Mark, in many respects so similar to Matthew, is in many respects also its perfect opposite. It is, as already said, the gospel in which we have the Lord in the humiliation so wonderful in view of His true glory, and which yet in fact glorifies Him so much. Only one so high could stoop so low; and Mark is the gospel of His service, even to the giving of His "life a ransom for many." The gospel divides, as it seems to me, into three parts, of nearly equal length:the first giving the character and results of the Lord's active ministry among the people (chap. 1:-5:); the second, the characteristics of discipleship to a rejected Master (vi-10:45); the third, His service perfected in suffering and death, even the death of the cross (10:46-16:).

I. (1:1-13.) The Person who comes to serve. (i) 1-3. Promised. Mark's gospel does not begin with a genealogy, nor contain one. Love needs no title to serve, except the power. In the power which He is to serve man, when we consider the greatness of his need, the true dignity of Him who ministers becomes apparent. Thus Mark starts with His title in the forefront,-" The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." As this also He is announced by the prophets:it is Jehovah Himself whose way the predicted messenger bids prepare. Nor is this but a specimen; all former time has prophesied of Him.

(2) 4-8. Heralded. In fulfillment of this, John comes, and as remission of sins is the blessing to be brought, so it is by the baptism of repentance- in bowing to this-the way is to be prepared. And this is partially accomplished. Multitudes flock out to Jordan, the river of death, to acknowledge, in taking their place there, their just due, "confessing their sins." Separate as he himself is from the multitude in food and clothes, he proclaims a greater distance between himself and the One of whom he is but the unworthy herald. But his voice has in it here no note of denunciation:the baptism of fire is not found, as in Matthew; " He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost."

(3)9-11. Attested. Then the Lord comes Himself to submit Himself to the baptism of John, taking His place, in grace, in that death which was the due of others; and there He is sealed with the Spirit, the witness of a perfection which the Father's voice proclaims, along with the full divine dignity which is His:" Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased." It is here not as in Matthew, however, a witness to the people, but to Himself, as the words show.

(4) 12, 13. Proved. Thus attested, He is "driven" by the Spirit into the wilderness, and is there for forty days tempted of Satan, and in circumstances of lowest humiliation, " with the wild beasts." At last, His perfection proved, ministered to by angels as to His bodily need, He is ready for His blessed service.

2. (1:14-3:6.)The character of His ministry.

(i) 1:14-20. The Word, and human instrumentality. His ministry begins with the presentation of the Word, with that gospel of which He is Himself the substance. This must of necessity be, of course, but it is well to notice it. John's message is confirmed, and his testimony-with a suited difference -taken up. Every new dispensation thus puts its seal on that which has gone before; while, throughout all, the Word maintains its place as the judge and arbitrator in every question that can arise. It is blessed to see the Lord Himself not refusing this test, but appealing to it on every occasion.

We next find Him gathering around Himself the human instruments, who, delivered themselves, are to be the means of delivering others. Men are to be fishers of men. How glorious here is the triumph of the gospel! how sweet and perfect the precious grace of God! It is, as another has said, "the fact in itself" that is given here; not the details, for it is the fact itself which is intended to have significance for us-a striking and blessed one.

(2) 1:21-39. The power of Satan met. In the next place, and first in the actual story of accomplished deliverance, we have the record of the power of Satan, man's terrible captor, met and foiled. It was the type of this which was the first sign by which Moses was to be made known to Israel as the deliverer raised up of God for them-the rod of power cast out of the hands of him to whom it belonged become a serpent, yet yielding itself with necessary submission to that hand put forth once more to claim it for its master. Man is captive in the grasp of one stronger than he. In the very synagogue is a man with an unclean spirit:terrible proof of Israel's condition! But the " Holy One of God"-tested and attested as this-has power to which the baffled enemy can only yield, the more unwillingly the more manifestly. The man is freed; and next, the diseases, so often his work, are healed, and we hear of devils every-where cast out. All men seek for Him; and He is found, having " risen up a great while before day," in a solitary place, in prayer. The pride of independence is the spirit of Satan. The Conqueror of Satan is the dependent One. It is thus Scripture, in its perfection, declares Him. Who would otherwise have dared to imagine it? Perfect Man as perfect God, how does His example speak to us in this!

(3) 1.40-45. Man's corruption cleansed. The root of man's condition is next reached; for leprosy is the well-known type of that for which it was so often inflicted-sin, as seen in its corruption, in its tendency to spread, in its contagious defilement, in its sure end which only God could avert. It is remarkable that here we have the second sign God gave to Moses; and here as there, though with how great a difference, the healing is by touch. It is the same story of redemption, however varied. Here how plain the assurance that to cleanse us from the sin by which we are inflicted there is needed, not simply the word of divine power, but the contact, so to speak, of incarnate deity! How wondrous this warm, assuring, health-giving touch! But the cross alone is that in which this " I will" of the blessed Lord could express itself; and in this it is He touches the leper. Who, more than he, could have imagined this " I will" ? (4) 2:1-12. Mans impotence removed. Next, and in perfect order, the impotence of man is met; and here, so beautifully, the place of human instrumentality is indicated. Powerless ourselves to heal or save, our one part is to bring the helpless one into the presence of Jesus. Is not this what must be the effect of all true preaching, as of all true prayer? and in both, is not faith the real worker? and does not Jesus still "see faith"?

Then the secret of power is, first of all, forgiveness. Power is not wanted to obtain forgiveness, but it is an after-result for those forgiven. Power is to be indeed the sign of this, as we see in the palsied man; but more, it is to be in the face of the blasphemies of unbelief a witness to Christ, that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, as still He has. How vain to expect this, then, where no present forgiveness, perhaps no forgiveness on earth at all, is known!

(5) 2:13-22. The exchange of law for grace. But this involves much more, which the Lord now openly announces:it is indeed the secret grace all along now openly announced. He calls Matthew from the receipt of custom,-a publican, the very type of a sinner, and to be not merely a recipient of salvation, but a special messenger to declare it to others. A feast at Matthew's house would be well understood in its significance for publicans and sinners. The Pharisees find fault. " How is it that He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?" How perfect and beautiful the answer! how it encourages, and how it exposes at once!- " They that are whole are in no need of the physician, but they that are sick:I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

But this was the reason why for so many the joy of the Bridegroom's presence was unknown. How should they know it who had no need to be relieved by His hand-need that no other could more unwillingly the more manifestly. The man is freed; and next, the diseases, so often his work, are healed, and we hear of devils every-where cast out. All men seek for Him; and He is found, having " risen up a great while before day," in a solitary place, in prayer. The pride of independence is the spirit of Satan. The Conqueror of Satan is the dependent One. It is thus Scripture, in its perfection, declares Him. Who would otherwise have dared to imagine it? Perfect Man as perfect God, how does His example speak to us in this!

(3) 1.40-45. Man's corruption cleansed. The root of man's condition is next reached; for leprosy is the well-known type of that for which it was so often inflicted-sin, as seen in its corruption, in its tendency to spread, in its contagious defilement, in its sure end which only God could avert. It is remarkable that here we have the second sign God gave to Moses; and here as there, though with how great a difference, the healing is by touch. It * is the same story of redemption, however varied. Here how plain the assurance that to cleanse us from the sin by which we are inflicted there is needed, not simply the word of divine power, but the contact, so to speak, of incarnate deity! How wondrous this warm, assuring, health-giving touch! But the cross alone is that in which this " I will" of the blessed Lord could express itself; and in this it is He touches the leper. Who, more than he, could have imagined this " I will" ? (4) 2:1-12. Mans impotence removed. Next, and in perfect order, the impotence of man is met; and here, so beautifully, the place of human instrumentality is indicated. Powerless ourselves to heal or save, our one part is to bring the helpless one into the presence of Jesus. Is not this what must be the effect of all true preaching, as of all true prayer? and in both, is not faith the real worker? and does not Jesus still " see faith "?

Then the secret of power is, first of all, forgiveness. Power is not wanted to obtain forgiveness, but it is an after-result for those forgiven. Power is to be indeed the sign of this, as we see in the palsied man; but more, it is to be in the face of the blasphemies of unbelief a witness to Christ, that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, as still He has. How vain to expect this, then, where no present forgiveness, perhaps no forgiveness on earth at all, is known!

(5) 2:13-22. The exchange of law for grace. But this involves much more, which the Lord now openly announces:it is indeed the secret grace all along now openly announced. He calls Matthew from the receipt of custom,-a publican, the very type of a sinner, and to be not merely a recipient of salvation, but a special messenger to declare it to others. A feast at Matthew's house would be well understood in its significance for publicans and sinners. The Pharisees find fault. " How is it that He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?" How perfect and beautiful the answer! how it encourages, and how it exposes at once !- " They that are whole are in no need of the physician, but they that are sick:I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

But this was the reason why for so many the joy of the Bridegroom's presence was unknown. How should they know it who had no need to be relieved by His hand-need that no other could relieve? It is in the consciousness of sin that we learn grace, and in grace, the God who alone can show it. How readily a soul that has come to a genuine sense of utter ruin can distinguish the voice of Christ from every other! For a lost sinner, can there be two Christs? Here, in self-judgment, man escapes out of the devil's snare, and out of the perplexity in which so many are hopelessly involved, and enters into the light where God is! But the awful isolation of a soul on its way to God is gone in the new eternal joy of having found Him. How impossible to such an one the dull routine of legal ritualism! How could the disciples of the Lord fast like the Pharisees, or even John's disciples? The ignorance of the questioners was the gross spiritual darkness of those who knew neither themselves nor God. But in truth the legal righteousness could not be patched with the new gospel one, nor the wine of this new spiritual joy be put into the forms of the old ordinances. The new wine must find new skins to hold it. Judaism with its forms was now to pass away.

(6) 2:23-28. Mans need beyond ordinances. With this the question of the Sabbath' necessarily connects. The Pharisees find fault with the disciples for plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath day. The Lord brings forward, as in Matthew, the example of David; but He presses specially the point of need-"when he had need,"-and adds the words, so decisive, and so characteristic of Mark, " The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath;" and that "-therefore the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day." Man's need is more with God than the maintenance of ordinances, as ministers to which in fact they were even ordained. To the "Son of Man," therefore, become that in pitying recognition of that need, and to relieve it, the Sabbath itself is subject.

(7) 3:1-6. The prerogative of good. In the case of the man that had the withered hand is added another consideration, more closely appealing to the conscience,-the prerogative of good. " Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath day, or to do evil; to save life, or to kill?" They hold their peace, guiltily silent where the case was clear. The Lord answers His own question by healing the man.

3. (3:7-5:) Results.

(i) 3:7-19. "Whom He would.". The results of His work in detail are now to be brought before us. And here we must remember, and as of wider application, the words prophetically spoken of Him by Isaiah as to Israel:"Then I said, 'I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for naught, and in vain:' yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God." Not only was it true of Israel, but all through the present time, apparent failure attaches to His work. Until He comes again in the clouds of heaven, the world remains the scene of His rejection, and none the less because whole countries are covered with nominal Christianity. Heaven is filling indeed with the fruits of His travail. The salvation of countless multitudes has not failed, but on earth we shall find His own warning words assuring us of what must be owned as failure. Yet neither His power fails nor His love. The end shall surely speak for Him; but in the meanwhile, faith and patience are needed constantly.

In the opening verses here, multitudes proclaim His power and goodness, and we find Him taking measures for the extension of His ministry by means of His disciples. No power can possibly be lacking to Him who is in His humiliation the Servant of the eternal counsels of divine love itself:"He calleth unto Him whom He would, and they came unto Him." He serves here who is sovereign. "And He ordained twelve, that they should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach"-again the Word of God takes its place in His thoughts-" and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils." A divine place is here assumed, for who could give authority of this kind except God Himself? But it is in service that it is displayed,-in love that has made Him serve.

(2) 3:20-30. Rejection. But from the outset, and most manifestly, He is the rejected One. His very kindred treat Him as out of His mind, and would lay hold of Him; while the scribes, with malignant wickedness, ascribe the glorious works, which it was impossible for them to deny, to the power of Satan. The Lord rebukes them with the unanswerable argument that Satan could not be divided against himself, and warns them that blasphemy against the Holy Ghost would never be forgiven.

(3) 3:31-35. The link with Christ spiritual, not natural. Upon this, His mother and His brethren come, and, standing without, send unto Him, calling Him. He uses this to declare the true link of relationship with Himself as spiritual-a link which the new dispensation was openly to make known. Subject Himself to, and supremely delighting in, the will of God, it is he who does that will who is brother, sister, mother, to Him. The consequence of His rejection by the world is the necessary separation of His people from it.

(4) 4:1-34. The Word testing men, and faith in it the only possible condition of bearing fruit. A dispensational change, then, is now announced; but even here it is the moral character that is insisted on. The Word of God dropped into the heart of men tests the state it finds, and faith is the indispensable condition of fruit-bearing-of this relation with Christ. In fact, three parts of what is sown are destroyed by the influence of the devil, the flesh, and the world. And this in the kingdom of God, outside of Israel, to the nation to which as a whole "all these things are done in parables." " These are they which are sown on good ground:such as hear the Word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit;" though here also, alas! in different measures, for the influence of these opposing forces is but too plainly felt.

The rest of the parables given in Matthew are omitted in Mark, save one, and that very evidently in moral connection. On the other hand, we have one added here that no other gospel gives, and which plainly enforces the lesson of responsibility, which the Lord inculcates in plain words at this point. There is nothing hid which shall not be manifested, nor kept secret, but to come abroad at last. To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken even that he hath. The kingdom of God itself is to be committed into the hands of men, as if He who begins thus the seed-sowing were asleep, or ignorant of all they did. Yet the harvest will come, and the hand of the first Sower will put in the sickle. In the meantime it will have changed form and character, and grown into the likeness of a kingdom of the world. This is a parable to many still, and yet the fulfillment is before the eyes of all. " If any man have ears to hear, let him hear."

These four sections give the result of Christ's work which are manifest and external. We now pass to three which give us more what is internal and spiritual-the divine view; and this is as well known, the common division, and common character of the division, of such sevens.

(5) 4:35-41. The security of faith amid whatever peril. The first of these results is the perfect security of those who are with Christ, whatever the seeming peril. Faith, alas! may fail, and does often, how miserably! Did they think the waters had power to engulf the Lord? He may seem asleep while the storm rages, but if with Him- and let our only care be practically to be with Him,-He on the throne of heaven is embarked with us in the vessel, and no wave can rise over the throne of God!

(6) 5:1-20. Deliverance, rest, clothing, and a right mind. Four precious things come now together, and who has words to tell their worth?

First, deliverance from Satan's bondage; in which naturally all are, although not as obviously as the Gadarene demoniac. His condition is most striking, dwelling among the tombs,-and the earth to which men cling is more a place of the dead than of the living; impossible to be kept bound, or to be tamed,-and so are all laws and civilizing processes unable to restrain or tame Satan's poor captives. Then," cutting himself with stones," self-torturer, and looking upon the Son of God as a tormentor! The deliverance is complete, decisive; then, what a change! Restlessness has given place to repose; his nakedness is clothed; his mind is cleared. How he clings to that dear Lord his Saviour, and would fain be with Him! but the word for the present is, " Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee."

(7) 5:21-43. Life out of death. Finally, we have, as in Matthew, (but here, surely, not with a dispensational meaning as in Matthew,) two histories intertwined. In Jairus' daughter we have man's state in its full reality discovered, his deepest need which must be met. The Lord is here the life-giver; and He is "declared the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead." The dead hears the voice of the Son of God, and lives. This is the divine side, and man is necessarily merely passive and recipient. But there is another side, and this, it seems to me, the woman with the issue represents. Here, faith relies upon the Saviour for its need, and the issue is staunched. To adjust these things fully-the divine and human sides-may transcend our power, but both have their place.

"And Peter answered Him and said, ' Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee upon the waters.'And He said, ' Come.' And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the waters to go to Jesus." (Matt. 14:28, 29.)

The individuality of the path is what I would press upon our souls just now. How strikingly it is presented! This solitary man, amid boisterous winds and waves, forsaking the protection of the boat and the company of the other disciples, and inviting the word which bids him to a path at once so difficult and so resourceless. We often speak of a walk of faith. It is well to look steadily at such a picture as this, and to ask ourselves, have we ever realized it in our own experience? does it present really what corresponds in its features (even though more deeply drawn,) to the path as we know it?

Solitary;-but he had before him as the end of his path the gracious and glorious presence of Him who had called him, and for sustaining power the word which in its call was a promise for all difficulties that could be. If in the meanwhile he had lost the. company of others, every step on this road would make the Presence before him more bright and lustrous; and, at the end at least, even those now separated from would be restored. Was there not abundant compensation in the meantime? Would there not be an overpayment of joy at the end ?

I would press, I again say, the individuality of it. As we look back upon the examples of faith which God has given us in His own record, how they shine separately and independently out from "surrounding darkness! How seldom are they set even in clusters! Enoch, in that walk with God which death never shadowed; Noah, with his family, sole survivors of a judgment wrecked world; Abraham, with whom even Lot is a mere contrast. They stand out from the dark background as men not formed by their circumstances, no mere natural outgrowth from that in the midst of which we find them, but plants of the Lord's planting, maintaining themselves where no power but His could avail to keep them, north wind, as well as south, making the spices of His garden to flow out. In all these the individuality of the path is manifest. Lot is a warning as to the opposite course, of unmistakable significance. A walk with God means necessarily independence of men,-even of the saints; while if it is with God, it will be marked by unfeigned lowliness, and absence of mere eccentricity and self-will.

In the scene to which I am now referring, this solitary man, in that individual path in which nothing but divine power could for a moment sustain him, is the representative, as is evident, of the Church at large. The saints of the present time are as a body called to go forth to meet the Bridegroom, leaving the "boat" of Judaism, a provision for nature, not for faith. "The law is not of faith." To faith, God alone is necessary and sufficient, and other helps would be helps to do (so far) without Him :hindrances to faith therefore, really. Practically, it was a Jewish remnant that the Lord left when He went on high, and to a Jewish remnant we know He will return again, we in the meantime being called to meet Him and return with Him. This company Peter, not only here, but elsewhere, represents.

At first sight this may seem to take from the individual aspect. The path is the Church's path, and belongs to the whole, not merely to individuals:and that is so far true. In fact, as a company it has perhaps never walked in it; most certainly not for centuries:and Scripture-prescient as the Word of God must be-announced beforehand what history has since recorded. If then the Church has failed, is the Christian to accept for himself this failure? or is not individuality forced the more upon him,-a good which divine sovereignty thus brings out of the evil? But in truth it never was intended that the walk of a Christian should be different in principle or on a lower level than that which characterized faith in former generations. We were not meant to seek Lot-like companionship with one another, but Abraham-like with God. He is "the father of all them that believe." If Peter here, then, represent a company, it can only be a company of such as walk, each for him-self, with God:a course which would indeed secure the most blessed companionship. Communion with one another can only be the result of communion with the Father and with the Son.

In this way how striking is the path of this lone man!-a path that terminates only in the presence of the Lord, and on which every step in advance brings nearer to Him! Various as in some true sense our paths must be, it is this that alone gives them their common Christian character; it is this that makes us pilgrims; nay, as the inspired Word presents it, racers:our goal outside the world; our object-that which rules us-heavenly. If it be not thus with us, we are immeasurably below those of a dispensation darkness itself compared with ours, who nevertheless by their lives "declared plainly" that they sought a better country. And for this reason God was not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city.

This path of faith is one in which we may show, with Peter, not the greatness of our faith, but the littleness of it. It will never really make much of us. Do we seek it? The glory of Christ is what lies before and beckons us; for our weakness, if there be rebuke, it is only that of a perfect love. Not, Wherefore didst thou presume? but, "Wherefore didst thou doubt?" And with that, the outstretched hand of human sympathy and of divine support. Is it enough, dear fellow-Christian? Is there not for all the difficulties of the way an overabundant recompense? And the end-who shall declare its blessedness?

Yet let us remember that it is to one who invites his Lord's invitation to such a path that it really opens. The " Come " of Christ is an answer to him who says, "Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee upon the waters! " The word for the path is the answer alone to the heart for the path. And what to Him is the joy of such desire so expressed? Let ours go forth, if any have not yet, with such a cry:"Lord, if it be upon the waters I must come, and that path it is which alone leads to Thee, then bid me come to Thee, blest, gracious Master, even upon the water!"

"In the heart of London city,
Mid the dwellings of the poor,
These bright golden words, were uttered :-
' I have Christ! what want I more?

By a lonely dying woman,
Stretched upon a garret-floor,
Having not one earthly comfort,-
'I have Christ! what want I more?'

He who heard them, ran to fetch her
Something from the world's great store;
It was needless-died she, saying,
' I have Christ ! what want I more?'
But her words will live forever ;
I repeat them o'er and o'er;
God delights to hear me saying,
'I have Christ! what want I more?'"

The Individual Application.-In the individual application certain broad features of Joseph's life are easy to be read, and these are all that I am able with confidence to speak of. It is plain how different in character is the suffering through which he passes to that of Jacob. Jacob's is disciplinary, the result, under God's government, of the evil of his own ways; Joseph, on the contrary, suffering for righteousness, the predestined path to glory:"if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him."

Child of old age is Joseph:how slowly, alas! the fruits of the new nature appear in us! Even for the saint, how true that " that which is first is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual"! Moreover, in the world through which we pass, all is hostile to the development of that which is of God. " He that separateth himself from evil maketh himself a prey ;" and separation from evil is a fundamental principle of the divine nature. Hence persecution for righteousness, not only from the world, but even at the hands of those who, chosen out of the world, are still practicing conformity with its ways. Nay, one's brethren are, alas! often in this case more hostile than the very world itself, just because their consciences are more awake to a testimony which condemns themselves. And indeed how few are there among the children of God who are thoroughly, and at all costs, subject to His Word! How many of all creeds, even the highest, whose code is liberty for self-will within certain wider or narrower limits! Thus, within the circle of professed Christian fellowship, how much real opposition which must be met by those who are Joseph’s, " adding," after the apostle's manner, disciples of the cross! Their path is individual, solitary often, save only for the God with whom they walk, and indeed because they have chosen to walk with Him. Yet it is thus a path of deepest, fullest blessing.

Rejected by his brethren, rejected by the world, Joseph carries with him the wisdom which interprets the scene around him, while master, too, of the circumstances by which he seems to be mastered. All things necessarily serve the One who is with him ever under all appearances, content Himself to find through seeming defeat His sure, eternal victory. Through all, he is preparing for the place where at last both his brethren are restored to him and also the world shall be his own:when Christ reigns, (of which we have been tracing the figures here,) His saints shall reign with Him.

Of this latter part, for the fullness of which we must wait to be with Him, we have nevertheless our anticipative foretastes. Even now, as the apostle tells us, the world is ours, long as it may be before we learn our spiritual supremacy over it. The word of life and of salvation is surely also ours as it was Joseph's, and it is ours to win to ourselves out of the world those who shall be in spiritual relationship to us also. This some would find as a type in Jacob's history, where it seems out of relation to the whole character and meaning of his life. It is Joseph rather, I believe, in whom we find this.

But while features of resemblance there necessarily are between the life of Christ as manifested thus in His people, and Him in whom alone it has been perfectly seen, yet the details, as remarked already, carry us continually away from the disciple to the Lord. This is surely designed and full of instruction for us. Is it not true that just so far as these features are developed in us it is the result of occupation with Christ Himself? "We all with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit." In preparation for the scene of His actual presence, He thus as we advance in spiritual life becomes the object upon which our gaze fastens. It is not we that live, but Christ liveth in us. He abides in our hearts by faith. We "grow in grace" as we grow "in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Thus, as the Nazarite's course ended, he came to the door of the tent of meeting to offer to God the various offerings in the value of which-not of his vows performed-he found acceptance with God; and there, thus standing, his hands were filled with the heave-shoulder of the ram, and the unleavened cakes of the meat-offering. Christ in the perfection of His blessed life, Christ alone upholding all things by the power of that in which in unique, matchless devotedness He glorified God, the Christ in whom we are accepted, fills, and for eternity is to fill and occupy, us only.

