Healing faith," as it is commonly called, is growing into credit with many in the present day. It is no wonder if in a world so full of that which sin has caused, and where even by Christians the sin itself is so little apprehended, it should be so. Neither the flesh is known nor the new creation. Christ's work is but to restore what Adam's had destroyed; and Christianity has, in the modern sense, not the apostolic, the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. Of such a state the gospel of healing, as it is developed in the little pamphlet that lies before me, would seem the full ripe fruit; and it is worth while to give it at least some brief examination just on this account. Mr. Simpson has the merit of writing clearly, and with no lack of boldness, and will be the last, as I should judge, to complain of such an inquiry into the scriptural foundations of his faith, which he proposes to us for our own, and which he believes nothing but unbelief and rationalism can oppose.

His "gospel" may be stated in few words. Man has a twofold nature; he is both a moral and spiritual being; and both natures have been equally affected by the fall; we would therefore expect that any complete scheme of redemption would include both natures, and provide for the restoration of his physical as well as the renovation of his spiritual life. Nor are we disappointed. The Redeemer offers Himself to us as a complete Saviour:His indwelling Spirit the life of our spirit, His resurrection-body the life of our mortal flesh. In the same full sense as He has borne our sins, Jesus Christ has surely borne away and carried off our sicknesses, yes, and even our pains, so that abiding in Him we need not, and we should not, bear either sickness or pain. We are members of His body, His flesh, and His bones. These words recognize a union between our body and the resurrection-body of the Lord Jesus Christ, which gives us the right to claim for our mortal frame all the vital energy of His perfect life.

This is the doctrine-stated in Mr. Simpson's own words. Of course with this there is the usual pressing of Mark 16:17 and kindred texts long pressed in a similar way by Romanists, Irvingites, Mormons, and such like; who have been always ready to produce the same host of living witnesses to the truth of their claims.

From doctrine of the kind just stated we should expect, however, miracles mightier than ever Rome claimed or apostles actually wrought; for if we may " claim for our mortal frame all the vital energy of Christ's perfect life," the resurrection of the dead itself-and we do not know that Mr. Simpson's faith reaches as far as this-should not be the limit of the power displayed. Those so gifted ought, plainly, not to die at all. " His body is ours; His life is ours; and it is all-sufficient:" for what? to heal a few sick folk? How paltry indeed such a conclusion! " His resurrection-body the life of our mortal flesh "! But how, then, can it possibly be any longer mortal? The believers in Mr. S.'s creed ought to be nothing less than a company of unsuffering immortals, or their faith has no proper fruit.

Is not Christ, then, a "complete Saviour"? and is He not the Redeemer of both natures-the mortal as well as the spiritual, the body as well as the soul? Assuredly; but " we wait for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." The passage which Mr. S. so little understands as to quote it in his favor contains indeed the very refutation of his doctrine:"And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness; but if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you." Mr. Simpson actually says of this that it "cannot refer to the future resurrection ; that will be by the voice of the Son of God, not the Holy Spirit; this is a present dwelling and a present quickening by the Spirit; and it is a quickening of the mortal body, not soul; what can this be but physical restoration?" Painful it is to pursue such things, more painful to think that Christians can be deceived by them. Does not Mr. Simpson know that our Lord's own resurrection is referred in Scripture to Himself, the Father, and the Spirit of God as well (Jno. 2:19; Rom. 8:11; i Pet. 3:18.)? How could he who had just said, " If Christ be in you, the body is dead," in the same breath declare that it was quickened by the Spirit ? whereas it is plainly shall quicken, in contrast with the present condition.

So again, when Paul says, " For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal body," Mr. S. sees in this nothing but "physical experience;" "His life was a constant miracle;" "this life, he tells us (5:16), was ' renewed day by day'" ! Paul says it was his "inward man;" and he contrasts it with the'"outward man " which was at the same time perishing. What was that outward man according to Mr. Simpson?

He quotes also, the apostle's prayer for Gaius, with the same entire unconsciousness of how his witness testifies against him. For why should there be need to pray that a man might " prosper and be in health, even as his soul prosper," if that was the constant rule in divine government for the Christian?

Again, he connects i Corinthians 10:II with Exodus 15:25, 26, to make the promise apply to Christians that God will put none of the diseases of the Egyptians upon them; not heeding or knowing that the Greek says, "types," and that the apostle is speaking of such things as the passage of the Red Sea, the manna, and the water from the rock, which assuredly are not things literally made good to us. The essential contrast between an earthly" people, such as Israel, and those who are "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 1:3.) is ignored altogether.

With most of the above texts it is hoped that few of our readers will have much difficulty. There remain some others, as to which many may not be so clear. Yet as to such passages as John 14:12-"The works that I do shall he do also," and the signs which should follow them that believe (Mark 16:17, 18.), it is plain enough that while for a time these things did follow, it would be totally false to say that they follow now. There is no hint of unbelief making this void, as it is contended. Are such things as these true of Mr. Simpson or his disciples:"They shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them"? or that he or they do the works that Christ did, which would include the raising of the dead, at any rate? If not, what folly to bring forward such cures of sick people as Romanists, Mormons, and spiritualists can boast of just as confidently, and with as much apparent truth, and make a fancied fulfillment of a small portion of what the Lord said pass muster for the whole!

But what, then, it will be asked, makes such a difference between the Pentecostal times and ours? Oh if men would only inquire into the causes, and judge honest judgment, instead of claiming by the power of their faith alone to bring back that Pentecost so long passed away! Where today is that Church with the great multitude of it " of one heart and of one soul," " continuing steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers"? Surely the sights and sounds of the day are those of predicted Babylon rather. And which of us will wash his hands and dare to say, " In this I have had no part"? Is it the time for putting-on the ornaments of the day of espousal, when God is saying, as to Israel of old, " Ye are a stiff-necked people:I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment and consume thee; therefore now put off thine ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee"?

Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were among us, they should but deliver their own souls by their righteousness. Who has shoulders to lift off from us the weight of eighteen centuries of failure? Let us own it, and take humbly what is our common shame. If this is the harder thing, it is still the more blessed, for with him who does this really God will be.

But what are we to think of Mr Simpson's wonderful discovery of the narrow channel in which it seems since the apostolic days the water of (physical) life has been flowing ? " But now the apostolic age is closing; is this to be continued? and if so, by whom? By what limitation is it to be preserved from fanaticism and presumption? by what commission is it to be perpetuated to the end of time, and placed within the reach of all God's suffering saints?" What is the answer? James 5:14 and the elders of the Church! Read the apostle's closing address to some of these very elders, beloved reader, and ask yourself what sort of preservation would be thus guaranteed, and if rather the apostle's warning does not find a fulfillment in such a pretension ?

I do not want, however, to dismiss the subject without adding a word as to what remains for us in these days. For this, we must first of all distinguish between cases which Mr. S. necessarily mixes up in confusion. Elihu, in the book of Job, shows us the chastening of a soul under God's hand, for which his flesh is consumed until he dies, or else humbles himself and confesses his sin and finds mercy. The apostle speaks in this way of a sin unto death, for which he does not say that any one should pray. In James, this case of chastening is supposed, though not exclusively. Here, the remedy is clearly not in doctors, and it is of the very greatest importance to remember it. Here still the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and " confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed" abides ever as the resource. The question of elders' and anointing is more difficult. In these days of division we have indeed many churches, and, for that very reason, no where the Church. The elders can hardly be found, if the Church is not; and official appointment (always by apostles' hands, or those of an apostolic delegate, such as Timothy or Titus) has necessarily ceased with apostles themselves. It seems to me better to own where we are than to claim any thing of which a doubt may exist. The prayer of faith surely remains to us.

All sickness does not come under the head of chastening, though discipline we may find in it, and find it needful, therefore, to that end. The apostle's thorn in the flesh had this character, and was not removed, nor could be; God taught him to acquiesce in, and to profit by it. For Timothy's weak "stomach's sake and often infirmities" he prescribes, not the prayer of faith, but " a little wine." Trophimus he leaves at Miletum sick; Epaphroditus too is sick, nigh unto death, right under the apostle's eye, but God has mercy on him, and on Paul too thus, and raises him up. Even in apostles' days, and with such as he, the gifts of healing were used, not indiscriminately, or for the personal ease of Christians, but for the glory of God, as with Lazarus' resurrection, or that healing of the sick of the palsy, " that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."

Thus stands the matter, simply taking Scripture. That we need still the admonition, " Have faith in God,"-that men may still die, because they seek not to God, but the physician, as Asa did,-that many a one may lie unhealed for whom a simpler and therefore more discerning faith would find in God the power to heal,-all this need not be doubted. On the other hand, Christians cannot be too earnestly warned against a view of things, coming up in many quarters in the present day, which ignores the sorrowful realities of the flesh and the world. It is but another fig-leaf apron,- another human invention to cover man's nakedness ; a fruit of wisdom acquired by the fall, and not divine.

We have noted already that from the fourth verse of the second chapter is a distinct part, and gives us" God in relationship with the creature He has made." Thus He is now spoken of, not simply as God-Elohim, "but as the Lord God-Jehovah-Elohim.

Jehovah is the name of which the inspired translation is given in the third of Exodus-"I am:" expanded to its full significance in the book of Revelation as, "He which is, and which was, and which is to come." Thus in immutable existence He follows out the changes of created being, prop-ping up creaturehood with the strength of eternity. " By Him all things consist." As in relation with a redeemed people-Israel-how blessed and re-assuring this His covenant-name!

But here He is the " Lord God," not of Israel, but of man, a prophecy and picture of what shall be when "the tabernacle of God shall be with men." Still there is no "tabernacle of God" here ; the final fact transcends all pictures.

That we have, however, a picture or type of eternal blessedness in this account that follows is plain to see. Its central figure, Adam, with his relationship to Eve, his wife, is so referred to else-; where. (Rom. 5:14; Eph. 5:31, 32.) Paradise and the tree of life also meet us in prophecies of the blessedness to come. (Rev. 2:7; 22:2.) That there should be contrast also in many respects is not inconsistent with the nature of types, but on the contrary most consistent, (i Cor. 15:45-48; Phil. 2:6.) We may therefore in the beginning of thing's contemplate the final end, however much we may find it true that " we see in part, and prophesy in part."

Man, then, is the manifest head. of the new created scene; and if made in the image and likeness of God, how plainly is he in the image also of the true man, God's image. The dust of the earth, inspired by the breath of the Almighty, might well! be the foreshadow of the union of the divine and human in one blessed Person in the time to come. The place of headship over all is but the anticipation of the wider headship of the Son of Man. "Image" and "likeness" of God have immeasurably fuller meaning in their application to the " last Adam " than to the first.

Then as to the relationship of the man and woman. It takes little to see in that "deep sleep" into which Adam was cast the figure of the deeper and more mysterious sleep of the "last Adam." Out of the man thus sleeping the woman is derived, as the Church out of Christ's death, and which by the creative Spirit is built up* as His body, "of His flesh and of His bones." *The margin of Genesis 2:23 gives rightly, for "made He a woman," " builded."*

This building of the Church being not even yet complete, the presentation to Himself is of course still future. To that day, however, the apostle carries us on in thought, at the same time reminding us of the necessary contrast between the earthly first man and the heavenly second. For whereas the Lord God brought the woman to the man, "He"-the Second Man-shall "present unto Himself" the Church, "a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing."

Our eyes are dim to see so far into the blessedness of that bright future which for eternity we shall then enter on with Him. Let us rather turn back here to see how distinctly it is noted that all belongs of right to Him, whose love must needs share it with His own. Thus, first of all, before the Bride exists, the creatures are brought to Adam, that he may see* what he will call them, and as master of them all he gives them names. *I do not doubt that " to see what he would call them," is might see.* And though the woman in due time shares this sovereignty, as we know, (chap. 1:27, 28.) she yet comes into it by her connection with the man, and only so. How perfect is the harmony of all this ! How blessed to see the Lord of heaven and earth thus at the very beginning occupied with these thoughts of His love as to that new creation which was once again to be wrought out of the ruins of the old! To wisdom such as this the craft of Satan and the weakness of man could add no after-thought. Against such power could be aught but as the potter's clay. Such love combined with all gives acquiescence and delight that all of power and all of wisdom I should be His, and make resistless the designs and counsels of His heart.

And Eden, man's garden of delight! how sweet to know that which lingers lovingly yet in the heart as in the traditions of men – which not six thousand years of sin and misery have been able utterly to banish from the memory – how sweet to know that also is but the type of a far more blessed reality, "the Paradise," not of man only, but "of God" (Rev. 2:7.)! The little that we can say of it belongs rather to an exposition of Revelation than of Genesis. The trees and rivers and precious things of the latter we see but as images of beauty too little defined. It is to our shame, surely for even as the fruits of the tree of life finally await the Ephesian "overcomer"-that is, the man who, amid the general decay and departure of heart from Christ, holds fast in the heart the freshness of the first, new-born love-so, who can doubt? a truer devotedness of heart to Him would give us even now a fuller knowledge, as well as a richer enjoyment, of what to Him (for it is His)the Paradise of God will be.

He who has the "keys of death and hell" has also, we may be sure, and in this sense too, the key of Paradise as well. (To be continued, the Lord willing.)

Antichrist and the enemies set aside.

(1) Psalms 9:and s. give the theme.

(2) Psalms 11:-xv:exercises of the remnant under the oppression of the enemy.

The ninth and tenth psalms are given by the Septuagint and Vulgate as one psalm, and also by a very few Hebrew MSS. no doubt, for the reason that they are bound together by their structure, forming together an imperfect and irregular alphabetic acrostic. Bp. Horsley and others have supposed on this account some confusion in the text, and have endeavored by a rearrangement of the verses to" supply the missing letters; even then with only partial success. The irregularity and omissions are clearly designed. The omission of six letters after the commencing lamed in the tenth exactly corresponds with the description of the wicked one.

The remnant-psalms are again five in number, as in the last section ; a number speaking of what is emphatically human, as elsewhere noticed.

Let us mark, then, first of all, this questioning of Adam on the part of God. Three several times we find these questions. He questions the man, questions the woman; the serpent He does not question, but proceeds instead immediately to judgment. Plainly there is something significant in this. For it cannot be thought that the Omniscient needed to know the things that He inquired) about; therefore, if not for His own sake, it must have been for man's sake He made the inquiry. It was, in fact, the appeal to man for confidence in One who on His part had done nothing, to forfeit it; the gracious effort to bring him to own in the presence of his Creator, his present condition and the sin which had brought him into it. And it is still in this way that we find entrance into the enjoyed favor of a Saviour-God:"we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand," the "goodness of God" leading "to repentance." Confidence!_in that goodness enables us to take true ground before God, and enables Him thus, according to the principles of holy government, to show us His mercy. Not in self-righteous efforts to excuse ourselves, nor yet in self-sufficient promises for the future, but "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

To this confession do these questionings of God call these first sinners of the human race. Because, there is mercy for them, they are invited to cast themselves upon it. Because there is none for the serpent, there is in his case no question. But let us notice also the different character of these questions, as well as the order of them. Each of these has its beauty and significance.

The first question is an appeal to Adam to consider his condition,-the effect of his sin, rather, than his sin itself. The second it is that refers directly to the sin, and not the first. This doublet appeal we shall find every wherein Scripture. Does man "thirst,"he is bidden to come and drink of the living water; is he " laboring and heavy-laden," he is invited to find rest for his soul. This style of address clearly takes the ground of the] first question. It is the heart not at rest here rather than the conscience. roused. Where the latter is the case, however, and the sense of guilt presses on the soul, then there is a Christ of whom even His enemies testify that He receiveth sinners, and whose own words are that the " Son of Mantis come to seek and to save that which is lost."

These are, as it .were, God’s two arms thrown around men. Thus would He fain by every, tie of interest. draw them to Himself,-of self-interest when they are as yet incapable of any higher, any worthier motive. How precious is this witness to a love which .finds all its inducement in itself-a love, not which God has, but which He is! How false an estimate do we make of it and of Him when we make Him just such another as ourselves,-when we think of His heart as needing to be won back to us, as if He,, had fallen from His own goodness, with our fall from innocence! How slow are we to credit Him when He speaks of the "great love wherewith He loves us, even when we are dead in sins "! How little we believe it, even when we have before our eyes " God, in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them "! And even when the feet evidence and measurement in one, manifests a grace overflowing, abounding over it,-even then can he justify himself rather than God, and refuse the plainest and simplest testimony to sovereign goodness, which he has lost even the bare ability to conceive.

In how many ways is God beseeching man to consider his own condition at least, if nothing else! In how many tongues is this "Adam, where art thou?" repeated to the present day! Ever grown of a creation subject to vanity, whereof the whole frame-work is convulsed and out of joint, is such a tongue. And herein is Wisdom crying in the streets, even where there is no speech and no word, " So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." This, man never does until divinely taught. " Wisdom is justified" only "of her children."

And Adam does not yet approve himself as one of these. His confession of sin is rather an accusation of God.-" The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." In patient majesty, God turns to the woman. She, more simply, but still excusing herself, pleads she was deceived.-"The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Then, without any further question, He proceeds to judgment, – judgment in which for the tempted mercy lies enfolded, and where, if the old creation find its end there appears the beginning of that which alone fully claims the title of "The Creation of God."

In the judgment of the serpent, we must remember first of all the essentially, typical character of the language used. We have no reason to believe that Adam knew as yet the mystery of who the tempter was. " That old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan," was doubtless for him nothing more than the most subtle of the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made. And herein, indeed, were divine wisdom and mercy shown, the tempter being not permitted to approach in angelic character, as one above man, but in bestial, as one below him; one indeed of those to which man as their lord had given names, and among which he had found no helpmeet. How great was thus his shame when he listened to the deceiver! he had given up his divinely appointed supremacy, in that moment.

So in the judgment here it is all outwardly the mere serpent, where spiritually we discern a far deeper thing. " And the Lord God said unto the serpent, ' Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed among all cattle, and among all beasts of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.'" Thus the victory of evil is in reality the degradation of the victor:he is degraded necessarily by his own success. How plainly is this an eternal principle, illustrated in every career of villainy under the sun! By virtue of it, Satan will not be the highest in hell, and prince of it, as men have feigned, but lowest and most miserable of all the miserable there. " Dust shall be the serpent's meat." "He feeleth on ashes:a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? "

But there is still another way in which the serpent's victory is his defeat:-"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." That this last! expression received its plainest fulfillment on the' cross I need not insist upon. There Satan manifested himself prince of this world, able (so to speak) by his power over men to cast Christ out of it and put the Prince of life to death. But that victory was his eternal overthrow.-" Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."

This is deliverance for Satan's captives. It is not the restoration, however, of the old creation, nor of the first man. The seed of the woman is emphatically the " Second Man," another and at " last Adam," new Head of a new race, who find in Him their title as " Sons of God," as " born, not of blood (1:e.,naturally), nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

This is not the place indeed for the expansion of this, for here it is not expanded. We shall find the development of it further on. Only here it is noted, that not self-recovery, but a deliverer, is the need of man ; and if God take up humanity itself whereby to effect deliverance it must be the seed of the woman, the expression of feebleness and dependence, not of natural headship or of power.

