"I will put my trust in Him," may be said to have J. been the language of the life of Jesus. But His faith was gold, pure gold, nothing but gold. When tried by the furnace, it comes out the same mass as it had gone in, for there was no dross. Saints have commonly to be set to rights by the furnace. Some impatience or selfishness or murmur has to be reduced or silenced, as in Ps. 73 and 77. Job was overcome:trouble touched him, and he fainted, though often he had strengthened the weak hands, and upheld by his word them that were falling. "The stoutest are struck off their legs," as an old writer says. Peter sleeps in the garden, and in the judgment-hall tells lies, and swears to them; but there has been One whom the furnace, heated seven times, proved precious beyond expression.

See this Holy One of God in that great chapter, Luke 22, in the hour of the trial of faith. He is first in company with the sorrow that was awaiting Him; then with His disciples; then with the Father; and then with His enemies. Mark it all, beloved:how unutterably perfect all is! What unalloyed preciousness, when tried in the fire! But all the life of Jesus was this-the life and obedience of faith. In one light of it, it was the Son of God in the form of a servant, humbling Himself even unto death; but in another, it was the life of faith, "I will put my trust in Him," " I have set the Lord always before Me:because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." These are His breathings, and we celebrate Him, after our own way, in His life of faith, and sing together of Him-

" Faithful amidst unfaithfulness,
'Mid darkness only light,
Thou didst Thy Father's name confess,
And in His will delight."

And all this precious life of faith was answered by the care and keeping of God. " He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." The faith of Him who was serving on earth was perfect, and the answer to it by Him who dwelt in the heavens was perfect (see Psalm 91).

The care which watched over Him was unceasing, from the womb to the grave. So had it been of old declared by His Spirit in the prophets:"I was cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou art my God from my mother's belly;" "Thou didst make Me hope [or, Thou keepest Me in safety] when I was upon my mother's breasts." It was love's unwearied care throughout. " Thou maintainest my lot; " "My flesh also shall rest in hope; for Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades ; neither wilt Thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption" (Ps. 22 and 16). This help, and care, and watchfulness, in one aspect of His history, was everything to Him; and He who kept that Israel could not slumber in the care of Him.

But all this, instead of being inconsistent with the full divine rights of His person, gets its special character from them. The glory of this relationship, and of the joy and complacency which attended it, is gone, if the Person be not vindicated and honored. Such was the Person, that His entrance into the relationship was an act of self-emptying; but He had taken "the form of a servant" in counsel before the world began; and, as fruit thereof, He was " found in fashion as a man." He was "Emmanuel" as an infant in Bethlehem, as He is now at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. All was humbling of Himself, from the womb to the cross. I forget His person, or who He was, if I doubt that. He was the -object of the Father's care, and yet Jehovah's Fellow; and we may look at His path in the chastened light with which that divine care and watchfulness invest it, as we may gaze at it in that brightest light and most excellent glory in which His rights aud honors as the Son of God present it to us.

By reason of such various truth as this, He could say, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up; " and yet the Holy Ghost could say of Him, that the God of peace brought Him again from the dead (John 2:19; Heb. 13:20). His enemies, who sought His life, fell before Him at a word; and yet, so did His perfect faith acknowledge God's perfect care and guardianship, that He could say, " Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" (John 18 :5, 6; Matt. 26 :53). He could, with a touch, heal the ear of the servant, nay, restore it when cut off, when just at the same time He would have His own brows bleed under the crown of thorns. In the perfection of His place, as the emptied One, He would ask for sympathy, and say, " Could ye not watch with Me one hour?" Then, in still greater gloom, He could be above the pity of the daughters of Jerusalem, and honor by the promise of Paradise the faith of a dying malefactor, for His glory shines even in the deepest moment of His humiliation. And let sinners know that it is not the compassion of men His cross seeks, but their faith; that it does not ask them in human kindliness to feel that hour, but in the faith of their hearts, to the full peace of their consciences, to be blessed by that hour ; not to pity the cross, but to lean on it, and to know, that though accomplished in weakness, it is the very pillar which is to sustain the creation of God forever.

In such different, but consistent forms, we read the life of the Son of God in flesh. Is the one the less real because the other is true ? The tears of Jesus over Jerusalem were as real as though there was nothing in His heart but the sorrow of an ill requited Lord and Saviour over a rebellious, unbelieving people. And yet His joy in the purpose of divine wisdom and grace was just the same pure reality. The "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! " and then the "I thank Thee, O Father" (Matt, 11:21, 25), were equally living and true affections in the soul of Jesus. There was no want of full reality in either; and so "the form of a servant," with all its perfect results, and "the form of God," in all its proper glories, were, in the like way, real and living mysteries in the one Person.

