That Scripture is divided into two main parts no one is ignorant. They are the twofold testimony of God, contrasted, but complementary to each other, the Old and New Covenants, as the word " Testament" should rather be. Upon this contrast, and the character of each, the significance of numbers puts its confirmatory? seal, assuring us also of our possession of the perfect number of the books themselves,-none lost, and none supernumerary.

The books of the Old Testament are thirty-six in number; in our Bibles, thirty-nine; but the division of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles into two books each was not found in the old Hebrew, and is plainly arbitrary when examined. The simplest division of 36 is into 3 by 12. Put these into meaning according to the symbolism of these figures, and what do we find? 3 is the divine, and 12 the governmental number; taken together, they speak of God in government. What more precise definition could we have for the books of the Law?

The books of the New Testament are twenty-seven in number, and this is the cube of 3; it is 3 times 3 times 3, the most absolutely perfect number that can be-the only one into which the symbol of divine fullness and manifestation alone can enter." God in government" is God hidden; clouds and darkness are about Him:though His glory be seen, it is, as with Moses on the mount, not His face; but in Christ we see His face; and the number 27 means God in His fullness revealed, in the perfection of His Godhead-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and in the gospel of His grace.

Thus, at the outset, the numerical structure vindicates itself. There is another division, however, of these books, not setting aside this, of course, but underlying it. I do not in the least doubt that we have in Scripture five Pentateuchs; the books of Moses being the pattern of the structure of the whole Bible. Thus again the seal is set upon what in the present day unbelief is calling most in question. But to pursue this, we must examine briefly the characters of these books.

And here the typical aspect is the most important. As another has well said of the first four, " After Genesis, and the earlier chapters of Exodus, there is very little of which the object is historical in the previous books of Moses. And even in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus principles and types are the most important aspect of what is related. As to the history of Israel, the apostle tells us this expressly in i Corinthians 10:11. And this appreciation of the character of these books greatly aids us in understanding them." (Synopsis 1:286, 2:)

Deuteronomy does not, indeed, give types proper, but it gives principles, not history, though this is recapitulated for a purpose.

We have seen that the books of Moses illustrate, as all Scripture does, the significance of numbers, but we must look more closely at them; for while every five is not, as it seems to me, a Pentateuch, it will be found that where this number is wrought into the structure of a part it is really so. Of this we shall have many instances.

Genesis is, then, the beginning of a foreknown and divine work; God in it the almighty, all-sufficient Creator; election showing this when man is fallen and departed from Him; first, that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual; life His gift, true life above all His. Thus Genesis is the seed-plot of the Bible, for " known unto God are all His works from the foundation of the world."

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, all express divine sovereignty in election; the first-born is uniformly set aside, as in Cain, Ishmael, Esau, Reuben; life in its various stages and aspects is exhibited in its successive biographies; and in these the individual work of God in man, the dispensations also to their close being typically presented. The Genesis sections of other books will be found in general thus the widest and fullest in character, the counsels of God being told out in them :He is put in His place as the fitting introduction to all else.

Exodus is the book of redemption whether by purchase or power;-by blood, from judgment; by the passage of the sea, from the old bondage. This marks the difference between the typical and historical aspects. Historically, in the wilderness the people came under the law; but this typically is but the throne or government of grace for the redeemed, as the mercy-seat declares for us. Obedience is in this way but the sign of accomplished redemption,-the willing obedience of faith.

Its principles are, ruin in responsibility, and redemption in grace, and that to God who has redeemed us.

Leviticus brings us to the sanctuary, to learn there what true sanctification is-the holiness that suits God's presence. The sacrificial work which maintains us there is at the same time the pattern of the perfection in which He delights. " I am Jehovah" and "that ye may know that I am Jehovah " is its constant language. Jehovah is God in relationship in grace, and thus takes that title first properly in Exodus, but relationship is what determines responsibility.-"You only have I known of all the families of the earth ; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities."

Sanctification every way, by sacrifice and by the Spirit,-positional and practical – is the key-note to Leviticus.

Numbers is plainly the probation in the wilderness, and this brings out the entire failure on the part of man, but on the part of God also priestly grace by which His people are brought through. As in Exodus we are redeemed out of the world, and in Leviticus are with God in the sanctuary, so here we go through the world. It is so plain as to need little comment.

Deuteronomy, finally, is the summing up of all this, and the principles of divine government, which they are to learn as lessons for the land when they enter there, and in conformity to which is all blessing to be reached. For us at the end of our course here, the judgment-seat of Christ will sum up thus, the divine ways be really learnt, and our wisdom forever.

These books have thus an individuality, a connection, and an order which mark them fully as divisions made by no human hand. And this is emphasized by the way they are used as the model of many similar divisions throughout Scripture. I have elsewhere shown how Isaiah 53:and the fifteen psalms of degrees (Ps. 120:-134:) are instances of this structure. The latter we may again look at; the former I shall briefly speak of here, as it is indeed a most perfect example, as well as of the numerical structure in general.
The prophecy of Isaiah 53:begins, it is admitted, with Hi. 13:the whole contains, therefore, fifteen verses; and these are, again, five threes; every three verses being a separate division of the subject. Moreover, every division is characterized in the completes way by the number thus attaching to it, the verses here being not arbitrary, but having full justification in the inspired writer.