The first direct prophecy links together the first page of revelation with the last, for only there do we find the full completion of it,-the serpent's head at last bruised. As a principle, the life of every saint in a world which " lieth in the wicked one" has illustrated and enforced it; In the next section of this book we shall return to look at this.

The judgment of the woman and the man now follow, but they have listened already to the voice of mercy-a mercy which can turn to blessing the hardship and sorrow, henceforth the discipline of life, and even the irrevocable doom of death itself. That Adam has been no inattentive listener, we may gather from his own next words, which are no very obscure intimation of the faith which has sprung up in his soul. '"And Adam called his wife's name Eve [life], because she was the mother of all living." The "woman which Thou gavest to be with me " is again " his wife," and he names' her through whom death…had come in, as the mother, not of the dying, but the living.

Thus does his faith lay hold on God,-the faith of a poor sinner surely, to whom divine mercy had come down without a thing in him to draw it out, save only the misery which spoke to the heart of infinite love. Like Abraham, afterward "he believed God," and while to the sentence he bows I in submissive silence, the grace inclosed in the (sentence opens his lips again. Beautifully are we permitted to see just this in Adam, a faith which left him a poor sinner still, to be justified, not by works, but freely of God's grace, but still put him thus before God for justification. And we are ready the more to apprehend and appreciate the significant action following:"Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skin, and clothed them." Thus the shame of their nakedness is removed, and by God Himself, so that they are fit for His presence; for the covering provided of Himself must needs be owned as competent by Himself. And we have only to consider for a moment to discern how competent it really was.

Death provided this covering. These coats of skin owned the penalty as having come in, and those clothed with them found shelter for themselves in the death of another, and that the one upon whom it had come sinlessly through their own sin. How pregnant with instruction as to I how still man's nakedness is covered and he made !fit for the presence of a righteous God! These skins were fitness, the witness of how God had maintained the righteous sentence of death, while removing that which was now his shame, and meeting the consequences of his" sin. Our covering is far more, but it is such a witness also. Our righteousness is still the witness of God's righteousness,-the once dead, now living One, who of God is made unto us righteousness, and in whom also we are made the righteousness of God. The antitype in every way transcends the type surely, yet very sweet and significant nevertheless is the first testimony of God to the Son;-a double testimony, first to the seed of the woman, the Saviour; and then, when faith has set its seal to this, a testimony to that work of atonement, whereby:the righteousness of God is revealed in good news to man, and the believer is made that righteousness in Him.

Not till the hand of God has so interfered for them are Adam and his wife sent forth out of the garden. If earth's paradise has closed for them, heaven has already opened; and the tree of life, denied only as continuing the old creation, stretches forth for them its branches, loaded with its various fruit, "in the midst of the paradise," no longer of men, but "of God."

The figurative character of so large a part of the inspired Word every one must have more or less realized. How much of what our Lord said was in parable,-parable, often left without direct interpretation too! Yet they are given as things to be known, and known assuredly:"Do ye not know this parable?" He asked once of His disciples; "and how then will ye know all parables?"

And when we take up even the historical part of Scripture, how here also we find the at first sight simple record of actual events pregnant with deeper meaning. After speaking of Israel's passage through the Red Sea, of the manna, of the water from the rock, and other things, the apostle writes," Now, all these things happened unto them for types (margin); and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." But if these things happened for types, how many more? What hinders but that all inspired history should have this character? The absence of any direct interpretation would not preclude this thought of it any more than it would of the parables just mentioned, or of the symbols of the book of Revelation.

It will confirm this greatly when we find, what is a most important thing to understand, that as each book of Scripture has its own special line of truth, with which all its details are in perfect harmony, so the historical books, interpreted thus, conform in the most beautiful manner to this rule. Each book gives a connected series of related types; nay, the whole series of books themselves form in this way a series of related and progressive truths. It supposes, of course, some acquaintance with these truths to trace the connection; but to those who are able, it is conclusive.

The same proof, however, in lesser measure, every single type has:it is in reality the consistency of truth,-of all truth:and the apostle, as he admonishes with a type the carnal Corinthians, with a type reproves the foolish Galatians. Truth, in whatever manner spoken, is its own authority:"By manifestation of the truth," says the same apostle, "commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God."

The importance of this practical teaching must be commensurate with the place it has in Scripture. Wonderful it is to think how God has fashioned the events of ages that they might speak to us now of the precious things that are our portion ! How evidently, in fact, do they set before us the truths of which they speak! How they present them, as it were, before our eyes, in so many shapes, and with so many harmonies! How they fix themselves in our memories,-" the words of the wise," which "are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one Shepherd"!

No doubt, in the interpretation of the types, as of all the figurative language of Scripture, there is danger of mere imagination acting as interpreter, yet not so much more than in the case of other parts as we are apt to think. Every where we have to dread and watch against imagination in the things of God. What havoc has it made with all the truths of God's blessed Word! Here, as elsewhere, we need to be taught of the Spirit, and the spiritual man will discern all things:we cannot escape from the necessity of being spiritual. Here too we have the literal Scriptures to interpret the figurative:it is a safe rule that types are not to be made to teach truths, but to illustrate, confirm, and impress what is elsewhere taught.

There is, in fact, more danger of their falling into contempt through a loose, wrong, and careless use of them, than of their being abused to establish error. It is the possession of truth which gives the key to the understanding of them; and once understood, their beauty, fitness, and power will give them their lodgment in the souls of those for whom the things they speak of have precious-ness. But for this, they must, as all other scripture must, have ascertained and certain, not doubtful significance. This must be, not merely like truth, but truth itself-the very truth designed by the Holy Spirit to be enforced by them.

And, as connected with this, let me say that I dare not use a saying current with some, that "no parable goes upon all-fours." It is a proverb quite easily taken by many to justify any slipshod and inconsistent interpretation, and, moreover, does not sufficiently honor the divine Word. If it be even for man a folly to use a halting figure of speech, how much more for God! and here an element of uncertainty quite incalculable would enter into all interpretation, to disturb all fixed knowledge forever.

Let us now try to read a type or two, that we may see how far definite they are; and for this purpose it will evidently be best to take up some that are more or less in question among the class of readers for whom especially I at this moment write. As I have already said, we must know the truth to which the type refers before we can expect to understand this. Thank God, there are many who have learned the blessed truth of the believer's death and resurrection with Christ, and of his being seated with Him in the heavenly places. Such will be able to look with us at the first type of which I would speak now.

The Red Sea, is it a figure of death with Christ, as in Romans, or only of Christ's death for tire believer? and, as connected with this, is Pharaoh a type of Satan, or of sin in the flesh?

Now, Egypt is the recognized figure of our natural condition in a world away from God; and the Red Sea is its limit, as death is of the natural state:to pass out of the world, in some sense or other, we must die. Israel, then, pass through the sea, a way being made for them through it by the hand of God, in response to the uplifted rod of Moses-the shepherd-rod by which all through the desert they were guided:an east wind is the instrument used of God for their deliverance.

There can be no question, then, one would think, that if the Red Sea be the figure of death, the people are actually brought through death, not experience its power, but pass it in triumph by the mighty power of God; surely this is the way in which we as believers have passed through with Christ. It is thus that we can say that we are dead with Him. That shepherd-rod reminds us of the good Shepherd of the sheep; the east wind through the night, of how His sorrow accomplished our deliverance. The type is most exact and striking in every respect.

But if the Red Sea represent our death with Christ, we are never said to be dead to Satan, but to sin and law:both these should some way find their representatives in the type, if it is to be the full setting forth of those wondrous truths.

Is Pharaoh, then, sin, or Satan? Satan is the prince of this world, clearly; and thus far the correspondence would be exact enough; but on the other hand, the apostle's language in the epistle to the Romans, the very epistle in which this line of truth is taken up, gives us another thought, which brings before us just what we were seeking:"Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should no more serve sin." How plainly the Red-Sea deliverance seems brought out in its inner meaning in this language of the apostle! Israel's service to Pharaoh ceased indeed forever at the sea; and if we want still more precisely the image of Pharaoh, we shall find it in the expression that he uses as to sin reigning unto death (chap. 5:21; 6:6.).

Notice, in this way, how the plagues that fall, upon Pharaoh get their true significance. It is with the sin within us that God is dealing; and thus He humbles our proud hearts, and although sin remains within us, his dominion is destroyed; we are delivered from the law of sin and death.

We find also, I doubt not, in the scene before us the picture of deliverance from the law; for what else but law is figured by that "Migdol" ? which, as its name imports, is a strong tower- a watch-tower in the enemy's country. It was there, pent up between Migdol and the sea, that Pharaoh came upon them; and those who have been through the experience, and only those, know how, " when the commandment came, sin revived, and" they "died;" but how in meeting death thus they found it, by Christ's death, only the pathway out from under the dominion of sin for evermore.

The truth depicted in Exodus corresponds, therefore, in every respect, to the truth in Romans. The passage of the Jordan we shall find, on the other hand, connecting with that line of things which Colossians and Ephesians present to us. Here alone we have resurrection with Christ, and with this line of things it is, and not with Romans, that Scripture connects the triumph over Satan. Thus in Colossians 2:15,-" Having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it;" and in Ephesians 4:8,-"When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." The Scripture order and connection is important, as all else is in it. And this throws light upon the further question whether Amalek, Israel's foe in the wilderness, is Satan or the flesh. I believe that it is the lust of the flesh, as the foe in Canaan is the devil-the spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. Thus in each case our contest is with an enemy already defeated; and very sweet is the encouragement of this.

Let me conclude with saying once more that the types may be as definitely known as any other part of Scripture, and that it is only as thus known that they can manifest the power which is really theirs.

When Peter cursed and denied his Lord, there was not a waver in the affection of Christ, not a cloud on that brow as He turned round and looked on Peter, and Peter went out with a heart broken under the power of it.

But I must say a word on the other-the dark side of this subject; for whatever has a bright side to the saved has a dark side to the unsaved. It cannot be said to them, Death is yours-your servant. It has to be said, You are death's-its servants. They have not availed themselves of the gracious provision of the cross, and therefore they are yet in their sinful standing, with their sins upon them. Hence, death to the unbeliever is a tyrant. The same verse which tells us that "the righteous hath hope in his death" affirms that " the wicked is driven away in his wickedness." (Prov. 14:32.) Where is he driven? Not to be with' Christ. We have His own word for this. Addressing those who rejected Him, He said, " Ye shall die in your sins:whither I go ye cannot come." (John 8:21.) Where does death take the unsaved? The same infallible One answers. After saying that " the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom," He said, " The rich man also died, and was buried, and in hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment." (Luke 16:23, Revised Version?) I take this to mean just what it says, notwithstanding the efforts to explain away its obvious sense. And though the wicked will come forth from death and hades, it will be no blessing to them, for they will, come forth to judgment. The fame great Teacher said, "All that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation," or judgment, according to the Revised Version. (John 5:28, 29.) Thus death, the result of Adam's sin, ends before judgment as to actual sins begins. The unsaved are brought from death to be judged. Mark, it is "they that have done evil" who come forth unto the resurrection of judgment. They have not received God's salvation ; thus they remain in the flesh or sinful standing in Adam, and the inevitable fruit is " evil." It is in the resurrection-state that, they fully meet God face to face as to their sins, and receive the sentence which is due.

Not only will the resurrection of the unjust differ from that of the just in the character of it, but also in the time of its occurrence. While all are to be made alive by having a resurrection, yet "every man," says the apostle, "in his own order:Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming. Then cometh the end." The word here rendered." then " is the same that is rendered "afterward" in the previous part of the passage, and has that meaning. "Afterward cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and .power; for He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." (i Cor. 15:23-26.) Death will be destroyed in all being made alive in resurrection. Those who are Christ's are raised "at His coming; " then, at a subsequent period, designated " the end," death is destroyed, which must be in the resurrection of those who are not Christ's.

We get further light in the twentieth of Revelation. We read, " Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests pf God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." John saw-that "the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." " And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison," and will go forth to " deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth," and yielding to his deceivings, they meet summary judgment, and he is " cast into the lake of fire." Then comes " the end," when death is"'destroyed, yet followed by judgment. " I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened:and another book was opened, which is the book of life:and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave, up the dead which were in it; and death and hades gave up the dead which were in them:and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, even the lake of fire. And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire." (Revised Ver.)

Such is the solemn " end." All beyond is eternity. Such is the dreadful outcome of belonging to death, and remaining under the appointment to judgment; in other words, of remaining in the lost condition by nature, and adding sins thereto. That outcome, God says, is "the second death, even the lake of fire;" and all will come to pass just as He says.

But He who has thus spoken has " found a ransom." His own Son gave His life as that ransom. He went into death's dark raging flood, bearing the judgment in His own blessed person, that, as the ark made a safe passage for Israel through the Jordan, those who accept this salvation might, thereby, be taken beyond the dark river of death and the ocean of judgment, and be brought into a life which these waters can never touch. And the love Which has done all this,-the love which was stronger than death, (for it went through it) is ever beseeching all to accept what it has done, with the assurance that the worst one who comes is perfectly welcome, and is at once beyond death and judgment, in a new and blessed life; or, to use the Lord's own words, " hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life."

But if souls neglect so great salvation,-if they go on in their own ways, however religiously, and refuse God's Christ, as "the way, the truth, and the life," how shall they escape? Death must come as a police, to hurry them to their prison in hades, to await the coming forth for judgment. And .God entering into judgment with them, they cannot escape- condemnation, for no man living could be justified if called upon to answer for his sins; and as they would not have God's gracious way of being cleansed from them, they must answer for them before "the great white throne," and pure justice must then have its course. Oh that men were wise! Oh that they would believe God as to their deep need, and take salvation while mercy lingers! Oh that those who are saved would do more to reach the unsaved! Knowing the terror of the Lord, we are to persuade men. The love of Christ should constrain us.

"Call them In-the weak, the weary,
Laden with the doom of sin;
Bid them come and rest in Jesus;
He is waiting-call them in.

"See, the shadows lengthen round us,
Soon the day-dawn will begin;
Can you leave them lost and lonely?
Christ is coming-call them in."

May God bless His word to us; and may we, during the " little while," walk in the power of the truth that death is ours; manifesting, in our spirit and ways, the life which we have in the risen and glorified One, abounding in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.

I knew a man in Christ, above fourteen years ago," says the apostle; "of such an one I will glory; yet of myself I will not glory, but in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

My present object is not so much to speak of what the man in Christ is, as of what he is not; in other words, to ask my readers if they clearly understand the contrast which the apostle draws here between the man in Christ of whom he will glory and the "self" of whom he will not glory.

Now, to a believer, the man in Christ is his true self. His whole blessing is based upon what he is in Christ. His acceptance is in the Beloved; his sanctification is in Christ Jesus; "all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." As a sinner, a child of Adam, the cross has been his end before God. In this character he exists no more. Faith seeing as God sees, accepting what He has done, transports one thus already beyond death and judgment into the blessed scene of the new creation.-" If any man be in Christ, it is new creation; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new."

For one who simply believes God's word about all this, how great the blessedness! God has dealt with the source of all my troubles, delivering me from the need of one anxious thought about myself, and putting before me Christ for every need, that I may unceasingly enjoy Him, and find in my joy in Him the secret of strength and holiness.

If now we were only simple, all would be well. If faith were simple, how many exhortations of Scripture would find no place! But in fact, there is a man down here; what about him ? and one in whom also the glory of God is to be accomplished. Here a new danger arises for us,-a new self is apt to become important. If we are born again, we have a new, yea, a divine, nature; and this is not flesh, nor ended at the cross, nor a thing to be hopeless of as bringing forth fruit to God. Christ is in us, as well as we in Him ; and practical holiness is to be maintained in the world; precepts are addressed to us, and this having respect to character as well as conduct. All this is true, and not only true, but most necessary to be. kept in mind. The question is, how is all this to be without self-occupation and without legality? The law is the strength of sin, not of holiness, and to make of the man in Christ, with all the duties and responsibilities flowing from this new position, but a law, would be to make a yoke the more intolerable the higher its perfection, and to render hopeless the very thing meant to be enforced.

Let us look at these things as simply as we can. We have a new nature, and this assuredly is not flesh. It is that in which God works, and which is to bring forth fruit for Him. But its fruitfulness is by faith. It is faith by which the heart is purified, faith which worketh by love, faith which, if it have not works, is dead, being alone. The whole activity of such a life as Paul's-what was the secret of it? "The life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."

But what is faith but dependence-occupation with another-reception from another? Self is never faith's object, clearly. Thus, for the " new man, renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him," " Christ is all." Blessed and comprehensive words! And if it is faith by which the heart is purified, as Peter declares, another apostle shows the manner of it,-" We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." Here all spiritual growth is by occupation with Christ. The very character of our new life itself is the knowledge. of God the Father, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent; and this knowledge increased by that continual intimacy of communion to which we are called produces the full maturity of Christian life and character. Thus the beloved apostle gives it, evidently as that which characterizes the " fathers" to whom he ' writes, that they have " known Him that is from the beginning.." Again, if it be testimony to Christ and fruitfulness in the world that is in question, the accomplishment of it is in this way:" If any. man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink; and he that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

The precepts of the New Testament must be read in the light of passages such as these. If I were to say to a person, " Get yourself warm," he would scarcely think I meant by exercise if he saw my finger pointing to the fire. Thus do the Scriptures point unceasingly to Christ as to Him in whom " dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;" and in Him, it bids us know, we are "complete," or, as the word rather is, "filled up." Precepts enable us to detect what is not of Christ in us, and make us understand that we must seek Him more, trust Him more, live more with Him and in Him.

The man in Christ we never find, therefore, never produce in ourselves, down here; for the man in 'Christ is what we are up there in the heavenly places,-in Him where He is. To find ourselves, we must look ever in the face of Christ; and seeing ourselves there, there will be no room for disappointment or discouragement. Of such an one we may well glory, without fear of self-complacency. Our glorying will be glorying in the Lord. The more steadily we can gaze upon ourselves there, the more we shall be taken out of ourselves-the more Christ Himself will fill us. It is that true abiding in Him, which has for its practical result His abiding in us.-"Abide in Me, and I in you."

Of the man down here, then, what? He is just that self of which the apostle writes,-" But of myself I will not glory, but in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." An earthen vessel for the Spirit to fill; to manifest divine power in it:all its fullness, Another's fullness ; its weakness, that which magnifies Another's strength. Do not confound him for one moment with the glorious man in Christ. Yet, withal, you may contemplate him without dismay, yea, with thankfulness:you may glory in his infirmities. Blessed, blessed weakness, which makes me realize the power of Christ continually! No difficulties of the way He cannot meet; no sorrows He cannot suffice for; no void He cannot fill up. "Now, thanks be to God," says the apostle, " who always leadeth us about in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of His knowledge by us in every place!"

