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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sovereignty of God is what alone gives rest to the Christian heart in view of a world full of evil, which is gone astray from Him. To know that after all, spite of the rebellion of the creature, things are as absolutely in His hand as ever they were,-that still with the apostle we can adore "one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all,"-this brings, and alone brings, full relief. Still He rules over all, and where evil cannot be turned to good, limits and forbids it:He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath (what would go beyond this?) He restrains.

The shepherd-rod, the type of power exercised in love, out of the hand to which it belongs, and become a serpent, is the vivid picture of what we see on every side. The prince of this world is not Christ, but Satan; but it was the sign of a deliverer for Israel that he had but to stretch forth his hand and take back to him what was already his for it to become a rod in his hand once more. For us, how sweet is this assurance! The rod had not slipped out of Moses' hand, but was cast out; and even when cast out it was fully under his control:so is it with the government of this world; for Him who rules it, even disobedience works obediently; Satan, meaning nothing less, accomplishes His purposes as do the holy angels which wait around His throne. Through all, spite of all, He yet " worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." "He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him What doest Thou?"

We rest, for we know who reigns. It is not mere sovereignty, the almighty despotism of mere will, to which we bow because we must, but the sovereignty of wisdom, holiness, and goodness,-of One in whom love is revealed in light. How strange and saddening that in any phase of it the sovereignty of God should be an unwelcome theme to a Christian heart! Surely, one would say, there must be something very wrong with the state of such an one, or with the manner of its presentation to him, or with both, for it to be the case. Yet is it not so, that the sovereignty of God in salvation, -and where else is the thought so simple and so necessary?-is by the large mass of Christians perhaps a thing most vehemently denied; and even where entertained, is entertained with coldness and suspicion. The truths of election and predestination, while the favorite cavil in the mouths of unbelievers, are undoubtedly, by many who receive them, received with inward shrinking,-as at most necessary, rather than really approved. And both causes named no doubt contribute to this result.

Yet if God be (what He must be to be God,) perfect goodness, and wisdom without fault, what could one possibly desire, but that every thing should be absolutely in His hand, plastic to and molded by His blessed will, working, according to plan and forethought, His eternal purpose? It is not possible to conceive objection on the part of any, worthy of the least respect. But this is all that predestination can at all imply. It is the simple and necessary result of a really divine government,-of the supremacy of One who lacks neither wisdom nor power, nor benevolent interest in the work of His own hands.

I know, of course, the objection that will be raised. " Open your eyes," it will be said, " and look around! Is the world as you see it just what you would expect as the fruit of a wise and perfect and omnipotent will? What of the suffering that abounds on every side? and what of the sin? Can you say of that it is the will of God, and attribute to Him still nothing but perfection?"

It is of course true that we find around us a very different state of things from what we could have at all imagined from the necessary perfection of an almighty Creator and Governor. Nor dare we ascribe moral evil to the direct will of Him from whom it is a revolt. Nevertheless the doctrine of predestination remains our only comfort and support in this perplexity:to give it up would be to abandon ourselves to the despair of good as the final goal to which all tends. If the rebellion of His creatures has thus far thwarted the will of God, and filled the world with an unanticipated or unavoidable confusion, who can say how this may perplex the final result? On the other hand, complete foresight of all being His, with full power to avert whatever will not fall into harmony with His purposes, predestination of all things may be safely maintained. God is neither made the Author of sin, nor compelled helplessly to admit defeat at the hands of men. And this is what Scripture asserts as the truth of His government:"He worketh all things after the counsel of His own will."-" Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee; the remainder of wrath"-foreseen in its issue as not glorifying Him,-" Thou shalt re-strain." (Ps. Ixxvi. 10.)

It may be said by some, " This is not predestination :this is only government." But what is" worthy of God to do, it is worthy of God,-and only worthy of Him,-to determine before, or from eternity, to do. This fore-determination, or predestination, alters in no wise the character of what He does in its appointed time. It frees it only from the character of after-thought, which would imply weakness and change in Him. And thus we can say, "Known unto God are all His works from eternity [π απvός]." (Acts 15:18.)

Thus, take the worst act the world has ever seen -the crucifixion of Christ; it can be said, " Of a truth, against Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done." (Acts 4:27, 28.) If in this act then, in all acts whatever we are privileged to read the hand and foreordination of God; and thus alone every where the darkness is no more unrelieved. The will of man is recognized in all this, and not set aside. Certainly we are no where led, from Scripture, to think of him as a mere intellectual machine, moved necessarily by influences external to himself, but as a being free and responsible, though now, alas! fallen, and become the willing slave of sin. As to this, we shall see more directly. It is certain that in no wise are we to think of God as determining to evil the wills of His creatures, or as involving them, whether by (what is to them) the accident of their birth or in any other way, in irretrievable ruin. This Scripture unites with our own consciences to assure us of. There may be difficulties, and there are; but however even insoluble may be the mystery, God has given us that within us which witnesses unfailingly for Him, that man's evil and man's ruin are of himself alone.

How, spite of contrary and conflicting wills, God is yet as absolutely "over all, and through all, and in* all," " working all after the counsel of His own will,"-this is beyond our skill to fathom. *The editors omit "you" in Ephesians 4:6.* But so it is:and blessed it is to recognize that, as the apostle witnesses, it is as " God and Father of all" He is so. This is in fact the very web and woof of Scripture. This is what so irresistibly appeals to us in those tears wept over impenitent Jerusalem by Him who could pronounce its sure and approaching doom,-a doom to be executed by the hands of men ignorant and careless of Him whose sentence they fulfilled.

This predestination extends to every thing. Foresight and omnipotent will are every where. Thank God they are! In the moral as in the physical universe, no where can one escape from His presence, save, alas! by such an insensibility as the mass of men have sunk into. For the Christian, it is joy unspeakable to recognize this pervading presence, which recognized brings light into darkness, order into disorder, peace into whatever circumstances of distress. In the strain of triumph with which the apostle closes his development of the Christian state in Romans viii, the basis of all is this precious doctrine. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to those that are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, them also He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the First-born among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? "

But this leads us to another doctrine, closely connected with this of predestination, and suffering the same reproach, even from those who owe their all to it. I mean, of course, the doctrine of election. Election is so plainly taught in the word that it is surely only the opposition of the heart to it that can account for its not being universally received among Christians. Nor is this an election nationally or individually to privileges or " means of grace" such as plainly Israel and for long the nations of Europe have enjoyed, but to salvation; and to salvation, not on account of foreseen holiness or faith, but through, or by means of, these." But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you unto salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto He called you by our gospel." (2 Thess. 2:13.)Nothing can well be plainer than this; nothing more positive than the assertion by the same apostle which was just now quoted of that " chain of salvation," link riveted to link, whereby predestination issues in calling, and calling in justification, and justification in glory. A hundred texts would fail to convince where two such as these would. But in truth, the difficulty is not textual; it lies elsewhere.

Election involves many another truth most humbling to man's pride of heart, and this is in a large number of cases the real hindrance. On the other hand, it is quite true that in the conflict of minds upon a subject which has been in controversy for centuries, the balance of truth has been very much lost (although I could not say, equally,) by those who contended on either side; extremes on either part have tended to throw men off into the opposite extreme. Thus Calvinism and Arminianism, or what are commonly so called, have nearly divided Christians between them, each refusing to recognize, for the most part, any truth in the other. Yet each has in fact its stronghold of texts and arguments, and its unanswerable appeals to conscience, never fairly met by the other. The mis-take has been in the supposition that what was really strong on both sides was in necessary opposition. The fact is, that, as another has said, in general, the strength of each lies in what it affirms; its weakness, in what it denies. The truths of Calvinism cluster about the pole of divine grace; those of Arminianism, about that of man's responsibility. The world revolves upon its axis between the two. (To be continued?)

The issue:Christ seen as the true Israel before God, and, heard amid the sorrows of death, the ground of their deliverances, from Egypt to the last days. He is delivered from the strivings of the people (Israel), and made the head of the Gentiles, and all serve Him.

To the chief musician, [a psalm] of the servant of Jehovah, of David, who spake to Jehovah the words of this song, in the day when Jehovah had delivered him from the grasp of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. And he said,-

I do love Thee, Jehovah, my strength. 2. Jehovah my rock, and my stronghold, and my deliverer! my God*, my strong rock, in whom I will take refuge; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation; my high place!

3. I call upon Jehovah [as] object of [my] praise; and I am saved from mine enemies.

4. The toils of death faced me about, and the torrents of Belial put me in fear.

5. The toils of hades compassed me round; the snares of death overtook me.

6. In my strait 1 called upon Jehovah, and cried for help unto my God:He heard my voice gut of His temple, and my cry came before Him, into His ears.

