being the possession of him who believes in the Son. Not, of course, that eternal life is in its own nature earthly, as surely the Son of God is not; but they can be and are received on earth, while Christ's testimony opens heaven itself.

(2) 4:1-42. The gift of the Holy Ghost-the living wafer. It is now significantly noted that "Jesus Himself baptized not," He confirms the Baptist's witness to man's condition, but not as if it were His own proper sphere of truth. We now find Him, moreover, in Samaria, a Gentile scene. Here He announces the gift of the living water, the Holy Ghost, to an open sinner; for it is the gift of grace, which surmounts, therefore, all legal restrictions also. The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans; but He is no Jew, but Himself the gift of God to men:of Him, of whom one has but to ask to obtain living water. Moreover, he who drank of this should not merely find satisfaction for a time, as with all mere human joys, but possess the spring of it-for it is not "well," but "spring"-in himself, perpetual and eternal, "springing- up unto eternal life." Here the indwelling of the Spirit is plainly declared to be forever.

The woman's conscience being now reached by the confronting with her past life, she confesses the Lord as a "prophet," and then appeals to His decision between Jerusalem and Gerizim. He declares the worship of God apart from all question of locality, and only possible in reality as resulting from the knowledge of an object which could produce it. God must be known, and salvation was that by which He was known, who was the Father, now seeking, in His grace, true worshipers. The thought of Messiah springs up in the woman's heart. The Lord declares Himself to be Messiah.

This completes the work in the woman's soul. Christ come, and with perfect knowledge of her, revealing to her heart the Father's love, she leaves what had occupied her to tell in the city her new-found joy, her words revealing the secret-" Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did" On the other hand, the Lord's joy is revealed in the fact that the disciples, who had left to obtain food for His need, come back to find Him no more a hungered:"I have meat to eat that ye know not of," He replies to their wonder. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work."

The "two days" in Samaria speak, I doubt not, of the present time of grace among the Gentiles. Their apprehension of Him is fittingly as "Saviour of the world"

We find, then, here the Holy Ghost as "living water," indwelling, satisfying the soul; Christ revealing the Father in connection with a known salvation, and, as the result, true, spiritual worship awakened in the heart. This testimony among Gentiles, and to the Saviour of the world. This, with the third chapter, gives the two great factors of Christianity.

(3) 4:43-54 The nobleman son, typifying Israel's conversion. The last part of the fourth chapter seems a supplement to the rest, in which God's grace is seen going out once more to Israel, after the present dispensation is ended. Here we return to Cana of Galilee, marked, too, as the place of the former miracle. We are prepared thus for a connected meaning.

The "nobleman," or "servant of the king," depicts, I doubt not, the nation sunk into the character of courtiers of the world, but now under the judgment of God, as the son smitten apparently to death at Capernaum (elsewhere doomed for the rejection of Christ,) plainly points out. This distress brings him to Christ. The Lord reproves him for the unbelief common to the nation:"Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." But the man's need is urgent:"Sir, come down ere my child die." And the ready answer of grace is, "Go thy way; thy son liveth." The deliverance brings both himself and his house to true faith.
July 1886

An important period comes now to be considered; not itself forming part of these probationary ages, but having nevertheless the deepest significance in relation to these. The trial by law, it is evident, was the fullest and most detailed trial that man received; as it was the trial of the only religious system that ever was the fruit of man's mind simply. We have seen it in principle already in Cain-a mere natural man, of course; but with the believer also there are-thoughts of the natural mind which are no better. God, in the giving of law, does not yet reveal His own way of blessing, but adopts, for the sake of experiment, man's way; only supplying the needful conditions that the experiment may be fully made, and the issue such as may not at all be doubtful.

But in a case of this kind, special care would be needed also to guard against the mistake, so sure otherwise to happen, of confounding this adoption of man's way, for a certain purpose, with the acceptance of it by God as the true one, and His own thought. This in fact has happened, because unbelief in man can set aside the plainest testimonies that can be given; while the systems which set these aside necessarily, in proportion as they do so, deny the simple facts connected with the giving of the law, and which arc indeed part of a testimony which He has thus graven upon the history itself.

Thus those who affirm the law to be in any sense God's original thought have endeavored to prove, as it was needful to prove, its universality and its existence from the beginning in a fallen world. Its universality, for that which was God's way of blessing for man, could not be (according to His own design) shut up from the mass; its existence from the beginning, partly for the same reason, and partly because God's thought would surely be the one first announced by Him.

To establish its universality, they have had to distinguish between a written and an unwritten law; or, as they assume to call it from Scripture, a law written on the heart. What they mean is in fact conscience, an implicit law which every one has, while the ten commandments are only its explicit form, and as such given to Israel alone. In the same way they prove equally, as they think, its existence from the beginning.

Scripture refuses this, however, utterly. The "law written upon the heart" is only used of Israel's condition when finally converted to God. It is one of the blessings of the new covenant-"I will put My laws in their minds, and write them in their hearts; "words which prove conclusively that such a condition is not every man's natural one. While in the passage in Romans often quoted, where at first sight a similar term seems to be applied to the Gentiles, it is in reality a very different one:"Which show," says the apostle, "the work of the law written upon their hears"-not the law written, but its work written, as the original text declares without any question. The work of the law is conviction :conscience does this work in the one who has not the law, though far less completely:"By the law is the knowledge of sin;" and this knowledge conscience in measure gives to every one, and in that respect they, "having no law "(so the Revised Version correctly gives it), "are a law unto themselves." Had they a law, they would not be a law to themselves.

There is no escape from the plain statement of Scripture that the law written on the heart is conversion, and not the natural state; and that if it were, God could not promise to do it for those who already had it done in them. Positive, too, is the statement that the Gentiles have "no law." But beside all this, the introduction of law at the beginning in a fallen world is the subversion of the whole argument of the apostle (Gal. 3:17), that "the covenant, which was confirmed before of God in Christ [or rather "to Christ"], the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, could not disannul, that it should make the promise of no effect." For "though it be a man's covenant, if it be confirmed, no man disannulled or adds thereunto."

He here shows one of the meanings of this Abrahamic period preceding the dispensation of law. No less than four centuries does God require to put between the promise of grace to Abraham and his seed and the legal covenant between Himself and Israel, to prevent the one being confounded with or added to the other. And the importance of this will be seen, when we compare the real universality of the first with the restricted bearing of the second. "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed," God says to Abraham, speaking to him as the pattern man of faith, the "father of all them that believe." For "they which are of faith," says the apostle, "the same are the children of Abraham." And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would "justify the heathen [the nations] through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, ' In thee shall all nations be blessed.' So then," he adds, "they which be of faith are blessed with faithful [or rather, "believing"] Abraham."

Thus God had proclaimed, centuries before the law, that the Gentiles should be blessed upon the principle of faith. Even as, long after the law was given, He had declared by Habakkuk that "the just shall live by faith." "And," adds the apostle again, "the law is not of faith; but 'the man that doeth them shall live in them' "-an entirely different and conflicting principle.

Even thus far it is plain that as God's universal way of blessing, the gospel had possession of the field before the law came in at all. But God would make it more evident; and He confirms this covenant of promise (really) to Christ, when He afterward adds, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." This is of course the completion (and therefore confirmation) of the former promise; and its full significance is seen in connection with that offering up of Isaac, and receiving him back (in figure) from the dead, which so plainly find their antitype in Christ's sacrificial death and resurrection. The true Isaac is that One Seed, as the apostle points out, "to whom the promise was made." If "in thee" showed that the blessing was to be by faith, "in thy seed" reveals the object of faith, the Person and work through whom alone the blessing of all nations could in fact come.

Law is excluded from this covenant of promise. It has absolutely no place there. And what proves this, according to the apostle, is just the fact of its having been made and confirmed of God four hundred and thirty years before the Sinaitic. Even a man's covenant made and confirmed cannot be reopened to insert new conditions. How simply impossible, then, to acid the law as a condition to the covenant of grace !

Theological systems would come in here to assure us, however, that the law was written upon man's heart from the beginning, and thus upset altogether the apostle's reasoning. Instead of grace having priority of law, as he affirms, according to these, it is the law that has the priority. Either he or they, then, must be in error.

In the epistle to the Romans also he speaks of a time before law. "For until the law," he says, -or rather, "until law"-"sin was in the world." Law did not introduce it therefore, he means to say" but again they would correct him:according to them, there was no time "until"-that is, before law. And some would doubtless quote the next words of the apostle in proof:"But sin is not imputed where there is no law." The mistake is in supposing "imputing" here to be the same thing as elsewhere in the epistle; it is in reality a different word :"sin is not put in account" (as the different items of a bill,) is the true thought. "Sin is not put in account where there is no law ; nevertheless death reigned"-proving that sin was "imputed," from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression." For Adam had"transgressed;" he had overstepped a positive law under which he was. "From Adam to Moses "is just the time of the most part of the Genesis history; it is the time until law, when sin was already in the world, but when it had not as yet this aggravation. The supposition-for it has been supposed-that infants are in question "from Adam to Moses," is scarcely deserving a refutation.

It is not true, then, that the law given at Sinai was only the explicit announcement of what had been implicitly in existence from the beginning; but on the contrary, law, as a principle of God's dealings in a fallen world, came in then. It is what He was forced into (to speak after the manner of men), rather than desired. Abel, in the world before the flood, declared what was His way from the beginning; and this Noah's altar proclaimed again as His, when those waters had scarcely dried from off the face of the new world.

In this prefatory period of which we are now speaking, the types of the law and its significance the apostle has taught us to find in Abraham's history. How suited their place there should be surely evident. Hagar is thus the "covenant from. the Mount Sinai, which genders to bondage," and every detail of her history is, I am assured, luminous in this way. That she is but handmaid to Sarah, the covenant of grace, every one owns, of course. Sarah's name is "Princess," for "grace reigns." Hagar is an Egyptian, child of fallen nature; and her name is "Fugitive," for, alas! the natural effort now is to get away from God. She is fleeing toward Egypt when the angel finds her at Lahai-roi; and when dismissed with her child in obedience to the divine command, again we find her gravitating toward Egypt. How plainly is it taught, thus, that the law is characterized by "the elements of the world," with which the apostle connects it in Galatians! As a principle, it is man's way, not God's; as specific commandment, holy, just, and good; and in His intent in giving it, surely worthy every way of Him. These things alter in no wise the fact that it is man's way-his experiment with himself-taken up by God, and worked out, in His own perfect manner, to a true result.

Thus it should be very plain why Hagar is first found by God in relation to Abram, manifestly his own shift, through little faith, to obtain the promised and desired fruit. Finding her thus, He appears to her at the well Lahai-roi, and sends her back to submit herself (mark) into her mistress's hands, and to allow the trial already begun to be fully wrought. But while He allows it, He does not leave the issue for a moment doubtful. The fruit of law is the natural fruit. Ishmael shall be born, but be only the "wild-ass man"-untamed, untamable flesh.

Abraham thus exhibits in his own history the lesson which afterward, for so many centuries, his posterity were set to learn. In his own person, he is the witness of sovereign, electing grace; called out of the darkness of heathenism, as Joshua reminds the men of his generation-"Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods." Here, "the God of glory appeared unto" him, and called him from country, kindred, and father's house, to be the special witness of His name and way.

Before Hagar appears in the history, God gives testimony to Abram, as a man righteous through faith; and it is instructive to see how the apostle, when he brings Abram before us as the pattern man of faith, passes over all the time of his connection with her as so much loss. "Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, 'So shall thy seed be' And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb:he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness,"

In the last words, the apostle seems to ignore the facts of history; for Abram's body was not yet dead when God said to him, "So shall thy seed be," and when his faith was first counted for righteousness. It was after this-probably some time after -that Ishmael was born; and he was thirteen years old at the time of which the epistle to the Romans speaks. All these fifteen years or more the apostle treats as so much lost time, to bring together the period in which he is first spoken of as having the righteousness of faith, and that when he received the covenant of circumcision as the "seal" of that righteousness. Circumcision means, as the same apostle elsewhere tells us, the "putting off of the body of the flesh;" and they are the "true circumcision" who have no confidence in the flesh." God Himself thus brings these two periods together; and circumcision is seen to be indeed, as the Lord says, "not of Moses." In its spiritual meaning, it is the fundamental opposite of law.

How fully in all this the character and purpose of this intermediate time comes out!_ Even the natural seed-Israel after the flesh-will find their blessing in the end from God according to the grace of the Abrahamic covenant, and not according to the Sinaitic, the only one according to which they have yet received the land. The Abrahamic covenant will thus be in very deed to them a "new covenant." Thus grace still as a nation holds them fast, as it ever has, for future blessing,-a blessing which, when it comes, will alone be the proper fulfillment of the "covenant of promise."

Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph give us, as types, yet further lessons. Isaac shows us the Seed through whom alone the blessing can come; Jacob, the immediate father of the twelve tribes, in both his character and history foreshadows theirs; and Joseph, rejected by his brethren, and yet at last received perforce as their Saviour and lord, shows in so plain a way their history in respect of One infinitely greater that it needs no insisting on. For our present purpose enough has been already said to prove how in this period prefatory to the law the law itself is guarded from misconception, and grace is declared God's way, and only way, of blessing for man. Even for Israel, God's covenant is the covenant of circumcision. Carnality and unbelief, stopping at the outside, may misread all this from first to last. If those misread it for whom has come the full and final revelation, "the vail is upon their hearts."

The story of the well with this significant name is told in few words, but full of interest. How in a few touches of Scripture a living, breathing-picture is made to stand before you; and, examine it closely, the more its perfection appears; the more your wonder and admiration grow.

God works by wonder, as when He drew aside Moses by the burning bush; but, as in that case, the wonder is never a wonder merely:underneath, if you look further, you will find some deep significance, some pregnancy of meaning-a "sign," or significant thing. More than that, where there is need,-where creature weakness and dependency are realized,-the "sign" will develop "power." there will be the ministry of God, the interposition of Omnipotent Love to meet that need. These are the three words which stand for a miracle in Scripture:it is a "wonder," a "sign," and a "power:" and in nothing are these found as they are in Scripture itself. It is one of the mightiest of miracles; and the Lord could say, even of the Old Testament, "if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead"

Now the well Lahai-roi is, I doubt not, the type of Scripture in this very character. It is the "fountain of water" at which the angel of the Lord finds Hagar when she is fleeing from the face of her mistress Sarai, and where, assuring her of the birth and multiplication of her seed, he bids her return to her mistress, and submit herself into her hands. These women are types of which the interpretation is given us. Hagar is the law, which genders to bondage, the servant of grace, the free-woman, as God has ordained. And as we find the well first in connection with Hagar, so the first books of Scripture are the books of the law. Yet it is at this well afterward we find, not a child of the bondwoman, but of the free. Isaac dwells at the well Lahai-roi:it is his possession, as is the Word that of him who believes through grace; and the Word, as ministered in the power of the living Spirit; for as the water is a figure of the Word, so the "living water" is the figure of the Spirit, as the apostle teaches us (Jno. 7:39). By the Word the Spirit ministers, and thus it is that, as the Lord says, "the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life."

