An appeal against the enemy ; upon the ground of the personal perfection of Christ associating Himself with the people.

A Prayer of David.

Hear righteousness, Jehovah! attend unto my cry:give ear unto my prayer, from no deceitful lips.

2. Let my judgment come forth from Thy presence ! let Thine eyes behold things equal.

3. Thou hast tried my heart; Thou hast visited me by night; Thou hast assayed me; Thou findest nothing:my mouth does not exceed my thought.

4. As for works of men, by the word of Thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the violent.

5. My steps holding fast to Thy ways, my footsteps have not slipped.

6. I have called upon Thee, for Thou wilt answer me, O God*:incline Thine ear unto me; hear my speech.

7. Distinguish Thy mercies; saving with Thy right hand those who take refuge in Thee from those rising up against them !

8. Preserve me as the apple of the eye! hide me in the shadow of Thy wings!

9. From the wicked that oppress me,-my enemies that with desire encircle me.

10. They are closed up in their own fat; with their mouth they speak proudly.

11. Now at our steps have they compassed us; their eyes they have fixed [on us] to bow [us] down upon the earth.

12. His likeness is of a lion greedy of prey; even as a young lion couching in the coverts.

13. Arise, Jehovah! anticipate him, cast him down; deliver my soul from the wicked one, Thy sword,

14. From men, Thy hand, Jehovah,-from men of this world, whose portion is in [this] life, whose belly Thou fillest with Thy store; sons have they to the full, and leave their residue to their babes.

15. For me, in righteousness shall I behold Thy face:I shall be full, awaking in Thine image.

Text.-(3) "My mouth does not exceed my thought:" the translations differ greatly; some give as the A.V.; others, "Thou wilt not find in me [evil] thoughts; my mouth doth not transgress;" others, "My thought doth not go beyond my mouth."

(6) "God," when El, "Mighty," will be marked henceforth with an (*) asterisk.

(9) "Desire" is here nephesh, "soul, life:" translated by some, therefore, "deadly."

(11) Or, "have set their eyes, bowing down to the earth."

(13. 14) Some say, "[with] Thy sword," "[with] Thy hand."

Lot.

"And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom :and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them:and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; and he said,' Be-hold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early and go on your ways.' And they said, 'Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.'"

How every circumstance seems designed to bring out the contrast! Two angels come, not men:there is distance, not familiarity; and the Lord Himself does not come nigh. Hence communion there is not and cannot be. Evening, too, is fallen; they come in gloom, and as if not to be seen. And although Lot's hospitality is as ready as Abraham's, there is no such readiness in the response. They yield, however, to his urgency,- "And he pressed upon them greatly, and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat."

But even the semblance of communion is not possible for him. Out of the path of faith, he is not master of circumstances, but they of him. The men of Sodom break in upon him, and the very attempt to entertain the heavenly guests only provokes the outbreak of the lusts of the flesh. Instead of the good he seeks, Lot has to listen to a message of judgment, which falls upon all with which he has chosen to associate himself.

How solemn is the lesson of all this in a day when heaven is indeed allowed to be the final home of the saint, but in no wise his present practical abiding-place; when Christians count it no shame to be citizens of this world, to be " yoked " in every possible way-commercially, politically, socially, and even ecclesiastically-" with unbelievers;"to sit as judges in the gate of Sodom, and mend a scene out of which He who came in blessing for it has been rejected, and which, when He comes again, for that rejection, He comes to judge! If all this be not just Lot's place, what is it? Personal "righteousness"-in the low sense in which necessarily we must think of it here,- no more exempts one from the condition pictured than it actually exempted Lot. God's Word persists in claiming one's voluntary associations as part of one's personal state. Not to be "unequally yoked with unbelievers" is the condition God gives upon which alone our Father can "be a Father to us;" to be "purged" from "vessels to dishonor" is the only state which has attached to it the promise, "He shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and prepared to every good work."(2 Cor. 6:17, 18; 2 Tim. 2:21.)

I am well aware that such principles are too narrow to meet with aught but contemptuous rejection in the present day. Evangelical leaders even can now take their places openly on public platforms with Unitarians and skeptics of almost every grade; and societies, secret or public, can link together all possible beliefs in the most hearty good fellowship. It is this that marks the time as so near the limit of divine long-suffering, that the very people who are orthodox as to Christ can nevertheless be so easily content to leave Him aside on any utilitarian plea by which they may have fellowship with His rejecters. Do they think that they can thus bribe the Father to forget His Son, or efface the ineffaceable distinction between the righteous and the wicked as " him that serveth God, and him that serveth Him not " ? Alas! they can make men forget this, and easily teach the practical unimportance-and so, really, the untruthful-ness,-of what in their creed they recognize.

O for a voice to penetrate to the consciences of God's people before judgment comes to enforce the distinction they refuse to make, and to separate them from what they cling to with such fatal pertinacity! The days of Lot are in their character linked in our Lord's words with " the day when the Son of Man is revealed."May his history, as we recount it, do its work of warning to our souls. Communion we have found to be one thing impossible for Lot in Sodom. It is surely what is implied in that assurance on God's part,—" I will be a Father to you,"-which He conditions upon our taking the separate place from what is opposed to Him that our relationship to Him necessitates. How is it possible, indeed, if " whoever will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God," to have communion with both at the same time? How is it possible to say to the world, " I will walk with you," and stretch out the other hand to God, saying, "Walk with me"?

But if this be so, communion with God must be how rare a thing! How many things must be substituted for it, and, with the terrible self-deception which we can practice on ourselves, to be taken to be this even! With, most, indeed, how little is Christ abidingly the occupation and enjoyment of the soul! And when we would be with Him, in our seasons of habitual or special devotion, how often do we perhaps all realize the intrusion of other thoughts,-unwelcome as, to Lot, were the men of Sodom. We are apt, at least, to console ourselves that they are unwelcome, perhaps to silence, or seek to silence, conscience with the thought, as if this relieved us from responsibility about them. Yet who could assert that Lot was not responsible for the intrusion of the men of Sodom? If their being unwelcome settled the whole matter, there is no doubt that they were unwelcome. But why had Abraham no such intruders ?

The thoughts that throng upon us when we would gladly be free-at the Lord's table, at the prayer-meeting, or elsewhere,-'have we indeed no responsibility as to these? The effort necessary to obtain what when obtained we can so little retain, while other things flock in with no effort, does it not reveal the fact of where we are permitting our hearts to settle down?

It may be, perhaps, a strange and inconsistent thing at first sight, in view of what has been already said, and if we are to find a figure here in Lot's case as in Abraham's,-that he has the materials wherewith to entertain his heavenly visitants. It is true he has neither the "calf, tender and good," which Abraham has, nor the " three measures of meal."Applying these figures, we may say that Christ is not, in the way thus pictured, present to the soul of one in Lot's case. Yet he has, what may seem almost as hard to realize, that "unleavened bread" with which the apostle bids us keep our passover-feast, and which he interprets for us as "the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." How, then, may we attribute this to Lot? The answer seems to me an exceedingly solemn one. It is found, I doubt not, in the very first case in which the command to keep the feast of unleavened bread was carried out. How, in fact, and why, was it carried out? Nothing would seem clearer than to say, Because the Lord enjoined it. But it is not this that Scripture itself gives as the reason.

"And the people took their dough before it was leavened; their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders. …. And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of the land of Egypt:for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry ; neither had they prepared for themselves any victual." (Ex. 12:34, 39.)
That is, their obedience to the divine command was not the fruit, alas! of the spirit of obedience. It was the product of necessity, the fruit of their being forced out of Egypt. And do we not, indeed, easily recognize in the Church's history under what circumstances in general the feast has thus been kept? Has it not been when by the hostility of the world she has been forced out of the world? Persecution has always helped men to reality. If it be simply a question between open acceptance of Christ or explicit rejection of Him, this will be a matter necessarily settled alike by every Christian. The black or white would have no possible shades of intermediate gray. The "perilous times" of the last days are not such to the natural life. All the more are they perilous to the soul.

Similarly, in the shadow of calamity and distress men wake up to reality. Their desire, the object of their lives, is taken from them, but the stars come out in the saddened sky. Face to face with eternity they have to learn how " man walketh in a vain show, and disquieteth himself" too " in vain." There are times when even Lots become real. Yet, as the mere fruit of circumstance, it has no necessary permanence in it, nor any power to lift to a higher level one in fact so low. Nay, a Lot stripped of his cover, how degraded does he seem! Strip some of my readers, perhaps, of every artificial help to make something of them,-of every thing Outside the man himself,-what would be the result? Yet to this it must come:aye, to this. We brought nothing into this world; we can carry nothing out:the world passeth away and the lust thereof. If our hearts have chosen that which passes, retain it we cannot. We must some day stand where Lot stood, and hear, as he did, words of judgment from the very lips of grace.

" And the men said unto Lot,' Hast thou here any besides? son-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place:for we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it."

And then we find how utter had been the wreck of testimony with a man personally righteous. Nay, that character of his (who can doubt?) would only contribute to the rejection of so strange a story as that God would visit with signal judgment for its wickedness a place so attractive as Sodom had proved to righteous Lot. God, then, it would seem, had not been in sympathy with him. This was his own confession:but if He now were, who could then possibly tell ? " He seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law."

Here we have, clearly, designed, sharp contrast with what had been God's own testimony as to Abraham's household. Evil has thus its law and order, we may be assured, as good has. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Train him up for the world, and can you marvel if your work be as successful?

"And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, 'Arise, take thy wife and thy two daughters which are here, lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.' And while he lingered, the men"-notice how in the time of his strait the more familiar term is used again,-" the men laid hold upon his hand and the hand of his wife and the hand of his two daughters, (the Lord being merciful to him,) and they brought him forth and set him without the city."

But now the shipwreck he had made of faith begins to be apparent in him. How often do you hear people speak of not having "faith for the path" Here it becomes plain that what is needed is to have the path in order to faith. How, indeed, can one speak of faith except for God's path ? Can we have faith to walk in some way that is not God's? or does He put before us one way for faith, and some alternative way if we will be excused from the necessity of faith?

If we have not, then, faith for the path, we must walk, manifestly, in unbelief, where God is not with us, where no promise of His assures us, where the might of His arm cannot be reckoned on. What a thing for men to choose-from weakness, as they would urge, or fear-a path in which God is not! Surely the sense of weakness it is not which drives men away from Him :it is willfulness, or love of the world,-sin; but never weakness.

Had one to ask really, Have I faith for the path? who could dare to say he had? This excuse might well excuse us all. Which of us knows where God's path may lead? The one thing certain is, it will be a path contrary to nature, impossible to mere flesh and blood. Had we in this sense to count the costs,-or better, to meet the charges of the way, we would all be bankrupts the first day's journey.

But is there, then, no Shepherd of the sheep? or does He not lead now in green pastures, and beside still waters? and even in the valley of death-shade is there no virtue in His rod and staff? shall we malign a path which is His path, or count upon all that which calls for His power and grace, but not upon Himself to show this?

In the path it is that He sustains the faith for the path. Out of the path, faith goes overboard at the first step; and then the after-life becomes necessarily the diligent practice of an unbelief which strengthens itself with all the maxims of sense and selfishness and worldly calculation. In Lot we have to recognize now this utter prostration of faith in a believer.

" And it came to pass, when they had brought him forth abroad, that he said, ' Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.

" And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord; behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy which thou hast shown me in saving my life; and I can-not escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die:behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one:oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one ?) and my soul shall live!' "

How many prayers does not unbelief dictate! and how plainly does it characterize this prayer throughout! He owns a mercy he yet dare not trust; asks God for Zoar as a little city, that He might spare as such; and for his own good, not the human lives that were involved. How base is unbelief! How wonderful the goodness that, at such intercession, could spare Zoar!

But for Lot there is no revival. His wife's end follows, involved in the destruction of from which she had never really separated. Then he leaves Zoar, haunted still by the unbelieving fear which had taken him there at first. Finally, he is involved in the infamy of his own children, and his death is unrecorded:he had died before.

Thus far, if the anchorage be lost, may the vessel drift. And this is what the Spirit of God has put before us as the contrasted alternative with the life of faith in Abraham. Let us remember that the grossness of the outward history here may have its representative before God in what to mere human eyes may appear as correct as can be. God knoweth the heart. Blessed be His name, He has shown us also what is on His own.

"Behold a pilgrim journeying on,
Through the maze of earth;
His staff his prop to lean upon,-
Unknown his place of birth;
Ask whence the smiles you see him wear:-
"The secret of the Lord" is there!

Behold the traveler on his way,
Eyeing each scene around;
Deaf to each voice that bids him stay,-
East speeding o'er the ground;
Ask what his errand is-and where:-
"The secret of the Lord" is there!

View him beset by beasts of prey,-
Aloof from human aid;
See, at his feet they prostrate lay!-
How was the conquest made?
And why no look of fright or care?
"The secret of the Lord" is there!

Behold him weary, sick, and poor,
Yet pressing onward still;
Each trial patiently endure,
And gain each toilsome hill;
Bid him his source of strength declare:
"The secret of the Lord" is there!

Tell him the few he used to meet,-
Dearer than aught below,-
Have gathered up their wearied feet,
And quitted life's frail show;
Ask whence his calm and chastened air:-
"The secret of the Lord" is there!

Go, see him on the dying bed,-
Witness his gasping breath;
He talks of blond on Calvary shed,
And says, " How sweet is death!"
Bestows his blessing, mounts-oh, where
"The secret of the Lord" is there!

He [the Lord] is the first-born of all creation:this is a relative name, not one of date with regard to time. It is said of Solomon, " I will make him My first-born, higher than the kings of the earth." Thus the Creator, when He takes a place in creation, is necessarily its Head. He has not yet made good His rights, because in grace He would accomplish redemption. We are speaking of His rights-rights which faith recognizes. He is then the image of the invisible God ; and, when He takes His place in it, the first-born of all creation. The reason of this is worthy of our attention-simple, yet marvelous:He created it. It was in the person of the Son that God acted, when by His power He created all things, whether in heaven or in the earth, visible and invisible. All that is great and exalted is but the work of His hand ; all has been created by Him (the Son) and for Him. Thus, when He takes possession of it, He takes it as His inheritance by right. Wonderful truth, that He who has redeemed us, who made Himself man- one of us-in order to do so, is the Creator! But such is the truth.-(Synopsis.)