Sin had no sooner come into the world than God announced atonement for it. If God took up man, become now a sinner, in the way of blessing, He must needs, in care for His own glory, as well as mercy even to man himself, declare the terms upon which alone He could bless. And although He did not and could not yet speak with the plainness or fullness of gospel-speech, yet He did speak in such a way as that, (in spite of six thousand years of wanderings further from the light,) the broken syllables echo yet in the traditions of Adam's descendants, in witness to divine goodness, alas! against themselves.

It is in the judgment denounced upon the serpent that we find the promise of the woman's Seed; a promise indeed, as men have ever and rightly held it, though couched in such a form. To Adam as the head of fallen humanity it could not be directly given, for reasons which we have already seen; for in fact the first Adam and the old creation were not to be restored, but replaced by another. The woman also, with the man, was to share only in the fruits of Another's victory, whom grace alone has brought down to the lowly place of the woman's Seed. The announcement is therefore designedly given in the shape of judgment upon the serpent-judgment which is to be the victory of good over evil, the issue of a conflict now in full reality begun. In righteous retribution, through the woman's Seed the destroyer of man should be destroyed; but this is connected with enmity divinely "put" between the tempter and the tempted, in all Which God's intervention in goodness for the recovery of the fallen is plainly to be seen. The victory of the woman's Seed is a victory of divine goodness in behalf of man.

This victory is not gained without suffering. The heel that bruises the serpent's head will be itself bruised. The Conqueror must be the Sufferer.

Moreover, the Conqueror is the woman's Seed. We are apt to miss the force of this, just by our familiarity with it. Not yet had the mystery of human birth been accomplished upon earth. The lowliness of origin, the helpless weakness and ignorance of infancy, so long protracted beyond that of kindred bestial life around,-this, by which God would stain the pride of man, was that through which Adam and his wife had never passed. The Seed of the woman implied all this. With what astonishment we may well conceive Satan to have contemplated the childhood of the first-born of the human race; and to have thought of the word, whose certainty he could not doubt (for Satan, the father of lies, is no unbeliever), that the heel of One so born and nurtured was to be one day upon his own proud angelic head!

Not strength was to conquer here then, but weakness-known and realized weakness. Of that the promise spoke. And God, who needed not the help of creature-strength, had chosen to link Himself with weakness and with suffering to accomplish His purposes of righteousness and goodness. How and in what way to link Himself remained for future disclosures to make known.

But that bruised heel, bruised in the act of victory on behalf of others, is not left without further revelation of its nature on the spot. For when Adam's faith, bowing to the divine word, names the woman-her through whom death had entered, -Havvah (Eve) or " life;" then we read, " Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them." Thus the shame and the fact of their nakedness were together put away. It would now have been unbelief for Adam to say, as with his fig-leaf apron he had still to say, that he was naked. God's own hand had clothed him. No need for him to hide himself from His presence as before. The clothing His hand had given was not unfit to appear in before Him.

But what gave it that fitness? Clearly something apart from suitability in the way of protection of a being naturally defenseless, and now exposed to the vicissitudes of a world disarranged by sin. The nakedness which Adam realized in the presence of God was moral rather than physical, the consciousness of the working of lusts at war in the members. The covering too, then, for God must have some moral significance,-must speak at least of that which would cover, not merely from a human, but from a divine standpoint; therefore put away sin really, for how else could it be "covered" from His sight?

Now, in Scripture, "covering" is atonement- 1:e., expiation, putting away of sin. To atone is caphar, to "cover;" only in an intensive form, which is of striking significance and beauty. Atonement is covering of the completest kind.

We have not the word yet in this first page of the history of the fallen creature, but we have surely what connects with it in a very intelligible way. For death had now come in through sin, and as judgment upon it. Death would remove the sinner from the place of blessing he had defiled, and thus far maintain and vindicate the holiness of God; but in judgment merely, not in blessing. Atone for his sin in any wise such death could not:Yet here is declared the fact that the death of another, innocent of that which brought it in, could furnish covering for the sinner according to God's mind. Only the typal shadow yet was this:it was four thousand years too early for the true atonement to be made. Yet shadow it was:would not faith connect it, however dimly, with the bruised heel of the woman's Seed?

In this clothing God's hand wrought, and not man's. God wrought and God applied. Man's first lesson, which it were well if after forty centuries he had really learnt, was, that he could do nothing but submit to the grace which had undertaken for him. The fig-leaf apron had summed up and exhausted his resources, and demonstrated only his helplessness. He had now to find that helplessness made only the occasion of learning the tender mercy of God. God wrought and God applied to these first sinners the covering for their nakedness. And so it has been ever since, and so will be, to the last sinner saved by grace.

But the gospel at the gate of Eden is not finished yet. We must take in, plainly, what the next chapter gives, before we can realize how much already in Adam's days God had, though necessarily as it were in parables, declared.

Abel's offering is that by which, as the apostle says, he, being dead, yet speaketh. " By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain; by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and by it he being dead yet speaketh." In him we are given to see, just at the threshold of the world's history, the pronounced acceptance of a faith which brought, not its own performances, as Cain the labor of his own hands which sin had necessitated and stained, but the substitute of a stainless offering. The character of it shows clearly that sacrifice was an institution of God:" by faith Abel offered;" not therefore in will-worship. Nor could human wit have imagined as acceptable to God what, except for its inner meaning, could have had no possible suitability nor acceptance at His hands. The coats of skin, confessedly of His own design, give here indubitable evidence that the whole thought and counsel was of Him. Here again death covers the sinner; but now in proportion to the clearness with which the sacrificial character of the covering comes out, so do we find God's voice plainly giving its testimony to the righteousness of the offerer:"God testifying of his gifts." As with one of His ministers, in a day yet far distant,-but only with regard to bodily healing-the shadow of Christ, as here in sacrifice, is of power to heal the soul.

Thus in the order of these two cases the manner and nature of appropriation are plainly seen. First, God appropriates the value of Christ's work to the soul; for faith must have God's act or deed to justify it as faith; and then it sets to its seal that God is true:It is not faith's appropriation that makes it true, as some would deem. It is the receptive nature that holds fast merely what God has put already in its possession.. To those who take shelter still under the atoning death of the great Victim, God attests its value on their behalf. It is for them to believe their blessedness on the word of One who cannot lie, nor repent.

Let us notice here, as ever henceforth, the victim is of the flock or herd, or what at least is not the object of pursuit or capture; which plainly would not harmonize with the fact of man's lost condition, or with the voluntary offering of Him who freely came to do the will of God. The blood of no wild creature could flow in atonement for the soul of man. The precise commandment as to this comes indeed much later, but to it from the first both Abel's and every other accepted sacrifice conform. Of blood no mention is made either here; of the fat there is:'"And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof;" the fat being that in which the good condition of the animal made itself apparent. Fat is always in Scripture the symbol of a prosperous condition, although, it may be, of such temporal prosperity as might result in an opposite state of soul. "Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked," says the lawgiver in his last prophetic "song;" "thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness:then he forsook God that made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation." Connected with this is the Psalmist's description of the wicked:"They are inclosed in their own fat; with their mouth they speak proudly." Then by an easy gradation of thought:"Their heart is as fat as grease." Where offered to God, fat is the symbol of that spiritual well-being which expresses itself, not in the energy of self-will, but of devotedness. Even in the sin-offering afterward, where burnt upon the ground, the fat is always therefore reserved for the altar; but of this elsewhere.

The "firstling of the flock" again represents Him who is the"first-born among many brethren" by Him sanctified. " For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause" He is not ashamed to call them brethren." The consecration of the first-born sanctifies the whole.

What mind of man could have anticipated thus the thought and purpose of God as does Abel's offering? In it the lesson of the coats of skin is developed into a doctrine of atonement henceforth to be the theme of prophecy and promise for four thousand years, till He should come in whom it should find its fulfillment, and all vail be removed. Until then, prophets themselves knew but little of what they prophesied. " The Spirit of Christ which was in them " spake deeper things than they could even follow, as the apostle testifies; though we must not imagine all was dark.

That sacrifice, on the other hand, was of God's appointment, not of human device, His words to Cain are full proof.-"If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ? and if thou doest not well, a sin-offering coucheth at the door." So, I am persuaded, this ought to be read. " Sin " and " sin-offering" are the same word whether in Greek or Hebrew; but what would be the force of " if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door"? That the last expression refers to an animal seems plain:some interpreters take it figuratively, as if sin as a wild beast were in the act to spring. Too late, surely, when one has already sinned! Rather would it not be the provision of mercy for one in need of it-an offering not far to seek, but at the very door'! and in what follows, the assurance of his retaining still the first-born's place with regard to Abel-" Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him "?

God thus, then, declares His appointment of sacrifice. And in this way the mystery of the suffering of the woman's Seed finds its explanation in the necessity of atonement. The bruised heel of the Victor in man's behalf enlarges and deepens into the death of a victim, slain for atonement. It is not really the serpent's victory even thus far, though it may seem so:the serpent may bruise the heel, but only as the unwitting instrument of divine goodness in accomplishing man's deliverance. The bruised heel is his own head bruised:the suffering is the victory of the Sufferer.

But who is this, to whom death-and such a death!-is but the heel, the lowest part, bruised? What a thought of the majesty of His person is here! Already there is a gleam of the glory of Him whom after-prophecy, supplementing this, shall speak of as the virgin's Son, Immanuel. But the question is only raised as yet, to which Isaiah gives this answer. We can see it is the fitting and necessary one.

Looking for judgment because Jehovah abhors the workers of iniquity – the bloody and deceitful man; but to have his own place of worship in Jehovah's house, and His way made plain before his face.

To the chief musician upon wind instruments:a psalm of David.

Give ear to my words, Jehovah! Consider my meditation.

2. Attend to the voice of my cry, my King and my God; for unto Thee do I pray.

3. My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, Jehovah; in the morning will I set in order [my prayer] before Thee, and will watch.

4. For Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with Thee.

5. Boasters shall not stand before Thine eyes; Thou hatest all workers of vanity.

6. Thou shalt destroy them that speak falsehood; Jehovah abhorreth the bloody and deceitful man.
7. But as for me, I will come into Thy house in the abundance of Thy mercy, in Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy temple.

8. Lead me, Jehovah, in Thy righteousness, because of them that are watching me; make straight Thy way before my face.

9. For in their mouth is nothing certain; gaping depths their inward parts; their throat an open sepulcher; they make smooth their tongue.

10. Let them bear their guilt, O God! by their own counsels shall they fall; cast them out in the multitude of their revoltings, for they have rebelled against Thee.

11. But all those that take refuge in Thee shall rejoice; they shall ever sing with joy because Thou dost cover them, and those that love Thy name shall exult in Thee.

12. For Thou, Jehovah, blessest the righteous; with favor dost Thou encompass him as with a shield.

Text.-(3) "Set in order," as a sacrifice; "and watch," that is, for the answer.

(4) "God" is here El, the "Mighty One," significantly contrasted with the mighty ones of earth, who use their power for evil purposes.

(9) "Certain," literally, "established, fixed." "Gaping depths," from "havvah," to yawn, gape.

(11) Literally, "and Thou shalt cover them ; " but van is used exceptionally in this sense, as psalm Ix. 12.

Like the second, a governmental psalm of twelve verses, also divided into four threes, easily to be recognized.

The ordinary dispensational application of the week of creation is one which has so many adherents, and has given rise to so much speculation otherwise, that we shall do well to look at it before proceeding further. In the words of a modern writer, "In this application, 'one day is as a thousand years.' Six thousand years of labor precede the world's Sabbath. The parallel here has been often traced." It is as old, indeed, as the so-called "Epistle of Barnabas,"* and its scriptural support is supposed to be the passage in 2 Peter iii, already referred to. According to it, the millennial kingdom answers, as the seventh thousand years, to the "seventh day," earth's Sabbath-rest. *Which, it is almost needless to say, was not the production of the scriptural Barnabas, although by the very general voice of antiquity attributed to him. Its date is supposed to be somewhat before the middle of the second century A. D. I quote the passage from the translation in the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library":"Attend, my children, to the "meaning of this expression:He finished in six days.' This implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thousand years. And He Himself testifieth, 'Behold, to day will be as a thousand years.'" The last is probably an incorrect citation of Psalm 90:4.*

But as to the principle, the passage in Peter is no proof at all. It is no statement of time, but the contrary-the simple assurance of how little God counts time as man counts it. It might be as fairly argued from it that the millennial "thousand years" was but a day, as that the creation "days" represented each a thousand years; for it is not only "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years," but also "a thousand years as one day."

Nor is the millennium, with all its blessedness, a proper Sabbath. The apostle represents the "rest" (literally, "Sabbath-keeping,") that remains to the people of God, as God's rest, and that surely is, as both the epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 4:9, 10.) and the book of Genesis show, His ceasing from His work. But in the millennium there is not as yet this. It is the last work-day rather, and not till the new heavens and earth will God's rest be come. The seventh day is not, then, the type of a millennium at all, but of final and eternal rest.

Moreover, the millennial kingdom answers so fully to the sixth-day rule of the man and woman over the earth, that it is strange how it could escape the notice of those who were seeking a dispensational application of the creation-work. While on the other hand a mere arithmetical interpretation of the days as each a thousand years of the world's history, seems almost self-evidently artificial and unspiritual.

I may leave this, then, to point out what I have no doubt is the real dispensational application. In this it will be found we have but the former interpretation extended and adapted to the larger sphere.

Thus we have here alike a primitive creation and a fall, and then, too, that work of the Spirit and the Word by which every step toward the blessedness that shall be has been successively produced. The first day has very plainly the features of the age before the flood, when through the word of promise the light shone, but without further interference with the state of the creature. The light fell only upon a ruin. Lust and violence were the general features of man's condition, and furnish a history over which the Spirit of God passes with significant brevity, and which "the troubled sea, when it cannot rest," sufficiently depicts. Upon this world a literal flood passed, and it perished.

The second day gives us the formation of the "heavens," a symbol not hard to read, when we have learnt elsewhere the constant use of these as the seat of authority and power. It is the uniform language of Scripture that "the heavens rule." The "sun to rule by day" is indeed not yet come, nor the moon by night. Naught fills these heavens as yet but " waters "-waters above as well as beneath-the very type of instability. And this makes it the perfect type of what took place when, after the flood, man was put in the place of responsibility to be his brother's keeper. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," is the principle, and was the institution, as is plain, of human government. It was the formation of a political " heavens "with, as yet, nothing but waters filling them. And how quickly Noah, the acknowledged head of the new world, drunk with the fruit of his vineyard, exemplified the instability of the type ! And from henceforth what has it been but the constant display of this-the want of self-government in those who govern? A step toward the full attainment of God's perfect counsel for the earth it is; even now, power ordained of God, and His ministry for good, and yet a Nero or Caligula may be this" power." And significant it seems that on this second day there is no voice of God pronouncing "good" what is nevertheless for good. Providentially, He may be working blessing by that which in itself He cannot bless. And this is of solemn import for all times and spheres.

The third day following sees the dry land separated from the waters. These waters we have all along seen to be the type of human passion and self-will-what man left to himself exhibits. But this is evidently, on the larger scale we are now taking, just the Gentiles,* and the earth raised up out of these waters is the seed of Abraham after the flesh-that people plowed up with the plowshare of God's holy law, and among whom was sown the seed of the divine Word. *Compare Revelation 17:16,-"The waters . multitudes and nations and tongues."* Little fruit may it yet have yielded, and given up it may be for its fruitlessness and unprofitableness at the present time; yet it lies but fallow, like the actual land of Israel, waiting for the latter rain and the foretold fertility under the care of the divine husbandry. Nor has the past been only failure. For long the only fruit for God we know was to be found there, and in a sense, of its fruit are even we:"salvation " was " of the Jews." Thus there need be no difficulty in this fertile earth separated from the waters representing Israel's separation to God out of all the nations of the world.* *To those acquainted with the meaning of Revelation xiii, it will not be insignificant that the last Gentile empire should be figured there in the beast from the sea, the Jewish Antichrist in the second beast from the earth.*

The fourth day's lesson is one simpler still. The lights set in the heavens speak very plainly of Christ and of the Church; or, as we are accustomed to say, of the Christian dispensation. The mystery here we have already glanced at, for the individual application scarcely differs from the dispensational. Here Christ, revealed by the Holy Ghost, shines out for men in the word of His grace; while the Church is the responsible reflector of Christ, His epistle to the world. The word of the Spirit to the churches (Rev. ii, 3:) may give us the moon's phases in the night of Christ's absence – that night surely now fast drawing to a close.

Let this scene preach to us that all true and divine light now is heavenly. To let our " light) shine" is naught else than to let men see we be-long to another sphere, are not of the world even as Christ was not; and to let them see our faces | brightened with the joy of what He is, our hearts satisfied with Himself, and so independent of the I broken cisterns from which they strive to draw refreshment. This was once actually the Church's testimony, in those days when men were "turned to God from idols…to wait for His Son from heaven."Alas! while the Bridegroom tarried, the light grew dim."They all slumbered and slept."The only light for the world is still the virgin's lamp as she goes forth to meet the Bridegroom.

His call of them to Himself will close this dispensation, and then will dawn that strange and solemn fifth day, when once again the " waters" will have risen and covered every thing; the time of which the ninety-third psalm speaks, though as of a past condition,-" The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves;" but only to prove that "the Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea."

The time of the world's discipline will have come, "the hour of trial upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." These waters speak of a universal Gentile (that is, lawless) state; of the working of man's wild will:" upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth."

But when God's." judgments are upon the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." This is the secret of the waters producing the living creature. It is the time when (the heavenly people being gathered home) God will be preparing a people for earthly blessing. Brief may be the time in which He does this:Scripture is none the less full of the detail of the mighty work to be done. And a most real and necessary step it will be toward that reign of righteousness and peace which the sixth day so plainly figures.

For here the rule of the man in God's image and likeness can scarcely fail to make itself understood by those who look for the Lord then to take a throne which as Son of Man He can call His own (Rev. 1:13; 3:21.), and which therefore He can share with His people, as He cannot share His Father's throne. The first Adam, we are told by the apostle (Rom. 5:14.), was the image of the One to come; even as he also tells us (Eph. 5:25, 32.) Eve is of that Church which He will present to Himself without spot or blemish. Thus we can scarcely by any possibility mistake the spiritual meaning of the sixth day's work.

In that day, too, the earth brings forth the living creature."Israel shall bud and blossom, and fill the face of the earth with fruit."She shall be Jezreel, "the seed of God," and "I will sow her to Me in the earth," says the Lord God.

And as this is the last work-day, not yet Sabbath rest, so is the millennial kingdom in the hands of Him who takes it to bring all things back to God. "He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. And when all things shall be subdued under Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that god may be all in all." Then, and not till then, is the Sabbath reached.

"And on the seventh day God had ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made."

Here God alone appears, and the work being ended, all being according to His mind, He sanctifies the day of His rest. How significant this of the day, never to give place to another, when redemption being fully accomplished, and all things brought to the pattern proposed in the eternal counsels, He shall indeed put the seal of His perfect delight upon the whole new creation, hallowed to Himself forever! How could God rest short of this consummation? Then indeed He will be "all," and that be the simple, full expression of the creature's blessedness, and of its perpetuity as well.