Lahai-roi is the Word, thus, with significance and power for the soul, and in which the presence of the living, omniscient God is made apparent. It is so, though under another aspect from that of water, that Hebrews 4:presents it:"living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow, of- soul and spirit, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." And then what have we? "Neither is there any thing that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." This is clearly, in another aspect, Lahai-roi. And how blessed when the Word brings us after this manner into the presence of God, as is its office! Looking at Israel in the type, we may see how in God's meaning, for His children, this is to be no casual or occasional thing. We are to dwell by the well. As children we are to abide in the intimacy of our Father's presence, under His eye, and in the assurance of His fostering care. Our Lord's words are but another expression of this:"If a man love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him"

This is His thought for us, and to be without it is the "orphanage" which He would not have His people know (Jno. 14:18, marg.) How blessed where, through the Word and by the Spirit, Father and Son realize Their presence continually to the soul! How wondrous the intimacy to which we are thus called! Alas, on the other hand, for the feebleness of our actual experience in view of such invitations and assurances! Why do we so fall short? Covet the blessing in its fullness every Christian must:what, then, is the difficulty of attainment, when it is divine grace that is drawing near us? The type before us is very instructive in this particular.

First, Isaac stands before us, not only as the representative of the child of God, but of the child in the child's place,-in the liberty of divine grace known and enjoyed. And this is the first and great prerequisite to the blessing. If grace it is that comes to be entertained, faith, it is on man's part gives it entertainment. How slow we are to enter into God's thoughts, to accredit fully His goodness, and "draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith"! Yet we all know that the least grace we could no more pretend to be worthy of than the greatest, and that God is no less true in one word He speaks than in another. "He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

The second point is, that Isaac is not only the child of the free-woman, but also the type of that great sacrifice which in spirit we are called to be conformed to. "Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robber)- to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, and became in the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Such is the pattern put before us, and in this twofold manner Isaac is a type. The result to us of the child's place is absolute surrender to the Father's will; and it is the peculiar fruit of faith, in which the soul's return to God is manifested. Being" in a fallen world, sin being in us and around us, this fruit is found in surrender-in sacrifice. Yet Isaac does not die, but lives; nor is there a life which speaks more of enjoyment and rest, in the book of Genesis, than his after-life. And so is surrender to God. It is the low-seeming portal to all that is bright and blessed and holy in practical life. Nay, what holiness, what blessedness, what freedom, what life of faith at all, can be known apart from it? It is here that for our troubles we find rest, for doubt assurance, for our weakness an everlasting arm. Yet it is in sacrifice we find entrance into this; for we have, alas! ways and wills that are our own, paths of human wisdom hard to relinquish, and a hostile world around. Faith amid it all seeks God, and finds in Him its rock and hiding-place.

Surrender to God must, however, be entire surrender, or it is not this; and here the real and grave condition of so many appears. They fall short, not in performance only, where all must own shortcoming, but in spirit, in intention also. And this may be with even entire unconsciousness as to the fact. Conscience does not reproach, if even it does not very decidedly approve. A standard not far removed from that of men around has been adopted practically with perhaps a theoretical one much higher at the same time, and there is little to alarm. Is not Christ's yoke easy and His burden light? They are not legal, and thank God for grace. They know no raptures, but as little disquiet. But Lahai-roi is not reached. The Word is certainly no full spring of unfailing blessing, realizing to their souls the constant presence of a living God. They have indeed no daily need. Ordinarily, they get on as others do; under more than ordinary pressure, they are forced to God.

How different Lahai-roi, where the Isaacs dwell!-the endeared mutual intercourse with God, wherein a soul lives indeed and grows, and like a tree planted by the water-brooks, brings forth its fruit in its season; his leaf also doth not wither, and whatsoever he doeth, it prospers. May you and I dwell here, dear reader, in this sweetest portion outside heaven, and where the joy of heaven is already tasted.

CHAPTER XXIII. The Penalty in its Inner Meaning.

But we have now to look more particularly at the penalty which the Lord endured for us-Penalty we have seen it was, and true substitution; Christ dying, not upon occasion merely of our sins, but bearing them in His own body on the tree-our iniquities laid upon Him, so that He calls them "Mine." No words could express more plainly a real substitution.

We have seen too that in the penalty upon man there were two parts, separable at least, if not in fact separated:the wrath of God upon sin, and death-not the second, but what came in at the beginning through sin; and that both parts He endured.

Death has its power in this, that it is the removal of the sin-ruined creature out of the place for which he was created. "Sin has reigned in death," as the expression is in Romans 5:21. It is man's destruction by the judgment of God, as being already self-destroyed.

But the death he dies is not the death of Sadducean materialism, but one in which the sinner abides under the judgment to which it has consigned him. It is a condition of darkness-outer darkness-for God has finally and forever withdrawn Himself, It is torment in the flame of necessary anger against sin. These are the elements of a judgment which will not be altered in character, when in the resurrection of judgment the dead stand before the great white throne to receive the discriminate awards of the day of manifestation.

Unspeakably solemn is it to consider that the holy and beloved Son of God, Himself knowing no sin, yet as "made sin for us," entered into that awful darkness, and was tried by the fire of God's wrath against it. So indeed it was. He was the Substitute under our penalty, and endured the penalty. Ours it was of course, not His; but He endured it, and endured it as the necessity of holiness, to set His people free.

But there is a point here it is important to guard, and which, guarded, will go far to preserve us from some excesses which people have gone into with regard to substitution. We must not confound the Lord's standing in our place to take for us our dreadful due, with any calculation, essentially lowering as it is to the very righteousness which it is meant to uphold, of so much suffering for so much sin. In the day of final award it is indeed said that "the dead" are "judged out of the things which are written in the books, according to their works" (Rev. 20:13), and this it is, no doubt, that has been carried back as a principle to the day of atonement. It has been argued that if our iniquities were laid upon Him,-if He bare our sins in His body, then these must all have been counted up and weighed, and He must have suffered so much for each one. In this case it is plain we have just so many sins absolutely provided for, and no others. It is a limited atonement of the most rigid kind, and of which it would be impossible to use the language of the apostle, "A propitiation, not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (i Jno. 2:2). For if the sins of the whole world had been after this manner provided for, no one could be lost, or judged again for what in Him had received its judgment. And this is very "far from the truth of Scripture.
A propitiation for the sins of the world means nothing less than such a provision made for them that if the whole world turned to God through Christ, it would find in Him a complete Saviour. But if sins needed thus to be individually taken into account and settled, this would not be true; if they had been thus settled, they could not in any case come up in the day of judgment; and this is what some hold-that men will be judged for nothing but for the refusal of grace in Christ:but this is entirely hopeless to prove from Scripture, which declares they shall be "judged according to their works," and that "every one shall receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad" (2 Cor. 5:10). And, as the Preacher says, "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."

"A propitiation for the sins of the whole world" does not, then, mean such an individual settlement of sins, nor is this needed in order for salvation. Can it, then, be needed for "our sins" any more than for the sins of the whole world? or can we make propitiation in the one case have a meaning which it has not in the other? This is surely impossible to suppose in the Word of God. Its faithfulness refuses absolutely all chameleon colors.

The sufficiency of atonement for the whole world we must absolutely receive, or give up Scripture. It will not suffer us to say that this is an elect world, for the "whole world" is not elect; and here, the "ours" distinguishes believers from this world, not includes them in it. Propitiation, then, (or atonement-it is the same word,) is for all; and it is the same thing for all:not as actually availing, of course, but as fully available. It has no limit to its value within the limits of the human race.

Of how that which is available for all avails for any, and how far it avails, I propose to consider in another chapter. Here, I go no farther than this, that the Lord standing in the place of men took the very penalty under which they were,-died, and was made a curse:the value of which must be measured by the infinite value of Him who did this, and the perfection of an obedience so beyond all price.

We are not, therefore, called upon to measure what is measureless, or to conceive of so many sins, or those of so many sinners, weighed out to be atoned for by a particular amount of suffering, Such a commercial idea (as it has been rightly called) of the Lord's wondrous work is an essential degradation of it,- not a high, but a low estimate of the requirements of absolute holiness which were to be met thereby. It is not that God must have so much suffering for so much sin, but that His holiness necessitates displeasure proportioned to the evil which awakes it. So even in the final judgment. The deeds done in the body become the manifestation* of the person upon whom the judgment of God rests correspondingly, but forever rests; not because, as people have wrongly conceived, the sin itself is necessarily worthy of eternal punishment, but because the sinner' remains eternally with the character which his life manifests.*"We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ" is the true rendering of 2 Corinthians 5:10.*

The error is therefore plain of making the atonement consist in the endurance of so much agony, as if God could measure out that to the holy Sufferer; whereas, beyond all our conception as was the agony endured, the reality and efficacy of atonement lay in the solemn seal thus put upon the divine estimate of sin, when God's own beloved Son stooped Himself to endure its dreadful penalty.

That He "bare our sins in His own body on the tree," and that God "laid upon Him the iniquity of us all,"-these and such like passages which declare a real imputation of our sins to Christ remain in all their solemn yet precious meaning for us. It was for these sins of ours He suffered, and this suffering of His is that which alone removes them from us, and removes them entirely:how perfectly, we shall see more as we proceed. He was the true Sin-bearer,-our Substitute under penalty, as we have seen. He could not have been this had not our sins been laid on Him; but I turn from this, which will come up before us again, to look at another question in connection with the penalty itself.

In what we have been considering lately, it will be noted that of necessity it would seem it is rather wrath-bearing than death we have been dwelling on; and it may be asked, If all this be true, what part exactly in the penalty has death, then? If wrath could be exhausted by the Lord before dying,-if He could emerge from the darkness into the light, and in peace say once more "Father" before he died,-what need, then, even of dying? Was death for Him the wages of sin which He had taken?

And it is undeniable that there has been a tendency two ways, according as one class of texts or the other has been dwelt upon, to make all atonement consist in wrath-bearing, or-far more commonly- all consist in dying. Yet both are plainly unscriptural, as we have sufficiently seen. What we want is to realize the relation of these two parts to each other-to find the due place of each in the Lord's blessed work. We have been looking at the meaning of wrath-bearing of late; and it does raise the necessary question, Why, then, His death? Granting, as we must, the necessity of it according to Scripture, yet why this necessity?

The answer is plain only in the realization of a truth which has been overlooked, conspicuous as it is, by the mass of those who have occupied themselves with the interpretation of Scripture:the setting aside of the failed first man and the old creation, to bring in blessing under another head and on another and higher plane altogether.

As already said, the solemnity of death lies in this, that it is the removal of man as failed out of the scene of his failure-the solemn sentence upon him as unfitted for the place for which he was created. The lower creatures, indeed, have never sinned,-are incapable of it,-yet they die; and men plead, therefore, that death is natural. But they cannot persuade themselves, whose whole nature cries out against it. The scriptural account is, "The wages of sin is death;" and thus, "man, being in honor, abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish" (Ps. 49:12).

Yes, the beasts do perish. Intended for nothing but a temporary purpose, they enjoy life while it lasts, without a sorrow for the past or a fear for the future. But man is not a beast:he is the offspring of God, meant to know and enjoy communion with Him forever; and his being leveled to the beasts is the sign of a moral, a spiritual ruin, in which he has forgotten God, and leveled himself to them. He, like them, passes away and is not found; his place knows him no more forever. But not like them, for he has "thoughts" that perish with him, unfulfilled plans and purposes, affections which cling to what they cannot hold, a dread upon his soul which presages a hereafter such as the beast dreads not and desires not, because it has not:"The dust returns to the earth as it was, but the spirit returns to God that gave it."

Such is death for man; and being such, it is the wages of sin. Man in it, as the creature which God made for Adam's paradise, perishes forever,-is set entirely aside. Nor do I forget resurrection when I say so. Resurrection docs not restore him to this, Job's words are absolutely true here, without bringing in the God-dishonoring thought of annihilation in any wise:"As the cloud is consumed, and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more:he shall return no more to his house; neither shall his place know him any more." God's grace may give him another and a better thing, but it does not reverse the first judgment.

And thus it is that when the Lord takes death for man He takes it as affirming God's sentence upon man, by which the old creation is set aside forever. Let this be well observed, that whereas the wrath of God upon sin, in being undergone by Christ, is removed (the effect of atonement is removal), it is not so with a sentence by which the first man is set aside:if the Lord take this, it must be, not to bring him back, but to affirm his setting aside. The effect of wrath-bearing is to put away wrath; but the effect of the Lord's dying is that with His death the old creation is confirmed as passing away-is set aside fully, not restored.

This is the direct force of 2 Corinthians 5:14-17, not well given in our common version:"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then all died [or, have died]; and for all He died, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again. Wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, [it is] new creation:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

This is an important passage, and needs attentive consideration. It is a positive statement of the meaning of Christ's death as dying for all, -these "all" being expressly shown not to be limited to "those who live," who are distinguished from them as a class in the latter part of the fourteenth verse.

It is directly affirmed, then, of all, that if Christ died for them, all died. Our common version has it, "then were all dead,"-making it a spiritual state; but the Greek will not admit of this, and the sense also is quite different. The point is as to what Christ's death" proves men to have been wider as sentence, not in as state; for lie came under our sentence as sinners, but not into our state of sin. He died, then, for all; and so all have died. Before God, the world is judged and passed; as the Lord Himself said of the cross, "Now is the judgment of this world" (Jno. 12:31). It is not a judgment executed, of course:none could suppose that; but it is a judgment pronounced; and a judgment pronounced is with God as it were executed, so sure and irreversible is it. If Christ, then, died for all, all died. Sentence is not taken away by this, but affirmed.

And this meaning is clearly proved by what follows in Corinthians-"wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh" This is the simple and necessary result (for faith, not for sight):if all have died, they are in the flesh no longer; we walk amid a world where men are either alive in Christ or but as it were dead men. But not only so:"yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." Even Christ has not taken up again the life which He laid down. He has not returned (that is,) to His former state upon earth. That is over; and the Christ we know is One who is in resurrection in the glory of God. An immeasurably higher condition, you say. Surely it is; but the former one is passed away, and passed away in that which affirmed God's sentence upon it. Where, then, are we who live? In Christ; and "if any man be in Christ, it is new creation:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

Thus the sense of the passage is plain and perspicuous. And the meaning of the Lord's taking of death is very clearly set forth. Atonement does not restore the old Adam condition, but affirms its judgment and setting aside. For those saved by it, the darkness of distance from God who is light is passed with the darkness upon the cross. It is thus the gospel of Luke, which gives especially the effects of the work of Christ for the conscience, connects them:"And it was about the sixth hour; and there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened, and the vail of the temple was rent in the midst" The vail meant darkness, as that in which God dwelled for man; its rending means that "God is in the light" (i Jno. 1:7).

But with His death the apostle Matthew takes especial care to connect what in fact did not occur till after His resurrection:"And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." The answer to His death is resurrection; not the recommencement of the old Adam life, which is finally and forever set aside.

Thus those alive in Christ are dead with Him also, and as it is specifically stated, "dead to sin," "dead to law," "dead to the elements of the world" -to all that makes it up,-and "not in the flesh." But to that we must return hereafter:our present subject closes here.

"So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading. And Nehemiah, which is the Tirshatha, and Ezra the priest the scribe, and the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the people, 'This day is holy unto the Lord your God; mourn not, nor weep! for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said unto them, 'Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy unto our Lord:neither he ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength' So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, 'Hold your peace, for the day is holy; neither be ye grieved' And all the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them." (Neh, 8:8-12.)

How sweetly, yet rebukingly, docs this lesson come to us from the pages of the Old Testament It is not the "gospel," and yet how much gospel is there in it too, which it would be well if we of a brighter and happier day had fully learnt. The "gospel" is "good news;" or, good news "of God" (Rom. ii); that which comes to us from the heart of the good and blessed God, as the witness of what He delights in. It is the preaching of gladness; and what is the reception of it unto the soul but the reception of gladness? News there is from Him, of such a nature and character that the mere believing listening to it is the one and effectual remedy for all the care and sorrow which oppress us naturally, and arc our heritage indeed as children of men. Reader, have you apprehended that? And good news, let me add, which God publishes for His own joy and glory, so that we may know and understand Him in the message He has sent.