We now come to the types of redemption, the recognized theme of the book of Exodus. That it is related to atonement in the most intimate way is evident; for if atonement is by blood, so is redemption. They are nevertheless different thoughts; and their difference, as well as their relation to each other needs to be considered.

Redemption implies purchase-price in some way paid, as the Greek words for it especially show;* although it is far removed from mere purchase, with which it is, in many minds, as in some creeds, confounded. *Lutrosis and apolutrosis, and the verb lutroo, all from lutron a ransom price; with exagorazo, to buy out.* Two things are implied beyond purchase:deliverance from alien possession, and that as an object of special interest to the redeemer. Even where the redemption is by power, as often in Scripture, it is implied that there is cost, if only of labor, effort, or peril incurred. We see at once that the first promise is a promise of redemption:the woman's Seed the Redeemer; the redemption itself by power from the serpent; the bruised heel the personal cost incurred. Yet this bruised heel, as has been shown, is, in another aspect of it, atonement; and the word kopher, in Hebrew, stands for both. The atonement is the ransom-the price of redemption. The difference between the two thoughts is plainly this:that atonement has in view the divine righteousness; redemption, the divine pity and love :atonement has respect to guilt; redemption, to degradation and misery. But the two connect here, that in the provision of atonement is seen the love of the Redeemer; in the nature of the ransom, the righteousness of the Judge, become thus the Justifier. Atonement and ransom are two different aspects of the same blessed work. Thus it is evident why the epistle to the Romans, which dwells on the reality of atonement, has for its key-note the righteousness of God; while we are " justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." (Chap. 3:24.)

In the book of redemption, then, we would expect to find atonement a central figure, as indeed we do; and yet not to find so much its intrinsic character dwelt upon as its delivering power for those in whose behalf it is accomplished ;-that is to say, its manward rather than its Godward aspect. And this is how, exactly, the passover and the deliverance at the Red Sea present it to us. We must wait for Leviticus to realize in the sanctuary with God its full character for Him. Peace and deliverance must be first known and enjoyed before we are competent, and " at leisure from ourselves," to enjoy the manifestation.

Another thing that will help our apprehension of the types before us is to connect them with the epistle to the Romans, in which we find their real interpretation. Most evidently, the theme of Romans is the gospel salvation; and this also the types of Exodus show forth. In both, the deliverance is in two parts, or stages,-the first part having respect to the judgment of God; the second, to the bondage of one who reigns unto death. In the first, moreover, it is the blood that shelters; in the second, a passage through death (which the sea figures) by which we escape from the captivity in which we were enslaved.

The detail is of surpassing interest; and though a tale often told, it will bear retelling. Our present object requires the main points at least to be brought out, as we shall find in it a material development of the doctrine of atonement, as far as concerns its application to the need of the soul.

We must remember, as we consider them, that these are types of experience,-of realization and attainment,-as the salvation which the gospel brings is a known and enjoyed blessing,"the righteousness of God revealed to faith." The knowledge of shelter under the blood of the Lamb may long precede the knowledge of a new ground before God in Christ gone up from the dead to His place in the heavens. Blessed be God, the possession of the place does not depend upon the apprehension of it:it is ours before we can apprehend it to be ours. But let us remember, then, that we have here an order of apprehension which does not involve a corresponding order of possession.

Taking, now, Romans to interpret to us Exodus, Egypt is the world of nature, in which our standing is " in the flesh," and in which sin reigns over us unto death, as Pharaoh over Israel. It is a condition not realized as bondage until God works in the soul, but then an increasingly bitter one. Then the "law of sin" becomes a "law of death" also, and the soul groans for deliverance:this deliverance God's hand can alone accomplish.

And God's way is not as our way, nor His thought as our thought. Our way is, by the strength He gives, to deliver ourselves from the law of sin within us, and then to meet God, not as sinners, but as saints, and to find Him for us thus, accepting through Christ our imperfect obedience, and putting away our failures for His sake:God's way is to deliver us Himself, not by our own efforts blest of Him, but, first, meeting us as sinners and justifying us as ungodly by Christ's death for such.

Israel remain, subject to their old master, and not the first step taken of a walk with God, until they have learned that the judgment of God under which they lie in common with the Egyptians themselves is over, and they are safe,-saved by the blood of the lamb. The first passover is kept in Egypt, their journey not yet begun; but they eat it with girded loins and shod feet and ready staves, for that night they are to begin to go out.

They go out with judgment passed over and behind them; for us the wrath to come anticipated by faith and met in the cross, as we have already seen illustrated in the eight saved in the ark from the judgment of the flood. Israel start, "justified " instrumentally "by faith"-the faith by which they took refuge under the sheltered blood; "justified" effectively "by blood," which God saw, and passed over their houses. The blood declared the death inflicted upon the substitute:a penalty which in its very nature (as we have already seen) set the one for whom it was undergone outside the sphere of natural responsibility for evermore. Therefore says the apostle, " Much more, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him."

For the death threatened we here find plainly judicial; a death which, if it end not the existence of the one under it, (as with man it does not,) involves in the shadow of it all that after-state. Such indeed had death been in its real nature, apart from the mercy of God from the beginning; yet in fact the first death on earth had been that of one pronounced righteous-"righteous Abel." Here, and in the flood, it was a death impossible to be confounded with this,-a strictly penal death. And this taken, the shadow of it also is removed. This too the "blood" implies:blood shed, not in martyrdom, as Abel's, but by direct command of God, in exaction of penalty. How surely, then, "being now justified by His blood" insures our being " saved from wrath through Him "! All is settled,-completely, finally settled, according to the type here and the apostle's argument, when we begin to start on our path with God.

Settled forever Godward, but not yet are we outside the enemy's jurisdiction. But his power is apparently broken, and God Himself is with us. From this point, and before the sea is reached, "the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:He took not away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people."

This complete settlement is given to their apprehension in the feeding upon the lamb within the house. It is such an obvious type, that it needs no insisting on. Death here, as had been permitted, significantly, since the flood, becomes the food of life. But it is marked in this case, that the lamb must be, " not sodden in water," (or rather, boiled)

But the passage through the sea does not land us in Canaan, as the doctrine of Romans does not put us in the heavenly places. We must for this add Joshua to Exodus, and Ephesians to Romans. We thus find that the passage through the flood has been divided into two for us, each part expanded and amplified, that we may the better view it. Here we pass over much of this, for our object is one precious truth, central indeed in doctrine, as the fact in divine history. May its contemplation grave it upon our hearts so as to enable us to say with the apostle, " God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Q. 9.-Does Romans 7:8-11 give the experience of an unconverted man, whose conscience has, however, been awakened in presence of the law ?

A. No, but rather the experience which is worked out in detail from the fourteenth verse. We only learn what death is after we have come to live.

Q. 10.-Will you explain Romans 8:10 ?

A "The body is dead is dead because of sin:" does not receive the spiritual life which the man himself does. Faith and sense (the body), as tendencies, are opposed; faith having to do with things unseen. This life of faith which the Spirit produces and sustains is the only thing which produces practical righteousness, or is really, therefore, "life."

Q. 11.-John 6:56?

A. "Dwelleth in Me, and I in him" is the same expression as chap. 15:4,5, and applied by the Lord to Himself and the Father (ch. 14:10.). If the branch abides in the vine really, the sap, which is the vine in its living power (comp. 1 Jno. 3:15.), abides in the branch. This vital participation in Christ manifests itself actively as a life of dependence and communion, in which Christ is the sustenance of the soul; and Christ dead for us, His flesh and His blood apart.

Q. 12.-Leviticus 7:26, 27?

A. The prohibition of eating blood is explained in chap. 17:10-12 to be because it is the practical life of all flesh, given on the altar in atonement. God was thus to be owned as the sole and sovereign Disposer of it, and as the One who had provided ill grace the forfeit incurred by man. The decision in Acts 15:29 shows that we are bound by the terms of the Noachian covenant. Spiritually, we do drink the blood; entering by faith into the value of the atonement.

Q. 13.-In John 3:8, have we how a man is born again, or what? A. First, that he is born by the sovereign power of God, uncontrollable as the wind; secondly, that there is evidence-fruit of the Spirit,-as of where the wind is. " So " is every one that is born of the Spirit-1:e., this is the way with him.

Q. 14.-In 1 Timothy 2:15, is the " salvation " here deliverance from death ?

A. " She shall be delivered in the hour of her trial:that which bears the stamp of judgment shall be an occasion of the mercy and succor of God." (Synopsis.)

15.-The anointing with oil in James 5:14 is certainly not medical treatment, but a type and sign of the presence and power of the Spirit to heal.

We cannot but feel deeply for our children growing up in such an atmosphere as that which at present surrounds us, and which will become yet darker and darker. We long to see more earnestness on the part of Christians in seeking to store the minds of the young with the precious and soul-saving knowledge of the Word of God. The child Josiah and the child Timothy should incite us to greater diligence in the instruction of the young, whether in the bosom of the family, in the Sunday-school, or in any way we can reach them. It will not do for us to fold our arms and say, " When God's time comes our children will be converted; and till then, our efforts are useless." This is a fatal mistake. " God is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." (Heb. 11:) He blesses our prayerful efforts in the instruction of our children. And further, who can estimate the blessing of being early led in the right way and having the character formed amid holy influences and the mind stored with what is true and pure and lovely? On the other hand, who will undertake to set forth the evil consequences of allowing our children to grow up in ignorance of divine things? Who can portray the evils of a polluted imagination-of a mind stored with vanity, folly, and falsehood-of a heart familiarized, from infancy, with scenes of moral degradation? We do not hesitate to say that Christians incur very heavy and awful responsibility in allowing the enemy to preoccupy the minds of their children at the very period when they are most plastic and susceptible.

True, there must be the quickening power of the Holy Ghost. It is as true of the children of Christians as of any other, that they "must be born again." We all understand this; but does this fact touch the question of our responsibility in reference to our children ? is it to cripple our energies or hinder our earnest efforts? Assuredly not. We are called upon, by every argument, divine and human, to shield our precious little ones from every evil influence, and to train them in that which is holy and good.-(Ibid.)

In contemplating the present condition of the professing church, we may discern two very distinct classes. In the first place, there are those who are seeking unity on false grounds; and secondly, those who are seeking it on the ground laid down in the New Testament. This latter is distinctly a spiritual, living, divine unity, and stands out in vivid contrast with all the forms of unity which man has attempted, whether it be national, ecclesiastical, ceremonial, or doctrinal. The Church of God is not a nation, not an ecclesiastical or political system; it is a body united to its divine Head in heaven; by the presence of the Holy Ghost. This is what it was, and this is what it is. " There is one body and one Spirit." This remains unalterably true. It holds good now just as much as when the inspired apostle penned Ephesians 4:Hence any thing that tends to interfere with or mar this truth must be wrong, and we are bound to stand apart from it and testify against it. To seek to unite Christians on any other ground than the unity of the body, is manifestly opposed to the revealed mind of God. It may seem very attractive, very desirable, very reasonable, right, and expedient; but it is contrary to God, and this should be enough for us. God's Word speaks only of the unity of the body and the unity of the Spirit. It recognizes no other unity; neither should we.

The Church of God is one, though consisting of many members. It is not local, or geographical; it is corporate. All the members have a double responsibility;-they are responsible to the Head, and they are responsible to one another. It is utterly impossible to ignore this responsibility. Men may seek to shirk it; they may deny it; they may assert their individual rights, and act according to their own reason, judgment, or will; but they cannot get rid of the responsibility founded upon the fact of the one compact body. They have to do with the Head in heaven and with the members on earth. They stand in this double relationship-they were incorporated there into by the Holy Ghost, and to deny it is to deny their very spiritual existence. It is founded in life, formed by the Spirit, and taught and maintained in the holy Scriptures. There is no such thing as independency. Christians cannot view themselves as mere individuals-as isolated atoms. " We are members one of another." This is as true as that " we are justified by faith." No doubt there is a sense in which we are individual:we are individual in our repentance, individual in our faith, individual in our justification, individual in our walk with God and in our service to Christ, individual in our rewards for service (for each one shall get a white stone, and a new name engraved thereon known only to himself). All this is quite true, but it in no wise touches the other grand practical truth of our union with the Head above and with each and all of the members below.

And we would here call the reader's attention to two very distinct lines of truth flowing out of two distinct titles of our blessed Lord, namely, Headship and Lordship. He is Head of His body the Church, and He is Lord of all-Lord of each. Now, when we think of Christ as Lord, we are reminded of our individual responsibility to Him, in the wide range of service to which He, in His sovereignty, has graciously called us. Our reference must be to Him in all things. All our actings, all our movements, all our arrangements, must be placed under the commanding influence of that weighty sentence (often, alas! lightly spoken and penned), " If the Lord will." And, moreover, no one has any right to thrust himself in between the conscience of a servant and the commandment of his Lord. All this is divinely true, and of the very highest importance. The Lordship of Christ is a truth the value of which cannot possibly be overestimated.

But we must bear in mind that Christ is Head as well as Lord. He is Head of a body as well as Lord of individuals. These things must not be confounded We are not to hold the truth of Christ's Lordship in such a way as to interfere with the truth of His Headship. If we merely think of Christ as Lord, and ourselves as individuals responsible to Him, then we shall ignore His Headship, and lose sight of our responsibility to every member of that body of which He is Head. We must jealously watch against this. We can m a look at ourselves as isolated independent atoms:we think of Christ as Head, then we must think of all His members, and this opens up a wide range of practical truth. We have holy duties to discharge to our fellow-members as well as to our Lord and Master, and we may rest assured that no one walking in communion with Christ can ever lose sight of the grand fact of his relationship to every member of His body.-(In "Life and Times of Josiah")
C.H.M.

If I have asked any thing of God and received His answer, I then act with assurance, with the conviction that I am in the path of His will:I am happy and satisfied. If I meet with a difficulty, it does not stop me; it is only an obstacle for faith to overcome.

But if I have not this assurance, I am uncertain, and know not what to do. May be it is a trial for my faith, or may be a direction which tells me not to do what I am doing. I am in suspense, I hesitate. Even if I do the will of God, I am not sure as to that will, and I am not happy. I have need, therefore, of being assured that it is the will of God before I begin to act.