7. Then the earth quaked and shook; and the foundations of the mountains moved and quaked because His anger burned.

8. Smoke went up out of His nostrils, and fire out of His mouth devoured:coals were kindled by it;

9. He bowed the heavens also, and came down, and thick darkness was under His feet.

10. And He rode upon the cherub, and did fly:yea, He swooped upon wings of wind.

11. He made darkness His covert; His pavilion about Him darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.

12. From the brightness of His presence His thick clouds passed:hailstones and coals of fire!

13. And Jehovah thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave His voice:hailstones and coals of fire!

14. He sent forth His arrows also and scattered them; yea, He shot out lightnings and discomfited them.

15. Then the channels of the waters were seen, and the foundations of the habitable earth were uncovered at Thy rebuke, Jehovah,-at the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.

16. He reached from on high, He laid hold of me, He drew me out of many waters.

17. He rescued me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated me; for they were too strong for me.

18. They overtook me in the day of my calamity; but Jehovah is my stay.

19. And He brought me forth into a large place:He delivered me, because He had delight in me.

20. According to my righteousness hath Jehovah recompensed me; according to the cleanness of my hands He hath returned me.

21. For I have kept Jehovah's ways, and have not wickedly departed from my God.

22. For all His judgments were before me; nor did I put away His statutes from me.

23. I was also perfect with Him, and kept myself from mine iniquity.

24. And Jehovah hath returned me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands before His eyes.

25. With the merciful Thou showest Thyself merciful, and with the perfect man Thou showest Thyself perfect.

26. With the pure Thou showest Thyself pure, and with the perverse Thou showest Thyself tortuous.

27. For Thou savest the humble people, and bringest low the lofty looks.

28. For it is Thou that lightest my lamp:Jehovah my God enlighteneth my darkness.

29. For by Thee I run through a troop, and by Thee I leap over a wall.

30. As for God, His way is perfect; Jehovah's word is tried; He is a buckler to all who take refuge in Him.

31. For who is God beside Jehovah? and who a rock except our God?

32. The God who girdeth me with strength, and maketh perfect my way!

33. That maketh my feet as hinds'; and setteth me on my high places;

34. That traineth my hands for the war, so that a bow of bronze is bent by my arms.

35. Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation, and Thy right hand upholdeth me; Thy condescension also maketh me great.

36. Thou makest room for my steps under me, so that my ankles have not wavered.

37. I pursue my enemies and overtake them; nor do I turn till they are made a full end.

38. I wound them so that they cannot rise:they fall under my feet.

39. For Thou girdest me with strength unto the war:Thou castest beneath me those that rise against me.

40. Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies; and them that hate me I cut off.

41. They cry for help, and none saveth; to Jehovah, and He answereth them not.

42. And I beat them as small as dust upon the wind, and as mire of the streets I pour them out.

43. Thou shalt deliver me from the contentions of the people, and Thou shalt set me for head of the Gentiles:a people I have not known shall serve me.

44. As soon as they hear they shall obey me:sons of the stranger, they lie unto me.

45. Sons of the stranger shall wither away, and be forced by fear out of their coverts.

46. Jehovah liveth, and blessed be my Rock! and exalted be the God of my salvation!

47. The God who giveth me vengeance, and subdueth the peoples under me;

48; That delivereth me from mine enemies:yea, Thou raisest me above those that rise against me; Thou rescuest me from the man of violence.

49. Therefore will I give thanks unto Thee, Jehovah, among the Gentiles, and sing psalms unto Thy name.

50. He multiplieth salvations for His king, and showeth mercy unto His anointed, to David and his seed, forever.

Notes.-Ver. 1-3 give first the praise for the deliverance. 4-6, the Lord in His sorrows as in Gethsemane. 7-9 seem to blend the deliverance out of death of the Lord personally, and that of the people from Egypt.

20-27, the ground of deliverance in His personal righteousness.

28-42, power and victory in Him for them.

43-45, millennial rule of Christ.

46-50, closing praises.
The latter part of ver. 23 must be carefully guarded in any possible application of it to the Lord. Here, "my iniquity" could only be whatever would have been that to one in His position.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Psalm 108:6-13.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The record of our Lord's sail over the Sea of Galilee, accompanied with His disciples, as given in Luke 8:22-26, is exceedingly interesting. It contains a lesson rich in instruction, and of deep practical value for the children of God.

It pictures very vividly our passage across the sea of this turbulent world. It is a reflection of our journey through a scene of incessant though ever-varying activity, on to the haven of rest eternal.

The proposal to go to the other side was the ' Lord's:it was no rash undertaking of the disciples. It was the Lord who said, " Let us go." One has come to us from the bright "over there." The Father has sent to us His Son from His own house, and He has told us of the Father-of the Father's house-of heavenly things. We have heard His voice, we have received His words, we have bowed in our souls to His heavenly communications. Owned now as His brethren and companions, He shows us that His blessed home over the other side is ours, and He says, " Let us go."

His saying to His disciples " Let us go over to the other side of the lake " was the expression of His will, the authority for the journey, and the sure pledge or promise of its successful end. Beside this, He was Himself present with them- present to share their lot, whatever that might be.

Beloved, what these disciples had we have. We have His word and His presence. We know His will is, that where He is, there we may be also. He has said so. " It is written " is faith's answer to the question, " What reasonable ground or authority is there for denying ourselves and following a despised and rejected Christ?" Through His word the eye of faith looks upon things " un-seen and eternal," and all is assured. Possessing in His word these three things of such incalculable value for faith-His word being all this to the heart, how free are we to enjoy the blessing of His presence along the journey. But if His word is not thus dwelling in our hearts, we shall not be keeping Him company, though He be with us. He was asleep on this ship as they were gliding along toward the land over the other side. He was oblivious to all around before the storm came and during the storm. A smooth sea, a balmy breeze, the beauties around, occupied neither His eye nor His heart. His disciples did not keep Him company in this obliviousness to the things of sight and sense. So when their circumstances changed, -when the smooth sea became rough, and the gentle breeze turned into a terrific gale,-the joy and pleasure of a beautiful sail was superseded by distress and fear. Now they think of Him, but they cannot bear to gaze upon His peaceful face. How descriptive this of ourselves! Bo long as the scene through which we pass contributes to our comfort, how we enjoy the journey! but when trouble comes-opposition, persecution for the word's sake, such things as the path necessitates,- not troubles our own failures and sins bring upon us, but troubles which are the necessary result of following after a rejected Christ,-when such trials come, what unhappiness! what discontent and murmuring! how much fear and trembling! How impossible to be quiet! How unbearable the quietness of the Lord! Like the disciples here we must invoke His activity. They went to Him and said, "Master! Master! we perish." He heard their cry. He answered their prayer. He arose, spoke to the winds and commanded the waves, and there was a great calm; but He said to them, " Where is your faith ? " Oh, what a rebuke!

Beloved, are the days evil and difficult ? do the winds blow fiercely? are the waves rising higher and higher? He is with us. We have His word and His presence. Is that sufficient? Are we desirous of an easier path? Is this heaving and tossing unbearable? Is His peacefulness, His mastery, His undisturbed supremacy unbearable ? Well, if we cannot endure, He may respond to our desire-gracious One that He is; (have we not known Him to do so?) but if so, be assured it is a rebuke. It is to ask us, "Where is your faith?"

The disciples here were ill at ease in the calm. The solemn quiet and stillness of the calm was dreadful, too. They were not free and happy in the presence of Him who had produced for them such a thorough change. They little knew the personal glory of their Master. " What manner of Man is this?"-who is He, to do such a wondrous thing? We, too, often say, What a wonderful providence! what a remarkable interposition! while yet our hearts are ill at ease in His presence ; so slow are we to learn Himself and the glories of His wondrous person.

What losers we are through our lack of faith, forgetfulness of the word, and indifference to the presence of our ever-calm and restful Lord! What we would gain by allowing His word its full power in our hearts, who can tell? Let us cultivate His company, and never weary of gazing upon His peaceful face.

C.C.

The book of Exodus is divided manifestly into two parts, and that whether it be interpreted as type or letter. The first eighteen chapters treat thus of the deliverance of Israel from their old tyrant; the rest of the book, of their taking fully up the service of their Deliverer. In the typical view, to which the whole sacrificial system (with which we have now to do) essentially belongs, the first part gives us redemption from the slavery of sin; the second, redemption to God. The one is the complement of the other:the "service" of God is the only "perfect freedom."

We shall have yet to inquire as to the relation of the law to atonement; in what I propose just now, we have nothing to do with law as such. Typically, it becomes the symbol of that divine government to which as redeemed we are at once freely and necessarily subject. This is too much forgotten in interpretations of the book, and nothing seen except strict law – the ministration of death and of condemnation, as then it must be:

Typically, if the first part answer to the epistle to the Romans, the second answers (although much less completely) to the first epistle to the Corinthians. In it, the main feature is that habitation of God which Israel themselves are not but Christians are. This tabernacle and its services we have now to consider, so far as it develops new features of atonement, the central figure in all these types.