Some details of this final blessing are presented to us in the following section, which concludes this first part of Genesis (chap. 2:4-25.); but before we go on to this let us only for a moment compare the meaning of the lives which shortly follow in the book-a meaning already briefly glanced at -with that now given of these six creative days. We shall find in them, not absolute identity (for Scripture never merely repeats itself), but a parallel of a most striking sort; a remarkable witness of the internal unity of Scripture, and of this first book. How easy to understand that Genesis is, as it has been called, the "seed-plot of the Bible," when it is thus in the whole the expansion of those divine counsels which have their indication already in the creative work itself! And so indeed it is.

But it is plain that here the seven lives recorded in Genesis must have their counterparts in the six days' work; there is none to the seventh-day rest. And it is as plain that the last life, Joseph, the most perfect type of Christ, the man, God's image, answers here precisely to the sixth, and not to the seventh day. We shall obtain a seventh day then, so to speak, by taking the third day as a double one. We have already noticed that it is so, for God speaks twice, and twice pronounces His work good. Looking at the days thus, let us compare the double series.* *It has been noticed by many that the six days themselves fall into a double parallel series. Arranged thus, we have, as to the parts of creation touched on, these respectively:-

1. Light. .4. Light. 2. Waters. 5. Waters. 3. Earth. 6. Earth.

Dividing the third day into two will give us a regular series of seven, which is commonly in Scripture (as noted elsewhere) 4 plus 3.*

Now, beginning with the third chapter, the story of Adam is just the exposure of man, such as the fall has made him:the light let in upon his condition, with no apparent internal change. And this is the truth of the first day.

Next, as to the division of the waters on the second day, we have already seen that its lesson corresponds with that of the two seeds into which the human race at once divides:the opposition, namely, between the carnal and spiritual mind, which every renewed soul is conscious of.

Then, if the third day give us in the earth's coming up out of the waters the type of how we too rise up out of the inundation of sin into the place at once of rest and power over it, the third life, Noah's, gives us as plainly our passage in Christ our ark out of the scene of the sin and judgment of man in the flesh to that in which blessing is secured by the sweet savor of accepted sacrifice.

The fruit of the second half of the third day, again, is seen in Abraham, the practical life of faith which follows upon this.

The fourth-day parallel seems less exact with Isaac; yet is he undoubtedly, more emphatically than any, the heavenly man. Even Abraham is found out of Canaan; Jacob almost spends his life away from it; Isaac may fail, and does, but never leaves it; and as the picture of Christ Himself, as he undoubtedly is, he is necessarily the picture of the reflection of Christ-of the Son and of the sons of God.

The parallel of the fifth-day type with Jacob is self-evident; the lesson of each is discipline, and what God accomplishes in it for His own-the! peaceable fruit of righteousness in those who are exercised thereby.

While Joseph's life is as plainly the spontaneous fruit of the new nature, and the attainment of sovereignty over all around, as the sixth day is also of the same things, none the less blessed because so little known.

Thus the remarkable unity of this first book of Scripture is apparent. Nor will this glance at it be in vain, if it awake in any soul a fresh realization of that eternal love so manifestly set upon us, when He for whom are all things and by whom are all things formed the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. Well may our voices mingle in that jubilee-song, "Praise ye the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights; praise ye Him, sun and moon; praise Him all ye stars of light; praise Him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying fowl; kings of the earth, and all people; princes and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens; old men and children; let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name only is excellent; His glory is above the earth and heaven."

Do you ask me to measure sin ?I cannot:the cross alone is the answer.

Confidence, because Jehovah has set apart the godly for Himself; and joy-vainly sought elsewhere, -in the light of His countenance:a pleading with the ungodly to consider.

To the chief musician, upon stringed instruments:a psalm of David.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! in straitness, Thou enlargedst me; be gracious to me and hear my prayer!

2. O sons of Man, how long shall my glory be a shame [with you] ? Will ye love vanity ? will ye seek after falsehood ? Selah. .

3. But know that Jehovah hath set apart the godly for Himself; Jehovah heareth when I call to Him.

4. Tremble, and sin not; speak with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
5. Sacrifice sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in Jehovah.

6. Many are saying, " Who will show us good ?" Lift up on us the light of Thy face, Jehovah!

7. Thou hast given me gladness in my heart, more than in the time when their corn and their new wine increased.

8. I will both lay me down in peace and sleep; for Thou only, Jehovah, makest me dwell securely.

Text.-(2) "Man" is here not Adam, the word for the race, but Ish (vρ, vir), implying greatness or eminence. I write it with a capital for distinction.

(3) "The godly:" some would translate the word chasid invariably as "merciful," or else "object of mercy," or "favor." Neither seems the sense here. Primarily, it means, according to Schultens, "swelling, exuberant;" which, toward man, gives the meaning "bountiful, merciful;" but here it is God-ward, and "godly" seems the most suitable translation, as well as the one most accordant with the tenor of the psalm.

Connections.-With psalm 3:1, 2, 4, 5, comp. respectively verses 1, 6, 3, 8.

In the next psalm we find evil and opposition growing more intense, and the pleading with them, become hopeless now, changes into pleading against them. It is the other side of the previous psalm. He who hath set apart the godly for Himself abhors the workers of iniquity. Lingering mercy gives place to judgment, and then to plead for it is to be as much in fellowship with God as to plead for grace when God is showing grace.

There are two smaller sections of the first natural division of the book of Genesis. The first (chap. 1:-2:3.) gives us the work of God and His rest; the second, (chap. 2:4-25.) God in relationship with the creature He has made. Hence, in this latter part the covenant-name is for the first time introduced; it is not "God" merely, but " The Lord God"-Jehovah. We shall see more fully the force of this hereafter. In this double account there is an exquisite beauty, which the unbelief that cavils at it can never see.

It is necessary also to distinguish from the six days' work, what has been strangely confounded with it, the primitive creation of the first chapter and verse, and the ruin into which it had fallen when "without form and void, and darkness on the face of the deep." This used to be, and I suppose still may be called, the common view; and yet the more one looks at the passage the more it seems impossible to make such a mistake. For plainly the work of the six days begins with this:"God said, ' Let there be light; and there was light." But as plainly the earth, although waste and desolate, was there before that, not created then. Moreover the words "without form and void," for which "waste and desolate" would be preferable as a reading, imply distinctly a state of ruin, and not of development; while a passage in which the first of these terms is used asserts expressly that the Lord did not create the earth so.* *It is the word rendered "in vain," Isaiah 14:18. together in Isaiah 24:11 and Jeremiah 4:23.*

Nor can it be said that the exigencies of a geological difficulty have forced such a construction of the opening words of this account. Augustine, who knew nothing of such a difficulty, long ago decided for it from the mere force of the language used. The requirement of it by the mere typical view I am just now advocating, is independent of it also, and yet quite as urgent; for it makes the six days' work a remolding of a former lapsed creation, the new birth, as we may call it, of a world. How plainly significant is that, at once! And such a view of it the words themselves necessitate.

There was, then, a primary creation, afterward a fall; first, "heaven and earth," in due order; then earth without a heaven-in darkness, and buried under "a deep" of salt and barren and restless waters. What a picture of man's condition, as fallen away from God! How complete the confusion! how profound the darkness! howl deep the restless waves of passion roll over the wreck of what was once so fair!"The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."

Then mark how the new birth begins:"The Spirit of God moved [or brooded] upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light.' " From the Spirit and the Word it comes:we are "born of the Spirit;" we are "born of the incorruptible seed" of "the Word of God." And "the entrance of Thy Word giveth light." How faithfully this beginning of creative work depicts that more mighty still in the human soul, and assures of what was even then for us in the counsels of divine wisdom! Truly His "delights were with the sons of men."

The first day gives us. then, the entrance of the Word giving light. The state of the creature is manifested by it, but as yet it shines on naught but desolation. Nothing is changed, save the darkness; there is nothing that God can find of good but the light itself. That He pronounces so- severs it from the darkness and gives it a place and a name; but the darkness too is named, and has its place, and is not all removed. For not in the earth itself is the source of light, and when turned away from this it is still dark. Practically, the day is not all light, but" evening and morning" make it up; yet, though darkness is in itself "night," it is well to note that it is never, now that light has once come in, simple and absolute night any more, but "evening;" some rays of the day there ever are; and in God's order, too, an evening surely giving place to morning. And then again, as to the "morning," its promise of the perfect "day" is never realized until God's work is wrought out and His Sabbath is reached; then, indeed, there is no more evening, or morning either, but "day," without mixture or decline- God's great finality-is fully come.

I do not believe this needs interpreting; the significance of its voice is not hard to apprehend. And thus not only" day unto day uttereth speech," but also "night unto night showeth knowledge." Dear reader, if perchance one there be who may read this, down into whose desolate soul the light has shone, revealing not good but ill, when good has begun to have attraction too, but there is none -you are learning but this first day's lesson. Spite of all that is disclosed, the light is good. Welcome it as from God, the beginning of His gracious work in you, the promise of the day that yet shall come.

The second stage of this" divine work is the making of the "firmament," or "expanse," by which a separation of the waters is effected. Strangely misunderstood as it has been by some, it is, one would think, self-evidently, the formation of the atmospheric "heavens," which draw up now (as they have been doing ever since) out of the deep below, waters which, purged of their salines, become the still inexplicably balanced clouds.

The spiritual stage it represents is scarcely more difficult to follow. A separation is now effected, not in the external condition merely, but more inwardly. The unseen things operate upon the soul, and attract affections and desires upward to them. That which was "lust" and " corruption " in a heart away from God is thus purified by the new object. It is the " kingdom of heaven " spiritually . begun. The heart is under divine government. And while the general state of the creature remains apparently the same (there is still no fruit nor solid ground)- while still "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing," yea, while "how to perform that which is good I find not" – still we can say, "To will is present with me," and "with the mind I myself serve the law of God." Peace is not come, nor liberty, nor power; but the heart drawn up to God, that intercourse with heaven is begun which blessing to fertilize and bring forth Still, by the Word is every stage produced. Each time God speaks. It is not mere development of what lies unfolded in the earliest germ. Step by step the forth putting of divine power accomplishes counsels that are all divine."We are His workmanship" – the patient, perfect elaboration of the wisdom of God – "created in Christ Jesus."Happy we, proportionately as we are yielded into His hands, and cast into the mold of His efficacious Word!

The "third day" speaks to the Christian heart of resurrection. It is marked here by resurrection-power:the earth comes up put of the waters. That which can be wrought upon and made fruitful is now brought up from under the irreclaimable waste of sea. This is not removed, but bounded and restrained; it cannot return to cover the earth. Its existence is indeed distinctly recognized; it gets for the first time its name from God; in the new earth there will be none. (Rev. 21:1:) Meanwhile He lays the foundations of the earth,* that it never should be moved at any time. *Not the world, but that "dry land" which He has just named "Earth."*

This is only the first half of the third day. It is a double day, as we may say, with God. Twice He speaks; twice He pronounces His work good. In the first half, the earth is separated from the waters; in the second, it brings forth the "grass." the " herb," and "the fruit-tree yielding fruit." Let us examine the spiritual meaning of all this.

"Risen with Christ " is the truth which inevitably connects itself with such a figure. Christ having died and risen again for us, His resurrection no less than His death ours. His death is our passage put of our old state and condition as sinners-as children of Adam. His resurrection is our entrance into a new state and sphere. "In Christ" – "if any man be" there, "he is a new creature:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

The attempt to read this by experience has been the loss (practically) of its blessedness. Unable to look within and say "all things are new," men have been reduced either to modify this as if it were too extreme a statement, or else to doubt if they were really Christians. Moreover, the trying to produce such a state of things within them has resulted in constant disappointment and real loss of power. They have sought to mend self and produce there what they might find satisfaction in, I instead of turning away from self altogether, to find occupation with Christ and with His love true power over it.

But it is not "if any man be born again" or "be converted." It is not the result of the work within us that is stated, but the result of the new position before God in which we stand. Acceptance in Christ is acceptance as Christ. It is no question, therefore, of what is in us at all, but of what is in Christ for us; thus viewed, old things are indeed passed away, and all things become new.

Christ's resurrection has put us in this new place; we are risen with Him. The acceptance of this blessed fact brings us into rest and peace, and sets us on vantage-ground above the water-floods. I It is for us spiritually God's bringing up the earth from under the waves, and settling it upon its ever-lasting foundations. True, the waters are not removed, the flesh is not become spirit, nor done away; on the contrary, it is now for the first time fully recognized as there, and incurable-has its the man in Christ has risen out of it- is,"not in the flesh."It is in him; but he is not it, nor in it.

This is the first part of the day of resurrection only. The second part gives us the fruitfulness which is the immediate consequence of this; for being now " made free from sin," we are " become the servants of righteousness." Notice some features here.

God calls the dry land " Earth." In the original, this word is derived from one which means " crumbling,"* and it is manifestly a chief condition of fertility that earth should crumble. *Eretz from Rate, according to Parkhurst, Heb. Lex.* The more continually its clods break up into ever finer dust, the more its promise to the husbandman; and this is a simple lesson and a great one. The brokenness of spirit which makes no resistance to the Father's hand is a main element of fertility in souls wherein He works. It is not power He seeks from but weakness; not resistant force, but "yieldingness" to Him. All power is His:His strength is perfected in weakness.

The character depicted here is beautifully illustrated in this very" third day" state in Romans 8:Up to the very end of chapter vii, in the well-known experience already alluded to, the man in question is profoundly conscious of two " I's" in opposition to each other; "with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." There is the struggle that convulses him; one part for God and good, the other always contrary – alas! always the stronger too. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" delivers him "from the law of sin and death." Then there are two contrary parties still. But there is a change. The flesh is there indeed yet, and nowise altered, but its now victorious antagonist is not "I myself.'' That is sunk; it is now "flesh" and "Spirit" that conflict-the Holy Ghost in place of "me."

Oh for constant realization of this! the dropping (not of the flesh-that cannot be here, but) of that good and right-minded and holy "I" which is ever weakness, ever inability, with all its pious resolution and good will! "I live-not I-but Christ liveth in me."

Even thus is the fertile earth produced. Out of weakness, out of nothingness, out of infirmities, which make the power of Christ to rest upon us, and leave us clay in the potter's hands. The more we know the reality of resurrection, the more shall we know of this.

Then as to the fruit. There is progress; from grass and herb to "fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself upon the earth "-another beautiful figure that. The fruit bears within itself the capacity of self-perpetuation. Itself for the Master's use (and it is well to remember that), the seed is in this fruit according to its kind,-love to produce love, and so on. If we want to find love, we must show it. And the riper the fruit; is for the Master's taste, the riper the seed is also; the best ripe fruit is that which has hung in the sun most.

All this is simple; and it shows there is a real voice in creation round, to be understood if we have will to understand. The works of His hand bear witness:to Himself,— creation to redemption -things seen to the unseen; the thoughts of God's heart, the depths of His love. It is not a mere accommodation of these things we are making; they are designed witness, though Christ must be the key to all.

And now we are come to the fourth day. Here the entire scene is changed. It is not the laying the foundations of the earth any more, but the garnishing of the heavens. Sun and moon are ordained as light-givers to the earth now made, and for signs and for seasons, for days and years.

And we are not only "risen with Christ," but in Christ, heavenly; "seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." This truth necessarily follows that of resurrection, and no view of our new creation could be in any wise complete which left out this. Here it follows, then, in very natural order, and the language of the type is not hard to apprehend. "Heaven" is, I doubt not, its own symbol, as indeed the firmament, the lower heaven, gives its name to the unseen and spiritual heaven. God's dwelling-place. Applying it in this way, the first object seen in it speaks for itself. Scripture too applies it (Mal. 4:2.). The great luminary of the day, the source of heat and light to the ' earth, its light self-derived, unchanging, constant as the day it brings,-clearly enough presents to us the "Heavenly One" back in the glory whence He came. The secondary light, light of the night, a light derived from His, yet oh how cold and dull comparatively at the best, changeful-full-faced or dwindled according as it fully faces or is turned away from Him; how easily we read that too, as we read such words as the apostle's here!-"We all, with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."

Let us learn the lessons that the moon teaches, for they are serious and yet helpful ones. What more serious lesson than her changefulness? She belongs always to heaven according to God's ordinance. Practically, you cannot always find her there; nay, she is. more often (to man's sight, of course,) out of the sky than in it. Then, when there, how seldom full-orbed! how often turned away from him from whom all her radiance comes! For so it does come; her part is reception merely; she shines perforce when in his light, not by her own effort in the least. And could you [go up, attracted by her brightness, to see how fair and glorious she was, you would find yourself there not in the glory of the moon at all, but of that sun which was bathing her with brightness.

Then notice her from this earth new risen from the waters. Fair she may be, and "precious fruits be brought forth" by her; yea, "abundance of peace as long as the moon endureth;" still the direct sun-rays are another thing, and are the real fructifying, life-giving influence after all. It is one thing to be occupied even with what we are in Christ-and it is our guide in the night, too (Gal. 6:15, 16.)-it is yet another to be in the glory of His presence, where moon and stars are hidden in the day.
There is much more here, but I leave it and pass on. The fifth day brings another change of scene; and here, when we might have thought that we had left them finally behind, we are brought back again to the barren waste of waters. But now even here the power of God is working; She waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and birds fly in the open firmament of heaven. It is still progress in the great creative plan, and new and higher forms of life are reached than heretofore. It is not now grass and herb, but the "living soul," and God blesses them, and bids them multiply.

Can we give this expression? I believe so. There are harmonies elsewhere that will guide us to an understanding of it.

Take one in the order of the Pentateuch itself, where the same thing occurs – a real progress by apparent retrogression. For if Genesis begins (as we have seen it does) with "life," Exodus gives us, very plainly, the redemption of God's people; while Leviticus leads us into the sanctuary of God, to learn in His presence what suits Him to whom we are brought and whose we are. Thus all is progress ; but at the next step this seems ended, for in Numbers we pass out once more into the world to face the trials of the wilderness and the still worse exposure of ourselves that meets us there.

This seems retrogression; still it is progress after all. There is no dislocation of His plan who is ever working onward to perfection. For the world is surely the place where, after we have known redemption, and the God that has re-deemed us too, we are left to be practiced in what we know, that we may be "those who by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

There is discipline in this; and failure comes I plentifully too; still we are chastened to be partakers of His holiness; the new life in us gets practical form and embodiment, as we may say; in other words – the words of our type – the "living soul" is produced out of the midst of the waters.

For the waters are, we have seen, the restless and fallen nature of man; and it is this (whether within or without) that makes the wilderness the place of trial that it; yet out of this evil, divine sovereignty produces good. And again, the "living soul"- since the soul is the seat of desires, appetites, affections, etc., – may fitly depict the living energies which lay hold of eternal things I amid the pressure on every side of what is seen and temporal.* * Take Philippians 3:as the vivid portrayal of this.*

This, I believe, is the fifth-day scene. One day alone remains, and God's work is complete.