Let us notice, in passing, that God disposes all, according to the desire of Eliezer; and this will necessarily be the case with them who find their joy in the Lord. All the wheels of the providence of God will move in the course of His will which I am doing. The Holy Spirit, by His Word, gives me the will of God. That is all I need. God will I see that every thing contributes to the accomplishment of His will. If, through spiritual intelligence, we walk with God, He helps us in the accomplishment of His will and purposes. We have need of this spiritual discernment, that we may abound in all wisdom and spiritual intelligence. " If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light." (Matt, 6:) I cannot tell where this will lead me, but this is the step I have now to take in the path I am called to tread.

The servant of Abraham came into the house. " And there was set meat before him to eat; but he said, 'I will not eat until I have told mine errand;' and Laban said, 'Speak on.'" What firmness of character there is with the servant! Look at the man who is not decided:he consults with this one and with that one when it is a question of knowing how he is to act; and even when he desires to do his own will, he will seek the counsel of those who have less faith than himself. Paul advised not with flesh and blood. (Gal. 1:) He saw it was Christ calling him, and he went ahead.

Eliezer, occupied with his mission, does not accept the food presented him. He does what he has to do. One of the secrets of the Christian's life, as soon as he knows the will of God, is to do it, to occupy himself with his work, to allow nothing to interpose, not even the question of the needs of his body. That is the effect and the sign of the work of the Spirit. Eliezer must attend to his mission.

And what was in question? The interests and the honor of Abraham his master. Abraham had intrusted him with the interests of his son Isaac, and God has intrusted us, here below, with the glory of His Son Jesus; and that glory occupies us by the Holy Spirit given us-that is, where the eye is single and there is a spiritual discernment according to the place God has set us in. If we are there, there will be no hesitation; being in our place, we will act freely and with joy.

If I think of my convenience, of my interests, of what concerns me, of my family, (and there are a thousand things contrary to prompt obedience,) it is advising with flesh and blood; but if I ask, What are the interests of Christ, the thing is clear at once. If I think of any other thing, whatever it be, I have not at heart that glory intrusted to me, and I have not confidence in Him who put me there. (Translated from the French of J.N.D.) J.N.D.

Christ, "Leader and Finisher of faith," the Shepherd going before the sheep, Jehovah His Lord and satisfying portion, the saints His delight,

Michtam of David.

Preserve Me, O God, for in Thee have I taken refuge.

2. I have said unto Jehovah,"Thou art the Lord:My goodness adds not to Thee;

3. " [It is] for the saints which are upon the earth, and the excellent, in whom is all My delight."
4. Their sorrows shall be multiplied who have run after another; their drink-offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take their names upon My lips.

5. Jehovah is the measure of My portion and My cup; Thou maintainest My lot.

6. The lines are fallen unto Me in pleasant places; yea, fair is My inheritance to Me.

7. I have set Jehovah before Me continually:because He is at My right hand, I am not moved.

8. I bless Jehovah, who giveth Me counsel; yea, by night My reins detain Me.

9 Wherefore My heart hath rejoiced, and My glory exalteth; yea, My flesh shall rest in confidence;

10. For Thou wilt not leave My soul in hades; Thou wilt not give Thy godly one to see corruption.

11. Thou wilt show Me the path of life; fullness of joys in Thy presence; pleasures at Thy right hand for evermore.

Text.-Title, "Michtam:" probably a "golden" psalm, from kethem, " gold."

(1) "God:" El, the "Mighty."

(2) This and the following verse are very variously translated. They are a pregnant illustration of the fact that a knowledge of what is in the mind of the Spirit is of value far beyond mere critical acumen. If we see David here only or principally, the difficulty of consistent rendering is very great (as see Moll in Lange's Commentary).It is Christ seen prophetically taking His place as man upon earth, subject to Jehovah as His Lord, and recognizing creature-nothingness before Him, yet a goodness which avails in behalf of the saints, in whom His delight is.

"I have said:" so the Sept., Pesh., and Vulg., with most modern commentators, taking it as a defective form, which is found in the later Aramaic. It seems preferable to assuming an address to the soul, with the Rabbins and the A. V.

"The Lord," confessedly the ordinary word for this,-Adonai. There is no need for "My," which takes from the force.

"My goodness (lit.) is not [al] additional to Thee." Most translators say, "My good," in the sense "I have no good in addition to Thee." But this is only what we find in verse 5, and effaces an important thought.

(8) " [It is] for the saints." This is only a slight change from the A. V. A common sense of I' with the verb "to be" (often understood) is "belonging to;" and so many understand it here. We cannot join it with the previous "I have said," as many suggest, because the construct form addirei, the "excellent," requires us to say "in whom" rather than "in them." Nor will the critics allow "as for them." It seems to me that the third verse is said to Jehovah as well as the second.

(8) "Detain:" literally, "bind me." It is often used in the sense of admonishing, correcting, but not necessarily.

Connections.-(4) To understand this we must see the Lord's position as the ideal Israel before God according to Isaiah 49:1-6 and Matthew 2:15 comp. with Hosea 11:1. God's great contention with them all through was on account of their idolatry. And though that unclean spirit had gone out when the Lord was on earth, it will return as He warned them. (Matt. 12:

Christ amongst the people; in His life and sacrificial work, the basis of all their blessing.

(1) Psalms 16:-24:-A Messianic group of nine psalms in three smaller ones of three psalms each, making the divine number very prominent in them.

1. 16:-18:-Christ seen as man, perfect in the path of faith and obedience; identifying Himself with the people, and identified with them by God.

2. 19:-21:-The godly by faith owning and identifying themselves with Him; the nineteenth psalm giving the previous and prefatory testimonies of creation and the law.

3. 22:-24:-The actual atoning work, and in its results in grace, present and final.

(2) Psalms 25:-39:- A group of fifteen remnant-psalms, the human (5) multiplied by the divine (3) number. These actually divide into three series of five psalms each. The grace now apprehended gives necessarily a new character to the experience here. The first series,-

1. 25:-xxix, gives the ground of the soul's confidence in God;

2. 30:-xxxiv, the joyful certainty therefore that, whatever the circumstances, God is for His saints; while-

3. 35:-39:shows the government of God over the righteous and the wicked, what is wrath for the latter becoming a holy discipline for the former.

(3) Psalms 40:and 41:-Two final psalms, give the perfection of holy obedience in Christ seen in the suffering of the cross, with the effect of unbelief or faith in Him.

Series I.-First Three.

There were three men in Old-Testament times with whom it pleased God specially to connect Himself. To Moses He declares Himself as " Jehovah, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," – and adds, " This is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations." (Ex. 3:15.)

Christians accordingly have been accustomed to trace in Isaac some of the lineaments of the Son of God, the Saviour. In Jacob, whose divinely given name is Israel, we may find no less, I believe, the Spirit of God; not personally, but in His work in man. While Abraham, at least in the memorable scene before us, (but elsewhere too, assuredly,) presents to us the Father. In His connection with these three men, then, God had already, ages before Christianity, foreshadowed its precious revelations.

In the history recorded in the twenty-second of Genesis, the apostle's words to the Galatians at least give us the hint of Isaac's presenting to us that greater Seed of Abraham, to whom God was in fact confirming His promise there. (Galatians 3:17 should read, "to Christ") And this is made clearer by what he states in Hebrews 11:19 – that Abraham received his son back, " in a figure," from the dead. It is in Christ risen from the dead that all nations of the earth shall be blessed indeed. This view of Isaac all his history confirms; but here is not the place to speak of it. Our purpose is to mark only what fresh features of atonement are given us in Isaac's offering, looked at as a type.

And here, the thing which we should first notice is, that here God Himself suggests a human offering. It has startled us all, I suppose, that He could do this; but we have only to connect it as a type with its antitype to see how gracious, in fact, this announcement was. Isaac did not, and was never meant to, suffer; but Another, in due time, was to take this place, and find no release from it, as he did. How the reality of what sacrifice pointed to bursts almost through the vail of figure here! Was it thus indeed that, as the Lord says, Abraham rejoiced to see His day; and saw it, and was glad? The bruised heel of the woman's Seed was in his mind assuredly. The Sufferer-Conqueror, acceptance by sacrifice, the blessing of all nations through his Seed, could but unite themselves with this suggested human offering, which was not Isaac, to give indeed a prospect full of joy, the deeper for its solemnity, to his believing heart.

The true Sacrifice was to be a human one, then. Man for men was to suffer and die; yet to be Conqueror in man's behalf over the serpent,-death only to Him the bruising of the heel. How this wrought in Abraham's mind we seem to see in what we know by the apostle's words was in it. A heel bruised is not fatal:death to the Conqueror here is not fatal. Isaac, the heir of the promises, must be offered up; and how then could these promises be fulfilled to him? In resurrection, answers faith, in Abraham's soul. " And he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, that in Isaac shall thy seed be called:accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure."

Only a figure, for Isaac does not really die:but if here is figured resurrection, it is the " Seed of the woman" surely (Abraham's true Seed also) that is to rise again; and in resurrection all promises are secured and fulfilled. Thus the Ark of salvation passes through the water-floods into the new scene of covenanted blessing, and thus we find our promised rest.
Is it strange to read, then, of Abraham and his immediate descendants, that "these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth " ?

But this offering of Isaac, seen in this manner, has a yet deeper significance. It is a father's offering of his son,-yea, as the apostle says, (for Ishmael has no place here,) of " his only begotten son." Here we can no longer speak of what Abraham's faith realized. For us, however, the type only becomes the clearer. If it is a man who offers himself, it is God who gives His only begotten Son. Isaac is here the example of perfect submission to the will of his father,-one with the will of God Himself. He but asks the question, as he bears the wood of the offering to the place of sacrifice, " Behold, here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?" Abraham answers, " My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering." And Isaac asks no more; but, in the vigor of his young manhood, silently surrenders himself, lamb like, to be bound and placed upon the altar. The voluntary character of the offering is here apparent, beyond what its being of the flock or herd implies.

But it is of the father that we think most. It is as Abraham's trial that Scripture presents it:" it came to pass that God did tempt Abraham." Point by point, the severity of the trial is brought out. "Take now thy son,-thine only son,-Isaac" (that is, "laughter:" for "Sarah said, 'God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear it will laugh with me;' ")-" whom thou lovest;-and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." He carries this three days in his breast, that it may be, not hasty impulse, but deliberate obedience. God knew His man; the man, too, knew his God. Promptly, " early in the morning," he starts, and in due time is there with unflagging steps, and faith in Him whom in his own body he has learned as " Quickener of the dead:" "I and the lad," he says to his young men, "will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." All the while that he spoke so bravely, what was the strain on the father's heart? " Now I know," says He who understood it all,- "Now I know that thou fearest God; seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me."

But how wonderful to realize all this trial of a father's love in connection with a type of atonement! the pain and stress of it dwelt upon as if to make our human affections illustrate that amazing statement, that God "spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." What a proof of infinite love is here! The Seed of a woman, the Victor in the conflict with the serpent, the willing Sacrifice for men's sins, is the Son of God sent of the Father to fulfill His will, and declare at once His holiness and His love. It is God Himself who in the manhood He has taken has acquired capacity to suffer and to die for man. He whose righteousness requires has Himself in love provided the atonement; humbling Himself to human weakness, suffering, and death. And we are not only brought to God in the value of so great a work, but know Him to whom we are brought as told out in the unspeakable gift of His Beloved, His only begotten Son.

Genesis thus, at the very beginning of Scripture, presents us with almost a full outline of the atoning work. Many are the important details yet to be filled in; but we have already certain fixed points which the fully developed doctrine will maintain and justify, not remove.

Atonement is by substitution; and in death, not life.

But death is the removal of the one who dies out of the sphere of his natural responsibility as a creature. Judgment is for the " deeds done in the body" only; if this also be borne substitutionally (and this is the "copher " of the ark:"atonement " which is something outside of and beyond death), then we are completely "covered;" sin completely removed from us before God.

But the substitution is not only of one perfect in the creature's place assumed, but infinitely more:it is the Eternal Son of the Father who, become man, makes this atonement. Hence the value of it is not to put us back into the old condition from which we fell, but to put us into a new condition altogether. The Second Man. risen from the dead, becomes the last Adam, Head of a new creation, Mountain of life for His people in a new power and blessedness. Upon those, partakers of His eternal life, death (but no longer a penalty) may be in the meantime allowed to pass; only until the time of reconstruction, which shall make them fully what (as man) He is.

This is man's side of the atonement; but God is glorified in it,-His righteousness vindicated, His truth maintained, His love revealed. We are brought, to God, know Him, and have our happy place as identified with the bright display of all He is. Good has indeed triumphed over evil, and it is the Seed of the woman who has bruised the serpent's head.

Abraham.

Circumcision known, we find in the next chapter God in communion with Abraham (now indeed Abraham) after a manner never before enjoyed. The Lord not only comes or appears to him, but openly associates Himself with him as with one of whom He is not ashamed. No one can doubt, that looks at it, the suggestive contrast with the next chapter, in which Lot for the last time comes before us, the very type of one " saved so as through the fire." This has been seen by others, but the more we look at it, the more striking and instructive will it be found. I shall dwell at more length than I have usually permitted myself upon lessons of such intense and practical interest as are those which God in His mercy has here given us.

It should be evident that the foundation of all this contrast expresses itself in the different position of these two men-the one, in the door of his tent at Mamre; the other, in the gate of Sodom. In the one, we see still the persistent pilgrim; in the other, one who has been untrue to his pilgrim-ship, and is settled down amid the pollutions of a sinful world. Striking it is, and most important to remember, that he is a " righteous man," expressly declared "so by the word of inspiration:"That righteous man, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their ungodly deeds." He is thus an example of how " the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." (2 Pet. 2:7,9.) This is a complete contrast with the way in which the book of Genesis represents him. I need scarcely say, there is no contradiction; and the contrast itself is a very beautiful instance of the style of Scripture. In the actual narrative he is spoken of as one of whom God is ashamed:" And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in the midst of which Lot dwelt." Lot has been under the cover, and God must use the cover toward him. He is the God of Abraham; how could He call Himself the God of Lot? How solemn this treatment of one of His own! Reader, how is it with you this moment as before God? Is He confessing, or denying you ? This is not a question which you can turn off by saying, I am a Christian. It is on that very ground that it appeals to you.