Well He knows, moreover, the people among whom He publishes this good news. It is just be-cause they are what they are His gospel becomes so sweet a declaration of what He is. And He bids it to be preached to every one of them in all the world, and makes it simple obedience, the first point of duty to Himself, to "obey the gospel" with the "obedience of faith." In other words, to believe and to rejoice!

This is the blessedness of this scene in Israel in the time of Nehemiah. Good cause had they, if any ever had, to weep "when they heard the words of the law." They might claim, if any, amid the ruins of their broken city, and listening to the thunders of that terrible law, which, through their breach of it, had brought in such desolation, that they did well to weep. Would it have been any thing but hardness of heart on their part to have refused their tears to the misery of their condition, and the sin against their God which had introduced the misery?

Yet one voice had title to be heard surely even there. If He against whom they had sinned spoke, surely they were to listen. If He, even now, could preach gladness to them, surely they were to be glad! and glad the more in Him who could make their sin and misery the suited time to display His goodness and His grace. It was not "joy" simply they were called to; it was "the joy of the Lord" If it were hardness in the first instance, then, not to feel their sin and misery, would it not be greater hardness not to feel His grace now and to rejoice in Him?

And this is what God is calling men to universally, beloved reader, by that gospel which He has sent out every where, to be preached to "every creature under heaven." He is bearing witness to Himself. Has He not title to be heard and to be believed? If He (jail to "obedience of faith" in this good news, is it humble or good to go on mourning as if He had not spoken? Is it good or wise not to be confident in the love He has in His heart toward us?

And what a precious thought is this of a holy day kept to the Lord, excluding sorrow, of necessity, as profanation of its holiness! Is it not the very echo of that thought of the apostle, "Now the very God of peace sanctify you wholly"? or, of that word which assures us that among the foremost "fruits of the Spirit" are "joy" and "peace"?

Dear fellow-believer in the Lord Jesus, will you let me say to you, in the presence of these blessed scriptures, that unhappiness is unholiness? that "the joy of the Lord" is alone your "strength," whether for walk or service?

You may ask me, Do you know who I am? Do you know my failures, my sins, my backslidings, the dishonor I have done to the name of Jesus? I reply, I am sure you will do nothing but still dishonor it, if you refuse God's way of help against such dishonor. "God is for us," beloved. Is that because we are for Him, or because of what Jesus is in His presence for us? Could we be nearer to Him by any effort of right-living of our own than we are at this moment as "accepted in the Beloved"? This acceptance, this favor, this delight of God in His own Son, rests upon us spite of all we are. To know it, believe it, enter into it, live in it, is restoration, blessing, power, for the soul.

You say, My feet are defiled; how can I walk with God? I ask, again, Know you not who it is, who, having come from God, and going back to God, stooped, in the full consciousness of that, to wash the feet of His own, that they might have "part with Him"? Was that cleansing their work, then, or His? Was He at a distance from them when He did it, or near at hand? Did the unclean-ness of their feet do aught but make Him serve them in more lowly fashion? If you would be clean now, you must sit still now and let Him serve you. "Washing of water" is "by the Word." You must sit and listen and believe. And as He puts before you all the greatness and fullness of His love, and all that love has done for security of blessing to you, you will hear Him say, "Now ye are clean through the word I have spoken to you."

That which no law, no ordinance, no striving, will effect for you, a few moments in His presence will accomplish. You will learn that "there is mercy with Him, that He may be feared;" and that "in returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." Yea, "the very God of peace" shall "sanctify you wholly."

And, reader, you who have never yet tasted of this love of His, let me assure you "to you" also "is the word of this salvation sent." There is "gospel" for you:the superscription of my message is, "To every creature." To you, surrounded with as sad evidences of your guilt as ever had Israel, the word of God's grace is still, "Believe the gospel"- "Obey the gospel." It is the "God of peace" sanctifies. It is "the grace of God which bringeth salvation unto all men," which teaches us and alone "teaches us, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world."

Therefore, to you, as you are, is "the gospel of salvation" preached. You can be nothing, do nothing, save as it teaches you, even the "grace that bringeth salvation." Will you listen to it? Will you believe it? For as surely as Christ "died for sinners" that death of His is God's great treasury of blessing for all such. Every check upon this must be signed with that name, that one name of "SINNER," which proves your title to the wealth laid up there.

To you, then, a holy day to the Lord is proclaimed"-"an accepted time, a day of salvation." God, against whom your sins have been, who alone has title to come in with a message of joy into the midst of the ruin and misery of the fall, has come in with the "good news" of "peace" made by the blood of the cross of Jesus, and preached to every creature for the obedience of faith. To believe and obey that gospel is to listen to and rejoice in what He is declaring to us.

Reader, will you be as those of whom it is written here, "And all the people went their way, to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had UNDERSTOOD the words that were declared unto them"?
June 1886

"Rejoice in the Lord always." Certainly it could not be in circumstances, for he was a prisoner. Christians are often a great deal happier in the trial than they are in thinking of it; for there the stability, the certainty, the nearness, and the power of Christ are much more learnt, and they are happier. Paul could not so well have said, "Rejoice in the Lord always," if he had not known what it was to be a prisoner. Just as in Psalm xxxiv:"I will bless Jehovah at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth." Why? "This poor man cried, and Jehovah heard him, and delivered him out of all his troubles."

There are but three other books which require now some attention before we close our consideration of Scripture-texts. They are the first epistles of Peter and John, and the book of Revelation.

We must not expect to find here the full development or application of atonement which Paul had especially in his commission to make known. The truth of it is every-where insisted on, however, in due connection with the peculiar theme of each book.

The theme of Peter's epistle is the path through the world of those who, as partakers of the heavenly calling, are strangers and pilgrims in it. Addressed to the believers among the Jews of the dispersion, he brings out the contrast between their Jewish hopes and those to which they had been now begotten by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Already they had received the salvation of their souls, being redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and born again of the incorruptible Word, and were a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. As children of God, they were the subjects of His holy government, under the discipline of a sorrow which He made fruitful, passing through a world through which Christ had passed, adverse to His as to Him. To do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently was their lot, having Him for their example, and the glory into which He had already entered their eternal rest.

It is not strange, therefore, that it is the "sufferings of Christ" upon which the apostle insists; that He suffered for sins, and that we must suffer, not for these, but for righteousness or for His name's sake (2:19-21); that He "suffered in the flesh,"- His only connection with sin being in suffering on account of it; we must arm ourselves therefore with the same mind (4:i).

But the sacrificial character and efficacy of His work are fully maintained, for "Christ also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God," and "Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree,"-the practical end of this being enforced, "that ye being dead unto sins, should live unto righteousness-by whose stripes ye were healed "(2:24), And thus we are "redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold," (alluding to Israel's atonement-money,) "but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot" (1:18, 19). Salvation, and begetting to a living hope, are therefore connected with the resurrection of Christ from the dead (3:21; 13).

This is so similar to the first part of Romans that it is scarcely necessary to enter into it more here. It gives us only a part of it however, the application being plainly to the practical walk, as that in Romans is mainly to the setting free the conscience before God.

The second epistle of Peter has but one word, which we may notice as we pass on:the false teachers, who privily bring in damnable heresies among Christians, deny the " Lord that bought them." Thus the plain difference between redemption and purchase is made clear. The Lord has title to the world and all in it (comp. Matt. xiii 44) by the cross, but we may buy what we have no personal interest in. Redemption speaks of heart-interest in the object, and of release, deliverance.

The first epistle of John gives us the characters of eternal life in the believer as now manifested in the power of the Spirit which is in us as Christians. He dwells, therefore, more upon the Godward side of the work of Christ-propitiation for our sins (ii, 2; 4:10), from which, therefore, we are cleansed by the propitiating blood (1:7). It is thus that divine love is declared toward us; and this love is perfected with us, giving us boldness in the day of judgment, in the assurance that even now, in this world, we are as Christ is (4:17). This falls short of Paul's doctrine, not as to the perfection in which we stand, but only in not bringing us into the heavenly places, or that of being risen with Christ. Its application is to the entire freedom of the conscience by propitiation through a substitute, whose acceptance is therefore ours.

In the last chapter we have another beautiful testimony to the necessity and perfection of the work of Christ. He came, not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit also bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. This, without any question, refers to the blood and water that followed the soldier's spear, and of which John by the Spirit bare record (Jno. 19:34, 35). What, then, is the purport of the record? That out of a dead Christ-His work accomplished-expiation and purification flow together for us. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Thus, as soon as He has died,-as soon as the judgment due has been borne, purification and expiation are found for men, in Him who has borne the judgment.

But, says the apostle, "this is the record, that God has given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." In "eternal life" he sums up, as it were, these two things. For "life" is the opposite of judgment, and implies that it is passed. (Comp. Jno. 5:24, 29, where "condemnation" and "damnation" are the same word-"judgment.") While the full extent of man's need as to purification is declared. Life in a new source alone meets it. But God's grace abounds over all man's need. This life is eternal life, and in His Son,-a divine spring which guarantees the perfection of what flows from it.

In the book of Revelation, finally, the name the Lord bears everywhere through it shows how central as to all God's ways is the work of atonement. The book of His counsels finds none with title to open it save One who, coming forward in the character of Judah's Lion, is seen, in that which gives Him title, as the Lamb slain. He is therefore at once the object of worship by the elders as the Author of redemption:"For Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation"(5:6, 9).

The book of life is accordingly "the book of life of the Lamb slain" (13:8; 21:27); and the being written in this book is the only possible escape from the judgment of the second death 20:15).

Thus the saints overcome the accuser by the blood of the Lamb (12:II); their robes are washed and made white in His blood (7:14); and this it is that gives "right to the tree of life" and to enter in by the gates into the heavenly city (22:14, R.V.).

The throne, moreover, is the "throne of God and of the Lamb" (22:1,3); and "the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of" the new Jerusalem (21:22); and the glory of God doth lighten it, while the Lamb is the lamp thereof (5:23).

Fittingly, thus, does Scripture close its testimony to the atonement and Him who made it. We will not try to define the meaning of these glorious sayings. They shine by their own light. May our attitude be that than which a creature can know no higher:that of the elders in the presence of their Redeemer-of worshipers.

"If the eye, instead of resting on our sins and sorrows, could rest only on Christ, it would sweeten many a bitter cup, and enlighten a gloomy hour."

salvation.(Chap. 8:22-19:27.) THROUGHOUT, Luke, as it presents the manhood of the Saviour, presents the grace that has come near in Him. We have seen that, as compared with the two former gospels, "grace," "peace," "Saviour," and "salvation" are new and characteristic words. The third part now declares the full character of the salvation now come for man.

I. (8:22-9:50.)The Fullness of Salvation.

(I) 8:22-25. From the power of circumstances. That which we have had in the two former gospels is repeated here, and in very similar connection. It is the same lesson of the Lord's control of circumstances through which we pass, Himself being with us, though faith be needed to discern His actual care. With God, whom all things serve, they serve us therefore, in His tender love toward us.

(2) 8:26-39. From the power of Satan and of sin.

(3) 8:40-56. Life out of death. These two sections follow almost in the words of the previous gospels, and the lesson I do not see to be different in the main from that in Mark. They are needed here to give us fully the features of that, salvation which is Luke's theme. The repetition of these things puts upon them a corresponding emphasis; and there are minor differences also, which surely have a meaning, if we have heart and wisdom given of God to find it.

(4) 9:1-17. Ministering and ministered to. We now see what the world is for those who are with Christ in it,-a wilderness, but where His grace and power are proved, and make those themselves the subjects of grace its instruments in blessing others. This is, in brief, what this section shows us.

(5) 9:18-36. Earth closed and heaven opened. Next, we have the Lord fully as the One rejected on earth, accepted of God, and glorified. And this for disciples also, as He declares, closes earth and opens heaven. In Luke we have, more than in the two former gospels, the heavenly things dwelt upon, and our portion in them. Thus, while Matthew and Mark say, "After six days," Luke dates the transfiguration as "about an eight days after" the Lord's promise. Luke also alone gives His decease in Jerusalem as what Moses and Elias spoke of with Him, and of their entering into the "bright cloud" of the "excellent glory," as Peter afterward calls it (2 Pet. 1:17). All this is in full accord with the grace which is the theme of this gospel; and here the full character of its salvation is displayed.

(6) 9:37-50. After this, it seems to me that we find a supplementary picture of a world in which those who are amazed and wonder at the power of God, owning it in Jesus, can yet crucify Him when delivered into their hands; and where disciples who have not power to cast out devils, because of their unbelief, would yet hinder him who has, "because he followeth not with us." The Lord Himself remains, the available source of power and grace, and who identifies Himself with a little child received in His name.

2. (9:vi-12:)The Ministry of Salvation.

In the last division, we were following almost entirely in the track of the two former gospels; in the two next we find what is almost entirely peculiar to the present one.

(I) 9:51-62. The spirit of the ministry. The Lord is now on His way to be delivered up. This gives character to all that follows. The Master of all is taking the path of absolute self-renunciation as Saviour of men, and His own must follow Him in this spirit, finding their freedom from the world as brought out of its sphere of death, to preach the kingdom of God among men. He is thus to be glorified by those who walk in the freedom of their privileged place, in the spirit of obedience to Him who has delivered them.

(2) 10:1-24. Its testimony and effect. The mission of the seventy is more connected than even that of the twelve with the person of the Lord Himself, nor are they restricted to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The power of the enemy is prostrate before the messengers of grace, and babes have revealed to them what wise and prudent cannot attain unto. The object of the testimony is the Son, who, inscrutable in the full glory of His person by man, alone reveals the Father to men. It is thus the kingdom of God becomes a reality in the souls favored with so wonderful a revelation.

(3) 10:25-42. Divine love to the sinner, and divine-fullness for the saint. The question of a lawyer gives occasion to the story which follows, in which "Who is my neighbor?" is seen as easily resolved by one who has in himself the heart of a neighbor. The story thus becomes a parable of Him who is alone man's neighbor fully, serving him in his deepest needs. Here the officers of law-the priest and Levite-have no succor for the conscience-stricken and helpless sinner, while the true helper is one outside of law and under its judgment (a Samaritan), yet the minister of divine compassion, bringing to him, where he is, effectual help. The oil and wine-the glad news of Christ's work made known by the Holy Ghost-heal the wounds of the conscience; the power of the Spirit brings him to the inn, the place of refreshment and ministry on earth, where the same blessed Spirit, as host, has him in charge until Christ comes again. The "two pence" signify the present recompense of those by whom He ministers to the need of souls, the witness of further recompense when Christ comes.

The latter part of the parable thus connects with that which follows to the close of the chapter, where Christ's fullness is seen to be the provision for the saint-the "one thing needful:" the "good part," therefore, to be sitting at His feet to hear His word.

(4) 11:Man’s dependence upon the Spirit, and responsibility and Judgment for resistance to Him. Christ is, then, the one sufficiency for the soul, the Holy Spirit the only power for ministering Christ to it. It is this latter truth that is now insisted on, man's responsibility as to it being dwelt on here, as before the Spirit's competence and grace. The chapter divides into four parts.