The subjective types of Genesis closing in the objective is thus not a defect, nor (I believe) a thought due to mere obscurity of vision as to what is presented here. It is to the " fathers " the apostle says, as characteristic of them, " Ye have known Him that is from the beginning." And there he closes. There Genesis closes too, with the vision of the glory of the Lord, suffering and exalted, the government laid upon His shoulder, the true Zaphnath-paaneah, revealer of the secrets of His Father's heart, Bridegroom of His Gentile Bride, Saviour of the world. Where He fills the eye and occupies the heart, all else finds its just place and completest harmony ; communion with the Father is the portion of the soul, the power of the living Spirit realized. And here what limit of attainment is imposed, save that which we may impose? The study of these Genesis-pictures will have done nothing for us, if it does not invite our hearts more than ever into the King's banqueting-house, where the everlasting arms inclose and uphold us, and "His banner" over us is "love."

In reading the gospel, I am very much struck with the way in which every hour of the time of the Lord Jesus is filled up. There is no " loitering" in the path of the blessed One through the world; no seeking (like we seek) for ease :life with Him is taken up with the untiring activities of love. He lives not for Himself; God and man have all His thoughts and all His care. If He seeks for solitude, it is to be alone with His Father. Does He seek for society? it is to be about His Father's business. By. night or day, He is always the same. On the mount of Olives, praying; in the temple, teaching; in the midst of sorrow, comforting ; or where sickness is, healing ; every act declares Him to be One who lives for others. He has a joy in God man cannot understand, a care for man that only God could show. You never find Him acting for Himself. If hungry in the wilderness, He works no miracle to supply His own need; but if others are hungering around Him, the compassion of His heart flows forth, and He feeds them by thousands.

"If any man serve Me, let him follow Me." (Jno. 12:26.)

That Scripture is divided into two main parts no one is ignorant. They are the twofold testimony of God, contrasted, but complementary to each other, the Old and New Covenants, as the word " Testament" should rather be. Upon this contrast, and the character of each, the significance of numbers puts its confirmatory? seal, assuring us also of our possession of the perfect number of the books themselves,-none lost, and none supernumerary.

The books of the Old Testament are thirty-six in number; in our Bibles, thirty-nine; but the division of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles into two books each was not found in the old Hebrew, and is plainly arbitrary when examined. The simplest division of 36 is into 3 by 12. Put these into meaning according to the symbolism of these figures, and what do we find? 3 is the divine, and 12 the governmental number; taken together, they speak of God in government. What more precise definition could we have for the books of the Law?

The books of the New Testament are twenty-seven in number, and this is the cube of 3; it is 3 times 3 times 3, the most absolutely perfect number that can be-the only one into which the symbol of divine fullness and manifestation alone can enter." God in government" is God hidden; clouds and darkness are about Him:though His glory be seen, it is, as with Moses on the mount, not His face; but in Christ we see His face; and the number 27 means God in His fullness revealed, in the perfection of His Godhead-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and in the gospel of His grace.

Thus, at the outset, the numerical structure vindicates itself. There is another division, however, of these books, not setting aside this, of course, but underlying it. I do not in the least doubt that we have in Scripture five Pentateuchs; the books of Moses being the pattern of the structure of the whole Bible. Thus again the seal is set upon what in the present day unbelief is calling most in question. But to pursue this, we must examine briefly the characters of these books.

And here the typical aspect is the most important. As another has well said of the first four, " After Genesis, and the earlier chapters of Exodus, there is very little of which the object is historical in the previous books of Moses. And even in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus principles and types are the most important aspect of what is related. As to the history of Israel, the apostle tells us this expressly in i Corinthians 10:11. And this appreciation of the character of these books greatly aids us in understanding them." (Synopsis 1:286, 2:)

Deuteronomy does not, indeed, give types proper, but it gives principles, not history, though this is recapitulated for a purpose.

We have seen that the books of Moses illustrate, as all Scripture does, the significance of numbers, but we must look more closely at them; for while every five is not, as it seems to me, a Pentateuch, it will be found that where this number is wrought into the structure of a part it is really so. Of this we shall have many instances.

Genesis is, then, the beginning of a foreknown and divine work; God in it the almighty, all-sufficient Creator; election showing this when man is fallen and departed from Him; first, that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual; life His gift, true life above all His. Thus Genesis is the seed-plot of the Bible, for " known unto God are all His works from the foundation of the world."

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, all express divine sovereignty in election; the first-born is uniformly set aside, as in Cain, Ishmael, Esau, Reuben; life in its various stages and aspects is exhibited in its successive biographies; and in these the individual work of God in man, the dispensations also to their close being typically presented. The Genesis sections of other books will be found in general thus the widest and fullest in character, the counsels of God being told out in them :He is put in His place as the fitting introduction to all else.

Exodus is the book of redemption whether by purchase or power;-by blood, from judgment; by the passage of the sea, from the old bondage. This marks the difference between the typical and historical aspects. Historically, in the wilderness the people came under the law; but this typically is but the throne or government of grace for the redeemed, as the mercy-seat declares for us. Obedience is in this way but the sign of accomplished redemption,-the willing obedience of faith.

Its principles are, ruin in responsibility, and redemption in grace, and that to God who has redeemed us.

Leviticus brings us to the sanctuary, to learn there what true sanctification is-the holiness that suits God's presence. The sacrificial work which maintains us there is at the same time the pattern of the perfection in which He delights. " I am Jehovah" and "that ye may know that I am Jehovah " is its constant language. Jehovah is God in relationship in grace, and thus takes that title first properly in Exodus, but relationship is what determines responsibility.-"You only have I known of all the families of the earth ; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities."

Sanctification every way, by sacrifice and by the Spirit,-positional and practical – is the key-note to Leviticus.

Numbers is plainly the probation in the wilderness, and this brings out the entire failure on the part of man, but on the part of God also priestly grace by which His people are brought through. As in Exodus we are redeemed out of the world, and in Leviticus are with God in the sanctuary, so here we go through the world. It is so plain as to need little comment.

Deuteronomy, finally, is the summing up of all this, and the principles of divine government, which they are to learn as lessons for the land when they enter there, and in conformity to which is all blessing to be reached. For us at the end of our course here, the judgment-seat of Christ will sum up thus, the divine ways be really learnt, and our wisdom forever.

These books have thus an individuality, a connection, and an order which mark them fully as divisions made by no human hand. And this is emphasized by the way they are used as the model of many similar divisions throughout Scripture. I have elsewhere shown how Isaiah 53:and the fifteen psalms of degrees (Ps. 120:-134:) are instances of this structure. The latter we may again look at; the former I shall briefly speak of here, as it is indeed a most perfect example, as well as of the numerical structure in general.
The prophecy of Isaiah 53:begins, it is admitted, with Hi. 13:the whole contains, therefore, fifteen verses; and these are, again, five threes; every three verses being a separate division of the subject. Moreover, every division is characterized in the completes way by the number thus attaching to it, the verses here being not arbitrary, but having full justification in the inspired writer.

Thus the first three verses give us the divine counsels as to Christ-"My Servant"-announced by God Himself, the ordained plan of Him who is excellent in counsel, mighty in working. The after-history is but the fulfillment, even by the hands of those who mean no such thing. How sweet and suited to begin thus, where all begins, with the infinite mind of God, and thus to reach the peace that passeth understanding of One forever above the water-floods.

First, we have (52:13-15) the wisdom of Jehovah's perfect Servant, and the exaltation to which it leads; then the suffering beyond any among mere men, expressed in the marring of His face and form; then, thirdly, the result in cleansing for the nations, whose highest would be brought to reverent silence in His presence, wondering with no idle wonder now at the gracious words proceeding from His lips.

In the second three (53:1-3) we have another speaker. The prophet identifying himself with the nation of Israel, speaks of their rejection of God's testimony to Christ, as the repentant generation of a future day will speak of it. Yet is He Jehovah's arm-the power of God in grace for deliverance from another Egypt; to God and man (in ways how different!) a tender plant, a root out of a dry ground; among men a man of sorrows and rejected.

Then the third section (4-6) brings the divine meaning of these sorrows before us, misconstrued as they were by men. Just as Leviticus gives us in the forefront of it those gifts and sacrifices which are the foreshadowing of the self-same precious work, so we are here in the sanctuary with God, to learn the true meaning of these sufferings of Him who was bruised for our iniquities, and upon whom was the chastisement of our peace. These three verses are indeed the centre of the whole.

The next, or fourth, section (7-9) speaks of another thing. They describe the trial of the perfect Servant, bringing out in His case that absolute perfection. Thus we have now His personal conduct under this unequaled trial; how, "oppressed and afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth," and how His grave was " with the rich man after His death; because He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth." Thus neither the sin of the powerful nor of the weak was His; while the government of the tongue marked Him as the perfect man of whom James speaks, under the severest pressure.

Finally, the fifth section (10-12), in a beautiful Deuteronomic strain, tells of the result (according to the holy ways of divine government,) of that perfect walk on earth, and absolute self-surrender for the divine glory and purpose in blessing toward man.

Thus closes the prophecy, marked, moreover, in its regular structure of 5 by 3 verses, with these two numbers-the human and the divine. And if 3 be the number of divine manifestation, and 5 be the human number, as we have seen, then these threes contained within this inclosing five are just as simply as beautifully significant of One in whom " God was manifest in flesh"

I have taken this, then, as one of the clearest and most beautiful examples of the Pentateuch being the model and key to the structure of other scriptures. We are now to inquire if the Bible as a whole, in its grand divisions, is not framed according to this pattern. I believe we shall find clearly it consists of five Pentateuchs, the seal being put once more in this way upon the book as a whole and the individual parts of it.

Looked at in this way, we have-

1. The Pentateuch itself, or Books of the Law.

2. The Covenant-History, or History springing out of this.

3. The Prophets.

4. The Psalm-Books.

5. The New Testament.

But we must remember that there are two divisions here, and that the New Testament is not really a fifth part, but stands alone, as complete in itself; or, as a second, or Exodus (redemption), part of the whole Bible.

I have now to show that each of these divisions, or of the last four, is a proper Pentateuch; that its five divisions (not books necessarily, for it is evident that three of these have much more than five books,) answer respectively in character to the five books of Moses.

The Covenant-History

These books comprise those styled by the Jews the " earlier prophets," with Ruth, Chronicles, and the three books of the captivity, which they placed in their third class of Chethubim, or Hagiographa, along with others utterly discordant in character; an arrangement in which I see no gleam of spiritual light. That which I mainly follow is perhaps of no more ancient date than the Septuagint. Yet this may well represent an older one. It is disfigured by the mixture of Apocryphal with inspired books, yet its naturalness and simplicity speak loudly for it, including in one division all the purely historical books, and in their historical order also. Ruth thus follows Judges, of which it is, as rightly held by many of the Jews themselves, an appendix; while Chronicles should fitly close the whole, as a Deuteronomic rehearsal, which reaches (in the genealogies) to the return from Babylon.

The five divisions here are easily apparent:-

1. Joshua.

2. Judges and Ruth.

3. The books of the kingdom-Samuel and Kings.

4. The books of the captivity-Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

5. Chronicles.

Joshua is the Genesis of their national existence in the land, the new beginning, in which abundantly the power of the Almighty is seen fulfilling the counsels of electing love in behalf of the people.

Judges gives, on the other hand, spite of repeated revivals and deliverances, their utter failure easily fall into five divisions, the Minor Prophets being counted as one book by the Jews, and forming by themselves, I doubt not, one of these, while Lamentations is a true supplement to Jeremiah. The order is thus:-

1. Isaiah.

2. Jeremiah, with Lamentations.

3. Ezekiel.

4. Daniel.

5. The Twelve Minor Prophets.

Isaiah is undoubtedly the Genesis of the prophets. In scope, he is the largest; the sovereignty of God in electing grace is his constant theme, and in this way he again and again appeals to creation and the Creator. He is eminently the prophet of divine counsels.
Jeremiah gives the utter ruin of the people, with whose sorrow his heart identifies him, as in Lamentations, in which he is the expression of the Spirit of Christ, afflicted in all the afflictions of His people. In his personal history, he often typifies the Lord, and filled with the sense of the relationship of the people to God, takes a mediator's place in their behalf. He is the prophet also of the new covenant.

Ezekiel gives the leprosy of Israel, upon which he is called to pronounce as priest, the glory then departing, the leper (1:e.) being put outside the camp. In the end of the book, the leprosy having come fully out, Israel is restored and glory returns. It is strikingly the Leviticus of the Prophets, the very phrase which constantly seals the commandments of Leviticus being found in the repeated phrase of Ezekiel,-" That ye may know [or, ye shall know] that I am the Lord."

Daniel, again, like the historical books of the captivity, gives the sifting of the people among the nations (Am. 9:9), in which, nevertheless, the abundant care of God will be shown toward them, with His judgment of the failed Gentile powers finally in their behalf. ("Daniel" is "God my Judge.")

The twelve minor prophets rehearse the ways of God toward Israel and the earth in holy government (12 is the governmental number). I give them in the order of the Septuagint, which here also I cannot but prefer to that of the Hebrew. Like other twelves, they divide into four sections of three each, which will be found to answer to the fundamental idea of their corresponding numbers.

1. Hosea, Amos, and Micah, kindred in subject, develop the state of the people which necessitates judgment; Hosea dwelling especially upon the violation of covenant-relationship, Amos on the moral condition, to which Micah adds the rejection of Christ; while in the sovereignty of God they are saved finally by that against which they had sinned :in Hosea, by the relationship they had violated ; in Amos, by the tabernacle of David they had rejected (for Amos treats the ten tribes as the people); in Micah, by the Christ they had smitten.

2. Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah speak of the Gentile enemy in three different ways, which all manifest His mercy to His people. First, Joel shows God's use of the northern foe to bring Israel to repentance and to blessing; then Obadiah shows the inveterate enemy destroyed; while Jonah declares the message of judgment, but, in effect, of mercy, which Israel, herself humbled, and brought up from the depths, will be the means of communicating to the Gentiles.

3. Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah bring out more the character of God as shown in His judgments, and all flesh brought into His presence. In Nahum, the Assyrian is His enemy, the pride of whose heart abuses the mercy of a long-suffering God unto destruction. Habakkuk shows us the exercise of heart under this government of God, who chastens His people often by those worse than they,-an exercise which results in a faith which in all circumstances rejoices unfailingly in God. While in Zephaniah the day of the Lord is on all; but after judgment has done its strange but necessary work, God will be free to exhibit toward a humbled people, turned to serve Him with a pure language, the love which is His own proper character, and in which He will rest forever.

4. Last, come the prophets of the returned captivity, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, answering strikingly to the three historical books of the same period respectively, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Ezra and Haggai speak mainly of the temple, Nehemiah and Zechariah of the city, Esther and Malachi of every thing broken down and gone, save providential care which still carries on all to the accomplishment of unrepenting purposes. All three prophets contemplate clearly the day of Christ, and have an outlook of blessing for the earth. Haggai declares the shaking of all things, but the coming of the Desire of all; Zechariah sees the Lord come and reigning over all the earth; Malachi speaks of the uprising of the Sun of Righteousness.

THE PSALM-BOOKS

The fourth Pentateuch consists of just five books, and in these we find as distinctly the human utterance as in the Prophets the divine. The testing of man is notably their theme, and in these five books all his exercises, sorrows, and joys are told freely out; – wrong thoughts as well as right thoughts; infidelity as well as faith. 5, the human number, is found, not only in the books, but often in their divisions also, as in Job, Proverbs, and especially in the Psalms proper, which is thus divided in the Hebrew. The books should evidently be arranged thus :-

1. Psalms.

2. Job.

3.Solomon's Song.

4. Ecclesiastes.

5. Proverbs.

The Psalms are the Genesis of this division :full of the divine counsels, varied and copious in matter, they manifestly occupy the place which Isaiah does among the prophets.

Job is the book of the "penitent," the need of repentance taught to one pronounced of God the best man on earth, grace meeting him there to double to him his original portion.

The Song Of Solomon gives us the heart in the presence of the Lord, occupation with an object too large for it, as another has said.

Ecclesiastes, the world an object too little for the heart, death stamping it with vanity, man's wisdom incompetent for solution or escape.

Proverbs furnishes the maxims of divine wisdom, the path of blessing under the government of a holy God.

The correspondence with the Pentateuch here needs no enlarging or insisting on.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Lastly, we come to the New Testament, a second division of Scripture, as we all recognize; not a fifth, and yet as distinctly a Pentateuch as any other. Its divisions are,-

1. The Gospels.

2. The Acts.

3. The Epistles of Paul.

4. The Epistles of the Four-James, Peter, John, and Jude.

5. The Revelation.

The Gospels are, without any doubt, here the new Genesis-the "beginning" to which the apostle John constantly recalls us. They are four in number;-the three synoptic, and that of John, which stands by itself.

Matthew :the gospel of the kingdom; the sin-offering aspect of Christ's work. Mark :the gospel of service, and the trespass-offering. Luke :the gospel of the peace-offering, and the Manhood.

2. John :the gospel of the burnt-offering, and the Godhead.

The Acts are the Exodus -the deliverance from the law.
The Epistles of Paul bring us to God, establishing us in His presence according to the value of the work of Christ, and in Christ, and so to walk. They are fourteen in number-7 by 2, (the testimony of the perfect work accomplished,) and divide into two parts:-

I. Those which speak of our place in and union with Christ, and of the power of this for us, which are only jive in number:-

I. Romans, which speaks of justification, and deliverance from sin and law ;-

2.Galatians, of the essential contrast of law and grace, and of God's design in the former;-

3.Ephesians, of our heavenly and Church-place; while-
4. Colossians brings in the fullness of Christ thus known for our life on earth, and-

5.Philippians shows its power in practical occupation with Him.

II. We have the epistles which speak of practical fellow-ship' with one another, which (three being double] fall into six divisions:-

1. Thessalonians, the Christian condition and character as belonging to the family of God.

2. Corinthians, as belonging to the Church.

3 Hebrews, as perfected worshipers.

4. Timothy, as in the house of God.

5. Titus, the fruits of true doctrine.

6. Philemon, Christianity the true exalting power.

The Epistles of the four other apostles are all connected with life and walk.

1. Peter gives the path through the world.

2. James, the principle of justification by works.

3. John, the features of eternal life.

4. Jude, (the Malachi of the New Testament,) the faithlessness of man and the faithfulness of God.

Lastly, the book of Revelation gives us the review and judgment both of the world and Church's course, with the blessing and the curse at the end. It is without doubt the New-Testament Deuteronomy.

This is what appears to me the general outline of Scripture, and seems to put every book in its place, and the seal of divine perfection on every part. Nothing is in defect; nothing redundant. The Pentateuch, vilified by the unbelief of the day, and torn to pieces by rationalism, is seen to be, not only a perfect whole, but the key to the structure of the whole Bible. The significance of numbers reveals harmony and design every where, even in the minutest portions, and prepares us for a closer inspection of the books in their internal structure, of which more than a glimpse has been already afforded us, and which should give a precision and definiteness to our apprehension of their contents, which must have been surely in His purpose in fashioning them after this manner. If carelessness and unbelief on our parts have long missed the clue, let us take the shame of this; it is none the less there. Let us now look at the books in detail, and. see to what it will lead.

One often trembles to hear persons make high professions, and use expressions of intense devoted-ness, whether in prayer or otherwise, lest when the hour of trial comes there may not be the needed spiritual power to carry out what the lips have uttered.

We should ever remember that Christianity is not a set of opinions, a system of dogmas, or a number of views; it is pre-eminently a living reality-a personal, practical, powerful thing, telling itself out in all the scenes and circumstances of daily life, shedding its hallowed influence over the entire character and course, and imparting its heavenly tone to every relationship which one may be called of God to fill.

We are going through the world, and God has given us a testimony about the world, and about what is going to happen to the world-infallible judgment. He has "appointed," it is said, "a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained ; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead." (Acts 17:31.)" By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet [prophetic testimony], moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith."Warned of what is coming on the world, he owns and recognizes the judgment, and falls in with God's revealed way of salvation; and he condemns the world. Mark this:faith " condemns the world;" not merely is it belief in a sacrifice that saves, and power for walk with God; but it says of the world that it is altogether departed from God, and is going to be judged. We have the testimony of the Word of God that the thing that is coming upon this world is judgment. There is many a person who, as a saint, would rest in a saint's walk with God, but who shrinks from breaking with the world. The saint is so to act upon this testimony as to the judgment of the world as practically to condemn the world. Had we Noah's faith, as well as Abel's and Enoch's, we could not go with the world. If His people are saved by Him, He is coming to judge the world; and therefore they have their portion with Christ, and in Christ, so that when He comes they will be with Him. As sure as Christ rose from the dead, He is "the Man" God has ordained to judge the world-" this present evil world; " and so sure there is no judgment for you and for me if we believe in Him. That by which I know there will be a judgment is that by which I know there will be none for me. How do I know there will be a judgment? Because God has raised Him from the dead. What more has God told me of His resurrection ? That my sins are all put away.
J.N.D.

The testimony of the prophetic books, distinctively so called, is full and constant to the person and glory of Christ:the announcement of His sufferings and atoning work on the other hand infrequent, and of the latter scarcely to be found, except in one passage of one book,-the fifty-third of Isaiah. Here, indeed, it is full and explicit; but we must not expect the wondrous reality to break often through its vail of type and figure while that dispensation of shadows lasted. The sacrificial system, at which we have been looking, was of course all through in existence; and Isaiah it is who is prepared for his mission, as peculiarly, and even by his very name,* the prophet of salvation, by what is in effect a sacrificial anointing. This is indeed remarkable in its character, and as the prophetic seal upon the Mosaic testimony. *Jeshaia, the "salvation of Jehovah."*

" In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim:each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, ' Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.' And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that spake, and the house was filled with smoke." The holiness of God was necessary wrath in a fallen world; and in such a presence, what is man, whoever he be? "Then said I, 'Woe is me! for I am undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.' " But if this be the necessary confession, how blessed the grace which is, in equal necessity, the divine response! "Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, 'Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is cleansed.' "

This touching of the " lips with sacred fire," how often has it been the subject of an allusion which has missed the whole point of what is here. It is quite true that it is a prophet whose lips are touched, and that his call (whether to the prophetic office itself or to some special mission) follows directly after; but the touch is nevertheless not that of inspiration, and the fire does not energize here, but " cleanse." And striking it is to find such an instrument employed in such a way. The live coal would seem more the symbol of divine wrath against, than of mercy for a sinner; nay, it does undoubtedly speak of that very character in God which the seraphim had celebrated, and which made His presence so insupportable to a guilty conscience. How could such a God give sentence in favor of one confessedly a sinner? :It is easy enough out of His presence to imagine this,-easy enough to say that mercy becomes Him as well as righteousness; certainly, if He be (as He must be) merciful, no one was ever afraid of His loving mercy. But He must be righteous in His mercy:righteousness must guarantee and condition all its acts; nay, justification (if this be possible,) must be the act of righteousness, and of righteousness alone. And this it is that produces terror at the thought of His presence.

How blessed is it, then, to see in this live coal, the very figure of that implacable righteousness in God which must be, here actually that which, applied to a man's sin-stained lips, cleanses and not consumes them! " Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged." But why? and how? The answer is most easy and most precious. It is a coal from off the altar which the seraph applies. It is a coal which has been consuming the sacrifice for sin:the type of a holiness which, while it remains of necessity ever the same, has found its complete satisfaction in that which has put away sin for every sinner convicted and confessed. Righteousness, because it is that, can only for such proclaim that " thine iniquity is taken away, thy sin is purged."