In the history, then, we find God making Himself strange to Lot. This was what His governmental ways required-the discipline that the need of his soul called for at the time. The need past and gone, as He looks back upon that history now, He can pick out of it the good He had marked all through, and say how precious to Him, even in a Lot, was the trouble of soul which the iniquity of Sodom gave him. Such is our God! such is His holiness, and such His grace!

But then how clear this makes it that it was not because Lot had taken part in the wickedness of Sodom that the Lord was thus displeased! It was simply on account of his being there, even as of Abraham that tent-life of his is marked out for His special approval:" By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise …. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. …. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God ; for He hath prepared for them a city." (Heb. 11:9, 13, 16.)

Thus, then, we are right in saying that the tent at Mamre and the gate of Sodom are characteristic and contrasted things. Faith, looking for a city which hath foundations, is content to scratch the earth with a tent-pole merely. This was Abraham's place, pattern as he is, and father of all them that believe; and God comes to commune with him, in the broad open day-" in the heat of the day."

The style of His coming is as noticeable as all else:there is no distance, there is intimacy:it is three men who come; in fact, two angels, and One before whom the angels vail their faces. But they come as men, and keep this place-the more strikingly, because in the next chapter we find those who had left Abraham still as two men appear in Sodom explicitly as angels. Clearly, this difference has meaning in it. How sweet a foreshadowing of what in due time was to take place-the tabernacling in flesh of Him in whom faith realizes the glory of Immanuel, now no more to faith a Visitant merely.

And Abraham's practiced heart knew under all disguises Him who stood there. We learn this plainly from the first words with which he welcomes One whom yet in this garb he has never seen before. " Lord," he says, distinguishing Him by a title only given to God, " if now I have found favor in Thy sight, pass not away, I pray Thee, from Thy servant:let a little water, I pray you be fetched you and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree:and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on :for therefore are ye come unto your servant."

The faith that recognizes, entertains in the same simplicity Him whom it recognizes. There is none of the unbelieving cry so often heard, " We have seen God, and we shall die." In beautiful confidence of faith, he meets Him who has come to him as man, and as man gives Him human welcome. If He stoop to come so, he will not say, " That be far from Thee, Lord," but receive Him as He comes, putting undoubtedly before Him whatever he has, and being met with unhesitating acceptance. " He stood by them under the tree, and they did eat."

And do you, beloved reader, in the like unsuspicious way receive the grace which has now come to us in a Christ made fully known? or do you, alas! draw back from His approach, as if He knew not the full reality of the place which He has taken with us, or else the full reality of what. we are, among whom He has come ? I cannot find that Abraham even put his dress in order to appear before the Lord Almighty. His best and his worst were not so far apart as to make him think of it. There was no preparation of himself to appear before Him who knew him through and through. Just as he was, whatever he was, the love that met him was worthy of reception, then and there:all the sweeter and more wonderful the more he was unworthy.

But in fact, if we translate these figures, Abraham has that which may well, wherever He finds it, bring the Lord in to have communion with us. These "three measures of fine meal," and this "calf, tender and good:" do you not recognize them ? Surely wherever such food is found there will still be found the Lord in company. It is Christ of whom these things speak, and occupation with Christ is still the essential and only prerequisite for communion. It is when the apostle has introduced to us, in just such nearness as was Abraham's here, that eternal life which was with the Father, and heard, seen, looked upon, and handled with the hands among us here, that he says, " That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye may have fellowship with us," and then he adds, " and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ."

If, then, our souls lack fellowship,-if we are out of communion,-ought we not to ask ourselves if the great primary lack be not of occupation with Christ? Other things, no doubt, will enter in where this is absent, and we shall not be able to return to feed on Him until these things be judged and removed. But here is the first point of departure, as with Israel the turning from the manna.

Abraham's tent is provided, then, with that with which he entertains a heavenly guest. First, the three measures of meal tell of Christ personally. The "meal" is not merely this:it is the "fine flour" of the meat-offering afterward, which we all know represents Him. It is Christ as man, the Bread of life, the food of His people. But what then are the "three measures"? What is the measure of the Man Christ Jesus ? Nothing less, surely, than this, that "in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." And is not this what the number three, the number of the Trinity -that is, of divine fullness, speaks?* *The same exactly as in the parable in Matthew 13:I cannot but understand, therefore, that it is Christ also that is represented there:it is the food of God's people which the professing church, having assumed the teacher's chair, is leavening with false doctrine.* The "calf," on the other hand,-not necessarily what this implies for us, but a young, fresh animal-no less clearly reminds us of Him who was the true and perfect Workman for God. And here that mystery, which we have before seen after the flood began to be pressed upon man, that life given up must sustain life, is once more told out.

In Scripture thus the person and work of Christ are kept ever together:it is not a work alone, but a living Person who has accomplished the work. Where we have Him before us really, communion with God there cannot but be. How sweet that thus, Lord's day by Lord's day at least, the bread and the wine are to be before us, to occupy our very hands and eyes-so busy with the things of time and sense as they are-with Him who claims the whole man for Himself,-that is, for fullest joy and blessing; that afresh and afresh He in His person and work may make communion with God our power to go though a world which has rejected Him.

And now Abraham is to receive the final message that the long-expected promise shall be fulfilled. Intimately connected, surely, with the scene before us (if we look through the figure to that of which it speaks,) is the birth of Isaac now announced. It was a "son born" that was to make Abraham's heart glad ("Isaac" means "laughter"), and we know of whom Isaac is the type. It is not of Christ come to dwell-no more to visit merely-that the figure speaks? Thus we have here what filled the apostle's heart so afterward for the Ephesians, and bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ:" That He would grant unto you, according to the riches of His glory, to be filled with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints the length and depth and breadth and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God."

But this we shall have to look at more in another place. We have now to see as the fulfillment and fruit of communion, the Lord disclosing to Abraham the doom of Sodom, now just ready to overwhelm her. How striking are the words in which He counsels with Himself as to this permitting us also to hear that counsel! "And the Lord said, ' Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? for I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham all that He hath spoken of him.'"

How beautiful this testimony to one who could be called " the friend of God! "How sweet the encouragement in maintaining in one's household an authority rapidly being given up in these days -an authority from God and for God! " He will command, . . . and they shall keep the way of the Lord." Do we not see the connection also between the man of God and the prophet? It was the constant title of these-:-men of God:Abraham too is called "a prophet." "And surely," says Amos, "the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets." To be with God is the way to penetrate the reality of things even of the world itself. And it is in this way that the book of Revelation addresses itself to Christ's servants, " to show unto them the things which must shortly come to pass."

How carefully and patiently God judges, moreover, as to Sodom,-no indifference, with all His apparent slowness! How that full oversight and patient judgment of every thing are affirmed! " And the Lord said, ' Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether -they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know.'"

"And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom; but Abraham stood yet before the Lord."

And now Abraham takes the place which it was surely one part of the design of this gracious communication to put him into-the place of intercession. For us whose characters are to be formed by the apprehension of Christ, and who know Him now as in this very place of intercession, how important it is to realize what is before us here! It is His people for whom the Holy Spirit intercedes below. Abraham's prayer too follows the same pattern:"And Abraham drew near and said,' Wilt Thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city, wilt Thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked; and that the righteous be as the wicked, that be far from Thee:shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'"

How strange the implied doubt here in Abraham's mind! What poor weak questions do not these minds of ours raise! An Abraham praying the Judge of all the earth to do right! Is it not a first principle that of course He must? How could he doubt? we say. Beloved, do we never? and how much more do we know of God than Abraham could do possibly! How large a portion of our prayers, if they were analyzed, would be resolved into this, the asking God to do right! Alas! what infidelity, even as to first principles, cleaves to us when we little suspect it! God will do right! Why, of course. Oh, but when every thing on earth seems as if it were going wrong,- when with Jacob we are tempted to say, "All these things are against us,"-when with Job we have to take our place upon the dust-heap, has there never the bitter question sprung up in our hearts, if it brake not the door of our lips,-do we never at least have to still our hearts with it,-" Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

But it is beautiful to see how Abraham flings it all out-doubt and all, casts it down before God. " Pour out your hearts before Him," says the Psalmist; " Be careful for nothing," adds the apostle ; " but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." In these very requests, what a multitude of things unworthy of Him! but He who has known them in the heart before would have us pour them out in His presence, and oh the relief that the heart gets so! How many of these workings of unbelief do the psalms thus give us! but they are poured out before God, and the soul stills itself in that blessed presence as no where else can it be stilled. What! we have been asking God if He is God! " O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted," peace! He is indeed the " God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

On the other hand, the intercession is right, and of God. He will do all things well. He will care for His saints whether we ask Him or not:Christ intercedes; could we add any thing to the efficacy of His intercession? is it not all-prevailing? does it not cover all? Yes, yes,-yes, He into whose hands God has given His people is surely the merciful and faithful High-Priest, never forgetting those whom He bears upon His breast before God. Yet none the less is it ours to pray "with all prayer and supplication for all saints." He has ordained, in His grace to us, that flow of abundant blessing which He pours out upon His people should flow, in part at least, through channels of our own providing. He has given us fellowship with Himself in His love and care for His people. How blessed this fellowship! Is it not, I ask again, in a peculiar way our privilege who are one with Him who as man has entered into the presence of God, and with whom we are one, surely not in position only, but in heart and spirit also ? Thus the Spirit maketh intercession for the saints according to God ; and in our hearts where this intercession is made, if there be prayer "in the Holy Ghost," it will still be " intercession for the saints:" not for me or mine (in the narrow human sense), not for individual saints dear to me merely ; not for sect or party ; but "for all saints"! O for more power for this broad and blessed outlook, with Christ for the whole field of those that are His! O for more ability to throw ourselves in with them into their joys, their sorrows, their cares, their exercises; to " bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ;" to realize our oneness with Him, as we take His own into our arms and hearts in real and hearty recognition of eternal kinship!

Sodom's judgment is indeed, alas! near at hand; and little does the proud and self-sufficient world dream, (just ready to throw off openly the rule of the ordained Ruler of the scene of His rejection,) that it is the " fifty righteous " that alone have suspended divine judgment hitherto. How solemn their condition for whom presently no prayer will any more avail!

There is no rebuke with God, but a full answer. " And the Lord said,' If I find fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sake.'" Abraham goes further. But it is not needful to go through the detail, so familiar as it is, of these requests which, pressed on and on, find nothing but acceptance from the patient goodness of God; until at last Abraham's faith fails, but not God's goodness:for we read that "it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in the midst of which Lot dwelt."

Q. 21.-Is there scripture for saying that the curse upon the ground was partially removed after the flood?

A. I think Lamech's prophecy in connection with Genesis 8:21, 22 would establish this. The words in the last verse seem hardly to refer wholly to the flood,-"I will not again curse, neither will I again smite," and this with direct reference to the regularity of the seasons. The last might refer to their necessary interruption by the deluge, but Lamech's words clearly go farther back.

Q. 22.-"Where is it that a woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered dishonoreth her head ?

A. Wherever it would be wrong for a man to cover his head it is right for a woman to cover hers. This is very simple in application.

We now come to a class of offerings distinguished broadly from those classed as " sweet-savor," by the fact of their being in no wise voluntary, but the specific requirement for actual sin. The burnt-offering and peace-offering both clearly recognized, of course, the condition of men as sinners. Apart from this, they had indeed no meaning. But in no case are these offered for specific acts of sin. In their case we find, " If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord;" in those now before us, " If a soul shall sin, he shall bring his offering."

The sin and trespass-offerings both speak of the judgment of sin, that judgment which is indeed no sweet savor to God, but His "strange work,"-not the delight of His love, but the necessity of His holiness. The sin-offering deals with sin in view of the divine nature; the trespass-offering, in view of the divine government. The words "sin" and "trespass" well convey this difference, the thought of restitution having a prominent place in the trespass-offering, as the sin-offering alone exhibits that necessary separation of God from sin which is at once the necessity of His nature, and its most awful punishment.

Yet it is striking that this, the most essential and characteristic feature, is only in fact found here in the sin-offering for the priest and for the congregation of Israel. In these cases alone do we read of the victim being burned without the camp, not upon the altar, the consecrated place, but in the outside place of the leper and unclean. It is to this the apostle refers in the last chapter of Hebrews, where he points out the absolute necessity of the Lord's taking such a place as is typified here in order to any true atonement:" For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate." It is a striking thing indeed that, of all the various sacrifices offered by the law, no blood but that of a sacrifice such as this should have power to penetrate into the sanctuary at all. The burnt-offering spoke of that which to God was precious beyond all else, but the blood was simply sprinkled round about upon the altar:the peace-offering spoke, according to its name, of peace made with God, and communion established between God and man, but here also the blood was only sprinkled on the altar round about; nay, there were various forms of the sin-offering itself where the effect was plainly stated to be to " make atonement for his sin " who brought it, but where, the body of the beast not being burned without the camp, the blood at the most anointed the horns of the altar of burnt-offering. Only in two cases, as I have already said, among the seven that are specified here, is that done in which alone lies the essence of true atonement.

This shows clearly in what manner we are to regard these other forms, namely, as lower grades, or less complete views of what only in its full completeness could satisfy God. In the lowest, indeed, they are plainly said to be provisions for the poverty of the offerer:" if he be not able to bring a lamb,"-"if he be not able to bring two turtle doves." In the case of the ruler, and in the first case of "one of the common people"-both, of course, on the footing of the Israelite simply,-it is or should be clear that they neither of them represent the place or the knowledge of the Christian; yet they are most instructive to us as enabling us to see just what is and what is not dependent upon clearness of knowledge upon a theme so all-important as is this. However, it will be all no doubt plainer as we look at the details of the type before us.

The first case, then, is that of the "anointed priest," clearly the high-priest, he who represents the whole people before God, the well-known figure of Christ Himself. Typically, this seems a departure from the usual order, for the offerer in other cases seems not to represent Christ, and this change must have a meaning. Naturally, we think of the day of atonement, where Aaron and his sons are distinguished in their offering from the people of Israel, and where we as Christians are represented in Aaron's house. In the offering of Leviticus iv, the high-priest stands alone; but the next offering, parallel in every particular to this one, is for the "whole congregation of Israel,"-those manifestly whom the high-priest represents:in the application must we not say, the Church? It is evident that this gives us two classes on essentially different footing,- those for whom the sanctuary is opened, and those who while accepted are outside worshipers.