The new features that the tabernacle-service presents to us are the mercy-seat, upon which the blood is presented to God; the priest who offers the sacrifice; with the full completion of the altar of burnt-offering.

The mercy-seat, with the ark upon which it rests, is the throne of Him who has taken His place in the midst of His people. He is the God who dwelleth between the cherubim, and appears in the cloud upon the mercy-seat.

Christ is this mercy-seat, as the apostle in Romans Hi. 25 declares; for the word "propitiation" there is the word so translated in Hebrews 9:5, and that by which the Septuagint constantly renders the capporeth of the Old Testament. This Hebrew word is a noun derived from that intensive form of caphar, which is used commonly in the sense of atonement. Atonement is plainly stated to be made in the holiest on the day of atonement when alone the blood was actually brought in there and presented to God. And while shed actually for the sins of priest and people-the whole congregation of Israel,-it was declared to be made for the holy place itself, and for the whole " tabernacle of the congregation " (or " tent of meeting" rather, because there the people met with God). Afterward, atonement was made for the altar of burnt-offering by putting the same blood upon it. Thus the divine intercourse with men was sustained and justified. The sins of the people could not defile that upon which rested the precious blood of sacrifice. The capporeth, the seat of atonement, became indeed the mercy-seat,-the throne of righteousness a throne of grace. Toward the mercy-seat the faces of the cherubim, ever the symbols of judicial power, and thus connected with the throne, bent to behold the blood which proclaimed and satisfied the righteousness of God. All this in Israel was indeed but type and shadow:there was thus as yet no actual way of access into His presence. For us, the substance is come, and we have " 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."

The apostle adds here the second thing which the tabernacle-service sets before us,-" A High-Priest over the house of God." (Heb. 10:21.)

The priest was the special minister of the tabernacle; the word in Hebrew signifying " minister." The apostle applies this in Hebrews 8:I:"We have such a High-Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." The word used for " minister" here is leitourgos, one performing duties for the public good; and this completes the idea of the priest, as one serving in behalf of men in the sanctuary of God. Christ is thus " entered . . . into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." (Ch. 9:24.)

From Levi, third son of Israel, sprang both the Levite and the priest. This " third " speaks of resurrection, always connected with the third day* (Comp. Hos. 6:2.). *In beautiful connection with the spiritual significance of numerals, far too little thought of; for 3 is the number which speaks of divine fall-ness-of the Trinity, and thus of divine manifestation; as it is only when this is reached that, in Father, Son, and Spirit, God is fully revealed. But resurrection is that also which reveals God,-a work proper to Himself alone. (See Romans 1:4.)* And so the sign of the true priest (Num. 17:8.) was the dead rod blossoming and fruitful in the sanctuary. Levi's own name also, "joined," is full of meaning:it is the Mediator, in whose person and work God and man are really joined, who becomes the Priest.

If then in the tabernacle God's dwelling with man is foreshadowed, priest and mercy-seat are the necessary witnesses of how alone this can be.

His work of sacrifice accomplished, He Himself carries in the token of it into heaven, the place henceforth of His priestly ministration. By Him we draw nigh to God:His acceptance, who is our representative there, the measure of our acceptance. The high-priest thus represented the people. "In the presence of God for us" He who once died for us ever lives.

Access to God, no more afar off, but abiding with us,-access in the sanctuary of the heavens itself, and by One who represents us there:this is the new feature of the tabernacle-types as they speak to us today of the power and value of the blood of atonement.

But the altar also gets its full place and character. Indeed, while we find frequent mention of it in the book of Genesis, we have no description at all until we come to the second part of Exodus. The word in the Hebrew simply means "a place of sacrifice." The first command as to its construction we find in chapter 20:24-26. This was to be the general construction which might have been adhered to, as some say, in the brazen altar, the frame-work of brass and wood being superimposed upon a substructure of earth.

"The altar sanctifieth the gift," If, then, the sacrifice represent the work of the Lord Jesus, it could not be sanctified by any thing outside. The person of the Offerer alone could give value to His offering. The character of the altar brings out and develops this.

The material, in chapter xx, is first of all, (and, as one might say, preferentially,) earth:" An altar of earth shalt thou make unto Me." We have evidently the thought of that which is fruitful. All fruit both Scripture and man's speech naturally call "fruits of the earth." But what is it that, in contrast with stone or sand, constitutes the fertility of earth? It is the readiness with which it suffers itself to be broken up into ever finer particles; and to this its name in different languages seems to refer.* *Parkhurst gives Crete, "earth," from ratz, "breaking in pieces, crumbling;" χθv, from Heb. kath, "to pound, beat in pieces;" the Latin, terra, from tero, " to wear away;" and the Eng. ground, from grind.* The spiritual application is readily made; and the yielding of the creature without resistance" to the hand of God is that in which all real fruitfulness is found. In Him who gave Himself in manhood to know (in what other circumstances!) that path from which His creature had departed, Gethsemane and Calvary proved the perfection of His self-surrender. It was here the altar of earth symbolized Him:only one of many ways in which what was so precious to the Father is told out. " Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life. . . . This commandment have I received of My Father."

The altar of stone is of course a different, and in some respects a contrasted thought. Stone is of the material of rock, the type of unyielding strength, a thought that we shall find repeated in the brazen altar, and linked there as here with that in which the secret of it is discovered. The Son of Man is the Ancient of Days. The rejected "Stone" is the "Rock of Ages." It is this that again gives value to the cross, and makes Christ the power of God unto salvation. Everlasting arms are they that are thrown around men. The human Sufferer is a divine Saviour.

It may seem to militate against this that Elijah builds his altar of twelve stones, expressly according to the number of the tribes of Israel; but this is no more against the interpretation I have given than it is against Matthew's application of Hosea's prophecy to Christ, that, according to the prophet himself, it is Israel, whom as a child God loved, and called His son out of Egypt. Whoever looks at Isaiah 49:3-6 will find how of necessity the place of the failed servant must be taken by One who cannot fail. Substitution may be as rightly stamped upon the altar as on the sacrifice; and this is surely the explanation here.

So the stone of the altar must not be hewn stone, nor must there be steps up to it. It is the intervention of God, not work or device of man. His attempt at this would only expose his shame:by any effort or contrivance he cannot rise above his own level. God could come down, and He alone exalt.

We come now to the brazen altar, where the brass covered a frame of shittim-wood, as in the ark, the table, and the altar of incense the gold covered it. In these, the two materials have been rightly held to speak of the two natures of our Lord:the shittim-wood, from a wilderness-tree, life conquering death, a growth not governed by its circumstances. Such was He who, growing up within the narrow circle of Judaism, ever spoke of Himself as " Son of man;" who, obedient to the law, breathed of divine grace; who was light shining out of darkness, life indeed, in the midst of death.

The gold I cannot conceive simply as "divine righteousness; " for who can conceive all the display of it in the tabernacle furniture speaking of nothing else but that? It is obvious, and often remarked, that it was characteristic of the sanctuary itself; and the sanctuary was the place where God manifested Himself; we having to consider it as with the vail rent, and the "first" tabernacle merged thus in the holiest of all. Moreover, in the things themselves there was this common character.* *" First, then, there arc the things which arc found in the Holy of holies and the holy place. The ark of the covenant, the table of the show-bread, find the candlestick with seven branches. This is what God had established for the manifestation of Himself within the house where His glory dwelt, where those who enter into His presence could have communion with Him."-(Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. Vol. I, p. 72.).* If the shittim-wood also represent the humanity of the Lord, the gold must needs represent, one would say, His divine:that by virtue of which alone He could manifest God in full reality. This it would be too narrow to limit to "righteousness," while of course this is contained in it. It is rather " glory," as the apostle calls the golden cherubim of the mercy-seat " the cherubim of glory." (Heb. 9:5.)

In the altar of burnt-offering brass (or copper) replaces the gold, and for the same reason must surely represent the divine nature in our Lord, yet with an evident difference. It is not the type of divine manifestation, but of unchangeableness- endurance. It is constantly thus associated with iron, but which is a lower type, without the brightness and sheen of the copper. In the successive degradation of the Gentile empires, the gold fades into silver, and the copper into iron. "Thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass," Moses warns the people, "and the earth that is under thee shall be iron:" words that sufficiently illustrate both the similarity and the difference between these two things. Again, in the blessing of Asher, he says, "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be." And the Lord even asks, in Jeremiah, "Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel [copper] ? "

In connection with the altar of burnt-offering, this significance of the brass is of easy application. It was no mere creature-strength that was in Him upon whom rested the accomplishment of all the divine counsels of grace through the cross. " I have laid help upon One that is mighty" may indeed be said of Him. But how wondrous this character of endurance in Him who learns obedience through the things that He suffers:to whom it can be said, (His strength weakened in the way, and His days shortened,) "Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands" (Ps. 102:25.)! Nay, the very power to stoop to such a place was the attribute of a nature necessarily divine.