(a) In the first place, (from 5:1-13) urgency and confidence in prayer are set before us, while the model prayer itself shows what is to be the spirit of the suppliant. In 5:13, all good gifts are summed up, as it were, in one-the Holy Spirit. "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit* to them that ask Him?" * We are not, I believe, to think here of that one gift of the Holy Ghost, as a Person dwelling in us, which constitutes the one indwelt a Christian:but, as the persons addressed and the whole context shows, rather of the help and ministry of the Spirit as daily proved. Our reception of the Spirit as indwelling is not dependent upon our prayers; nor having received it, do our prayers become less needed. The context of the passage is here, as mostly, its best interpretation*. As Christ's fullness is the one thing needful, so all gifts must be in fact included in this one, by which this fullness is communicated to us.

(b) From 5:14-28, man's rejection of the Holy Ghost is made the subject of the most solemn warnings. As the -Spirit glorifies Christ, so the devil will bring in Antichrist for the nation that refuses Him, and thus the unclean spirit (of idolatry) returns to its dwelling-place in Israel, out of which it had gone (5:26). And man, who loves independence, is in fact wholly dependent. For him, if it is not the Spirit of God, he is in the power of Satan to do with as he lists. Only Christ, by the Spirit of God, can effectually bind the strong man, who is not divided against himself. The kingdom of God was thus among men:blessed, above whatever natural relationship even to Christ Himself, were they who heard the word of God and kept it.

(c) The people sought a sign. They would find it in fact too late. For as Jonah (risen as from the dead) was a sign to the Ninevites, so the Son of Man would be to that evil generation (comp. Matt, 24:30). He would be manifested (in the clouds of heaven) to their condemnation. For God had not put the light-its own witness-under a bushel:what was wanting was the eye to take it in.

(d) Then, to the close of the chapter, the Lord exposes the unholiness of the Pharisees and lawyers, the leaders of the people, whose cleansing of the outside only made the inner uncleanness more defiling, "as graves which appear not;" while the lawyers loaded men with burdens they would not touch themselves, and built sepulchers for the prophets whom their fathers slew. They would be tested by new prophets, whom they would slay and persecute, to bring upon that generation the blood of all the prophets.

(5) 12:A call to sitting loose to the world, as men that are waiting for their lord. The twelfth chapter contains evidently one discourse; and its burden is that we be free in spirit from the world, as those whose hearts have found another Master. The first twelve verses exhort to confession of Him, and against fear of the world. Thence, to the thirty-first verse, against love of the world and care, the soul being sweetly encouraged to confidence in the perfect love of God. Then, to the forty-eighth, we are bidden to be ready for the coming of our Lord. And finally, in the closing verses, we have the effect of His first coming through the unbelief of men, and Israel going with their adversary-Moses, to whom they appealed–unto the judge, not to depart from prison until they paid the very last mite.

3. (13:-16:) The Gospel as Manifesting both God and Man.

(I) 13:Conditions of divine holiness in order to salvation. Sovereign as is God's grace, there is yet a necessary method in God's rescue of a sinner. It must be such as shall maintain the holiness and authority of God. This involves the conditions of which this chapter speaks. There are two, which give the two divisions:-

(a) The condition of repentance. The law declares this absolutely as to all:"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." The woman with the "spirit of infirmity" then shows that for weakness there is abundant help; divine goodness never can be stayed by divine ordinances; and so evident is this, that only manifest hypocrisy could dispute it.
(b) The second condition is, Christ sought and known in a day of grace. When once the master of the house rose up and shut the door, it would be too late. Moreover, outward acquaintance with Christ, and external relationship with Him, would not be enough. Those who were far off would enter from all sides into the kingdom of God, while Jews, of Abraham's seed, would be shut out. Jerusalem, so long rejecting the sheltering wing of God, would now be left of God desolate, until she should say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.

(2) 14:Man's supper and God's. The opposition of man to God in nature and will is now made manifest in the two suppers of which the fourteenth . chapter speaks. Resistance to God's grace is the first thing, not for the first time, brought before us ; then, man's self-exalting spirit, which He can only abase; then, his seeking his own, in a carnal way, without faith. Hence his refusal of God's invitation :the field, the yoke of oxen, the wife, are more, in his eyes, than all of God's offers; and God must send out to the outcasts,-to the highways and hedges,-and even then "compel" men to come in, that His house may be filled. Yet, if men will keep to their (thought, God must of necessity keep His own; and they must count the cost of discipleship, not take it up lightly.

(3) 15:God's heart told out in salvation. And now we come to the three parables so familiar to every Christian heart, but which continually disclose fresh beauty and blessedness to the eye opened to behold it. For it is the heart of God that is seen,-His joy in finding and receiving the lost soul, famine-pressed to seek the bread in a Father's house. Here, Father, Son, and Spirit have one mind in the pursuit of one object.* * As the "shepherd" is, of course, Christ, and the Father is spoken of as such, without any figure, so, though much more enigmatically expressed, the "woman" gives us the ministry of the Holy Ghost, acting, doubtless, through the people who belong to Christ, that is the woman. And here I would ask my readers to observe in what section of this book this wonderful display of God in His grace is found. How significant is it that it is placed in the third section of the third part of the third gospel! I would once more very earnestly beg all students of the divine Word to test the truth of these divisions by the meaning of numbers as I have given them in the commencement of these "Key-Notes." If they are indeed not human fancy but of God, it is hard to overrate their importance in the study of the Word. Every number given furnishes a means of testing if it is really so*. The sheep simply wanders, is lost, and brought back. The piece of money must of necessity be sought and found. And in the case of the lost son, while he does indeed set out on his way back to the father's house, yet it is as forced by a necessity in which we see, not the will of man, but God's will supreme over it. Coming to work for necessary bread at a servant's wages, he comes to find at once the wealth of a father's love poured out over him,-the kiss, the ring, the robe, the banquet, unconditionally made his own.

(4) 16:1-13. Another's and our own. The Lord now (to His disciples) speaks of the responsibility in earthly things of those brought into a heavenly portion. Turned off as steward for unfaithfulness as man is with regard to the earth, he yet has in his hands his Master's goods; and as the unrighteous servant in the parable used what he had with a view to his own advantage after he should be dismissed, so grace privileges the believer to use the natural things, from the stewardship of which death dismisses, with a view to what is his eternal interest after death. And this for him is not unrighteousness, therefore:it is in faithfulness to his Master that this eternal blessing is to be found. This the next section emphasizes and enforces by a glimpse of the contrasted portions of souls beyond death.

(5) 16:14-31. Here or hereafter. In answer to covetous Pharisees, the Lord draws this picture of Lazarus and the rich man. The latter's case is what is emphasized. To choose one's good things here is to give up eternal blessedness. But here, faith in the word of God-better authenticated than if one returned from among the dead to wit-ness-is what enables one to choose for one's self a portion else unseen. We see in this section that grace does not set aside the "holiness, without which none shall see the Lord; "nor the principle of faith the works which it produces.

4. (xvii-19:27.)The Practical Fruits of Salvation:the Kingdom of God.

(I) xvii-18:8. The presentation of the kingdom of God. The practical power of the gospel is this, that it establishes the authority of God over our hearts and lives. And it is in Christ He is revealed:grace introduces this kingdom into our hearts. Otherwise, there is but one alternative-the judgment of God. This gives the thread of the present chapter, which seems to have three parts. In the first (10:i-io), the grace which is the spring of all right action characterizes, therefore, the walk of the receiver of it. "He cannot with impunity despise the weak. He must not be weary of pardoning his brother. If he have faith but as a grain of mustard-seed, the power of God is at his disposal. Nevertheless, when he has done all, he has but done his duty." Secondly (10:11-19), it is by the relief of personal need that the glory of Christ is revealed to the soul, and the one who thus finds Him is delivered from the claim of law. Thirdly (10:20-37), the kingdom of God comes thus among men, (not yet as outward display,) to be received in the person of the lowly Son of Man. But the disciples would soon desire to see one of His days, and would not see it; for He must suffer many things, and be rejected of that generation. From thence, the Lord goes on to speak-of His return and the judgment connected with it.

(2) 18:9-34. The character suited to the kingdom. We have now put before us the character suited for the kingdom. First, the publican, stricken with the consciousness of sin, is contrasted with the self-righteous Pharisee, and goes down to his house justified rather than he. Then the little child, the type of helplessness, is received, "for of such is the kingdom of God;" while the ruler finds in his riches that which excludes him from it, although salvation is among the things possible with God, where impossible with men. Peter suggests their own having left what they had, to follow Him. And the Lord, in reply, declares that whosoever had left anything for the kingdom of God's sake should receive much more even in the present time, and in the world to come eternal life. But the Master's feet would be foremost on the path in which the disciples were called to follow. He was to be delivered to the Gentiles, put-to death, and then to rise again.

(3) 18:35-43. Light through faith. We now find one who owns the Lord as King-the Son of David,-receiving sight wherewith he follows Him. "Thy faith hath saved thee," says the Lord. The subjection of faith to Christ is that which gives a single eye; and "the light of the body is the eye." "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

(4) 19:i-io. God works, and salvation. The story of Zacchaeus then distinguishes carefully between good works and salvation. It is plain that Zacchaeus’ answer to the Lord is the repelling of the charge that he was (as they said) in a special way a "sinner." Yet He, while owning him a "son of Abraham," maintains "salvation" to be a thing apart from any question of works, and for the "lost." It had come with Himself that day to Zacchaeus' house.

(5) 19:11-27. The reward of faithfulness and judgment of unbelief. This section closes now with the reward of works at the coming of Christ. The judgment of the unfaithful servant shows unfaithfulness to be simply unbelief.

"Whenever we look around to shun a mortal's frown or catch his smile, we may rest assured there is something wrong; we are off the proper ground of divine service."

Among all, creation beside, there was found no helpmeet for Adam. God makes all the creatures pass before him that he may see this for himself,-a fact which we shall see has its significance for the after-history. Adam gives names to all, as their superior, and in the full intelligence of what they are; but for Adam himself there is found no helpmeet.

Yet that "it is not good for the man to be alone" is the word of his Creator as to him. Looking at the circumstances of the fall, he who has learned to suspect God every where may suspect Him here. He provides in the woman one whom Scripture itself pronounces inferior naturally in wisdom to the man, but on the other hand supplementing him otherwise. The rib out of which she is made is taken from the breast; and if man be the head of humanity, woman is its heart. Even spite of the fall, this still is clear and unmistakable; and man's heart is correspondingly drawn out and developed by her. The awful perversion of this now shows but the fact the more; and the perversion of the best thing commonly produces the worst. For Adam, where all was yet right, here was not only a spiritual being with whom was possible that interchange of thought and feeling which our whole being craves, but also an object for the heart. Pledge of his Creator's love was this fair gift, in whom love sensibly ministered to him and drew out his own, redeeming him from self-occupation as from isolation:surely it was not,-"is not good for the man to be alone," and the help provided was a "help meet for him."

If unbelief still object that by the woman sin came in, and that inferiority of wisdom exposed her to the enemy:she was "beguiled," and ate;- Adam too ate, though he was not beguiled. The woman's strength did not, and does not, lie in wisdom, but in heart:and the instincts of the true heart are as divine a safeguard as the highest wisdom. It was here-as it is easy to see by the record itself-the woman failed, not where she was weakest, but where she was strongest. And with her, as still and ever, the failing heart deceived the head. There is an immense assumption, growing more and more every day, of the power of the mind to keep and even to set right the man morally. It is a mistake most easy of exposure; for are the keenest intellects necessarily the most upright and trustworthy of men? or is there any ascertained proportion between the development of mind and heart? The skepticism that scoffs at divine things revealed to babes is but the pride of intellect, not knowledge. It is itself the fruit and evidence of the fall.

Enough of this for the present, then. Along with all other provision for his blessing we must rank this-too little thought of-that Adam was to be taught mastery also, even in a scene where moral evil was not. He was to "replenish the earth and subdue it;" to "dress and keep" even the "garden of delight." The dominion over the lower creatures he was also evidently to maintain, making them to recognize habitually the place of lordship over them which was his. All this implies much in the way of moral education for one in whose perfect manhood the moral and mental faculties acted in harmony yet, with no breach or dislocation.

Surely we can see in all this a kindly and fruitful training of Adam himself, as in a scene where evil threatened, though it had not come. The full and harmonious play of every spiritual and bodily faculty was provided for, that the man himself, to use language antiquated now, might "play the man;" language truer in its application to him than to any of his natural issue since the fall.

But to that fall itself we must now go on. Its brief but imperishable record is full of the deepest instruction for us, for every day of our life here;- nay, who shall forbid to say, for our life hereafter also? The lessons of time, we may be assured, will be the possession of eternity; of all that we gather here, no fragment will be lost forever. In this history we shall find, too, I doubt not, what we have been considering as to Adam abundantly confirmed.

First, then, as to the instrument in the temptation. Scripture leaves us in no possible doubt that the one who used in this case the actual serpent was the one whom we too familiarly recognize as the leader in a previous irremediable fall-the fall of the angels. Thus lie is called "a liar from the beginning," and "a murderer," "that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan."

The use of the serpent here is noteworthy in another way from that in which it is generally taken. No doubt in the fact that it was "more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made" lay the secret of his selection of it. But why appear under such a form at all? For myself, I cannot but connect it with the fact that Adam had before named every creature, and found no helpmeet for him among them all. If evil, then, would approach, it was not permitted to do so save only under the form of one of these essentially inferior creatures, refused already as having help for man. It was a divine limit to the temptation itself. Man listening to the voice of a creature over whom he was to have dominion, and in whom there was recognized to be no help for him, was in fact man resigning his place of supremacy to the beast itself. In all this, not merely the coming of the enemy, but the mercy of God also, may be surely seen.

Again, as to the form of the temptation itself. It was a question simply-apparently an innocent one -which, entertained in the woman's mind, wrought all the ruin. Here again, surely the mercy of God was limiting the needful trial. Evil was here also not permitted to show itself openly. The tempter is allowed to use neither force nor allurement, nor to put positive evil before the woman at all until she has first encouraged it. "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"

Here was affected surprise-a suggestion of strangeness, no doubt, but no positive charge of wrong. Such an insinuation, if it were even that, a heart true to God need scarcely find much difficulty in repelling. This was in paradise, where all the wealth of blessing which the munificent hand of God had spread around her filled every sense with testimony of His love. Was reason demanded? or did intellect need to find the way through any difficult problem here? Assuredly not. A heart filled with divine goodness would be armor of proof in such a conflict as this. The effort of the enemy was just to make a question for the reason what ought to have been one of those clear perceptions not to be reasoned about, because the basis of all true reason. As a question for the mind the woman entertained it, and thus admitted a suspicion of the divine goodness which has been the key-note of man's condition ever since.

She thus, in fact, entered upon that forbidden path of discriminating between good and evil, which has resulted in a conscience of evil within, in the very heart of the fallen creature. Around was naught but goodness-goodness which they were not forbidden but welcomed to enjoy. Every thing here had but to be accepted; no question raised, no suspicion to be entertained. To raise the question was to fall. And this was the meaning of the forbidden tree, as it was the point to which Satan's question led. In the midst of a scene where was naught but goodness, there could be no question entertained where there was no suspicion. By entertaining- the question, the woman showed that she had allowed the suspicion. Thus she fell.

How differently now we are situated is most plain. In a mingled scene where indeed divine goodness is not lacking, but where also the fruit of the fail, and Satan's work is every where, suspicion becomes continually a duty, and conscience a divine preservative. The knowledge of good and evil is no longer forbidden, but we have our "senses exercised to discern" these. Innocence is gone; but, thank God, who is supreme to make all things serve His holy purposes, righteousness and holiness are things possible, and, in the new creature, things attained.