Thus the first three verses give us the divine counsels as to Christ-"My Servant"-announced by God Himself, the ordained plan of Him who is excellent in counsel, mighty in working. The after-history is but the fulfillment, even by the hands of those who mean no such thing. How sweet and suited to begin thus, where all begins, with the infinite mind of God, and thus to reach the peace that passeth understanding of One forever above the water-floods.

First, we have (52:13-15) the wisdom of Jehovah's perfect Servant, and the exaltation to which it leads; then the suffering beyond any among mere men, expressed in the marring of His face and form; then, thirdly, the result in cleansing for the nations, whose highest would be brought to reverent silence in His presence, wondering with no idle wonder now at the gracious words proceeding from His lips.

In the second three (53:1-3) we have another speaker. The prophet identifying himself with the nation of Israel, speaks of their rejection of God's testimony to Christ, as the repentant generation of a future day will speak of it. Yet is He Jehovah's arm-the power of God in grace for deliverance from another Egypt; to God and man (in ways how different!) a tender plant, a root out of a dry ground; among men a man of sorrows and rejected.

Then the third section (4-6) brings the divine meaning of these sorrows before us, misconstrued as they were by men. Just as Leviticus gives us in the forefront of it those gifts and sacrifices which are the foreshadowing of the self-same precious work, so we are here in the sanctuary with God, to learn the true meaning of these sufferings of Him who was bruised for our iniquities, and upon whom was the chastisement of our peace. These three verses are indeed the centre of the whole.

The next, or fourth, section (7-9) speaks of another thing. They describe the trial of the perfect Servant, bringing out in His case that absolute perfection. Thus we have now His personal conduct under this unequaled trial; how, "oppressed and afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth," and how His grave was " with the rich man after His death; because He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth." Thus neither the sin of the powerful nor of the weak was His; while the government of the tongue marked Him as the perfect man of whom James speaks, under the severest pressure.

Finally, the fifth section (10-12), in a beautiful Deuteronomic strain, tells of the result (according to the holy ways of divine government,) of that perfect walk on earth, and absolute self-surrender for the divine glory and purpose in blessing toward man.

Thus closes the prophecy, marked, moreover, in its regular structure of 5 by 3 verses, with these two numbers-the human and the divine. And if 3 be the number of divine manifestation, and 5 be the human number, as we have seen, then these threes contained within this inclosing five are just as simply as beautifully significant of One in whom " God was manifest in flesh"

I have taken this, then, as one of the clearest and most beautiful examples of the Pentateuch being the model and key to the structure of other scriptures. We are now to inquire if the Bible as a whole, in its grand divisions, is not framed according to this pattern. I believe we shall find clearly it consists of five Pentateuchs, the seal being put once more in this way upon the book as a whole and the individual parts of it.

Looked at in this way, we have-

1. The Pentateuch itself, or Books of the Law.

2. The Covenant-History, or History springing out of this.

3. The Prophets.

4. The Psalm-Books.

5. The New Testament.

But we must remember that there are two divisions here, and that the New Testament is not really a fifth part, but stands alone, as complete in itself; or, as a second, or Exodus (redemption), part of the whole Bible.

I have now to show that each of these divisions, or of the last four, is a proper Pentateuch; that its five divisions (not books necessarily, for it is evident that three of these have much more than five books,) answer respectively in character to the five books of Moses.

The Covenant-History

These books comprise those styled by the Jews the " earlier prophets," with Ruth, Chronicles, and the three books of the captivity, which they placed in their third class of Chethubim, or Hagiographa, along with others utterly discordant in character; an arrangement in which I see no gleam of spiritual light. That which I mainly follow is perhaps of no more ancient date than the Septuagint. Yet this may well represent an older one. It is disfigured by the mixture of Apocryphal with inspired books, yet its naturalness and simplicity speak loudly for it, including in one division all the purely historical books, and in their historical order also. Ruth thus follows Judges, of which it is, as rightly held by many of the Jews themselves, an appendix; while Chronicles should fitly close the whole, as a Deuteronomic rehearsal, which reaches (in the genealogies) to the return from Babylon.

The five divisions here are easily apparent:-

1. Joshua.

2. Judges and Ruth.

3. The books of the kingdom-Samuel and Kings.

4. The books of the captivity-Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

5. Chronicles.

Joshua is the Genesis of their national existence in the land, the new beginning, in which abundantly the power of the Almighty is seen fulfilling the counsels of electing love in behalf of the people.