And what does the brazen grate "beneath," "in the midst of the altar," speak but the deep capacity for suffering here implied? True, as, to be His type, the bird of heaven must die in the vessel of earth (Lev. 14:5.), so He must in the verity of manhood acquire capacity. . The capacity is not thus to be measured by a mere human standard:He was one blessed Person in whom Godhead and manhood met; and in the depths of His being, as the grate within the altar, the fire of the cross could and did burn in abysses of nameless suffering to which no other sorrow could be like. To attempt to fathom or define would be presumption.

These, then, are features which the tabernacle-service adds to the idea of sacrifice. With this,. we shall be prepared now better to come to that sanctuary-book, Leviticus, in which, in some sense finally, the whole heart of atonement is opened up to us.

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

Michtam of David.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looked at in this way, we have-

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

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

3. The Prophets.

4. The Psalm-Books.

5. The New Testament.

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

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

The Covenant-History

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

The five divisions here are easily apparent:-

1. Joshua.

2. Judges and Ruth.

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

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

5. Chronicles.

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

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

1. Isaiah.

2. Jeremiah, with Lamentations.

3. Ezekiel.

4. Daniel.

5. The Twelve Minor Prophets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PSALM-BOOKS

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

1. Psalms.

2. Job.

3.Solomon's Song.

4. Ecclesiastes.

5. Proverbs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

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

1. The Gospels.

2. The Acts.

3. The Epistles of Paul.

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

5. The Revelation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Corinthians, as belonging to the Church.

3 Hebrews, as perfected worshipers.

4. Timothy, as in the house of God.

5. Titus, the fruits of true doctrine.

6. Philemon, Christianity the true exalting power.

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

1. Peter gives the path through the world.

2. James, the principle of justification by works.

3. John, the features of eternal life.

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

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

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

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

[A psalm] of David.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dispensational Application.-In Isaac we have had, as we have seen already, the acknowledged type of the Son of God. In the twenty-second chapter also Abraham takes the place, which from his relationship we are prepared to find him filling, the place of the typical father. These two, Abraham and Isaac, God links with Jacob's name when revealing Himself to Moses at the bush He bids him "say unto the children of Israel, 'The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob hath sent me to you.'" This is, as the apostle tells us, a sign of His approbation of them:" God was not ashamed to be called their God;" He could connect His name openly with theirs. Had He said He was the God of Lot, Lot's conduct would have been His own dishonor. The special choice of these three men in the way God chose to associate them with Himself was perhaps the highest honor He could bestow upon men.

In the New Testament there is one name which has of necessity displaced all other names. God has found one Man with whom He can perfectly and forever identify Himself, and from whom His character can be fully learned. He has been revealed in His Son, and is now to us forever known as the " God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

But surely this will prepare us to see even in the case of the Old-Testament names a deeper view of God than any thing which could be gathered merely from their biographies. As to two of them, we have seen that this is justified by the fact; but God, when linking in His revelation to Moses the name of Jacob with this, adds, " This is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations." This has generally been limited to the title, "Jehovah," which is the word our version, as is well known, here as almost always, translates as " Lord," but which is, indeed, almost identical with the " I am" of the previous verse:" I am hath sent me to you." Nor can it be for a moment contested that Jehovah is the name by which God is henceforth known as Israel's covenant-God. This is not meant, then, to be disputed. Only along with and displaying this "Eternal" One, this other term comes in:" Jehovah, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob:this"-all of it-"is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations."

For us the God of redemption is indeed here fully displayed. For if in Abraham we find manifestly the type of the Father, and in Isaac admittedly that of the Son, in Jacob-Israel we find a type and pattern of the Spirit's work which is again and again dwelt on and expanded in the after-scriptures. Balaam's words as to the people, using this double-this natural and this spiritual- name, are surely as true of the nation's ancestors, " It shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!" What God hath wrought is surely what in the one now before us we are called in an especial way to acknowledge and glory in. For Jacob's God is He whom we still know as accomplishing in us by almighty power the purposes of sovereign grace.

In these two names of his-Jacob and Israel- the key to all his history is found. The long years of discipline through which he passes are necessitated by his being Jacob:they are the necessary result of righteous government, but which in the hands of a God infinitely gracious issue in blessing the most signal to the chastened soul; the worm Jacob becomes, in the consciousness of his weakness, Israel,-has power with God and with man and prevails. The fruitfulness of God's holy discipline is surely the moral of his life.

And of this the nation are as striking an example. The only people chosen of God as His own among the nations of the earth to be the manifest seat of divine government, their own history becomes of necessity the illustration of this. " You only have I known," He says, "of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities." Any thing else but this would have been impossible for a holy God. And yet it is of Israel and their election that it is said, " The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." (Rom. 11:29.) Even in their present state of dispersion, as the apostle argues, they are still " beloved for the fathers' sakes." Their rejection as a nation is not final. God repudiates utterly, by the mouth of Jeremiah, that which is still the thought of many Christians:" Considerest thou not what this people have spoken, saying, ' The two families which the Lord hath chosen, He hath even cut them off'? Thus have they despised My people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith the Lord, If My covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth, then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David My servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them." (Jer. 33:24-26.)

Their present chastening is therefore for final reformation, and thus nationally are they a pattern of God's dealings in holiness, but in grace, with all His people. Their father Jacob becomes thus also their type, a view to which it seems to me the language of the prophets every where conforms, and which it indeed necessitates.

The life of Jacob divides into three parts, according as we find him in the land, exiled from it at Padan-Aram, or again returning; and to this correspond very plainly the three great periods of Israel's national life. The last is indeed only known by prophecy, but as surely as any history could make it known.

The first part seems to me to cover the whole of their inspired history. Jacob is shown to us, as the apostle declares in Romans ix, as the object of election. The constant order of Genesis is, as we have seen, the rejection of the first-born:it is "first that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." But in every other case there is some plain reason for the divine choice. In Cain, self-righteousness sets aside; in Isaac, his birth from Sarah might be urged as reason; Reuben, too, falls into sin, which deprives him of the birthright. In Jacob's case, as the apostle tells us, " The children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth; it was said unto her,' The elder shall serve the younger.'" Jacob stands indeed here scarcely so much as a type of the people as he is one with the people:"Jacob have I loved" is said of both. And this choice of divine love, as it insures their full final blessing, so it insures the discipline needed as the demand of His holiness and of that blessing of theirs also:" You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities." Beth-el, the house of God, figures therefore so largely in Jacob's history, and it is as El Beth-el, the God of His own house, that he has to know Him, in the holiness which becomes His house. It is thus at Beth-el, when he returns there, that his history morally closes.

In this first part he answers fully to the name which Esau indignantly invokes:" Is he not rightly called Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times." The national characteristic cannot be well doubted here. Jacob values the blessing of God, but seeks it in subtle and carnal ways, totally opposed to faith, as the apostle testifies of Israel that they "sought after the law of righteousness," but "did not attain to the law of righteousness; and wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith." It was thus they stumbled at the stumbling-stone, and became wanderers from the land of promise, exiled by their sin. Yet as Jacob, an exile from his father's house, finds God at Bethel watching over him with providential care, and assuring him of a final return to his father's house in peace, so have his seed been watched over in all their wanderings, and their return to their land is guaranteed by the sure word of prophecy.

The Lord in His words to Nathanael applies that Beth-el vision to Himself. It is when Israel shall accept with Nathanael's faith the Lord Jesus Christ as Son of God and King of Israel that they shall have the blessedness of looking up into an opened heavens, and seeing the angels of God, in their ministrations to men, attending on the Son of Man; and these two thoughts combined-Son of God, as confessed by Nathanael, and Son of Man, as in His love to men He constantly styled Himself-imply a Beth-el, a house of God on earth. In that day it could be but a vision of the future, for the nation had not Nathanael's faith. For such as he, the pledge of that day was already there.

During Jacob's twenty years at Padan-Aram he enjoys no further revelation until the angel of God bids him depart thence. In the meantime He deals with him as one for whom He has purposes of blessing which can be reached only through disciplinary toil and sorrow. He is multiplied through unwelcome Leah and the two bondmaids mainly, serving long and with hard labor for his wives and flocks. The general application to such a history as that of Israel since her dispersion is not difficult to make, although it may be impossible to trace in detail. Perhaps we should expect no more than a general thought of such a history, as the Spirit of God could find nothing in it upon which to dwell, save only to magnify the divine mercy in it. Enslaved, trampled on, yet preserved, and merging into final wealth and power:this is the simple, well-known, yet marvelous fact, in which they witness to the care and holiness of that God of Beth-el whose name they know not.