This indeed opens the prophet's lips to speak for God:"Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send? and who will go for Us?' Then said I, ' Here am I; send me.'" It is no wonder that he who in this (as the apostle tells us) "saw [Christ's] glory, and spake of Him " should be the instrument to declare His blessed work with a clearness which is no where else to be found outside of the New Testament. This we must look at now, although for our purpose it will be only a few statements that we shall consider.

The prophecy begins with ver. 13 of chap. lii, and goes down to the end of the fifty-third chapter. All the typical vail is dropped, and we see One manifestly in a sacrificial place for men,-a sin-bearer. The details of the death by which He would be cut off from among men are minutely given, as well as the perfection of character and life which fitted Him for an offering. He is, moreover, Jehovah's servant in all this, fulfilling His gracious purposes of blessing, and exalted by Him to glory unequaled as His sorrow.

Let us take this first, which to Him was first. It is as Jehovah's servant that the prophecy begins with Him. The wisdom with which He acts, the glory resulting, hinge upon this. God is glorified in Him; and being glorified in Him, glorifies Him in Himself. In the depths of that terrible agony to which He stooped,. in the heights of supreme glory to which He is lifted, He is still and ever the steadfast servant of Jehovah's will. It pleased Jehovah to bruise Him:Jehovah hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all; Jehovah's purpose prospers in His hand; He is "Jehovah's arm" of power for the deliverance and blessing of His people. How indeed like a track of light through the darkness of this apostate world is such a course! This is the bullock of the burnt-sacrifice, offered indeed for us, but " without spot, to God."

In the world despised and rejected, that was the necessary effect of what was His true glory. In His humiliation, carnal eyes discerned but weakness; to God, He was the "tender plant" of perfect dependent manhood; but therefore not formed by circumstances-not growing out of them, as far as they were concerned with His resources in Himself, a root out of a dry ground, life conquering death, but in strangership necessarily unknown and misconceived by those who, not being Wisdom's children, justified her not.

Yet not apart from men, to whose wants and sorrows, in no mere patronage, but as one bearing them in His own soul, He ministered; a death of shame and agony, to Him the necessary price of relieving even the least of the consequences of sin, -that death which those unconscious of their need took but as the decisive token of His own rejection. In fact it was but the antitype of those vicarious sacrifices which for centuries had been prophesying day by day in Israel, " He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities." Chastisement was it truly, still for our purification, corrective discipline for us whose peace it made,- " the chastisement of our peace;" for " with His stripes we are healed." " The iniquity of us all Jehovah has made to meet on Him."

Under the pressure-what? Only the full proof of absolute perfection:no violence (the sin of power), no deceit (the sin of weakness); taken away by oppression with the form of judgment, stricken for the sin of others, not even a word but in meek surrender to the full weight of woe, which transformed with agony His whole frame and features. Nor was this therefore merely bodily agony:His soul was made an offering for trespass, travailed with men's salvation, and was poured out unto death; He numbered with the transgressors, bearing the sin of many, making intercession for the transgressors.

Already we are following the track of the white-robed priest into the sanctuary. In truth, that entrance could not long be delayed. Even in death, the appointed grave with the wicked is changed into the rich man's tomb. Life follows- length of eternal days, and the portion of a conqueror. But it is Jehovah's purpose prospers in His hand:a seed is given Him among sprinkled nations, fruit of the travail of His soul, by His knowledge turned to righteousness.

Such, in brief, is Isaiah's vision of Christ; but the Conqueror-Sufferer, here depicted is without difficulty recognized as the One of whom the prophet has before spoken in terms which are full of the deepest significance. He is the " Child born," the "Son given," whose "name is called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace" (ch. 9:6). Weakness and omnipotence are here united; and in Him we rind the Founder of that eternal state in which the purposes of divine wisdom being fully accomplished, divine love can rest without possibility of any after-conflict. The work which we have here been contemplating is that in which the foundation of this is laid. Jehovah's wondrous Servant is Himself Jehovah; and in Him God meets man in the embrace of reconciliation and of love eternal.

This is surely the gospel of the Old Testament, but we must remember here the caution of the apostle of the circumcision as to the real intelligence of even those who wrote of such infinite glories:"Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you; searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Which things the angels desire to look into." (i Pet. 1:10-12.)

Seven is the perfect cycle, the week of divine accomplishments. In its highest form, nothing can succeed it:its Sabbath is an unbroken eternity,- perfect rest because God's rest (Heb. 3:4). In lower forms, however, it may be succeeded by other cycles, and hence the significance of the number 8.

The eighth day is the first of the new week, which it contrasts thus with the old one passed away. Thus the eighth psalm gives the " world to come" of Hebrews ii, with Christ as Son of Man over it; while the hundred and nineteenth psalm, with its twenty-two groups of eight verses each, gives the law written on Israel's heart, according to the terms of the new covenant.

Nine has, so far as I am aware, no other significance than what it obtains as a multiple of 3 by 3, an intensifying of its meaning. It illustrates the truth that as to the larger numbers they derive their meaning generally from the smaller ones of which they are compounded:forty, for instance, is simply a 4 by 10, as twelve is a 4 by 3.

The number ten, too, seems to fall under this rule. As in the ten commandments of the law it is the measure and mark of responsibility toward God. This is the effect upon man of all divine testimony:and as 5 is the human number, so 10 is 5 by 2. Judgment too is measured by responsibility. Thus ten times Pharaoh hardens his heart, and ten times God in judgment hardens it, while ten plagues fall upon the land in recompense.

Eleven I have at present no light upon, but twelve I have already stated to be 3 by 4. It is the number of divine government, although it may be administered by man. Twelve apostles to regulate in the kingdom of heaven, with twelve corresponding thrones when the Son of Man takes His throne. Twelve gates and foundations for the metropolitan city, New Jerusalem; twelve tribes correspondingly of the royal people upon the earth. The numbers that make up 12 are 3 and 4, the divine and world number, as are those that make up 7. If the one is 4 by 3, the other is 4 plus 3. In both it is thus divine acting in the sphere of the world, but in the former case more directly than in the latter. In this, faith recognizes the divine hand surely working out its own purposes, but in the meanwhile the world goes on, and there is until the close no outward transformation of it; in the former, there is a direct manifest work and transformation. The one traces the steps of secret government; the other, of open and publicly recognized authority.

This closes the regular series of symbolical numbers, so far at least as I have been able to follow it. There remains but one number mote, of which we may fitly speak.

Forty is the well-known number or measure of perfect probation; and here again the numbers of which it is compounded speak for themselves. It is plainly 4 by 10:the latter, the measure of responsibility to God; the former, the sign of the testing of man in the world; the product of these two, the perfect probation of man in the full measure of his responsibility. Such was the character of Israel's forty years' sojourn in the wilderness; of the Lord's forty days' temptation; of Esau's forty years which ended with his marriage with two Canaanitish wives, and the loss of the firstborn's place and blessing.

These, then, are the numbers. Their significance will be emphasized by their application. And in all this, I am only glad to say, there is nothing very new; what is so, is mainly in the extension of principles admitted by many to a new field, where indeed, however, the application should be easy and indeed necessary, if only it be once seen that numbers have this significance. In the hundred and nineteenth psalm we have just seen how plainly significant is the number 8 which is to be found, not in its text, but in its structure. A more familiar case for many will be found in the division of the seven parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13:Here, the first four are spoken in the presence of the multitude, and give the public aspect, while the last three, spoken to the" disciples in the house, give the internal and spiritual side, the divine meaning understood by faith alone. Here the numbers are found again in the structure, and are clearly significant.

Instances are to be found on every page of Scripture, but I need not now dwell upon what we are so shortly to have fully before us. I only assert emphatically here that the whole structure of the Word, and of every part of it, is as really governed by the significance of numbers as is the hundred and nineteenth psalm. These alphabetic acrostics are only encouragements to look further and more deeply to find every where what, if less obvious, is as really there; and being there, has its power and blessing in the design of God's love toward us, which surely we cannot and would not slight, and will not without loss. But before we proceed with this, I would notice some other examples of the way in which numbers are used by . Him. We can adduce, if I mistake not, chronology also in proof of this; and here I again quote what I have said elsewhere.

According to the common reckoning in our Bibles, Christ was born into the world in the four thousandth year of it. There has been much contention about the date, as is well known, and it will be instructive to examine it according to already established principles. For forty centuries, then, the world's probation lasted (for that was the character of those ages at the end of which He came, and whose history is found in the books of the Old Covenant), and forty we have already seen to be the sign of complete probation.

But whence the other factor?-whence the century? Let us only consider that Isaac was a type of the true child of promise, and then we shall easily remember that his birth took place when Abraham's body was "now dead, when he was about a hundred years old;" and God left him to this that Isaac might not be "born after the flesh" The flesh in Abraham had its probation for that hundred years; and when in the issue of this it was seen as dead, the power of God brought life out of death in the birth of Isaac. How significant and easily applicable to One greater far! born in the fortieth century of the world's probation, when all flesh was seen as dead, and in the power of God new life began in Christ.

Take as another instance from chronology the important period of Daniel's seventy weeks. They are weeks of divine working to accomplish blessing,-" to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sin, and to bring in everlasting righteous-ness." Here, seventy sevens remind us of the steadfast, if secret, working out of divine counsels.
This is emphasized by the double use of 7; while the 10, the other factor in the number, reminds us that we have here also responsible man, with the sins, alas! which come so surely from him.

This is the character of the whole period; but the separate parts are no less strongly marked. The first portion, of seven weeks, or seven sevens, is thus marked as one in which divine energy is working in a high degree; and if one will but glance at the margin of his common Bible, he will find that "from the going forth of the commandment to rebuild and restore Jerusalem," in Nehemiah ii, (B. C. 445,) forty-nine years will bring us to B. C. 396; and turning to Malachi, Israel's last Old-Testament prophet, he will find 397 B. C. as the date of his prophecy. Thus these seven sevens cover the time of prophetic ministry in Israel till its close. "

The sixty-two weeks that follow are symbolically silent; but the silence is itself significant. It is a time of expectation for Messiah. Inspired history and prophecy lapse together. The deepest of the night precedes the dawn; but even that dawn is not yet for Israel. Messiah comes, and is cut off.

The last week again tells us, in its simple seven, of divine power once more at work; but the week is violently broken in upon and interrupted. Opposition to God is at its height, spite of which the divinely determined time runs on to its conclusion, and the divine purpose is consummated at the close of the seventy weeks.

Take still one instance from the types, which gives remarkable meaning to the silence of Scripture. In the twelfth of Exodus the beginning of the year is changed, the passover being the foundation of every thing for Israel, as for us the blood of redemption, of Christ our passover.

But the month does not begin with the passover itself. It is not till the tenth day that the lamb is taken, and then it is kept up for four, when on the fourteenth day at even it is slain. Here, 14 is 2 by 7; it is the number which speaks of the perfection of divine work, multiplied by that which speaks of testimony:the blood of the lamb is indeed the witness of the precious work upon which all depends for us.

But what, then, of the ten days silently passed over, and the four of keeping up? The first speaks of responsibility, and applies to the time as to which a very similar silence is preserved in the gospels, at the close of which the Lord comes forward to be proclaimed by the Father's voice as the object of His delight. This testimony comes at the close of His private life, in which He has been fulfilling, as man, His individual responsibility. Therefore the silence up to this, and the seal put upon Him now; while from this point He begins His testing (as the four gospels show it) as the appointed Sacrifice and Saviour. He begins this, therefore, with His forty days' temptation by the devil. At the close of this whole period He is offered.

Thus the types, the structure, and the chronology of Scripture all unite to insist upon the significance of numbers. We must yet look more particularly at what is closely connected with this -the place of the books of Moses, the Pentateuch, in relation to the other books; but this will of necessity lead us into the heart of our subject.

It is a deeply solemn thing to learn truth; for there is not a principle which we profess to have learned which we shall not have to prove practically.

Pleads the one desire of the soul to dwell in Jehovah's house ; yea, Jehovah had invited to seek His face, and faith had answered the invitation ; therefore He would not hide His face:he would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

[A psalm] of David.

Jehovah is my light and my salvation; of whom shall I be afraid? Jehovah is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be in dread ?

2. When evil-doers came upon me to eat up my flesh,-my oppressors and enemies,-they themselves stumbled and fell.

3. Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should arise against me, in this will I be confident.

4. One thing have I asked of Jehovah; this will I seek after:that I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of Jehovah, and to inquire in His temple.

5. For He shall lay me up in His pavilion in the day of evil:in the secret of His tent shall He hide me; He shall raise me up upon a rock.

6. And now shall mine head be raised up above mine enemies round about me; and I will sacrifice in His tent sacrifices of joyful sound:I will sing, yea, I will sing psalms to Jehovah.

7. Hear me, Jehovah! I cry with my voice:be gracious also unto me and answer me!

8. To Thee hath my heart said, " Seek ye My face?" Thy face do I seek, Jehovah.

9. Hide not Thy face from me! turn not Thy servant away in anger:Thou hast been my help; cast me not off, and forsake me not, O God of my salvation!

10. For if my father and my mother have forsaken me, Jehovah will take me up.

11. Direct me, Jehovah, in Thy way; lead me in an even path because of those that watch me.

12. Give me not up to the will of mine oppressors ; for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe violence.

13. -If I had not believed to see the goodness of Jehovah in the land of the living!-

14. Wait on Jehovah; be strong, and He shall confirm thy heart; therefore wait on Jehovah.

Text.-(8) " Seek ye My face :" Jehovah's words, which faith lays hold of.

(10) Lit., " For my father and mother have forsaken me, and Jehovah taketh me up."

(14) Or, " Let thy heart be firm."

The Dispensational Application. – Joseph, whose touching history closes the book before us, is so well known as a type of the Lord that there is no need to insist upon the reality of the application. It is one of the longest, fullest, and clearest to be found in Scripture; and here, as we have seen before in another case, the inward, individual application seems almost to be absorbed by and make way for the outward. Nor need we wonder:for in these stages of the divine life in man we have now reached that in which finally the fruit of the new nature, its proper characteristic fruit, is found, and here it is no longer I that live, but "Christ liveth in me."

The first view that we have of Joseph is at seventeen years feeding the flock along with his brethren. How ever the typical ruler for God is the shepherd! of Moses and of David both we find this; and in Matthew (the kingdom-gospel) we hear the scribes quoting Micah to the king:"Out of thee shall come a Governor who shall rule My people Israel." In the margin this is "feed;" it is literally " be a shepherd to" My people Israel. Jacob's prophecy at the close of this book connects this character of Christ's rule with the type of Joseph (49:24).

It is with the children of the bondmaid too that we find him,-a significant expression of Israel's condition, politically perhaps as well as spiritually, when the Lord came in flesh; but separated from them morally far, the ground of the after-separation upon their side, not on His. " Me the world hateth," said the Lord to His brethren, " because I testify of it that its deeds are evil."

Special object of his father's love, and prophet of his own coming exaltation, he incurs through all this an intensity of enmity which finds its opportunity in his mission of love as sent of his father to them. He seeks them in Shechem, finds them in Dothan, and there in brethren after the flesh, in will and intent, murderers. But these names, like all others in Scripture, are suggestive; and it is surely in place to inquire what they suggest.

Now Shechem we have already had twice before us, and it seems referred to again in chap. 48:22. It is here translated "portion;" a meaning which in Scripture it never elsewhere has:its undoubted uniform sense is " shoulder," which is usually considered to refer to the "position of the place on the 'saddle' or 'shoulder' of the heights which divide the waters there that flow to the Mediterranean on the west and to the Jordan on the east."* *Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.* There is no need to exclude this significance, any more than to stop here as if it were the whole matter. The natural constantly typifies the spiritual ; and so it may well be in this case.

Figuratively the shoulder finds its place as the burden-bearer, and this with the thought of service and subjection as in the blessing of Issachar afterward :" He bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute;" but the burden may be one of a very different character, as it is said of the Lord, "The government shall be upon His shoulder:" the place of service and the place of power being here one. How truly so of Him whom this declares!

In the first case in which we have to do with Shechem, I have sought to show that we have the former thought. The oak of Moreh (the " instructor") at the "place of Sichem," Abraham's first resting-place in the land, gives beautifully the fruitfulness of subjection to divine teaching; and here Jehovah Himself appears to him. We need seek no further for the significance of Shechem in the history of Joseph's brethren. From Abraham's place Abraham's seed had but too far wandered when the Lord came as seeking them. Zealous law-keepers they were, and to this Dothan, if I mistake not, very exactly points. It means " laws," in the sense, not of " precepts," (moral-spiritual- guidance, such as the divine law was,) but of imperial "decrees."* *Dothan" is generally held to mean "two cisterns" or" wells;" some, however, prefer the meaning " laws," from doth, a very different word from torah, (akin to Moreh above,) the usual word for Jehovah's " law."* To Israel, away from God and from the path of their father after the flesh, such had the divine word become.

At Dothan, then, Joseph's brethren are found, and at once they counsel to slay him. In fact they cast him into a pit, but which holds no water-" It is not lawful for us," the Jews said to Pilate, "to put any man to death ;"-and out of this they draw him to sell him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. So by Israel was the Lord transferred to the Gentiles.

How striking is that touch in this terrible picture, "And they sat down"-with Joseph in their pit-" to eat bread"! How much more terrible in the case of the pharisaic persecutors who "would not go into the judgment-hall, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the passover"! History does indeed repeat itself, because each generation but repeats the one before it :as Ahab, Israel's worst king, was but after all what his name signifies, his "father's brother."

Thus Joseph is brought down into Egypt; but before his history is proceeded with, that of Judah, terrible record as it is, is continued through another chapter (xxxviii). That it is simply Judah's history is itself significant. Israel (the ten tribes) have for long had none; the Jews for us represent the whole people. Here at the outset Judah separates himself from his brethren and connects himself with the Canaanite, – the "merchantman,"- marrying the daughter of Shuah (or "riches"). Surely these names give us in plain speech the characteristics of the nation for these centuries since the cross! His seed is thus, however, continued upon the earth, although God's wrath is upon the first two sons, (whose names speak, Er, of "enmity," and Onan, of "iniquity,") while the third son, Shelah, ("sprout"?) speaks of divine power in resurrection bringing out of death.* * " Come, and let us return unto the Lord :for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us:in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live In His sight." (Hos. 6:1, 2.).* Thus is a remnant preserved.

The history of Tamar shows us in God's own marvelous way how Christ comes into connection with Judah, and thus it is her name appears in the Lord's genealogy in the gospel of Matthew, first of those four women's names, whose presence there demonstrates the grace which has stooped to take up men. Each of these four has its own distinctive gospel-feature to bring out, as has been elsewhere shown. * *"The Women of the Genealogy," first published in " The Present Testimony."* It is Tamar's sin that is insisted on, as it is Rahab's faith; while for Ruth to come in, the sentence of the law has to be set aside, and Bathsheba shows us grace triumphing even over a believer's sin. A salvation for sinners,-a salvation by faith,-a salvation from the sentence of the law,-an eternal salvation:this is what the simple insertion of these names declares. And in this chapter of Genesis, whatever else may be contained, we are assured, as every where, for Jew first, and for Gentile also, sin it is which through the infinite pity of God connects us with a Saviour. Tamar's sin alone brought her into the Lord's genealogy; and God has taken pains to record, doubly record, this striking fact. Even so as simply sinners have we title to rejoice in a work accomplished for the need of sinners. Judah shall find in a coming day his title, not in legal righteousness, nor in Abrahamic descent, but in what God has emphasized for us here.

With chap. 39:we come back to Joseph,-in type, to see Christ among the Gentiles. It is evident that thus viewed there is no direct continuity with the thirty-seventh chapter, but in some sort a new beginning. Even the position of Joseph under an Egyptian master may remind us of Zechariah's words, which I believe with others to be intended of Christ:" Man acquired me as a slave from my youth" (ch. 13:5, Heb.). Here, notice, it is not Israel:the lowly service to which He has stooped has the widest scope. Of course He is at the same time, and always, Jehovah's perfect servant:the one thing, far from being inconsistent with the other, involved it. But what response did this service receive from man? "What are those wounds in Thine hands? Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends."

With Joseph in it, the house of the Egyptian is blessed of God; but with Christ ministering in it, how unspeakably was the world blessed ! All the power was there, and manifesting itself, which could have turned, and will yet turn, the need of man, however great and varied, into occasion for the display of the wealth of divine loving-mercy. But it availed not to turn man's heart to God:false witness casts Joseph into Pharaoh's prison, where, however, all things come into his hand; while under false accusation the Lord descends into a darker prison-house, in result to manifest Himself as Master of all there.

A higher power than man's was working beneath all this in Joseph's case. The path of humiliation was to end for him in glory; the sorrow of the way was to issue in the joy-love's own joy of service in a higher sphere. " God did send me before you to preserve life," he says to his brethren afterward; and he who in prison reveals himself as the interpreter of the mind of God, is as such qualified to administer the resources of the throne of Egypt for the relief of the distress which is at hand for the world. All this is easily read as typical of the Lord, only that the shadows of the picture are immeasurably darker here, as the lights are inexpressibly brighter. From the humiliation and agony of the cross, in which He is the interpreter of man's just doom on the one hand and of the mercy for him on the other, the lowly Minister to human need comes forth to serve as Wisdom and Power of God upon a throne of grace. She-chem is the portion of our Joseph's inheritance, for a better kingdom than any kingdom of the nations is that He receives. (Mark 10:42.)

Seven years of plenty to be succeeded by seven years of famine which shall devour them up,-such is the prophecy of Pharaoh's dream. Even yet is the world enjoying its plenteous years, and little it believes in its plainly predicted future. The time of famine is nevertheless surely not far off which is to manifest the resources of Him who will then be seen alone competent to meet its terrible exigencies. In that sore time of trial both Israel are to be brought back to Him whom they have rejected, and the world to be subjected to the throne whose provision of grace He ministers. These things are now in our type with some detail set before us.

But first, and as soon as ever he is exalted, we hear of new relationships for Joseph:"And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphnath-paaneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Poti-pherah priest of On; and Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt." The name given we may take as Hebrew,* and in the meaning anciently given to it, "Revealer of Secrets." *The absurdity does not follow which Grove suggests (Smith's Dict, of the Bible) that it makes Pharaoh speak in Hebrew. If it has pleased God to speak to us in Hebrew, why should not the Egyptian name be translated into this to make it intelligible to us ? I am not convinced of the wisdom of seeking the meaning of these names in ancient and little known tongues, and these "Shemiticized;" at least when the Hebrew furnishes a satisfactory one nearer at hand.* How precious a title for Him who has indeed revealed to us the secrets of the heart of God! And especially is it appropriate typically in connection (as the text suggests) with Joseph's Gentile marriage. To Christianity belongs, above all, the revelation of the divine " mysteries." The " mysteries of the kingdom," the " great mystery" of "Christ and the Church;" the " mystery of His will. . . for the administration of the fullness of times, to head up all things in the heavens and earth in Christ" (Matt. 13:II; Eph. 5:32, 1:9, 10) are given to us for the first time in these Christian days; while He Himself is, in His own person and work, the " mystery of godliness."Even the false church appropriates (only to pervert) this idea of "mystery" (Rev. 17:5); while the apostle desires no better estimation for himself and others than "as ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God" (i Cor. 4:i). For us, even the stored treasures of the past dispensation are revealing themselves, and things which happened unto Israel happened unto them for types, and are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are come (i Cor. 10:II). All these things are pledges of new relationship, confidences (how unspeakably precious!) of the heart of Christ (Jno. 15:15). Revealer of secrets indeed is He; no truer or sweeter name for Him who has been pleased to take, in these plenteous days before the time of the world's famine, a Gentile bride.