Judges gives, on the other hand, spite of repeated revivals and deliverances, their utter failure easily fall into five divisions, the Minor Prophets being counted as one book by the Jews, and forming by themselves, I doubt not, one of these, while Lamentations is a true supplement to Jeremiah. The order is thus:-

1. Isaiah.

2. Jeremiah, with Lamentations.

3. Ezekiel.

4. Daniel.

5. The Twelve Minor Prophets.

Isaiah is undoubtedly the Genesis of the prophets. In scope, he is the largest; the sovereignty of God in electing grace is his constant theme, and in this way he again and again appeals to creation and the Creator. He is eminently the prophet of divine counsels.
Jeremiah gives the utter ruin of the people, with whose sorrow his heart identifies him, as in Lamentations, in which he is the expression of the Spirit of Christ, afflicted in all the afflictions of His people. In his personal history, he often typifies the Lord, and filled with the sense of the relationship of the people to God, takes a mediator's place in their behalf. He is the prophet also of the new covenant.

Ezekiel gives the leprosy of Israel, upon which he is called to pronounce as priest, the glory then departing, the leper (1:e.) being put outside the camp. In the end of the book, the leprosy having come fully out, Israel is restored and glory returns. It is strikingly the Leviticus of the Prophets, the very phrase which constantly seals the commandments of Leviticus being found in the repeated phrase of Ezekiel,-" That ye may know [or, ye shall know] that I am the Lord."

Daniel, again, like the historical books of the captivity, gives the sifting of the people among the nations (Am. 9:9), in which, nevertheless, the abundant care of God will be shown toward them, with His judgment of the failed Gentile powers finally in their behalf. ("Daniel" is "God my Judge.")

The twelve minor prophets rehearse the ways of God toward Israel and the earth in holy government (12 is the governmental number). I give them in the order of the Septuagint, which here also I cannot but prefer to that of the Hebrew. Like other twelves, they divide into four sections of three each, which will be found to answer to the fundamental idea of their corresponding numbers.

1. Hosea, Amos, and Micah, kindred in subject, develop the state of the people which necessitates judgment; Hosea dwelling especially upon the violation of covenant-relationship, Amos on the moral condition, to which Micah adds the rejection of Christ; while in the sovereignty of God they are saved finally by that against which they had sinned :in Hosea, by the relationship they had violated ; in Amos, by the tabernacle of David they had rejected (for Amos treats the ten tribes as the people); in Micah, by the Christ they had smitten.

2. Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah speak of the Gentile enemy in three different ways, which all manifest His mercy to His people. First, Joel shows God's use of the northern foe to bring Israel to repentance and to blessing; then Obadiah shows the inveterate enemy destroyed; while Jonah declares the message of judgment, but, in effect, of mercy, which Israel, herself humbled, and brought up from the depths, will be the means of communicating to the Gentiles.

3. Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah bring out more the character of God as shown in His judgments, and all flesh brought into His presence. In Nahum, the Assyrian is His enemy, the pride of whose heart abuses the mercy of a long-suffering God unto destruction. Habakkuk shows us the exercise of heart under this government of God, who chastens His people often by those worse than they,-an exercise which results in a faith which in all circumstances rejoices unfailingly in God. While in Zephaniah the day of the Lord is on all; but after judgment has done its strange but necessary work, God will be free to exhibit toward a humbled people, turned to serve Him with a pure language, the love which is His own proper character, and in which He will rest forever.

4. Last, come the prophets of the returned captivity, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, answering strikingly to the three historical books of the same period respectively, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Ezra and Haggai speak mainly of the temple, Nehemiah and Zechariah of the city, Esther and Malachi of every thing broken down and gone, save providential care which still carries on all to the accomplishment of unrepenting purposes. All three prophets contemplate clearly the day of Christ, and have an outlook of blessing for the earth. Haggai declares the shaking of all things, but the coming of the Desire of all; Zechariah sees the Lord come and reigning over all the earth; Malachi speaks of the uprising of the Sun of Righteousness.

THE PSALM-BOOKS

The fourth Pentateuch consists of just five books, and in these we find as distinctly the human utterance as in the Prophets the divine. The testing of man is notably their theme, and in these five books all his exercises, sorrows, and joys are told freely out; – wrong thoughts as well as right thoughts; infidelity as well as faith. 5, the human number, is found, not only in the books, but often in their divisions also, as in Job, Proverbs, and especially in the Psalms proper, which is thus divided in the Hebrew. The books should evidently be arranged thus :-

1. Psalms.

2. Job.

3.Solomon's Song.

4. Ecclesiastes.

5. Proverbs.

The Psalms are the Genesis of this division :full of the divine counsels, varied and copious in matter, they manifestly occupy the place which Isaiah does among the prophets.

Job is the book of the "penitent," the need of repentance taught to one pronounced of God the best man on earth, grace meeting him there to double to him his original portion.

The Song Of Solomon gives us the heart in the presence of the Lord, occupation with an object too large for it, as another has said.

Ecclesiastes, the world an object too little for the heart, death stamping it with vanity, man's wisdom incompetent for solution or escape.

Proverbs furnishes the maxims of divine wisdom, the path of blessing under the government of a holy God.