In the third part we find Jacob (up to this, still and only that,) returning to his own land. In the application, we must remember that it is a remnant that represent and grow into the nation. For these as for their father, Peniel prepares for Bethel ; that they may not fall into their enemies' hands, God, whose name is yet unknown to them, must take them into His own, crippling the human strength in which they contend with Him, that in weakness they may hold Him fast for blessing. They must needs confess their name naturally, that grace may change it for what has to be henceforth their name. At Peniel, Jacob becomes Israel, although not yet does he fully realize that which is implied in this, so that at Beth-el he again receives it, as if never his before. Thus, broken down in repentance, and their human strength abased, the nation will be saved from the hands of their enemies. Purged from idolatry, they will then have their second Beth-el, when God discovers to them His name, so long hidden, and confirms to them the promise to their father Abraham. Christ, Son of His mother's sorrow, but of His Father's right hand, will then take His place among them, and so they will come to Mamre, and to Hebron, to the richness of a portion which now is to be enjoyed in fellowship with God.

The Philistines

After the judgment of Sodom, and before Isaac is yet born, we find Abraham again in the south country, and in connection with a people who in the after-history of Israel have a much more important place. Throughout the times of Samson, Eli, Samuel, and Saul, (whom they defeat and slay,) the Philistines hold the chief place among the enemies of Israel. David defeats and subjugates them, although they appear again in the times of his degenerate successors.

Their typical importance must correspond to their place in an inspired history of "things" which "happened unto them for types," and their general history and character throw light upon what is written of them in that part of Genesis to which we are now come.

The Philistines were not Canaanites, although sons of Ham. They sprang, according to Genesis 10:14, from Mizraim, to whom the land of Egypt gave its distinctive name. Yet we find them in the land of Canaan always, on the lowland of the south-west coast, with their outlook indeed toward Egypt, with which they had (as see Ex. 13:17,) the freest and most unobstructed communication.

To translate this spiritually, they are natural men in heavenly things. Of Ham and Mizraim we have already briefly spoken. Ham is the darkness of resisted light, and out of this, Egypt, the natural world, is come. Its name, " Mizraim," or "double straitness," applies with unmistakable clearness to the strip of land on either side of the river, maintained in fertility and beauty by its yearly overflow, and bounded strictly by the desert on either hand. From their land the people derive their name. As natural men, they are conditioned and limited between narrow bounds, within which they may do great things, but not transcend them. They are governed and characterized by their conditions, naturally; are governed and get their name from what they should govern.

Such limits-indeed, much narrower,-confine the Philistines to their strip of sea-coast. They hold but a border of the land; and, however fertile, its lowest part. Other parts they may ravage, not really possess:there, they are (according to their name) "wanderers" merely. Here too they are sojourners in a land that is not theirs:it belongs already, in divine purpose, to the seed of that " Abram the Hebrew," who now comes to Gerar, no wanderer, but a " passenger," or pilgrim, To the one alone is there a future, a fixed point beyond, faith in him the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Yet as the order is, first, that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual, the Philistines for long seem to possess the land, Abraham already finds a king at Gerar whose name, however interpreted,* speaks of established, successional authority while the captain of his host is Phichol-1:e., the " voice of all." *Abimelech:either " Father of a king," or " Whose father [is] king.* "Who that is prepared to find meaning here at all can fail to see in this the shadow of that traditional authority to which human religiousness, ignorant of the living Spirit, ever appeals? And completely in accordance with this it is that with Abraham and Isaac, as with the men of faith of every age, their great contention is about the wells of water which they themselves never dig, but of which they would with violence possess themselves, only to stop them again with earth. Of how many Sitnahs and Eseks has church-history been the record, until in God's mercy a Rehoboth came and they who sought the truth found "room"! All this in its general meaning seems easy enough to follow, and to make the typical character of these Philistines very clear.
It is noteworthy, too, that while never themselves possessing more than a border of it, they have loomed so largely in men's eyes as to give their name to the whole land. Palestine is only Palestine. So the traditional church is "catholic" –universal.

And now at Gerar we find Abraham once more failing as long before he had failed in Egypt. These Philistines, too, are but Egyptians, though in Canaan; even as the world, though come into the church, is still the world. Sarah, the covenant of grace, belongs still and only to the man of faith; but how often has he failed to assert this absolutely exclusive claim! In the present day there is surely more failure in this respect than ever; when, with an open Bible ours, and more enlightenment, Protestant traditions are become the rule of what is no less a world-church than Rome itself. For such, the Abimelechs and Phichols will have their place as of old; human authority be substituted for divine; the wells which faith had dug be stopped again. And here, how great the danger of Sarah being given up,-of grace being divorced from faith!

Alas! the liberality of the day is gone so far in this direction, that grace must not be denied where not only faith, but the faith, is absent,-where Christ is Himself denied. Orthodox and unorthodox mingle on platform and in pulpit. All lines are being surely and not slowly effaced. Churches with orthodox creeds open their doors widely to whatever is popular enough to make it worth their while; and Christians, with whatever trouble of conscience or grief of heart, dare not purge themselves from the evils which they feebly lament. They have obeyed one scriptural injunction at least,-they have "counted the cost:" alas! with too cold a calculation, into which neither the glory of God nor even their own true blessing has been allowed to come.

How little man's hand is competent to hold what God has intrusted to it we may see in Abraham. It is not the young and raw disciple, but the man who has walked in the path of faith for long, who here shows himself ready to give up the partner of his life, and the depositary of all the promises! What then is man? and what hope for him except in God? None, surely. And it is to ground us well in this that we are given to see the sad and terrible failure of these honored servants of God. Not to discourage, but to lead us to the source of all confidence and strength. Only in realized weakness do we find this. Only when unable to do without God for a moment do we find what He is for us moment by moment.

And it is the best blessing that we show most our incompetence to hold. Our place in Christ is that upon which all else for us depends, yet who of those to whom God has in His goodness been showing it in these last days is not aware how the knowledge of it had for ages almost disappeared out of the faith of Christians? Justification by faith, given similarly back to us in Reformation days, has been only by the same goodness preserved by constant revivals out of perpetual decline since then. Well for us will it be in proportion as we learn these lessons and our faith takes hold upon the living God. Alas! that even here the very failure of man should tend to shake our hold of His faithfulness,-as if He, not we, had failed ! But " hearken unto Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by Me from the belly, which are carried from the womb, even to your old age, I am He; even to hoar hairs will I carry you:I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you."

In a marked way God interferes here for His failing servant, suffering him indeed to find for awhile the fruit of his own ways, but coming in for him at last in how tender and gracious a manner, to speak of him as " a prophet," and to make Abimelech debtor to his prayers. How different from our own ways with one another, ready as we are so easily to give up each other, sometimes at the mere suspicion of wrong-doing, when faith would hold fast the people of God for God! How sweet and restoring too for Abraham's soul this goodness of the ever-faithful One! for grace it is that restores alone:"sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace."

Let us hold each other fast for God, if of this grace indeed we would be ministers. Members of Christ as we are, we are members also, and thus, of one another. This bond will survive all failure, and it should in whatever failure be felt (the more, not the less, for the strain upon it,) in our hearts.

And now, unmoved from His own purposes of wisdom and of love, the Lord fulfills to Abraham the promise that He had made. A son is given to. gladden his life, and be the pledge of mercies still to come. Isaac is born, type of a greater, in whom all promises find completion. In Him, dwelling in the heart by faith, the life of faith finds its completion. From the first its one necessity, He now becomes its abiding realization. Let us look at this briefly, as the prayer in Ephesians 3:develops it.

The apostle's prayer is to "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every* family in heaven and earth is named." *So, rightly, the Revised Version, with Alford, Ellicott, etc.* Christ in His place as Man, yet Son of the Father, is a new link of relationship between God and all His creatures. Angels as well as men have their place here. It is impossible but that the place He takes must affect all. He is Head over all things, as well as Head to His body the Church :the " First-born of every creature,"-" Beginning of the creation of God." The arms which reach to man at the farthest distance encompass all between. The love which has displayed itself toward the lowest is felt as a pulse of new life by every rank of the unfallen "sons of God." Every family of these has for its Father the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How this at once sets the one in whose heart by faith Christ dwells at the center of all the divine purposes! How "length and breadth and depth and height" begin to dawn upon him whose eye rests upon Him by whom and for whom all things were created! No wonder, therefore, that the apostle prays "that He would grant unto you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." The "inner man" and the "heart" are parallel in meaning in Scripture:the " hidden man of the heart," as Peter calls it; not affections merely, but the whole man himself-the true man under all appearances. Here, in the center and citadel of his being, faith receives its Lord.

Christ dwelling in the heart by faith redeems us then from the narrowness and pettiness of mere individual interests, and brings us into the plans and counsels of a wisdom that embraces all things. "Rooted and grounded" ourselves "in love," which has met and satisfied all need in so wondrous a manner, "breadth and length and depth and height" begin to be revealed to us. All mysteries find solution in the deeper mystery of the cross. Evil is no where else so evil, but it is no where else so met, defeated, triumphed over, by the inherent power of good. And it is good which is in God Himself toward us, which manifests and glorifies Him.

