"I have called you friends." (John 15:15.)

Once the grace of God revealed in Christ Jesus is known and enjoyed, who would not be a man in preference to any other of the creatures of God ? Who, even while weeping in the deepest contrition for sin, would return to the Eden state of innocence ? Who that knows the nearness and ultimate ends into which the grace of redemption has brought us would return to mere creation-blessedness?

But even as a mere creature, God showed His delight in man; for in the cool of the day, walking in the garden, He is heard calling to Adam (Gen. 3:8); He has made him such that He has pleasure in intercourse with him. Though now fallen, and therefore upon a new basis, we see all along the line, in Abraham especially, the same pleasure of God in intercourse with man. Abraham's ready response to this causes God to call him His friend-visits him, and unveils His purposes to him:He listens to his petitions, and treats him as a trusted companion. In Prov. 8:31 He testifies, " My delights were with the sons of men."

When Jesus is born into the world, the hosts of heaven are heard praising God, saying, "Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace; good pleasure in men." God's full delight in humanity has come. All along the pathway of Jesus, God shows His delight, and finally He takes that Man up into heaven, in the highest and nearest place to Himself.

During His stay here Jesus surrounded Himself with men. To such as had an ear and a heart for Him He opened His and the Father's heart. He made them His companions, and loved them even spite of their many failings. He saw them according to the final issues, and bore their present state. He would not call them servants, because servants, as such, are not companions. Angels were servants, but men He would have for companions, and so He poured His Father's mind into them, and thus put them in the place and condition of friends.

Later on the Spirit testifies that we, men whose hearts have been won to Jesus, have been predestinated to be conformed to Him (Rom. 8:29). "We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is " (i John 3:2). Marvel of marvels! poor sinners worthy of wrath and condemnation are, through Christ, elevated to a place and condition which angels themselves may well wonder at. It is what God, in His sovereign and righteous grace, has set His mind upon, and, spite all Satanic opposition, is now laboring to bring to its issue.

What a blissful eternity stretches out to the eyes of faith! What depths of enjoyment in being thus made the companions of such a Person! Is it a wonder that He is jealous of the grace which has set out for such things, and that He resents the legalism which mars it all; which hinders its glory from shining out, and would exalt afresh that humanity which has received its just sentence in the cross of Christ.

In the light.' (1 John 1:7.)

From a brief address recently given on this passage, one expression especially struck us, and stayed with us. The speaker said, "If 'walking in the light as He is in the light' were interpreted as walking 'according to' that light, who among us would dare to say or think that his walk was such ? But the truth is that grace has put us in that light- the light of the presence of God. We stand and walk in that light from the moment we are saved, and it is that light which detects everything in us which is inconsistent with it. It makes us judge ourselves. It makes precious to our souls the fact here stated too that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.

May the power of this abide in the soul of both reader and writer!