The correspondence with the Pentateuch here needs no enlarging or insisting on.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Lastly, we come to the New Testament, a second division of Scripture, as we all recognize; not a fifth, and yet as distinctly a Pentateuch as any other. Its divisions are,-

1. The Gospels.

2. The Acts.

3. The Epistles of Paul.

4. The Epistles of the Four-James, Peter, John, and Jude.

5. The Revelation.

The Gospels are, without any doubt, here the new Genesis-the "beginning" to which the apostle John constantly recalls us. They are four in number;-the three synoptic, and that of John, which stands by itself.

Matthew :the gospel of the kingdom; the sin-offering aspect of Christ's work. Mark :the gospel of service, and the trespass-offering. Luke :the gospel of the peace-offering, and the Manhood.

2. John :the gospel of the burnt-offering, and the Godhead.

The Acts are the Exodus -the deliverance from the law.
The Epistles of Paul bring us to God, establishing us in His presence according to the value of the work of Christ, and in Christ, and so to walk. They are fourteen in number-7 by 2, (the testimony of the perfect work accomplished,) and divide into two parts:-

I. Those which speak of our place in and union with Christ, and of the power of this for us, which are only jive in number:-

I. Romans, which speaks of justification, and deliverance from sin and law ;-

2.Galatians, of the essential contrast of law and grace, and of God's design in the former;-

3.Ephesians, of our heavenly and Church-place; while-
4. Colossians brings in the fullness of Christ thus known for our life on earth, and-

5.Philippians shows its power in practical occupation with Him.

II. We have the epistles which speak of practical fellow-ship' with one another, which (three being double] fall into six divisions:-

1. Thessalonians, the Christian condition and character as belonging to the family of God.

2. Corinthians, as belonging to the Church.

3 Hebrews, as perfected worshipers.

4. Timothy, as in the house of God.

5. Titus, the fruits of true doctrine.

6. Philemon, Christianity the true exalting power.

The Epistles of the four other apostles are all connected with life and walk.

1. Peter gives the path through the world.

2. James, the principle of justification by works.

3. John, the features of eternal life.

4. Jude, (the Malachi of the New Testament,) the faithlessness of man and the faithfulness of God.

Lastly, the book of Revelation gives us the review and judgment both of the world and Church's course, with the blessing and the curse at the end. It is without doubt the New-Testament Deuteronomy.

This is what appears to me the general outline of Scripture, and seems to put every book in its place, and the seal of divine perfection on every part. Nothing is in defect; nothing redundant. The Pentateuch, vilified by the unbelief of the day, and torn to pieces by rationalism, is seen to be, not only a perfect whole, but the key to the structure of the whole Bible. The significance of numbers reveals harmony and design every where, even in the minutest portions, and prepares us for a closer inspection of the books in their internal structure, of which more than a glimpse has been already afforded us, and which should give a precision and definiteness to our apprehension of their contents, which must have been surely in His purpose in fashioning them after this manner. If carelessness and unbelief on our parts have long missed the clue, let us take the shame of this; it is none the less there. Let us now look at the books in detail, and. see to what it will lead.

The pleading of integrity, as separate from sinners and loving Jehovah's house.

[A psalm] of David.

Judge me, Jehovah, for I have walked in mine integrity; I have trusted also in Jehovah,-I shall not totter.

2. Try me, Jehovah, and prove me:assay my reins and my heart.

3. For Thy mercy is before mine eyes, and I have walked in Thy truth.

4. I have not sat with men of falsehood, and do not go with dissemblers.

5. I have hated the congregation of evil-doers, and do not sit with the wicked.

6. I will wash my hands in innocency, and [so] compass Thine altar, Jehovah ;

7. To proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving, and to declare all Thy wondrous works.

8. Jehovah, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.

9. Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with men of blood,

10. In whose hands is crime, and their right hand is full of bribes.

11. But as for me, I walk in mine integrity; redeem me and be gracious to me.

12. My foot standeth in an even place:in the congregations will I bless Jehovah.

The Dispensational Application.-In Isaac we have had, as we have seen already, the acknowledged type of the Son of God. In the twenty-second chapter also Abraham takes the place, which from his relationship we are prepared to find him filling, the place of the typical father. These two, Abraham and Isaac, God links with Jacob's name when revealing Himself to Moses at the bush He bids him "say unto the children of Israel, 'The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob hath sent me to you.'" This is, as the apostle tells us, a sign of His approbation of them:" God was not ashamed to be called their God;" He could connect His name openly with theirs. Had He said He was the God of Lot, Lot's conduct would have been His own dishonor. The special choice of these three men in the way God chose to associate them with Himself was perhaps the highest honor He could bestow upon men.