And this day, which is a second "third," has its two parts likewise, as the third day had. First, the earth (and not the waters now) bring forth the "living soul." It is not now the fruit of discipline, or the chafing and contact of sin and evil, but the development of what is proper to the new man apart from this. Jacob's and Joseph's lives show us this contrast fully, as we may see more after-ward. And like Joseph's too, this sixth day shows us next the rule of the man, God's image. I can but little interpret here, it is true, but the outline is not the less plain because of the meagerness of the interpretation. The mere indication may attract some to look deeper into this final mystery of creative wisdom.

For what remains is rest, and only rest, God's rest in love over His accomplished work. Seven times He has pronounced all "good," the last time "very good." Now "evening" and" morning " come no more, but full, ripe, unending "day" -a day blessed and sanctified of God as the day of His rest.

The fuller exposition of this, however, will come more in its place after we have glanced at the dispensational application of the six days' work. For they have their fulfillment also, as I have already said, in the sphere of the world at large, in the progressive steps by which from the beginning divine power and wisdom have been moving on to the accomplishment of that of which eternity alone can fully tell.

True holiness," in Ephesians 4:24, is literally, as in the margin, " holiness of truth." It is a pregnant and beautiful expression, well worthy of our deepest attention. Let us look at it a little together, beloved reader, and may God give it application and power over us.

Truth is the effect of light. " The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth:" such is the acknowledged reading of chap. 5:9. For us it is the fruit, we may say, of light come into the world, not natural to it. Darkness is what is natural to us:" the light shineth in darkness,"-so dense that the light alone will not remove it, as it is said here:-" And the darkness comprehended it not." There is one darkness which no light can penetrate,-that of death:"He that followeth Me," says the Lord, " shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

But then even when alive the light is no mere internal one:" the light of the body is the eye ;" but the eye is only the door of entrance for the light; and so with the Christian, as again the Lord applies the natural figure:" If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world ; but if he walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him."

Yet, blessed be God, the Christian walks in the light, for him the " darkness is passing, and the true light already shines." Indeed, only "if we walk in the light, as God is in the light," does the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanse us from all sin. The vail being rent by that which has put the precious blood of Christ upon the mercy-seat, the circle of the light is coextensive with the actual efficacy of the blood. No Christian but has the light. How great the blessedness, and how great the responsibility! if there be in effect darkness, the eye must be evil.

In the holy place, where the priests served of old, no light of common day was permitted to come; the golden lamp alone lighted the sanctuary of God. For us too, if not in the sanctuary, we are in a world of illusion and subtle snare:" When I thought to know this," says the Psalmist, "it was too difficult for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God." Yes, His Word, in His presence, is our unfailing resource. " The knowledge of the holy is understanding." The fruit of the light is truth:our walk there becomes a walk in the " holiness of truth."

"Truly the light is sweet," says the preacher, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun! " How precious to the eyes that spiritually behold this! God known in Christ:the throne of God a mercy-seat, a throne of grace ; grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life! His Word, the word of peace, the word of reconciliation, now become the "ingrafted word," the law of my new growth and being! Is it indeed so with you, dear reader? am I but tracing out in all this what is your real and happy experience? This, then, and nothing else than this, is, holiness. To live in the place of reality, where all is assured, fixed, eternal, this is the life of faith. Faith is no overwrought enthusiasm of imagination. It is the sober estimate of things as they are:an estimate which even time will justify, where eternity will pronounce all other madness. And this, reader, if you be a Christian, is the settled and deep conviction of your heart.

And yet is it too much to affirm that the mass of Christians live as if what they know to be absolutely true were manifestly false; as if the illusions of the world were a reality, the maxims of the world the most practical truth; as if time and eternity were in reverse order of importance? Is it not true that many more seem to have at least settled it that the Word of God can not be followed fully and unreservedly; that this may cost too much; that to be exhorted to the full measure of apostolic holiness is to be unreal, dreamy, and impracticable? Alas! this truth so blessed, as in some sense every Christian must esteem and know it, by what subtlety of Satan do we act so much as if it were a yoke we were not able to bear?

Is it not in this way that it is come to be thought that after all the knowledge of the truth has little to do with real sanctification; that if the life is right, little matter about the creed? as if there could be a right life but in proportion to the reality and purity of faith, or faith could be without creed! as if it were not true that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works"! Thus the Word and the Spirit of God are alike dishonored, and infidelity finds its most convenient argument from the unbelief of Christians!

Holiness is " of truth;" sanctification by the truth; the " Word is truth." Beloved reader, are you hungering after it, rejoicing over it, receiving it unreservedly into your heart, bowing to its authority, following it out (to use men's language) at whatever cost? If not, do not plead weakness, and so misuse the blessed word. Does not God know, I ask, this weakness? Does He not know the cost of obedience, He who in the reality of manhood became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross? And where should weakness be but with Him whose presence is alone unfailing strength? And where shall we find His presence but in His path ? Ponder the cost, then, if it must be, dear reader, but let it be the cost of losing for the day of realized weakness His resources and His strength. Alas! people mean willfulness, and talk of weakness. " To them that have no might He increaseth strength:" to be really weak is to be in the very place to know the might and the tenderness of His everlasting arms.

Yes, holiness is nothing else but to walk in the light and sunshine of the Eternal Presence, where every tint of the landscape has the fresh and unfading hue of that which is not corruptible; and His Word is that which gives it to our hearts. It is the tree of knowledge, which is indeed not only pleasant to the eye, but good for food, and to be desired to make one wise, and which is not forbidden; yea, it is Christ Himself, for He is the truth, and to know it indeed is to know Him.

Doctrine may be barren, as seeds may have no life; yet we none the less, and rightly, expect our harvest only from the seed.

Confidence in Jehovah, in view of increasing enemies mocking it as vain; the realization of Jehovah's supremacy and care.

A psalm of David, when he fled the face of Absalom his son.

How are they multiplied that straiten me, Jehovah! many are rising up against me!

2. Many are saying of my soul, "There is no salvation for him in God!" Selah.

3. But Thou, Jehovah, art a shield about me; my glory, and the lifter up of my head.

4. With my voice I call unto Jehovah; and out of His holy mount He answereth me. Selah.

5. I have laid me down and slept; I waked, for Jehovah sustaineth me.

6. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about. .

7. Arise, Jehovah! save me, O my God! but Thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the jaw:the teeth of the ungodly Thou hast broken.

8. Salvation is of Jehovah:Thy blessing is upon Thy people, Selah.

Text.-(7) "Put" is better than "because," which indeed gives no just sense. The force is, that even while he prays the answer is given, and his prayer changes to triumph and to praise.

Connections.-"Many are saying:" contrast with psalm 4:6.

In seeking to develop (as is now my purpose) the truths of the New Testament from the history of the Old, it is the typical meaning with which we have to do. The divine glory, as seen in Moses' face, was veiled to the people addressed; for us, the vail is done away in Christ. The words of the apostle with reference to Israel's history, it can scarcely be doubted, apply no less to that which was but prefatory to theirs,-" Now, all these things happened unto them for ensamples [lit. types]; and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."

He gives us, moreover, many of the details,- Adam, a type of Christ; Eve, of the Church; Abel's offering, of the sinner's acceptance; Noah's salvation by the ark, of our own in Christ; Melchizedek, king of righteousness and peace; the story of Abraham's two sons; and a hint, at least, as to the offering up of Isaac (Gal. 3:16, 17.). Nor is this all that is commonly recognized as typical, though some no doubt would have us stop where
the inspired explanation stops. But in that case, how large a part of what is plainly symbolical would be lost to us!-the larger part of the Levitical ordinances, not a few of the parables of the Lord Himself, and almost the whole of the book of Revelation. Surely none could deliberately accept a principle which would lock up from us so large a part of the inspired Word.

Still many have the thought that it would be safer to refrain from typical applications of the historical portions where no inspired statement authenticates them as types at all. Take, however, such a history as that of Joseph, which no direct scripture speaks of as a type, yet the common consent of almost all receives as such; or Isaac's sacrifice, of the significance of which we have the merest hint. The more we consider it, the more we find it impossible to stop short here. Fancy, no doubt, is to be dreaded. Sobriety and reverent caution are abundantly needful. But so are they every where. If we profess wisdom, we become fools:subjection to the blessed Spirit of God, and to the Word inspired of Him, are our only safeguards here and elsewhere.

When we look a little closer, we find that the types are not scattered by hap-hazard in the Old-Testament books. On the contrary, they are connected together and arranged in an order and with a symmetry which bear witness to the divine hand which has been at work throughout. We find Exodus thus to be the book of redemption; Leviticus, to speak of what suits God with us in the sanctuary,-of sanctification; then Numbers, to give the wilderness-history-our walk with God (after redemption and being brought to Him where He is,) through the world. Each individual type in these different books will be found to have most intimate and significant relation to the great central thought pervading the book. This, when laid hold of, confirms immensely our apprehension of the general and particular meaning, and gives it a force little if at all short of absolute demonstration.

The great central truth in Genesis is "LIFE "It thus begins where all begins actually for the soul. God is seen in it as Life-giver, Creator; this involving necessarily also that He is sovereign in purpose and Almighty* in execution. *Which is plainly God's revelation of Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as distinct from Jehovah to Israel (see Exod. 6:3). In the rest of the Pentateuch the word occurs only in Balaam's prophecy (Num. 24:), and only in Ruth besides of all the historical books.* This is why Genesis is, as it has been called, "the seed-plot of the Bible," because it is the book of the counsels of the sovereign and almighty God.

But "life" is, so to speak, the key-note-the thread upon which all else is strung. Genesis is plainly almost entirely a series of biographies. It divides, after the introductory account of creation, in chapters I. and ii, into seven of these, in which we have a perfect picture of divine life in the soul, from its almost imperceptible beginning to its full maturity.

Adam gives us the beginning, when, with the entrance of God's Word, light comes into the soul of a sinner, and God meets him as such with the provision of His grace. (Chap. 3:)

Then, (Chap. 4:and 5:) we have the history of the two "seeds," and their antagonism,-a story which has its counterpart in the history of the world at large, but also in every individual soul where God has wrought,, and where the "flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other."

Next, Noah's passage through the judgment of the old world into a new scene, accepted of God in the sweet savor of sacrifice, is the type of where salvation puts us-" in Christ, a new creation:old things passed away, and all things become new." (Chap. 6:-11:9.)

Abraham's Canaan-life-pilgrim and stranger, but a worshiper, gives us the fruit and consequence of this-a "walk in Him "whom we have received. (Chap. 11:10-21:)

Then, Isaac, our type as "sons," (Gal. 4:28.) speaks to us of a self-surrender into a Father's hands, the door into a life of quiet and enjoyment, as it surely is. (Chap. 22:-24:33.)

Jacob speaks of the discipline of sons, by which the crooked and deceitful man becomes Israel, a prince with God,-a chastening of love, dealing with the fruits' of the old nature in us. (Chap. 26:34-27:1.)

While Joseph, the fullest image of Christ, suffers, not for sin, but for righteousness' sake, and attains supremacy over the world, and fullness of blessing from the almighty One, his strength. (Chap. 27:2-50)

All this we may more fully see hereafter. Even this hint of it may make plain what I have already stated to be the main feature of the book, with which the first section corresponds in the closest way. Like many another first section, but perhaps beyond any other, it is really a sort of table of contents to the rest of the book. It is of course much more than that, as we shall see, if the Lord give wisdom to unfold what this story of creation gives us.

It is, as all else here, a type, while it is none the less on that account a literal history. Its spiritual meaning in no wise turns it into myth or fable, as some would assume. "All these things happened unto them," says the apostle,-so the things really happened, but-"for types." What importance must attach, then, to a "type," to produce which God has actually modeled the history of the world from the beginning! With what reverence should we listen to the utterances so strangely given, so marvelously' "written for our admonition"! Instead of setting aside the literal record of creation, it surely confirms it in the highest degree that the Creator should demonstrate Himself the new Creator, and show how in laying the foundations of the earth which sin has cursed and death has scarred, He who seeth the end from the beginning had even then before Him, in the depths and counsels of His heart, a scene into which, secure in its unchanging Head, sin and death no more should enter-which they should nevermore defile! It is divine, this record:true, of course, then, and infinitely more, – although faith be needed for the realization of it.

I do not doubt that the story before us is not merely even a single, but a twofold type; finding its fulfillment in two spheres, which are very generally correspondent to one another. The world without has its reflection in the world within us. So the steps in the divine dealing with the world at large have their correspondence with His dealing with us as individuals. In our consideration of them, this individual application will come first. It is that which is most prominent all through, and which links the whole series of types together; and this has its significance for us. In men's thoughts you will find, as what they imagine to be advanced and liberal views, the progress of the race putting out of sight the interest of the individual:they speak much of man, think little of men.* *As, e.g., Dr. Temple's "Education of the World," in "Essays and Reviews."* It is not so with God; the blessing of the race is reached (with Him) through the blessing of the individual, and not one is "overlooked. Nay, "not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father." This is what is in His heart, whatever the perplexity which sin has introduced; and oh how profoundly needful for us the assurance of this! It may do for philosophy to proclaim the grandeur of general laws, to which the individual good must give place; but the grip of this iron machinery has none of the comfort of the grasp of a Father's hand. The heart of God alone suffices the hearts which He has made.

Let us take, then, this individual application first, and let creation preach to us lessons which may be happily familiar to us, and yet have a new charm as preached thus, where (as all preaching should be,) the sermon is an anthem, and the anthem is in the many voices of the universe-the revelation-chorus to which all will come at last:"And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, 'Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever!'"

In reading the gospels, 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.

4.-In answer to more than one correspondent as to woman's place in service and in the church, it is well to remember that Scripture gives us principles of conduct, not a code of laws. In the application, spirituality is always required, and there will always be room for those who are not so to dispute the application. The remedy is not to turn the Scripture precepts into a legal code, so as to be practically Independent of the guidance of the Spirit. We all naturally like, in such matters, sharply defined edges, and to be saved the trouble of that exercise of soul by which alone we have our "senses exercised to discern both good and evil."

As to the principle, there is not the least uncertainty for those whose hearts are subject to the Word; to those who are not so, it is hard to imagine what scripture would be decisive.

The two things by which the apostle determines the woman's place are, first, the circumstances of her creation, then of her fall.-"For Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman, 'being deceived, was in the transgression." And this is the ground of what he enjoins, and with the full weight of apostolic authority.-"I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in subjection." This is in Timothy. In the epistle to the Corinthians he again appeals to creation.-"But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God."-"For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man; neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man …. Judge in yourselves:is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? Doth not even nature itself teach you . . . ?"

It is plain, surely, from all this, that it is what is becoming to the woman naturally that is insisted on. The daughters of Philip were prophetesses; women labored with Paul in the gospel; Priscilla, as well as Aquila, took Apollos and instructed him in the way of the Lord more perfectly:some would find difficulty in reconciling all this with what the apostle has insisted on as the woman's place. They ought to guard us only against too rigid an interpretation of his words. If Philip's daughters prophesied, they did it not in the assembly, we may be sure, but in a manner becoming female modesty and reserve. If women labored with Paul in the gospel, it was not public preaching, but more privately-in visitation, probably to houses where God had given them access; while Priscilla could instruct Apollos in what she herself had learned without setting up to be a teacher, or departing from the " subjection" which the apostle orders. No doubt there is difficulty in maintaining the true place in all this. Difficulties and clangers surround our path, but what is wanted is not more precise definitions, but to be before God; and that a woman should be a woman, which in these days she has assuredly temptation enough to forget. An unwomanly woman is one of those things as to which nature really most effectually teaches, although we may, of course, get dulled in this respect, as in all others, by habituation to it.

Here, as in other cases where Scripture does not sharply draw the line, there is need of watching against narrowness and readiness to form hasty judgment. It is easy for us to define another's duty, and to draw lines according to our taste, and to make Scripture responsible for mere cold criticism of what might be more devoted service than we have heart to understand. If un-womanliness is a real danger on the one side,-a danger we have no thought of diminishing,-there is, on the other hand, a danger of unmanliness which we must not forget. There is a plain word to wives to be subject to their husbands; but it is to the wives:there is no word to the husbands to enforce subjection. And while one would be very far from justifying the sadly out-of-place position often occupied by women in the present day, it is pertinent to ask, Was Deborah's judgeship a dishonor to the women, or to the men 'of Israel ? and if it were thus a sign, of what was it a sign ? Alas ! of what but of in subjection on their part to God ? Subjection to Him it is that brings every thing else right; and for the rest, patience, gentleness, and grace are signs of strength; as irritability and impatience- are of weakness only.

We have here an example in the case of JESUS, and two warnings in Peter and in Judas.

In Peter we may learn the weakness, and in Judas the dreadful wickedness, of the flesh. We get in JESUS what we should aim after.

In Judas we see the mere professor; in Peter, the saint sifted. All three are before us in a time of searching trial, and the result of trial is seen in each.

We ought to remember that we have received the Holy Ghost, which Peter had not when he denied the Lord; yet, having the Holy Ghost, we may still learn a lesson from Peter's flesh. And is not the entire worthlessness of the flesh among the last things we learn? In Peter we see what the flesh is.

I would dwell, first, upon Judas' apostasy. He had all the appearance, to men, of being as the other disciples;-he had companied with the Lord, had been one of those sent forth to preach the gospel and work miracles; but his conscience never was before God. He might have truth in his understanding (and, indeed, the understanding does not generally receive truth so readily where the conscience is affected). Again, Judas could not have walked three years with Jesus, and seen His grace and love, and not have had his affections moved. But then his conscience had never been brought into exercise before God. So it is with many. If we watch the saint receiving truth, we shall often find him slow of apprehension. There's something to be judged before God,-something which condemns him, and which involves sacrifice. For instance, we see most clearly that the precious blood cleanses from all sin; but only let us commit sin, and how slowly do we apprehend that blessed truth so as to get the comfort of it! The cause is, the conscience is at work. In like manner the affections of the unconverted may be moved-a great company of women followed Christ at the crucifixion, bewailing and lamenting Him. So we read, of "anon with joy receiving, and by and by [or "anon," for it is the same word], when tribulation arises, turning away."

The natural man may have been instructed in the gospel, and the understanding may be clear, and the affections moved; but unless the conscience be bare before God, there is no LIFE.

Here was Judas betraying his Master! What was this? Nothing more, at the bottom, than what is in every heart,-sin in the nature.

In Judas, it showed itself in the shape of the love of money. The next thing was, Satan suggested a way of gratifying this lust, and he loved money more than he loved Jesus. And now we find the result of outward nearness to the Lord while the conscience is unaffected;-it was to make Judas reason upon circumstances;-he thought, probably, the Lord would deliver Himself, as He had done before ; for, when he found it not so, he threw down the money, and said, "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." He continues in this nearness to Christ until, thirdly, we read that "after the sop Satan entered into him"In the condition of hypocrisy he gets his heart hardened, and then Satan gets between his conscience and all hope of pardon. Many a natural man would not betray a friend with a kiss, as Judas soon after did. His nearness served to harden him, and he actually took the sop from the hand of the Lord! Even natural feeling was silenced. So it is when the unconverted man gets into a similar position;-he becomes more vile than ever; his heart is hardened; hypocrisy, and at length despair, ensues. Such is the flesh and its end; and the flesh cannot be bettered by ordinances, even where Christ Himself is. A natural man has a conscience and shame. He will not do in the light what he would do in the dark. But the outward form of Christianity, where it has not touched the heart, only makes this difference, that his conscience is seared, and he is only more subtly the slave of Satan.

