I." The promise of life which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 1. 1.9; Tit. 1. 2,3.)

When was this promise given? and to whom was it given? The common thought, I suppose, has been that it was given in eternity, and to Christ; and to this I have been content in past time to adhere. It would be necessitated if the rendering of our common version were exact, "before the world began," but this is far from being so. The late revision, with an attempt to be absolutely literal, fails more signally. Its rendering is, "before eternal times"-a self-contradiction, according to our usual thoughts. The word used here is indeed the regular one for "eternal," and So far, the translation is justifiable; but there is an alternative which the sense, the context, and the doctrine of Scripture elsewhere alike require-"before the age-times," the same word being used in Scripture for "eternity" and for an "age," a period marked by some uniform dispensation of God. These ages are referred to in many parts of the Word, and are in no sense eternal, as see in the Revised Version I Cor. x, II Heb. 9:26, etc. Before these age-times, then, the promise of life was given.

But, it may be asked, did not these ages begin in fact with the beginning of the world ? and does not this bring us back to the same thought as at first? It docs, if the time of innocency be reckoned as such an "age;" and as such probably all have reckoned it. In proposing another thought, I must therefore show cause for it; but this will be better done after we have looked at the promise of which the apostle speaks. The "promise of life which" -that is, which life-" is in Christ Jesus' is, I believe, no other than the first promise to fallen man of the Seed of the woman.

A "promise" seems certainly a strange thing to speak of from the Father to the Son. And when the apostle adds, "which God, that cannot lie, promised before the age-times," is it not plain that he is speaking of some word openly given to one who, alas! might doubt Him? Does he not appeal here to some such known and recognized word by which God had pledged Himself from the beginning?

When in Timothy he speaks of this, he says, "According to His own purpose and grace given us in Christ Jesus before the age-times," is it not also clear that he is speaking of a purpose, not merely entertained by Him, but openly avowed? What else means "given us"? And "in Christ Jesus "-does not this declare, not simply the way in which the promise had been fulfilled, but the way in which it was given? It was the promise of a personal Deliverer, the woman's Seed, who should vanquish the serpent, destroying him who had the power of death, and giving life to those who had lost it. And of this the next verse speaks:-"But is now made manifest"–a promise in some measure obscure now lighted up with its full luster,- "But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." Is it not the old penalty to which we are carried back, and the scene in Eden?

Christ has brought life to light:the promise, although really of this, was not fully clear as to it. This explains the possibility of doubt even as to the apostle's reference. The truth in its whole magnificence is now displayed. But always the life in Christ Jesus was God's meaning, and through all the intervening centuries there was nothing else that could fulfill the promise but the life in Him. Now it is revealed without a cloud.

The notice of these "age-times" comes out more fully thus. Their probationary character up to the cross-dwelt upon elsewhere in this volume (pp. 15-17)-explains how for so long a time the cloud rested on the revelation. Before them, the promise had been given; now they have ended, the full truth has come out. And this also seems to explain why the time of innocence-too brief indeed to be put down as an "age"-should be left out. It is the trial of fallen man of which the apostle is thinking, as it is of the blessing to fallen man the promise speaks.

One word more only. The actual mention of "life" is not in the promise. The full blessing could not yet be manifested, as we have seen. Yet it is striking that what is not plainly uttered Adam's faith takes up, and his voice utters, upon hearing it, this significant word. "Eve" means "life;" and it is before the close even of this scene in the garden that it is said (Gen. 3:20), "And Adam called his wife's name 'Eve' because she was the mother of all living." Unbelief, after listening to the sentence just pronounced, would have said, "The mother of all dying" Faith had laid hold upon the promise, however; and blessed it is to see how thereupon God clothes the fallen with the fruit of that very death which had come in through sin.

Thus, then, we have the promise of the life which is in Christ Jesus,-the same life by grace in believers of all times.

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

2 Cor. 5:17,18.

In Christ Jesus! What position!
Once "in Adam," ruined, lost!
Now redeemed ! (O changed condition!)
By His blood ! Amazing cost!

In Christ Jesus ! Blest transition !
"Old things [now] are passed away."
"All things new"in Faith's wide vision.
"All things are of God "for aye.

In Christ Jesus ! Who in heaven
Stands, our Advocate and Priest!
Conscience purged, and sins forgiven,
There He bears us on His breast.

In Christ Jesus !Midst the lilies,
Where His pasture is, we feed ;
And our song of rapturous thrill is,
He supplies our every need.

In Christ Jesus !Yet the mystery
Lies beyond, still unrevealed !
For the half the wondrous history
Is untold-in Him concealed !

In Christ Jesus !Swiftly Hearing
Is the hour of blest record,
When the saints, at His appearing,
Shall be like our glorious Lord.

In Christ Jesus ! Throned in glory !
Sons of God !With Christ coheirs!
Sequel, this, to Calvary's story:-
All things with His own He shares.

November 1886

Resurrection the Sign of Complete Atonement.
For the great mass of Christians, the resurrection of Christ has dropped out of the place in reference to atonement which it finds in Scripture. The resurrection side of the gospel has dropped out. Yet God has been graciously reviving the truth of it in many hearts. Let us seek to get hold of what is wrapped up for us in the joyful tidings of Christ risen from the dead.

If Christ be not risen," says the apostle to the Corinthians, "ye are yet in your sins." The resurrection was the full, open acceptance of the work which alone could put them away. It was God manifesting Himself on the side of those for whom the work was now accomplished. Hence faith rests in "Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;" and it is added, in explanation of this, "who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification" (Rom, 4:24, 25).

"Resurrection from the dead" has always this character of acceptance of the one raised up, and must not be confounded with the simple fact of resurrection in itself. When the Lord, at the Mount of Transfiguration, "charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen until the Son of Man were risen from the dead," the disciples "kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean " (Mark 9:9, 10). Familiar as they were with the general truth that the dead should rise, this rising from the dead-not from the state of the dead, but from among the dead themselves, a special resurrection which would leave the rest unchanged,-was to them a new and unknown thing. "I know that he shall rise in the resurrection at the last day," Martha's words as to her brother, was the expression of the faith of every orthodox Jew of that day. Alas! even yet, the general faith of Christendom goes no further. But the Lord, in arguing with the Sadducees, speaks of a special class, "those who should be accounted worthy to attain that world and the resurrection from the dead" as "the children of God, being the children of the resurrection" (Luke 20:35, 36). The resurrection from the dead approves as accepted of God all that participate in it. Thus is it pre-eminently, then, with the resurrection of Christ from the dead. It is the triumphant demonstration, in the face of His enemies, of God for Him whom they had crucified and slain. "What sign showest Thou," said the Jews once to Him, "seeing that Thou doest these things?" and the Lord answers, " 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up! . . . . lie spake of the temple of His body" (Jno. 2:19, 21).

All through His ministry among men indeed the signs of the Father's approval and delight were openly given. The works which He did in His Father's name bore witness to Him. The Father's voice and the descending Spirit had borne witness also. But these were personal to Himself alone. Now, having completed His work on behalf of others, His resurrection becomes the seal of the acceptance of what was done in their behalf. It is the testimony still of the approval of His own personal perfection, but as standing in a place altogether apart from what was His due personally, and where the holiness of God tested Him as the fire of the altar the sacrifice upon it. In result, all the sweet savor of the sacrifice was brought out by it.

So of the Lord, as had long ago been declared by another prophetically personating Him, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [or "hades"], neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption." It was as the Holy One He could not see it. "Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save Him out of death,"-not, as in the common version, "from death,"-"and was heard in that He feared," or as in the margin, "for His piety" (Heb. 5:7). It was this upon which all depended, what under the most perfect, most bitter trial, was found in Him. The white linen garments of the high-priest, the type of spotless righteousness wrought out, were the only ones, as we have elsewhere seen, in which he could enter the most holy place. Nothing else but such righteousness could bring Him in there, the representative of a people accepted in Him.

The declaration of this acceptance waited not, indeed, for resurrection. His testimony before He dies is that the atoning work is "finished" (Jno. 19:30). He had no sooner died than the rent vail declared it. And the threefold witness of the Spirit, water, and blood answered at once the thrust of the soldier's spear (Jno. 19:34, 35; i Jno. 5:8). Already the record is, that "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son"(i Jno. 5:II). It is only in continuance of these testimonies that by the glory of the Father He is raised from among the dead, and then in due season "by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12).