In the New Testament there is one name which has of necessity displaced all other names. God has found one Man with whom He can perfectly and forever identify Himself, and from whom His character can be fully learned. He has been revealed in His Son, and is now to us forever known as the " God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

But surely this will prepare us to see even in the case of the Old-Testament names a deeper view of God than any thing which could be gathered merely from their biographies. As to two of them, we have seen that this is justified by the fact; but God, when linking in His revelation to Moses the name of Jacob with this, adds, " This is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations." This has generally been limited to the title, "Jehovah," which is the word our version, as is well known, here as almost always, translates as " Lord," but which is, indeed, almost identical with the " I am" of the previous verse:" I am hath sent me to you." Nor can it be for a moment contested that Jehovah is the name by which God is henceforth known as Israel's covenant-God. This is not meant, then, to be disputed. Only along with and displaying this "Eternal" One, this other term comes in:" Jehovah, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob:this"-all of it-"is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations."

For us the God of redemption is indeed here fully displayed. For if in Abraham we find manifestly the type of the Father, and in Isaac admittedly that of the Son, in Jacob-Israel we find a type and pattern of the Spirit's work which is again and again dwelt on and expanded in the after-scriptures. Balaam's words as to the people, using this double-this natural and this spiritual- name, are surely as true of the nation's ancestors, " It shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!" What God hath wrought is surely what in the one now before us we are called in an especial way to acknowledge and glory in. For Jacob's God is He whom we still know as accomplishing in us by almighty power the purposes of sovereign grace.

In these two names of his-Jacob and Israel- the key to all his history is found. The long years of discipline through which he passes are necessitated by his being Jacob:they are the necessary result of righteous government, but which in the hands of a God infinitely gracious issue in blessing the most signal to the chastened soul; the worm Jacob becomes, in the consciousness of his weakness, Israel,-has power with God and with man and prevails. The fruitfulness of God's holy discipline is surely the moral of his life.

And of this the nation are as striking an example. The only people chosen of God as His own among the nations of the earth to be the manifest seat of divine government, their own history becomes of necessity the illustration of this. " You only have I known," He says, "of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities." Any thing else but this would have been impossible for a holy God. And yet it is of Israel and their election that it is said, " The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." (Rom. 11:29.) Even in their present state of dispersion, as the apostle argues, they are still " beloved for the fathers' sakes." Their rejection as a nation is not final. God repudiates utterly, by the mouth of Jeremiah, that which is still the thought of many Christians:" Considerest thou not what this people have spoken, saying, ' The two families which the Lord hath chosen, He hath even cut them off'? Thus have they despised My people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith the Lord, If My covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth, then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David My servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them." (Jer. 33:24-26.)

Their present chastening is therefore for final reformation, and thus nationally are they a pattern of God's dealings in holiness, but in grace, with all His people. Their father Jacob becomes thus also their type, a view to which it seems to me the language of the prophets every where conforms, and which it indeed necessitates.

The life of Jacob divides into three parts, according as we find him in the land, exiled from it at Padan-Aram, or again returning; and to this correspond very plainly the three great periods of Israel's national life. The last is indeed only known by prophecy, but as surely as any history could make it known.

The first part seems to me to cover the whole of their inspired history. Jacob is shown to us, as the apostle declares in Romans ix, as the object of election. The constant order of Genesis is, as we have seen, the rejection of the first-born:it is "first that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." But in every other case there is some plain reason for the divine choice. In Cain, self-righteousness sets aside; in Isaac, his birth from Sarah might be urged as reason; Reuben, too, falls into sin, which deprives him of the birthright. In Jacob's case, as the apostle tells us, " The children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth; it was said unto her,' The elder shall serve the younger.'" Jacob stands indeed here scarcely so much as a type of the people as he is one with the people:"Jacob have I loved" is said of both. And this choice of divine love, as it insures their full final blessing, so it insures the discipline needed as the demand of His holiness and of that blessing of theirs also:" You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities." Beth-el, the house of God, figures therefore so largely in Jacob's history, and it is as El Beth-el, the God of His own house, that he has to know Him, in the holiness which becomes His house. It is thus at Beth-el, when he returns there, that his history morally closes.

In this first part he answers fully to the name which Esau indignantly invokes:" Is he not rightly called Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times." The national characteristic cannot be well doubted here. Jacob values the blessing of God, but seeks it in subtle and carnal ways, totally opposed to faith, as the apostle testifies of Israel that they "sought after the law of righteousness," but "did not attain to the law of righteousness; and wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith." It was thus they stumbled at the stumbling-stone, and became wanderers from the land of promise, exiled by their sin. Yet as Jacob, an exile from his father's house, finds God at Bethel watching over him with providential care, and assuring him of a final return to his father's house in peace, so have his seed been watched over in all their wanderings, and their return to their land is guaranteed by the sure word of prophecy.

The Lord in His words to Nathanael applies that Beth-el vision to Himself. It is when Israel shall accept with Nathanael's faith the Lord Jesus Christ as Son of God and King of Israel that they shall have the blessedness of looking up into an opened heavens, and seeing the angels of God, in their ministrations to men, attending on the Son of Man; and these two thoughts combined-Son of God, as confessed by Nathanael, and Son of Man, as in His love to men He constantly styled Himself-imply a Beth-el, a house of God on earth. In that day it could be but a vision of the future, for the nation had not Nathanael's faith. For such as he, the pledge of that day was already there.