But why, then, is Christ here first of all by Himself, and the people apart, and not rather, as in the day of atonement, the high-priest and his house, or Christ and His people together? It seems to me to bring out representation more clearly, but especially, as I think, makes way for a comparison with the two next offerings, where the ruler and one of the common people take the place of the priest and congregation, and the character of the whole is lowered.

The literal application supposes the sin of the high-priest himself, and his place as such secured, his incense altar anointed with the blood of the sin-offering. As a type, it is Christ confessing the sin of His people, and the place which through His offering He takes before God, He takes for them, and they in Him. Thus for the people the blood in the same way is sprinkled before the vail, and anoints the golden altar of incense.

It is here only that we find, as already stated, the burning of the victim without the camp, upon the ground also and not upon the altar. It is thus Christ made sin for us-not seen in the perfection of His person as in the burnt-offering, but identified with those for whom He had undertaken. No where but in this outside place could He reach the objects of His grace to bring them up out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay in. which they were hopelessly engulfed, and in which alone His feet could find footing. How important, then, to have a right apprehension of this essential feature of His wondrous work! Yet there are those among evangelical Christians so called who see no difference between the Lord's sufferings in life and those in His death,-between Gethsemane with its bloody sweat and the blood of the cross! They see not the contrast between a time of which He yet says, " I am not alone, for My Father is with Me " and that of His cry, " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The three hours' darkness while He hangs upon the tree is almost universally misinterpreted as the sympathy of Nature with her Head and Lord, whereas it is the manifest expression of the withdrawal of Him who is light, and finds, therefore, its true interpretation in that cry of forsaken sorrow.

We come, then, here for the first time to the full and undeniable type of wrath borne, and needed to be borne in order to atonement. The copher of the ark had hinted, as we have seen, at such necessity; but it only hinted. Now, the truth was plainly set forth. Every sacrifice had shown what is announced as a principle a little later, that, as the apostle says, " without shedding of blood is no remission."But here we see what blood alone could meet the atonement of righteousness upon the sinner. Not death merely, but death and after this the judgment, is man's doom. The full reality of sacrifice, of which each separate sacrifice was but a fragment, must meet both parts of this. The cross as death and as curse did this.
But how beautiful to see even in the sin-offering the type preserved of that inward perfection which was necessarily and ever God's delight and the basis of all the acceptability of it. Only He could be " made sin for us" who Himself " knew no sin." Accordingly the fat here, as in the case of the peace-offering, is put upon the altar, and in the case of one of the common people it is even said to be for a sweet savor. While this is not said with regard to the first two cases, the word used for the burning on the altar is the ordinary one for that, different from that employed for the burning of the victim on the ground outside the camp.

Wrath endured, the due of sin in its full measure reached, God can open the sanctuary, and give a place in His presence where in the complete security of the seven-times-sprinkled blood we can stand in unquestioned nearness, and the heart pour itself out in praise, the blood anointing the incense altar. For us the vail is rent, as we know, but as we do not find in the type before us:we have boldness to enter into the holiest itself.

Thus far the divine thought, the perfection of the offering. In the next two cases the whole character of it is lowered. We have now the ruler and one of the common people taking the place of the high-priest and congregation in the former two; the burning outside the camp is no longer found; and the blood of course does not enter the sanctuary at all, but is first put upon the horns of the altar of burnt-offering, and then poured out at the bottom of the altar.

All this speaks evidently of a lower grade. Whatever may be the difference of the offerer, and although this might account for the blood not being brought into the holy place, the apostle's words link these rather with the body of the victim not being burned without the camp; and of the absence of this who can find a reason thus? For the least as for the greatest atonement must be the same. It is clear, therefore, that we have in this only the sign of the commencement of a descending scale of offerings, in which we find the poverty and confusion of man's thoughts allowed to have their place, in order that on the one hand we may realize the consequence of falling short in the apprehension of divine grace, while on the other we learn that that grace will still manifest itself as such, and that God's actual acceptance of us is not measured, after all, by our apprehension of it, but by His own estimate of the value of the work of His beloved Son.

The goat here still speaks of substitution, of Christ in the sinner's place, for the Lord's own Use of it, as contrasted with the sheep in the picture in Matthew 25:assures us fully of this. But while seen as a substitute thus, what substitution implies and necessitates is not seen. The sin is none the less forgiven, but the offerer remains an outside worshiper merely. Christ is for him a " ruler " in the heavens, not a representative proper, as the priest is. He remains, as people say, " at the foot of the cross;" does not see that through the work of the cross Christ has entered heaven, and taken a place before God in which he as a believer stands. This is, alas! where the mass of so-called evangelical systems leave their adherents,-the Jewish place, clearly, for the standing of one of the common people of Israel is not even a type of ourselves. We are, as the apostle tells us, " a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."We therefore are brought nigh, and belong to the sanctuary as did Aaron's house,-with the unspeakable difference here also of the vail being rent:"Therefore," says another apostle, "having 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."
For the goat a lamb might be offered, and here we see again how a type higher in itself may give from its connection a lower because a less congruous thought. The latter speaks, as we know, of the personal perfection of Christ, but here it displaces the goat, so that the thought of real substitution is fading away:the ritual of the offering is otherwise the same.

In the next cases, however, the ritual itself is changed; for now we find first the trespass-offering . (which is nearest to the sin-offering), and then the burnt, and finally even the meat-offering introduced. The inability of the offerer is now, moreover, more distinctly recognized. It is plain, therefore, that the mention of the trespass-offering in this place does not imply, as some have imagined, that there is no essential difference between it and the sin-offering, or else it would prove the same for the others mentioned. There is a very marked and unmistakable difference. It is distinctly " his trespass-offering for his sin which he hath sinned … for a sin-offering." Even as a trespass-offering it has not its full character:it is a " lamb, or a kid of the goats," not a ram. I do not doubt that here we have the case of those who look at atonement as a mere provision of divine government instead of a necessity of the divine nature. It is one truth substituted for another, the less deep for the deeper; but of all this we shall have a more fitting place to speak.

The substitution of the burnt-offering, or its introduction rather into the ritual of the sin-offering, is remarkable, as it is distinctly a provision for poverty:"if his hand cannot reach to the sufficiency of a lamb;" and, moreover, the sin is called a " trespass," while here, again, the two turtle-doves or two young pigeons speak of what is highest in itself, lowest because of its incongruity, in fact the lowest type of the burnt-offering, as we have seen; for a sin-offering most incongruous of all.

Lastly, if he be not able to attain to this, even a meat-offering of fine flour is permitted, and here, although no blood at all is shed, it is distinctly offered and accepted as a sin-offering, and his sin is forgiven him just as before. How clearly and beautifully does the grace of God shine out in all this! If it be Christ trusted in view of sin, God knows the nature and sufficiency of His blessed work, and reckons the value of that work to the offerer, unknown though to him it be. It is a point which if seen aright will deliver us from much narrowness, and comfort us with the largeness of the grace of God.

It is evident to roe that sin in the nature as much as in the act is dealt with in the sin-offering. We must not be misled as to this by the consideration that it is only for actual sins that it is offered. The fruit manifests the tree, and it is in this sacrifice alone that we find the judgment of God taking effect upon the whole victim. The burnt-offering, although wholly burnt, does not in this give the type of wrath or condemnation, as we have seen, but the very opposite. The very word for the burning is different; it is sweet savor and nothing else. Here, on the contrary, judgment has its full course. This complete judgment of nature and practice alike is absolutely necessary, in order that the blood of propitiation may be able to enter the sanctuary.

"Be ye also patient; establish your hearts:for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." (Jas. 5:8.)

I thank Thee, O my gracious God,
For all Thy love to me,
As deep, as high, as long, as broad,
As Thine eternity.

And when I far from Thee did rove
In paths of sin and shame,
'Twas then Thou called me in Thy love, '
And gav'st me to the Lamb.

Oh, happy day when, drawn by love
To Thee, my Saviour-God,
My guilty conscience came to prove
The power of Jesus' blood!

And happier still Himself to know,-
The changeless One on high,
Whose love led Him to stoop so low
To suffer and to die.

Praise-praise to Thee, my God, I give,
Who gav'st Thy Son for me!
I'll render praises while I live,
And through eternity's.
J. W. S.

Christian, there is a power in you-the "Holy Ghost-which is ever ready to lift you up in soul to the heights whence He's come. But the way to it is the cross. If you have learned to glory only in the cross, you know that power and you know those heights. But beware lest power be your object, for if it is, a work is needed to be yet done in you which will make you not desire for power, but glory in the cross.

I Beseech you, carry about in your body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in you, as you pass through the world:not having a word to say for self, not coming with I, I; not wishing to become more worthy,-not I at all, but reckon yourself to be dead. Had not Paul thoroughly done with self when he could say, "Not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God"?

Our path through the desert is strewed with countless mercies, and yet let but a cloud the size of a man's hand appear on the horizon, and we at once forget the rich mercies of the past, in view of this single cloud, which, after all, may only "break in blessing's on our head."

"Why do believers go so heavily through the wilderness, going through the sand, and their feet sinking so heavily down in it? It is because they do not see that their acceptance with God is as perfect as that of Christ; God seeing all the beauty of Christ – upon them, and they will be presented by Christ to God, glorified with all His glory. I am on my road to glory, able to sing songs in the night."

"If Christ were to save me from the world and from Satan and not from self, what should I do? I have a self-will of my own. Christ must save us from self, and that is why we often get falls. Peter had a good opinion of himself, and the Lord let him alone. David was allowed to go down into the depths of evil, that he might learn how unlike he was to David's Lord. If any one knows Christ, he will know Christ's willingness to save from self; he will be able to say, 'Ah, there is One up there who if He has to break my heart to pieces in order to break self, will yet keep me unto that day.'"

An alphabetic psalm, the letters Vau and Kuph being omitted, while the number of verses is preserved.

Remarks.-Confession of sin is here for the first time explicitly, in suited connection with God acting for His name's sake, to display His grace. Comp. Psalm 20:i :the name of Jacob's God was in fact Jehovah, and under this He delivers His people (Ex. 3:) " Good," He takes up sinners, and " upright," guides them in His ways. The psalm is greatly in advance of all former experience-psalms.

This closes the second part of the book. The general features of the scene are now before us. They wait yet to be transfigured and glorified by the presence of a Man in whom men are to see the glory of the Only Begotten, full of grace and truth. This is what awaits us in the third division of the book.

God over all the flood of evil, and using this for the trial and final blessing of the righteous. To the chief musician.[A psalm] of David.

In Jehovah have I taken refuge:how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?

2. For, lo, the wicked bend their bow; they have fixed their arrow upon the string, that in the dark they may shoot at the upright in heart.

3. When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

4. Jehovah is in His holy temple, Jehovah's throne is in heaven:His eyes behold, His eyelids try, the sons of men.

5. Jehovah trieth the righteous; but the wicked and him that loveth violence hath His soul hated.

6. Upon the wicked He shall rain snares:fire and brimstone and a burning wind-the portion of their cup.

7. For Jehovah is righteous; righteous deeds He loveth:the upright shall behold His face.

PSALM XII.

The words of pride on mans lips contrasted with the pure words of Jehovah, the resource and assurance of the righteous, and which the day of trial only approves.

To the chief musician upon Sheminith. A psalm of David.

Save, Jehovah; for the godly hath ceased; for the faithful have disappeared from among the sons of men.

2. They speak falsehood, every one with his fellow:with a smooth lip, with a double heart, do they speak.

3. Jehovah shall cut off all smooth lips,-the tongue that speaketh great things:

4. Which have said, " With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own:who is lord over us?"

5. " Because of the spoiling of the humble, for the groaning of the needy, now will I arise," saith Jehovah:" I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."

6. Jehovah's words are pure words:silver refined in a crucible of earth-seven times refined.

7. Thou shalt keep them, Jehovah; Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.

8. The wicked walk on every side; for vileness is exalted among the sons of men.

PSALM XIII.

Deliverance from the very gates of death. To the chief musician. A psalm of David.

How long wilt Thou forget me, Jehovah ? Forever? How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?

2. How long shall I take counsel in my soul, with sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall my enemy be exalted over me ?

3. Regard, answer me, Jehovah my God! lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the death.

4. Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; [and] those that straiten me exult when I am moved.

5. But I have trusted in Thy mercy:my heart shall exult in Thy salvation.

6. I will sing unto Jehovah, for He hath recompensed me.

PSALM XIV.

The folly of the ungodly, as against God, and against His people.

To the chief musician.[A psalm] of David.

The fool hath said in his heart, "No God." They have acted corruptly; they have done abominable deeds:there is none that doeth good.

2. Jehovah looked from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.

3. They all of them are turned aside; they are together become corrupt:there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

4. Have all the workers of vanity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread. They have not called upon Jehovah.

5. There were they in great dread; for God is in the generation of the righteous.

6. Ye turn to shame the counsel of the humble, when Jehovah is his refuge.

7. Who shall give salvation unto Israel out of Zion? When Jehovah turneth the captivity of His people, Jacob shall exult, Israel shall be glad.

PSALM XV.
The final blessing of the righteous according to the eternal principles of righteousness in God Himself

A psalm of David.

Who shall sojourn in Thy tent, Jehovah? who shall dwell in Thy holy mount?

2. He that walketh in integrity, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh truth in his heart.

3. That hath not slandered with his tongue, nor done evil to his fellow, nor taken up a reproach against his neighbor.

4. In his eyes a reprobate is despised, but he honoreth them that fear Jehovah:he hath sworn to his own hurt, and changeth not.

5. He hath not put out his money to usury, nor taken a bribe against the innocent:-he that doeth these things shall never be moved.

"We are no more than fairly entered upon our subject as yet ; and of all that we have learned hitherto the examination of other scriptures will confirm, extend, and render more precise our knowledge. We have seen the need of man, which atonement has to meet, to be fourfold:first, his actual sins; secondly, corruption of nature; thirdly, the penalty of death, proclaimed by God in Eden, and in which clearly all men share as well as the first sinner; fourthly, the judgment after death. As to this last, so far as we have reached in Genesis, it is rather a dread undefined shadow than a thing plainly taught, an inference rather than an announcement. Correspondingly we find in atonement, so far as we have hitherto gone, the emphasis laid upon death as borne by a substitute, – a truly vicarious death, by which sin is "covered " or expiated before God, and the shame of man's nakedness put away.