The "breadth and length and depth and height," of which the apostle speaks, are not, of course, measures of "the love of Christ, which," he declares, "passeth knowledge;" yet are they the means of better knowing how infinite it is. The "love" in which we are "rooted and grounded" alone enables us to "comprehend the breadth and length and depth and height;" and these apprehended, heaven and earth, time and eternity, are filled forthwith with the fullness of a divine presence. We know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and are filled up in all the fullness of God.

This is the consummation of the life of faith when the true Isaac dwells thus with us. It is the conclusion, therefore, of this section of the book before us, save only the brief appendix in which we see, first, the bondwoman and her child cast out, and then the Philistines owning the superiority of the pilgrim man of faith.

The first has a dispensational application, which the apostle gives us in Galatians iv; and here Isaac appears, not as the representative of Christ Himself, but of those who by grace are one with Him. " Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise; but as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the Scripture? 'Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.'"

In Christianity God had for the first time recognized relationship with a family not born after the flesh, as in Judaism Israel as a nation was, but with those spiritually born of Him. The children of law were born to bondage; the children of grace alone are free. But the Church had, as Isaac, its weaning-time, before the child of the bondwoman was cast off. The larger part of the Acts illustrates this, which the close of the fifth of Hebrews explains and applies. The last chapter of this epistle shows the camp rejected,-Ishmael and Hagar, the nation on the footing of the legal covenant.

Cast out, they wander in the wilderness of Beer-sheba, and are nigh perishing for thirst. This I conceive to be the present condition of Israel. The water, the word of life, is spent for them, and the well they see not, although the oath of God, the covenant with their fathers, secures it for their final possession." * *Beersheba" means " The well of the oath." (Ver. 14.)* This, therefore, their eyes shall yet be opened to, and Hagar herself become a means of blessing to them (Deut. 30:1-3.); their dwelling still and ever outside of Canaan-the heavenly inheritance.

The development of these things would be full of interest, but would lead us too far to follow. The individual application is clear in general, although the details may be less easy to trace. Most interesting is it to see that the Philistine has now to concede that " God is with" the man of faith, and that the well of water is all his own. Here, then, afresh he worships, calling on Jehovah, the everlasting God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Series I.-First Three.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lord is coming! Most blessed, yet most solemn truth! The midnight cry has gone forth, " Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him." Far and near the cry is sounding. Loud and clear and long it rings through the midnight air, and the virgins are being aroused from their careless and guilty slumbers. Have you heard the cry? has your heart answered to it? Are your loins girded? Is your light burning? Do you know Christ as the heavenly Bridegroom? and are you waiting for Him in the joyous expectation of going " in with Him to the marriage " ?

The Bridegroom is coming. Most plainly has God spoken in His Word about this great event. " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." We are called to hear the very words of God. It is God Himself who speaks, and woe be to those who despise His word. " Incline your ear, and come unto Me," He says; "hear, and your soul shall live." Let us, then, bend our ear to God, and hear His word to us at this solemn moment, when the midnight cry is calling forth the virgins afresh, to meet the coming Bridegroom.

" Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom." (Matt. 25:) This well describes the first condition of the professing church, while the heavenly hope of the saints still shone bright in their hearts. Christian Jews went forth from the camp of Judaism, and converted Gentiles left their dumb idols, to wait for God's Son from heaven, who had said, " I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, / will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" I WILL COME AGAIN"! This was the blessed" hope of the saints! This the blessed Lord set before the Jewish disciples when He was about to leave them, and it was the comfort of their poor sorrowing hearts. They had been drawn to His person; they had marked the unfoldings of the divine, eternal life in Him as a man among men; they had seen, heard, touched, and handled the Word of life; they had seen the outgoings of eternal love manifested in Him; they had seen Him pressing on to the cross, and meeting the storm of human hatred and Satanic malice; they had seen Him bow His holy head under the tempest of divine judgment, as the Bearer of their sins; they had seen Him risen again from the dead, victorious over death and all the power of Satan, presenting to their wondering eyes His pierced hands and side as the proof that "it was Himself, their risen and victorious Saviour; they had gathered around Him on the mount of Olives, and heard His parting words, and seen His hands uplifted to bless them as He ascended up to heaven; and now, as the cloud received Him out of their sight, and they still stood gazing up into heaven, the men in white apparel assured them that this same Jesus should so come in like manner as they had seen Him go up into heaven. This was their blessed hope, their comfort, their joy. He was but gone to prepare a place for them, and would come again and receive them to Himself. What was the effect of all they had seen and heard? They were drawn to His blessed person, and their hearts clave to Him in love. The manifestation of eternal and divine love had bound them to Him, and as He ascended, their hearts followed Him on high. All the links that bound them to the world that had crucified Him were broken. Their links were with Him, and every chord of their hearts vibrated with holy joy at the words, " I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."He was coming again, and they went forth to meet the Bridegroom!

But this same Jesus was preached to the Gentiles also, and preached, not only as a Saviour to deliver them from the wrath to come, but as the One who would gather His own around Himself, and usher them into the deep, eternal blessedness of the Father's house. This was their, blessed hope. The Thessalonian saints were turned from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven. And if the enemy brought in confusion of thought as to those who fell asleep before the coming of the Lord, the apostle would not leave them in ignorance. He would let them know that those who fell asleep would not miss the blessing and glory of the kingdom. God would bring them all with Christ. But there is a preliminary event necessary to take place before this can be accomplished. "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (i Thess. 4:16, 17.) Thus, when all the saints have been caught up to meet the Lord, and to be forever with Him, then God can bring them all with Him, as His co-heirs, to enter upon their inheritance, and fill their predestined place in the kingdom and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Such was the hope and such was the state of the Church when it was in the freshness of first love; but

"The Bridegroom Tarried."

More than eighteen hundred years have passed since He said to His disciples, "Watch." Why has He tarried so long? Is it because He is slack concerning His promise ? Oh, how could any one think this of Jesus, who died upon the cross in self-sacrificing love, that He might be " the Amen "-the verifier of all God's promises? " The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to usward, not I willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." (2 Pet. 3:9.)Ah! this is the wondrous secret of His having tarried so long. God is gathering a heavenly bride for Christ, and divine love still lingers over the lost in long-suffering patience, and one and another and another are being brought to repentance, and screened under the sheltering blood of the Lamb from the awful storm of coming judgment. And while the activities of divine love have been displayed in reconciling men to God, the time has not grown long to Him, with whom one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

Ought the time to have grown long to us ? Ah! if the saints had been in communion with their Saviour, and followed the outgoings of His heart as the great Shepherd of the sheep, they would have been but too willing to suffer and toil and wait, without counting the time long. They would not have forgotten their hope; but, having the secret of His heart, they would have kept the word of His patience. But, alas!-

"While the Bridegroom Tarried, They All Slumbered and Slept."

The hope of the Lord's coming ceased to be an immediate hope. The wicked servant said in his heart, " My lord delayeth his coming," and then " began to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken." Through how many centuries has the Church slumbered and slept, and the evil servant done his own will! Alas! the church-the great professing body-instead of keeping herself as a chaste virgin espoused to Christ, gave up the hope of His coming, and played the harlot with the kings of the earth.

But the Lord is coming; as it is said, "He that shall come will come and will not tarry." But does He want to come and find a sleeping bride, a bride not expecting her Bridegroom? Ah, no. He will have the saints, in conjunction with the Spirit, saying, " Come." He will have bridal affections in the saints answering to His own imperishable love. And oh! think of the grace that has sent out the heralding cry, "BEHOLD THE BRIDEGROOM; GO YE OUT TO MEET HIM!"- the cry that has aroused the slumbering virgins, and made them trim their lamps.

Oh, reader, have you heard this cry ? Are you awake? Have you trimmed your lamp? is it burning for Christ? Oh, sleeper, awake! awake! awake! The Lord is coming-surely coming, and coming quickly! Oh, awake from your midnight slumber! trim your lamp, and be ready!

But you have heard the cry, perhaps, and trimmed your lamp, and it is "going out." You have taken no oil in your vessel. So it is in the parable. " They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them; but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." There must be the oil of the Holy Ghost-the power of divine light in the soul-in order to have a place in that glorious procession that will light our coming Bridegroom in to the marriage.