Blessed it is to see the promptitude of this utterance of the heart of God as to that which is in His sight of such infinite value. At once the rent vail attests that the "merciful and faithful High-Priest" has made "propitiation for the sins of the people" (chap. 2:17). The typical blood must wait until the high-priest himself has entered the sanctuary; but not so the antitypical. The vail could not have been rent had not the mercy-seat been already sprinkled. The typical blood was but the blood of bulls and goats, and required human hands to carry it in; the antitypical needed none such to present it to the omniscient eye of Him to whom it was offered. The difference is one of those suited necessary contrasts between figure and reality, of which there are so many, and which constitute one of the gravest admonitions to caution in the application of the figures.

That it is the high-priest who makes "atonement in the holy place" (Lev. 16:17), and of whom the apostle speaks in the interpretation, Heb. 2:10, is indeed a difficulty with those who having learned from Scripture that "if He were on earth, He should not be a priest" (chap. 8:4) suppose therefore that at the cross He was not. The mistake is natural, but the Word of God meets the difficulty for us in the words of the Saviour as to this, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth." At the cross He was no more "on earth," and this is no strain of an expression:He had in fact done with earth,-was passing from it, His place among men gone. And here, of necessity, His priesthood began; else was there no priestly offering up at all, for assuredly it was not in resurrection that the altar-fire consumed the victim; and the ministry of the altar was exclusively the priest's work. Thus, surely, it is clear how it was our High-Priest who as such made atonement, as it is also clear by the rent vail and the resurrection itself that before resurrection the blood was sprinkled on the heavenly mercy-seat.

Resurrection followed on the third day to set the Second Man in His Last-Adam place. It is plain how 1 Corinthians 15:connects this place with the "spiritual body" of the resurrection. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living souls; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." The first Adam is plainly himself a living soul with a natural body,-the word "natural" being here the adjective of the word "soul" itself, a body fitted for the soul, as we may say. The last Adam is the pattern of those of His heavenly race, as the first was of his earthy race. Only they are not yet in the image of the heavenly, (as they shall be,) though they are heavenly; and the Lord too is not merely a living spirit, but, according to His own necessary pre-eminence, a life-giving spirit. This is so beautifully pictured in the scene in the twentieth of John, where as God breathed into Adam at the first, He breathes now upon His disciples, that I do not doubt it to be the meaning there. He has taken and is representing to us His last-Adam place. But this I do not dwell on further here.

He rises, then, with a spiritual body,-does not assume it afterward, as some have thought. The wounds in His hands and side, which some have brought forward to prove the opposite, do as little prove it as Zechariah 12:10 or 13:6 would prove it of a day yet future. Return to His former condition before the cross we have seen He could not. His death means the acceptance of the solemn sentence by which man as first created had been set aside out of his place. Restore this He does not; while He can and does bring in for His people what is infinitely better.

He rises, then, the Representative of His people in their new place of unchanging blessing, in the likeness to which they are to be conformed. He is raised again for the justification of all believers, For these His death has absolutely atoned, for these acceptance is complete and unconditional; while individually every one comes into it by faith,-is justified by faith. Here is the one condition upon which Scripture uniformly insists, in regard to propitiation no less than substitution:for, be it that He is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, this is not unconditionally; He is a "propitiation by faith in His blood," as the common version, or "a propitiation through faith by His blood," as the Revised Version better renders it. The door is indeed open to all the world, but those who enter by faith; and only thus is the propitiation really theirs.

The resurrection of Christ is therefore God coming out openly for His people, and Christ risen is the measure of their acceptance. His is theirs. He is accepted for them; they are accepted in Him. Substitution ends with the cross, for our place in which He stood ends there; but representation does not end with the cross, but the place He
takes in resurrection He brings us into. We are dead with Him is the language of Scripture; we are risen also with Him:we are "accepted"- "taken into favor," "graced" if we may use the literal word,-"in the Beloved."

His place is ours; only we must remember that when we say this, we limit it strictly to that of which we are speaking-His place in resurrection. There are glories, it need hardly be said, that are entirely His own,-not only divine glories, but as man also. We speak simply now of a place of acceptance as manifested in resurrection from the dead; not even as yet of the opened heavens:for when we go so far, we have to remember that not all accepted ones go even to heaven. There will be by and by a new earth also, in which dwelleth righteousness. But so far as we have reached, we speak of what is the common portion of saints of all ages, heavenly and earthly alike. In this sense, then, we say His death is ours, His resurrection is ours, His acceptance is ours:we are accepted and find our place in Him; we are identified with Him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is one of the Christian ornaments which the elect of God are exhorted to put on and wear. How much we have to make us humble, and yet how little effect it has upon us! If we reflect upon our origin, and look unto the rock whence we were hewn; if we consider the course we pursued before conversion, even the course of this world; or if we remember what we have been and done since the Lord called us by His grace, one would think we should see enough to make and keep us humble.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was not the smoothest, or the shortest, or the one most frequented, but it was the best. It was the only right way. He intended to prove them, and to display His wonders, and the way afforded an opportunity for both. Thus it is with all His people. He has marked out the way in His unerring wisdom; He guides them into it, He tries them by it, He leads them along it, and glorifies Himself by doing so. God's way is always contrary to that which flesh and blood would choose. We want ease, plenty, pleasure, and honor; but the Lord intends that we shall have faith, humility, patience, fortitude, and confidence in Himself alone. His design is to empty us, and strip us, and humble us, and break us down before His throne; to endear the Saviour, sweeten the promises, and make the good land more desirable. And this He effects by sanctifying the trials, the losses, the disappointments, and the troubles we meet with in the way. Beloved, is yours a rough way, a trying path, a perplexing road? It is the right way. The Lord leads you, and He never leads wrong. He brings into the wilderness before He brings into Canaan.

"In the desert God will teach thee
What the God that thou hast found,
Patient, gracious, powerful, holy,
All His grace shall there abound."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The "times of the Gentiles" is the Lord's own expression for the whole period of their divinely appointed supremacy over Israel (Luke 21:24). It is the period, therefore, of Israel's rejection nationally, and begins with Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the temple and city when Judah was carried away captive into Babylon, and ends with their deliverance from the assembled nations by the coming of the Lord from heaven (Zech. 14:3, 4, 9). It is the time of the four Gentile empires seen in the visions of Daniel and the king, with a noteworthy exception which we find in the book of Revelation, that there is a time in which the last empire "is not" (17:8), before its final appearance and complete overthrow. In this gap we stand, for none of the great world-empires exist, and all the political effort of the present is to prevent any possibility of the revival of such a thing. Napoleon's history is a warning of how easily God can break through these human counsels, and bring about what He has ordained.

For the history of the times of the Gentiles we are dependent largely upon prophecy, even although much of this be now historical fact. But the history of the Old Testament almost ceases with the subversion of the kingdom of Judah, and no mere human hand can supply the deficiency. It is God's view of things we are seeking, and "the Lord seeth not as man seeth." Thus man's history would be likely by itself to lead us only astray from the divine view, which alone has any real significance. We should hold fast, then, to prophetic scripture as to our sure guide through the mazes of human history.

But prophecy, while it throws light upon the darkness of the present, hastens ever onward to the accomplishment of God's counsels in the time before us, and indeed mainly in revealing this declares the present to us. The end is the time of manifestation, for the tree is known by its fruit. We misjudge constantly by anticipating this, mistaking the true harvest-time which it is the glory of Him who knows the end from the beginning to make certainly known.

This will prepare us for a character of prophecy to miss which will leave us in continual perplexity. All prophecy connects with the end, and by this means with every other prophecy. None is its own interpreter, as that passage in the second of Peter, so commonly perverted, really means.* *"No prophecy of Scripture is of separate"-literally, "its own"-"interpretation.*" And why? "For prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." It is all one plan, one counsel. To separate one part from the rest would be to make a rent in a seamless robe. Every seeming by-path connects at any rate with some road that ends not save in the city of the Great King. And as we approach this, the highway widens, the view lengthens, road after road comes in and pours its contribution into the swelling stream that hastens onward whither all ends- at the feet of the King Eternal.