If we took at the woman's answer to the serpent, we shall easily find these workings of her soul. "And the woman said unto the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.'"

Here is the wavering unsteadiness of a soul that has lost its balance, and flounders more in its endeavors to regain it. What tree had God put into "the midst" of the garden ? According to the inspired account, it was the tree of life. Prohibition -was that at the very heart of paradise? Did every thing there radiate, so to speak, from the threatening of death? Alas! slight as the matter may seem, it tells where the woman's soul is. The first words we hear from her are words very intelligible to us, far gone as we are from innocency. For how easily with us does one prohibited thing blot out of our view a thousand blessings! Alas! we understand her but too well.

And her next words are even plainer. When had God said, "Neither shall ye touch it"? The prohibition has got possession of her mind, and to justify herself as to her conception of it, she adds words of her own to God's words. A mere "touch," she represents to the devil, might be fatal to them. They might perchance be the innocent victims of misfortune, as it would seem according to her. Who can doubt how dark a shadow is now veiling God from her soul? All the more that her next words make doubtful the penalty, and as if it were the mere result of natural laws, as men now speak, rather than direct divine infliction,-"lest ye die."

God's love is here suspected; God's truth is tampered with ; God's authority is out of sight:so far on the swift road to ruin the woman has descended. The devil can be bolder now. Not "ye shall not surely die" is what he says, but "certainly ye shall not die;" and closes with one of those sayings of his in which a half truth becomes a total He,- "for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, [or perhaps, "as God,"] knowing good and evil."

And there is no more tarrying as to the woman:her ear and her heart are gained completely. She sees with the devil's eyes, and is in full accord and fellowship with him, and the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life come in at once. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."

Thus was the fall consummated. Conscience at once awoke when the sin of the heart had been perfected in act. "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked ; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons." But we are now in another scene from that with which we started, and a new age now begins, even before Genesis 3:is closed. We shall therefore look at this in its place separately when we consider, if the Lord will, the dealings of God with man under the next economy.

Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of My 'God, and the name of the city of My God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God; and I will write upon him My new name."(Rev. 3:11,12.).

That acceptance with God must precede a walk with God is a thing so evident that it should not need a moment's insisting on. To walk with God, one must first be with Him; to be with Him, one must first have come to Him,-have sought Him out, and found Him; for, alas! naturally, with Him we are not. A breach has taken; place between God and His creatures; and in the far-off country in which man is, both what He is and that He is can be debated questions:" He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that seek Him out."

The way of acceptance, Abel has already declared to us. That way, as it alone meets the need of a truly convicted soul, so it discovers God to the soul. Henceforth, He is known, and as known, rejoiced in, loved, and worshiped. Henceforth, the world, once so dark and empty, is lighted, cheered, and peopled by His presence. Henceforth, our walk is to be characterized as a walk with God.

How marvelously does Scripture present in these three brief words the whole practical life of faith! Into how many volumes may they be-nay, have they been, expanded, without exhausting their significance! The moral character, the spirit, the power, the joy, the triumph, of such a life are all here indicated. Take any other feature, how utterly defective would it be! And this is the statement as to Enoch to which the apostle refers apparently as the " testimony that he pleased God." What indeed pleases the love that seeks us, so much as the heart's answer of practical delight in Him intimated in such a walk! Let us consider it in some main features, then, and the Lord give us an understanding heart! Enoch, translated that he should not see death,-Enoch, caught away before the flood in which the old world perished,- and of whom is recorded the first, far-off prediction of the coming of the Lord,-is surely, as many have seen, the type of that Church which, in contrast with Jewish saints as such, is not removed from the earth by death, but caught away alive "to meet the Lord in the air." To us who are expecting Him, therefore, Enoch should be an example, appealing to us in the strongest way. In his days, indeed, we read of but one Enoch. In ours, in the full brightness of a revelation such as has been vouchsafed to us, how many should there be!

And yet the first characteristic of a walk with God is that it is in a certain sense necessarily alone. On this it is needful continually to insist. It is that which passes in secret between the soul and God that gives it its character for Him, and measures, so to speak, what the life is. Faith, even in the midst of a crowd, individualizes-isolates us. On the "white stone" of approval the name written- the name by which He knows us,-speaks of some, thing secret between our souls and Him:" a new name written, which no man knoweth, save he who receiveth it." When His glory is revealed to us, it makes us in such sense His as He can share with no other. In the deepest exercises, the most ecstatic joys, we must be alone. And the path of faith is ever that in which His word comes to us alone. "What shall this man do?" if asked, as we are prone to ask it, as if it affected our own course in any wise, must be met by the rebuke of the Lord, as in the case of Peter:"What is that to thee? follow thou Me."

A walk with God of necessity means for us one only Master. In the presence of God, could there be even a second ? Every heart that knows it will say at once, Impossible! The yoke of discipleship, easy as indeed it is, is in this respect imperative:he that forsakes not all that he hath cannot be Christ's disciple. This implies a path not only individual, but at all costs individual; the maintenance of one will only, which we are responsible to learn, too, from Himself. How great a matter is this individuality, when in it is involved the whole question of Christ's authority over us,-of a true, divine path!

If the walk be with God, the moral character of it is of course guaranteed. By which, it surely is not meant that the assumption of being with God is to be allowed to justify whatever may seem inconsistent in it; but contrariwise, that unrighteousness and evil in the path negative its being of God necessarily. This should be too simple to need saying, yet in fact the application seems often strangely difficult to make. The first thing, before faith and love, which the apostle exhorts Timothy to follow, is "righteousness:" "Follow righteousness, faith, love." It is the first, and if you will, the lesser thing, but the only way by which the greater can be reached, and the road traveled by the pure in heart.

Righteousness levels the road ; faith determines its direction; love is faith's goal; for if it works by love, it is on that account toward love that it works. And let us remember, we do not know the road by the people who walk on it, but by its own characters; and the pure in heart, by their walking on the road.

Again, therefore, a walk with God determines our associations. How strangely significant is the inability of Christians often even to understand this! If one's walk is really with God, does it not necessarily follow that only those who walk with Him are to walk with us? Are we not otherwise seeking impiously to make Him walk with the evil that He hates? It is impossible. His own words are express:" Come out from among them, and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing, and "- thus, and not otherwise,-" I will receive you, and will be a Father to you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

These, then, are tests as to the walk with God. How many, alas! do they disqualify! yet who that knows the blessed One to whom we have been brought can think without astonishment and dismay of the people bought with the precious blood of Christ bartering the joy of communion for the world that cast Him out; and turning their dear-earned service into the enemy's advantage? "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider."

But "Enoch walked with God." Let us look a little more closely at what is implied in this, for as yet we have only looked at it from the outside, as it were, and seen more what attaches to it than what it is in itself.

In the first place, then, it means, relationship with a living Person.

Now, of relationship in the Christian sense Enoch knew nothing. He was one of those who, although children, had not yet the place of children. He had not the Spirit of adoption, could not cry, Abba, Father, knew not of the fullness of salvation now preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; and yet the word of God is express, he walked with God. Noah too is said to have walked with God ; and Abraham is called by God Himself His " friend." Enoch was in relationship with One who as a living Person walked with him. And God and he were agreed; for " how can two walk together, except they be agreed?" It is a great thing to be with God as one agreed with Him. Do we all who know redemption, and the child's place with God,-know yet much of what it is to walk thus with Him ?

For, therefore, this is not to cry, Abba, Father, to pray to Him and be heard, to receive from His blessed hand:all these there may be, and no walk with Him at all. It is quite another thing to walk from day to day as of one mind with Him, in known accord. This is a life of wonderful joy and power and dignity:to be at one with His interests upon the earth, and maintain them in practical devoted-ness of intelligent service. How many among Christians even can speak much from actual knowledge of such a life ? With a large number, salvation-nay, even their own salvation, is the important matter:a personal interest absorbs by far the greatest part of their attention. With how many, indeed, a steady pursuit of their own blessing is their avowed principle, which they suppose will suffice to justify any course of conduct! Spiritually, they do not imagine it to be what the apostle would reprove,-that they "seek their own, not the thirds of Jesus Christ."

How many, again, have no very distinct thought at all of any thing beyond what they feebly call their "duty;" in itself, no doubt, a word which embraces all that it is possible for any to do, and immensely more than any one ever does, for " When ye have done all," says the Lord, " say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it is our duty to do." And "if any one knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." We can never, then, by any possibility, get beyond duty, and the word is one full of power and sweetness, when it stands for the debt so impossible to cancel, so sweet ever to owe-to Him who has bought us for His own with the shedding of His precious blood. But in truth, how little it often stands for,-a cold, fancied measurement of the immeasurable, a pacifying of conscience with nothing very particularly wrong, where yet nothing either is right! It would surely be impossible to bring a walk with God under the idea merely of duty. Duty to walk with Him!

The first requisite of such a walk is surely that we appreciate it. Think of who it is that invites us to living companionship with Himself! Can a cold-hearted half-response suit the blessed Person who seeks us for Himself? If the answer on our part be not frank and sincere, must not all the vigor of the life be lost? What He wants is heart, not service,-He whom all things gladly serve!

And yet appreciation can only be shown in surrender of will and life to Him. We can walk with Him on no other terms than that He shall be master; and in this there is nothing dreadful, nothing but what, if indeed we know Him, we must know to be as good as it is necessary. "His commandments are not grievous." Do we need that to be argued out? The blessedness of eternity is stated in just such a brief sentence as that " God is all in all."And this is perfect order, holiness, happiness, all in one. Yet we look at the cross, and we shrink. Into what depths, we think, may it be His will to lead us. Marah lies with its bitter waters at the very entrance of a road which is all the way through the desert. True, but it was sweetened Marah; "and there He made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He proved them, and said, 'If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and wilt keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee.'"How sweet a promise that true obedience should be the way of blessing and of good; that as Marah did, things that seemed contrary should change into their opposites for them-bitter to sweet, and sorrow to joy!"And who is he that shall harm you," asks the apostle, if ye be followers of that which is good?"

He anticipates an objection here:" But and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye;" and," if ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye" Such sufferings he will not put down among sorrows. Would Paul have given a doleful account of the road h%traveled ? Those who look at it from outside may think it hard; but do we, any of us, ever think of pitying Paul? Do you pity Israel at sweetened Marah?

Suffer we shall, no doubt, for who can escape? The only question is, are we to suffer on the path with God, where suffering itself has its joy and fruit, or suffer for sin and without Him? Is it not strange indeed that for the child of God there should be a moment's hesitation ?

A walk with God means oneness of mind with Him. True, we have to be taught it; for naturally, His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. Yet how precious the lesson, day by day, to learn by fresh and wonderful discoveries the perfection of those ways and thoughts! To be taught of His Word and guided by His eye, while carried, too, in what grace, in the arms of His strength:" they go from strength to strength" therefore,-no wonder! Carried on to final victory, sure from the first; where dependence means, not discouragement, but rest.

How far-seeing an Enoch thus could be we know by the record which Jude gives us:"And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, ' The Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.' " How keen the eye of faith exercised by the iniquity around as it looks over the intervening centuries to that consummation for which still we wait! You may say, That was prophecy; but we should do wrong, nevertheless, to separate the prophetic office from the soul of the prophet. There might be a Balaam, no doubt, whom the wisdom of God might use for its own purposes:of such I do not speak. Elijah, the man of God, jealous, as he says to Him Himself, for Him, the man whose effectual fervent prayer availed much, though he were of like passions with ourselves, as James pointedly reminds us,-such is the model of the Lord's prophets. Of these it could be said, " Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets." How blessed the place of those who have chosen their path with God ever! For Enoch, it ended in heaven without seeing death; and so with Elijah. "By faith" says our passage in the Hebrews, "Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated Him:for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God." Surely it was not to the dispraise of others that they went to heaven by a very different road. It pleased God thus to give testimony to Enoch; to others in very varied ways:but it was a blessed end of a path as blessed, the seal upon a life upon which no shadow of death passes. Flow simple and beautiful,-a walk with God here, passing as without necessity of change into a walk with Him in joy forever. And we who wait for such a transition as was Enoch's, should we not make it our care to walk with Him now even as Enoch did? ( To be continued, D. V.)

III. THE LORD’S SERVICE PERFECTED IN SUFFERING AND DEATH (Chap. 10:46-16:)
The closing verse of the last section is the one which opens the following one. The Son of Man is now' about to complete His earthly ministry by the giving of His life a ransom for many. The divisions here are in general simple:first, from chap. 10:46-xiii, we have the doom upon the people, which He Himself is going to take, to deliver them from ; then, chap, xiv, xv, He stoops under the necessary judgment of sin, bearing it in His own body on the tree; and then, as in the other gospels, resurrection becomes the public witness of acceptance (chap. 16:).

I. (10:46-13:) Judgment and Deliverance.

(i) 10:46-11:26. The Lord's entry into Jerusalem. In each of the three synoptic gospels it is at Jericho, and with the healing of the blind man, that the story of the Lord's final sufferings begins. Bartimaeus is, so to speak, the herald who announces to the people the character of the kingdom which they are invited to receive. Here, for the first time in the gospel, the Lord is appealed to as Son of David, and answers the appeal. Power is put forth in his behalf, and faith makes him whole. Alas! in the nation at large there is none.

We next find the Lord entering the city according to Zechariah's prophecy. The multitude hail Him who cometh in the name of the Lord, but not as in the future they will from their heart do so. The Lord enters the temple, simply looks around upon all things, and departs. It is striking that no overt act of rejection is recorded as yet. It is not the national or dispensational question, but one much deeper. He then pronounces judgment on the fruitless fig-tree. True, the time of figs was not yet, but the leaves professed to the eye what was not justified to the hand that tested it.

Once more in the temple, He denounces the shameless traffic which polluted the house of God; and in the morning the disciples find the fig-tree dried up by the roots. The Lord uses this to strengthen their faith in God.

(2) 11:27-12:The judgment of the people. The leaders of the people now question His authority. He convicts them by a counter-question as to John's baptism, and then in a parable exposes their refusal of the divine claim, and of Him in whom it was presented to them. Yet how vain, as well as causeless, was this enmity! It was already written that " the stone which the builders rejected " was to " become the head of the corner."

The only result is another attack, concealed with the most consummate hypocrisy, of the Herodians and Pharisees together. The Herodians found their gain in what was their shame, while the Pharisees resisted what was the punishment for their sins. God was on both sides alike forgotten. The holy wisdom of the answer confounded their serpent-cunning:" Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

The infidelity of the Sadducees is next rebuked by the unexpected witness of that part of Scripture which alone they acknowledged:" I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," was said when the patriarchs had long been to men dead. Yet this word of Moses exhibited God still as owning relationship to them, who therefore to Him lived. The Lord bases His argument for resurrection upon the fact of a separate state. The Sadducees, as consistent materialists, denied both.

Thus is man told out,-infidel, worldling, or under whatever form of religion, still at heart a rebel to God's rightful claim. The first of all the commandments was, "Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God," and yet men had difficulty in realizing the comparative importance of this compared with "all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices." He who discerned it is pronounced by the Lord Himself as " not far from the kingdom of God."

And if the law was clear, so were the prophets. The Christ who was to be David's Son is owned by David himself to be his Lord, and set by God at His own right hand. But the secret of unbelief is in the lust of place and power and gain and reputation; while with Him who quietly watched and weighed men's actions, two mites in faith and self-denial given to God were of more value than a myriad costly gifts.

Such was, such is, man; and being such, redemption can only be for him through the cross. The Son of Man must be lifted up.