I turn now to the contrast afforded by what is seen in Peter with what we see in our blessed Lord. In Jesus we see the obedient, the dependent One; expressing His entire dependence by His praying,- and there was seen an angel from heaven strengthening Him. He felt the weakness which He had given Himself up to bear:He was "crucified in weakness." "All My bones," He says, " are out of joint, My heart is melted like wax in the midst of My bowels."-"My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death:tarry ye here, and watch with Me." So in the earlier temptation we hear Him answering the devil out of the Word of God. Jesus might have sent Satan away by divine power, but that would have been no example to us; so in this chapter we see the Lord praying!

If you compare what Peter is doing with what the Lord is doing, you learn the secret of Peter's weakness and the Lord's strength. What was the effect of trial upon the weakness of Peter's flesh? He had said, " I will go with Thee to prison and to death." The Lord had to say to him, " Could ye not watch with Me one hour? " They were sleeping for sorrow. The Lord does not sleep, and seek to forget His sorrow; He goes and prays to the Father. His eye rested not on the circumstances, to think of them. He does not see Pilate or Judas; it was not Satan that had given Him the cup, but His Father. So with us-if in a frame of entire dependence, temptation does not touch us at all! we do not enter into it. Trial comes; but, like Jesus, we can say of it, " The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" Every trial becomes a blessed occasion for perfecting obedience, if near God; if otherwise, a temptation! Jesus was walking with God. Being in an agony, He prays the more earnestly; it drives Him to His Father; and that before the trial comes. Then, when the trial actually comes, it is already gone through with God! He presents Himself before them, saying, "Whom seek ye?" as calmly as if going to work a miracle. Whether before Caiaphas or Pontius Pilate, He makes a "good confession;" owns Himself Son of God before the Jews, and King before Pilate!

But Peter sleeps; he gets rid of the pressure of circumstances. He has not gone through the trial with the Father. At the moment when Jesus is going to be led away, the energy of the flesh wakes up, and Peter draws the sword. The flesh has just energy enough to carry us into the danger where it cannot stand-that energy deserts us then. How little real communion is here! When Christ was praying, Peter was sleeping; when Christ was submitting as a lamb led to the slaughter, Peter was fighting; when Christ was confessing in suffering, Peter was denying Him with cursing and swearing. This is just the flesh-sleeping when it ought to be waking-in energy when it ought to be still, and then denying the Lord when the time of trial comes. With Christ it was agony with the Father, but perfect peace when the trial came. Oh, if we knew how to go on in all circumstances in communion with the Father, there would be no temptation that would not be an occasion of glorifying Him!

The great thing was, Peter had not learned what the flesh is; he did not keep in memory the weakness of the flesh; and thus the condition of dependence was hindered. He seems to be sincere in wishing to own the Lord Jesus and not deny Him. There was more energy of natural and very true affection in Peter than in those who forsook the Lord and fled:he really loved the Lord. He fails, not from self-will, not from willing to sin, but through weakness of the flesh. His fall began by want of dependence, and by neglecting prayer. We must be watching " unto prayer;" not merely ready to pray when temptation comes, but walking with God, and so meeting it in the power of previous communion and prayer. Without continual prayer, and constant sense of entire weakness in self, the more love to Christ, and the more goodwill to serve Him are in a saint, the more certainly will he, by that very good-will, be led into the place in which he will dishonor Christ! The other disciples, that fled, did not so much dishonor the name of their Master as Peter did.

It was thus Peter had to learn the evil of the flesh. Jesus, on the contrary, ever walked in the confession of dependence-always praying. And what use did the Lord make of His knowledge of Satan's purpose to sift Peter? He prayed for him! The more knowledge, dear brethren, the more prayer! "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." As the result of this intercession, Peter learnt the evil of the flesh more deeply than the others, and was "able to strengthen his brethren."We are incapable of ministering truth to our brethren unless we are conscious of weakness in ourselves. The flesh is ever playing us false-it is good for nothing! Keeping in the Lord's presence, cast on the Father, is the only remedy. Paul had the thorn in the flesh given him; there is to be the consciousness that the flesh is worth nothing.

We may notice that there are three ways of learning the power and wretchedness of the flesh; first, prior to peace, often in desperate struggles, as in Romans vii; second, when we have peace, before the Lord in prayer and communion, not daring to take a step till He leads us; third, in the bitter experience in which Peter learned it, when flesh is not judged in communion with God. We are in no certainty from one moment to another as to what trial may be coming, therefore our only safe place is watching and prayer-yes, prayer before the assault-prayer that may amount to agony, for so Jesus prayed.

We must expect to have our souls much exercised; often, it may be, when trial is there, casting about as to why this trial is sent. It may be for a fault; it may be for some careless or hard state of soul; it may be, as Paul's, to keep down the flesh; it may be preparatory to some coming conflict. But in these exercises of soul we must keep before the Lord; then, when the trial comes for which the Father has been training us, there will be perfect peace. The Lord will make you bear, in spirit with Him, when exercised, the burden which He will make you bear in strength in the battle. Don't shrink from inward exercise:settle it with Him. There is no limit to our strength for obedience when our strength is the Lord's.
J.N.D.

We are going to look at the truth of atonement in the way in which Scripture develops and puts it before us; beginning with the Old Testament and proceeding, in the regular order of its books as we have them, onward to the New; except that we shall necessarily take the light of the New Testament to enable us to read the Old-Testament lessons aright, remembering that the " vail is done away in Christ." I choose this method, rather than what might seem the simpler one, of stating the doctrine after the manner of the creed or theological text-book, for many reasons.

God's method of teaching plainly has not been by the creed. He could surely have given one, not only better than any human could claim to be, but absolutely perfect, avoiding all the errors and all the incompleteness of the best of creeds, and giving what would be indeed a royal road to knowledge in divine things. It has pleased Him otherwise; and in this there must be wisdom worthy of Him, and care too for the real need of His people. God's way has been to speak to us in a far different manner. He has given us truth in fragments, which at first sight seem even to have little orderly connection,-which gleam out upon us from history, psalm, and prophecy, as well as in more detached statement sometimes in an apostolical epistle. Even here we have seldom what the systematic theologian would call a treatise; certainly nothing at all resembling the articles of a confession of faith or of a creed.

Understand me, I am not denying that such things have their place. Unfortunately they are valuable precisely when stripped of that in which to most lies all their value. As authoritative expositions of doctrine, they substitute human authority for divine; the confession, with all its admitted liability to error, in place of the unfailing, infallible Word, by which the Holy Spirit, the sure and only Guardian of the Church in the absence of Christ its Head, works in the hearts and consciences of men. Stripped of the false claim, and left as the witness of what individual faith has found in the inspired Word, they may be used of God as the voice of the living witness. However, to that Word, with all its perplexities of interpretation, as men speak, we must come for that which can alone give certainty to the soul; these very perplexities used of God to give needful exercise, to deepen the sense of dependence upon Him, and discipline us by the exercise.

The truth given in this way, moreover, only to be learnt fragment by fragment, by constant research into and occupation with the precious book in which the treasure lies, enforces its lessons by that needful frequent "putting in remembrance" of which an apostle speaks. We realize its many sides and internal relationships; we discern how little all our systems are, compared with the truth itself; that the completeness we desired was only narrowness. Finally, that God's method of teaching is divine, as the truth taught is; His way to lead us out, at least into more apprehension of the infinity of that which, cramped into the human measure, necessarily becomes dwarfed and distorted by it.

In the historical part of the Old Testament, the lessons given to us are mainly those pictured lessons which we call types. But before we come to the types of atonement proper, there is one we must consider, which, although not that, is in the deepest and most intimate relation to it, and the right or wrong conception of which will influence correspondingly our view of atonement itself. The apostle tells us, with regard to the first man, that Adam was " a figure of Him that was to come" (Rom. 5:14.);and in i Cor. 15:45, he speaks of Christ as the " last Adam." He is again spoken of by the same apostle as the "First-born of every creature," or, "of all creation" (Col. 1:15.); and speaks of Himself, in the address to Laodicea, as the "beginning of the creation of God." (Rev. 3:4) So again, "If any one be in Christ, he is a new creature [or, "it is new creation"]:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17.); and this is insisted on as the governing principle of a Christian life; " for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation; and as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy." (Gal. 6:15, 16.)

The fallen first man and the old creation are thus, according to God's thought, replaced by the last Adam and a new creation. There is no restoration of the old; it is set aside, or becomes the material out of which the new creation is to be built up; and this last is God's creation-what was in His mind from the beginning. So, when the Psalmist asks, " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest . him ?" the answer is, " Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, Thou hast crowned him With glory and honor." This the apostle interprets for us in the epistle to the Hebrews,-" But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor."

This last Adam, true man as He surely is, is emphatically the "Second Man." "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the Second Man is of heaven [so all the editors read it now]. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." Here, as elsewhere, the type is the shadow only, and therefore in many things the contrast, of the antitype; and so precisely as to what is connected with each.

Here is the great and fundamental mistake with the general mass of theological systems. They make the first man God's real thought instead of the Second, and bring Christ in to restore the first creation; to gain what Adam should have gained or kept. Thus many now think of no more than earthly blessing for the saint, while those who are not able to resign their heavenly inheritance would make this Adam's natural birthright also. The so-called evangelical creeds of Christendom put Adam under the moral law to win heaven for himself and his posterity, and write " This do, and thou shalt live " over the gate of entrance. The Lord's suffering in death, they say, puts away our sins; His obedience to the law is our title to heaven. But in this way, not only is the full blessedness of the Christian's place unknown, but Christ's work is necessarily however unintentionally degraded.

To Adam in Eden God spoke nothing of heaven, nor ever connected going to it with the keeping of the law. " This do, and thou shalt live" He did say; never, " This do, and thou shalt go to heaven." God never proposed to the creature He had made to win by His obedience a higher place than He had put him in at first. To have proposed it would have been to have made man from the start what sin has so long made him-a worker for himself rather than for God. He who has said, " When ye have done all, say, We are unprofitable servants," could never have taught him any thing so perilously like a doctrine of human merit.

Under law Adam was, as is evident; but not under the moral law, which an innocent being could not even have understood. The commandment to him was simply not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the terms, not "This do, and thou shalt live," but " Do this, and thou shalt die." He had not to seek a better place, but enjoy the place he had. Men may reason and speculate, but they cannot find one word of Scripture to justify the thought that unfallen Adam was what sin has made man now-a stranger, or what grace has made the saint-a pilgrim. He was made to abide, and his punishment not to abide, where God had put him.

It is to man fallen, not innocent, that God speaks of heaven ; and by grace, not law at all. It is the fruit of another's work, who, not owing obedience for Himself, as a creature must, could give thus to what He undertook, a real and infinite merit. Christ's work alone has opened heaven to man; the value of the work being according to the value of Him whose work it is. Apart from any question of the fall, the first and the last Adam are in this way contrasts:"the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit;" "the first man is of the earth, earthy; the Second Man is the Lord from heaven;" or rather, as the editors read it now, " the Second Man is of heaven."

Here the first man, as a type, images however the Second, where God breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. This is an essential difference between man and the beast below him:he has by the inspiration of God what the beast has not; and thus Elihu has the justification of his claim. That his "lips shall utter knowledge clearly" refers back to the original creation:" The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." In the doctrine of Scripture elsewhere we find distinctly what the breath of the Almighty has given to man which distinguishes him from the beast. It is the " spirit of man which is in him," and by which alone he knows the things of a man. (i Cor. 2. 11.) He has a spirit, as " God is spirit," and thus by creation, as Paul quotes from the Greek poet to show the general sense of man, declares, "We are God's offspring."* *See " Facts and Theories as to a Future State," or " Creation in Genesis and in Geology," for a full exposition of this.*

And yet "the first man Adam was made a living soul," as this history in Genesis itself declares- " Man became a living soul." In this he was what the beasts were. In this, Scripture anticipates all that is real in what the science of the day vaunts as its own discovery. Man is as the beast is, a being bound within the limits of sense-perception, through which all the stores of the knowledge upon which he so prides himself have to be painfully acquired. The spirit of man is in this way, by the necessity of his nature (I speak not of the fall), subjected to the soul. And the apostle connects this, in the passage before us, with the possession of a "natural body," as he does the "spiritual body" of the resurrection with the " image of the heavenly " last Adam. This " natural body" is rather, literally, a soul-body (the English language has no adjective for "soul"),- that is, a body fitted for the soul, as the spiritual body will be for the spirit. Hence it is that with the body the mind grows, and with it languishes and apparently decays; and hence in Scripture the title for one absent from the body is higher than for one in it. In the body, he is a "living soul;" absent from the body, he is a ghost, or spirit.

From hence arises an important consideration. For while ever the Second Man, and as such " of heaven," it is plain that the Lord was pleased to be subject through His life here, as man, to the conditions of man. Ever "apart from sin," save as in grace bearing it upon the cross, the limitations springing from disease and decay He could not know, of course; but of His childhood we read expressly that He "grew in wisdom and in stature,"-mind unfolding with the body as with men in general. How differently inspired Scripture speaks from what a mere human biographer would have written of the " Word ' made flesh "! But what such words decisively prove, in opposition to men's thoughts about it, is that while Second Man from the beginning of His human life, as I have said, He ever was, He did not take the place of last Adam until His sacrificial work was finished and in His spiritual body He rose from the dead. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone," such are His own words; " but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

This explains the Lord's significant action when after the resurrection He appears to His disciples and, breathing on them, says, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost." For the first Adam had as a living soul been breathed into when quickened of God; the last Adam as a quickening spirit breathes into others. Not, of course, that it was quickening here:they had surely been already quickened; but now He puts them formally into the place of participants in a life now come through death, and to which justification attached as fruit of the death through which it had come. They are to be in a definite place of acceptance and peace with God, according to His words before He breathes on them-" Peace be unto you," twice spoken. "Justification of life " is thus assured to them, the doctrine of which the apostle develops in the fifth of Romans.

The same chapter distinctly brings forward the first Adam as the " figure of Him that was to come." The contrast between the two does not affect the comparison:it is a comparison of contrasts. In the first Adam's case, " through the offense of one the many have died," and "by one that sinned" "the judgment was by one to condemnation;" and "by the disobedience of the one the many have been constituted sinners." The point here is the bearing of the act of the one, the father of the race, upon the state of the many, his children:corruption of nature, death, the present judgment, tending to final condemnation, have come to them in this way. So in the case of the Second Adam has His obedience resulted in blessing to those connected with Him. Only," not as the offense is the free gift." God is not satisfied with a mere obliterating the effect of the first man's sin, He will go far beyond that in His grace:"If through the offense of one the many have died, much more has the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded unto the many." If many offenses have been added by Adam's posterity to the primal sin, "the free gift is of many offenses unto justification;" " if by the offense of one death reigned by one, much more shall they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life by One, Jesus Christ."

It is this "much more" of divine grace, which has been so forgotten, and which we must ever bear in mind. The value of the person of the Second Adam gives proportionate value to His work. The work itself, moreover, is such as none but He could possibly have accomplished. And the value of person and work together gives those in whose behalf it is accomplished a place of acceptance with God of which He Himself, gone into His presence, is the only measure. It is not now the time to speak at large of this, but it is essential to keep it in mind. Christ and the new creation must get their due place for our souls, or all will be confusion.

The two verses which follow in the fifth of Romans we must carefully distinguish in their scope. The eighteenth verse contemplates " all men, '' the nineteenth, the " many" who, are connected with the one or the other of these two heads. The first gives us the tendency of Christ's work; the second, the actual result. It is as impossible, to make the "all men" mean just those in effect saved, as it is to extend the "many" with whom Christ is connected into the whole human race. The tendency of the " one offense " was " toward all men to condemnation (I do not quote the common version, which has here supplied words which the original has nothing of); the tendency or aspect of the " one righteousness," " toward all men to justification of life." On the other hand, in actual result, " as by the disobedience of the one man the many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of the One the many shall be constituted righteous."

The result contemplates all those, obviously, of whatever age or dispensation, who obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ; and it should be as evident that the connection with Christ that is spoken of is with Him as the last Adam, that is, vital connection. The many being constituted righteous gives, I have no doubt, the fullness both of imputed and imparted righteousness. For as the life communicated by the last Adam is necessarily such as He Himself is, so also it carries with it the efficacy of the work accomplished-of the death through which the corn of wheat could alone bring forth fruit. " The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord " (ch. 6:23, Greek):justification is therefore "justification of life" These go together. How completely this connection harmonizes with the apostle's argument in the next three chapters will be plain to those who are happily familiar with the doctrine there,-a doc-trine which comes in as the answer to the practical question with which they begin:"Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Upon this, however, I cannot enter here.

We are only upon the threshold of the subject which is before us yet, and all that we have done is just to indicate certain connections of atonement, which will find their development as we take up, as we have now to take up, in its gradual unfolding from the beginning, the doctrine of atonement itself.

We may now dwell a little on the blessedness of death being thus ours.

If death be ours-our servant, then we need not pass our days here in fear of it. The fear of death is natural to the natural mind. This is observable, not only where the Bible is read and known, but where revelation has not gone. The heathen have a great dread of death. A little while ago, I saw a missionary from India, who said, " The Hindoos have an intense fear of death." He narrated how they dispose of their dead. They burn the body, and carefully preserve the ashes; and then, on a certain day of the year, take them to their sacred river, the Ganges, and having put them in a tiny boat, with a little lamp, they are committed to the stream. The missionary observing a Brahmin doing this to his dead, asked him why they put a lamp with the ashes. The reply was, " It is to give a little light; death is so dark!" And all the tapers of man, all his devices, all his religiousness, even in the most enlightened lands, can give no more true light than the little lamp of the benighted Hindoo. Christianity as taught in the New Testament,-Christianity as known in reality, can alone, in the true sense, take away the fear of death, and enable souls to pass their days in rest and peace, free from dread and uncertainty.

If death be ours, then we shall not see it or taste it should it come. Jesus said, " If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death." Those who heard Him, in repeating His statement, used the expression, " shall never taste of death." (John 8:51, 52.) Thus, the one who keeps the saying of the Lord, though he may die, shall not see, shall not taste, death. The blessed Lord Himself, taking our place, saw death in its reality,-He "tasted" it in all its bitterness. Hence, the reality-the bitterness of death is passed for faith. Nothing but the shadow remains, and there is no taste in a shadow.

"Jesus can make a dying bed
Feel soft as downy pillows are;
While on His breast I lean my head,
And breathe my life out sweetly there."