Dear reader, will you have a place in that wondrous throng? Do you know redemption? Have your sins been washed away in the blood of the Lamb? Have you been sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise? Oh, remember, the mere lamp of profession will not do. You must have the oil; and you must get this now, while it is still the day of grace. When the Master rises up and shuts to the door, it will be too late. Now is the accepted time. Oh, will you not seek the oil now ? Christ will give it you. You cannot get it from the wise virgins:they have it only for themselves. You must get it from Christ:He alone can supply your need. And He sells " without money and without price."You cannot buy it otherwise. The Holy Ghost is the gift of Christ (as Christ was the gift of God the Father) to all those who believe the gospel of salvation. Having accomplished redemption by His death upon the cross, Christ was exalted to the right hand of God the Father, and received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, which He shed forth in power on the day of Pentecost. This is the oil for the virgins vessels-the oil that sustains the light of Christ in the soul amid the darkness of this world's night. Oh, have you received this oil? Your lamp will be worthless indeed unless you have the oil to keep it burning. If you have not the oil, you will be left outside, forever and ever to bewail your fatal neglect. Oh, be wise, and take the oil which Christ freely gives to all who come to Him. Believe in Christ, whose precious blood cleanseth from all sin, that you may receive the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and be numbered among the wise who took oil in their vessels with their Tamps.

"And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage, AND THE DOOR WAS SHUT." Reader, on which side of that door will you be when that solemn moment arrives? Will you be inside, to share the wondrous joys of that blood-washed throng? or will you be outside, to join the cry, " Lord, Lord, open to us," only to hear the crushing answer, "I know you not"?

Oh, what a moment will that be when the Lord comes and takes away His own which are in the world! What a separation will take place then! All the saints will be changed "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet," and caught up to meet the Lord in the air; while the despisers of the gospel will be left behind, to fall under the awful delusion of Satan, and be carried away in that terrible apostasy in which "the man of sin" will be deified and worshiped in the very temple of God, ' that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thess. 2:12.)

Too suddenly and swiftly, it may be, for human eyes to see, yet with divine certainty the separation will take place. Every believer will be taken away:every rejecter of Christ will be left behind. Education, rank, wealth, social position, will have nothing to do in deciding who shall be caught up and who shall be left behind. All turns on whether men have believed the witness of God, and received the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, or whether they have despised God's word and rejected His Son. The separation is between believers and unbelievers, and takes place among all classes and conditions of men-high and low, rich and poor, great and small. Wherever they are, in whatever employ, in city or country, house or field, believers are caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall they ever be with the Lord.

In one part of the globe it is morning. The morning light has dawned, and the sun has arisen, and all seems the same as yesterday. The family circle are in their accustomed seats at the table, . and all are partaking of the morning meal. Suddenly one and another are missed. They have vanished in a moment, and no earthly call can bring them back. They have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

In another part of the globe the inhabitants are at their daily occupations. There also the great separation takes place. In a moment God's people vanish from earth,-some from the streets of the city, some from behind the counter, some from the workshop, some from the field. Calls are unanswered, and all search is vain. They have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

In another part of the globe it is evening. The work of the day, and the evening meal are over. Some of God's people, perhaps mingling with the family circle, are, with the others, talking over the affairs of the day; some are at the prayer-meeting; some, perhaps, are preaching the gospel to sinners, and pleading with men to be reconciled to God, or, it may be, themselves listening to the old, old story they loved so well. Suddenly, and quickly as the lightning's flash, the summons comes, and as quickly all the saints are gone. The saint whose voice was just heard in the family circle is seen no more; the voice heard in prayer and supplication is silent; the servant of God proclaiming the word of reconciliation suddenly vanishes from the sight of his hearers; those who just now were listening with delight to the old, old story, or the teaching of God's blessed truth, have gone to behold the face of Him whom having not seen they loved. The great separation has taken place. The saints have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

In another part of the globe it is night. The inhabitants are wrapped in midnight slumber, but the Lord Himself descends from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and every saint answers to the heavenly call. The unsaved husband, or the unsaved wife, is left behind, and, it may be, slumbers on till morning, or awakes in the night to find the loved companion gone, and the children too, who had been taught the fear of the Lord by the faithful father or mother. Every where the separation goes, all classes are divided; all relationships are broken. Oh! moment of awful desolation to the unsaved! From field and city, counting house and workshop, stately mansion and lowly hamlet, royal palace and poor man's cottage, a cry more terrible than the cry of Egypt on the night when the first-born were slain, a cry of anguish and despair, ascends to heaven, " LORD, LORD, OPEN UNTO US." But alas ! it is too late ! too late ! " They that were READY went in with Him to the marriage, AND 'THE DOOR WAS SHUT"!
And now, what is the conclusion of the whole matter? "Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour." "Times and seasons" there will be for the waiting Jews after the Church is gone, but there are none for us. The Lord may come to-day, or He may come to-morrow. He may come at morn, or noon, or night. The one solemn word He left ringing in the ears of His disciples was, " Watch." " Blessed are those serv- ants, whom the lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. Verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants." "Blessed are those servants"! Who shall tell the unutterable blessedness and joy of those who have waited and watched for Christ, and who shall be fashioned into His glorious likeness at His coming ! " We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." (i Jno. 3:2.) And what is the power of this wondrous hope? "Every man that hath this hope?" We shall be like Him then; we want to be like Him now, "purifying ourselves even as He is pure." Shall we not then cultivate bridal affections in our hearts, and keep ourselves (as a chaste virgin espoused to Christ) unspotted from the world? Shall He find us walking with defiled garments? walking with the world that crucified Him, and now coldly rejects His message of grace? Are we members of its societies, guests at its pleasure-parties, attendants at its theaters, companions of those who by these things drown the voice of God in the conscience? He who was the light of this world is gone, crucified, and cast out. And now it is night-the long desolate night of His absence. Shall we seek shelter and comfort and carnal ease where He was slain ? Oh, may we rather cleave to Him with undivided affections, enduring the cold chill of the night, and keeping our lamps burning brightly till He comes. Let us go forth to meet the Bridegroom. "Surely, I come quickly" are His blessed words of cheer to our lonely and waiting hearts. Let the sound tremble on the chords of our hearts, making melody there to Him, whose heart will never be satisfied until He has us with Himself; and let us wait for that moment when His heart and ours shall be mutually satisfied-when " the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife had made herself ready.""Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."

A.H.R.

It was something new. A horse, a plow, a beautiful field of corn, a fresh, lovely morning, nature singing all around. The work was simple -just pass up and down each row of the young corn cultivate its roots and destroy the weeds. And, in its own language, it seemed to be thankful, for it looked the greener in the newly stirred ground. Earnestly, and with a light heart, the boy at the plow went on, making nice headway. Bat the sun was going on too, and as he rose, the heat of the day began to be trying. It grew hotter Still, insects made the horse fretful, and this made the plow unsteady. Perspiration rolled down the boy's face, and his task assumed a painful aspect. At the end of a row, he stopped, looked back, and measured with a glance how much he had done. Another glance forward showed a field whose end he could not see; it was far off, beyond the sloping hill. Discouraged, he sat on his plow and wept.

Just then, from over the hill, where the end of the field was hid, a well-known figure came in sight-his mother. There she was, with a pitcher and a plate. Amid her many cares she had not forgotten her boy. Nor would sending a messenger with the refreshments do; she would go herself.

"Why, my boy, what is the matter?"

"Mother, I have worked faithfully since I commenced, and see, I have only an insignificant strip of the field done. I can never get through this whole field."

"My child, you have not the whole field to do, but only one row. Can you not do one row?"

"Oh yes, mother; that is easy enough."

"Well, that is all you have to do."

The boy's courage had returned, the refreshments had revived him, and by doing only one row he finished his task in peace and good cheer.

I leave the application of this incident of real life to those who, having tasted the freshness of the morning of another and better life, may now be lagging under the heat of the day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The divine meaning of Christ's sacrifice. Atoning suffering, the drinking of the cup of wrath:every other element of sorrow entering in, only to be contrasted with God's forsaking. As the result, grace flows out to men in ever-widening circles:(i)the remnant of Israel owned as brethren; (2) the "great congregation" of all Israel; (3) all the ends of the world; and Jehovah's righteousness in the cross is declared to the generations following.

To the chief musician, upon Aijeleth Shahar. A psalm of David.

My God*, My God*, why hast Thou forsaken Me? – far [art Thou] from saving Me, [from] the words of My roaring !

2. My God, I cry in the day-time, and Thou answerest not! and by night, and cannot be silent!

3. But Thou art holy, dwelling amid the praises of Israel.

4. Our fathers trusted in Thee:trusted, and Thou didst deliver them.

5. They cried unto Thee, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not ashamed.

6. But I am a worm, and not a man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

7. All they that see Me mock Me:they thrust out the lip, they wag the head, [saying]:

8. "He trusted in Jehovah,-He will deliver Him; He will rescue Him, for He delighted in Him."

9. But Thou art He who brought Me out of the womb; giving Me confidence upon My mother's breasts.

10. I have been cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou art My God* from My mother's belly.

11. Be not far from Me, for distress is near, but there is none to help.

12. Many bullocks have compassed Me about; strong ones of Bashan have beset me round.

13. They opened wide their mouth upon Me, as a lion tearing and roaring.

14. Like water am I poured out, and My bones are all disjointed; my heart is become like wax,- it is melted in the midst of My bowels.

15. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue cleaveth to My jaws; and Thou hast laid Me in the dust of death.

16. For dogs have compassed Me; the assembly of evil-doers have inclosed Me, piercing My hands and My feet.
17. I may number all My bones:they gaze, they look upon Me.

18. They part My garments among them, and cast lots upon My vesture.

19. But Thou, Jehovah, be not far from Me; O My Strength, haste quickly to My help!

20. Rescue My soul from the sword,-My only one from the paw of the dog!

21. Save Me from the lion's mouth! yea, from the horns of the aurochs Thou hast answered Me.

22. I will declare Thy name unto My brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.

23. Ye who fear Jehovah, praise Him; all ye seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and reverence Him, all ye seed of Israel.

24. For He hath not slighted nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted one; nor hath He hid His face from Him, but when He cried unto Him He heard.

25. Of Thee shall be My praise in the great congregation; I will make good My vows in the presence of them that fear Him.

26. The humble shall eat and be full; they shall praise Jehovah that fear Him; your heart shall live for aye.

27. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Jehovah; and all the families of the Gentiles shall worship before Thee.

28. For the kingdom shall be Jehovah's, and He shall be Ruler among the Gentiles.

29. All the fat upon earth have eaten, and worship :all those going down to the dust shall kneel before Him, and he who cannot keep his soul alive.

30. A seed shall serve Him:it shall be counted to the Lord for a generation.

31. They shall come and declare His righteousness to a people that shall be born, in that He hath done [this].

Text.-Title :"Aijeleth Shahar "-" Hind of the dawn," the first morning beams being compared to the horns of a hind. This is so beautiful a significance when applied to that work in which the darkness in which man had got (the face of God being hidden from him,) was put away, and the true light broke forth upon him, that it is needless even to allude to other proposed meanings.

(8) Perhaps more literally, " Rolling [it, or Himself] on Jehovah, He will deliver Him."

Remarks.-This psalm gives unmistakably the sin-offering aspect of the work of the cross. It divides evidently into two parts, of which the twenty-one verses of the first part give the work itself, the last ten the results. This number 21 is surely significant, especially when we compare it with the thirty-six verses of the trespass-offering psalm (Ixix). 36 is the number of the books of the Old Testament or law, and give, as 3 plus 12 (the divine and the governmental numbers), " God in government." Here, the 21 is 3 plus 7, the last, as in the days of creation, the expression of accomplished, perfect work. In the sin-offering it is the divine nature that is in question; in the trespass-offering, the divine government, as the requirement of restitution shows, a precise estimate of the injury being made.

What is emphasized and put in contrast with all else is the forsaking of God ; and this is what the holiness of His nature implies with One who, though He knew no sin, was made sin for us. The fourth verse shows that was no mere being left in the hands of His enemies, for the fathers had not always escaped these :it was a real desertion of soul, which the three hours' darkness symbolized, the light withdrawn, and God is light. To this, on the light breaking forth again out of this darkness, the title, as I have said already, points.

If riches will thus do them good, all things shall concur to make them rich:if poverty, all things shall concur to keep them poor:if it be good for them to be healthful and strong, all things shall concur to prevent sickness:if it is better to be sick or weak, all things shall concur to impair their health:and so in every thing else that can be named. So that every thing that happens well for them-the best that can be, in that it helps to the subduing of some vice in them, or to the regulating of some passion, or to the breaking of an ill custom, or to the preventing some occasion of falling into sin or mischief, or to the diverting some temptation, or to the arming them against it, or to the making them more watchful over themselves, or to the exercising some virtue in them, or to the putting them in mind of their duty or to the keeping them close to it, or to the giving them an opportunity of doing some good which otherwise they could not do, or else to their growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and so to the fitting them better to serve God here and to live with Him hereafter. Whatever conduceth to these and such like ends is truly good for them, and therefore all things concur to effect it. They may be sure of it, for they have the word of God Himself for it, assuring them here, by His apostle, that " all things work together for good."

Beveridge

Abraham.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As the burnt-offering gives especially the divine side of the work of Christ, so the peace-offering dwells rather upon its effects with regard to men. This must not be taken in too absolute a way as respects either. The burnt-offering is for man, of course, and in atonement; and the skin removed undoubtedly carries us back to the coats of skins which clothed our first parents, as we have already seen. On the other hand, in the peace-offering, who could forget the Father's joy in that which brings the prodigal to the Father's table? And this is what the peace-offering presents to us. Still this " peace" is what the offering effects for man with God. It is rather an effect of the work which is contemplated than a new aspect of the work itself.

For this reason we have necessarily, in connection with our present subject, less to do with it. The main peculiarities connect with the necessary distinction of destination of the offering, of which only the fat is burnt upon the altar, while the rest of the animal belongs either to the priest or to the offerer himself,-the only sacrifice in which the offerer does partake. In the lower grades of the sin-offering the priest has his part; the offerer no where but in this. Here, then, the peace-offering fulfills its name, and finds most evidently its distinctive character.

The peace-offering may be of the herd or flock, male or female, bullock or sheep or goat. Birds are omitted, with a manifest propriety, which confirms fully the meaning ascribed to them. " The bread from heaven," as the Lord says in the gospel, is what "the Son of Man shall give you." If we speak of communion, which we have seen to be the point here, it must be the Son of Man, sealed of the Father, that must be the basis of it. True, if He were not God over all blessed forever, all the preciousness would be lost for us. Nevertheless it is in His manhood that we apprehend Him doing that work which alone brings us to God. Even in the burnt-offering we see that the bird, though a higher thought, comes in necessarily as a lower grade. Here it disappears. It is in the joy brought out of sorrow that I find what establishes my soul in peace with God. It is the value of His manhood's work in which I draw near, although none but such as He was could have had power to lay down His life and again to take it. In the peace-offering and sin-offering alone is the female permitted,-in the latter indeed enjoined, although only in the lower grades, It seems clear that it gives thus the character of comparative feebleness or passiveness to the offering, but it is not clear that is all we are to gather from it. We have seen that the lower grades of sacrifice represent in general thoughts true in their place, but here misplaced. Yet in Numbers xix, the female is commanded where there is no other grade at all. Here, it is surely impossible that mere feebleness can be intended. Passiveness may indeed have its suited place with reference to the sin-offering, but here, and in the peace-offering also, the type of the sheep seems by itself to represent this; and in the sin-offering, the sheep is expressly to be a female too. Taking all these together, I have little doubt that those are right who believe the female to be the type of fruitfulness, which in connection with the thought of passiveness or quiet subjection to suffering seems here not out of place, but eminently in place. Is it not true, as there are in man and woman characters which complete each other, and give, as thus seen together, perfection to the divine idea of man, so in our Lord, as the perfection of all human excellency, the male and female characters find both their place?

Jehovah's Servant, in the accomplishment of those counsels of love and wisdom which were laid upon Him, giving up His life in meek surrender, even to that cross in which the full due of sin was His to meet and put away for us forever:-these things seem fitly to unite here to give the complete character to the peace-offering. They may seem to connect with other offerings, as the goat especially with the sin-offering, but they seem all rightly to meet and give character to this central sacrifice, where in a common joy Blesser and blessed, Saviour and saved, God and man, stand. Thus we find here no grades really, as in the burnt-offering we have found, and in the sin-offering shall much more find them. Here, the details of the sacrifice, whether for cattle, or sheep, or goat, seem almost absolutely the same.

The details are such as we have already sought to trace the significance of. The animal is presented to Jehovah, designated as the substitute of him who offers it, killed, and the blood sprinkled on the altar round about. Then all the fat is put upon the altar, upon the burnt-offering, which is on the wood that is on the fire; and it is emphatically pronounced a sweet-savor offering.

That which I have emphasized is very precious. Our communion is founded upon nothing less than the full acceptance of the beloved Son of God,- acceptance in all the perfection which we have already seen the burnt-offering expresses. This gives the measure of communion as God intends it; the measure of our apprehension is quite another thing.

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ."-(2 Cor. 5:17.)

The apprehension of the above cannot fail to produce a blessed experience in a simple, honest soul. But the passage itself is not experience; it is fact. It is true of every believer in Jesus whether it is apprehended or not. Many read it as if it were written thus:If any man be in Christ, he ought to be a new creature:old things ought to be passed away; behold, all things ought to become new, etc. Now, it was not so written, and to read it thus is to lose the whole blessing and hinder the consequent experience.

Child of God, you now belong to a new creation, beyond death, of which the risen Christ up there is the Head, and the Holy Ghost down here the Witness. Would you enjoy the new-creation experiences and delights? First, then, accept simply by faith the place grace has given you in it, giving glory to God " who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ," having "made Him sin for us, [He] who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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