Let us turn aside to gaze more intently at His person, while we are tracing either the acts of His life, or the secrets of His love and truth. It is a part of the obedience of faith to do so. "The fear of the Lord is clean; " but there is a fear that is not altogether clean, having some spirit of bondage and unbelief in it. The refusal to turn and look at such great sights as these may be such. I grant the "mystery," and that the mystery is "great." So was it a great and mysterious sight which Moses turned to look at; but with unshod feet he might still look and listen. Had he not done so, he would have gone away unblessed. But he listened, till he discovered that the " I AM " in the bush was also " the God of Abraham." A strange spot for such glory to enshrine itself! But so it was. In a burning bramble-bush, the Lord God Almighty was found.

And supposing I go to Calvary, and look there on the smitten "Shepherd," whom shall I discover, if I have an opened eye, but the Fellow of the Lord of hosts ? (Zech. 13.) And if I go into the midst of the rabble which surrounded Pilate's judgment-hall at Jerusalem, whom shall I find there ? The One spit upon and buffeted and derided, is Him who of old dried up the Red Sea, and covered the Egyptian heavens with sackcloth (Isa. 50 :3). And I ask, When I have so looked, and by the light of the Spirit in the prophets made these discoveries, am I quickly to retire ? If I had bowels, I might ask, Where can I go for richer refreshment of spirit? If my faith discover, in the grieved and insulted Jesus, amid the men of Herod and the Roman officer, the God who did His wonders of old in the land of Ham, am I not to linger on that mount of God, and Moses-like to turn aside and look and listen ? I cannot treat the sight as too great for me. I do not believe that such would be the mind o£ the Spirit. An unsubdued spirit or reasonings of the mind shall be rebuked as they transgress, but to linger there is not transgression but worship. The exercises of our hearts are dull and cold indeed;
and the sorrow is (if one may speak for others), not that we spend too much thought over the mystery of the person of the Son of God, but that we retire to other objects too quickly. Another has well said, "That Person will be the eternal wonder and ornament of the creation of God."

"Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him," says the apostle in Phil. 2. We are only in new wonders when we read these words. For what, we may ask, could exalt Him ? Ere He entered upon. His course of sufferings and of glories, He was in Himself infinitely great and blessed. Nothing could personally exalt Him, being, as He was, "the Son." His glory was divine. It was unspeakable and infinite. No other honors could ever increase His personal glory. But still we see Him traversing a path which conducts Him to honor and glory still.

Strange and excellent mystery! And these new and acquired glories are, in some sense, the dearest with Him. Scripture entitles us thus to speak; as it does to speak of many things of His grace which the heart would never have conceived. To compare divine things with human is the way of the Spirit's instruction. Let the highest by birth, the son of a king, go forth and acquire dignities:his acquired dignities, though they cannot raise him personally, will be his dearest distinctions; they form the choicest materials of his history in the esteem of others. Such a thing as that is instinctively understood among us. And so is it (in the unspeakably precious mystery of Christ) with the Son of God. According to eternal counsels, He has gone forth to battle; and the honors He has acquired, the victories He has won, or is still to win, will be His joy for eternity. They are to form the light in which He will be known, and the characters in which He will be celebrated forever ; though, personally, He dwells in a light which no man can approach unto. And this He prizes:" Jehovah-Jireh" (the Provider, Gen. 22:14); " Jehovah-rophi " (the Shepherd, Ps. 23 :i) ; "Jehovah-shalom " (the Peace-Giver, Judg. 6 :24); "Jehovah – Tsidkenu " (our Righteousness, Jer. 23 :6) ; " Jehovah-nisei" (our Banner, Ex. 17:15), are all acquired honors-they are chief with Him in the unspeakable ways of boundless grace ! In Ex. 3 He communicates His personal name to Moses, saying out of the bush, "I AM THAT I AM." But then He communicates His acquired name also, calling Himself " the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; " and to this acquired name He adds:"This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations "-words which deeply tell us how He prized that glory which He had acquired in His doings for sinners. As also in the tabernacle, or temple, where His name was recorded, it was His acquired and not His personal name that was written and read there. The mysteries of that house did not speak of His essential omnipotence, omniscience, or eternal glories, but of One in whom mercy rejoiced against judgment, and who had found out a way whereby to bring His banished ones home to Himself.

Surely these are witnesses of what price in His sight is His name gained in service for us. That "God is love," may account for it all, and tells the secret. If the manifestations are excellent and marvelous, the hidden springs are in Himself.

"Of the vast universe of bliss,
The Center Thou and Sun :
The eternal theme of praise is this,
To heaven's beloved One :
Worthy, O Lamb of God, art Thou
That every knee to Thee should bow."

J. G. B.