It is to prophecy that we mainly turn, then, and for our present purpose especially to Daniel and its complement, the book of Revelation. And the fact that the history is at the present time prophetic has a significance which we must now consider.

With Israel in the Old Testament man's history morally ends. The law has given its judgment as to him. "There is none righteous,-no, not one" is the verdict it renders. If true of the favored nation, true then of all, for "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man."

There is indeed another trial to be made here, but for which we must pass on to the pages of the New Testament. Will he not, now convicted and exposed, be ready for grace when it is offered him ? Will not the prisoners of hope turn to the stronghold,-to the Mighty One on whom God has laid help? The answer to this is but the cross; and in this the full and final judgment of the world is found. In the meanwhile, the law has already, and to leave him thus shut up to grace, given its verdict. Man's history closes with Israel's ruin. The record closes. God may predict the future of him with whom He has now parted company; but He has parted company.

It was the throne of the Lord upon which Solomon had sat (I Chron. 29:23), and the ark of the "God of all the earth" had long before passed through the dried-up Jordan to the place of His rest. But now the glory of God had passed from the mercy-seat, and Ezekiel had seen, its lingering sorrowful departure from the city (Ezek. 11:23); and now God's title is in the books which speak of this time, the "God of heaven" (2 Chron. 36:23; Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel). The God of heaven gives Nebuchadnezzar the kingdoms of the earth, and the Gentile kingdom widens out soon into an empire such as never had been seen in Israel. Nebuchadnezzar is thus a king of kings,- a petty image again of Him who will be the "King of kings and Lord of lords;" somewhat also in the absolute authority possessed by Him. But there the resemblance ends. How different the character of the one who possesses this power, and how rapid the degeneration of it!

To him whom God had raised up He appears, that he may know the hand that had raised him up; making him debtor too for the interpretation of his dream to one of the scanty remnant of the people he had overthrown, that he may learn the vanity of his false gods in the presence of Him to whom they are opposed. This dream makes him aware of the fact that He who had placed can displace, and of the continual degradation of power in the kingdoms which succeed his own until at last they all together come to an end, smitten by a kingdom which becomes really world-wide, and which stands forever. About this final kingdom little is said; only that it is of no human shaping, but set up in a peculiar way by the God of heaven Himself, that it destroys all others, and abides. It is the vanity and corruptibility of all mere earthly power that is insisted on:a homily against pride and independence of heart read to one who is in the greatest need of it.

In this view of the kingdoms, the debasing of material shows the decay of power in the successive forms. The Babylonian was the head of gold, owing no allegiance save to God Himself. In the Persian-the silver.-the law when made, although the king might make it, could not be altered even by himself. The kingdom of Alexander-the "brazen-tunicked Greeks"-had risen on the ruins of a pure democracy, of which it retained many elements; while Rome, which succeeded this, though strong as iron, was in principle entirely such, the power of the emperors being gained by their assuming to themselves a number of democratic offices. Finally, in the latter days of the divided empire, the inroads of barbarian nations mixed the iron with clay. There was no real cohesion, and the heterogeneous elements falling apart, the kingdoms of Europe arose out of this division. Cut this was not the smiting of the image with the stone. This belongs to a still future time, as we shall see, if the Lord will, as we proceed.

The next four chapters of Daniel show, step by step, the character which these world-powers assume, and are the preface to the seventh chapter, in which they are viewed prophetically in their history as before God, the history in which these features are manifested. The third chapter shows the assumption of control over the conscience, which has characterized man's rule wherever he has had the necessary power. Nebuchadnezzar's image is marked as that which he has set up. To refuse to worship in the prescribed way is rebellion, therefore, against himself. How invariably, we may say, has the civil power assumed to be the religious also, wherever it could. Liberty of conscience,-precious as the boon is,-is in our days the sign of the decay of absolute authority, and it will not last, but give way finally to the worst form of spiritual despotism which the world has ever seen. But this, as in the case before us, surely leads into opposition to God in the persecution of His people. Others may escape by submission, but not they; although the Son of God is with them in the furnace.

The fourth chapter is the descent of the kingdoms from what has at least the form of a man, as in the second chapter, to the beast-form in which they are seen in the seventh. It is the pride of power which forgets God which levels man with the beast which has none. Nebuchadnezzar claims the great city over which he rules as built by his own power and for his own glory. In the same hour he is driven to the beasts, until he has learnt that the "Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will." Then he is restored, but the lesson remains, not, alas! to avert the doom of the Gentile empires, but as a note of warning for him who has the secret of the Lord.

The fifth chapter shows us the moral declension still progressing unchecked. Belshazzar openly lifts himself up against the Lord of heaven, exalting above Him the senseless idols of silver and gold, and fingers of doom come forth and write his sentence before his eyes.

Thus the Babylonian empire runs its course, and is followed by the Persian; but the Persian we see also, in the next chapter, brought in to complete the terrible picture of decline, ending in complete apostasy. The king exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, making a decree that for thirty days no petition is to be asked of any god or man except himself. That Darius himself is not the real author of this decree, and is personally very different from what it would imply, does not alter the significance of this terrible act, -the presage of that last antichristian blasphemy for which the Gentile powers come to an end, while Israel, like Daniel, is delivered from the paw of the lion.

The seventh chapter now gives these empires, seen in the prophetic vision, as four wild beasts. But attention is concentrated upon the last, and that, too, as seen at the time of the end. It has already its ten horns, corresponding to the ten toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, and then there arises another little horn, on account of whose blasphemous words, the beast is destroyed, and his body given to the burning flame. But the kingdom now becomes His in whom meet the characters at once of the Son oi Man and of the Ancient of days; and "His dominion is an everlasting dominion, that shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."

Thus when Israel's course is ended for the present in utter ruin, God takes up the Gentiles, (not as yet to reveal Himself in Christ to them-that is another and totally different thing, as will, I trust, in its due place appear,-but) to give them their trial also. This will seem strange and contradictory at first sight, for has it not been just said that with Israel in the Old Testament man's history morally ends? That is surely true also. In all this history of the Gentiles, there is no fresh stirring of that question. No law, no moral code, is given to them. No revelations at all are made, save only Nebuchadnezzar's vision; although Cyrus speaks of a charge which God had given to him to build Him a house in Jerusalem. This he might readily have found in Isaiah's prophecy (chap. 44:28), and probably was shown it there. At any rate, the founders of the first two empires were made perfectly aware from whom it was they had received their greatness. Here all personal communication ends. God does not bring them nigh, as He had brought Israel. He has significantly left the earth, putting It afresh, in the most decisive way since Noah's time, into man's hand, but with scarcely a word as to its government. There was His written Word, indeed, if they had heart for it; for ignorant He took care, as we see in Cyrus, that they should not be. And there He leaves it. ( To be continued.)

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

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

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

THE DIVINE ACCOUNT OF CREATION.
The first verse of the Bible tells us of an undated beginning when God created. Millions of years ago the earth may have existed in light and perfection. We say may have been; but most certainly no human voice was ever heard, nor human foot trod its walks. Scripture does not inform us as to the antiquity of the globe, but it does as to the age and origin and history of the race.

Perfection characterizes the earth of ver. i:ruin as certainly distinguishes the earth of ver. 2. The former was the creative act of God; the latter, the result of judgment. The weeping prophet, Jeremiah, uses the very terms of ver. 2 to describe the utter judgment and desolation of Israel. (Jer. 4:23.) "I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void" While Isaiah as distinctly informs us that God did not create it so. "Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain (or void), He formed it to be inhabited." (Isa. 45:18.) The conclusion seems plain, the evidence irresistible, that the earth was created in perfection; then, from causes unrevealed, it came under the just judgment of God, which is not so as to the heavens. Now we have the shapeless, waste, desolate earth, submerged in the restless, heaving mass of waters-a dark and lifeless scene, yet the subject of intense regard and of loving interest to the Spirit of God, who "moved upon the face of the waters."

What a beautiful idea is here suggested! The Spirit of God-not a breath, impulse, wind, or influence, but a divine Person-"moved," rather "was hovering," or "fluttering" over the awful desolation. It is the same word and thought as, in Deut. 32:II-"As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young," etc. How this sweeps aside the cold and heartless thought that the making and preparing of this earth out of chaos, merely (!) displays the sovereign power of the Creator!