As to Asenath, if the meaning of her name is conjectural only,* yet those of her two sons are very significant. *According to Poole (Smith's Dict.), probably "storehouse;" but Simonis, with the help of the Ethiopia, suggests "beauty." The old conjecture, " worshiper of Neith," every way objectionable, is generally given up.* Born before the famine, and while Joseph's brethren are yet strangers to his exaltation, he " called the name of the first-born Manasseh:For God hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house;" while " the name of the second called he Ephraim:For God hath made me fruitful in the land of my affliction." Here, clearly, is our place and relationship with our blessed Lord; and how blessed to realize the value to Him of which these names speak. For His Church, His heavenly bride, He has been content to be as if He remembered not His relationship with His people of old. The thread of prophecy lies unwoven on the shuttle of time, as if its wheel had stopped forever. What means this attitude of forgetfulness on the part of Him who neither slumbereth nor sleepeth? Surely no change, but the pursuance of eternal purposes, which accomplished, Israel shall look upon the face of Him whom they have pierced, and a fountain be opened to them also for sin and for uncleanness.

So "the seven years of plenteousness, that was in the land of Egypt, were ended. And the seven years of dearth began to come, …. and the dearth was in all lands. …. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread:and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, ' Go unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do.'"

So when God's judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. It is face to face with our need that we learn our true nothingness, and cry out to Him who then proves Himself the living God. But God's remedy is Christ alone. He has put, absolutely and unrepentingly, all things in His hand. He would have all men to be saved, but there is no other name given whereby we can be saved. As for the individual, so for the world:not in the plenteous times, of Christianity will the world at large turn to God ; and therefore come drought and famine from the same hand that, unknown, bestowed the blessing.

The present dispensation closed by the removal of the Church to be with her Head and Lord, the times of the Gentiles will close as the Lord Himself predicts :"And there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars ; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring ; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth ; for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." (Luke 21:25-27.)

But before He appears, and amid all the trial of a time such as the world has never seen – will never again see, – Israel will be preparing to recognize and receive her rejected Lord. "Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? where-fore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it; it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it, and …. they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them " (Jer. 30:6, 7, 9). It is indeed the travail-time of Israel's new birth.

In the type before us, the famine reaches Canaan, as all the countries around", and Joseph's ten brethren come down to buy corn in Egypt. We are all familiar with what follows, and how their hearts and consciences are probed by him who knows them and loves them well, but whom they know not. They obtain indeed a temporary supply for their necessities, but leave Simeon in prison, and are bidden not to appear again except they bring Benjamin with them. Famine again forces them to come down, and this time, Judah having under-taken for Benjamin with his father, they bring him also; are then feasted by Joseph still unknown; sent away with the cup in Benjamin's sack; pursued and brought back under the charge of theft; Benjamin is to remain as Joseph's slave, but Judah, his heart fully reached, offers himself in his stead:then Joseph's love bursts out; he makes himself known to them; they own their sin, are reconciled and comforted with his love.

In all this it is plain how every thing turns on Benjamin and their state toward him. This is made the test of their condition. The power for their deliverance lies in Joseph's hands alone, however, and their exercises as to Benjamin all tend to awakening conscience and heart as to their sin against Joseph. The key of the typical interpretation is to be found in this.* *"His brethren, who had rejected him, forced by famine, are brought, by the path of repentance and humiliation, to own him at length in glory whom they had once rejected when connected with themselves. Benjamin, type of the power of the Lord upon earth among the Jews, is united to him who unknown had the power of the throne among the Gentiles; that is, Christ unites these two characteristics. But this brings all the brethren into connection with Joseph." (Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. 1:59.) *

Joseph is, as we know, Christ once rejected and suffering, now exalted:this is He whom Israel does not know. A Christ triumphant simply and reigning upon earth is the Benjamin who is found among them, whether in the days of the Lord's rejection or the latter days. The conqueror they were prepared for; the Sufferer-not knowing their own deep need-they have refused. Yet the two are really one:even Benjamin was first Ben-oni; and for them the Conqueror cannot be till they receive the Sufferer; not the faith of a sufferer merely, but the One who has been this. Power lies with Joseph, not with Benjamin.
But Joseph's heart longs after Benjamin:Christ longs to display this character of power for them; but for this they must be brought to repentance, and He uses the ideal, prophetical Messiah to bring their hearts back to Himself the true one.

Amid the sorrows of the last days this will be accomplished for them. He who unknown is seeking them will make them realize their Benjamin as Ben-oni, the son of sorrow, and that as the fruit of their own sin (ch. 44:16). Benjamin is taken from them:they have lost their part in Messiah as having rejected Him. All the depths of Judah's heart are stirred; and in his agony for Benjamin, he is met and overwhelmed by the revelation of Joseph. They look upon Him whom they have pierced, and mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son, and a fountain for sin and for uncleanness is opened to them.

This, I believe, is the true, however meager, interpretation of the type before us. But, this brings the whole nation into blessing under Christ; and here, as far as they are concerned, the type (I suppose) ends. They are established in Goshen, and the fat of the land of Egypt is theirs.

After this we read of the reduction of Egypt itself under the immediate authority of the throne. The people, bankrupt through the famine, receive back their lands from the bounty of the king, returning him one fifth of the produce of the land as the token of their indebtedness to the grace from which they have received all. Two tenths may remind us of the double claim of God upon us- by creation and by redemption. All the world shall own this in the day to come.

From chap. 47:28, I think we have a separate part, an appendix to this history.

" Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the children of the east." And here the second period of his life begins. He is now a stranger, a servant for hire, the victim of deceit and self-aggrandizement on the part of Laban, his relative, and morally also near akin. It is impossible to mistake the retribution all the way through, in which the measure he has meted to another is measured to himself again; but it is impossible also not to see that in the manner in which it is dealt out God is speaking to the heart and conscience of the wanderer. There is governmental equity, but also the chastening of a holy love. Beth-el is vindicating itself. The Father scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. The scepter of the kingdom is the rod of discipline of the Father's house.

Deceit and injustice practiced upon ourselves, how easy to read them in their true character! how the poor pretense of justification we had attempted in our own behalf betrays its shame when another attempts it against us. Thus can God overrule sin to teach us holiness. Yet the lesson this way is long in learning, as we surely see in Jacob. Throughout it he is Jacob still, though by degrees becoming fruitful and prosperous.

The general teaching here seems plain enough, while the details are difficult to follow. The names of wives and children too bear witness to the subjective character of the line of truth which presents itself to us. Rachel, "sheep," seems significant of the meekness and patience of true discipleship, the very opposite of Jacob's hitherto self-willed and unrestrained temper. But her he must obtain by means of undesired Leah, whose name, " wearied," suggests the "tribulation" by which "patience" is wrought out. And even then, before Rachel is fruitful, and in despair of her fruitfulness, the bondmaids are received, Bilhah, " terror," and Zilpah, a "dropping" (as of tears).

These names seem to harmonize very strikingly with the general purport of the history. Indeed, putting them together, they carry conviction scarcely to be resisted. The names of the children, again, as they should do, speak on the other hand of various blessing, but which I am not prepared to enter into here. But Joseph, Rachel's son, surely, in beautiful conformity to his origin, expresses that steady " virtue " (or courage) which goes through whatever trial to the crown, and with which Peter commences that spiritual " adding " to which he exhorts (2 Pet. 1:5), and which seems indicated in Joseph's name. From his birth Jacob begins to look toward his own place and country once more; and though at Laban's request he continues six years longer in his service, he yet now emerges from the poverty in which he has for so long been, until his riches awaken the envy of Laban's sons and of their father. Yet he waits until Jehovah's voice bids him return to the land of his fathers, though still lacking faith to take an open course-he steals secretly away, God interposing to save him from the pursuit of Laban, who follows him to Gilead, but there to part from him with a solemn covenant.

Jacob now pursues his way, and angels of God meet him:how ready is He to assure us of His power waiting only a fit moment to be put forth in our behalf! It must have reminded, and been intended to remind him too, of Beth-el, and of the promise there ; but there Jehovah had appeared to him, if but in a dream. Here He does not appear. Jacob an outcast and wanderer could have that which Jacob returning in wealth and with a multitude could not now be permitted. Then, it was grace; now, it would be fellowship; and for fellowship he was not yet prepared. " This is God's host," (or "camp,") he says; and he calls the place "Mahanaim,"-that is, "two hosts," or "camps." Here he must have counted in his own, and accordingly we find him immediately dwelling upon it in his message to Esau:" I have oxen and asses, flocks and men-servants and women-servants, and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find favor in thy sight." How significant that in but a little time we find him dividing this host of his into two camps (the same word as before), saying, "If Esau come to the one camp and smite it, then the other camp (the same word as before) which is left shall escape"! "The same word as before. Such is our strength when built upon, although we would fain perhaps associate God's power with it. In the time of need, our own, what is it? and God's, where shall we find it?

It is remarkable too that it is just when he has met God's messengers (same word as "angels") that he sends his own to Seir to Esau. But God and Esau are evidently mixed up in his mind all through. Nor is it strange, but inevitable, that what recalls God to our souls should recall also one against whom we have sinned, and sinned without reparation; perhaps without possibility of reparation. Beth-el is still manifesting itself in all this-the discipline which becomes God's holy house. There was but too much truth hid under Jacob's servile words to his brother a little later:" I have seen thy face as though I had seen the face of God."

Yet when he said this, Peniel had intervened; and he had " called the name of the place Peniel, because [he said,] I have seen God face to face." How could he after that fail to distinguish between God's face and his brother's.

He could not, had Peniel really answered to its name; but how often do we misinterpret the significance of what has been (as Peniel was to Jacob) of most real importance to our souls! Had he seen God in reality " face to face," how could he have added to this as the wonderful thing (as we find him doing,) " and my life is preserved" ? Who that has seen God's face but has found in it deliverance from self-occupation and from fear, such as controlled Jacob when he met his brother?

God had indeed met Jacob, but met him by night and not by day:when the day broke He had disappeared. And correspondingly, though He blessed him finally, He refused to declare His name to Jacob's entreaty. Unknown He had come and unknown He departed.

Jacob it was who had acquired a name at Peniel, and yet even this cannot be said without reserve; for at Beth-el afterward he has afresh to receive it, -there where Beth-el itself for the first time really acquires its name. These two things are surely connected. What he has learned at Peniel is expressed in his altar at Shechem, where he proclaims exultingly God to be the God of Israel-his God; but his altar at Beth-el owns Him God of His own house, in which in subjection Israel must find his place in order to have really the power of his name.

At Peniel God meets him (His face hidden) to make him learn the strength which is perfected only in weakness. With his thigh out of joint he prevails and is blessed. The secret of strength is learned, and yet, strange as it may seem, the power that he has with God he cannot yet find before man. He meets Esau with abject servility, practices still his old deceit, talks of following him to Seir, and as soon as freed from his presence, crosses into Canaan, building him a house at Succoth, and buying a parcel of ground at Shechem. There he proclaims God as God of Israel, when presently Dinah falls, and the massacre of the Shechemites makes him quake with fear because of the inhabitants of the land. No part of his history is so dark and shameful as that which follows the scene in which (and they are divine words) " as a prince he has power with God and with men, and prevails."

If this be a mystery, it is one with which the experience of the saint is but too familiar. Power may be ours which yet we cannot manifest, or find for our emergencies. " I besought Thy disciples to cast him out, and they could not," says the father of the possessed. And those to whom this very power had been committed ask in perplexity, "Why could not we cast him out?" And the Lord replies, "Because of your unbelief;" but adds, " Howbeit this kind goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting."

Even so he whose name is already Israel is practically Jacob still, as God says to him afterward (35:10). Only in obedience can power be used; our meat and drink-our strength and refreshment -are in doing His will; grace, where realized, breaks the dominion of sin; and "sin is lawlessness," our own will and not His. Divine power must be realized in the divine ways:grace only establishes, never alters this. So at Beth-el alone the promise of Peniel can be fulfilled.

How many are there whose altars are to " God their God," and who exult in a grace which proves yet no practical deliverance; who dwell in an unpurged earth, and are reaping, and must be allowed to reap, the sure and bitter fruits! God's princes, how far from knowing the dignity of their calling!

In the extremity of his distress God's voice arouses Jacob to "go up to Beth-el and dwell there;" and then we hear of strange gods in his household to be put away, and purification effected to meet Him " who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way I went;" and the terror of God falls upon the cities round about, so that they do not pursue after the sons of Jacob. At Beth-el his wanderings really end; his new name is confirmed to him, and God declares His own, as at Peniel He could not; the blessing now is fully his; and Jacob bowed in gratitude recognizes the house of God, in which (the purpose of discipline being accomplished,) he finds at last his rest.

Still he journeys on, for pilgrimage is not over, although in the land now, his portion. Sorrow still comes, for on the road to Bethlehem his beloved Rachel dies, but Jacob now shows his mastery over it. Him whom his dying mother names Ben-oni, "son of my affliction," his father calls Benjamin, " son of the right hand." We can easily discern the reflection of Christ in this the glory fruit of the cross. With our eye on this, Mamre, which is in Hebron, (the "richness of communion,") Abraham's old resting-place, is soon reached. With how great toil and how many experiences is he back at last, whence only unbelief had ever driven him! And we? how much do most of us resemble him in this! Yet with him and us " tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed."

The next chapter follows with a long list of Esau's generations, prematurely ripening into dukes and kings. The world must have its day; and yet amid it all a significant sign is given of fulfillment of that divine purpose " which is not of works, but of Him that calleth;" for we read that " Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the persons of his house, and his cattle and his beasts, and all his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan, and went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob."

While in chapter 37:one verse contrasts Jacob's portion its very brevity speaking volumes to the ear that hears:-

" And Jacob dwelt in the land in which his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan."

The Inspired Use of Numerals

The inspiration of Scripture it is not my purpose to argue here. Every Christian must in some sense admit it, and as a different thing wholly from any thing to be found in whatever product of the human mind merely. Inspiration is the result of a direct operation of the divine mind upon the human:"holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." (2 Pet. 1:21.)

How far this divine influence extends has been, and is, alas! at the present day, much in question. As with Him to whom its testimony is, its human form hides from many its true glory. The apostle's claim for himself and others, if admitted, cannot be restricted to them, and is of verbal inspiration:" Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth " (i Cor. 2:13). And in fact nothing less than this would secure the truthful presentation of the " things " themselves. Every lame imperfect word would communicate necessarily its own imperfection to the thought conveyed, and an element of possible inaccuracy,-therefore of doubt,-would pervade the whole of Scripture, to an extent quite incalculable.

But, as I have said, it is not now my purpose to argue this. That which I have before me depends upon, and if it can be shown, demonstrates the absolute perfection of the whole word of God, putting the divine seal upon the whole and every part of it; while it furnishes a most important guide to its true division, and so to its right interpretation.

The present divisions are, it is known, mainly arbitrary, and of comparatively recent date; and, while having for certain purposes an evident convenience, are often a real hindrance to a proper understanding. The arrangement of the books too is various in different collections, little importance attaching to it in the minds of most, that of the Old Testament especially among its Jewish guardians being (where not guided by the chronology) capricious and unsatisfactory. Their number was made to agree with that of the letters of the alphabet; and many have been the speculations as to lost books whose names even have been appealed to as furnished by the books which yet remain. And similar thoughts have been entertained even as to the New Testament.

The views I have been led to, (and of the truth of which my readers need have no doubt, if they will follow me patiently in the investigation of them,) attach meaning and importance to every thing,-to number, arrangement and connection with each other; while they guide also as to the internal structure of the books individually. Of course I do not pretend in the detail of this to have attained either completeness or entire accuracy, but a good beginning I do not doubt the Lord in His goodness has enabled me to make, and enough to establish without any question the accuracy of the principles.

The first of these is the significance of numbers in Scripture, and their application in this significance to every thing here-books, divisions of books, chapters, verses,-always supposing, of course, that these are something more than men's conjectures or devices for reference. But in order to show this, we must first examine this significance, and prove it; and the task is lighter, inasmuch as those up to twelve are all that seem to require it, the higher ones being characterized as compounds of these, as even some of these are of those still lower.

Their significance in general is admitted by those who have looked with any care into the typical system of the word. But those who doubt may best have their doubts dispelled by such an inquiry as we are now to make into their individual meaning. Real consistency here is no mean evidence of truth; but when there is not only this internally, but new force, fullness, and beauty are given by this consistent meaning to the Scriptures themselves, we need not hesitate to see in it the design of infinite wisdom, as well as the seal of a perfection minute enough to be readily overlooked, but when discovered, only awakening the more our wonder and delight by its minuteness.

Ought we even to allow that it is to be " readily overlooked" ? It has been and yet surely only carelessness and unbelief could overlook it. Take the structure of the alphabetic psalms, or that- less familiar to the English reader,-of the book of Lamentations:who that had any right apprehension of the word of God could escape from the conclusion that if the Spirit of God were pleased to write an acrostic, it could not be from conformity to the prettinesses of an artificial style? It is man who has adopted it rather, and made of it a mere exercise of ingenuity, and belittled a meaning deeper than he could see; whereas God would by the singularity rather attract us to search further into what must, if it be His, be worthy of Him. Why in the ninth and tenth psalms, which are together an acrostic, is this alphabetic structure invaded as it were by some conflicting element, and for the time lost, disorder conquering order, but which returns again to be undisturbed thereafter to the close? Why in the hundred and nineteenth, on the contrary, is there the most perfect symmetry throughout, and each letter heading each of eight verses to the close of the alphabet and of the psalm? Why, again, in Lamentations is it just the third section (or chapter, which in this case rightly represents the sections,) which multiplies by three the simple alphabetic structure of the first and second? Surely there is a design here into which we shall do well to look; for God has surprises of love every-where awaiting the faith that honors Him. And in all this we shall make but little way if we are not skilled in the use of numerals as Scripture employs them.

I shall give now the meanings of these, as I have more than once given them, only desiring to insist that these must be definitely ascertained, or there will be no definite result in using them. Of some, there are very different meanings current, upon which I shall not enter however, nor need to enter as I think; it being enough to establish clearly that which I believe to be the true one, and which all subsequent use will tend to confirm.

The number one will be seen without much difficulty to stand for unity and supremacy. It is the number of God; not in His fullness, but as Sovereign Master of the whole scene of His creation. The first elementary truth is that God must be God. The first book, Genesis, thus represents Him as the Almighty-El Shaddai, the All-sufficient; sovereign in counsel, almighty in execution.

Two speaks primarily of not-oneness, which may develop into contradiction, enmity, but also on the other hand into fellowship, essential agreement and mutual confirmation. Hence it is the number of competent testimony, as Deuteronomy 19:15 ; " The testimony of two men is true," says our Lord. There are " two tables of the testimony " for Israel; two testaments into which the word of God is divided; "two witnesses" to Israel in the last days in the book of Revelation. The second Person of the Trinity is the "true Witness" and the "Word of God;" the second book of Scripture, Exodus, is the book of redemption, the great subject of testimony among men. But the thought of enmity, of the enemy, will often be found under this number, by no means necessarily displacing the other thought. Where Christ is, the opposite of Satan will be, and redemption is from his power.

Three is the number of Persons in the Godhead; therefore of divine fullness and completeness, as well as manifestation; for the One God (unknown in His proper character when known only as that) is unvailed to us in these three Persons:Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Thus the third Person is also the Revealer, the Teacher of all things. And the third book of Scripture, Leviticus, leads us into the sanctuary as priests, to learn there what suits His presence. So too, because God manifests Himself in resurrection from the dead, coming in where all hope from man is absolutely gone, the third day is the day of Christ's resurrection, and the number is very frequently connected with this forth-putting of divine power, whether in physical or spiritual resurrection. And thus it is that "witness," overabundant, more than competent and in fact divine, is also found in this number (i Jno. 5:6-9).

Four is the number of the "four corners of the earth " or the " four winds of heaven." It is the is the world -number, looking at the world as a scene of those various and conflicting influences which make it the place of trial and probation for man exposed to these. He is taken on every side, surveyed and exposed-looked at from every point of view. The four gospels, I doubt not, give in this way the Lord so tried, but for Him making manifest His perfection only. And it is evident how the fourth book of Scripture, Numbers,-Israel's probation in the wilderness,-gives just this side of things.

Five is the human number, the stamp of man as a "living soul," connected by his five senses with the scene around. The books which are distinctly man's utterance in the Old Testament are five in number, from Job to Solomon's Songs, while the book of Psalms is in the Hebrew divided again into five books. These give us the full tale of human exercises, experience, and emotion, as the prophets speak on the other hand from God to man. The fifth book of Scripture, Deuteronomy, is as distinctly the people's book as Numbers is that of the Levites and Leviticus the priests. The thought of responsibility which some would press in connection with this number, and that of weakness, as others, have both their place in this larger definition, but incidently only, while the number ten, which is a multiple of five, is that which gives responsibility properly.

Six is the number of man's work-day week, without a Sabbath; and, as this, may be of good or evil significance, although inclining much more, alas! to the latter. The number of the beast, 666, six in continually higher powers, man's vain effort to reach the divine, stamps him with utter profanity.

The number seven adds the Sabbath to the week, and this is the stamp of perfection put upon it, as God rested the seventh day, His week being now accomplished and pronounced very good. These first seven days are thus the key-note to the use of the number; and as the week itself figures a spiritual week in individuals, and also in the earth dispensationally, there seems a corresponding largeness of application here. It is even used with reference to evil as complete and ripe for judgment, its eternal doom. The number of the day of God's rest applied in this way to good and evil alike is unspeakably solemn. And akin to this seems its division often into 4 and 3, the world-number and that of divine manifestation side by side-the evil and the good going on side by side; evil not hindering the good, nor itself changed from what it ever is, yet God manifesting Himself in all, and therefore glorifying Himself in all. (To be continued.)

A man's acts are always the truest index of his desires and purposes. Hence, if I find a professing Christian neglecting his Bible, yet finding abundance of time, yea, some of his choicest hours, for the newspaper, I can be at no loss to decide as to the true condition of his soul, I am sure he cannot be spiritual-cannot be feeding upon, living for, or witnessing to Christ.

Is it right that a believer should be a politician? This is the question before us. And to treat the matter clearly, let me state some points that belong to such a character, if they are not the very conception of it.

I understand, then, by a politician, one who takes a considerable and constant interest in the civil government of his own country, and of the world at large. He praises the rulers when he thinks they deserve it, and condemns them when, as he believes, they govern amiss. He lifts up his voice against injustice, fraud, deception, corruption, restraints on liberty. He will resist what is evil as far as he may by law. He exercises every civil privilege to which he is entitled to influence the government of his country. If opportunity were offered, he would take office and power in the world, and exercise it for his fellow-citizens' benefit.

I. How, then, can we tell whether this is right in a believer or not? By looking to Jesus as our pattern. His life is recorded to this end-" leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps." (i Pet. 2:21.) Every thing He did was pleasing to His Father. " I do always those things that please Him" (Jno. 8:29:Matt. 17:5); and, since every perfection was found in Jesus, whatever He did not do or sanction is not pleasing to God.

Was Jesus, then, a politician? Did He take any interest in the political government of His country? Did He pass judgment on the persons or measures of the civil rulers of Palestine? Did He stand up for the politically oppressed, and rebuke the political oppressor? Did He exercise authority of any kind in civil matters?

1. His conduct is the very reverse of the politician's. Had He been one, His political feelings must have been peculiarly drawn out by the circumstances of the day. In His days the last shadow of Jewish liberty departed, and His country was oppressed beneath the iron gauntlet of Rome. Such a state of things would have thrilled and agitated to its core the breast of the independent citizen, the lover of liberty. In the gospels we only gather the political changes of the land from the most distant hints of the narrative.

2. When occasions occur on which, if politics be right for the Christian, the Saviour must, have declared Himself, He uniformly puts them aside. One of His hearers beseeches Him to engage his brother to divide an inheritance with him. (Luke 12:13.) Here the politician would have shown himself. Jesus refuses to listen to the matter, or exercise even the lowly power of an arbitrator. " Man, who made Me a judge or a divider over you?" If the Christian's duty is to take the office of judge or divider, Jesus ought to have taken it as our perfect example of what is right; but He thrusts away with a firm hand the political element of the question, and only warns the disciples against covetousness.