During Jacob's twenty years at Padan-Aram he enjoys no further revelation until the angel of God bids him depart thence. In the meantime He deals with him as one for whom He has purposes of blessing which can be reached only through disciplinary toil and sorrow. He is multiplied through unwelcome Leah and the two bondmaids mainly, serving long and with hard labor for his wives and flocks. The general application to such a history as that of Israel since her dispersion is not difficult to make, although it may be impossible to trace in detail. Perhaps we should expect no more than a general thought of such a history, as the Spirit of God could find nothing in it upon which to dwell, save only to magnify the divine mercy in it. Enslaved, trampled on, yet preserved, and merging into final wealth and power:this is the simple, well-known, yet marvelous fact, in which they witness to the care and holiness of that God of Beth-el whose name they know not.

In the third part we find Jacob (up to this, still and only that,) returning to his own land. In the application, we must remember that it is a remnant that represent and grow into the nation. For these as for their father, Peniel prepares for Bethel ; that they may not fall into their enemies' hands, God, whose name is yet unknown to them, must take them into His own, crippling the human strength in which they contend with Him, that in weakness they may hold Him fast for blessing. They must needs confess their name naturally, that grace may change it for what has to be henceforth their name. At Peniel, Jacob becomes Israel, although not yet does he fully realize that which is implied in this, so that at Beth-el he again receives it, as if never his before. Thus, broken down in repentance, and their human strength abased, the nation will be saved from the hands of their enemies. Purged from idolatry, they will then have their second Beth-el, when God discovers to them His name, so long hidden, and confirms to them the promise to their father Abraham. Christ, Son of His mother's sorrow, but of His Father's right hand, will then take His place among them, and so they will come to Mamre, and to Hebron, to the richness of a portion which now is to be enjoyed in fellowship with God.

The Philistines

After the judgment of Sodom, and before Isaac is yet born, we find Abraham again in the south country, and in connection with a people who in the after-history of Israel have a much more important place. Throughout the times of Samson, Eli, Samuel, and Saul, (whom they defeat and slay,) the Philistines hold the chief place among the enemies of Israel. David defeats and subjugates them, although they appear again in the times of his degenerate successors.

Their typical importance must correspond to their place in an inspired history of "things" which "happened unto them for types," and their general history and character throw light upon what is written of them in that part of Genesis to which we are now come.

The Philistines were not Canaanites, although sons of Ham. They sprang, according to Genesis 10:14, from Mizraim, to whom the land of Egypt gave its distinctive name. Yet we find them in the land of Canaan always, on the lowland of the south-west coast, with their outlook indeed toward Egypt, with which they had (as see Ex. 13:17,) the freest and most unobstructed communication.

To translate this spiritually, they are natural men in heavenly things. Of Ham and Mizraim we have already briefly spoken. Ham is the darkness of resisted light, and out of this, Egypt, the natural world, is come. Its name, " Mizraim," or "double straitness," applies with unmistakable clearness to the strip of land on either side of the river, maintained in fertility and beauty by its yearly overflow, and bounded strictly by the desert on either hand. From their land the people derive their name. As natural men, they are conditioned and limited between narrow bounds, within which they may do great things, but not transcend them. They are governed and characterized by their conditions, naturally; are governed and get their name from what they should govern.

Such limits-indeed, much narrower,-confine the Philistines to their strip of sea-coast. They hold but a border of the land; and, however fertile, its lowest part. Other parts they may ravage, not really possess:there, they are (according to their name) "wanderers" merely. Here too they are sojourners in a land that is not theirs:it belongs already, in divine purpose, to the seed of that " Abram the Hebrew," who now comes to Gerar, no wanderer, but a " passenger," or pilgrim, To the one alone is there a future, a fixed point beyond, faith in him the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Yet as the order is, first, that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual, the Philistines for long seem to possess the land, Abraham already finds a king at Gerar whose name, however interpreted,* speaks of established, successional authority while the captain of his host is Phichol-1:e., the " voice of all." *Abimelech:either " Father of a king," or " Whose father [is] king.* "Who that is prepared to find meaning here at all can fail to see in this the shadow of that traditional authority to which human religiousness, ignorant of the living Spirit, ever appeals? And completely in accordance with this it is that with Abraham and Isaac, as with the men of faith of every age, their great contention is about the wells of water which they themselves never dig, but of which they would with violence possess themselves, only to stop them again with earth. Of how many Sitnahs and Eseks has church-history been the record, until in God's mercy a Rehoboth came and they who sought the truth found "room"! All this in its general meaning seems easy enough to follow, and to make the typical character of these Philistines very clear.
It is noteworthy, too, that while never themselves possessing more than a border of it, they have loomed so largely in men's eyes as to give their name to the whole land. Palestine is only Palestine. So the traditional church is "catholic" –universal.