First day's work (10:3-5). The first day of the world's history was ushered in by one of the finest utterances ever penned or spoken. The first historical utterance of our God, "Let light be, and light was," for power and sublimity, there is nothing we know of like it. Both light and sun-the work of the first and fourth days, were created long before, being part of the system which in the beginning God created (5:i). It is evident, too, that the celestial luminaries are not the source of light, but simply the home or receptacle of it. The light was the distinguishing work of the first day; the luminaries, of the fourth. For three days the earth enjoyed light apart from the sun. Scripture says it was so; science demonstrates the possibility of it, and infidelity retires from that old battle-field-her strength in the early part of last century-utterly discomfited. The light instantly produced was full and brilliant, and was at once called "day" We need not say any thing about the nature of light-others have done so.

Second day's work (10:6-8). Light revealed the utter desolation. The earth stood a confessed and hopeless ruin before the full blaze of day. Now heaven is formed. The restless, heaving mass of waters are divided, and an expanse formed between. The atmosphere-absolutely indispensable for the life and growth of the animal and vegetable kingdoms-naturally precedes the interesting work of the third day. The earth was not formed by the concourse of particles of matter,-all matter lay in the stillness of death till "moved" or acted upon by the Spirit of God ; nor was the atmosphere produced by the action of the sun's heat,-it was a distinct work of the Creator.
Third day's work (10:9-13). In the previous day, the waters were separated by the heavy atmosphere, consisting of a body of invisible fluids, enveloping the whole earth, revolving with it, and which extends upward for forty-four and a half miles, and which presses upon every square inch of substance-living or inanimate, with a weight equal to about fifteen pounds. The dark, heavy clouds of rain and mist, formed by evaporation, were pressed upward by the weight of the atmosphere. Now, however, the third day opens with the waters beneath being bounded; restraints are put upon their course, and they flow in their divinely appointed channels; "they are gathered together unto one place," forming about one hundred and thirty-eight millions of square miles, to about sixty millions of dry land. The second action of this resurrection-day (as the "third" implies), is the resurrection of the earth out of its watery tomb, where it had lain buried for, perhaps, countless ages. This, like all else, was accomplished instantaneously by the fiat of the Creator, for as yet there was no sun's heat to dry the earth, or to harden it into needed consistency. All this demands the divine note of approval, "God saw that it was good," But the third action of the third day is surely a grand and fitting close to the first half of the creative week. The earth is now clad with rich and luxuriant vegetation. Life in its lowest form is now produced, but produced in perfection. This must have been so, for "there was no man to till the ground," and as yet no sun to contribute, by light and heat, to the growth and maintenance of the vegetable world. The order of vegetation is on the ascending scale-from the lowest to the highest:grasses, herbs, and fruit-trees-all appear in maturity, and all as parents, having seed in themselves. This beauty and fruitfulness was preparation for the higher forms of life created on the fifth and sixth days, of which man was the perfect type. The vegetable kingdom would be needed to sustain all animal life. The fecundity of certain plants is truly amazing. The botanist tells us that there are thirty-two thousand seeds on a single poppy plant. Wilkinson discovered a vase, hermetically sealed, in an Egyptian tomb, and which contained, amongst other things, certain seeds, supposed to be three thousand years old; yet the germ of life was there. They were planted under favorable conditions, and in course sprung up bearing fruit. It is believed that there are from eighty to one hundred thousand different species of plants. Again, the Creator pronounces His work "good."

Fourth day's work (10:14-19). This day opens with the usual creative formula, "And God said" -ten times repeated. In ver. 3, it is "Let there be light;" here, it is "Let there be lights, [or luminaries]." The language does not imply that the solar system was then created, but merely that it was assigned a special place in the heavens, and appointed to perform certain functions toward the earth and especially to man. "He made the stars also" is a kind of incidental expression. The adjustment of the celestial orbs to the new and physical conditions of the earth,-set in mathematical precision as to distance, etc., so as to secure just the necessary heat and light by the revolutions of our planet, seems to us the leading idea presented in the work of the fourth day. They are also God's indicators of time. The sun is the center of a mighty system. It has a fixed place, as a center should, although it has a revolution on its own axis every twenty-five days and ten hours. It is ninety-five millions of miles distant from the earth. Our planet performs its daily journey on its own axis once in twenty-four hours,-thus we have day and night. She travels, too, attended by her pale and beautiful satellite-the moon, on her yearly circuit round the sun at the rate of fifty-eight thousand miles an hour, and performs the journey in three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours,-thus we have "years" and the various seasons (see chap. viii, 22). Thus we have "seasons, days, and years" ac-counted for. But why for signs?-signs of what? Yes, the sun, moon, and stars are not only faithful indicators of time, lamps too of light, and sources of heat; but they are signs, to the terrestrial world, of God's glory (Ps. 19:1-6); silent yet eloquent teachers of Jehovah's faithfulness to Israel (Jer. 31:35, 36); signs of the enduring character of Messiah's kingdom (Ps. 72:17), of Christ in His majesty and glory (Rev. 1:16). The stars also tell their tale, and point to Him who alone is worthy (Num. 24:17), etc., etc. It will be observed that the light of the first day is now gathered up, and makes the sun her palace and her home.

Fifth day's work (10:20-23). We come now to the creative wonders of the animal world. The seas, oceans, and rivers have been prepared for their aquatic inhabitants:"the open firmament of heaven," with its rare combination of gases, compounded with a nicety which bespeaks the skill and wisdom of the Creator, becomes one vast aviary for every species of winged fowl. As we near perfection, it is positively beautiful to trace, in the progressive character of the work, the admirable wisdom, the infinite skill, displayed in the most minute act of these marvelous days of creation of which Moses unfolds the historic origin, while John discloses the prophetic close.

Here, then, for the first time after the primal creation (5:i), we meet with the word "created" (5:21), which in itself would be sufficient to show the special importance attached to this day's work. Life alone belongs to God. Hence, He creates from the largest sea-animal, about three hundred feet in length, down to the tiniest insect. It will be observed that there are two distinct creations of life-fish and fowl; the point in ver. 20 is the respective spheres assigned to each-the seas and the open firmament. It is worth careful notice that the words "after his," or "their kind" occurs ten times in the course of the narrative. It is three times used of the vegetable world, once of species of aquatic creatures, once of every winged fowl, and five times of all land-animals and creatures. Most certainly, all attempts to cross the numerous forms of life, whether in the vegetable or animal world, has no support in Scripture, and such practices should be shunned by all obedient to the Word; besides which, these attempts to im-prove the species only tends to their deterioration. God's order is always best. Propagating power is not inherent. The extraordinary multiplication of fishes and fowls is due to the expressed blessing of the Creator (5:22). Of existing species, there are about four thousand kinds of fish, and about three thousand kinds of birds.

Sixth day's work (10:24-31). Here, as might be supposed, the record is more full, more lengthy. The first week of the new world's history is drawing to a close, and what a fitting conclusion to such a work is the creation of man, in the image and after the likeness of God-the Creator's viceregent and representative in authority on the earth. The seas swarm with life, while many a bird of song and beauty wings its way in the open firmament of heaven. The earth, too, is clad with its carpet of green; the trees, fruit, and flower fill the balmy air with their delightful aroma. As yet, there is no scared leaf, no withered rose, no taint on the beauteous scene. Now again God works, or rather creates, so as to fill this beautiful world with life. As on the previous day we had two creations of life-fish and bird, so we have here two distinct creations, only of a much higher order and character of life than before. It will be observed that the divine word of power, "God said" occurs on the sixth-the closing day-four times. This is interesting, as it is purposely intended to bring into prominence the special acts of that unique day. "God said,"-and instantly the earth was occupied with creatures of every shape and size and species (10:24-25). "God said"-and man-the noblest work of the Creator, and subject of special God-head counsel," Let Us make,"-takes his place of intelligent lordship over the ordered scene (10:26-27). "God said,"-and the fruitfulness and multiplication of the species are thereby assured, as also the continuance of man's dominion over the animate creation (5:28). "God said,"-and the resources and wealth of the vegetable kingdom are placed at the disposal of man and animal for food (10:29,30). It may be remarked in passing that this latter appointment remained in force for sixteen hundred and fifty-six years-till the flood. Only vegetable food, and that for all, was the provision for the ark-inmates (Gen. 6:21). Flesh-meat to man only was added after the flood (Gen. 9:3).