3. John the Baptist, His own forerunner, the greatest of women born, is slain through the arts of an adulterous princess, and by the orders of an ungodly king. How does Jesus meet the event? Does He lift up His voice against the oppressor and murderer? No, John is imprisoned, but Jesus speaks not of the injustice; he is murdered, but He utters no cry. against the cruelty or tyranny of Herod. John's " disciples came and took up the body and buried it, and went and told Jesus. When Jesus heard of it, He departed thence by ship into a desert place apart." (Matt. 14:10-13.) The case is solemnly announced to Him by John's own followers. As pointedly He is silent. The Saviour was no politician.

4. Take another incident. " There were present at that season some that told Him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." (Luke 13:1:) A politician would have been on fire at this national outrage. Religious antipathies met with political. Here was a field whereon to inveigh against Roman cruelty, and to rouse the Jews against a tyranny that trampled on the true religion. A pagan profaning with bloody hands the worship of the true God! What would the politicians of our day have said had a party of the queen's troops fired into a dissenting chapel while they were at worship, and shot some dead while on their knees? Would not the politician account it almost treason to be calm ?

What is Jesus' reply? "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." The politics of the question are wholly passed by; the moral and spiritual views of the matter is alone regarded. This is an especial-a most decisive case. Doubtless it made the blood of every native Jew boil with rage; but Jesus drops no word of indignation against the governor's crime, nor applauds the as martyrs for their country. Jesus, no politician.

5. The politician must maintain his civil rights, (he would tell you) for his own sake, authority not to overstep its just aries. An unjust demand upon his purse in the way of tax he would esteem himself bound to resist. But how does Jesus act in such a case? The demand of the tribute-money is made upon Him. (Matt. 17:24.) He proves His exemption, but He works a miracle to pay the demand.

6. A question is raised by His countrymen, and referred for His decision-" whether it was lawful to give tribute to the Roman emperor or not." This critical question must have drawn out the politician. Involved in it lay the right of the Romans to rule Judea, and impose taxes at their will. The oppressions of the governor were before His eyes. The Caesar that swayed the scepter was profligate, cruel, a murderer. Yet He bids the Jews pay tribute even to an idolator, and though the emperor might apply the money to the support of idolatry.

Jesus, then, was not a politician. Am I a disciple of His? Neither, then, am I to be one. " It is enough for the disciple that lie be as his master." If Jesus did not intermeddle in civil government, it is because such conduct would not be pleasing to God. Jesus neither acted politically Himself nor sanctioned it in others. To be engaged in politics, therefore, either as an actor or speaker, is no part of my duty as a Christian, else the character of Jesus is not perfect. But His perfection is my pattern; and therefore it becomes me to refuse, as pointedly as He did, to mingle in politics; for this is my calling-to be not of the world, even as Jesus was not of the world. (Jno. 17:19.)

II. But did not Paul plead his Roman citizenship when they were about to scourge him? Did he not, when his life was in danger, appeal unto Caesar? True; and the Christian is permitted, therefore, when on his trial, to plead the provisions afforded by the law to save himself from death or injurious treatment. But neither of these points form part of the character of the politician, such as we have described him.

Take the strongest case. Paul and Silas are dragged by interested men before the rulers of Philippi. The magistrates, without any form of trial, scourge them and thrust them into prison. (Acts 16:19-24.) What would a politician have done in such a case? Would he not have thought it due to his Roman citizenship to carry the cause to Rome, and to make an example of these tyrannous magistrates, that all throughout the empire might know that the rights of a citizen were not to be trampled on? Does Paul do so? No. He requires, indeed, that the magistrates should not dismiss them privately, but come themselves and set them free. But he exacts no apology; he lays no information against them. This would have been to act the politician, and this he docs not do.

III. Many of the principles put forth in the epistles decide the present question.

I. What is the Christian's position? He is a "stranger and pilgrim upon earth." (Heb. 11:13-16; I Pet. 2:11.) Then lie has neither inclination, right, nor title to political power. By profession he surrenders it. Who may take part in the government of a country? Natives only-not strangers. What has an Englishman living in France to do with the government of France ? But he is, moreover, a pilgrim, and therefore has less reason still. If a stranger may not interfere in the policy of a foreign country, much less one who is not even residing in it, but merely passing through it on his way to another land. To meddle with politics, then, is to put off our character as strangers and pilgrims.

2. To take up the politician's character blinds the Christian as to his true place before God, and mars the testimony which he ought to give to the world. The witness of the Holy Spirit to the world (which, therefore, the believer is to take up and manifest by his word and life) is, that the world is sinful, because it believes not on Jesus, and that it is under condemnation, together with its prince, only spared from day to day by the patience of a long-suffering God. (Jno. 16:) The Christian is to testify that the Lord Jesus is coming to execute upon it the due vengeance for its iniquity, and that therefore it becomes all to flee from the midst of it to Christ. All who do thus flee to Christ become part of His flock-the Church, which is not of the world, but gathered out from it.

If, then, the Christian readily surrender the world's good things-pleasures, privileges, title,- he lives as becomes the child of faith, and, like Noah, condemns the world. Lot, escaping out of Sodom with nothing but his staff, bore a strong testimony that he believed that the wrath of God was about to descend on it. But how would the force of that testimony have been broken, if he had gone back into the city to purchase a house there? or had Noah, after declaring that in a year the flood would destroy the earth, bought an estate, would not the world have seen the inconsistency at a glance? Would not men have said, " Noah himself does not believe his own message. Why, then, should we credit it? If he believed that the flood were so near, would he buy, and plant, and build?" Apply this, Christians, to politics.

3. At this point the prophetic question comes in. They who think that the Christian should act as the citizen of the world, imagine also (and this fresh error is necessary to render them consistent,) that the world is becoming better, and that in the happier times that are approaching the gospel will, by virtue of the means now employed, prove triumphant every where. Is this the truth? What saith the Scripture? What is the motto of our dispensation ? " Many are called, but few are chosen" "God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name." (Acts 15:14.) And what is the close of it? "In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits." (i Tim. 4:1:) In the last days perilous times shall come" (2 Tim. 3:1:) When the world "shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape." (i Thess. 5:3.) The world is evil, then, and will be evil when the Saviour returns-will be caught in its iniquity, and smitten with His destroying judgments.

4. But if he may not rightfully use his political privileges as the private citizen, much less may he take office in the world. But it is said, "What! are not Christians the fittest persons to hold power? No:they are of all the most unfit, for they have a Master to serve whose laws are quite opposed in principle to those of the world, and the magistrate must execute the world's laws, as being the world's servant. The law of the world, when at its highest perfection, is strict justice. But Christ has to His disciples repealed this, and taught us mercy as our rule. (Matt. 5:38-48.) Could any worldly government act out the sermon on the mount? When one of its citizens had been assaulted and robbed, could it dismiss the convicted robber, because the Saviour commands us not to resist, or to avenge evil? Its principle is, "Punish according to the offense," and by that it abides. If so, the Christian (if he understands his place,) cannot be a judge or wield the power of the world's law. He is commanded, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (Matt. 7:I.)

As he stands himself on mercy before God, mercy is to be his rule toward man. Judgment now is to him judgment "before the time." (i Cor. 4:5.) God challenges vengeance as His own. " Vengeance is Mine" it is not, therefore, His saints' office. But the magistrate is " a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." (Rom. 13:4.) He, then, who sees this can never consistently touch the civil sword. The saints shall indeed one day "judge the world" (i Cor. 6:2); but now, because we are the sons of God, " the world knoweth us not, even as it knew Him not." (i Jno. 3:1:)

5. The same thing might be shown from Paul's rebuke of law-suits; for these seem matters of necessity almost, as men are apt to account them. How much more, then, would he have rebuked the seeking the world's privileges or honors? Paul had to counsel the believers in the world's loftiest, imperial city. He had to indite directions to those who lived amidst the perpetual strife for consulships, praetorships, quaestorships, and every kind of honor. Were the Christians, then, to engage in the struggle? "Mind not high things; but condescend to men of low estate." (Rom. 12:16.) Is not this decisive?

The epistles show the Christian is to conduct himself as a husband, a father, a master, a subject; but no rules are given to him as a magistrate or citizen. What must we infer, then? That God does not recognize Christians as acting for Him in either of these two conditions. The politician rebukes the real or supposed misgovernors of his country. The Christian is to " speak evil of no man, to be no brawler, but gentle." He is not to despise government or speak evil of dignities, or to bring against them railing accusation. (2 Pet. 2:10, ii ; Jude.) He is to "show all meekness unto all men." The politician's motto is, "Agitate! agitate! agitate! " the Christian's, "that ye STUDY to be quiet, and to do your own business." (i Thess. 4:11.)

6. To the extent that the Christian is a politician, his heart is engaged with the things of the world; a new thorn is planted in his breast to choke the good seed and make it unfruitful; a new weight is hung about his neck to hinder him in his race. To the extent that he is a politician, he comes under the censure passed upon the false prophets,-"They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them." (i Jno. 4:5.) He is a soldier of Christ, who, contrary to his Captain's will and pleasure, is "entangling himself with the affairs of this life" (2 Tim. 2:3, 4.) It is the Christian's condemnation to be living like others. How surpassingly strong is that word, " Are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" (i Cor. 3:3.)

Look to the practical results of this doctrine. Are political Christians the most heavenly-minded, useful, gentle patterns of their Lord? or have not the love and zeal of the Nonconformists sadly declined since they have come forward to take a prominent part in the world's strifes and partizan-ships? Do they not confess that the work of the Lord has not prospered ? This is one of the reasons. They have descended to the world's level, and have drunk into its spirit.

Let me exhort the believer, then, to surrender all interference in politics. " Let the dead bury their dead." Your concern is the kingdom of God; your city, the one to come; your citizenship, in heaven. 'Refrain from the world's politics, for Jesus was no politician. Refrain, else you mar your witness to the world, that it is evil and lying under judgment. Are you not a stranger and pilgrim? Then meddle not with that world which you left.

The world is ripening for judgment, and all your efforts cannot improve it in God's sight. Gather out from its doomed streets as many as you can, but leave the city alone. Lot cannot mend Sodom; but Sodom can-nay, will-corrupt Lot. (A reprint from an old tract.)

The book of Numbers gives us the history of the wilderness, the testing of the people by the trials and difficulties to which they are exposed, their failure as so tested, and the triumphant grace of Him whose love and whose resources for His people cannot fail, and whose word is pledged to bring them through. The ordinance of the red heifer gives us the effects of atonement, not in forgiveness, but in the purification of the people from uncleanness, and this in a special form, which had its peculiar significance in relation to the wilderness.

For the wilderness is, of course, the world as the place of our pilgrimage,-a place where every thing about us echoes the divine voice, " Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest:because it is polluted." The seal of its condition in this respect is death, in which the life universally forfeited is removed and man given up wholly to the corruption, which has already been inwardly his state.

Death marks the world as a wilderness before God, and for him therefore who has the mind of God; it is a scene of death out of which we have escaped as dead with Christ, and partakers of eternal life in Him beyond it, and separation from which is an absolute necessity to real holiness. " Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this:To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world." (Jas. 1:27.)

The remedy for defilement is here typically put before us. It is not in a new sacrifice, nor in the shedding of that blood without which is no remission. It is in the application of that which speaks of a sacrifice once for all completed, of wrath exhausted and gone, the ashes alone remaining to testify of the complete consumption of the victim. In this way the red heifer, in opposition to the many sacrifices constantly being offered, represents alone among legal ordinances the abiding efficacy of that which has been offered "once for all."

The victim is here a female,-a type of which I have already spoken. It is passivity, subjection, willlessness, which we may see in the Lord in Gethsemane, whose " cup" was in fact drunk afterward upon the cross; a red heifer, as the ram-skins of the tabernacle were dyed red, to show how far this willless obedience in Him went. "Without spot or blemish:"-with neither defect nor deformity; and "upon which never came yoke,"-not simply sin's, but any, for a yoke is an instrument to enforce subjection, which in Him could not be. At the same time when He was saying, "Not My will, but Thine, be done," He might have had twelve legions of angels and gone to the Father, but would not:His was the perfection of a willless will.

And how suited all this to express the perfection of the obedience unto death, by which our disobedience was met and removed, and which is to be fruitful in us as well as for us, in separating us from the lawlessness and lusts which characterize us as fallen creatures!

The heifer is brought forth without the camp and slain, like any sin-offering, even the blood being burned, except what is used in the sevenfold sprinkling before the tent of meeting, where the people went to meet with God. And into the midst of the burning of the heifer were cast cedar-wood and hyssop-types of all nature, from the highest to the lowest (i Kings 4:33), and scarlet- of the glory of the world:" if any man be in Christ, it is new creation," and by the cross is severed his connection with the old.
A man that was clean then gathered up the ashes of the heifer, and they were laid up in a clean place outside the camp, to be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel, for a water of separation, a purification for sin.

A person denied with the dead remained unclean for seven days; on the third day and on the seventh he was to be sprinkled with it,-running water being put to it in a vessel,-and on the seventh day at even he should be clean. The sprinkling on the third day was all-important:"if he purify hot himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean."

The reference to death as the stamp upon the old creation makes all this clear. The third day is the resurrection day, deliverance from death; the eighth,-first day of the new week,-speaks of new creation. One cleansed by the evening of the seventh day was brought in fact to the eighth:only by deliverance from the old creation could he be really clean; but into this resurrection,-the resurrection of Christ,-is the necessary introduction :therefore the insisting upon the third day.

Only in the power of resurrection could death become a means of purification for the soul. We cannot be in any true sense dead to the world except in the power of a life which is ours beyond it. But thus resurrection is not the revival of the old, but that which links us with the new creation. This is the united teaching of this third and seventh-day sprinklings. The power of the Holy Ghost (running, or "living," water) applies to the soul the death of the cross, that death in which for us the old world ended under judgment, to set us free from all the seductive power of things through which we pass,-free for the enjoyment ours outside it. The world is but the lace of the empty cross, and He who once filled it is now entered for us into the Father's house, our Forerunner. This is purification of heart for him who realizes it; power for true self-judgment, and deliverance from the corruption that is in the world through lust.

This is " water-washing by the word." The sacrifice is not again offered, nor the blood afresh sprinkled for him who is thus to be cleansed. Neither acceptance nor relationship are here in question, although just as " without holiness, no man shall see the Lord," so "he that purifieth not himself shall be cut off from Israel."

The lesson as far as atonement is concerned seems just this dependence of purification on it. The water as well as the blood comes out of the side of a dead Christ, with whom we too are dead. How shall we that are dead live any longer in that to which we are dead ?

We have now completed the types of atonement ; before our glance at the Old-Testament doctrine is complete, we have still to consider the prophets and the psalms.

We have to get rid of the bad; and what is strange, the more good we get, the more bad we have to get rid of.

As long as the Lord Jesus was here, He was a solitary Man upon earth; but now He, being raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, forms a new class of men of the same order as Himself; and every believer is of this same class.

The problem for the believer is to live Christ in His body on earth. Nothing explains truth like practice.

When I hear a person say, I do not see the harm of it, I answer, It is just because you have not learned enough good. And that is why a worldly saint will go through the world the easiest, and also do himself the least harm by going through it. It is only the worldly man who can say, I do not find it does me any harm.

The man who knows most of Christ, is always the one who is the most apprehensive of Satan.

The body is the place in which all the evil has been done; but now the Lord says, I have redeemed it; it must now be My place-My garden ; it has been growing all the weeds that Satan could plant in it, but now it must grow flowers for Me.

I do not believe there is any moment of more ecstatic delight to the soul than the one in which it finds that God's place for it is its own. It is a moment of unspeakable delight; it has reached the climax of every thing, and it knows that it is there. It is a wonderful moment; but, I say, woe betide the person who is satisfied with stopping at it! What the Lord warns them about, on their getting into the land, is their state in it.

The day of atonement was that upon which the efficacy of every sacrifice in Israel depended. On that day alone was the holiest entered and the blood of atonement put upon the mercy-seat be-fore God " once a yean" This alone sanctified for them the tabernacle and all its appointments, with the altar itself.

It is of the day of atonement that the epistle to the Hebrews mainly treats, interpreting and applying its lessons for our use, though not without a side-reference to Israel themselves, when in a future day they shall find in Christ the meaning of all their shadows. It will be of profit, before we begin to consider it in detail, to see the nature of this double application, or its dispensational character, as the apostle and the book of Leviticus together present it to us.

In the twenty-third chapter of this book it finds its place among Israel's holy seasons,-not feasts, for feast it is not, but a day in which they were to rest, not in joy but in sorrow of spirit, afflicting their souls. In the order of these, the passover, first-fruits, and Pentecost (or feast of weeks) begin the year; then there is a long pause till the seventh month, and in this the rest are found:on the first day the blowing of trumpets, on the tenth the day of atonement, and on the fifteenth begins the feast of tabernacles. These seasons fall therefore into two divisions, of which the first has special reference to the Church, the second to Israel. This last begins with the blowing of trumpets, which, as the gathering of the congregation, speaks of the reassembling of Israel; then the day of atonement speaks of their repentance and taking refuge under the work of Christ; while the feast of tabernacles is the anticipation of their millennial blessing. Upon all that does not concern our present purpose we of course do not enter here, but it is evident thus that the primary reference of the day of atonement is to the last days and Israel's apprehension of the work of Christ when " they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son," and " in that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness."

This gives its full meaning to the fact that in the day of atonement it is after the high-priest has come out of the sanctuary that he confesses the sins of the people on the head of the scape-goat and sends it away by the hand of a fit person into the wilderness. This is the application to the people of the work of Christ long before accomplished, and the apostle, in the epistle to the Hebrews, teaches us our part to be in connection with His going into the sanctuary, not His coming out. For us, the Holy Ghost is come out, to give us the knowledge of what is done in our behalf, adding for us two things which in the. type before us find no expression:the first, the session of our High-Priest at the right hand of God; the second, that for us the vail is rent, and by faith we enter into the sanctuary itself.

The day of atonement thus, while having peculiar significance in relation to the people of Israel in a future day, covers nevertheless the whole present period; and we are led to ask, Is this application made by the apostle to us as Christians to be found in the Old-Testament type itself? And to this we are able to answer undoubtedly in the affirmative. . The first offering,-for the priestly house,-is entirely distinct from that for the people; and it is Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, who teaches us to recognize our representatives in these (i Pet. 2:5). We shall find how much the apprehension of this distinction tends to make clear the doctrine of atonement itself.

The failure of the people had caused the forfeiture of the place conditionally promised them as " a kingdom of priests," and given Aaron and his sons their special priesthood. The failure of the" priests themselves had now shut them also out of the inner sanctuary. But all this only served to bring out the condition of man as man, and his need of the Mediator of whom on this occasion Aaron was but the type. He could only in fact draw nigh thus once a year, not in his garments of glory and beauty, but in simple linen garments, and with sacrifices for himself and all the people.

Typically, these linen vestments have a glory of their own not excelled by any other. They represent the personal righteousness which, tested as it was by the fiery trial of the cross, and the unbending requirements of divine holiness, alone insured the acceptance of His work and His deliverance out of the awful place which He took for men. Crying "unto Him who was able to save Him out of death," He " was heard for His piety. (Heb. 5:7, Gr.) It was God's "Holy One" who " could not see corruption." And this perfection of His it was by which as High-Priest of our profession He entered the sanctuary.

But in this respect therefore He was the total opposite of the Jewish high-priest, who, as one taken from among men, and so, like others, himself compassed with infirmity, by reason hereof comes with the blood of others in atonement for his own sins. He, on the other hand, " holy, harmless, un-defiled enters the heavens with His own blood as atonement for the sins of His people. The type in Aaron is necessarily thus deficient because but a type. It must of necessity bear witness to its own deficiency, and thus point forward to Him who should yet fulfill it. The deficiency itself is thus not an imperfection merely; it is rather a perfection :not meaningless, but full of meaning. And it is important to see this.

Before, however, Aaron carries in the blood of the sacrifice into the most holy place, there must be another witness to the preciousness of Christ personally. " He shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before Jehovah, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the vail, and he shall put the incense upon the fire before Jehovah, that a cloud of the incense may cover the mercy-seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not."

The witness of the high-priest's garment is here confirmed. If that might seem in question because of his personal need of cleansing by blood, here was an unmistakable witness. It is not sacrifice; it must not be confounded with it. It is the proclamation of the value of Christ Himself before there is the testimony to the value of His work with-God. Here the fire of God's holiness tests all,- how has it tested Him!-only to bring out the fragrance of " sweet incense." This covers the mercy-seat, that in safety and in peace the priest may sprinkle it with the blood of atonement.

The sacrifices are two, as we have seen; one for the priestly house, the other for the people. Both are sin-offerings; for, as we have seen, and as Hebrews 13:explicitly declares, only the blood of those beasts burnt outside the camp could be brought into the sanctuary. Here we find however a remarkable difference in the animals offered, the more remarkable when we contrast it with the regulations of Leviticus 4:There, for the congregation, as well as for the high-priest, the offering was the bullock. Here, for the high-priest it is still that, but the offering for the people is the evidently much lower one of the goat:and this will be found in the most beautiful way to confirm the interpretation already given of that chapter. There it will be remembered that we took the high-priest and congregation as figuring Christ and the Church. It is thus that the blood for the congregation is brought into the holy place to anoint the incense-altar:it is a priestly congregation that is thus figured; and this the Church is.* * The distinction in this respect cannot be maintained if in chapter 16:18 the ' altar" is the golden altar of incense, for in this case the blood of the goat for Israel would also be put upon it; but this is not so, and the expression "before Jehovah" is inadequate to prove it. How often, and even in this chapter, is this connected with "at the door of meeting" (as (ver. 7). On the other hand verse 17 shows the work completed for the sanctuary, and then Aaron "goes out" to the altar, which in 20,33, is named apart from the sanctuary and tent of meeting altogether. It seems to me that the blood on and before the mercy-seat accomplishes all the rest.* But the goat is for the ruler and the common person, which we have seen to give Israel's standing; and here the blood anoints only the altar of burnt-offering, not entering the tabernacle at all.

Now how striking it is to find that on the day of atonement the bullock is for the priestly house,- the Church,-while the goat is again for Israel. If we look deeper, we shall see how suitable this is. The bullock speaks of service; the goat, merely of the place of sin being taken. In the case of the last, if sin be removed, that is all; but the bullock speaks of service to God, the glorifying Him in the place thus taken; and "if God be glorified in Him, He will also glorify Him in Himself:" this opens the sanctuary to His people; He is not only their Substitute upon the cross, but their Representative in glory.

Thus in the millennium Israel, though accepted, will have place on the earth, not in heaven; and so, though in greater nearness in the new earth, while the Church has hers with her Lord according to His promise* (Jno. 14:3). *Of course it is not meant to confine this to the Church.*

The bullock is first slain, and its blood brought into the sanctuary, and sprinkled once upon the mercy-seat and seven times before it. Once is enough for God; the sevenfold sprinkling is the witness of perfect acceptance before the throne. The goat being then killed, its blood is then carried in and sprinkled after exactly the same manner. And so, it is said, " he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins; and so shall he do for the tent of meeting that remaineth among, them in the midst of their uncleanness." "And he shall make-atonement for himself, and for his household, and for all the congregation of Israel."

Then follows the-reconciliation of the altar, and then the ordinance of the scape-goat. We must look at this, and get the general features of the whole thus before us, before we look at the doctrine of atonement as expressed in it.

For the priesthood, there is but one sin-offering, -the bullock; for the people, there are two goats which together form but one sin-offering. Lots are cast upon the two goats; one, the Lord's lot, becomes the sacrifice; the other, when the work of atonement within the sanctuary is finished, has the sins of the people confessed and put upon its head, and bears them away to the wilderness-to an un-inhabited land. It is plainly the actual removal of the people's sins, and manifestly refers to the yet future history of the people as we have already seen it, when "they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced," at His second coming, and be cleansed from their sins. We have to look at these things to see what light they give us as to propitiation and substitution, or the Godward and man-ward sides of atonement for sin. In general, the Lord's lot is said to illustrate propitiation; the scape-goat, substitution; but we must inquire how far this is true, and their connection with each other.