But yet the one who obtains witness that he is righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and though dying in his substitute, dies himself, as all mankind but two have ever done. Why this? Surely because that while atonement is in behalf of sinners of Adam's seed, its purpose is not to restore the first man or the old creation, but to bring those saved into the new. While, of course, as to power over the soul, death is "abolished:" "Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."

That to which we now come will bring, and is designed to bring, this change from the old to the new creation vividly before us. The ark which Noah prepared to the saving of his house is a figure of Christ, as we surely know, and of Christ as One with whom we pass through the judgment of the world into that new scene where all abides in the value of the accepted sacrifice. " If any man be in Christ, [it is] new creation:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

For faith anticipates that judgment yet to come, meets it in the cross, and passes through it, leaving it behind. The death of our Substitute is for us what death ever is-our passage out of the world. Sheltered and safe ourselves, we pass through it; our Ark alone breasting the flood, and lifted above it by its own inherent buoyancy; for the Holy One could go through death, but not be holden of it. By the might of His own perfection He rose into the sphere to which He belonged, carrying with Him the hopes and promise of the new creation.

The gopher-wood, the material of the ark, I can say little of, but, it speaks of death (the tree cut down), as that by which alone death could be met for us. The "pitch" is copher, near akin, as it would seem, to gopher, not bitumen (or at least there is no proof of this), but, as would seem most probable, a resin from the gopher-wood itself; identical, too, with the word " atonement" in one of its forms.* *Translated "ransom," Ex. 30:12; 1 Sam. 12:3, marg,; Job 33:24; 36:18; Ps. 49:7; Prov. 6:23; etc.; " satisfaction," Num. 35:31,32.* Here, it seems to me, is the first hint we find in Scripture of something beyond death which is implied in and needed for atonement. Not the gopher-wood alone would have kept out the waters of judgment. Not death alone lay upon men, and for true substitution not death alone needed to be borne. It is indeed the wages of sin; but not, as some would have it, the full wages. So, if death be judgment, as for man it is, it is "after death the judgment;" which is not a repetition of the first death either, though it be the second:for the first death is not repeated. " It is appointed unto men ONCE to die, but after this the judgment."

The penalty borne by our Substitute, then, is something more than death. The copher must pitch the seams of the ark of salvation, that it may bring its freight of living souls in safely through the flood. Thus, and thus alone, is there perfect security, and the new scene is reached in peace. Salvation, as known and enjoyed here, if Scripture is to be at least our measure, does not stop short of this. Christ " gave Himself for our sins," says the apostle, " that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father." "Ye are not of the world," says the Saviour Himself," even as I am not of the world." " If any man be in Christ," says the apostle again, " [kaine ktisis] it is new creation:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

For if Christ was our Substitute only upon the cross,-and this is true,-His identification with us does not and cannot cease there. We are in Him risen from the dead, and gone up to the glory of God. The manhood which He took up here He has taken in there. Nay, it is in resurrection, and only so, that He becomes "last Adam," as we have already seen, and as a "quickening Spirit," communicates that " more abundant life " of which He spoke, while yet on earth, to His disciples. (John 10:10.) As naturally we are children of the first man after his fall, and inherit from him its sorrowful results, even so as quickened of the last Adam, after the accomplishment of His work in our behalf, we are born into His status, and inherit the results in justification and acceptance with God, who " hath taken us into favor [echaritosen] in the Beloved." (Eph. 1:6.) Already are we "seated together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

We are thus past death and judgment. The Ark has brought us through. The old world, as that with which we are connected, is for faith already gone. In Him we are brought into a place of which me new world just emerged from its baptism was but the shadow; and here again we find a fresh aspect of atonement, and fresh results of it, in the burnt-offering, the altar, and God's covenant with creation.

If we have read God's words to Cain aright, Abel's offering was doubtless also a sin-offering. The distinct mention of the fat, as a thing apart, may go to prove this; for in the sin-offering, as afterward detailed, the fat was dealt with separately from the animal itself. It was, so to speak, ' the burnt-offering side of the sin-offering:for as the various sacrifices were but various aspects of the one great sacrifice, so there was in each some link of connection with the others, in witness of their common theme.

The development of these offerings as yet we do not find; still, so far as" developed, if they be types or divine pictures of the great reality, we look for harmony among them, and shall assuredly find it from the very first. And in the order of application, which is the order observed here, the sin-offering comes naturally before the burnt-offering, to which now we come in Noah, in significant connection with the new place in which he appears.

For what is the burnt-offering? Literally, "the offering that ascends," or goes up to God. As we find here, it is what is sweet savor to Him; and though we shall find other offerings which are of sweet savor to God, as the meat and the peace-offering, yet is this the great and fundamental one. The term is inadequately given as "sweet savor:" it is properly, as in the margin, " savor of rest" or acquiescence, complacence. It thus unites with what is stated to be the purport of the burnt-offering, in a passage obscured by mistranslation in the common version. " He shall offer it of his Own voluntary will "-(Lev. 1:3.), should be rather, "He shall offer it for his acceptance:" and this is the key-note of the burnt-offering. In contrast with the sin-offering, which represents the solemn judgment of sin, it speaks of that perfect surrender of Christ to the will of God, tested and brought out by the cross, which brings out the supreme delight of the Father:" Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again." That is the measure of our acceptance with God.

And to express this perfection in its manifold character it is that, we read, "Noah took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." The burnt-offering was thus very frequently multiplied in a way that the sin-offering was not, and could not be. One sin-offering was ample for the putting away of sin, while to express the perfection of our acceptance with God, the burnt-offering is multiplied many times. Thus compare especially, in the twenty-ninth of Numbers, the sacrifices of the seven days of the feast of tabernacles; or those in Hezekiah's day (2 Chron. 29:), or in Ezra's (ch. 8:35.).

The presence of the altar too, for the first time, is full of meaning; for the altar is not of little significance in connection with the sacrifice. Our Lord Himself declares that " the altar sanctifieth the gift." We read of none in the case of Abel's offering, and in the fullest type of the Levitical sin-offering. (Lev. 4:12, 21.) But what could sanctify the Lord's own gift? Certainly, nothing external. It was the perfection and dignity of His Person that gave value to His work, and the divine direction as to the altar afterward makes certain that it is Christ Himself who is before us in it. Thus fittingly from the sin-offering it is absent; for " He who knew no sin " being " made sin for us," the person is hidden, as it were, in what He represents, as the serpent of brass elsewhere conveys to us. On the contrary, in the type before us the altar necessarily finds its place. The dignity of His Person adds infinitely to the value of His work, and both together unite to lift us into the blessed place we have in Him. The ark and altar have thus a kindred meaning; and we find that atonement itself, necessarily getting its character from Him who makes it, does not restore man to his original place, but becomes the foundation and security of that new creation which the type here-depicts, and with which God abides in unchangeable covenant.

The bow in the cloud, the token of this covenant with all that go out of the ark, I have elsewhere dwelt upon. It is typically the token of how God has been glorified (that is, revealed in the work of the cross; His holiness, love, and truth banding the darkness of the most terrible storm of judgment ever seen. The storm passes, and the bow too to sight is gone, but faith finds its glories permanently enshrined in the jewels upon the foundations of the heavenly city, the pledge of its eternity. God is vindicated, satisfied, at rest; and where He rests, all things must needs abide too at rest.

"So Levi made Him a feast:and He, as understood and welcomed, took and maintained there His place of Welcomer; was fed in feeding, rested in giving rest; and the Spirit His Witness testifies His satisfaction with the fare He got. For of all who received Him, not all understood Him so; of all who welcomed, not all feasted Him. Is any desolate heart now needing to be made aware of such a Christ so seeking sinners, that where'er He feasts He must have open doors for them ?"

"CHRIST Himself is that which feeds our hearts, and His love so realized that it becomes the one object of our hearts to love Him."

(2) ABRAHAM’S INNER LIFE, (ch. 15:-21:)-It is evident that in the fifteenth chapter we have a new beginning, and that we pass from the more external view of his path and circumstances to that of his inner life and experiences. Abram is now for the first time put before us as a man righteous by faith, a thing fundamental to all spiritual relationships and all right experiences. It was not, surely, now for the first time that he believed the Lord when God said to him under the starry sky of Syria, "So shall thy seed be." Yet here it pleased God first openly to give the attestation of his righteousness:words which lay for a gleam of comfort to how many sin-tossed souls, before God could come openly out with the proclamation of it as 'His principle, that a " man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."

There are two things specially before us in this chapter; and they come before us in the shape of a divine answer to two questions from the heart of Abram. The two questions, moreover, are drawn out of him by two assurances on God's part, each of which is of unspeakable moment to ourselves.

The two assurances are, (i) "Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward;" (2) " I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." As we would read this for ourselves now,-" God is our portion," and " Heaven is the place in which we are to enjoy our portion."

To the first assurance Abram replies, "Lord God what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless?" to the second, "Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" Strange words, it may seem, in the face of God's absolute assurance; which do speak to us of a man's heart which not merely God's, word, but God's act must meet; questions which thus He takes up in His grace, seriously to answer, and that we through all time may have the blessedness of their being answered.

The answer to both, no Christian heart can doubt, is Christ; for Christ is God's answer to every question. Here it may be figuratively and enigmatically given, as was characteristic of a time in which God could not yet speak out fully. None the less should it be plain to us now what is intended, and unspeakably precious to find Christ unfolding to us, as it were, out of every rose-bud in this garden of the Lord.

"After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:'Fear not, Abram:I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.' "

Had Abram been fearing? The things that had just transpired, and to which the Lord evidently refers, were his victory over the combined power of the kings, which we have already looked at; and secondly, his refusal to be enriched at the hands of the king of Sodom. Brave deeds and brave words! wrought with God and spoken before God who could doubt ? Yet it is nothing uncommon, just when we have wrought something, for a sudden revolution of feeling to surprise us,- for the ecstatic and high-strung emotion upon whose summit we were just now carried, to subside and leave us, like a stranded boat, consciously, if we may so say, above water-mark. The necessity, of action just now shut out all other thought. That over it no longer sustains. We drop out of heroism, to find-what? Blessed be His name!-God Himself beneath us! We who were shielding others find more than ever the need of God our shield:we who were energetically refusing Sodom's offers need to be reminded, " I am thy exceeding great reward." Thank God, when the boat strands there!

God our defense! what shaft of the enemy can pierce through to us? God our recompensing portion! what is all the world can give ? In this place of eternal shelter, oh to know more the still unsearchable riches!

"Of Christ," adds the apostle. Did not Abram feel the lack of our revelation there,-unintelligent as he may be as to what was wanted,' and utterly unable, of course, to forestall God's as yet but partially hinted purpose ? Grasping, as it were, at infinity, and unable to lay hold of it, he drops from heaven to earth, and cries, with something like impatience, as the immensity of the blessing makes itself felt in his very inability to hold it, " Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? …. Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed; and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir."

How flat all God's assurances seem to have fallen with the pattern man of faith! And yet we may find, very manifestly, in all., this pattern. It is all very well to say that Abram's faith was not up to the mark here. In truth it was not; but that is no explanation. Do you know what it is, apart from Christ as now revealed to us, to grasp after this immensity of God your portion? If you do, you will know how the wings of faith flutter vainly in the void, and cannot rise to it. Thank God, if you cannot rise, God can come down; and so he does here to Abram. Serenely He comes down to the low level of Abram's faith, and goes on to give him what it can grasp:" And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, 'This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.' And He brought him forth abroad, and said,' Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them:so shall thy seed be.' And he believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness." .

The many seeds and the One are here; and the many to be reached by means of the One. Abram's " One Seed " must be familiar to us all. Through and in Isaac we read Christ:" He saith not, And unto seeds, as of many; but as of one, ' And to thy Seed,' which is Christ." To us, at least, is it an obscure utterance of how this first assurance is made good to us, and possible to be realized ? The Son of Man, here amongst us, where faith shall need no impossible flights to lay hold of Him, and the infinity of Godhead shall be brought down to the apprehension of a little child. Himself "the Child born," Himself the "Son given," the kingdom of peace is forestalled for those with whom, all the faculties of their soul subdued and harmonized under His blessed hand, "the calf and the young lion and the fatling" dwell together, and a little child leads them.

God our shield, and God our reward:we know these, we appreciate them in Him who is God manifest, because God incarnate.

The second question now comes up.-"And He said unto him, 'I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.'And he said, ' Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?' "

Here too the question is plain, and to be answered by deeds, not words. The land for us is the good land of our inheritance, the land upon which the eyes of the Lord are continually – not earth, but heaven. A wonderful place to enjoy our portion, when we know indeed what our portion is! " Where I am " is the Lord's own description; and thus you will find it most apt and suited, that it, is not until He stands before us upon the full clear revelation of an inheritance in heaven is made to us. He uncloses heaven who ascending up there; carries the hearts of His disciples within its gates. Did they open to admit us without this, would not our eyes turn back reluctantly to that earth only familiar to us ? Did they not open now, would they not be an eternal distance-putting between us and our Beloved? "That where I am, there ye may be also" explains all. The stars shining out of heaven are thus in this chapter the evident symbol of the multitudinous seed.

But how is man to reach a land like this? A place with Christ, reader ! Look at what you are, and answer me:what is to raise a child of earth to the height of God's own heaven?

No work of man, at least; no human invention of any kind. How could we think of a place with Christ as the fruit of any thing but God's infinite grace? He who came down from the glory of I God to put His hand upon us, alone can raise us up thither. No human obedience merely, even were it perfect, could have value of this kind, because it would be still merely what was our duty to do. He to whom obedience was a voluntary stooping, not a debt, alone could give it value. And He, raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, and gone in as man into the presence of God, brings us for whom His work was done into the self-same place which as man He takes.

Thus God answers Abram by putting before him Christ as the pledge of inheritance:" Take Me a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon." God delights to accumulate the types of what Christ is, and press their various significance upon us. These are all types which are brought out more distinctly before us in the offerings after this. The three beasts-all tame, not. wild, nor needing to be captured for us, but the willing servants of man's need" each three years old-time in its progress unfolding in them a divine mystery. The first two, females, the type of fruitfulness:the heifer, of the patient Workman; the she-goat, of the Victim for our sins; the ram, in whom the meek surrender of the sheep becomes more positive energy, -afterward, therefore, the ram of consecration, and of the trespass-offering. (Lev. 5:15; 8:22.) The birds speak of One from heaven, One whom love, made a man of sorrow (the turtle-dove), and One come down to a life of faith on earth (the rock-pigeon, like the coney, making its nest in the place of security and strength).