(3) 13:The second coming " apart from sin unto salvation!' But before that is shown us, we have, as in Matthew and Luke both, the Lord's announcement of His coming the second time, not as one having to say to sin any longer, but in power and glory, for the full deliverance of His own in Israel, oppressed at once by the unbelief and wickedness of the people, and the calamities which this entails. It is plain that the character of the gospel is observed here as elsewhere, and that it is with disciples as such that the Lord is occupied, throughout. On the other hand, Israel is exclusively in sight. The references to Christianity and to the Gentiles which are found in both Matthew and Luke are entirely omitted here.

2. (xiv, 15:) Judgment borne (the basis of deliverance.

(i) 14:1-52. The cup in view. In Mark's relation of the last supper, the Lord's sovereignty over circumstances is not dwelt on, as in Matthew, while His foresight of them is much more so. In Matthew and Mark both, the cup He is about to take is more simply in view than in the other gospels, which speak more of the fruits of it. Here, if the shadow is deeper, the surrender is absolute; and it is beautiful to notice that it is in these two gospels alone that the hymn is mentioned which they sing before they go out to the mount of Olives. From the darkest shadow the fullest praise! In both, also, in striking relief of the present sorrow is the anticipation of the new wine to be drunk with His own in the kingdom of God. In the garden, we have the trial of a perfect will, which could not but abhor the awful doom of sin, yet could not but accept a Father's will, even to the drinking of such a cup. This was the pure linen garment with which alone the priest could go into the holiest. How wonderful the light which the absolute Light must needs carry with Him in the darkest place-nay, which there would shine out in fullest luster ! Only He could be " made sin " who Himself knew none. " He is there as a man- glad to have His disciples watch with Him, glad to isolate Himself, and pour out His heart into the bosom of His Father, in the dependent condition of a man who prays. What a spectacle!"

" All forsake Him and flee; for who beside Himself could follow this path to the end? One young man indeed sought to go further; but as soon as the officers laid hold upon him, seizing his linen garment, he fled and left it in their hands. Apart from the power of the Holy Ghost, the farther one ventures into the path in which the power of the world and of death is found, the greater the shame with which one escapes, if God permit escape." (Synopsis.)

(2) 14:53-15:15.The cup taken. Before the high-priest the Lord is condemned for His own true testimony, the false witnesses being able to do nothing but manifest their mutual contradiction. Jesus is distinctly refused as Son of God, though the Son of God could alone redeem; but of their own need they know no more than of His glory. Peter makes evident that none can follow Him now, breaking down before the accusations of a maid and vindicating himself with oaths and curses from the suspicion of knowing Him whom to know is eternal life. The crow of the cock alone awakes him to his sin and shame, but to the grace of the Lord which had anticipated and provided for all, and he is brought to repentance.

Before Pilate, the account of what takes place is briefer than in any other gospel. The charge itself is scarcely distinct even, for the question is here of another kind. The people's choice of Barabbas, on the other hand, instigated by the priests, is clear and decisive. They refuse the Prince of Life, and desire a murderer to be granted to them. The state of man is every way made plain, and for this, a willing sufferer, Jesus dies.

(3) 15:16-47. The cup drunk. The only thing that remains, therefore, is the cross itself. First, in mere causeless brutality, He is mocked by the soldiers, then led out to be crucified, another bearing His cross, whom the Lord well remembers in his sons, Alexander and Rufus, known men afterward in the Church. Then the usual stupefying drink is offered and refused. He had come expressly (blessed Lord!) to suffer; might have had twelve legions of angels and have gone to the Father, and would not. Then they crucify Him, casting lots upon His garments; and the scripture is fulfilled which saith, " He was numbered with the transgressors." We have very exactly the scene of the twenty-second psalm, all other sufferings only bringing into prominence that great suffering which alone interprets the darkness-the being forsaken of God. He expires, and the vail of the temple is rent in the midst. The Gentile centurion owns Him as the Son of God. And now, His work accomplished, the ministry of His own begins once more, and the rich man's new tomb receives its brief-tarrying Guest. The peculiar character of Mark's relation has been already dwelt upon.

3. (16:) Resurrection, the acceptance of the work of atonement.

(i) 16:1-8. The re-establishment of the connection between the Lord and the poor of the flock in Israel, a remnant who by and by become the nation. The conclusion of Mark's gospel divides manifestly into two parts; a fact which criticism has laid hold of to deny the authenticity of the last part. In truth, they are widely different, the Lord being in these verses, if we may so say, in Old-Testament connection, in the following ones in New. In these first verses He is not actually seen at all, but is promised to appear to them in Galilee, a place constantly connected with the blessing for Israel in the latter days. To this it no doubt points-a blessing in reserve, its foundation already laid.
(2) 16:9-20. The Lord in New-Testament connection. announces the results of His atonement. In the second part, faith in testimony is insisted on, for ours is the greater blessedness of those who have not seen but believed. The gospel is sent out to every creature, and he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. The signs that follow are tokens of Satan's power subdued; the division introduced by disobedience among men removed in grace; the serpent's bite, the poison of sin, annulled ; the power of death, too, canceled; and the blessing received to be communicated to others.

Finally, as the guarantee of all, fit answer to the humiliation into which, though it be His glory too, He has come down, "the Lord therefore, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God." But He is not divorced thus from the service which He loves; and the gospel ends in character as it began:"And they went forth and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following."

The first question that seems needful to ask is, What is assembly -action? There is no doubt, or should be none, that the Lord has given to even two or three gathered to His name the power to act in a certain sphere and within certain limits, and that to resist such action, where scripturally taken, would be to resist the authority of the Lord Himself. In subjection and self-will are here, as ever, most serious for the soul of him who displays them. The assembly is not a set of people gathered by their own wills, or governed by rules enacted by mutual agreement, and which may be canceled in the same way as made. In it the Lord's will must have supremacy alone, the Word of God being its expression alone, and the Spirit of God its sole interpreter. When the decision of an assembly fulfills these conditions, then alas for the man whose pride and independency would set-it aside! On the other hand, where its decision does not fulfill them, then it violates its own character, and humility is shown, not in accepting, but refusing this.

But what is assembly-action? This is of first importance to consider. I assume here the knowledge of what the assembly is, and of course it is the local assembly of which we are speaking,- those who are the members of the body of Christ in a given place, or the "two or three" who alone may be actually gathered as that. This- action, it is very simple to understand, is the action of those gathered,-ideally, of all gathered, in intelligent agreement with one another.

That this is the perfect ideal should need no discussion. If, for instance, one of those coming together were not consulted,-were left out,-it would no longer be the assembly. But more than this, if the consent of one or more of these were brought about by other means or inducements than the apprehension of Scripture and its application to the facts of the case, it is plain they would still be practically outside. For the decision of an assembly, if rightly so, is not merely an agreement that such a thing shall be, but also that it ought to be,-in accordance with the mind of the Lord, and in subjection to His word.

How solemn, for those who pronounce it, therefore, is the decision of an assembly! Let us pause here for a brief word of application, before we proceed further. It is strange and sad how readily the most simple results of obvious truths escape us. It is clear that the woman, whatever practical restriction the Word may enjoin as to her public part in the assembly, yet belongs to it as fully as does the man. No action of the men alone (whether formally or virtually such) is the action of the assembly. The conscience of the woman is to be respected exactly as is the man's; for her obedience to the Lord is as necessary as is his. But on this account, the woman is to be made acquainted with what is in question as much as is the man. Nothing can relieve us of our individual responsibility in that in which we are to act for God, and no one can, therefore, devolve his individual responsibility upon another, or upon any number of others:not the wife upon her husband, for instance, or the child upon his parent. Each one of us must give an account of himself to God; and any interference, whether by constraint or neglect, with the claim of God upon another is really and only sin, whatever the plea.

This does not at all set aside the value of "guides" in this as in every other matter. Guidance supposes the intelligence and conscience both in exercise; and assisted, not suppressed. As another has said, " It is not the seeing leading the blind, but the seeing leading the seeing" Thus none can dispute, surely, the use of brothers' meetings for preparing a matter for the assembly so that confusion may be avoided, and a godly judgment more easily attained. But this has need to be closely watched lest officialism and clerisy come in by this door, and the decision be virtually made here, only to be announced for formal approbation afterward. Such a meeting has no claim of right, but is only a matter of wisdom-of expediency. Those meeting in it are servants of the assembly, not its lords; to be respected and honored for their service; as lords, to be peremptorily rejected and refused. How easily here may custom grow into claim! Dangers beset us every where, and helps" readily become hindrances. The assumption of brothers' meetings has been so great as to throw doubt even upon their expediency, however undeniably useful in their place they may be. At least, authority from Scripture they have none.

The first requisite for assembly-action, then, is, that it should be really the assembly that acts. God would have neither unexercised consciences nor violated consciences. To secure this, patience and forbearance toward one another have to be displayed, and no decision come to while one honest-hearted person remains unconvinced. Slow work this, some will object; but what if it entail much more waiting upon God, more tender care of each other, than we have been accustomed to; is it not better to reach slowly a decision in which all concur than to sow the seed of future self-accusation, dissension, and doubt among brethren ? May not the slowness of some be a needed guard against the haste of others,-a most real help against rash and ill-considered judgment? Does not the endeavor to keep the unity of' the Spirit, too, necessitate this? Can we really claim the authority of the Lord for that which is the result of pressure put upon the weak, the timid, the ignorant-nay, even of the unconcern of the indifferent? Alas! we may; but will He that is holy, He that is true, confirm with His authority the fruit of disregard for His own precepts, and carelessness for His people?

I am aware that 2 Corinthians 2:6 is pleaded, where the punishment of the man put away from among them is said to have been "inflicted of many," or " of the greater part." It has been hence pressed that a majority had Scripture-ground for giving their judgment as that of the whole. It has been also pressed that the point to be reached is the Lord's mind, which not even unanimity, much less" a majority, could secure. This last is evidently true, and upsets the other. The decision of the majority cannot be taken as necessarily the Lord's mind, for the majority in an assembly may not be the most spiritual, or the secret of the Lord with them. As a matter of fact, at Corinth, the apostle was in doubt about many, (chap. 12:21,) and could not speak of the action of the assembly as being in truth of heart the action of all; although this by no means shows that all had not outwardly consented to it. To plead this for a decision by majority would surely be all wrong. On the other hand, a unanimous judgment may be wrong also:there is no infallibility of the assembly. And it is the Lord's mind that is to be sought and found. The question is, are any number, few or many, entitled to act as having the Lord's mind, because of their own conviction of having it, apart from the concurrence of the assembly as a whole?

The thing is plain, that if any number assume to be the assembly, they deny the claim of those who dissent from them to be of the assembly at all. Practically, they cut them off. And in so doing, they must be prepared to establish to their brethren elsewhere the claim they make; not simply the Tightness of their decision on the point in question, but of this cutting off of those who dissent. They cannot justify this by the Tightness of their decision as such. The question is, why did they disregard the consciences of the rest? why is the unity of the Spirit violated? or, on which side really is the responsibility for the breach?

But now, supposing the action to be unanimous, how far and in what cases are all assemblies bound by it? how far is it authoritative for all who will be subject to the Lord?

Now of course if an assembly go beyond the limits of its authority, it has none; nay, is itself in insubjection, and to be resisted and rebuked, not listened to. If it undertake to decree doctrines, or bring in principles in opposition to the Word, the conscience of the weakest babe is under obligation to refuse such action altogether. Of principles we are bound to judge. Here, the whole church, and every believer in it, are to be subject to the Word of God alone. Every act of discipline, though it were in an assembly at the end of the earth, requires to be so tested. The maintenance of false principles destroys the claim of any action in which they are found to be valid before God or man. "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven " applies not here. We are in no wise in this case to " hear the church," but the Scriptures, which alone are " able to furnish thoroughly unto all good works."

But again, the Lord's words cannot avail to show that an unrighteous judgment is bound in heaven. The plain principles of truth and righteousness are never, and can never be, violated in any path of duty. If grace reigns through righteousness, does not set it aside, how much less can an act of judgment set aside righteousness, and yet God require my subjection to it! Of course, I must be very sure of my steps here, and that my own judgment is just of the case before me. In a conflict of views, humility will in general go right, where pride is certain in some way to go wrong. The point we are upon is not the manner of dealing with evil, but the very simple principle that the authority of the Lord can never be pleaded to make me bow to it. That is impossible. I can never do it without defilement and dishonor to the Lord, whose holy name it is blasphemy to connect with the upholding of sin.

An assembly-action, then, if the assembly be not (as it is not) infallible, must be judged of as every human act is. If there is in it no unscriptural principle, then in most cases we are bound to accept it, not as infallible in any wise, but as an assembly act. The body is one, and what they have done we have done. We do not affirm it to be righteous, and it is capable of being recalled and repented of, if shown to be unrighteous. Questions of fact can in general only be settled there where the matter judged occurred. It is manifestly impossible to carry it round the world for fresh decision in any place where question may be raised. Such a course would prevent any thing being ever settled, would transform every assembly into a court of appeal in every case that may arise, and load every gathering with the burdens of all. Moreover, it would set gatherings at issue with one another throughout the world, and destroy all practical unity whatever. For the act of another assembly is our act, and if it be not according to God, the remedy is not to set up another against it, but to reverse and repent of what has been wrongly done. There, where the wrong is, it should be righted, and in this way every gathering should be open to listen to and weigh any godly representation from another gathering. Has it not been from a straining of the words, "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven," that an assembly-act has been so much looked upon as practically irreversible, and that such a thing as the repentance of an assembly is hardly recognized?

The thought leads plainly to an implication of infallibility in the judgment which the Lord (it is supposed) maintains, and this, in turn, leads to practical carelessness in judging. How can they repent of what they say, with unintentional blasphemy, is bound in heaven? And what a millstone upon the assembly must be such unrepented sins. No wonder they should be easily taken in any snare of Satan afterward, who have thus far yielded already to him!

Let the real responsibility of assemblies be recognized, and the duty of public recall and repentance insisted on for what is done amiss, and in this the Lord will be really honored, and His authority maintained, and there will be blessing accordingly. But this high-church pretension is but the haughty spirit that precedes a fall.

On the other hand, independent action is division begun, and this is only justified in the last extreme, when otherwise we should be ourselves involved in evil against which protest is no longer of avail. We must be sure also that God has really put a matter into our hands for judgment, before we undertake to be the judges; else it is no wonder if we err grievously. If evil be plain, God would never involve us hopelessly in complicity with it, although patience and lowliness will be absolutely necessary in any right course. In the presence of evil, to be in lowliness and self-judgment before God is above all things requisite. In fleshliness we cannot rightly deal with flesh. We must " put on the whole armor of God, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil."

The principle should be plain, that we recognize the act of any two or three gathered to the Lord's name as our act, save only if obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ require otherwise. If that act involve unscriptural principles, we are bound to refuse it; and if evil can be shown in the act itself, apart from this, remonstrance and protest are called for while they may avail, and only in the last resort can there be rightly a contrary judgment given elsewhere. In this case, separation from evil has necessitated division, and that which necessitates it for ourselves must justify it to our brethren.

1 John.

'Twas not in worlds of light above
That God made known His way of love;
'Twas not in scenes unsullied, bright,
That He revealed that God is light:
'Twas not amidst the ambient air,
'Midst glowing suns, or moonlight fair,
Nor where the myriad creatures creep
Who move amidst the untrampled deep.