Propitiation I have called the Godward side of atonement, using the latter word in the larger sense in which we generally use it now; but in our common English Bibles no distinction of the kind appears. Atonement in the Old Testament, we may rather say, is the equivalent of propitiation in the New, which replaces it.* * Atonement" and " reconciliation" in Romans 5:11 and Hebrews 2:17 ought, as is well known, to exchange places; and this is the only place in the New Testament in which the former word occurs. In the passage in Hebrews the word used is elsewhere translated " propitiation."* It has been urged that we never find God as the object of propitiation, but only " sins," and that thus the thought is rather " expiation " than propitiation. It is thus only more completely the counterpart of the Hebrew caphar, of which the same thing is equally true."

Yet it is also true that the Greek word used in the New Testament (λάσχoμαι) is one which, in its common use in that language, undeniably has the force of appeasing, and is even used once in the gospel of Luke in the passive form in this way,- our Lord putting these words in the mouth of the publican, standing afar off and smiting on his breast, and saying, " God, be merciful"-(λάδθητι) "be appeased," "propitiated"-"to me a sinner" (Luke 13:13). As put into the mouth of such an one, its force doctrinally must not be urged too much; and elsewhere the fact is as stated above. We surely, however, cannot avoid (nor would we) the meaning of propitiation as thus introduced into the thought of expiation itself. Divine love indeed never needed to be forgotten in the heart of God toward us; it was there from eternity, and the cross, where God gave His only begotten Son, is the expression of it; but it is the expression also of demands of righteousness which required satisfaction in order to its showing forth:and this is what we mean by propitiation; it is the propitiation of otherwise withstanding righteousness, which now is turned to be on our side fully as God's love is.

Propitiation is thus really the divine side of atonement; and he who accepts truly the one can make no difficulty as to the other:the expiation is the propitiation. Now let us look at this as exemplified in "the Lord's lot," "Jehovah's lot," on the clay of atonement.

First, let us realize what "Jehovah's lot" implies. It is not "God's lot" simply, although Jehovah is of course God, but God in relation to His people, God in the title by which He redeems them, as the third of Exodus fully assures us. The goat which is Jehovah's lot is the sacrifice by which He maintains in righteousness this relationship, as we see by what is stated. It is thus His dwelling-place and all the means of approach to Him alone can remain among them. But this involves of necessity atonement for the sins of the people among whom He thus abides, and so it is distinctly stated:" And he shall make an atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make an atonement for the tent of meeting, and for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation."

The goat which is the Lord's lot, moreover, as explicitly speaks of substitution as it does of propitiation. The goat (the type of the sinner,) is the, very thing which does speak of that:no figure could more precisely convey the thought. Propitiation it proclaims to be by substitution, and for the people therefore for whom the substitution is, and for no other. Let us mark these things, for they are of great importance, if we would see clearly the relation between these thoughts. If substitution is for a certain people, then propitiation is for that same people only; if propitiation has a universal aspect, then substitution must have the same.

Before we consider this in the light of Scripture, we must consider the scape-goat, however, and what is said of it. " Two kids of the goats for a sin-offering " (5:5) shows that the living goat is identified with the one slain, as if slain, although spared for a certain purpose. A dead goat could not " bear away " the sins of the people as the living one does; .but this going away of the goat represents its death, which clearly, if it take place, must take place after the sins are put upon its head, and not before. Thus it is said (5:10), "To make an atonement with it, to let it go for a scapegoat into the wilderness." This wilderness,-"a land cut off" (5:22, Heb.)-is, in figure, the land of the dead. * *g'zerah:used in Psalm Ixxxviii. 5:"Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou rememberest no more; and they are cut off from Thy hand;" and in Isaiah 53:8:"He was cut off out of the land of the living."*

Now propitiation here is inferred rather than presented, and substitution brought out clearly in its effects, as removing sin; while in the Lord's lot substitution is presented however none the less, as where, if not in the sin-offering, may we expect to find it? In fact for Israel when the Lord comes, they will need ,the special application to them of an offering long before offered, when the day of grace might seem entirely passed.

For the priests, who represent the Church, there is no scape-goat. Substitution for them is found simply and entirely in the bullock of the sin-offering. It must of course be found there in what exactly answers to. Jehovah's lot among the goats; and the apostle in Hebrews 10:applies the principle of the scape-goat to Christians in the Lord's words by Jeremiah (the words of the new covenant):" Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." And this is as far as the effects of substitution (as seen in the scape-goat) seem to reach. This, then, cannot avail to separate substitution from being essentially implied in the " Lord's lot," -in the propitiatory offering.

Propitiation, I repeat, then, is by substitution, and in no other way, and for the people alone for whom the substitution is. This may seem, to many, to narrow its application in an unscriptural way, or to widen that of substitution in a way just as unscriptural. In reality, it does neither; while it clears up many obscurities, and meets tendencies to serious error. But let Scripture.

Propitiation is evidently for no select number merely. It is for " the whole world," as i John 2:2 explicitly teaches. " And He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Here "the sins of" are in italics in our common version, showing that in the Greek there are no words exactly representing them:it is contended therefore by some that they should be omitted, and, that this preserves an important difference; while the propitiation is for the sins of Christians,-so removing them,-it is only for the world,-their sins not being removed. And some have a similar objection, while owning that Christ died for all men, to saying that He died for the sins of all.

Now, assuredly, it is not true that the sins of all men are removed by the death of the Lord; and if that were meant by saying that He died for them,
the use of such language in Scripture (for it is used) would involve the deepest perplexity. Some moreover have rashly put forth this as the gospel, that Christ has borne the sins of all, and that now men are called to believe this for themselves, being condemned only for their unbelief of it.

But this is utterly false, for in the day of judgment we are assured that men shall be judged " according to their works," not merely for their unbelief; and Scripture no where says that Christ has borne the sins of all men. Faith can say in believers," The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" but it is true of believers only.

Yet propitiation is for the sins of the whole world, and the passage in i John 2:is conclusive as to this. The words which are sought to be omitted are necessarily implied; for what else does "not for ours only " do but imply them? Had it said, "not for us only," it would have been entirely different; but " not for ours only " necessarily infers, then for the sins of others also.

Moreover, when the apostle is reminding the Corinthians of the gospel which he had preached to them, he says it was " that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures" (i Cor. 15:3). But he could not preach as gospel that Christ died for other people's sins:" ours" is there plainly general, as in the epistle of John it is distinctive.

But if propitiation has this general aspect, and propitiation be by substitution, can substitution be general also? and if so, in what way? For this we must look deeper, for even the word in question is not in Scripture, although the thought is, and we" cannot therefore have a simple text to appeal to, as in the other case we have.

What then is meant by substitution ? It is One taking the place of others, so that they for whom He stands shall be delivered from all that in which He stands for them. The cross is thus the complete taking of death and judgment for those whom there He represents, so that for them salvation was absolutely insured. This is the substitution which the sacrifices speak of to us, and we have again and again considered it. A substitution in death and judgment can mean nothing less than the necessary salvation of those for whom it is made. It is clear, then, we cannot speak of the world in this connection. A substitute for the world the Lord could not be, or universalism would be the simple necessity, and there could be no judgment for a single soul. But this is terrible error, and not the truth in any wise; and error which is now deceiving thousands. What have we on the other hand ? " Substitution," is the thought of many," for the elect." This is, of course, limited atonement. It is not possible to make it unite really with propitiation in any real sense for the world. You may say it is sufficient for the whole world. In itself it may be of value enough, but available it is not. Could one coming upon this warrant plead the value of that which in its design was absolutely for a limited number, of which he was not one,-Christ being really the Representative of so many millions and no others? If you say they will not come, it may be very true they will not; but you cannot say the work is done for all, if it be not so; and the blood of propitiation is the blood of substitution-of an offering offered for so many.

Another consequence follows. This offering has been offered, accepted, and Christ's resurrection is the justification of all for whom He died. Our sins were on Him, and were put away-when? Eighteen hundred years ago! But how then could we ever have been accounted sinners? How is justification by faith possible,-that is, justification when we believe?

These are not imaginary difficulties or results; they are actual and operative. And they are the effect-as so much error is-of misplaced truth. Election is a truth of Scripture; but election is not, in Scripture, brought in to limit the provision made in atonement,-a provision really made and sufficient for all the world. On the other hand, Christ is not a substitute for the world, for substitution implies the actual bearing and bearing away of the sins of those who are represented in the Substitute, and the sins of the world are not so borne away. He is the Substitute of His people, but a people not numerically limited to just so many, but embracing all who respond to the invitations of His grace, though it were indeed the world for multitude.

Thus even in Israel, though the offering of the day of atonement was for the people of Israel alone, even here the door of circumcision was kept ever open, by which the stranger might take his place at the redemption-feast, and be as " one born in the land." And circumcision was, as we know, "the seal of righteousness by faith." How precious this open door of divine grace, through all the darkness of the legal economy! Thus we have an intimation of how the actual Substitute for the sins of His people may be (in language suggested by another) the available Substitute for the sins of all. Only as come in among the number of. His people can we say, " The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all;" for if justification be by the resurrection of the Substitute, as it truly is, it is none the less by faith we are justified; only as believing does it become our own.

With this the doctrine of the last Adam is in fullest accord, as the fifth of Romans represents it. For the principle is that of representation, the one for the many, and the connection between the one and the many a life-connection; yet is there in the last Adam's work an aspect toward all:"Therefore, as by the one offense toward all men to condemnation, even so by one righteousness toward all men unto justification of life."The family position and blessedness are open to all that will; but on the other hand, "as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous."

Propitiation is, then, by substitution, and only so; yet the substitution itself is not for a fixed number before determined, but for a people to whom men can be freely invited to join themselves, because of the infinite value of the work accomplished, and of the infinite grace which that work expresses. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life."

A Recollection of a Lecture at Plainfield, Aug. 2nd, 1884.

(Psalm 108:6-13.)

This psalm is the second of the Deuteronomic book of the Psalms. The Psalms are divided in the Hebrew into five books, which have been styled amongst the Jews" The Pentateuch of David."As some of us are aware, it is in fact a real Pentateuch, answering, book for book, to the five books of Moses. The fifth and last book begins with the one hundred and seventh psalm, and is therefore the Deuteronomy of the Psalms. If we look at this one hundred and seventh psalm, we shall find that in it Israel is seen prophetically as gathered together out of their dispersion, and just ready to enter into possession of their land. It is the celebration of His mercy by there deemed of the Lord, redeemed out of the hand of the enemy, and gathered out of the lands from the east and the west and the north and the south. He has brought them out of the wilderness, out of the solitary way, where they found no city to dwell in. Their distress has made them cry to the Lord, and He has led them forth by the right way, to go to a city of habitation. His ways with man are thus celebrated:ways of discipline necessitated by what He is and by what men are, the end of which is blessing, and that men may praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men.

In the book of Deuteronomy you will find, in exact accordance with this, the people gathered in the plains of Moab, looking across into the land which they were shortly to have in possession; and before they enter it, Moses recounts to them the story of their journeyings, and all the Lord's dealings with them,-how He had caused them to hunger, and fed them with manna, which they knew not, neither did their fathers know, that He might make them to know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Such lessons are they to carry with them into the land of their inheritance, to be their practical wisdom there.

Deuteronomy thus gives us the ways of divine government, to which men must needs be con-formed in order to find blessing from God's hand; and these ways are found, in the fifth book of the Psalms, illustrated in the whole history of Israel until the time when sovereign grace brings them to the final blessing which from the first had been designed for them. But these ways with Israel are just His ways with man as man. Ways of sore and various trial, from which alone He can deliver, and which make Him known to their souls in this absolute necessity. The end is, He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. But how terrible oftentimes the way by which one must be led to the experience of these circumstances out of which no hand but one can deliver, and there the consciousness of sin, which forbids all claim upon Him, men sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, bound in affliction and iron (in hopeless incapacity to escape), because they rebelled against the words of God and contemned the counsel of the Most High; their heart brought down with labor, they fall down and there is none to help? Have you, be-loved friends, realized such a condition? Except you have, you can scarcely have realized the grace and power of a living God. "They cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder."

But it is not only when we are first brought to God that we are called thus to experience His power and grace:it is "they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep." The place of need is still the place in which the God of salvation discovers Himself. The living God, making Himself known as such. It is thus the apostle commends us to God as well as to the word of His grace,-to the God who is made known in Christ, made known by the word of His grace, but a distinct and living reality. It is thus the way of trial is the way of blessing, and the deeper the trial the greater the blessing. David and all his afflictions are the theme, we may say, of the Psalms, in which are foreshadowed the un-equaled sorrows of One infinitely greater; but David is none the less the beloved, as his name means, because of these afflictions. They are the school in which the sweet psalmist of Israel finds his necessary training,-the means by which his heart is tuned to be an instrument of many strings to make melody to the Lord. ' For this there must be the deep tones as well as the high ones. The song is the song of salvation:no angel is ever said to sing to God. God gets His song of praise from the redeemed of the earth:the Holy One inhabits the praises of Israel.

The one hundred and eighth psalm is a very remarkable one. Could you imagine an inspired psalm made, as one may say, with a pair of scissors ?Such, in fact, is this. We have the latter half of two psalms-the fifty-seventh and sixtieth -joined together to produce a third, an instance which the rationalist would hold up to scorn as impossible to be a divine procedure; but "the foolishness of God is wiser than man."It is just this which gives its character and beauty to the psalm in question. The ends of these psalms are taken, cut off from the experience of their former parts, to illustrate the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. It is in Israel, of course, that this mercy is seen,- Israel who, brought out of her sorrows, is to sing the praises to God among the nations. And the latter part, which I have specially before me, is God now claiming the land for His redeemed, securing their inheritance, putting down finally all their enemies. Israel, as His beloved, are delivered, saved with His right hand. And God having spoken, and able to speak in His holiness in their behalf, Shechem is divided, and the valley of Succoth measured out; He claims, or Christ in His name, Gilead and Manasseh, Ephraim and Judah. Moab, Edom, and Philistia are put down forever. These two psalms, therefore,-the hundred and seventh and the hundred and eighth-give us the way and the end of the Lord with regard to His people.

And I may say that the psalms which follow these, in perfect accordance with them, illustrate also God's way and His end; but as before with sinful and fallen man, so now with Christ the one perfect One. Here the hundred and ninth psalm shows us the Lord also in the depths of distress, rejected of man, and in poverty and need cast upon God alone for His answer and help. But here it is not discipline. Evil is on the part of His adversaries only. Their enmity is without a cause, and in the hundred and tenth psalm God lifts up the head of Him who has been thus content to drink, in lowliness, of the brook in the way. He sets Him at His right hand in royal priesthood, His people made willing subjects to Him, and His enemies His footstool. The last three psalms of the first section of this book give us, then, a threefold hallelujah. Jehovah is praised for His wonderful works in the hundred and eleventh psalm, for His ways in the hundred and twelfth, and for His mercy in the hundred and thirteenth. This is the final issue to which in God's infinite grace we shall all come at length. But now let us return to this hundred and eighth psalm, to look more closely at it.

It is seldom that I speak of merely personal experiences., but there are times when it is fitting to declare what God has done for one's soul. That which illustrates the actuality and power of the living God is quite within the scope of our present subject, and the manner in which the inner meaning of this psalm was declared to me was in very striking answer to a deep personal experience.

It was a time when my soul had been passing through as deep a conflict as perhaps I have ever known. Satan, the accuser of the brethren, had been bringing up against me things which lay in the depths of my soul, skillfully interwoven with his own malice and wickedness, until it seemed with me, as John Bunyan says of his pilgrim, I no longer knew the sound of my own voice. Cling indeed I did to God, and to the work of His Son, with a grip from which by grace nothing could detach me; and yet when I looked into the face of God, it seemed as if over it were written these terrible things,-as if, at least in this life, they could never more be blotted out or forgotten, and my soul sank in misery which words are feeble to express. Out of this, in a wonderful way, God delivered me, and as it were in a moment, by the words of this psalm:and how do you think? He to)d me Gilead was His and Manasseh was His!

I was in no condition, as you may imagine, for entering into nice points of Scripture-interpretations, nor for flights of fancy in any direction; nor had I ever attributed to these words other than their obvious meaning. I knew that they had reference to Israel's possession of their land in the last days; but what this could have to say to me, I knew no more than, I will venture to say, any of you here may now know. The thought of any meaning in the names had never occurred to me; and yet in the depths of my distress I found myself repeating, how or why I knew not, " Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine."

A moment after, and God interpreted it to me. The meaning of "Manasseh" is of course, as you know, " Forgetfulness:" it was the name Joseph gave to his son born in Egypt, where, he said, " God hath made me to forget all my kindred, and my father's house." That, then, had some meaning for me, although a familiar thought enough. I knew God could forget:I knew that our sins and iniquities He remembered no more; and if this were all, it might be only imagination, and not the Spirit of the Lord, that applied it to me.

What, then, about "Gilead"? "Gilead" is "a heap of witness." It is the same, essentially, as Jacob's Galeed, set up upon this very Gilead as a witness before God of his covenant with Laban. Who could doubt the designed contrast between " Gilead," the perpetual memorial, and " Manasseh," forgetfulness ? I had been fearing just this perpetual remembrance-this ineffaceability of what, uneffaced, could be only darkness and distress. God told me that Gilead was His as Manasseh was, that there was no real contradiction between the two. He could forget at the same time that He remembered. He could remember without in the least impairing the blessedness of His forgetfulness; and if He could thus remember, so could I too, and forget also, even while remembering.

How blessed to realize that these things are true of God! If there were one thing that had ever been done on earth which needed to be absolutely blotted out of the book of remembrance forever, in order either to the glory of God or the blessing of His people, that thing would be indeed a real derogation to the glory of God. He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath He restrains. When God judges the secret things of man, every work will come into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil, and God will be glorified about the whole. It is only thus that there is no more for us any hopeless darkness. Sin will be seen, of course, and seen in all its terrible reality as that, but it will be seen as that which God has triumphed over, and made His people sharers of His triumph. Hell will be the perpetual restraint upon an evil which, if permitted, would now no longer glorify God. It is not, as men suppose, a place in which sin will be permitted a certain activity forever; nor therefore will there be, as some imagine, a continual increase of punishment brought down upon themselves by its hopeless inhabitants. Judgment, although it be eternal, will be measured by the sins done in the body, and thus even in judgment the mercy of God becomes apparent. In hell itself every knee shall bow to Christ, and every tongue confess that He is Lord. Men will remain indeed essentially unchanged, but let any one look at the sixteenth of Luke, and see the Lord's own picture there of a sinner, though in hades yet, and not after the final judgment, and he must needs see the power of repression that is in God's hand upon him there. These texts are not universalist in character, as so many are maintaining now, and to accept them frankly will only deliver us from all the appearance of truth in universalism.

But thus as to our former lives we must not think or hope for forgetfulness, as any part of the element of our eternal happiness. Would we forget the cross? but the cross is Gilead and Manasseh both in one. It is there that we find our sins put away forever, so that God can say, " Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." But it is there that we have the abiding memorial of those very things. Would any of us be thankful to enjoy eternity as angels instead of sinners re-deemed by Christ? Surely we would not. It is just the apprehension of grace which will give us a song indeed-a song which none can sing but the redeemed of the Lord. The enjoyment of everlasting love will be only infinitely sweeter and more wonderful as we realize the depths out of which it has drawn us-the lower parts of the earth into which He had to descend who has ascended up again for us far above all heavens. Gilead is His, and Manasseh is His. We shall find these parts of our inheritance, as we find them in the inheritance claimed for Israel. Had we skill to realize it, what features of our inheritance might we not trace in this land possessed by the earthly people. We may trace not a few things, in fact, in this very psalm. Going back to the verse preceding, how beautiful to see again the contrast between Shechem and Succoth! She-chem is a shoulder, a ridge; Succoth is a valley. Shechem is the place of power; Succoth, the low place, the valley. The meaning of "Succoth" is "booths," and it carries us on to the day in which Israel will enjoy their final feast of tabernacles, when they will make booths to dwell in, in remembrance of their wilderness-journey, now indeed passed forever. But of all these wilderness experiences they will enjoy then the fruit, in that very lowliness so painful in the learning, so happy as finally attained. It is to the valleys that the heights minister;-it is to the valley that they send down all their streams:it is there that fruit-fulness is secured ;–it is there that all the wealth of blessing is found. Whatever we may know of Shechem,-whatever heights of power and glory may be ours,-our rest will be still in Succoth, in a scene whose moral characteristics are described in the pregnant words, " God all in all." There, dependence will no longer have the least trial in it:there, our creature-needs will be the avenues of eternal blessing:there, the restlessness of our spirits will have passed away for evermore.

Pass on to the eighth verse, and we find a beautiful thing. " Judah," says God, "is My lawgiver." The word is better " scepter." The meaning of "Judah" is, as we all surely know, "praise." Praise is God's scepter, the sign of His dominion alone thus fully maintained among His own. What can insure, if one may speak thus, the obedience due, so well as this praise that rises up to God from every heart unceasingly? The consciousness of perfect blessing; the contrast with the known effects of evil now left behind; the sense of how God has displayed Himself in His dealing with the evil and the deliverance of His own; the Lamb Himself upon the throne; His voice, too, that which leads the praises of His people; the divine authority will be established in a manner thoroughly according to God's own heart. The Father's throne, the Father's kingdom, where all the subjects are children also, will give that character to which eternity will put the seal of divine satisfaction. Judah will be His scepter.

In verse nine we find the enemies, and here too God's power is manifest, and in behalf of His own. We find Moab, Edom, and Philistia. Moab, the expression of the impurity of evil; Edom, of enmity and antagonism; Philistia, of heavenly things held in unreal possession by those who are in heart strangers to heaven. All these God triumphs over. Moab, the unclean, God uses as His wash-pot. Did you ever realize why God allowed the flesh, defined as that, to remain in His own? Did you ever realize how God uses the knowledge of evil so acquired by the Christian man in effect to purify him? Understand me that I am not talking of the breaking out of sin, still less of any laxity in the judgment of it. Of those who could use the argument that because God is glorified about sin, therefore it will lose its character as that and be incapable of judgment, the apostle says, " Whose damnation is just." But the sin in us, however little it may come out, the constant cause of sorrow and humiliation to us, God has some purpose in leaving us still to be tried with, as He surely makes also all the out breaking of corruption in the world around us to be a daily discipline to our souls. Moab, enemy as He may be to God and to His people, God uses as His wash-pot.

Edom, on the other hand, the steady and malignant foe, is brought to thorough humiliation and ignominious defeat. The casting of the shoe over it is the expression of this. It is brought into final and disgraceful submission. Thus surely will all opposition to the divine counsels end. Philistia too, the last enemy before the kingdom in Israel, for us the type of the last form of evil as we see it in Laodicea,-the form of godliness without the power of it,-truth only used by those who can glorify themselves with it, instead of its abasing them in the dust. The empty hollowness which we feel too, every one of us, so much, as an internal enemy as well as an external:-over Philistia will be final triumph. No more traffic with unfelt truth; no more self-complacent pretension in that which is our shame; no more pride of knowledge, holding the living Truth outside. Philistia in that day will be dispossessed forever, smitten by the true David into the dust of His feet. Then shall there be no more adversary or evil occurrent. That which will be true for Israel when she sings praises to God among the nations will be true in how deep a sense to the heavenly saints, brought home and possessing the many mansions of the Father's house. Beautifully thus the internal sense of this wonderful psalm agrees with its first literal application, the earthly being here as ever the type of the heavenly. We are admitted now by, faith, if faith be in activity, to the joy of it all. We are permitted to go already through the dried-up Jordan into the land of our inheritance, assured that every place that the sole of our foot treads on is our own. Shall we not covet this joy ? shall we not seek to possess ourselves more than ever of that which thus lies invitingly before our eyes? God is opening these things before us to attract our hearts. Shall we not seek His grace that there indeed we may abide, in that which is eternal ? there where no rust or moth corrupts, there where no thief enters, there where to covet and acquire delivers us from the corruption that is in the world through lust, there where already we may breathe the purity of an atmosphere where the tabernacle of God is with men, and He dwells with them, and is their God, and God is all in all?