The threefold order of land Mammalia is, first, "cattle"-domestic animals ; second, "creeping thing"-invertebrates; third, "beast of the earth" -animals of prey. Each are created after their kind. The theories of evolution and of development have not been proved by science, and Scripture condemns them, for each species of vegetable and animal life was created "after his kind."

The creation of man completes the work of God. There is now a creature intelligent, morally responsible, and competent, moreover, to represent the Creator in the vast and sinless scene. One who could lead creation's praise, enter into the moral perfections displayed by God in His beauteous workmanship, and be the vehicle of the divine thoughts to the lower creation. Surely, it was fitting that a moral link should be established between the Creator and His work! The whole terrestrial sphere came under the gaze of its Creator:all was perfect and sinless. He beheld it with complacent delight, and pronounced the whole "very good." "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." We may remark that while an "evening" is said to precede the distinct creations of each day, it is not so as to man. No evening is said to precede his creation:in kind, in character, in purpose, it was entirely unique, and quite distinct from all else. We take the eleventh verse of the twentieth chapter of Exodus as conclusive proof that the creative week consisted of six literal days-days of twenty-four hours each. On the seventh, God rested, blessed, and sanctified it. It is not said to have been a day consisting of an evening and a morning-Jewish and eastern mode of reckoning. Sin came in, and misery with it. God then wrought in love and righteousness in midst of evil, and holds out to faith the grand and eternal state as" His rest." W.S. (Scotland.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Glorified and Glorifying Himself. We have seen the work of atonement as a work needed by man, applicable and applied to him for his complete justification and deliverance. And this involves, as we have seen, God's satisfaction with the blessed work done on man's behalf, of which the rent vail and the resurrection are the prompt witnesses on His part. But we have reserved to this place, as the fittest for it, the full divine side of the cross, so far as we can utter it. In our review of Scripture, it has necessarily often occupied us; but in this sketch of the doctrine-now very near conclusion,-it needs to be afresh considered and put in connection with it. It is indeed, and must be, the crowning glory of the whole.

We begin, naturally and necessarily, with that which meets our need as sinners, and yet even so that need is never rightly met until we have seen, not merely our sins put away, but whose hand it is that does this. Nor must we stop here even with Christ for us. It must be " God for us." "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us."

Quite true, if we have come to Christ we have come to the Father; if we know Christ we know the Father:and so our Lord replies to Philip's words which we have just quoted. But we need to understand this. It is no long road to travel, from the Son to the Father. The Father is perfectly and only revealed in the Son. Yet many stop short of this for long; using Christ's work more as a shelter from God than a way to God:like Israel on that night in Egypt when God says, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you;" but how different from the Psalmist's deeper utterance -"Thou art my hiding-place." To be hidden from God, or hidden in God-which is our faith's experience, reader?

It is evident that in these two thoughts God is in contrasted characters:to pass from one to the other involves a revelation. And as Philip's words truly say, nothing but this last suffices the heart. God has made it for Himself; nothing but Himself will satisfy it.

It is true "the Son of Man must be lifted up:" here is a necessity. Yes, but "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son:" here is God Himself revealed. It is the cross in each case that is contemplated, but how differently! And it is this divine side of the cross that is now to occupy us.

God glorifies Himself in revealing Himself. He shines out. Clouds and darkness no more encompass Him. He is in the light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

And we, blessed be His name! are in the light. The darkness is passing, if not wholly passed. The true light already shines. Through the rent vail of the flesh of Jesus the divine glory shines. It is of His cross our precious Redeemer says, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God be glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will straightway glorify Him." These words may well serve as the text of all we have to say.
"Now is the Son of Man glorified." No ray of glory shone upon Him:all was deepest darkness, profoundest humiliation; yet in the cross the Son of Man was glorified. Well might He say to Peter, "Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me now." Who but Himself could have gone down into the abyss where was no standing, to lay again the misplaced foundations of the earth? Who but He could have borne the awful trial of the fire of divine holiness, searching out all the inward parts, and in that place have been but a sweet savor to an absolutely holy God? Who but He could have assumed those sins of ours which He calls in the prophetic psalms "My sins," and risen up again, not merely in the might of a divine person, but in the power of a thoroughly human righteousness?

Yes, verily, "the Son of Man was glorified;" but more-" God is glorified in Him." There are two ways in which we may look at this.

First:God was glorified by the perfect obedience of One who owed no obedience, as He had done no wrong. He restored what He took not away. He confessed fully a sin He had Himself to measure in infinite suffering and alone. He confessed and proclaimed a righteousness and holiness in God to which He surrendered Himself, vindicating it against Himself when God forsook Him as the bearer of sin. And He presented to God a perfect humanity, fully tried and beyond question, in which the fall was retrieved, and God's thought in man's creation brought out and cleared from the dishonor the first man had cast upon it. And goodness triumphed in weakness over evil; the bruised foot of the woman's seed trod down the serpent's head.

But secondly:when we think of the mystery of His person, it is God Himself who has taken- truly taken-this earthen vessel of a pure and true humanity, that He might give to Himself the atonement for man's sin. It is God who has coveted and gained capacity for weakness, suffering, and death itself, that He might demonstrate eternal holiness, and yet manifest everlasting love to men. It is God who has "devised means that His banished should not be expelled from Him." And it is God who has cleared up all the darkness of this world by this great joy found at the, bottom of a cup of awful agony; who has brought out of the eater meat, out of the strong sweetness, out of death and the grave eternal life!

It is this revelation of God in the cross that is its moral power. In all that He does, the Son of God is doing the Father's will, keeping the Father's commandments, making known the Father's name. The gospel is the "gospel of God"-His good news,-in which "glory to God in the highest" coalesces with "peace on earth, delight in men." And so it is "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." Every way it becomes true, "when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." This is that moral power of the cross which some would make the whole matter, but which can only be when found in a true atonement for our sins. Mere exhibition would be theatrical, not real, and could not do the work designed in it. A real need really met, a just debt paid at personal cost, guilt measured only and removed by such a sacrifice,-this alone can lay hold upon the heart so as to be of abiding control over it. And this does control:" O
Lord, truly I am Thy servant:I am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds."

But the moral effect of the cross, the power of the display of divine glory in it, is not to be measured merely by what it accomplishes among men. Scripture has shown to us, clearly if not in its full extent, a sphere which is far more extensive than that of redemption. Into the "sufferings of Christ and the glories which should follow," says the apostle Peter, "the angels desire to look." And while by it the Redeemer, "gone up on high," has "led captivity captive," and "having spoiled principalities and powers, made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,"-on the other hand, "God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." And more precisely the same apostle speaks of God's "intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God." (Eph. 2:4-7 ; 3:10.)

Not to us only, nor only for our sakes, is the glory of God revealed! Would He hide from others the glorious face which has shone upon us? On the contrary, if "the Lamb" be "the light of" the heavenly city of the redeemed, the light of the city itself is "like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;" for He that sits upon the throne is "like a jasper and a sardine stone," and the city has the glory of God (Rev. 4:3; 21:2:"Unto Him," says the apostle, "be glory in the Church, in Christ Jesus, through all generations of the age of ages" (Eph. 3:21).

God, then, being glorified in Christ, glorifies Him in Himself, giving Him a name above every name. "By His own blood He enters in once into the holy place, having- obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12). Not simply as the divine Person that He always was does He enter there, but now as the One who has by Himself purged sins He sits down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (chap. 1:3). He is Head over all things, Head of all principality and power, Head to the Church which is His body (Col. 1:18; 2:10; Eph. 1:22). His request is fulfilled:"Father, glorify Thy Son," and the end in which His heart rests He names, "that Thy Son also may glorify Thee" (Jno. 17:2).

The end and object of all is the glory of God. It is perfectly, divinely true, that" God hath ordained for His own glory whatsoever comes to pass." In order to guard this from all possibility of mistake, we have only to remember who is this God, and what the glory that He seeks. It is He who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,-of Him in whom divine love came seeking not her own, among us as "One that serveth." It is He who, sufficient to Himself, can receive no real accession of glory from His creatures, but from whom- "Love," as He is "Light,"-cometh down every good and every perfect gift, in whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning. Of His own alone can His creatures give to Him.