'Twas not in Eden's garden fair,
Where all was good for man to share;
Whence sprang each tree to please the eye,
To lend its shade, its fruit supply,
Where Nature, in her tenderest ways,
Diffused her joys in myriad rays:
Not all creation's glories bright
Could tell that God is love, is light.

Not there came forth the light divine,
Not there did God's full purpose shine,
Not there did He who dwelt above
Reveal Himself as light and love;
But in those scenes of ceaseless shame,
Where sin still burned unholy flame,
Where in its fierce and fiery breath
Man wasted, moth-like unto death.

There Jesus came-the incarnate One-
God's peerless, perfect, lowly Son,
Where 'midst sorrow, sin, and shame
He showed His Father's holy name.
His life shone there in purest light,
As light 'midst darkness, burning bright,
Then crowned by death His life of love
To bring man up to God above.

T.McK.

The epistle to the Colossians has for its key-note the ninth and tenth verses of the second chapter-"In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him." It is the fullness of Christ for the Christian. The first chapter gives us the first part of this, which it anticipates:" For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him."The second and third chapters show our completeness in Him:His death for us delivering us from our natural portion; His resurrection bringing us into our portion now with God. In the first chapter, the work of atonement is represented as for the reconciliation of heaven and earth, as well as having accomplished the reconciliation of all believers:"And having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself,-by Him, I say, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven. And you, that were some time alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight."

This doctrine of reconciliation is important as showing how far the need and value of the cross extend. In Romans already there is the statement that " when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son;" but here it extends much more widely, and has to do, not merely with persons even, but with things-all things, both in heaven and in earth. There are no persons in heaven to be brought back by the work of Christ, " for verily He taketh not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold "(Heb. ii:16, Gr.). It is not, therefore, of persons that the apostle is speaking here, but of the frame-work of things put out of joint, as it were, through sin, as far as sin has reached, and which the work of Christ was needed to set right.

In this application of reconciliation two things are plain:first, that it is not merely a moral effect on man that is intended by it, (although this moral effect there is, and it is a great truth too;) and secondly, that it was in the nature of God Himself that the deepest need of atonement lay. Going on to Ephesians, we find the apostle speaking of "the redemption of the purchased possession" (1:14); and in Hebrews 9:12, saying, "It was necessary, therefore, that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these." Here, the heavenly things, then, are spoken of as purchased, purified, reconciled, redeemed. In whose eyes were they, then, impure? Clearly, in His to whom alone all true sacrifice was ever offered. It was the nature of God which required atonement, His holiness that needed satisfaction in it. In a deeper sense than probably Eliphaz knew could it be said, "The heavens are not clean in His sight" (Job 15:15). The work of Christ enables Him to lay hold upon all that with which sin has been connected, and restore to more than all its pristine beauty and excellency. How unspeakable is the value of that work which not only does this, but actually glorifies Him in filling the heavenly places with those redeemed from the fall, and made the very " righteousness of God in Christ."

As for Christians, they are already reconciled through the work of Christ:"You…hath He reconciled."It is done, although not yet are all the fruits reaped of this. Already are we before God in Christ, " accepted in the Beloved," waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body, to put us in" our place every way, in the very image of the heavenly. Reconciliation on bur part necessarily includes the change-from enmity, the natural state, to love, as here and in Romans both:" When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son;" "You, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled." The moral effect is what is needed as to vis. The power of the display of the love which has so wonderfully met our whole necessity brings our hearts back to God. Love wins love:" we love Him because He first loved us." Hence, for this effect, the freeness and fullness of the gospel are essential. " 'Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him most?''I suppose that he to whom he forgave most.' ' Thou hast rightly judged.' "Question of the love that calls forth my love is fatal to this effect. I must be delivered from the necessity of seeking my own things, in order to live, not unto myself, but unto Him who died for me and rose again. This, the apostle tells us, was the secret of his life, such as we know it was:" The life which I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."

Reconciliation was needed thus on our part, and in order that it might be, the death of Christ must meet the demand of divine righteousness; but on this very account it is never said in Scripture, as it is so often in human creeds, that God is reconciled by the work of Christ. He had not changed, but we. God had never enmity to the work of His hands, however fallen away from Him. He had not, then, to be reconciled; and so, even where the reconciliation is of things, not persons, it is still these that are said to be reconciled, as we have seen. As to man, reconciliation is pressed upon him on the ground of Christ's work:"We pray, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God; for He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

The second part of Colossians gives, as I have said, the effect of the work of Christ for us, bringing in His resurrection and life beyond death as giving us our new place in the efficacy of it with God. We have "dead with Christ," "buried with Christ," almost exactly as in the second part of Romans, our death being called here "the circumcision of Christ," or Christian circumcision. While the "alive in Christ" of Romans is here carried back to its commencement in our being "quickened together with Christ."Our life in Him is thus seen, from its first moment, to be the result of atonement. The blotting out of legal ordinances, which were contrary to us, and the spoiling of principalities and powers, are connected also with His work. Risen with Him, we are in spirit to be outside the scene we are passing through,-to " seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God."

Ephesians, as is well known, carries us one step beyond this. We are not only risen, but ascended, " made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Here, "with" can no longer be said, as is evident. We are not actually, but as yet only represented, there:it is " the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places."

This is individual, of course. And though, as in Colossians, "we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace," yet the meeting our responsibility in grace is not the special subject of Ephesians, but the new creation which we are made in Christ, and this in its heavenly character the epistle sets before us. It is not within our scope just now to enter upon this. In connection with it, the effect of the cross is spoken of as breaking down the middle wall of partition between both Jew and Gentile, both man and God. This middle wall of partition is the law, which the apostle calls, therefore, by a strong figure, the "enmity," and its abolition, our peace and reconciliation:"Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one new man, making peace; and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby."There is nothing here but what is simple enough, and needs no comment. Nor does Ephesians present us with any further development of the doctrine of atonement.

The texts we have had before us naturally connect themselves with one already quoted in connection with them, but to which we must give now more particular attention. It is 2 Corinthians 5:21. The whole passage runs thus:"And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as" though God did beseech by us, we pray in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

Notice, first, there is no statement here of the world having been reconciled. It is of the attitude which God took in Christ come into the world, of which the apostle is speaking. What Christ was doing when here, he says, we are doing as His representatives, "in His stead," now He is no longer here. But that attitude is of beseeching men to be reconciled,-not telling them they are. In this way God was not imputing their trespasses to them, inviting them to draw nigh to Him, not forbidding access.

Now this same liberty of access is proclaimed, but the ground of it is an already accomplished work:"He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." The main feature of atonement is here very clearly given; and the force is made plainer by the contrast of words and thought. In the same sense was Christ made sin for us as that in which we are made righteousness; and as the sin was the sin of man, so the righteousness is the righteousness of God. Moreover, as it was not in Himself that He was made sin, for He knew none; so not in ourselves are we made divine righteousness, but in Him. The antithesis in all this no one can doubt to be designed; and it makes evident the meaning of the whole. Christ who knew no sin was identified with it upon the cross; we as the fruit of His work, in our place in Him, are identified with the righteousness of God. In Him dying upon the tree is seen the sin of man; but the righteousness of God is seen, wonderful to say, in sinners being accepted in the Beloved.

But you may say, Is not the righteousness of God seen also in the cross? Surely it is; and so the third of Romans states:" Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness;" but in what respect? "That He might be righteous, justifying"-pronouncing righteous-"him which believeth in Jesus." That we might be in Him, it was necessary that He should be made sin for us; the righteousness of God no less could satisfy. That we are in Him declares therefore the cross God's method of salvation-affirms that righteousness, now our shelter and defense, " the righteousness of God over all them that believe." With this, then, we are identified forever:forever we shall display it, as we shall " the exceeding riches of His grace."

"That the world may know that Thou hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me." Do you believe that? If you do not, it is positive unbelief.

Therefore we labor that, whether present or absent, we may be acceptable to Him."

The apostle begins the examples of faith by one not taken from the past, but from the present. He does not speak of the elders, but of ourselves, and claims all his hearers as belonging to this company of witnesses." Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things that are seen are not made of things which do appear." It seems strange associating what now we deem simple and common belief with the list of precious fruits which follow; and we ask ourselves naturally, What is the meaning of such a preface? But in fact, a living faith in creation is one more connected with the elders than at first we may perceive. Creation is that with which the Old Testament begins, and it is the basis of the truth of all revelation. No heathen ever understood it; and to understand it is to do what faith must ever do-put God in His true place as the One upon whose mere, word all things, whatever they may be, depend. It is an immense principle, if realized in the soul, not simply the unseen things known, but known as that upon which the things seen are absolutely dependent. One walking in this spirit has alone the secret of endurance, the key of all just reasoning as to created things. I am supposing, of course, his relationship assured to Him without whom thus not a sparrow falls to the ground, and who is our Father. But this ascertained, then to walk before One at whose word the worlds sprang into being, -consciously to live and walk and have one's being in Him,-how sweet is the realization of this to the heart! In what corner of His universe shall we not then be with Him? or which of all the subject elements shall be our foes? "If God be for us, who shall be against us? . . . Shall even tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

What encouragement for the pilgrim path is this! Moving through a world where things seen are entirely dependent on the unseen, not unknown, Source! True, sin has come in, and there is not only apparent but real confusion,-that is a thing none the less true, and to be ever kept in mind; but the rod of power belongs still to the shepherd-hand that will once more claim it, and justify Himself from all the suspicions that His creatures now may entertain. Meanwhile faith has learned deeper lessons from the One smitten with the rod than if smiting with it. He has stripped Himself that He might enrich us with His poverty, and yet shall have His own returned with usury in the glory soon to be revealed.

For the path of faith, then, the third verse of this chapter has great significance.

We come now to the examples which for our admonition and encouragement the apostle sets before us. And here it will be at once seen that there is an order of connection between them which it is for our profit to observe. The first example begins where every thing begins with us -with acceptance with God; and it lies at the threshold of history, speaking aloud in the solemn circumstances attached to it, which, for the fifteen hundred years before the flood, would make it impossible to be forgotten, and which the Spirit of God has recorded for the ages afterward. The way of Cain has indeed been constantly man's unhappy choice; but God has distinctly marked His approval of Abel's way,-no self-devised one, surely, or it could not have been the way of faith. " By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and by it he being dead yet speaketh,"

There are some words in the sermon on the mount, which it is instructive to compare with this. There, the Lord speaks of a gift which cannot be accepted; not for any thing wrong with it, but because of wrong in the giver,-that is, of a gift which the state of the giver may discredit, if it. cannot accredit:while here, we are told of a gift which accredits the giver. " Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."

Now it may seem strange to some who read this, for me to say, what is but the simple truth, that this last gift is really the saint's gift; while the one in Hebrews is the sinner's. If I come to God as a saint, with something to present to Him, there must needs come in the question, Is it with clean hands I bring it? but a sinner has a gift which if he will he may bring to God, and no question of the cleanness of his hands be raised at all! How could it be the question with a sinner, of clean hands? That he is a sinner necessarily settles that. But is there not a way by which a sinner, as such, may draw near to God? Indeed, blessed be His name! there is. Faith is his resource, even as it was Abel's; and Christ, of whom the firstlings of the flock which Abel brought speak, is the precious gift which no hands of ours can soil when we bring it to God! Abel's was just the sinner's sacrifice; which his faith made what it was, for in fact it was but in itself a mere slaughtered beast, of no possible value to take away sin:faith made it what it was for God-the token of an infinite sacrifice to come. Thus offered, it stood for him-he was accepted in it:"He obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts." So too can any other be accepted.

Our text is a precious and incontrovertible evidence of what gave value to the offerings of the saints of Old-Testament times. Had they brought simply in blind obedience what God had bidden, it would have been at best their faith which God accepted and testified of:the testimony would have been to themselves, not really to their gift. Had faith not been needed, God could not have testified but to the mere value of the beast itself, which for the purpose could have had none. Thus that in faith they brought-that to which, and not to their faith, so brought, God testified, shows that what they in their faith really saw and brought was Christ; for only to the value of Christ could God bear witness. Doubtless it was through a haze of distance that they mostly saw; not clearness but reality of faith was necessary, as now also it is:but to Christ only could God ever witness. Could He to the cattle upon a thousand hills, or to man's faith itself, whatever it were, as making a sinner righteous before Him?

"Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad:" such are the Lord's conclusive words. Moses, says the apostle, "esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt; for he had respect to the recompense of the reward." How much they knew it may be impossible for us at all to understand ; but such statements as these are given us that we may recognize our brethren in these saints of an elder day, and that faith's object in all times may be seen as ever and only in Him of whom the seed of the woman, from the first moment of the fall, has spoken on God's part to men.

Acceptance by faith and acceptance in Christ are, in Abel, one; and this significantly begins the record of Old-Testament worthies. It begins, surely, every path of faith, the whole world over, and in every time. This testimony is sealed with the blood which declares too, from the beginning, into what a world God's grace has come. Six thousand years have past, and still He waits, and the long-suffering of God is still salvation.

( To be continued, D. V.)

Turning to Zechariah 13:6-9, we find a scene described of which the likeness to that in John 20:cannot be considered accidental. The question is the same-the identification of Christ, this time in His royal glory; and the inquiry, "What are these wounds in Thy hands?" with the answer, " Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends," are so profoundly suitable to the occasion of our Lord's second presentation to His people that one marvels and worships to read .them as written full five centuries before His first coming to suffer that wounding at their hands. Wonderfully, too, the passage closes with the greeting of restored relationship that follows on His recognition by signs such' as these,-"And I shall say, It is My people;" and they shall say, "The Lord, my God!"Here, then, we discover the solemn truth that the wounds of Jesus' will, at His coming in His kingdom, prove His title to the homage of the repentant nation at whose hands He received them-a truth further taught in the previous chapter, where the familiar words occur, "And they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn," etc.;a word of prophecy repeated in almost similar terms by the same Spirit six centuries later, and after the piercing had taken place:"Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him; and all the tribes of the land shall wail because of Him." (Rev. 1:7.)

With this also agree the strange words of the prophet Habakkuk, who (if we may accept the marginal reading of chapter 3:4,) describes the coming of God and the Holy One thus:," His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise; and His brightness was as the light, and He had bright beams out of His side;" that is to say, that not only will the wounds of Jesus be His identification, commanding the obedience, submission, and worshiping love of His nation, but those very wounds will be themselves His highest glory, and from them, as from the stricken thunder-cloud, will issue forth " bright beams " of light, to the joy of His reconciled people, and the confusion and destruction of His enemies.

If, then, the wounds of Jesus-kept open, so to speak, in our love-feasts from week to week, through all the ages of this present interval-shall fulfill so glorious a function at His coming back to the earth to reign over Israel, can we be surprised to find that in the still further future, at His assuming universals way, His wounds will again prove His title to that throne of glory?

Opening at Revelation v, this scene is portrayed -portrayed in purpose so divine, in effect so dramatic, in language so wonderful, as to confound, overpower, and yet inspire and elevate, our minds as often as we read it. For there it is told how, , when every creature in heaven, in earth, and under the earth had failed to qualify to claim the title-deeds of universal sovereignty,-when the eyes of the se£r flowed with bitter tears to think that earth's long hopes of redemption from her cruel subjugation were to be disappointed,-a Lamb, a little Lamb, a little wounded Lamb, a Lamb as it had been slain, stood out in the midst of that glittering circle of glory, and, by right and title only of those visible wounds, took the book from off the hand of Him that sat upon the throne, and heard the joyful acclamations of all the great wide universe, which had now at last beheld its Redeemer.