The pleading of integrity, as separate from sinners and loving Jehovah's house.

[A psalm] of David.

Judge me, Jehovah, for I have walked in mine integrity; I have trusted also in Jehovah,-I shall not totter.

2. Try me, Jehovah, and prove me:assay my reins and my heart.

3. For Thy mercy is before mine eyes, and I have walked in Thy truth.

4. I have not sat with men of falsehood, and do not go with dissemblers.

5. I have hated the congregation of evil-doers, and do not sit with the wicked.

6. I will wash my hands in innocency, and [so] compass Thine altar, Jehovah ;

7. To proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving, and to declare all Thy wondrous works.

8. Jehovah, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.

9. Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with men of blood,

10. In whose hands is crime, and their right hand is full of bribes.

11. But as for me, I walk in mine integrity; redeem me and be gracious to me.

12. My foot standeth in an even place:in the congregations will I bless Jehovah.

There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; the locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces." (Prov. 30:24-28.)

It does not require much spiritual intelligence to perceive the lesson God would teach us in the above verses. The mere man of the earth finds it wisdom in his sphere to lay them to heart -he reaps earthly blessing by it. Shall we be less wise in our heavenly sphere and fail to reap? God forbid!

They are wise indeed who, during the pleasurable days of summer remember the coming winter. Unquestionably there are pleasures in sin. God's word owns it. Speaking of Moses, it says, " Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." (Heb. 12:25.) It is not necessarily the gross, beastly ways of the degraded. In the case of Moses, the attractions of kingly grandeur and position, though enjoyed in a most moral way, would have been"the pleasures of sin."The whole moral atmosphere of this world is the direct production of sin, and he who enjoys it enjoys the pleasures of sin. How subtle it is! how ensnaring! and how effectually it robs multitudes of well-behaved people from the wisdom of the ant! They forget the approaching days of winter-the day when, the deluding bubble being broken, they will say, " Lord, Lord, open to us!" but He will answer, " Verily I say unto you, I know you not." Day of awful desolation! who can describe it?

How wise are they, then, who have laid to heart that day, and who neither forget nor neglect the salvation which God has prepared through Jesus Christ.

But what are our efforts, our works, our mightiest endeavors against the day " that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble" (Mal. 4:i)-the day when even for "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof " (Matt. 12:36) before that throne where a chief among the prophets had to cry out "Woe is me! for I am undone" (Is. 6:5), and angels have to cover their faces? What are we before that glory? What can we do to make ourselves meet for it? Man may talk proudly or boastingly away from it, but he who has the least sense of it must own himself a poor weak "cony," trembling at the sight of it. Where can we flee for refuge?"They make their houses in the rocks."Ah, there is security." In Christ"! what a safe place!

What is it to be "in Christ"?It is to be seen by the eye of God in such absolute oneness with Him that He can say of us, "As He [Christ] is, so are we in this world" (I Jno. 4:17), and again, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit."Of course He could not thus associate us with His blessed Son with our sins unremoved and our sin unjudged. Here moved our sins by laying them upon Jesus on the cross (i Pet. 2:24), and judged our sin by making Him to be sin for us and condemning Him (2 Cor. 5:21).Thus the way is all clear. To him that believes in His blessed Son He can say, You are "justified from all things" and you are "in Christ"-in Christ risen and glorified, seen in all His beauty:" as He is, so are we." Isn't this to have our house in the rocks? What matters it if we are a feeble folk,-if we cannot lift a finger for ourselves, since we have such a place of security? What is the weakness of that infant in its mother's arms but a means of displaying its place of security? What is the prodigal's need but the way to the Father's wealth and the Father's heart. Blessed conies! The storm may sweep all before it out- side. Their houses are in the rocks, and they rest in peace.

But if this blessedness, this place of security; be, as we see, the fruit of the work of Christ, we have had to be taught of God to enter into it. We have been born of Him, and this means, not an improvement of the old nature, but the imparting of a totally new one over and above the other, which has its instincts and desires in holiness as the other in sin. It makes us love God and all them that are born of Him. It gives us a family feeling, so that while tender and kind to all men, those of the "household of faith" ever have the prominent place, because they are near and dear. Wherever two such persons meet, they will be attracted to each other.-" Every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.", (i Jno. 5:1:) Thus the Lord's prayer is fulfilled:" That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us" (Jno. 17:21). " The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands."It is not an outward government that unites them, but the locust nature. So the family of God. The tie between them is by virtue of the divine nature which every one of them possesses, not by any outward organization. But this is not all. Another tie exists; dependent upon this, but quite different, and based on an entirely different thing. When Christ had accomplished redemption, risen from the dead, and been glorified, the Holy Ghost came down from heaven to introduce these children of God into a new and peculiar unity-a unity that would depend on no kings, no rulers, no laws, no walls, but in the living power of that blessed Spirit who was sent to form it. " By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body" (i Cor. 12:13),-"The Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23). Thus the children of God scattered about among Jews, Samaritans, or Gentiles were taken out of those connections through the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and in living power introduced into the unity of the Body of Christ. And it is in this unity every child of God in this dispensation is introduced.

But our practice agrees with our position and calling only in the measure in which the Spirit of God in us is ungrieved. He is the power, and only power, we have here as Christians. What must we expect, if we grieve Him in any manner, but inability to practice what we know, as well as to learn what we do not know? May we have a single eye. Thus, in the Church there may be leaders and rulers and teachers as there may be among the locusts, but its unity is not in their government as theirs is not in a king. It is a living unity; the creation of God; an established, unchangeable, eternal unity, the walking in which we learn ac-cording as we " walk in the Spirit" breathing the atmosphere whence all this comes.

But it is faith which is wise in all this wisdom. What but faith can't take God at His word? Unbelief wants to see, wants to feel, wants to reason, wants any thing but" Thus saith the Lord." " The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces."That is just what faith does. It lays hold of the word of God, and it goes in the palace of the King. " Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" (]no. 11:40.)

May we be " exceeding wise," though this wis-dom put us among the "things which are little upon the earth." P.J.L.

There are two reasons given in Scripture for the notable delay of Christ's coming into the world. The one, you will find in Romans 5:6; the other, in this chapter. The one is developed in connection with the Jews, the other has its development in connection with the Gentiles; but the lesson in both cases is for men in general,-a lesson of world-wide significance; of so much importance that God devoted four thousand years to make it plain, while now for nearly half that time men have slighted or refused it. And yet there is no blessing for man which does not depend upon the reception of it.

These four thousand years were needed to prepare the world for Christ; but how different a preparation from that which is ordinarily thought of as necessary. If education be, as it is rightly insisted that the term implies, the drawing out of the natural powers and qualities of the soul, then we may, if we will, call these ages the period of the world's education. It ended with a cross, which Jews and Gentiles combined to give their Creator and Saviour!

But that cross had its "due time" fixed in the wisdom and grace of God; "for when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." The moral question as to man was solved. What was he ? What had his education under law proved him to be? "Ungodly" and " without strength:" "yet"-after centuries of patient trial and long-suffering goodness,-"yet without strength."

And this was not Israel's merely, but mans trial. If Israel only had the law, yet who could contend that what it had demonstrated as to them was not as fully proved for every other people? "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." And thus says the apostle, " We know that what things soever the law saith it saith to those that are under the law,"-but for what purpose? "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God."

But the Gentiles too had their own special proving. If God had given up those who when they knew God, glorified Him not as God, but abased Him to the likeness of the lowest of His creatures, -and if for ages they had remained without revelation or open intervention on His part,-even in this silence there was not indifference. It was "in the wisdom of God " to prove that " the world by wisdom knew not God." Those to whom the apostle is here writing were familiar with all that culture, science, and philosophy had achieved in Greece; and where else had it achieved so much? It was their well-known characteristic that "the Greeks seek after wisdom." Yet in Athens, to believers in an " unknown God," could Paul declare Him whom thus in ignorance they worshiped. "For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe."

Mentally and morally, thus man's need was exposed. And indeed his mental defect is a moral defect, as his inspired history (the only competent one) shows. The world got its wisdom by the fall, and while it values highly what it bought so dearly, it necessarily cannot revoke nor remedy the judgment of sin. It cannot escape the sentence of "vanity" written now upon the fallen creature.

This double lesson as to a need met only by God's word and Christ's work is given us in two books of Scripture-not of the New Testament, but of the Old; for God has title to speak as to the issue of the experiment He was making, before it was in fact made, thus enabling faith to anticipate the result, and learn before hand the dispensational lesson. These two books are, of course, Job and Ecclesiastes. And here, remarkably enough, and as if to make us realize the universality of these conditions, the Gentile is taken up to preach to us of righteousness, the Jew to descant upon human wisdom.

The book of Job is that of "the penitent." So competent scholars interpret his name; and it is with his repentance that God's controversy with him closes, and the story finds morally its end. But who is this penitent one? Some chief of sinners ? No. When God is teaching us the greatness of His grace, He may and will take up the chief of sinners to emphasize it. But here His design is to teach us what man is, and for this He takes up "man in his best estate,"-a saint, not a sinner, -nay, the very chief even of saints. He does not leave us to form our estimate of Job; He carefully gives us His own estimate. " There is not a man like him upon earth," He says:"one that feareth God and escheweth evil." It is this man who in the presence of God is brought to say, " Behold, I am vile;" " I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Who then can expect to stand before God, sinner or saint, upon the ground of any mere human righteousness? And this book of Job is not only outside of law, but antidates it altogether. Yet it is bound up among the books of the law, for the instruction of those under it, abiding, side by side with the vail that with one exception, typical in its meaning, no foot of man could pass, the witness of universal judgment upon all that is born of flesh.

In Ecclesiastes we find, by no means the most perfect, but the wisest of men. Just as God has taken care to pronounce upon Job's goodness, so (with an evidently parallel purpose) has He pronounced upon Solomon's wisdom. For " Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men, . . . and his fame was in all nations round about." (i Kings 4:30, 31.)

Into the hands of one thus qualified God put resources otherwise as abundant that he might find, if possible to be found, " what was that good for the sons of men which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life."

We know well how this wisdom was baffled,- what he saw who looked upon the earth with these discerning eyes. A wheel of events ever passing, ever returning, but generations passing that did not return; a time for every thing, and every thing but for a time, and man, with his heart revolving the question of eternity,* driven back by the mystery of death, which levels the wise and the fool, man and beast together, and beyond which one may indeed speculate, but cannot know. *"The world" in chap. 3:11 should be "eternity."* Even as to things here, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happening to them all. " Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun; because though a man labor to seek it out, yet shall he not find it; yea, farther, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he riot be able to find it."

" What hope or answer of redress?
Behind the vail, behind the vail."

So says the modern prophet amid the open glory of Christianity, alas! Yet the vail is done away in Christ. But now as ever, for mere science or philosophy, God is inscrutable, life beyond death a possibility for hope; the wisdom of man is forced "ever to put questions of infinite moment for which it can find no answer. Eternity is the problem in his heart; his knowledge is all of time; his conscience only prophesies of judgment to come.

The wisdom of man is thus wholly incompetent, confessedly so, to settle one of those questions, which are of the deepest importance,-nay, we may say, of the only real moment. It is incompetent to deliver from the stamp of vanity a life which comes out of darkness and returns to darkness again, burdened the meanwhile with infinite care and sorrow and perplexity. The apprehension of sin, and of judgment because of sin, will explain it, but brings in itself no hope. In turning thus to God there may be hope indeed; but then it must be from Him, and man's wisdom own itself the wrecked and ruined thing it is, and that in God, and not in itself, deliverance is.

Nowadays the world vaunts its progress; but as to removing death, or the sting of it, which is sin, or any of the most real shadows which darken man's few years of life, no one believes in his heart there has been progress at all. Bring all that art or science has produced or discovered, and who supposes that in it all there is one whit of real advance beyond the preacher-king? Men have sought out, indeed, many inventions; and "necessity," say they, " is the mother of invention:" but how then did man get into necessity ? Scripture answers, for those that will heed the answer, that in eating of the forbidden tree of knowledge, his first attainment in it was to know that he was naked, his first invention an apron to cover his nakedness,-a conventional covering, not really one,-and these are but the types of his wisdom and inventions ever since. He has decorated the apron, if you like.

Is it any wonder, then, that the revelation of God seeks and finds no help from mere human wisdom? that, with its Author, it should say, " I receive not testimony from man " (Jno. 5:34) ? Is it not the natural and necessary consequence that the wise, and the scribe, and the disputer of this world should be set aside; that " not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble" should be called; but that God should choose "the foolish things of the world to confound the wise"? Nothing is more simple, nothing more inevitable, than what so many cavil at. By what right do the proud assertors of the value of this world's wisdom cry up, as they do, their article ? Every one knows that intellect and genius argue nothing as to the possession of qualities which we are compelled after all to value more. Brilliancy is not goodness. Cleverness and knowledge may be only the equipment of consummate knavery; but "the knowledge of the holy," as Scripture says, alone "is understanding." (Prov. 9:ii) How, then, can God put honor upon a wisdom gotten by the fall?

But we can go further. We can rejoice with Him who in the day of His rejection could answer and say, " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes." Had it been otherwise,-had revelation addressed itself to the wise as such, and the babes been compelled to wait for their sanction of it before they could receive it, how fatal would have been the consequence! how helpless the dependence upon those whose intellect is, as I have said, no guarantee for their integrity! how would the conscience be taken out of its true place before God and made subject to the guidance of His infirm and sinful creatures! But not only so:the lower level is the broader-the common-level. There is no hindrance, save the pride of knowledge, to the wise receiving upon its own sufficient evidence what equally commends itself to the merest babe, while the babe could not acquire (if that were necessary) the intellect of the other.

But what evidence, then, it will be asked, can Scripture furnish on which to base its claim to be believed ? The evidence that it can transcend the limits of mere human wisdom, relieve the conscience from its guilt, satisfy and purify the heart, and set man free from the stamp of vanity by bringing him to God, and transforming and trans-figuring the shadows of time in the light of a holy and blessed eternity. " Light," indeed, is the term used by Scripture itself for what in Christ has come into the world." The entrance of Thy word giveth light."And light is for the many, not for the few, nor needs outside evidence, nor aught but its own shining to declare it. All other things are seen by means of it, not it by means of other things. Christ is thus light for all,-light for the mind, conscience, and heart alike, witnessing to every man, independently of all other men. Faith in Him is the entire opposite to all credulity, while faith in the wisdom of the wisest else is but credulity and nothing more.

Think of One, of whom they wondered, " How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" -a Galilean peasant merely in the eyes of men, venturing to say, in the midst of a world of restless and unsatisfied hearts, " Come unto Me, and I will give you rest"! Think, still more, of One who could propose as a remedy for all the trouble and care that makes this life a burden, only increased by the thought of another, to believe in Himself as they believed in God! Yet every generation since has had its millions of rejoicing witnesses to the truth of these wonderful promises. The conscience has found rest in His blood as atonement for sin; the heart, in His love who in Himself has revealed the Father; sinful men have bowed their necks to His yoke, and found the path of obedience to His commandments the path of unfailing pleasantness and peace; in every tongue that man has spoken, new words have had to be found to give voice to the new blessedness wherewith He has filled men's hearts and lives. As the apostle says, who in his own person had proved it well, " to them who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ" has become " the power of God and the wisdom of God."

And it is of Him as the wisdom of God that this thirtieth verse speaks to which now I want to invite your attention. It is evident that " wisdom " is the apostle's subject both here and in the following chapter; and the language used puts an emphasis upon this which our common version, and indeed every version that I know, fails to bring out, but upon which the point of the passage largely depends. I read it very much as the margin of the Revised Version puts it, which is good sense, but bad English:"But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom from God, not only* righteousness, but also sanctification and redemption. *"This is plainly the force of διχαιoσύvη Γε χα, άγιασμός etc. τε χα after διχαιoδύvη disconnects "righteousness" from "wis-dom," and binds it to the following words. The margin of the Revised Version has "both," which can only connect two things-not three. There is no peculiar difficulty in the Greek.* "It is not four things which are given us side by side, but one which includes three others. Christ is made to us wisdom from God in that we find in Him the full meeting, and more than meeting, of man's need as a fallen and ruined creature. Human wisdom is lost and shows itself the merest folly in presence of sin and death and judgment; but the true wisdom, which is from God, and which we have in Christ, demonstrates itself as such by being able to deal with all, arid to bring men out of their ruin and guilt into greater blessing than was his unfallen, thus glorifying God in the place where He had been dishonored:- " that, according as it is written,' He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.' "

If we look, then, at these three things, we shall find that they meet, and in divine order, the threefold need of man:he is guilty, he is depraved, he is ignorant of and away from God; righteousness ministered to him meets his guilt, sanctification his depravity; redemption claims him for God and brings him to God. In Christ all this is found, and in Him therefore divine wisdom is displayed and glorified.

Let us ponder these things a little, and may God give us hearts to praise,-us who are yet to lead the angels' praises for a grace of which we are the subjects and shall be monuments forever.

Righteousness is the first need; for except guilt can be removed, God cannot interfere except in judgment. In the Scripture-statement, generally, indeed, sanctification comes before justification, and not in the order in which evangelical Christians ordinarily put them. In the order of application, sanctification must begin first; for only as believing are we justified, and where there is this faith, the work of sanctification has in fact begun. Nevertheless in another sense righteousness must be the foundation of all. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Thus the Lord speaks of the necessity of His death, for only in death-atoning death-could He lay hold upon us for blessing. Our life itself comes to us out of death, and only so,-out of righteousness accomplished for us. Thus only could God find way for His love.

Guilty, then, as we all are, God must minister righteousness; He must justify freely, justify the ungodly,-He, and He alone. Who else could do it ? what but His wisdom find any way?

Sinners, and already-condemned sinners, we find in Christ One who has gone into death for us be-cause we were that, taken our condemnation and our curse, and by His own perfect obedience, glorifying God in the awful place of sin, has risen up out of all,-raised of necessity by the glory of the Father, by His resurrection manifestly accepted of God; but O joy, then, accepted for us, and we in Him, "who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification."

If we ask for our title to account this ours, it is for sinners,-our sins are our title, if in this day of grace we bring them and put them down before God-a title that He assuredly never will deny. Every sinner as such has thus a title to the Saviour of sinners, but a title forfeited if not claimed in time, and which so forfeited will be the deepest agony of the soul forever. " If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

In Christ's blood, then, we find what justifies us; in His resurrection, our sentence of justification pronounced by God, under which, when we believe, we come, so as to be justified by faith. It is one justification only, not three, which we find; by faith, in Christ risen from the dead. But He is not merely risen, He is gone up to God, and gone up in the value which He has for God, and as Man for men for whom He suffered and died. It is there that He is our righteousness, as risen and gone up to God. Thus, not merely are we justified, (which is negative righteousness-cleared of all charge of guilt,) but, much more than this, the best robe in the Father's house is put upon us- upon returned prodigals bringing merely rags and wretchedness in the hope of-"Some lone place within the door."

How blessed, how wonderful, this matchless grace! How is it possible that it can ever be mentioned without stirring the whole depths of our being to go out in praise? How manifest and perfect the divine wisdom and power in Christ toward us!
Yet however wondrous the righteousness, more is needed. God could not merely cover the nakedness of a sinner while leaving him still the sinner that he was before. Man's guilt was plainly only the first need that had to be provided for; he was depraved no less than guilty, and here was a second need, no less impossible for any invention of man to meet, no less needing divine wisdom. This too in Christ is met, and more than met. Not only is He made righteousness for us, but also sanctification.

Now sanctification is spoken of in two special ways in Scripture. We are sanctified by the blood of Christ, and we are sanctified by the Spirit of Christ; we are sanctified positionally, and we are sanctified practically.

Positionally, the blood of Christ has set us apart to God:that is the meaning of sanctification- setting apart to God. The Lord speaks thus of sanctifying Himself when He is going to take a new position as Man with God:" For their sakes," He says, " I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth." (Jno. 17:19.) It is plain that this was no spiritual change in the Lord, which it were blasphemy to think:it was simply a new place He was taking for us Godward. And upon this our sanctification, positionally and practically, depends.

We have followed Him in our thoughts already up to that blessed place where now He sits in glory, and we have seen that He has taken it, not simply by virtue of His divine nature. He is gone there as man. " By His own blood He has entered in once into the holy place, [that is, of course, heaven,]having obtained eternal redemption." (Heb. 9:12.)This blood that He has shed for us then sets us apart to God, or sanctifies us in the power of this "eternal redemption." This is brought out in the epistle from which I just quoted:" By the which will [of God, which He came to do,] we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (10:10.) We are thus "saints," holy ones, separated to God from all impurity and self-service, by this perfect sacrifice. How far our character and ways correspond to this is another question, which presently the word of God will raise; but it raises none until it has set us in the place itself, separated to God, separate from all iniquity according to the power of the blood that has been shed for our redemption.

From thence results, as the apostle shows, the purification of the conscience:" For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve [or better, worship] the living God" (9:13, 14).And how complete the purification he urges from the completeness of the work itself, never to be, and never needing to be, (as the legal sacrifices were,) renewed! " Worshipers once purged" according to God, should have "no more conscience of sins " (10:2), for " by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified" 5:14).Thus the exhortation follows for us, " 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; having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."(10:19-22.)

How absolutely necessary for practical sanctification this purifying of the conscience by the knowledge of a perfect and abiding work! And then for us this open sanctuary, henceforth the place where with joyful and free hearts we draw near to worship God. This is indeed the spring of holiness, to be at home with God, worshipers necessarily, as all are there. Alas! how little do we realize the blessedness! There is no possible place of distance from sin but in nearness to God.

Practical sanctification has its two factors in new birth, and the operation of the Holy Ghost, through the word, upon the believer, taking of the things of Christ to show them to him. Of new birth I shall only say that here Christ it is who is our life, and that this new life is as really such, as that communicated naturally. It is thus we have a nature capable of responding to the word ministered to it, although still and ever the Spirit's work is necessary to make the word good in the hearts of the children of God.

But being born again, it is Christ as apprehended by the soul, in what He personally is, and in the place in which He is, who is the power of sanctification for us. And herein is the wisdom of God in Him fully and wonderfully displayed. By His blessed work He has not only put away our sins, and set our consciences at rest in the presence of God, but He has thus laid hold upon our hearts, and won us for Himself forever. His love to us has begotten love in us; and he who knows that he has had much forgiven will love much. Christian life,-what only can be called so,-is thus love's free and happy offering to Him who has loved us." He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for us and rose again."

But then if our hearts are thus Christ's, where is Christ? In heaven, And where then are our hearts? If it be reality with us, then in heaven too. And that is the power of practical holiness, an object-the object–for our hearts outside the world, outside the whole scene of temptation and evil. We have not to look about in this world to see what of good we can perchance find in it. Christ is in heaven. Holiness is for us by heavenliness; and how simply, and in what perfect wis-dom, has God provided for us by the power of an absorbing affection, the object of it withdrawn from us, outside the world, and becoming thus the goal of a pilgrim's heart and a pilgrim's steps!

Are you a pilgrim, reader ? It is a day of sad declension, in which even God's own children are, how many of them become blind, and cannot see afar off, and have forgotten they were purged from their old sins! But Christ has all the power and attraction yet He ever had, and if our feet are slow upon the road, it is not because He is less fitted to fill and satisfy and energize the heart than ever He was; it is because our eyes are too little fixed on Him. But thus if we are become dull and lethargic, He abides, with unchanged affection soliciting our hearts. If it be so, let us turn to Him, and own it, and pray Him so to reveal Himself that we shall yet know what it is, in calm and sober estimate, to count, with the apostle, all things but loss and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

Surely Christ as sanctification is Christ the wis-dom of God ; but we must pass on to the last point yet in which according to the apostle He is shown to be so:-this is " redemption."