To unfold all this, and apply it, would require a volume. No wonder, for we have here our occupation for eternity begun. These, the fivefold type expressed in one perfect Man, Abram " divided in the midst, and laid each piece one against another, but the birds divided he not; and when the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away."Thus upon all these types of moral beauty, and that they may be fit types of Him whom they represent, death passes, and they lie exposed under the open heaven, faith in Abram guarding the sacrifice from profanation, until, " when the sun was going down, a deep sleep passed upon Abram, and he slept; and, lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him."Faith's watchfulness is over; darkness succeeds to light; but this only brings out the supreme value of the sacrifice itself, which not faith gives efficacy to, but which sustains faith. God Himself, under the symbol of the "smoking furnace and the burning lamp," passes between the pieces, pledging Himself by covenant* to perform His promise of inheritance. *See Jeremiah 24:18, where God announces the doom of those who had not performed the covenant made with Him, when they " cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof."* Purifier and enlightener, He pledges Himself by the sacrifice to give the discipline needed in faith's failure, and the needed light in the darkness it involves; and thus the inheritance, not apart from the suited state to enjoy it with God, but along with the conditions Which His holiness (and so His love) necessitates.

How complete and beautiful is this, then, as the answer to Abram's second question ! If, with his eyes upon himself, he asks, " How shall I know that I shall inherit it?" he is answered by the revelation of the infinite value of all that puts a holy God and a righteous One, in both characters, upon his side:under propping faith in all its frailty, and securing holiness as fully as it secures the inheritance itself. These types and shadows belong assuredly to us, to whom Christ has become the revelation of all, the substance of all these shadows. Ours is indeed a wider and a wondrous inheritance. But so ours is a sacrifice of infinite value, and which alone gave their value to these symbols themselves. How precious to see God's eye resting in delight upon that which for Him had such significance, ages before its import could be revealed! How responsible we whom grace has favored with so great a revelation!

Thus all is secured to Abram by indefeasible promise on the ground of sacrifice. It is of promise as contrasted with law, as the apostle says. Abram believes the promise, but does not yet know this contrast. He believes God, but not yet simply; alas! as with all of us at the beginning, he believes in himself also. He is a believer, but not yet a circumcised believer. Do you perchance even yet know the difference, beloved reader? It is this that Abram's history is to make plain to us.

"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children." Sarai is, as we have seen, the principle of grace, and this is one of the strangest, saddest things in a believer's experience, the apparent barrenness of that which should be the principle of fertility in his life and walk. " Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under grace." And yet it is the justified man, and who thus far at least knows what divine grace is, who says, " When I would do good, evil is present with me;" and " The good that I would I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do." It is impossible to read the lesson of the seventh of Romans aright until we have seen this. The struggle that it speaks of is not a struggle after peace or justification; nay, cannot over. The whole until this is break-down, not of a sinner, but be known aright secret of it is the of a saint. That efforts after righteousness before God should be vain and fruitless is simple enough; but that efforts after holiness should be fruitless is a very different thing, and a much harder thing to realize. It is Sarai's barrenness that troubles us. Alas! how in this distress Sarai herself, as it were, incites us to leave her; persuading us, she may be builded up by Hagar!

Of Hagar also we have the inspired interpretation. She is the covenant " from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage:" the only form of religion that man's natural thought leads him to, and that to which, if grace is left, we necessarily drop down. Hagar is thus an Egyptian, a child of nature, or as the epistle to the Galatians interprets, " the elements of the world." The principle of law, however much for the purposes of divine wisdom adopted by God, was never His thought. He uses it that man being thoroughly tested by it may convince himself by experiment of the folly of his own thoughts. It is thus Sarai's handmaid, though exalted often even by the roan of faith to a different place. The tendency of law, as it were, to depart from this place of service is shown in her very name-Hagar, that is, " fugitive;" and thus the angel of the Lord finds her by the well, going down to Egypt. When she is finally dis-missed from Abram's house, she is again found I with her son, gravitating down to Egypt; and I upon the wilderness upon its borders Ishmael dwells afterward. How little Christians suspect this tendency of that by which they seek holiness and fruit! Yet even that which, as given by God, is necessarily " holy and just and good," speaks nothing of heaven or of Christ, or, therefore, of pilgrim-life on earth. But thus all of power is left out also; for Abram's pilgrim-life springs from his Canaan-place ;and " in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision," – the whole condition of man as man, – "but a new creation."

Abram takes Hagar, however, to be fruitful by her, just as believers in the present day take up the law simply as a principle of fruitfulness, not at all for justification :it is their very thought that is being tested here. And the effect at first seems all that could be desired once. It is only when God speaks that it is seen that Ishmael is, after all, not the promised seed. The immediate result is, Sarai is despised :" And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes."So it ever is. Once admit the principle of law, and what is law if it be not sovereign?' Faith may cling to and own barren Sarai still, but the principle introduced is none the less its essential opposite. "Sarai dealt hardly with her," and " she fled from her face."

The scene that follows in the wilderness is, I doubt not, a lesson from the dispensations. It is the instruction, not of experience, as in Romans, It is the explanation of the divine connection with the law. It is between the promise of the seed and its fulfillment that Hagar's history comes in. The law was given, not from the beginning, but four hundred and thirty years after the promise was made ; and it was added till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made. Again, it was not God who first gave Hagar to Abram, but Abram who took Hagar:that the experiment might be worked fully out, God sends her back to him; that is all. So in like manner the covenant at Sinai was not God's own proper thought, but what was in man's mind taken up of God to be worked out, under true conditions, to its necessary result. The whole scene is here significant:God's own voice now recognizing, and insisting on, that which alone Hagar filled; the " fountain of water " by which Hagar is found, the symbol of that spiritual truth which, connected with law, is not law; that characterizing, before his birth, of the " wild-ass man," Ishmael-child of law, and lawless,-just as the law from the beginning foretold its own necessary issue:" Every imagination of the thought of man's heart" being " only evil, and that continually." Therefore the vail before the holiest, and the declaration, even to Moses, " Thou canst not see My face." God in all this, we may note, appears to Hagar, and not to Abram:for thirteen years more we read of no further intercourse between God and Abram.

But "when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said unto him, ' I am the almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect.' " This is the period to which the apostle refers in the epistle to the Romans, when his body was now dead, being about one hundred years old; and it is striking to see how completely the intermediate years from the taking of Hagar are counted but as loss. "And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb:he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able also to perform :and therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness" (Rom. 4:19-22.)

Now here it should seem as if the apostle had confounded times far apart. It was at least fourteen years before that Abram had "believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness." Before Ishmael was born his body was not dead, for Ishmael was born " after the flesh," or in the energy of nature merely, in contrast with the. power of God. It could not have been at that time, then, that he considered not his body now dead. Thus the faith that the apostle speaks of is really the faith of the later period. All the intervening time is thus covered, and the two periods brought together.

Natural power had to reach its end with him before the power of God could be displayed. It was now an almighty God before whom Abram was called to walk. Mighty he had known Him; not really till now almighty. The apprehension of power in ourselves limits (how greatly!) the apprehension of so simple a fact as that all "power belongeth unto God." By our need we learn His grace; by our poverty, His fullness; and the Christian as such has to receive the sentence of death in himself, that he may not trust in himself, but in God that raiseth the dead, and as a child of Abraham find his place with God according to the covenant of circumcision.

" For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh;" " having put off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." The cross is our end as men in the flesh, not that we should trust in ourselves now as Christians, but in Christ:that as we have received Christ Jesus our Lord, we should walk IN him. How little is it realized what that is! In our complaints of weakness, how little that to be really weak is strength indeed!

What comfort is there for us in the fact that thus "sprang there of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable"! How serious and how blessed that upon all the natural seed is the very condition upon which alone they can call him father! the token of the covenant was to be in his flesh for an everlasting covenant, the token of the perpetual terms upon which they were with God. How striking to find that under the law the very nation in the flesh must carry the "sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which Abraham had being yet uncircumcised"! and that at any time, spite of the middle wall of partition still standing, any Gentile could freely appropriate the sign of such a righteousness, and with his males circumcised sit down to the feast of redemption- the passover-feast!

Another reminder is here:"And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man-child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed." Every child of God is both born in the house and bought with money; not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:and the "eight days old" shows to how fair an inheritance we are destined; for the eighth day speaks, of course, to us of new creation, the first week of the old having run out. It is in the power of the knowledge of this that practical circumcision can alone be retained. In the wilderness Israel lost theirs, and on reaching Canaan had to be circumcised the second time. So too the water of separation had to be sprinkled on the third day:in the power of resurrection only could death be applied for the cleansing of the soul. The sense of what is ours in Christ alone qualifies us to walk in His steps. It is only what His own words imply,-" Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me." "As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk ye in Him."

If ever a text were turned from its exact opposite, this is perhaps the one. It is not only misapplied, but mistranslated; and not only mistranslated, but even then misquoted. People quote it as "diligent in business," and use it as their justification in throwing all their energies into the pursuit of money-making; the very next words of the apostle being swamped in the fulfillment of the prior duty. How hard indeed do Christians find it to be " diligent in business" and " fervent in spirit" at the same time! The occupation of heart with that which is in fact "the mammon of unrighteousness,"-how impossible to combine this with true devotedness to the Lord, He Himself declares. " No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will cleave to the one and despise the other:ye cannot serve God and mammon."

But while these are owned, of course, as the Lord's words, how few realize their solemn meaning! How few of those to whom money has become a most real object would willingly own that they were serving mammon! It is an object, they would have to acknowledge, but it is not the object, and surely at the bottom of their hearts one would trust it was not; but it is the admission of another object at all that the Lord warns of. If to get money is the object of the heart at all, a divided heart is a divided service, the very thing that He who knows so thoroughly pronounces incompatible with service to Himself.

How shall the heart be kept free from what the hands must needs be busy with? In one way alone. By really recognizing that what we handle is Another's, and not our own; that what is ours is what is unseen and eternal:that we are really stewards, and that the solemn result of unfaithfulness will be what is emphasized in that momentous question, " If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own ?

" Faithful:" in real use of your Master's goods as His; beloved reader, are you indeed seeking to be so? not putting Him off with a tenth, or a fifth, or any measured portion, but using as in His sight, all to Him as His?

If that is indeed your desire, how little will your business hinder spirituality! You can take the admonition of the verse "not to loiter in earnest purpose," for that is its real force. Your counting-house or workshop will be as holy as any other place of your companionship with God; neither cares of this life nor deceitfulness of riches can choke in you the seed of the Word, and make you unfruitful; and this is the only way in which all this can be accomplished. As for all need of yours, it will be His care:you are privileged to care for Him, and to let Him care for you, to realize that while " it is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of carefulness,"-He giveth to His beloved sleeping." So says the true version of the one hundred and twenty-seventh psalm. How blessed this deliverance! How precious the privilege of this life of faith, to which not one more than another, but all the Lord's people are called! Dear reader, have you understood your privilege? How many of God's people are walking in heaviness because they are not faithful in the things that are Another's, and therefore cannot enjoy their own! May the Lord waken His own to the reality before eternity comes to awaken us all. May we be "not loitering in earnest purpose, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."

(1:) His path. (11:io-14:)-The life of Abraham is the well-known pattern-life of faith, as far as the Old Testament could furnish this. It connects, as already noticed, in the closest way, with the story of Noah which precedes it, and alone makes it possible. For the essential characteristic of the life of faith is strangership, but this founded upon citizenship elsewhere. Faith dwells in the unseen, substantiating to itself things hoped for. This is exemplified in Abram, called to Canaan, his possession in hope alone. He dwells there, but in tabernacles, the bringing together of two things typically-the heavenly calling and its earthly consequence. Canaan is here Noah's new world beyond" the flood, and, as we all know, heaven; but the earthly aspect of this is, as all through Genesis, the prominent one. We must wait for Joshua be-fore we get a distinct type of how faith lays hold even now, of the inheritance in heaven. Here, tent and altar are as yet the only possession.

The introduction to this history is the record of Abraham's descent from Shem. It is a record of failure, of which the whole story is not told here, for we know that his line whose God Jehovah was were worshiping other gods when the Lord called Abraham from the other side of Euphrates (Josh. 24:2.). The genealogy itself may tell us something, however,-in Peleg, how men were possessing themselves more than ever of the earth, and at the same time the days of their tenure of it shortening rapidly,-by half, in this very Peleg's time (comp. ch. 10:25.). Reu lives two hundred and thirty-nine years; Serug, two hundred and thirty; Nahor, but one hundred and forty-eight; Terah, again, two hundred and five; but Haran dies before his father Terah. God yet numbers the fleeting years of those who have forgotten Him.

Now we find a movement in Terah's family, the full explanation of which we must look for outside of Genesis. Here, it seems to originate with Terah, for we read that " Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife ; and they went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan :and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." Terah fulfills his name (" delay "), and ends his days at Haran, so called from his dead son. Natural things hold him fast, though death be written on them, and memory but perpetuates his loss. "Haran" means "parched," yet there he abides (and Abram with him) tin he dies. Then we find that whom he had led he had been holding back ; and Abram rises upon the power of a divine call which had come to him and to him alone in the first place, and by which he was separated from country, kindred, and father's house alike, to be blessed and a blessing in the land pointed out of God for his abode. And now there is no further delay :" they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came."

Which of us does not know something of these compromises, which seem to promise so much more than God and to exact so much less, but in which obedience to God goes overboard at the start, and which end but in Haran, and not Canaan? Who would not have thought it gain to carry our kindred with us, instead of a needless and painful separation from them? Why separate, when their faces can be set in the same way as ours? and why not tarry for them and be gentle to their weakness, if they do linger on the road? [ How hard to distinguish from self-will or moroseness and unconcern for others, the simplicity of obedience and a true walk with God! But the lesson of this is too important to end here, and Lot's walk with Abraham is yet to give us full-length instruction upon a point which is vital to the life of faith.