The glory of such an one is found in the display of His own goodness, righteousness, holiness, truth; in manifesting Himself as in Christ He has manifested Himself and will forever. The glory of this God is what of necessity all things must serve,- adversaries and evil as well as all else. He has ordained it; His power will insure it; and when all apparent clouds and obstructions are removed, then shall He rest-"rest in His love" forever, although eternity only will suffice for the apprehension of the revelation. "God shall be all in all" gives in six words the ineffable result.

Christ, then, is the One in whom God has revealed and glorified Himself-glorified by revealing Himself. Upon Him all the ages wait:"all things were created by Him and for Him." He is the "Father of eternity:" Head of the Church His body; last Adam of a new creation.

And in this eternal purpose of God we have our place, therefore, and how blessed an one!-" chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love "(Eph. 1:4). "That in the ages to come He might show forth the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus"-"God, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ; and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

The cross of Christ was an absolute necessity for the salvation of men; but it is more,-it is an absolute necessity for the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose to show forth the exceeding riches of His grace. In it already has been accomplished that which is the wonder and joy of heaven, the fullest song on the lips of her adoring worshipers. But the grace in this must have full expression-the fullest. He who has become a man for our salvation cannot give up again the manhood He has assumed. Service is the fruit of love. He has taken the place of service, and will keep it:the love is not temporary, but eternal, in His heart; the expression of it should be as eternal as the love.

And if He come down to this place, and as man lead the praises of His people, men must be in the nearest place to Him; that it may be, not merely compassion seen in Him, but love; and love, free, unearned, divine, the exceeding riches of the grace of God.

Thus, too, the cross is honored, exalted, lifted up before the eyes of all the universe. That He died; for what He died; how gloriously the work has been achieved. While the arms that thus are thrown around men encircle all; for it is God in Christ who has done this, and who is this,-God, the God and Father of all.

There are various circles and ranks among the redeemed in glory. There are earthly and heavenly, and differences too among these. This of course implies no difference in justification, in the atonement made alike for all. A common salvation has been taken generally to mean a common place for every one of the saved; and the special place and privileges of the body of Christ have been assumed to belong to all of these. But Scripture is as plain as need be that this is not so. There will be, of those whose names are written in heaven, a church of first-born ones, as there will be a company of "spirits of just men made perfect"-a suited designation of Old-Testament saints (Heb. 12:23). There will be a new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness, as there is an "inheritance reserved in heaven" for believers now (i Pet. 1:4; 2 Pet. 3:13). I cannot dwell upon this here, and yet if it is not seen, there must be real and great confusion. But all in these different places are blood-washed ones alike:the same sacrifice has been made for all; His name under whom Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely will be, for them as for us, "The Lord our Righteousness". (Jer, 23:6). Yet Israel's promises are earthly, and not heavenly. We see, then, that to have "Christ made unto us righteousness" involves no necessary place in heaven.

And yet the cross is the sufficient justification of whatever place can be given to a creature; and it has pleased God to take out of the Gentiles a people for His name, to make known the value of the cross and show forth the exceeding riches of His grace. In Christ we are already seated in the heavenly places, and where He is to be our place forever. This we know; and it is part of the blessed plan in which God in Christ shall be fully made known, to the deepest joy and adoration of His creatures.

We are reminded here of the unequal offerings of the day of atonement,-the bullock for the priesthood, and the two goats for the nation of Israel. They are types of the same sacrifice, but in different aspects; and the priesthood clearly represent the heavenly family, as the holy place to which they belong represents the heavenly places themselves. We have considered this already, however, in its place.

And now we may close this brief and imperfect sketch of an all-important subject by reminding our readers of the way in which the Lamb-the atoning victim-fills the eye all through the book of Revelation. Not only by the blood of the Lamb the saints' robes are washed and the victors overcome; not only is it the Lamb that the redeemed celebrate, while the wicked dread His wrath; but He is the opener of the seven-sealed book, the interpreter of the divine counsels; His is the book of life, and the first-fruits from the earth, and the bride the Lamb's wife; the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of the city; the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light; while the river of the water of life flows eternally from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

"Soon shall our eyes behold Thee,
With rapture, face to face;
One half hath not been told me
Of all Thy power and grace.
Thy beauty, Lord, and glory,
The wonders of Thy love
Shall be the endless story
Of all Thy saints above."

written when I learned the sweetness of

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

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

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

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

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

August 1886

TAKE Thine own way with me, blest Lord," I said,
Kneeling in prayer at midnight by my bed;
And then upon my heart there fell deep dread.

What if He take me at my word, and lead
Into the wilderness, from verdant mead
And pastures green in which His flocks do feed ?

What if His way winds o'er the desert sands,
A road of pain and loss, through sun-scorched lands,
Where not a palm with grateful shadow stands ?

A whisper came :Not loss; there may be pain,
But al His dealings must be to their gain
Who are His own."My trust surged back again.

"To shaded Elim He doth lead."Once more
Peace swept upon my soul, as on the shore
A noiseless summer-tide. The dread passed o'er.

I spake the words again, and faith said" Yes;
The Father's loving hands can only bless,-
God for His own hath naught but tenderness !"

October 1886

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If there be in us any anxiety of conscience as to our acceptance, we may be quite sure that we are not thoroughly established in grace. It is true there may be the sense of sin in one who is established, but this is a very different thing from distress of conscience as to acceptance. Want of peace may be caused by either of two things-my never having been fully brought to trust in grace, or my having, through carelessness, lost the sense of grace, which is easily done. The "grace of God" is so unlimited, so full, so perfect, that if we get for a moment out of the presence of God, we cannot have the true consciousness of it-we have no strength to apprehend it; and if we attempt to know it out of His presence, we shall only turn it to licentiousness.

If we look at the simple fact of what grace is, it has no limit, no bounds. Be we what we may, (and we cannot be worse than we are,) in spite of all that, what God is toward us is love!

Grace supposes all the sin and evil that is in us, and is the blessed revelation that through Jesus all this sin and evil has been put away. A single sin is more horrible to God than a thousand sins-nay, than all the sins in the world are to us; and yet, with the fullest consciousness of what we are, all that God is pleased to be toward us is love! It is vain to look to any extent of evil. A person may be (speaking after the manner of men,) a great sinner or a little sinner, but that is not the question at all. Grace has reference to what God is, and not to what we are, except indeed that the very greatness of our sins does but magnify the extent of the "grace of God." At the same time we must remember that the object and necessary effect of grace is to bring our souls into communion with God,-to sanctify us, by bringing the soul to know God and to love Him. Therefore the knowledge of grace is the true source of sanctification. J.N.D.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II. " Justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." (I Cor. 6:2:) The truth of justification is variously given in Scripture, nor is it always the same thing. It is always a sentence of righteousness pronounced in favor of the person justified, but in different ways and at different times. Paul's justification by faith without works is, for instance, entirely different from James' by works; and to confound them is the destruction of both. Paul inserts a note, as if it were on purpose, to guard against such a mistake. "If Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God" (Rom. 4:2). James, on the other hand, asks of the same person, "Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?" (Jas. 2:21.) The time of which they speak is different. Paul speaks of Gen. xv; James, of Gen. 22:But also Paul speaks of justification before God, and denies James' justification by works to be before God. The latter speaks of justification before men:"A man may say, Show me" And there is no confusion.

The "justification" of our text is neither of these, but a third thing distinct from either, and I think in our day little understood. The passage that explains it is i Tim. 3:16, where the same expression is used of our Lord:"was justified in the Spirit." The preposition is the same in both passages, the instrumental "in," or "by." This clearly refers to the descent of the Spirit upon Him at His baptism, when the Father's voice testified its delight in Him. He Himself speaks of this as the Father's seal:"Him hath God the Father sealed" (Jno. 6:27). It was the divine confirmation of what He was,-His public justification thus.