Such, briefly, are the tremendous issues that have turned and shall turn upon the wounds of Christ, which in, our commemorative supper we love to discover symbolically shown forth. May it not be that hereafter, when faith shall change to sight, we shall make the personal proof of their identifying power which one has sought to convey in the beautiful lines that follow:-
" But how shall I then know Thee
Amid those hosts above?
What token true shall show me
The object of my love?
Thy wounds, Thy wounds, Lord Jesus,-
These deep, deep wounds will tell
The sacrifice that frees us
From self, and death, and hell!"

(G.F.T.)

II. DISCIPLESHIP TO A REJECTED MASTER. (Chap. 6:-10:)
In the face of rejection, the Lord now sends out His disciples; chosen before, but now actually sent into the field of labor. This characterizes, I do not doubt, the second part of Mark. It gives us, first, in the sixth chapter, the features, for faith, of a world in which Christ has been rejected, but in which divine love manifests itself in none the less energy, while its ways suit themselves to the condition of things. Secondly, to the ninth verse of the eighth chapter, we have the religious opposition, which ignores man's true need, as well as the authority of God, in contrast with divine grace, which recognizes both. Thirdly, to chapter 9:8, we find the person of Christ confessed by faith, with the cross as present result, the glory the final one. Fourthly, to the end of the same chapter, lowliness and self-judgment are insisted on as the sole way of power and blessing. Lastly, in the tenth chapter, the original divine order in creation is restored, marriage cleared, and its fruits received and blessed, while the fall and need of salvation are maintained, and the principles of reward and rule with Christ announced.

I. (Chap, 6:)The activity of divine love in a scene of rejection.

(i) 6:1-13. Limited by unbelief, yet with full power for men, and seeking them. At the outset, we find the Lord rejected in His own 'country; spite of His mighty works, refused, because of the lowly, familiar way in which He appeared among them. The prophet is not without honor save in his own house. He recognizes this, yet marvels; hindered by their unbelief, can there do no mighty work:yet what they will let Him do He does; He lays His hand upon a few sick folk, and heals them. Still seeking them in patient grace, He goes round about the villages teaching.

It is in face of this unbelief He now sends out the twelve. " He who could not work mighty works, because His service was dependent on divine conditions, on which God could found and carry on His intercourse with men, in order to reveal Himself, now gives power to others over all unclean spirits, a power which is divine. Any can work miracles if God gives the power, but God alone can give it. They are to lack nothing, for Emmanuel was there; and to announce judgment if their message was rejected. Divine love had made Him entirely a dependent Servant; but the dependent Servant was God, present in grace and righteousness," * Synopsis, 3:212.

They who are sent forth are identified then with this gracious activity of divine love toward men; take up their Master's word, and manifest the power given them over the enemy.

(2) 6:14-29. The power of the world in opposition. But here the evangelist turns aside to exhibit the character of the world in opposition to the message of God. At Herod's court the Lord Himself appeared at another time, to find him only hardened by resistance to the present prick of conscience. The scene here is without Christ, in awful antagonism. But such is the rule of the "prince of this world" during the whole present time of long-suffering goodness, until the revelation of the Lord from heaven ends it. How easy to see here the real ruler is not Herod! How marvelous to find Satan using the conscience that would not bow to the word of truth and God, to make him bow to the mandate of a wicked woman against one he knows to be " a just man and a holy"! This, too, was-among the professing people of God, by one who swore to Him the oath by which the prophet died. Since then the powers of the world may be professedly Christian, and that only disguise, not hinder, the real rule of Satan.

(3) 6:30-45. Wilderness ministry. We now return to the Lord, who brings His disciples out into the wilderness for rest and refreshment. This is what still for us the wilderness is made to yield. But here, too, they find a multitude of needy ones, who, seeing them depart, have come out thither after Christ. The day will soon declare how much the wilderness has been the meeting-place between Christ and the souls He serves, and how the Church, in this her necessary place if she will company with Him, has been used for the communication of blessing . to those seeking Him. Little, it may seem, they have, but if God's grace be there, five loaves and two fishes feed five thousand men, while each of those distributing has his precious basket of fragments left,-more than what he began with. For true ministry does not exhaust the one who serves, but furnishes him, if (that is) it be received from Christ. Let us remember the command also to make men sit to eat; and that none that come but find a welcome him that cometh He in no wise casts out.

(4) 6:36-52. His way in the sea. What follows represents His care for His beloved people toiling across the sea, the wind contrary, (for Satan is the prince of the power of the air,) Himself absent:how He comes to them upon the sea, and they know Him not, but take Him to be a spirit, one . conquered of death, not conqueror; how He makes Himself known and is received into the ship, and then the wind ceases. Our general and our individual histories repeat this story often; and how often do we find, when the new trial comes, that we are no more prepared than formerly to recognize the One who comes to us, and when He makes Himself known, it is as great a wonder! Our hearts are, how often, hard and unbelieving as these disciples-indeed, more strangely so.

(5) 6:53-56. The final blessing. But at last the sea is passed, as when He joins us in the end it will be passed, and then the blessing comes, even for the earth, when it, like Gennesaret, shall " know" the One upon whom it all depends, and the blight upon the whole frame of things shall pass, with the spiritual sickness it attends and indicates. For us in His presence also, the former things shall have passed away.

2. (7:-8:9.)The religious opposition, and the grace that alone meets the need of man.

(i) 7:1-23.Human tradition against God and man. We have now the opposition of the religious leaders, always to be met under whatever different forms, until Christ comes. Human authority, first derived from the authority of the Word interpreted, soon and surely displaces the authority of God Himself; and superstition darkens and perverts the natural conscience. It is easier to wash the hands than to purify the heart, and, a priesthood having taken the place of God, their profit may be found in that which sets aside His glory. But man's true need is where all human help is powerless, in a heart from which nothing but evil comes.

(2) 7:24-30. The grace which meets man where no claim is possible. But then in God alone man's help is, and where no claim is possible at all. Of this the Syrophenician woman is the example. A Canaanite, of a race under the curse, and under the power of Satan in her daughter, she is not of the privileged family, but outside-a dog:man's true position whosoever he is. But he has only to take this, to find his sure resource in the grace of God, which cannot possibly fail the one who counts on it. So the woman finds, and from such need Christ cannot be hid.
(3) 7:31-37. The gift of hearing and of speech. But this is not all, nor the worst of man's condition. His deepest need is just that which leaves him without voice to cry, or ears to hear the word that comes to him. It is here we find the Lord oppressed with the state to which He ministers. This is indeed the fullness of grace, yet it is that of which every saved soul is the recipient. Here the election of grace is marked, the man being taken apart from the multitude when he receives healing. And this, it seems to me, connects this with the miracle that follows in which is emphasized-

(4) 8:1-9. The divine sufficiency of the provision made for man. We have a similar miracle indeed to that in the sixth chapter, but the numbers tell a different tale. It is now seven loaves, instead of five, and the baskets-large baskets, and not as before,-are seven also. Before, the numbers 5 and 12 point surely to the human instrumentality employed. Seven speaks rather of divine perfection, although still the grace of God employs men as instruments. This is the fitting close of what is the subject of this second section.

3. (8:lo-9:8.) The confession of Christ, leading to the cross in this world, and to the glory beyond.

(i) 8:10-13. The unbelieving Pharisees seek a sign. Again the section opens with the question of unbelief on the part of the leaders of the people. The Pharisees seek a sign from heaven-some wonder which would command the attention and secure the homage of men at large. The sign of the Son of Man in heaven will be this at last, but too late then. Their former religiousness had no need of the cross, and could not recognize the lowly self-humiliation to which divine love had stooped for men. But of necessity that love must keep its own way, and Christ must be a stumbling-block to those whose pride could not interpret grace. To such a generation no sign could be given.

(2) 8:14-26. The leaven of the Pharisees. But not only in enemies did these things work; the leaven of the Pharisees acted as hindrance to faith in the hearts of the disciples also, and the. Lord's warning words to them as to it only serve to bring it out. They prove themselves ignorant of the proper power and glory of Him in whom yet they sincerely believe. They see, but as through a vail, "men as trees." This condition is no doubt represented in the blind man at Bethesda. But the Lord does not leave incomplete that to which He has once put His hand, and at last the man is restored and sees every thing clearly.

(3) 8:27-30. Faith's confession. Save in those brought thus by personal need into contact with the Lord Jesus, there was nowhere any true faith, those who thought to do Him honor only equaled Him with John the Baptist, Elias, or some other prophet. For truly convicted souls, blessed be God ! there is but one Christ. Peter, divinely taught, then confesses Him. But for Israel, as for man / in nature, all was over therefore, and as Messiah, He charges them that they should tell no man of Him. Through depth's of suffering and distress the way lay open to higher glory,-the glory from which He had stooped, and to which He was to return with the joy for which He endured the cross.

(4) 8:31-38. The way of the cross. And now the Lord begins to speak openly of His rejection and death; and immediately the unbelief which can be so strangely mixed with faith begins to show itself in Peter. He "took Him, and began to rebuke Him"! but the Lord at once rebukes as of Satan Peter's opposition, and announces this cross of His as a pattern and principle for His disciples also. " Whoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's," (observe how legality is swept away by the very terms,) "the same shall save it. . . . . Whosoever, therefore, shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels."

(5) 9:1-8. The glory at the end. The revelation of the glory closes, therefore, this section. Three-disciples are taken up into the mount of transfiguration to see the kingdom of God come with power. All the elements of the kingdom are in the scene, -the saint who has passed through death; the saint who, like another Enoch, was translated without seeing death; the saints on earth in natural bodies, yet with the glory openly revealed; the "bright cloud," the Shekinah, soon declared as the place of the Father's presence; but Jesus, the Son of Man, proclaimed once more, as at the beginning of His ministry, the Son of God, is the object before the eyes of the astonished disciples, who, if they for a moment put their lowly Master upon some sort of equality of footing with Moses and Elias, are at once warned by the voice from the " excellent glory," " This is My beloved Son; hear Him."

4. (9:9-50.)Lessons of the Path.

(i) 9:9-13. The lesson of resurrection from the dead. The Lord has already spoken of resurrection, but now He refers them to the time when the Son of Man should be risen from the dead as the time when the glory just, unvailed to them should be matter of public testimony and of common joy. But before this, the. Son of Man must suffer, as Elias, for that generation had already come and been cut off. Thus resurrection from the dead, at which they wonder now as a new thing announced, is indeed the foundation of the power and blessedness of Christianity. It is the witness of Christ's work accepted for us; it is that in which we too are risen with Him ; it is that which gives character to our walk through the world. These meanings are not here, nor could be yet, unfolded; but to us, they connect necessarily with what the Lord speaks of to His disciples.

(2) 9:14-29. The lesson of power to use power. On their descent from the mountain, they find a multitude gathered, and the scribes questioning with the other disciples. The power of Satan is manifesting itself unchecked by that which the Lord had intrusted to them. It is this that causes His exclamation, " O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?" Still there is resource 'in Himself. The only lack of power, as He assures the father of the afflicted child, is in the lack of faith. The devil is cast out; and the Lord, in answer to the question, " Why could not we cast Him out?" points out the root of failure to be in want of prayer and fasting. Dependence and self-denial is the secret of power, without which we do not practically possess what in fact is ours. We have seen, in the beginning of His ministry, the Lord Himself meeting Satan as the dependent One; how necessary, then, that His followers should do so!

(3) 9:30-37. The lesson of greatness. The Lord we find full of the cross and of resurrection; the disciples, shrinking from this, are occupied with and dispute about which of them should be the greatest. The Lord bids them understand that the desire to be first would put one last of all. He takes a child as His fitting representative, and assures them that whosoever receives one such little child in His name receives both Himself and His Father also. Self-seeking is surely the antipodes of greatness, as every conscience needs must own. And yet how far asunder are heart and conscience here!

(4) 9:38-41. A lesson on "not following us'' An important lesson comes next as to the largeness of heart by which alone we are competent for a narrow path. John answers the Lord, " Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us; and we forbad him, because he followeth not us." It is self in a subtle, religious way, none the less offensive upon that account. Think of devils being actually cast out in the name of Christ, and a disciple of His forbidding it! But liberality is not enjoined, as men enjoin, upon the ground of any uncertainty as to the path itself. They could not be-how could it be supposed they could be-uncertain of their own path. The Lord puts His answer upon different ground entirely. " No man can do a miracle in My name that can lightly speak evil of Me." In the midst of a world which rejects Christ, how simple and necessary should be the recognition of all that is of Him. It is the joy of the Spirit to take forth the precious from the vile, supposing there be the vile. And as to the Lord Himself, there is not a cup of water given to a disciple in His name but He will acknowledge it in due season.

(5) 9:42-50. Salting with fire. On the other hand, woe to him who causes to stumble one of Christ's little ones; and whatever in you causes you to stumble, cut it off:for every one shall be salted with the fire of divine holiness. If it be in this present life, the result will be holiness eternal; but if not, in Gehenna the flame of remorse will accompany the eternal fire which will subdue all opposition. " Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another."

5. (10:1-45.) The moral restitution of a fallen world.

(i) 10:1-12. The divine order of marriage restored. We find now the moral Order of the kingdom of God, in which the defects of the law (which made nothing perfect) are removed, and the institutions of God in creation are freed from the perversions of man, fallen and corrupt. In answer to the Pharisees, the Lord restores the primitive meaning of marriage, and forbids the divorce which Moses, for the hardness of their hearts, had allowed.

(2) 10:13-16. Children received and blessed. Children are next received and pronounced of the kingdom of God, while whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

(3) 10:17-27. The need of salvation affirmed. But if only as a little child can the kingdom be entered, the power of man to earn it in any shape is excluded. His goodness is set aside. Not the rich but the poor enter, and that by the very grace of God,-by salvation. Thus the natural amiability, which even drew out the regard of Jesus, when tested, proves only the more decisively the complete ruin of man. " There is none good but One, that is, God." The first-born of fallen man is Cain, "possession;" for the heart dropped away from Him who alone can satisfy it, seeks its good where death reigns over all, where all is vanity. Possessed of this, God is all the more shut out by it out of his heart, and " it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." But " who then can be saved?" asks the disciples. That is indeed what is needed-salvation; but that is entirely in the hands of God:"with men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible."

(4) 10:28-31. The principle of reward. Peter then begins to say to Him, " Lo, we have left all and followed Thee." The heart of a disciple is quite capable of turning the rewards of grace into earning, and so destroy their whole character. Divine love will in fact reward, but only what is done for Christ, not for the reward. "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or-lands, for My sake and the gospel's, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the world to come, eternal life." But then all depends upon the motive; and thus, in result, " many that are first shall be last, and the last first."

(5) 10:32-45. The kingdom of God no kingdom of the Gentiles. Again the Lord begins to put before them the cross. It was that which if they had known in its inner meaning, of necessity would have delivered them from the spirit they immediately manifest; for James and John come unto Him now seeking the places on the right hand and the left in His glory. The Lord puts to them the question of their ability to drink of the cup He was to drink, and be baptized with the baptism with which He would be baptized. They answer, though they had shrunk from it just before, that they are able. He replies that they shall do this, but that the places they seek are not His to give, except to those for whom they' are prepared of His Father. When the ten hear it, they are much displeased, for the same spirit really animates them all; and then the simple blessed truth is stated, so clear and necessary when made known, so impossible to conceive beforehand, that God's kingdom is not like a kingdom of the Gentiles-the places in it not such as would satisfy the pride and ambition of men. The highest there is He who as the " Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." The spirit of service is that which qualifies for a rule which is service still, the ministry of love which values the wealth that is in its hand as power to minister.