But now Abram is in the land. We hear of the first halt at Sichem (Shechem), at the oak of Moreh. The first of these words means " shoulder," the second, " instructor;" and it is in bowing one's shoulder to bear that we find instruction. He that will do God's will shall know of the doctrine:he that will learn of Christ must take His yoke. This is the "virtue" in which still is " knowledge " (2 Pet. 1:5.). The oak of Moreh grows at Shechem still.

And it is surely "in the land" we find it:power for full obedience in those heavenly places, where we are " blessed with all spiritual blessings," and where "to the principalities and powers are made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God." It is as Canaan-dwellers the secrets of God's heart are opened to us; and Christ, in whom we are, becomes the key of knowledge as of power. In Him,"in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," we are "filled up."

Jehovah now appears to Abram, and confirms the land to his seed as their inheritance; and here for the second time in Genesis we read of an " altar," the first that Abram builds. He worships in the fullness of blessing, and then first also his "tent" comes into view:" he removed from thence into a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east.""Hai" means "a heap of ruin," and is the city which in Joshua resists the power of Israel, after Jericho falls to the ground. It is as if the very ruins of Jericho had risen up against those who had lost the victorious presence of God their strength. Typically, Hai is no doubt the ruined old creation, and thus between a judged world and the "house of God" Abram's tent is pitched, in view of both. Here, too, once more he builds an altar, and calls upon Jehovah's name.

But Canaan is a dependent land. It is contrasted with Egypt as not being like it watered with the foot, but drinking directly of the rain of heaven.* *Egypt of course must needs be dependent also, but not so immediately. Its river was its boast, and the sources of supply were too far off to be so easily recognized:a vivid type of the world in its self-sufficiency and independence of God. They are yet sending scientific expeditious to explore the sources of their unfailing river; and by searching yet have not found out God.* And although the eyes of the Lord are there continually, that does not exclude the trial which a life of faith implies and necessitates. Thus Abram finds a famine in the land to which God has called him, and to avoid it goes down to Egypt. There it becomes very evident that he is out of the path of faith, and he fails openly.

But we must note that the secret failure had begun before, and the famine itself had followed, not preceded this. A famine in Canaan cannot be mere sovereignty on God's part-sovereign though He be. And thus we find that when Abram, fully restored in soul, returns to the land, it is "to the place of the altar, which he made there at the first." There, between Bethel and Hai, he had been at the beginning; but there he had not been when the famine came, but in the south-his face toward Egypt, if not yet there. This border-land is ever a dry land, and Abram found it so. Famine soon comes for us in our own things when we get into this border-land. But who that;, has known what God's path is but has known the trial of a famine there? And when we find such, how Egypt tempts-how the world in some shape solicits to give up the separate place which we have taken. Few, perhaps, but have made some temporary visit to Egypt in the emergency. But the price of Egypt's succor is well known. Abram's fall there has been bat too constantly repeated, and its repetition upon the largest scale has been one great step in the failure of the whole dispensation. Sarai in Pharaoh's house is but the commencement of that which reaches its full development in the guilty commerce of the harlot-woman with the kings of the earth. But the germ is yet very different from the development, and Sarai is of course by no means the apocalyptic woman. She is, as the epistle to the Galatians tells us, the covenant contrasted with the Sinaitic, as grace with law. The grace in which we stand God has linked with faith, and with faith alone. It belongs not to the world in any wise. We are not of the world:"we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."But who can maintain that testimony, when the world's help is wanted, and association with it sought? It is evident some form of universalism must be preached. Sarai (grace) must not be held as Abraham's exclusive possession, but the world allowed to believe it can obtain what divorced from faith is sufficiently attractive to it. Give Sarai up, and you shall have wealth and honors-be the king's brother-in-law; and by simony such as this has the Church bought peace and prosperity in the world; but the world will yet learn by judgment (as did Pharaoh) that Sarai is "not its own. This manifest, its favors cease, and Abram is sent away.

And now the true character of Lot comes out. His story (one of the saddest in Genesis) is most important to be noticed in a day when, God having revealed to us the truth of our heavenly calling, it is but even too plain that there are many Lots. The word "Lot" means "covering," and I under a covering he is ever found. With Abraham I outwardly, he is not at heart what Abraham is; and with the men of Sodom outwardly, he is not after all a Sodomite either. He is a saint and therefore not a Sodomite, though in Sodom. He is a saint untrue to his saintship, and herein Abraham's contrast, even of his companion. His is, however, alas! a downward course. First, with Abraham, a pilgrim; then, a dweller in Sodom; finally, he falls under deeper personal reproach, and his life ends as it began-under a covering. There is no revival, no effort even upward, throughout nothing but mere gravitation, dragging down into still deeper ruin lives associated with his. His wife's memorial is a pillar of salt; his daughters', a more abiding and perpetual infamy, linked with his own shame forever. How terrible this record! How emphatic an admonition to remember, in him, how near two roads may be at the beginning which at the end lie far indeed apart! Reader, may none who read this trace this by-path, save here where God has marked out for us the end from the beginning, that with Him we may see it; not, as having trod it, the beginning from the end.

The beginning is found here:-

" And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son … to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there."

Nature, taking in hand to follow a divine call, which, it had never understood nor heard for itself; leading without being led; settling down short al-together of the point for which it started, to dwell) in a scene of death to which it clings spite of dis-satisfaction:-these are the moral elements amid which many a Lot is nurtured. Terah shines out in him when, having under taken to walk with Abram, the plain of Jordan fixes his eyes and heart:once again, when in the presence of judgment, the messengers of it laid hold upon his hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and brought him forth and set him without ,the city,-because " he lingered.."

But there is another beginning, after this; for now-

"Abram took Sarai his wife,, and Lot his brother's son, . . . and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came." Not nature now, but the man of faith leads, and they no longer linger on the road; but Lot merely follows Abram, as before he had followed Terah. Abram walks with God; Lot only with Abram. How easy even for a believer to walk where another's bolder faith leads and makes the way practicable, without exercise of conscience or reality of faith as to the way itself! How many "such there are, practically but the camp-followers of the Lord's host, adherents of a cause for which they have no thought of being martyrs, nearly balanced between what they know as truth and a world which has never been seen by them in the light of it. For such, as with Lot, a time of sifting comes, and like dead leaves they drop off from the stem that holds them.

Egypt had acted thus for Lot. The attraction it had for him comes out very plainly there where the coveted plain of Jordan seems in his eyes " like the land of Egypt."But beside this, it is easy to understand how Abram's failure there had loosened the moral hold he had hitherto retained upon this nephew. Yet still true to the weakness of his character, Lot does not propose separation, but Abram does, after it was plain they could no longer happily walk together. Their possessions, increased largely in Egypt, separate them, but Abram manifests his own restoration of soul by the magnanimity of his offer. Lot, though the younger, and dependent, shall choose for himself his portion; and he, not imitating the unselfishness by which he profits, lifts up his eyes and beholds the fertility of the plain of Jordan, and he chooses there.

The names unmistakably reveal what is before us here. Jordan ("descending") is the river of death, flowing in rapid course ever down to the sea of judgment, from which there is no outlet-no escape.* *The Dead Sea, it is well known, lies in a deep hollow, twelve hundred and ninety-two feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and there is no river flowing out of it.* There, in a plain soon to be visited with fire and brimstone from the Lord, he settles down, at first still in a tent though among the cities there, but soon to exchange it for a more fixed abode in Sodom, toward which from the first he gravitates.

Lot-like, even this he covers with a vail of piety. The plain of Jordan is " like the garden of the Lord "-like paradise:why should he not enjoy God's gifts in it? He forgets the fall, and that paradise is barred from man, argues religiously enough, while under it all the real secret is found in this:It is "like the land of Egypt." How much of man's reasoning comes from his heart and not his head -a heart too far away from God! It is significantly added, '.' As thou comest unto Zoar;" and thus indeed Lot came to it.

But Abram dwells in the land of Canaan, and God bids him walk through it as his own. Thereupon he removes and dwells in Madre (" fatness ") which is in Hebron ("companionship, communion"). The names speak for themselves again sufficiently. May we only know, and live in, the portion of Abram here.

In the next chapter things are greatly changed. Abram himself is in connection with Sodom, as well as with another power, which we may easily identify as essentially Babylonish. The names are difficult to read, and two at least of the confederated countries are just as doubtful.* *For the attempt to make Ellasar Hellas, or Greece, though favored by the Septuagint, can scarcely be maintained. It is more probably Larsa. Nor is Tidal, king of nations, a very satisfactory representative of the Roman power, as some take it.* But in the first enumeration Amraphel, king of Shinar, stands first, the undoubted representative of the kingdom of Nimrod, although Chedorlaomer appears the most active and interested. They all seem but divisions of this Babylonish empire however, though changed no doubt into a confederacy of more or less equal powers.

These four kings-and our attention is specially called to the number here (ver. 9.)-are at war with the five petty kings of the plain of Jordan. Typically, these last represent the world in its undisguised* and sensual wickedness; the Babylonish kings, the religious world-power, always seeking to hold captive (and in general successfully) the more open form of evil. *Undisguised indeed, if Gesenius is right as to Bera being equivalent to Benra," son of evil," and Birsha to Ben-resha," son of wickedness."* Indeed the Sodom of heathenism never yielded but to a spiritual Babylon which had already obtained supremacy over the Christianity of Scripture and the apostles; and in no way was this last ever really established, nor could it be. But the world craves some religion; and nothing could suit it better than one which with external evidences to accredit it, such as undeniably historical Christianity had, linked its blessings with a system of ordinances by which they could be dispensed to its votaries. This exactly was the character of Nicene Christianity, and hence its conquest of the Roman empire. The leaven was already in the meal:the adulteration of the gospel had already advanced far; but leaven (evil as in Scripture its character undoubtedly is) has certainly the power of rapid diffusion, and rapidly the popularized gospel spread.

These, then, are the powers represented here. The portion of Abram lies outside the whole field of conflict. Lot, on the other hand, is already in Sodom, and of course is carried captive in the captivity of Sodom. It is the spiritual history of those who, having known the truth, fall under the power of the world-church which Babylon represents. It is their link with the world by which they are. sucked in. And such is the secret of all departure, from the truth. The Lord is top faithful to allow mere honest ignorance to be deceived; and although men may credit Him with it, the record still stands:"Whosoever willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."

The secret of Abram's power is revealed in one pregnant word, which as here used of him flashes light upon the scene before us:" There came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew." That word, patronymic as it may be, is yet significant:it means " the passenger." So Peter exhorts us, "as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts "-the destruction of Sodom, while to the pilgrim, Babylon, claiming her kingdom now in the yet unpurged earth, can only be the persecutor, "red with the:blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus." Here may seem a difference between Abram and the spiritual sons whom he represents; but typically he none the less may rep-resent those who, after their Lord's example, conquer by suffering. There never were more real conquerors than were the martyrs.

So Abram brings back his brother Lot and all the other captives; whose deliverance indeed was, as we see, merely incidental. For as between Sodom and Shinar how could Abram interfere, or what deliverance would it be for a mere child of Sodom to be delivered from the power of Babylon ? Even as to Lot it is once more solemnly made manifest that not circumstances have made him what he is, and that change of circumstances do not change him. Freed by God's hand working by another, he is not really free; and soon we shall find him needing once more to be delivered from what, having escaped judgment, falls under God’s.

But if Lot's eyes are still on Sodom, those of his pilgrim-brother find another object. For as he returned from the slaughter of the kings, "Melchisedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the Most High God." The type is explained to us by the apostle in the epistle to the Hebrews; and we all know in Christ the Priest after the order of Melchisedek. The apostle's words are remarkable for the way in which they bring out and insist upon the perfection of Scripture, in what it omits as well as what it inserts. " Without father, without mother, without beginning of days or end of life," are words which have been thought to show that the mysterious person before us was no other than Christ Himself ; but this the apostle's very next words disprove; for "made like unto the Son of God" could not be of the Son of God Himself. It is simply of the omissions of the narrative that the apostle is speaking; these omissions being necessary to the perfection of the type. He is our High-Priest, not finding His place among the ephemeral generations of an earthly priesthood, but subsisting in the power of ah endless life; Priest and King in one. Whilst, however, the Lord is thus even now a Priest after the order of Melchisedek, it is not after Melchisedek's pattern that He is now acting. Here, His type is rather Aaron. It is at a future time – a time, as we say, millennial – that He will fulfill the type before us, as many of its features clearly show. Thus. Melchisedek is priest of the Most High God,-a title always used of God in the coming; day of manifested supremacy. This Melchisedek's own words show:" Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth." The interpretation of his name, and the name of his city, confirms this:" First of all,' King of Righteousness'; and after that,' King of Salem which is, ' King of Peace.' " This is the order in which the prophet gives the same things,' when speaking of millennial times:"Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field; and the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever."

His place in this chapter is in perfect and beautiful keeping with all this. For we find the timeliness of Melchisedek's appearance to the vic-tor over the kings, when the king of Sodom says to Abram, " Give me the. persons, and take the goods to thyself." It is to the " Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth "-the One of whom Melchisedek has spoken to him,-that Abram declares he has lifted up the hand, not to take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet.' Christ seen thus by the pilgrim man of faith claiming on God's part all that is his own, is the true antidote to the world's offers. If Christ could not accept the kingdoms of the world at the hands of Satan, but from His Father only, no more can His followers accept enrichment at the hands of a world which has rejected Christ for Satan. And that bread and wine which we receive from our true Melchisedek, the memorial of those sufferings by which alone we are enriched, for him who has tasted it, implies the refusal of a portion here.

Antichrist and the enemies set aside.

(1) Psalms 9:and s. give the theme.

(2) Psalms 11:-xv:exercises of the remnant under the oppression of the enemy.

The ninth and tenth psalms are given by the Septuagint and Vulgate as one psalm, and also by a very few Hebrew MSS. no doubt, for the reason that they are bound together by their structure, forming together an imperfect and irregular alphabetic acrostic. Bp. Horsley and others have supposed on this account some confusion in the text, and have endeavored by a rearrangement of the verses to" supply the missing letters; even then with only partial success. The irregularity and omissions are clearly designed. The omission of six letters after the commencing lamed in the tenth exactly corresponds with the description of the wicked one.

The remnant-psalms are again five in number, as in the last section ; a number speaking of what is emphatically human, as elsewhere noticed.