One of the great, outshining glories of the Lord's life was His performance of His Father's will. Entering into this world, He says, "Lo, I am come, in the volume of the book it is written of Me, to do thy will, 0 my God/' Moreover, during His marvelous ministry, those three years that were destined to change the course of the whole world's history, He epitomizes His life service by the words:"I came not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me." This declaration is of a most startling character, for on the surface it would seem to imply that His will was something different to that of the Father. As a matter of fact, there was a most perfect harmony between them, and because of that very harmony, that which was indeed also HIS will becomes lost in the will of Him of whom He could say, "I do always the things that please Him."

A recent meditation on the 40th psalm, the keynote of which is that blessed, "Lo, I am come," led the writer of this article to the concordance, in order to trace out the Lord's expression of His own will, and he thus stumbled across one of those little gems of scriptural thought that outcrop everywhere on the pages of Holy Writ.

There are two words for will, in the Greek, one laying emphasis on the purpose and the other on the desire that actuates it, and our Lord makes use of both of these in expressing His own volitions. These indeed are not many, but when arranged in logical sequence they afford an outline story of the gospel that is almost astonishing in its terse, clear delineation of the essential features.

The first of these utterances is given above, and is the key-note of that lovely selflessness that separated Him so phenomenally from all the rest of the human race:"NOT mine own will but the will of Him that sent Me." Here "the great Apostle (or, latinizing the word, "Missionary") of our profession," is seen commencing that wonderful missionary journey from heaven to earth for the salvation of poor human sheep, who characteristically ever "turned to their own way." God took away the bloody sacrifices of old and substituted the "Son of His love " for them, and under the shelter of Calvary are gathered the redeemed multitudes of the disobedient, now by that one act of obedience, of conformity to the Father's will, made forever safe.

The love and will of the Lord opposed by the will of man

Those of us who have preached the gospel-and all Christians do it in some form or other-know but too well how the will of our blessed Lord has been opposed by the will of man, and ever since the beginning

"—- angel hosts are musing O'er this sight so strangely sad,"

and yet sad indeed as the sight has been, and ever must be, the first rejection of the Saviour has given us a wonderful insight into the heart that guided His will, where, in one of the most moving spectacles that earth has known, He who ever went about doing good stands weeping over an obdurate and impenitent city:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often had I willed to gather thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not."

What an ensample for all preachers who have followed Him.

The blending of the wills. The saved sinner.

Leprosy was perhaps the most terrible form of disease that man suffered from in the days when our Lord walked the earth, and it has been universally recognized as a type of the most fateful spiritual disease, sin. When a leper comes to the Lord and worships Him, saying, "If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean," we are delighted to know that our Lord "put forth His hand and touched him, saying, I WILL; be thou clean." The music of those other words, "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses," blends with this music, and we learn not merely of His sympathy with the physically suffering, but of His readiness to put away spiritual leprosy,

Sins against a holy God,
Sins against His righteous laws,
Sins against His love, His blood,
Sins against His holy cause,
Sins immense as is the sea,
Hide me, O Gethsemane.''

This ability and readiness to put away sin is emphasized as we go out with Him to a lonely garden on the side of Olivet, and we learn at what cost He purchased it:"Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless not My will but Thine be done." Here we are face to face with a solemn mystery. The Perfect Man is confronted with the cup of our infinite guilt, of vicarious distance from God, the Cross and the Curse. He seems to shrink, and His sweat is as it were great drops of blood rolling to the ground. Does He indeed will that the cup should pass? It is very plain that He does not, but God is drawing aside for us the veil from before the Holy Sanctuary to let us see within the blood upon the mercy seat, to make us realize the infinite cost at which His blessed will harmonizes with the Father's. Did the Father have no similar anguish? Who can question it?

And if He wills the cup, He wills that the suffering shall not be mitigated. "They gave Him vinegar to drink, mingled with gall, and when He had tasted thereof, He would not drink.

It is the same blessed will that introduces the sinner, with his sins put away, now a child of God, to the heavenly Father.

This, as we know, immediately follows upon the forgiveness of sins. The hymn says,

"Trembling we had hoped for mercy, Some lone place within His door,"

but instead of the "lone" place we get the "son's" place. "God hath sent forth the Spirit of adoption into our hearts, whereby we cry Abba, Father." Do we know the joy of it? Of one formerly possessed of a demon, Harold Begbie, in his book, "Other Sheep," writes:"Her prayers I am told, were of extraordinary beauty. She always began-her eyes raised to heaven and her arms uplifted-with the words, whispered in an imploring tenderness, 'O God, you are my Father-my Father.' " She had experienced something of the overpowering import of those words of our blessed Lord, "And no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him."

He wills the resurrection of the Dead

It is one of the bitter things of life that we are separated from our parents-our father, our mother, and all our dear ones. And in the next expression of His will our Lord comes in to illuminate this dark sorrow, and to give the further assurance that the heavenly ties are everlasting.

Tennyson says, in "In Memoriam:"

"Our dim life should teach us this, That life shall live forevermore, Or earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes, all that is."

And yet, if we rely only on our "dim" life to do it, "dim" will be the hope engendered. We need the assurance of Him who is the Prince of Life:"As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will."

The Home Everlasting

But to what are we quickened? To what is this blessed Prince of Life bringing us? He finally assures us that it is a princely place that He has secured for us:"Father, I will that those also whom Thou hast given Me out of the world, be with Me where I am, that they may see My glory, for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world."

As we think of that glorious consummation to which we may at any moment be brought, according to the good pleasure of God's will, may we strive more and more to make the following true also, as we are gathered home:

"These like priests, have watched and waited,
Offering up to Christ their will,
Soul and body consecrated,
Day and night they serve Him still;
Now in God's most holy place,
Blest they stand before His face."

(If the reader is at all interested in this study, he may look up the other two instances of the Lord's expressed will and find a useful lesson for this life.) F. C. Grant
'FIXING THE EYES UPON JESUS"