If death be ours, then, as Christ could not employ a useless servant, we cannot pass through it without being the gainers; and we are assured in . the Word of God that we do not pass through it without gaining thereby,-this servant being used to let us out of "our earthly house" that we may. go to Him who is our all. The Lord said to the dying penitent at His side, "Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise." (Luke 23:43.) The apostle speaks of being "willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." (2 Cor. 5:8.) He says, " For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. . . . . For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." (Phil. 1:21-24.) These passages have, as we all know, been much tortured to make, them say what they cannot be made to say. What they do say is plain, namely, that the departed in the Lord are with Him,-that to die is gain,-that to depart and be with Christ is far better than to abide in the flesh,-in short, that death being ours, we do not pass through it without gain, the intermediate state being an advance on our present happy, though trying, lot.

If death be ours through the cross, and through being identified with the risen Christ, then, (to the praise of God's grace) it may be said that we have title to a part with Him in the resurrection of life, to the resurrection of which His own was the first-fruits. The Word plainly states this title.- " Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him" (Rom. 6:8.).-"Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. …. Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming." (i Cor. 15:20, 23.) While those who have fallen asleep in Christ are thus^to be raised at His , coming-raised in the power and character of His own blessed resurrection, those who are alive and remain will not sleep, showing that death has no real claim on believers, otherwise they would have even then to die to meet the claim. " Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump." (i Cor. 15:51, 52.) " For 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"-being changed in the same moment in which the righteous dead are raised-" 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.) And being ever with Him after we are caught up to join Him in the air, we shall, of course, be with Him when He appears, and every eye sees Him. Indeed the Word assures us of this.-" When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." (Col. 3:4.)

In short, when the day dawns and the Lord comes, death, the dark servant, must stand aside, and the righteous dead will rise in the power of a blessed life, and the righteous living be changed to immortality,-both be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and go with Him to the Father's house of many mansions, and return with Him when He appears in judgment, and to introduce His millennial reign. As no good reason can be assigned why He may not come at any moment for His saints, the proper attitude is to be watching for Him.

I may add that death being our servant, it follows that when it can be of no further service, it will be dismissed forever. In this sense, " the servant abideth not in the house forever." Of Him who rose a's the first-fruits it is said, " He dieth no more." He says, "Behold, I am alive for evermore." And are we not to be " like Him " ? Is it not said that He will " fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory " ? Is not all that is mortal of the saint to be "swallowed up of life," that is, lost in it forever? The Lord, speaking of those who " shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead," said," Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." In the moment they are raised or changed, the saying that is written,- Death is swallowed up in victory-is brought to pass as to them (i Cor. 15:54.). Henceforth death has no more power with them. They " reign in life by Jesus Christ," not only for "a thousand years," but evermore; for when the millennial age is closed, and all that may be called time is in the past, the Word assures us " there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." He who sits on the throne will " make all things new;'' and those who overcome inherit "all things;" and "they shall reign forever and ever."

" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

All this, and infinitely more than a feeble mortal can utter, or even conceive, is embraced in the truth that death is ours. Our full blessedness in heavenly kingdom, when the results of sin are wiped away forever, will be the outcome of the fact that while we were in the midst of these results, they were our servants. Our being with the Lord in glory will- tell out forever that all things during our little day of trial were jointly working for our real and abiding good.

Beloved, I would remind myself and you that we are indebted to grace, and to what it has wrought in the Lord's death, for all this. It is not of ourselves, or of works, that we have this blessed portion and this bright prospect. The praise is all due to God and the Lamb. If so, should not our hearts be won by a sight of such love ? and ought not our lives to be the outflow of hearts thus won? Oh, beloved, surely every thought should be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. He died that death might be ours, and that we might not come into judgment, yea, that we might be holy and without blame before God in love and favor forever. Let us live to Him who thus died for us and rose again. It should be our joy to do this.

We may briefly see how this place is reached in the book of Numbers. It is in this wise:First of all, we find in the first ten chapters the principles of the camp,-God's principles for His people going through the wilderness; for the book of Numbers is the history of the wilderness,-the history of failure, alas! but also of His own wonderful ways with them in grace. When their history starts, as in the end of the tenth chapter, you find at once failure, and failure which goes on increasing steadily until it reaches apostasy in the rebellion of Korah. Then God executes judgment; but at the same time, in judgment He remembers mercy, and we find consequent upon the failure of the people the provisions of God's grace for them there in the wilderness, to bring them through into the land in a way suitable to His own righteous character; preserving His own holiness, and manifesting it by His dealings with them.

The question then comes up, How are a people like these to be carried through? It is quite true the apostasy itself may be only the sin of some, but the whole people are of this character. Aye, you and I, beloved friends,-all of us, if it depended upon us only, would go to any extreme- aye, to apostasy itself. Thank God, He does not permit it, that is all. Now, how are such a people to be brought through the wilderness according to God? The answer is in this:Aaron is told to take a rod for each of the tribes, his own rod for the tribe of Levi, and to put them into the sanctuary; and the tribe in whom the priesthood is pointed out by the fact that the dead rod put into the sanctuary in the presence of God bursts into life and yields blossoms and almonds. It is a clear type of resurrection; but not only so, it is a beautiful type also of such a resurrection as implies and is the first-fruits of a harvest which is to follow. The almond-tree is, in the Hebrew tongue, called the "Wakeful," because it wakes up the first in the spring, and when it is awake, you know that the whole summer is at hand. Now, that, beloved friends, is how it is as to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ out of death, now gone into the sanctuary and in the presence of God in heaven. He is the first-fruits of the new-creation harvest,-the forerunner of all that shall come there through Him. He is the First-Begotten from the dead; that implies, of course, that others are to be begotten from the dead. He has title,- having shed his blood for His people,-He has title to bring them through, where He is, whatever they are.

In consequence, we find in the nineteenth chapter the provision for defilement-defilement from the dead. This is ever, in Numbers, the character of defilement, because the wilderness through which they are going is the type of the world; and the world passeth away; it has on it the stamp of death-the stamp of God's displeasure. The provision of the ashes of the red heifer is therefore God's provision for defilement with the dead. The priest now being with God, the provision is here by which they are freed from all the defilements of the way.

But there is another thing which has to be taken into account. It is not enough that our sins should be gone, not enough that defilement should be removed; there is something deeper in us which makes all this defilement practicable, as I may say. There was One in the world who could touch, not only the physical, but the moral leper without defilement, in perfect superiority over it-in the midst of all man's unholiness, the Holy One of God. But, beloved, there was not in Him what there is in us:-a fallen nature. Ours is a fallen nature:this is the secret of our condition; and how can we go with such a nature before God?

The answer to this is, the cross. The brazen serpent is the type of Christ as made sin for us-He who knew no sin. The brazen serpent represents, not sins borne, but sin in us,-the root, of which these are the bitter fruit,-judged in Him who in grace became our representative upon the cross. Thus the people's case is perfectly met; and as a consequence, let the enemy accuse,-surely he had plenty of material for accusation-a stiff-necked and rebellious people, as Moses says, from the day he knew them until that day;-so perfectly secure are they, he can only pronounce their blessing. The very attempt to curse only brings out blessing. How wonderful, beloved friends! and mark, it is just when they have finished their journey; they are in the plains of Moab, with only the Jordan between them and the land they are going to. And it is there, after they have been told out fully in their history,-after all has been said of them, so to speak, that could be said,-it is there that the accuser comes up to curse and has to bless. How blessed that is for us! How sweet to know that is the sure and certain result of the work of Christ, and of His presence in heaven for us! So, beloved, at the close of our journey, blessed be God, are we found before Him; so completely according to His mind, so completely sheltered from every accusation, that, after our whole story :is told out, we can be presented "blameless" before God.

Now, I want to bring out specially the two blessings in these verses read; but in the first place, just let us glance at the whole together. There is an order in these blessings which I want to speak of. The point of view is different, as you see at once, in each of the three. Balak, in fact, takes Balaam to another and another place on purpose to change the point of view, in order to see if by any possibility he shall be able to curse. They are to be looked at from every side save one, and that is, the Canaan one,-heaven's side, in fact; which God gives, nevertheless, all through. But more than that, the point of view is ever nearer. If you notice, at the end of the twenty-second chapter, it says that Balak took him to the heights of Baal, in order that he might see from thence the utmost part of the people-the " end " of the people. His effort there is to diminish them; he does not want to let him see too much. He sees the last camp, as it were-just the end. And you may notice that when Balaam sees them from thence, he says, " Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?" The fourth part was the hindermost of the camp, and that is what he was looking at.

But in the next place, he takes him to the field of Zophim-to the top of Pisgah, and here there is a little alteration which we shall have to make in our translation, as it is inconsistent with what has gone before, as you will notice in the forty-first verse of the last chapter (the twenty-second). Balak is here (in the thirteenth verse of the twenty-third chapter) made to say to him, " Come, I pray thee, with me unto another place, from whence thou mayest see them:thou shalt see but the utmost part of them."Now, that is only what he had seen before. A very simple alteration makes it all consistent. We have to alter the future, "thou shalt see," into the present, "thou seest." Future and present are all one in the Hebrew language, and it is simply a question of critical I judgment as to which should be used. Here, it is evidently the present, and not the future. From the point where he stood at first he saw but the utmost part of them; and now Balak is going to show him, not the " utmost part," but all. He thinks he has made a mistake; he should not have shown him the utmost part merely, and that this was the reason, perhaps, he had not succeeded in cursing them. Now, he takes him. where he can see them all. Thus, it is when Balaam looks through the length and breadth of them that he says, "God hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel." See, beloved friends, how that would be spoiled if, after all, He was only looking at the utmost part of them. Balak might have said, as it were, You don't see any spot there, but there are plenty elsewhere. But Balaam's eye now looks upon the:whole of the people, and he says there is not a spot any where.

And then Balak brings him nearer still. You can evidently see how near he is, for now the distinct order and arrangement of the camp comes up before him. Balaam, it says, " lifted up his eyes and saw Israel abiding in his tents according to their tribes." And now what does he say? "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!"

The nearer he comes, the more the beauty appears. In the first place, when at a distance, they are not like any other people on the earth. You cannot apply ordinary rules to them. When he comes nearer, he says there is not a spot any where; but when he comes nearest of all, his heart goes out in admiration, and he says, " How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!" Beloved, what a state that is! what a condition! What a people of whom it can be truly seen, the nearer you approach to them, the more they are blessed-the more it comes out! You know how we look at men at a distance from them, and think them very happy people. We see them with riches of all kinds, blessed in basket and in store, in the fruit of the body and the fruit of the field, and you think their cup is full. We have only got to look a little nearer to find there are flaws; and the nearer we consider them, the more their case differs from what it appeared at first; we end, perhaps, in not envying them at all. What a difference it is, beloved friends, when you have God's people before you, and the portion which God gives! The nearer the point of view, the more blessed that portion is.

But now, then, let us look a little more at the first blessing. In the first place it is simply this:" How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed ? or how shall I defy whom the Lord hath not defied ? For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him." Now, notice, beloved friends, that is the point of view all through-the top of the rocks. He calls it, in the third blessing, the "vision of the Almighty." God sees from above; we see from the lower level- the level of earth. But God's view is the real one:an unobstructed view, you know, you get from a mountain-peak. From the lower level, you find all sorts of things in the way; you get mere fragmentary glimpses, which you cannot put together:but from the upper level, you see things as they really are, – God always sees them so. God's | view is the real view; and all other, if not false, is still an inferior one.

" Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!" That is the first thing, beloved friends, that Balaam sees- a people who are separate from all the other nations of the earth; they are not numbered with them; they don't form part of them at all. As I said before, ordinary rules do not apply to them; you cannot merely judge of them by ordinary judgment:they are the people of God. The moment you bring in God, it makes all the difference. The thing that distinguished Israel from all the other nations of the earth was, that God was with them. And, beloved friends, if God was with them, from the very nature of the case, they must dwell alone. That was their privilege and blessing:they dwelt alone. The people of God," of necessity, ever dwell alone; they do not form part of the world. If we remember what the Lord Jesus Christ said of His disciples before He left them, it was distinctly that. He says, speaking to the Father, " They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." Nay, more-He says, " As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." So that, being distinctly not of the world even as He is not of the world, He sends them into it. They are in it simply as sent of Him, to represent Him even as He represented the Father. He alone could represent the Father:we could not do that; it would be impossible. Blessed be God, however, we can, through His grace, represent Him. Only the Son ' could represent the Father. We may, in a measure, at least, represent the blessed One who was Son of Man down here in the world.

But, now, if He says, " They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world," what does He mean by that? Remember, it is the vision of the Almighty. It is not at all, beloved, what may seem practically true. It ought to be, I quite grant it. Israel ought to have dwelt alone:was it true as to their practical history that they did ? Alas! no. You know how in the wilderness they mixed themselves up with other people. You know how through the devices of this very Balaam who pronounced the blessing here they were seduced into evil alliances with the Midianites, and judgment came upon them in consequence. How little could it be said, if you looked upon them from a mere human point of view, that they "dwelt alone"!

But, beloved friends, God's point of view is the true view. He has a ground for saying what He I does; although faith only sees with Him. Faith alone reckons as God reckons,-sees as God sees. And, beloved, to faith it is true. We are not of the world, even as Christ is not of the world.

Is that in character? Alas! not wholly so. Character, you can say, in a certain sense; for, blessed be God, as born again, we are partakers of the holy nature of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Nevertheless, as to practical conduct in the world, how little can it be said of us, " the world knoweth us not"! And yet, beloved, it is what ought to be true in this way. Alas! it reads like a reproach,- in this day of far-spreading Christianity, it reads like a reproach when the apostle says, " The world knoweth us not, even as it knew Him not."

Beloved, is that true of you and me practically? How far is it true? It is not a question of profession, because the world can make a profession too. It is doing it; it is the easiest thing possible. How is it when we come to the reality, when the world practically tests us, what do we find ? Are we able to enter into their pleasures? They can quite understand that. Are we able to follow the objects that they follow as objects? They quite understand that. Are we as keen at a bargain? They quite understand that. If they find us seeking to make money, they quite understand that. Alas! isn't it true in the present day, whatever it might have been once, the world looks at Christians, and says, "Oh, we know these people very well; very good people they are; we enjoy their company, we go to their churches and they go to our places of amusement. They are a little peculiar, it is true; but after all, we like them very well"?

What a reproach! Look at the Lord Jesus Christ going through the world, and tell me, was it ever true that the world knew Him, or understood Him, or sympathized with Him? Never; no, never. Why did it not know Him ?Beloved, He was come from God, and was going to God, and all through the world He was a pilgrim and a stranger-a man with only one object in it:-one whom the will of His Father, and His love for man, kept in the world at all, leading Him on to that cross where the Son of Man was glorified. How far are you and I like that? There was not an object in the world-not one single object which you can say is one to a man of the world, that was an object to the Lord Jesus. Was there one? People want to make a moderate competence, make money moderately, get on in the world; they think that lawful, that it is allowable. Is it possible to find fault with that? Yet put that along with the example of the Lord Jesus Christ! Could you possibly, without blasphemy, think of Him trying to make money?
His was a place of very real necessity; it was not His Godhead which prevented Him being exposed to the common lot of man. The foxes had holes, and the birds of the air had nests, but the Son of Man had not where to lay His head. That was His condition; and that was His answer to one who proposed to follow Him:" Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest." Oh, beloved, how many professed followers has the Lord Jesus now?

Did the world understand Him ? He could not , recommend Himself to it; He could not, beloved friends, be at peace with it. Not that there was not peace, with Him. Yet He says, " I came not to send peace, but a sword." Why? Because He brought God and God's claim into the world; and, whatever He might give up personally on His own account, He could never give up that. And the world hated Him. Oh, beloved, you take God and God's claim into the midst of your business relations, into your houses, into your places of resort, what will be the effect ? I tell you what,- you will soon " dwell alone,"-you won't be reckoned among the nations, so to speak, in that way. Do you think the people that don't want God will want you if you identify yourself with Him ? "The reproaches of them that reproached Thee," He says, in the Psalms, "are fallen upon Me."

Oh, beloved, before Him there was but one object-the "pleasure of Jehovah," which was in His hand to accomplish, and that was what He steadfastly pursued.

He came from God, He went to God. He was not of the earth, earthy; He was the Lord from heaven. The world did not understand Him. How could it? Where it understood in measure, it hated. It understood that there was light there, and it hated the light, and loved the darkness, because its deeds were evil. If He was the light of the world, they would quench that light in order that they might enjoy the darkness.

Oh, beloved, what a reproach for us!-"The world knoweth us not, even as it knew Him not." It comes back to us from those old days of reality, it comes back to us like the knell upon this pretentious Christendom around.-" The world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not."

And yet, blessed be God,-oh, wonderful to say! oh, marvel of His grace!-we are not of this world, even as He is not of this world. We are not of it; God has separated us from it-separated us from it by His own grace altogether. We belong to another scene. We may be unfaithful; alas! how easily unfaithful! We belong to another scene. And the place which is ours, beloved friends, before God, if we are Christians, is, " in Him " who has passed into the heavens, there. Our acceptance is in God's own beloved, before Him. By God we are reckoned dead with Christ-dead because He died-dead with Christ, buried with Christ as to the world and all that belongs to it, passed out of the scene, and quickened together with Christ, raised up together, seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That is our wonderful position. Death and judgment, instead of being before us as they are before the world, are behind us. He has taken our place on the cross- death and judgment in that awful cross of His. He has poured out His soul unto death, was reckoned with the transgressors. More than that, He was made a curse-He was made sin for us. " He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Oh, beloved, all this blessed place is ours. All this that distinguishes us from all around has come to us from the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,-that grace in which, " though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich." You cannot exhibit those riches in the world; and the world does not know us,-in that sense, really does not know us. But alas! alas! that we should not be practically more what He has made us really in His own grace, at the cost of His own agony and blood-shedding- the cost of the cross!

But I do not dwell on this first blessing any more; it is not my object. But notice how even a Balaam can say, " Let my last end be like his." Aye, if it were only that, if it were only the last end, even a Balaam would want that.

But now look at the second blessing. Notice here, as I say, he is in the field of Zophim, on the top of Pisgah. The field of Zophim is the field of the watchers, it is the jealous eye of the enemy that is watching here; it is an enemy that is scanning the people with eyes eager to discover, if they can, spot or defect. Now, these eager eyes search through the whole camp-nothing is hid from them. Yes; but still what is seen is "the vision of the Almighty." Beyond even the keen sight of an enemy, the eyes which are as a flame of fire are here, seeing through and through, and pronouncing His judgment. What, then, does He say of this people-this very people of whom we can take such a different view at another time, if we take the lower level? When we come to look with God, who ever thinks of His Son-righteously thinks of Him and what He has done, beloved, the answer to the accuser is, " he hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel."

But now mark, and I want you to look at this a little steadily. There is some very blessed truth brought out here, I believe, which we want to ponder. Of course, what we have here is the blessed truth of justification. God has not seen iniquity. He does not say there has not been any. There is none, in fact. But why? Oh, beloved, the real secret of all justification-of all non-imputation of iniquity, is, that the precious blood of Christ is before God. God looks at His Son- God looks at the work which has been accomplished by Him, and He cannot impute sin. How can He say there is iniquity when the precious blood of Christ cleanses from all sin? How can he who sees with the vision of the Almighty say that there is any there? "There is none-none.