And now at Gerar we find Abraham once more failing as long before he had failed in Egypt. These Philistines, too, are but Egyptians, though in Canaan; even as the world, though come into the church, is still the world. Sarah, the covenant of grace, belongs still and only to the man of faith; but how often has he failed to assert this absolutely exclusive claim! In the present day there is surely more failure in this respect than ever; when, with an open Bible ours, and more enlightenment, Protestant traditions are become the rule of what is no less a world-church than Rome itself. For such, the Abimelechs and Phichols will have their place as of old; human authority be substituted for divine; the wells which faith had dug be stopped again. And here, how great the danger of Sarah being given up,-of grace being divorced from faith!

Alas! the liberality of the day is gone so far in this direction, that grace must not be denied where not only faith, but the faith, is absent,-where Christ is Himself denied. Orthodox and unorthodox mingle on platform and in pulpit. All lines are being surely and not slowly effaced. Churches with orthodox creeds open their doors widely to whatever is popular enough to make it worth their while; and Christians, with whatever trouble of conscience or grief of heart, dare not purge themselves from the evils which they feebly lament. They have obeyed one scriptural injunction at least,-they have "counted the cost:" alas! with too cold a calculation, into which neither the glory of God nor even their own true blessing has been allowed to come.

How little man's hand is competent to hold what God has intrusted to it we may see in Abraham. It is not the young and raw disciple, but the man who has walked in the path of faith for long, who here shows himself ready to give up the partner of his life, and the depositary of all the promises! What then is man? and what hope for him except in God? None, surely. And it is to ground us well in this that we are given to see the sad and terrible failure of these honored servants of God. Not to discourage, but to lead us to the source of all confidence and strength. Only in realized weakness do we find this. Only when unable to do without God for a moment do we find what He is for us moment by moment.

And it is the best blessing that we show most our incompetence to hold. Our place in Christ is that upon which all else for us depends, yet who of those to whom God has in His goodness been showing it in these last days is not aware how the knowledge of it had for ages almost disappeared out of the faith of Christians? Justification by faith, given similarly back to us in Reformation days, has been only by the same goodness preserved by constant revivals out of perpetual decline since then. Well for us will it be in proportion as we learn these lessons and our faith takes hold upon the living God. Alas! that even here the very failure of man should tend to shake our hold of His faithfulness,-as if He, not we, had failed ! But " hearken unto Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by Me from the belly, which are carried from the womb, even to your old age, I am He; even to hoar hairs will I carry you:I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you."

In a marked way God interferes here for His failing servant, suffering him indeed to find for awhile the fruit of his own ways, but coming in for him at last in how tender and gracious a manner, to speak of him as " a prophet," and to make Abimelech debtor to his prayers. How different from our own ways with one another, ready as we are so easily to give up each other, sometimes at the mere suspicion of wrong-doing, when faith would hold fast the people of God for God! How sweet and restoring too for Abraham's soul this goodness of the ever-faithful One! for grace it is that restores alone:"sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace."

Let us hold each other fast for God, if of this grace indeed we would be ministers. Members of Christ as we are, we are members also, and thus, of one another. This bond will survive all failure, and it should in whatever failure be felt (the more, not the less, for the strain upon it,) in our hearts.

And now, unmoved from His own purposes of wisdom and of love, the Lord fulfills to Abraham the promise that He had made. A son is given to. gladden his life, and be the pledge of mercies still to come. Isaac is born, type of a greater, in whom all promises find completion. In Him, dwelling in the heart by faith, the life of faith finds its completion. From the first its one necessity, He now becomes its abiding realization. Let us look at this briefly, as the prayer in Ephesians 3:develops it.

The apostle's prayer is to "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every* family in heaven and earth is named." *So, rightly, the Revised Version, with Alford, Ellicott, etc.* Christ in His place as Man, yet Son of the Father, is a new link of relationship between God and all His creatures. Angels as well as men have their place here. It is impossible but that the place He takes must affect all. He is Head over all things, as well as Head to His body the Church :the " First-born of every creature,"-" Beginning of the creation of God." The arms which reach to man at the farthest distance encompass all between. The love which has displayed itself toward the lowest is felt as a pulse of new life by every rank of the unfallen "sons of God." Every family of these has for its Father the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How this at once sets the one in whose heart by faith Christ dwells at the center of all the divine purposes! How "length and breadth and depth and height" begin to dawn upon him whose eye rests upon Him by whom and for whom all things were created! No wonder, therefore, that the apostle prays "that He would grant unto you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." The "inner man" and the "heart" are parallel in meaning in Scripture:the " hidden man of the heart," as Peter calls it; not affections merely, but the whole man himself-the true man under all appearances. Here, in the center and citadel of his being, faith receives its Lord.

Christ dwelling in the heart by faith redeems us then from the narrowness and pettiness of mere individual interests, and brings us into the plans and counsels of a wisdom that embraces all things. "Rooted and grounded" ourselves "in love," which has met and satisfied all need in so wondrous a manner, "breadth and length and depth and height" begin to be revealed to us. All mysteries find solution in the deeper mystery of the cross. Evil is no where else so evil, but it is no where else so met, defeated, triumphed over, by the inherent power of good. And it is good which is in God Himself toward us, which manifests and glorifies Him.