If this be so as to the Lord, our own justification as given here is by the Spirit received:the seal of the Spirit is the witness given by God to us, of course, and as is said here, "in the name of the Lord Jesus." But what precisely does this mean? The apostle's sermon on the day of Pentecost furnishes the answer. Peter there takes Joel's words for his text, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." He proclaims Jesus the Lord:"God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ." They are pricked to the heart, and cry out, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" He answers, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" Baptism is "unto the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 8:16). They thus call on the name of the Lord, owning Jesus as this, and in His name receive remission of sins*, and the gift of the Holy Ghost in confirmation of it.*Of course, only the authoritative witness to it on earth, and conditioned upon the reality of their confession of Christ (comp). Acts 22:16 Jno. 20:23).*

We have only to remember now that in Cornelius' case-the first Gentile, and pattern for the Gentiles afterward, the gift of the Holy Ghost is not dependent upon baptism, and that the apostle of the Gentiles (the first preacher of justification,) is not sent to baptize, and this text in Corinthians becomes quite plain. The person owning Jesus as his Lord is justified in His name and by the reception of the Holy Ghost, then and there bestowed, the mark set on those who belong to Christ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

F. R. H.

THE DIVINE ACCOUNT OF CREATION.
We had occasion, some time ago, to consult a good and useful work on The Hebrews, by Arthur Pridham, and were astonished, in reading a lengthy note at foot of page 305, to find the following sentence; marked, too, by all the emphasis of italics:" ' In six days God created] etc. Such is the express testimony of the Holy Ghost." Now this is a singularly inaccurate expression, and is neither the "express "nor even indirect" testimony of the Holy Ghost." The words of Moses are plain enough:"For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is" (Ex. 20:11). The evident reference is to the six literal days' work described from the third verse to the end of the first chapter of Genesis. It is no-where stated in Scripture that the earth was created in six or any number of days. People have confounded creating and making; they are carefully distinguished in Scripture:thus "created to make" (Gen. 2:3, marg.). Again, "These are the generations" (an expression occurring ten times in the book) "of the heavens and of the earth when they were created"- referring to the first verse of Genesis-to that primal creation of which no particulars are given, the fact alone being stated-" In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens" (Gen. 2:4); this part of the verse refers to the six days' work detailed from ver. 3 to ver. 31 of the first chapter of the Bible. Carefully observe that when it is creating, the order is "the heavens and the earth;" but when it is making, he says, "the earth and the heavens." The word "created" occurs five times in course of the narrative-once in reference to the universe (5:. I), once to the sea-monsters (5:21), and thrice to man (5:27).

God "called" occurs five times:-"day," "night," "heaven," "earth," "seas," were severally named by the Creator. Thus human language was ordained. The next who distinguished things by names was Adam (vv 5, 8, 10; chap. 2:19). In naming these things, the ground-work was laid in which the beauty, order, and life of creation were to be displayed.

"God said" -a simple yet withal majestic expression-is repeated ten times in course of the chapter. There is no elaborate preparation for so mighty a work, no means employed or assistance given. Power went with the word. "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." The third and sixth days were the most important:in the former, the earth is raised up and out of its watery tomb, and then covered with luxuriant vegetation,-thus we have life out of death and judgment, surely the great lessons of the third day; while the latter or sixth day shows two creations of life,-first, of land animals, and lastly, of man. It is the importance of the creative-acts of those days which accounts for the sublime expression "God said" being used twice for the third day and four times for the sixth day.

In that creation-psalm 104:we meet with a beautiful expression- "The Lord shall rejoice in His works" (5:31). Hence, in our chapters the Creator's delight in His work is repeatedly signified in the six repetitions of the word "good.; God saw that it was "good;'' and when all was made, it was pronounced ''very good." It is interesting, however, to observe that the word is omitted on the second day, while it occurs on the third day twice:the reason being that the third day was needed to complete the work of the second; hence, till completion was reached, the Creator's note of approval in His work could not be uttered.

It is interesting to observe that all aquatic creatures and winged fowl (5:22), man (5:28), and the seventh, or Sabbath, day (chap. 2:3) are "blessed" by God. Why are land animals an exception to the bestowal of their Creator's blessing?

Before passing on to a brief consideration of the work of making, forming, and beautifying this earth as a home for man-preparing it as a sphere for the display of the moral principles of good and evil-a platform on which God, man, and Satan were to be the chief actors,-it may be well to inquire if there is scriptural authority for contrasting' two distinct material creations, generally spoken of as "the old creation" and "the new creation." These expressions are not to be found in the Scriptures ; it would be as well to discard them, therefore, in our theological writing. The use of them has done harm. It seems to us that the effort to prove a re-creation of material heavens and earth involves the idea of the annihilation of the present physical system-a thought utterly foreign to Scripture.

But does not Isa. 65:17, 18-"I create new heavens and a new earth … I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy"-teach a fresh creation of physical worlds? Certainly not. The grandest of the Hebrew prophets is treating of the moral change which the presence of the Messiah will accomplish. The whole moral system, in the celestial and terrestrial spheres of glory, will be changed. Jerusalem, its center, will become the joy of the Lord, and He will fill it with rejoicing. It is the millennium, in which, we know, the PRESENT heavens and earth will exist to display the glory of the Nazarene, that is before the mind and the prophetic gaze of the seer. It is equally certain, however, that the "new heavens and new earth," without the troubled sea-the sepulcher of countless millions-referred to by Peter and John, are to be understood as physically new-the new homes through eternity of the heavenly and earthly families of God (2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:i). But then these arc made, not created:"Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5) What Scripture does teach is that the heavens, earth, and elements which are will be destroyed (not annihilated,) by fire, then new ones made adapted to the eternal condition of things. So far, then, there is contrast; not, however, between what was and what is-that is old and new creations; but the contrast is between the present material universe and the future one. The eternal new heavens and earth are never termed "new creation;" in fact, the word "creation" is not used of them at all. God will "make," not create, the new heavens and earth of eternity.

Now Scripture does not say, so far as we know, that we Christians are brought into a "new creation" either by life or by the Spirit. The term occurs but twice in the New Testament (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15, see Gk.). If in Christ, you are "new creation;" not, mark you, brought into it. The new and spiritual race "in Christ" are it-1:e., "new creation." The term is applied to persons, not to things, which greatly simplifies the subject we are considering.

We will not enter the new heavens and new earth for more than a thousand years. Our anxious desire is to "hold fast the form of sound words;" shunning, too, those peculiar phrases and expressions which have grown up amongst us, and which will not always stand the rigid application of God's Word. Then Christ is said to be "the beginning of the new creation of God," and comments are freely made upon this supposed beautiful scripture, but they lack the merit of scriptural correctness. The Word reads, "The beginning of the creation of God" (Rev. 3:14)-that is, the present material system. The expression, "Creation of God" is probably more comprehensive than even that recorded as the creative-work of God in the first chapter of the Bible; and of this vast created system Christ is pre-eminent in time, rank, title, and glory. What comfort, what strength, is thus ministered to our souls in these Laodicean times and ways! God "made the earth, and created man upon it" (Isa. 45:12). The earth was not "created" as a home for man; it was "made" out of the chaotic state and condition of ruin into which it fell subsequent to its creation, and the six days' work prepared it as man's dwelling; so the race in Christ are "new creation," and for which God will "make," not create, an eternal home. W. S. (Scotland.) (To be continued, D. V.)

EDITOR’S NOTE-for the contents of this, and all papers to which initials are appended, the writer is understood to be alone responsible. A some what different account of new creation is given in this volume (pp. 103-108), I would here add that it is not at all denied that in Isa. lxv, lxvi, the scene which is dwelt upon is millennial, as is clear. The prophet just gives the "promise" of the new heavens and new earth which Peter appeals to and Revelation describes the fulfillment of -surely not as millennial,-and then goes on to what was more within the Old-Testament range of vision.

Let it be considered also that Scripture speaks of no creation of matter simply, but of heaven and earth; and that after the dissolution Peter speaks of, the word "create" would seem appropriate. It is a change, at least, the nature of which we know little of. Neither the beast nor man were altogether produced from nothing when "created."

The "rule" of new creation (Gal. 6:16) seems difficult to apprehend also in the way our brother uses it. If it mean the rule of belonging to another scene, it is evident. We have to walk as outside the world. If the scene be the same, (no new creation at least of it,) no separation seems enforced.