And what is redemption ? It is God's love acting from itself, to satisfy itself, and at personal cost. It is more than purchase, for I may purchase, not because I care myself for what I get, but to give away, or for some other reason. But redemption is for myself, for what my own heart values, the getting back of something the worth of which to me is known by the price I am willing to give for it. Redemption brings out thus the heart of the redeemer.
And in Eden, amid all the goodness with which he was surrounded, man, taught of Satan, had learnt to suspect the heart of God. There and then he had lost God, for He is nothing if He be not good. Since then, "there is none [naturally] that seeketh " Him, that believes that there is any thing in Him for which to seek Him. Natural religions are religions of fear and of self-interest only, and men's gods the image of their own corruptions. God must reveal Himself; and He has, how gloriously! Not goodness merely for man innocent in Eden, but infinite love to those who in Christ could see and hate Him." God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Christ is the redemption-price which shows the heart of the Redeemer, and in His wondrous work, the Father's love and the Father's heart.

Thus in the wisdom of God man's need is completely met. His conscience and heart are effectually provided for, and Christ is this wisdom and this power of God. How blessed beyond measure thus to know Him! Human wisdom, humbled in the dust, finds alone its own gracious restoration in owning God's. Has it any evidence? men ask. He who finds it enter as light into his soul need be none of earth's wise ones to give the answer. There is but one Christ any where for a soul that has realized its need. The word is the revelation; and if man be abased by it, and no flesh able to glory in the presence of God, He is made known so that in Him, and in Him alone, they shall henceforth glory. And this, for those who know it, is the happiness and the holiness of eternity begun.

For such, redemption shall soon display its power over the body itself, that in the image of Christ fully they may enjoy the blessedness which is theirs in Him forever.

For our purpose, it would be evidently a diversion to take up the various applications of the sacrifices which we find in the book of Leviticus or elsewhere; but where we find variation in the sacrifice itself, we may expect a development of new features in that one great offering which all these foreshadow. Such variation we have in that which is enjoined for the cleansing of a leprosy which was already healed; and if we passed it over, we should manifestly miss designed instruction as to the work of atonement.

Here, "two birds, alive and clean," are to be taken, one only of which is to be killed, and this in a remarkable way, namely, "in an earthen vessel, over running [literally, living] water." "As for the living bird," it is added, " he [the priest] shall take it and the cedar-wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the living water; and he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field." In the cleansing of the leprous house, the same thing precisely is enjoined.

We have already, in the burnt-offering and sin-offering both, become familiar with the type of the bird. In the case before us there are, however, some notable differences from these, which all tend to show that here we have the type in its fullest character,-the most typical of all its forms. Thus it is neither dove nor pigeon nor any particular species that is prescribed, but simply two " birds." It is the bird as such, irrespective of specific qualities,-" the bird of heaven," according to the constant phraseology of Scripture,* a being not of earth. Its dying in a vessel of earth, by its plainly designed contrast, only brings out the more this character, and is interpreted for us by the apostle's application of the figure (2 Cor. 4:7) so as to render mistake impossible. *In our common version, most generally given as the fowl of the air."*

Again, while the bird-type, in the sin-offering ""plainly, and in the burnt-offering no less really, is placed higher thought, in fact a lower one, the other hand, it is the manifestly divine one remarkable as being defined neither as any other offering, but standing by itself, (in this first part of cleansing which restores the leper to the camp,) as if representing complementary thought, if I may so which while not entering into the idea of sacrifice as such, and therefore not found in these distinctive aspects of Christ's blessed work, must yet have its place in order to any just conception of what has been done.

The bird, then, represents the Lord as a heavenly Being, acquiring capacity to suffer and die in that manhood which He had taken, and which is symbolized by the earthen vessel; the living water here as ever type of that Eternal Spirit through whom He offered Himself without spot to God. It is striking that the figure does not, as we might at first imagine it would, represent the breaking of the vessel, while the bird itself escapes unhurt, but on the contrary the death of the bird itself; and Scripture is always and divinely perfect:such apparent slips are not in fact blemishes, not even the necessary failure of all possible figures, but things that call for the deepest and most reverential observation.

For it is one blessed Person, in whom Godhead and manhood unite forever, who has been among us, learned obedience in the path which He has marked out for us through the world, suffered the due of our sins, and gone out from us by the gate of death, risen and returned to the Father. We lose ourselves easily in this depth of glory and abasement, where the abasement too is glory; but no Christian can give up the blessed truth because of his ignorance of explanation. In ourselves we have such inexplicable mysteries, not on that account doubted, as where every nerve-pang that thrills the body is felt really not by the body, but by its (as reason would say) untouched spiritual inhabitant. Here it is not needful to explain, to accept the lesson:He who came upon earth to do the Father's will has taken as the means of His doing it that " prepared body " which was the instrument by which He accomplished it. Thus, rightly, according to the figure, the bird of heaven it is that dies in the earthen vessel. This stooping is the unparalleled marvel and power of the weakness in which He was crucified. We must not take the glory that was His to deny or lessen that weakness, but accept it as adding to it the wonder of such humiliation. How beautifully is this preserved in that one hundred and second psalm, in which, if any where, we have just this type!

" Hear My prayer, O Lord, and let My cry come unto Thee. . . . For My days are consumed as a smoke. … I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled My drink with weeping; because of Thine indignation and wrath, for Thou hast lifted Me up and cast Me down. My days are like a shadow that declineth. . . . He weakened My strength in the way; He shortened My days:I said, 'O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days; Thy years are throughout all generations!' "

Who then is this that speaks? who is this who suffers under the wrath of God, and that to death; whose days cut off contrast so with the divine eternity ? How does this psalm proceed ? and what is the astonishing answer to this lowly prayer?

" Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure:yea, all shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt change them, and they shall be but Thou art the same, and Thy years have no end!"

If He go down into death, then, He must needs low Himself master of it. Resurrection must vindicate Him as the Lord of all:"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Accordingly in the type before us it is of resurrection that the second bird speaks. Let loose into the open field, he carries back to the heavens to which he belongs the blood which is the witness of accomplished redemption. The second bird represents the unextinguished, unextinguishable life of the first which has come through death, taking it captive, and making it subservient to the purposes of divine goodness, which, by the blood shed in atonement, cleanses us from the defilement of spiritual leprosy.

Here, for the first time, in connection with the legal sacrifices, we have the type of resurrection as necessary to the application to us of the great Sacrifice itself. " He was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification." (Rom. 4:25.) In Isaac, long since indeed, we saw one received back in a figure from the dead, but there the results were personal to himself:there was no application of blood, no announcement of justification by resurrection. These are important features, which this type of the birds for the first time adds to the picture of atonement.

And thus it is throughout Heaven's ministry of love:not so much the Son of Man necessarily lifted up as on the other hand, so far as such types could reach, that God has given His only begotten Son. It is divine love that has been at charges to bring such ready and effectual help to human outcasts. It is to the degraded and polluted leper that the purity of heaven descends. How precious this contrast! In truth man's case was hopeless to any other than divine resources. If "it is God that justifieth," who but He could righteously justify those expressly designated as " ungodly " ?

This justification of ungodly ones who are content to trust themselves as such in the hands of Christ has been once for all pronounced in the raising from the dead of Him who for our sins went into death. Abraham needed a special word in his day from God, and that availed for himself alone. For the rest, the apostle distinguishes between the "passing over of sins that had been before " the cross, and the justification at the present time of him that believeth in Jesus.* *See the Revised Version of Romans 3:25,26.* Under this public justification by resurrection, announcing the acceptance of that which actually justifies,- the blood of the cross,-we come individually as soon as we believe, and need no individual declaration.

Q. –What is the force of λoυτρόv in Ephesians 5:26? Has it the same meaning as in Titus 3:5? Are all Christians being bathed now? or are we only regenerated by the bath once for all, and then throughout our wilderness-journeys get our feet washed?

A. In both places λoυτρόv mean "washing," as it is translated in the common version. The passage in Ephesians is quite general, and speaks of the whole process of cleansing by the Word. On the contrary, the "washing of regeneration" in Titus speaks of the change from the natural to the Christian or new-creation state to which the "renewing of the Holy Ghost" practically conforms us. Of the former, the flood in which the old world perished and gave place to the new seems the Scripture-figure. The latter is not "renewing" in the sense of refreshing, restoring, but vακαιvσις, making entirely new.

Q. 27.-Romans 7:9. How "alive without law once," and when the "commandment came, sin revived, and I died" ?

A. Because the law of God, while holy, just, and good, is the "strength of sin" (1 Cor. 15:56) and not of holiness. This is the sad mistake that so many are making, who suppose, because the law is holy, it is the strength of holiness. It was given for the "very purpose of convicting (Rom. 3:19.) and proving man's im-potence for good, and this it effectually does. The prohibition of sin arouses it, and self-occupation, the necessary effect of being under law, gives no power over it. On the contrary, "I died" is the expression of absolute, utter helplessness, a state of felt corruption and impotence out of which God only can deliver:"O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" The deliverance is found in the apprehension of our place before God in Christ, and ability to turn away from ourselves, and occupy ourselves with Him. "We with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."

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Q. 28.-Romans 8:C. Does this refer to the believer:"To be carnally minded is death" and if so, in what sense is death referred to?

A. It is really, in this and in the following verses, the " mind of the flesh," "the mind of the Spirit,"-that is, of the old nature and of the Spirit of God.

It was a terribly solemn thing for the Pharisees to " resist the counsel of God against themselves." They stiffened their necks and hardened their hearts, and would not hear God's message through John the Baptist.

John came preaching repentance, exhorting the people to the confession of their sins, and faith in the One coming after him. "The people and publicans justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John; but the Pharisees and lawyers resisted the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him." (Luke 7:29, 30.)

Two classes we find here,-those who justified God, and those who resisted His counsel against themselves. The one moved by the word of God, and took their place in self-judgment before Him, owning themselves sinners and needy; while the other built up in self-righteousness, and instead of yielding to the divine counsel which sought to lead them to repentance and blessing, they resisted that counsel, and were offended at His word. And when the One came of whom John spake, and told out the tale of divine love to a ruined world, and piped the sweet notes of grace, they were as far from receiving Him as they had been from receiving John. They neither mourned when John preached repentance, nor danced when the Son of God proclaimed the grace of God. Of the one they said, " He hath a devil;" of the other, " Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." " They resisted the counsel of God against themselves." How terribly solemn! God would lead them to repentance, but they would none of Him. All was resisted, despised, and set at naught.

" But Wisdom is justified of all her children." (Luke 7:35.) What distinguishes Wisdom's children from the unbelieving mass is that they justify God, and, in the reception and belief of the truth, they take their place as ruined and guilty before Him, and cast themselves upon His mercy. They resist not His counsel which leads to repentance, but own in full all that they are, and find pardon and eternal blessing at His hand. Their prayer is, " God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" and God answers their prayer by justifying them. It is God in grace meeting the repentant soul with a full salvation. This is how God is revealed in the gospel. The sinner, therefore, who justifies God and condemns himself is in return justified of God " freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." (Rom.' 3:24.)

In this very chapter (Luke 7:36-50) we have a lovely instance of one of Wisdom's children finding her way to Jesus, and what she received at His hand. In a way, her experience is the experience of all who return, for " Wisdom is justified of all her children."

Jesus was invited to eat with a certain Pharisee, and He accepts the invitation. And while there, a woman, a known sinner, crosses the threshold of the man's house, and finds her way to where Jesus was sitting. What has brought her there? Unbidden, and undesired by the Pharisees at least, she had come; but the burden of her sins, and the sense of her guilt, had driven her to the One who had come to seek and to save such as she, and had said, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." He had come from heaven to save such ; she comes to Him to be saved. His counsel drew her; she resisted not His gracious counsel against herself. She finds herself in His blessed presence, and with confidence in God already replacing itself in her heart, she had brought an alabaster box of ointment, for she felt that He was worthy. She stands at His feet behind Him weeping, washing His feet with her tears, wiping them with the hairs of her head, and anointing His feet with the ointment. Blessed place indeed! A repentant soul in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is a blessed picture. It furnishes joy for the unjealous hosts above, as it is written, " There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." (Luke 15:10.)

In the presence of this sovereign grace of God the hideous spirit of self-righteousness could not rest. The man who had bidden Jesus said within himself, " This Man, if He were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him, for she is a sinner," Self-righteousness would upset the poor woman, but grace would draw her to the Saviour. Man's religion, as cold and heartless as death, would create a wide gulf between the sinner and the would-be-righteous people, but the sweet story of love divine told out by the lips of the God-man could but win her to Himself.

Jesus, who read the thoughts of the Pharisee's heart, said, " Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee." " Master, say on," he replies. " There was a certain creditor which had two debtors:the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty:and when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him most?" "Simon answered and said, ' I suppose that he to whom he forgave most.'" "Thou hast rightly judged," responded the Saviour. " And He turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, ' Seest thou this woman ? I entered into thine house, thou gavest Me no water for My feet; but she hath washed My feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest Me no kiss; but this woman, since the time 1 came in, hath not ceased to kiss My feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint; but this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved much:but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.' And He said unto her, ' thy SINS ARE FORGIVEN.' "

Again the murmurs of self-righteousness are heard, " Who is this that forgiveth sins also?" but they are answered with a more positive expression of grace than before. "And He said to the woman, ' THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE :GO IN PEACE.' "

How very beautiful is all this, as far as the Saviour and the poor woman are concerned! Condemned by the Pharisees, He is nevertheless justified by Wisdom's child, who is in repentance at His feet, and He lavishes upon her, poor needy sinner as she is, all His love and grace. She came believing, and He pardons and saves, and sends her away in peace. " "THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN." "THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE:GO IN PEACE." Pardon, salvation, peace. Oh the precious grace of God! To the God of all grace, and to His adorable Son, be eternal praise!

Beloved reader, are you one of Wisdom's children? Are you pardoned, saved, and in peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ? or are you careless, indifferent, unbelieving, self-righteous, and therefore resisting the counsel of God against yourself? If the latter, O sin of all sins, which will blight and ruin your soul for eternity! E.A

The trespass-offering is for sin looked at as in-jury, and in view of the government of God, as the sin-offering contemplates it in its intrinsic character as abhorrent to His nature. Thus restitution-" amends for the harm that he hath done " -is so prominent a feature in the trespass-offering, the ram of which is itself valued, and becomes part of the repayment. The governmental view of the atonement, which so many in the present day contend for, while it is thus justified as a partial view, falls entirely short in its estimate of it when taken as the whole. It is not in government merely that God hides His face from sin. The darkness and the cry of desertion of the cross express more than governmental atonement. Indeed, to the mass of writers upon the subject these are features whose significance is of little import. In the punishment of the wicked finally, few or many stripes express the governmental award of the "great white throne;" but the "utter darkness," the necessary separation of God from what is abhorrent to His nature, is not merely governmental, but the necessary portion alike of all.

Hence that offering burnt in the outer place alone had power to penetrate into the sanctuary, the abode of divine light, and when really offered, to rend the vail and bring us into the light of the divine presence. Hence, as we have seen, the sin-offering for the high-priest and congregation is the only one which we can regard as the true sin-offering. All others were but partial and defective forms.

The trespass-offering, as far as its ritual is concerned, has little to distinguish it from these lower grades of the sin-offering. There is no laying on of hands, so far as we read, and the blood is not put upon the horns of the altar, but simply sprinkled on it round about. The fat alone is burnt upon the altar; the rest eaten by the priests.

The ram is the victim here alone appointed, although elsewhere for the leper (ch. 14) and the Nazarite (Num. 6:) a lamb was to be offered. The ram was evidently the fuller type,-the female sheep and lamb giving the character of meek submission, the male sheep more of energy in devotedness; in the coverings of the tabernacle the ram-skins were dyed red, to show that devotedness even to death which characterized the Lord.

The great thought impressed upon us in the trespass-offering is that of restitution-amends for the harm done. This has to be estimated by the priest in shekels of silver after shekel of the sanctuary. The estimation was to be a divine one, the priest giving the divine judgment; while the restitution-money was to be also the sanctuary shekel. But even this was not enough; the fifth part more was still to be added; for God would have an overplus of good result from evil, not mere making up to where things were before. That would not be worthy of Him. How could He have suffered sin at all, merely to show His power in vanquishing it and no more? Such victory would be little better than defeat. And yet this is what the mass of Christians perhaps suppose. Christ is to bring us back, they think, to the point from which Adam wandered, or which he ought to have reached but failed. But this is a deep degradation of Christ's blessed work. On the contrary, it is a second Man and a new creation which the word proclaims, of which the old is but the mere figure, and to which it gives place. The "fifth part more," heartily believed, would do away with much error and replace it with much precious and needed truth.

Christ has restored that which He took not away; but it is after the divine and not the human fashion. As the trespass-offering is here looked at in connection with trespasses against God or against man, so the cross has brought to God an infinite glory overpassing all the dishonor done to Him, by the fall of the creature, and to man a wealth of blessing such as Eden never knew.

For the detail of this we must go to the New Testament. The trespass-offering itself says nothing even in type, only indicates an over-recompense, the nature of which it does not further declare. But we, thank God, can declare it. " Now," says the Lord, speaking of what He was soon to suffer,-"Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him." (Jno. 13:31, 32.) This surely is the key of all that the offering implies. The glory of God accomplished by One who has become Son of Man for this purpose; this answered in glory by God, an answer in which the objects of His grace are made to share:how far beyond the mere putting away of sin and its results is thus indicated! Goodness, holiness, righteousness in God maintained and manifested as no where else; mercy and grace declared how wondrously! For men, in result, not an earthly paradise again restored, but heaven opened; not innocence, but the image of God in righteousness and holiness of truth; not Adam-life, but Christ as Life eternal; not part with merely sinless men, but part with Christ in glory. For "not as the offense even so is the free gift;.:… for if through one man's offense death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ."

Thus in both ways through our Trespass-Offering is the fifth part more made good. And now, having completed, briefly enough, our survey of these Levitical sacrifices, let us look back at them for a moment in what was in fact, as we see in the law of the leper, the order of application. This was not a simple reversal of the order in which these chapters give them however, for while the "trespass-offering preceded in this way all the rest, and the sin-offering always, for an obvious reason, the sweet-savor offerings, on the contrary the burnt-offering invariably preceded the rest of these; the meat-offering following next, and connected with it often as if its proper appendage,- "the burnt-offering and its meat-offering" (Lev. 23:13, 18; Num. 8:8; 15:24; 29:3, 9, etc.) the peace-offering closing the whole. When, however, the peace-offering alone was Offered, the meat-offering became its adjunct, and was pre-scribed in a scale proportionate to the value of this, as it was in the case of the burnt-offering itself (Num. 15:1-14).

First, then, we have the offerings which settled the whole question of sin as against the offerer, and then those for acceptance, or a sweet savor. Not only the burnt-offering was for the "acceptance " of him who brought it, but the peace-offering also (Lev. 19:5 ; 22:25).This is not said directly of the meat-offering, but it is of the sheaf of first-fruits (Lev. 23:11), with which, however, a burnt-offering was offered. The difference of course results from the meat-offering being no real sacrifice, although it might be offered, as we have seen, even for a sin-offering, where the extreme poverty of the offerer permitted nothing more. The meat-offering spoke of Christ, but in the perfection of His holy life, not as a vicarious Substitute for sinners. The perfection of His life could not, it is plain, atone for sin, nor be in itself the acceptance of a sinner; yet it could not be omitted either from God's estimate of the work of His beloved Son. Hence, as it makes necessary part of that accomplished righteousness in the value of which He has entered into His presence and as man sat down there, so in its value also we stand before God. The place of the meat-offering in connection with the burnt-offering speaks clearly here.
Finally, the peace-offering closing all is witness to us that God would have our communion with Himself find its measure and character from the apprehension of this place of acceptance and what has procured it for us:in Christ; as Christ; justified and sanctified in His precious name. When we compare this place with the feebleness of our apprehension of it, we have cause indeed for the deepest humiliation before God; but what reason for encouragement also in this grace that continually beckons us forward to enjoy our portion according to the fullness of it as the word of God's grace so constantly presents it before our eyes, and in the power of the Spirit of Christ given to us, without limit, save as, alas! unbelief on our part may impose a limit!

"John answered and said, 'A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven.' " (Jno. iii, 27.)

What gives firmness and comfort and power to the servant is the consciousness of doing the Lord's will. Self-complacency of fleshly zeal easily deludes, but nevertheless the path of communion with God and obedience is open to every one of us; it is a reality. There is great comfort in John the Baptist's reply, "A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven," when questioned about his service. There is that which I am sent to do. Outside of that, nothing is required of me; I am freed from vain attempts of self-will. But in that to which God has called, there is the power of God and rest of heart, joy in the soul and blessing in ministry. And the power and blessing are not to be measured by the sphere of service. The whole power of God is with the least as with the greatest true service for Himself, as the smallest stream runs by His power as well as the mightiest river. " As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak as oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth:that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion forever and ever. Amen." (i Pet. 4:10.)

To know what is one's path of service is not self-occupation. On the contrary, it is what alone excludes it, and brings soberness and the fear of God:"For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." No man could work in the making of the tabernacle except as God gave ability:"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, ' See, I have called by name Bezaleel, . . . and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, … to devise cunning works, . . . And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, . . . and in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee." (Exod. 31:) " Then wrought Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise-hearted man in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that the Lord had commanded. And Moses called Bezaleel and Aholiab and every wise-hearted man in whose heart the Lord had put wisdom, even every one whose heart stirred him up to come unto the work to do it." How vain and irreverent for any man to have put his hand to the work without wisdom from God! And with the wisdom was needed the true heart-" even every one whose heart stirred him up." (Ex. 36:) It was a work of obedience, but in liberty; from a heart devoted to the Lord and His service, and to His people. They served gladly and freely, but in no other work than the Lord had appointed and fitted them for.

In that, there is the whole power of God in the humblest life and service. It is the whole power of God:how great a power! and there is none other. "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." Of the two evils common in the church,-holding back from service, and too great forwardness, the latter is a pressing evil. Often a ministry of this character rests as a weight upon God's assembly. But the two evils are found together, and the responsibility for a ministry, and life (for the two are united) without power is upon the whole assembly in measure:"Thou sufferest that woman Jezebel," and "So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicholaitanes," shows the principle. How humiliating to consider it! but how easy to groan under the evil without realizing either our responsibility as regards it or the power of God for deliverance. The absence of the power of God in an assembly allows the work of the flesh to come in, as the lack of fruit-growing and cultivation in the garden leaves room for the weeds; and the richer the soil, the ranker the growth. The same lack of communion that leads one to over-activity may be the cause in another of self-indulgence that shrinks from responsibility, or weakly leans upon another, and leaves things to man. A subtle evil, because a spirit of indolence so easily indulged, with little thought of how carnal a state it is, and how great the responsibility.

It is a serious evil to use the word of God in ministry without corresponding inward exercise. Gift is from God, and the power to use it for edification at any moment is from God, whether in public or private ministry. This is no doubt a common evil among us. We may often weary one another with the truth known and easily repeated, but the reality not enjoyed in the soul. The power of our ministry will not be above our daily life. And the power of our testimony in daily life is not a mere absence of wrong conduct before man. It is not a negative thing, but a positive power of the Holy Spirit in inwardly enjoyed communion with God, and the outward result must follow-the rivers of living water. A stream cannot rise above its source. Let us beware of burdening our brethren and injuring our own souls through lack of watchfulness and prayer. "Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear; for our God is a consuming fire." But it is to Mount Zion we are come, the place of His delight-the fullness of His favor in Christ. " For the Lord hath chosen Zion. . . . this is My rest forever. … I will clothe her priests with salvation, and her saints shall shout aloud for joy." In such a blessed and holy presence we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. E.S.L.