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

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

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