But it is not merely that. Look now at what we have further. These words which are given here as "iniquity" and "perverseness," I want to translate a little more closely to the original. It is really this:"He has not beheld vanity in Jacob, neither hath He seen labor"-toil, if you please, or the weariness produced by toil,-" He hath not seen labor in Israel." What then? "The Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is amongst them." These last words explain the former, or at least give them their full character.

Now, I want to dwell upon this a little for our souls' sake to-night. In the first place, beloved friends, perhaps you will think, when I read, "He hath not beheld vanity" I take away from the blessedness of this assurance, because "vanity" is not, in people's apprehension of it, the same as sin; yet the word is one that is constantly used for sin. The "workers of iniquity," an expression you will find all the way through the Psalms, for instance, is really the "workers of vanity."Call it, if you please, "worthlessness," and you will then have a word which comes near to the double sense of the original. You may speak of worthlessness as a moral thing, or you may mean simply what is of no value. Well, both meanings are right here. What has come in through sin? and what, in one aspect of it, is sin? Well, what is it but men spending their strength for naught? what is it, in fact, but man walking in a vain show, and disquieting himself in vain,-aye, it may be, heaping up riches, and not knowing who shall gather them? Oh, beloved, this world that values wisdom so much, this world that praises intellect, this world that worships genius,-oh, beloved, what is it in the esteem of God? He taketh the wise in their own craftiness, He knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain. How utterly vain! Man lives for his seventy years possibly, and what then ? Why, as you know, every thing that he has lived for-I speak of the ordinary life of men-every thing that he has lived for vanishes like a dream. I am only putting it now in the lightest way, I am not speaking of judgment to come. Judgment there is-awful judgment there is, but, beloved friends, apart even from that, suppose there were none, what is it to live a life of which every object, every thing that man has lived for, passes away in a moment with that which comes at last, however, slowly, comes surely. It is what people say, "One thing certain is, we are all going to die;" and the one thing certain is, we are all living as if we never meant to. What is all the wisdom of the world about? Making the world a comfortable place. That is what they are doing every where, as you may see in cemeteries any day, putting flowers over the unsightliness of death, covering it all up, and trying to fancy that it is not there.

You remember there was one in whom the devil dwelt once, when the Lord Jesus Christ was here upon earth, and one of the marks of that awful demoniacal possession was, that he had his dwelling in the tombs. Beloved, is n't that the mark of man? alas! under the power of Satan, that all His heart should attach itself to that which is really a place of tombs. Isn't it the simplest fact that can be that the world is much more the home of the dead than the living ? How many are there of the living compared with the mass of the dead ? Beloved, in Scripture, that is what gives the world its character before God. As I have said, defilement, all through the book of Numbers, which is the book of the wilderness, is defilement with the dead; death, in God's thought, defiles. Why? Why! Well, do you think that God is like a child, who makes his toy to-day and breaks it to-morrow? Do you think, beloved friends, it is a good thing or a natural thing that we " bring our years to an end as a tale that is told;" that in fourscore years, if we reach that, our "strength is but labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away"? Is it natural? What a terrible nature this must be! Is that just what you expect of God? What a" strange God He must be in your thoughts! God? No, beloved, God did not make man for this. Man has made himself what now he is, and yet "their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue forever, and their dwelling-places to all generations; and they call the lands after their own names. This their way is their folly, and their posterity approve their sayings."

Oh, beloved, never, never think the world is the place of wisdom. Man got his wisdom in disobedience,-as the fruit of the forbidden tree; and what has he done with that wisdom? God made him upright, and he has sought out many inventions. His first invention was an apron of fig-leaves, to hide his shame from another, if he could not hide it from God. When God came in, he was naked; and ever since, all his inventions have been just fig-leaves to cover his nakedness. They say necessity is the mother of invention. The fatal words! How came this necessity? It means that all his wisdom, all these inventions, which are the fruit of his necessity, are the signs of the fall.

Such is the world; and the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. In the midst of such a scene, and of it naturally, are the people of God. Upon them too death sets its mark in wrinkles and gray hairs and decrepitude. Vanity is on these also. On them, if the enemy looks, he may see abundant evidence of their shame. Well, here in this scene in Numbers, it is the keen eye of the enemy that is observing them-from the "field of Zophim," the field of the watchers;-nothing, you may be sure, will be omitted that can in any way discredit them. What does he say? Why, "He hath not beheld vanity in Jacob"! Compelled to see with the vision of the Almighty, he sees no trace even of sin or of the curse,-no, not in Jacob. Sin is gone and that which sin has wrought. In God's sight, oh, wonderful to say, His people have not a wrinkle or spot. " Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee." What Christ is going to present His Church as unto Himself, that He sees them now, without spot or wrinkle-not a sign of age-without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. God sees us in that way. God looks at us, beloved, in the unfading freshness that belongs to us, as having our real portion there where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt.

"He hath not beheld vanity in Jacob, neither hath He seen labor in Israel" If you look through these blessings, you will find the changes rung continually on these two names-Jacob and Israel. They were both names of the first father of Israel:one, the natural name; the other, the divine name. Jacob was the natural name-the supplanter (" he hath supplanted me," Esau says," these two times,"):but God takes up this Jacob, and what does he come out as the result of this divine workmanship? Israel-a prince with God.

Ah, beloved, that is how God glorifies Himself. There is hardly a sweeter title throughout the Old Testament than that of the " God of Jacob,"-the God that could take up the poorest and basest thing that ever was-a Jacob, and turn him into an Israel-a "prince with God." No wonder "according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel "(you could not do without Jacob there; you want Jacob to compare with Israel; you want to see the material, in order to admire the workmanship;)-"according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought?"

That is the whole matter-What hath God wrought? Oh, beloved, how wonderful it is to have a God who can take up men in that way,- take you up, beloved friends, whoever you are, with all your vanity, with all your folly and evil! Oh, yield yourselves, if you have not, into His blessed hands to-night. He shall make you a specimen of His workmanship "that shall be the admiration of eternity; giving Him, even a name; for He shall " show forth the riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus."

But now put the first clause of the following sentence along side of this:" The Lord his God is with him." What does that mean? The Lord his God is with him-Jehovah, the eternal God. Ah, that redeems him from the curse of vanity, indeed. Take a string of ciphers, as many as you please; no multiplication of them will give them value. Multiply nothing ever so many times, it is nothing still. But put a simple one before these ciphers; now, six of them represent a million. So let man be the cipher that he is-be vanity, if the Lord his God be with him, all is changed. If the Lord his God is with him, surely he is redeemed from vanity. How wonderful to know that in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ man is joined to God forever! How wonderful to know that manhood is taken up from the degradation into which it has sunk, and that the Second Man is " God over all, blessed forever,"-aye, the Second Man sits upon the throne of God the Father. Vanity? No; eternity that means. Worthlessness? Oh, no; infinite value. Lord, " what is man that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that Thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet." Yes, the Lord his God is with him, blessed be His, name! He who, that He might be Emmanuel-" God with us," is called Jesus, His people's Saviour from their sins. Think of the unutterable goodness of One who could come out of His everlasting dwelling-place to make His dwelling with the sons of men, and at His own personal cost taking them up to be with Himself in everlasting glory. Ah, the Lord His God is with Him.

But what then? "He has not beheld vanity in Jacob, neither hath He beheld labor in Israel." "Come unto Me," says the Lord, "all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." "Labor." Amalek means "labor." That is, at least, a part of the word apparently is the very same as the word here. Labor is just that weary, toilsome, profitless drudgery which is come in through sin. Man was intended to be active in the garden, to dress it and to keep it:quite true, but that was not "labor." Now, he labors-labors in the fire-labors for very vanity. "All things are full of labor," says the preacher; "man cannot utter it:the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." And what is the secret of this? A heart dropped away from God. The corruption that is in the world through lust. That is what it means. What is lust? Why, just the parent of this very labor. The restless longing of the heart after what it can never get. It cannot get the satisfaction from the things in which it seeks it. "All the labor of a man is for the mouth, but the soul is not filled."

Where did man get this lust? How did this corruption come in? At the fall; from the fatal tree of knowledge. Man's heart has dropped away from God. He has lost confidence in God. In the midst of all the blessing in the garden of Eden, he became a questioner in the devil's track. " Hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" Can it be possible God has put a tree in the midst of the garden and forbids you to use it? Such was man's first lesson in that reasoning in which he has become proficient since. That one little thing denied blotted out the beauty of that fair scene around. Man has been questioning ever since, and he cannot find out God by it. " Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?"

What then? Having lost confidence in God, he must confide in himself. He cannot trust God to provide for him. He does not believe in God's providence. He has forsaken the peaceful paths of faith. He has got wisdom, and he loves himself, at any rate; he thinks he can take better care of himself than God. He. takes the goods of his father and carries them off into a far-off land, where to spend is easy, but where fortunes are not made in keeping swine.

What is the end? what must be the end? The world passeth away, and the lust thereof. What desolation for the soul when all is spent! as spent all must be.

Now let me ask, If there were to come into man's heart just this (which, blessed be God, He has given us to know in Christ):he were able to look up to God and say, My Father is the Lord of heaven and earth; the One whose resources are absolute, whose power is unlimited, whose wisdom is beyond all that man can understand; and who is for me-mine,-my Father. What would be the result? Why the lust of the heart would cease; the soul would return to its quiet place of rest, and say, Blessed be God, my weary toil is over. I have come into infinite riches in a Father's love and care. I need not look out for myself, He is looking out for me; never withdraws His eyes from me. What is my wisdom to His? Nay, the very love that He loves me with is love superior to my own, for He counts the hairs of my head and I scarcely care for the hairs of my head being counted. Oh, beloved, the heart would, like a poor fluttered bird, just fold its wings and drop into its nest. Isn't it so?

Now that is where God sees His people. Oh, you may say, I wish He could see this more in me. Ah, but God sees us according to what He has made us-in the full blessedness belonging to us. Faith is to assert its full claim to all this, and to fulfill it. And, beloved, according to the time it shall be yet said, "What hath God wrought?" Of Jacob and of Israel it shall be said, "What hath God wrought?" "He hath not beheld labor in Israel." No. "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; . . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls."

Yes, beloved, for surely, surely, when we have become satisfied with His will, when our hearts find-in proportion as they have found-the plan of faith in His love, perfect rest will take the place of all weary labor. "He hath not beheld vanity in Jacob, neither hath He seen labor in Israel."

But mark what goes with these:"The Lord his God is with him ; and the shout of a king is among them." Do you know what that is? It is the ringing, loyal shout of welcome the loyal shout with which we greet one to whom all our hearts are subject. The shout of a king. Ah, beloved, the shout of a king!

Man has got away from God, and he deems himself independent; he likes to think so of himself, and if not-if he cannot be quite that, he will take up the devil's service rather than God's The Lord Jesus Christ casts the devil out of that poor distraught man, and he becomes a quiet sitter at the feet of Jesus; and all the people come and- most respectfully; mark, you may do it in the most respectful way;-beg the Lord Jesus to depart out of their coasts.

But is he really independent who is the slave of his necessities? who is never at rest? How can he be? What are men's lives filled up with? Pleasure-seeking even,-all this effort after pleasure even, do you think a heart that had found happiness would be seeking pleasure ? I say, such have not found happiness. It is a clear case. No, how could it be? Beloved, when our hearts return to true subjection to the blessed One whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light, then alone we find rest for our souls. When the shout of a king is with us, the curse of labor is removed. "I removed his shoulder from the burden,"says God of Israel; "his hands were delivered from the pots." When we cease from our own ways, then we are indeed delivered.

Do you remember what was said of Moses, when Miriam and Aaron murmured against the divine leader? Just at that very juncture there is a word dropped as from God.-" Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." And that was the ruler they were objecting to. What better ruler could they possibly have had than the very meekest man on the face of the earth ? But, beloved, we have found a better one, who is the blessed Son of God-God over all, blessed forever; One who, taking this place, speaks of Himself under this very character:"Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls." Beloved, God has got a path for His people; a path in which their Shepherd leads them; a path which infinite wisdom has chosen, in which infinite love ministers to them, and infinite power protects. "As the hills stand round about Jerusalem, so the Lord God stands round about His people." Do you think I want my own way in the presence of One seeking me after this fashion, loving me in this wonderful way? Do you think, beloved, if I believe this, I would sooner be allowed a little choice of my own? do you? Ah, "the shout of a king is amongst them." Do you know what that is? Have your hearts returned in delight to loyalty to the King of kings ? Blessed be His name, that shout of a king is the shout of freedom; His law, the only law of liberty.

I have scarcely time for the third blessing. Just let me however, in the briefest possible way, speak a word or two about it.

Balaam is speaking now from the third point of view, and here the beauty and the order of their encampment is seen. Yet he speaks, mark, turning his face toward the wilderness. He says, "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!" The tents are Jacob's, but they are Israel's tabernacles. Jacob has a tent; good enough for him, you might say, a man who has made his bed and must lie in it as he has made it. This Jacob is a mere wanderer, from the world's point of view; a man who takes no more hold the earth than his tent-pole and his tent-pins do. He is not a success, this Jacob. His own lips confess that few and evil have been the days of his life. Yet Balaam can speak of the goodliness of Jacob's tents. For God, these tents of Jacob are the tabernacles of a prince. The wanderer is a pilgrim. " How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!" Think of the tents of a people who were journeying to Canaan. Think of the poverty of a people of whom the Lord says. The world is not good enough for them; that is why I don't give it to them. That is the truth. Jacob's tents are Israel's tabernacles. It is a prince of God who is dwelling here. It is a prince of God who is going to his rest beyond Oh, beloved, Jacob's tents are good, for they mean that. He says to us, I cannot give you your portion here; you shall have it with Me in eternity.

Now look:"As the valleys are they spread forth." Low enough the valley, but all its blessing is the result of this. It is cold on the mountain-tops, but the sun shines warm in the valley, and the streams run down there; aye, and whereas they only run down the rocks and do no good, as soon as they come down to the lower level, linger lovingly, and spread verdure round about. Beloved, what a picture it is of what will be by and by too, in the near eternity, when man's day of misrule is over, and God's time comes; and in His kingdom the highest shall minister to the lowest, the hills to the valleys; highest above all, He who, as Son of Man, came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. That is God's thought. Are you sorry to be in the valley? Why, the sun shines there warmest; all the waters run down there. It is the place of unceasing ministry. But what more? "As the valleys are they spread forth; as gardens by the river's side; as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted." There is the special care of God. Not merely a valley, but a valley which is a garden. Let only man take up a piece of land and dress it and nurture it, and he can make it wonderfully beautiful. There is a strange power God has given to man, that he can take a flower, and nourish it, and care for it, and make it at last come out as different from the little humble thing it was at first as can be. If man can do that, what can God do with His care? what can God do with His garden which He plants? Think of being the objects of God's care.

Now once more:"As gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted." What are these trees of lign aloes? They are precious trees, fragrant trees; but that is not all; they are exotics. You know what an exotic is:something that is brought from a foreign land, because of its fragrance or its beauty or its useful-ness, or all these, and planted there. That is what the Lord's people are; He has sanctified us, and sent us into the world. Now, plainly, He must have taken us out of the world first. He sends us see into the world, not as worldlings, but as those who belong to heaven. We are exotics-strange plants which the Lord has planted, not natural to…the soil. And oh, beloved, if such plants are some-thing for man's sight, and for man's taste, think of our being plants which the Lord hath planted that He Himself may have His delight in us.

As "cedar-trees beside the waters"-the stateliest things in nature. But now look at the next:"He shall pour forth the waters out of his buckets." That is what characterizes a very fruitful place. Especially a warm land must have abundance of water. If a tree is planted by the rivers of waters, it shall bring forth its fruit in its season.

What says the Lord, beloved friends, of those that come to Him? "Whosoever is athirst, let him come unto Me and drink," and "he that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." You remember that in the fourth chapter of that gospel of John it says, " The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." It is not properly a well:it is a fountain. There is this difference:In a well, you have to put your pail down to dip up what you want; but a fountain comes up to you. And, be-'loved, that is what God's blessed Spirit is in our souls, as it says, "This spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive."

I don't wonder if some turn in upon themselves and say, Is that true? Can that be possible? Is it true of any, what the Lord says,-"he shall never thirst"—" Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst"? Do you thirst, beloved ? How is it true, then ?

Just because God speaks from His own point of view. But then it is a real thing He speaks of. His point of view is a true one, for He speaks according to the quality of the gift He has given. His own blessed Spirit dwells in the very bodies of His saints. Do you understand that? Now, if the Spirit of God dwell in us, can you measure the Spirit? No; He is a divine Person. Can you measure His power, then ? can you measure His fullness? Alas! you can give Him a limit. By unbelief, indeed, you can repeat the sin of those who once limited the Holy One of Israel? Let us fear to set a limit to this infinite fullness that is ours. Thus indeed can we check the flow of living water.

Alas! we can set a measure where God has set no measure; and instead of being full and satisfied, we can thirst like others, and men can see our thirst to our shame. But has He made any mistake? No; it is we, not He,-the failure is on our part wholly.

I must close. Only, beloved, I want to leave with you, as the last thing, this thought:Think of how the apostle turns to Christians and says, " Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit." The apostle puts it upon us,-upon you and me-to be filled with the Spirit. Isn't it the simplest thing possible, if it is a spring of living water, that all we have to do is to keep out all that hinders the rise and outflow of its waters? Here is the blessedness of self-judgment, of a heart exercised before God to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men. Oh, the blessedness of being able to look up and say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting."!

Beloved, can you do that heartily and unreservedly? Are you saying to God unreservedly, See well whether there is any wicked way in me? Every honest, real bit of self-judgment is like taking a stone out of the spring:the living water bubbles up in the soul after it. Did you never realize it? Did you never realize what it was to cling to something or other, no matter what, as impossible to be given up, until you have found that it was costing you all the brightness and freshness of your spiritual life; all the joy of Christ's companionship; and then when you have given it up, have you never felt a rush of life into your heart, as of a long pent-up stream that suddenly had burst its bonds ?Such a sudden tide of jubilant gladness, have you not felt it? Well, I cannot tell you what it is, if you have not.

Beloved, it is a solemn responsibility this-to be filled with the Spirit. Think of being a vessel out of which there flow rivers of living water! It is the necessary effect if the spring is sufficient; and the vessel being an earthen vessel is no hindrance. The excellency of the power is of God, and not of us. When the vessel is full, it overflows. And when the vessel is full, it does not overflow, so to speak, by effort, but of necessity; and what over-flows is the full strength and power of the stream. Think of all the power of the Holy Ghost, having first filled you, pouring itself forth even in a world like this, " rivers of living water."

Beloved, God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, and His ways not as our ways. If we take these types of old and only look at them in the poor, meager way in which we have been looking at them, does it not shame us? But then, does it not encourage us also ? If Israel of old could be pictured in a way like this, how of that of which Israel is but itself the shadow?

God grant, beloved friends, that our practical state may answer more to the reality of what we are before Him, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake. Plainfield, NJ, Aug. 1, 1882, F.W.G.