If our readers will weigh all in the presence of God, there will be only good from the comparison of views. And our beloved brother's desire in this paper will be attained. Scripture must judge us all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. (Chap. 8:2-12:) Brought to God in the Power of Resurrection.
The third section divides, like the second, into three parts:(1) chap. viii, the soul in the light,- the presence of God, revealed in grace; (2) chap. ix, x, the light in the soul,-Christ as Object and Shepherd of His people; (3) chap. xi, xii, life in the power of resurrection. The internal connection of these things we shall see better as we examine the chapters in detail.

(1) Chap. 8:The soul in the presence of God revealed in grace. To be now in the presence of God, whatever the exposure from the light of that presence, means grace. The law never revealed God, as it never brought to Him :an unrent vail was the characteristic of that dispensation. This shows the spiritual blindness of the scribes and Pharisees, zealots for the law, who would condemn by it the light for shining. In His presence they find to their own confusion that it does shine, while the convicted sinner whom they bring there finds the only safe place possible for such an one, a refuge in the grace of the One so revealed.* *Whether indeed she found it as salvation for her soul docs not seem indicated in the narrative, and is not needed for the lesson intended to be conveyed, (Grace was there for her, at least, in all its fullness, if there were faith to receive it.* It is upon this the Lord announces Himself as the "light of the world "-the revelation of God in it. Whoever followed Him should not walk in darkness, but" have the light in the only possible way for the dead to have it,-that is, as "the light of life" the light attaching to eternal life.

All turns upon the divine glory of His person therefore, which men ignorant of God, judging after the flesh merely, refused, though the Father had openly borne witness with Himself. To those who believe on Him, He adds, that continuing in His word, they should be His disciples indeed, and should know the truth and be set free by it. To the caviling, (plainly of the unbelieving Jews,) He answers in a way which seems to confuse, but in fact designedly identifies, the servant of sin and of law. "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant [bond-servant] of sin; and the servant"-the one serving in bondage, the place the law alone could give,-"abideth not in the house forever; but the Son abideth ever." The reference is plainly to Hagar and her child, types of the law and its children, as the apostle shows us:"(The covenant] from Mount Sinai, bearing unto bondage, which is Hagar. . . . But what saith the Scripture? ' Cast out the bondwoman and her son." It is plain the Lord and the apostle are speaking similarly of the footing upon which according to the law men stood with God. It is as plain that the former identifies the bond-servant to sin with the bond-servant to law; and that he who is made free by the Son is freed from sin and law together. And so, says the apostle again, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace." It is as brought to God, accepted, and standing in grace, His love in Christ made known to the heart, the tyranny of sin is broken.* *The connection of this with the story of the woman taken in adultery in the beginning of the chapter shows how foolish is the criticism which would deprive us of this latter. A gap would be left by its absence, very apparent to one who follows, as we have been doing here, the truth contained in it. And what uninspired hand could or would have written or interpolated here this wondrous passage?*

The Lord goes on to convict the Jews of their opposition to God in Him, and to bring out more and more His full glory to whose day their father Abraham had looked on rejoicing. They were no true children of Abraham; much less, as they falsely claimed, of God; but rather of Satan, the liar and man-slayer from the beginning. He that kept His saying, on the other hand, should never see death. Here already we have anticipated the doctrine of the eleventh chapter.

(2) Chap. ix, 10:Christ become the Object, Lord, and Leader of the soul. The next two chapters are self-evidently one, the story of the man born blind being but the usual narrative-introduction to the truths which follow.

The man is born blind, as spiritually we all arc. In healing him, the Lord once more proclaims Himself the light of the world. The clay made with the spittle is no doubt the figure of His own person in that lowly form which blinded indeed the eyes of carnal men, but which when revealed in the power of the Holy Ghost, the sent One, ("Siloam" means "Sent,") is the entrance of true light into the soul. Here, again, its being the Sabbath testifies to the grace of God apart from law. The Pharisees are once more roused. They question the man, seeking ground for the refusal of what is plainly the work of God. In the face of the miracle, owning too they know not whence He is, they condemn the Lord, and cast out of the synagogue the one who confesses Him to be of God. But so cast out, the man is found of Him, who is in fact leading His sheep out of the Jewish fold, and who reveals Himself to him as the Son of God.

This introduces the discourse in the next chapter, in which Jesus contrasts Himself with all pretended shepherds. Entering in by the door,-in the way of lowly submission to all divine requirements, the Spirit of God gave Him access to the sheep; those that were His own in Israel heard His voice and recognized His authority. He Himself became the door, not into the fold- there was to be no fold any longer,-but of the flock:* by Him, if any one entered in, he should be saved, go in and out, and find pasture. Salvation, liberty, sustenance, would all be found with Him, who had come to give life, and that abundantly, by the giving up of His own. In this flock, Judaism being done away); the Gentiles would have part. *In the sixteenth verse, as is well known, it should be, "One flock and one Shepherd."*

The guidance of a living Leader, whose love known in salvation has attached the heart to Himself, is here substituted for the mere measurement of sin by a code. To follow Him who laid down His life for the sheep is a new holiness, in which liberty is safe. Moreover, His everlasting arms of love are ample security, which the walls of the fold could never give. The Father's love to the saints is specially dwelt on in this chapter. They are those whom the Father has given to Christ; gave Him commandment to die for them, an act which has drawn out to Him peculiarly the Father's love. And now the Father and Son are both engaged to keep the possessors of eternal life.

(3) Chap. xi, 12:The power of resurrection-life. But this eternal life as given to man is life out of death, placing him who receives it therefore beyond death, in a new place outside the world, and which gives character to his life while in the world. This is to the glory of God, by which the Son of God is glorified. Lazarus brought up from the grave is the illustration of this.

The power of death for the disciples is shown in the first part of the eleventh chapter. They cannot understand how the Lord should go back into Judea, where of late the Jews sought to stone Him; nor His quiet talking of death as sleep. Martha and Mary rise but in their thoughts to this, that His presence would have saved their brother from dying. But now he is dead, and will rise but in the resurrection at the last day-far off for present comfort. The Lord, in reply, brings out the great distinctive feature of the new day which is coming in:"I am the resurrection and the life:he that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die."

Here, "he that believeth on Me, though he were dead," speaks evidently of Old-Testament saints; while "he that liveth and believeth on Me" speaks of the time now beginning, the characteristic of which is that the Resurrection and the Life has come. For believers in the past, the power of resurrection can be known only when they are raised from the dead by the coming Lord. For those now alive, there is, on the other hand, a present power of resurrection. Such have no death to pass through. All the reality of it has been taken from them. If they go through it, it is in the triumph of Him who has "abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel."

Thus the believer of the present time finds his type in Lazarus raised from the dead for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby. In fact, this testimony it is that makes many to believe on Him, as it rouses, on the other hand, the opposition of the Pharisees to its height. Bethany becomes known as the place of resurrection; and there we find, in the beginning of the twelfth chapter, a supper made for Him. The place is significant of that in which He can alone see of the fruit of the travail of His soul; and here Martha serves, Lazarus sits at table with Him, Mary anoints His feet with her ointment:service, communion, worship, have each their representative there where no cloud ever casts its shadow.

But now, if the Lord is to be to others the resurrection and the life, we have to see what this involves for Him. He enters Jerusalem, is hailed as King of Israel; and then certain Greeks come up, desiring to see Him:upon this He announces the approach of the hour in which the Son of Man should be glorified. But in what? "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." No way could life come for us but out of His death; resurrection-life out of death accomplished. And with this, judgment is come for the world, the prince of this world's doom, to be cast out; Christ lifted up from the earth is yet to draw all men unto Him.

The chapter closes, as so many others, with warnings because of their unbelief. The greater the blessing, the sadder to be lost; the more the mercy, the worse the judgment for its rejection; and even as the last miracle which attests the Deliverer is the water turned into blood, so says the Lord, "He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him:the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day."

II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Our care should ever be, not to suffer ourselves to proceed for a single moment beyond the energy of the Spirit, as the time for the Spirit will always keep us directly occupied with Christ. If the Holy Ghost produces 'five words' of worship or thanksgiving, let us utter the five and have done. If we proceed further, we are eating the flesh of our sacrifice beyond the time; and so far from its being 'accepted,' it is really 'an abomination.'"