The "breadth and length and depth and height," of which the apostle speaks, are not, of course, measures of "the love of Christ, which," he declares, "passeth knowledge;" yet are they the means of better knowing how infinite it is. The "love" in which we are "rooted and grounded" alone enables us to "comprehend the breadth and length and depth and height;" and these apprehended, heaven and earth, time and eternity, are filled forthwith with the fullness of a divine presence. We know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and are filled up in all the fullness of God.

This is the consummation of the life of faith when the true Isaac dwells thus with us. It is the conclusion, therefore, of this section of the book before us, save only the brief appendix in which we see, first, the bondwoman and her child cast out, and then the Philistines owning the superiority of the pilgrim man of faith.

The first has a dispensational application, which the apostle gives us in Galatians iv; and here Isaac appears, not as the representative of Christ Himself, but of those who by grace are one with Him. " Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise; but as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the Scripture? 'Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.'"

In Christianity God had for the first time recognized relationship with a family not born after the flesh, as in Judaism Israel as a nation was, but with those spiritually born of Him. The children of law were born to bondage; the children of grace alone are free. But the Church had, as Isaac, its weaning-time, before the child of the bondwoman was cast off. The larger part of the Acts illustrates this, which the close of the fifth of Hebrews explains and applies. The last chapter of this epistle shows the camp rejected,-Ishmael and Hagar, the nation on the footing of the legal covenant.

Cast out, they wander in the wilderness of Beer-sheba, and are nigh perishing for thirst. This I conceive to be the present condition of Israel. The water, the word of life, is spent for them, and the well they see not, although the oath of God, the covenant with their fathers, secures it for their final possession." * *Beersheba" means " The well of the oath." (Ver. 14.)* This, therefore, their eyes shall yet be opened to, and Hagar herself become a means of blessing to them (Deut. 30:1-3.); their dwelling still and ever outside of Canaan-the heavenly inheritance.

The development of these things would be full of interest, but would lead us too far to follow. The individual application is clear in general, although the details may be less easy to trace. Most interesting is it to see that the Philistine has now to concede that " God is with" the man of faith, and that the well of water is all his own. Here, then, afresh he worships, calling on Jehovah, the everlasting God.

Christ amongst the people; in His life and sacrificial work, the basis of all their blessing.

(1) Psalms 16:-24:-A Messianic group of nine psalms in three smaller ones of three psalms each, making the divine number very prominent in them.

1. 16:-18:-Christ seen as man, perfect in the path of faith and obedience; identifying Himself with the people, and identified with them by God.

2. 19:-21:-The godly by faith owning and identifying themselves with Him; the nineteenth psalm giving the previous and prefatory testimonies of creation and the law.

3. 22:-24:-The actual atoning work, and in its results in grace, present and final.

(2) Psalms 25:-39:- A group of fifteen remnant-psalms, the human (5) multiplied by the divine (3) number. These actually divide into three series of five psalms each. The grace now apprehended gives necessarily a new character to the experience here. The first series,-

1. 25:-xxix, gives the ground of the soul's confidence in God;

2. 30:-xxxiv, the joyful certainty therefore that, whatever the circumstances, God is for His saints; while-

3. 35:-39:shows the government of God over the righteous and the wicked, what is wrath for the latter becoming a holy discipline for the former.

(3) Psalms 40:and 41:-Two final psalms, give the perfection of holy obedience in Christ seen in the suffering of the cross, with the effect of unbelief or faith in Him.

Series I.-First Three.

One often trembles to hear persons make high professions, and use expressions of intense devoted-ness, whether in prayer or otherwise, lest when the hour of trial comes there may not be the needed spiritual power to carry out what the lips have uttered.

We should ever remember that Christianity is not a set of opinions, a system of dogmas, or a number of views; it is pre-eminently a living reality-a personal, practical, powerful thing, telling itself out in all the scenes and circumstances of daily life, shedding its hallowed influence over the entire character and course, and imparting its heavenly tone to every relationship which one may be called of God to fill.

There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; the locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces." (Prov. 30:24-28.)

It does not require much spiritual intelligence to perceive the lesson God would teach us in the above verses. The mere man of the earth finds it wisdom in his sphere to lay them to heart -he reaps earthly blessing by it. Shall we be less wise in our heavenly sphere and fail to reap? God forbid!

They are wise indeed who, during the pleasurable days of summer remember the coming winter. Unquestionably there are pleasures in sin. God's word owns it. Speaking of Moses, it says, " Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." (Heb. 12:25.) It is not necessarily the gross, beastly ways of the degraded. In the case of Moses, the attractions of kingly grandeur and position, though enjoyed in a most moral way, would have been"the pleasures of sin."The whole moral atmosphere of this world is the direct production of sin, and he who enjoys it enjoys the pleasures of sin. How subtle it is! how ensnaring! and how effectually it robs multitudes of well-behaved people from the wisdom of the ant! They forget the approaching days of winter-the day when, the deluding bubble being broken, they will say, " Lord, Lord, open to us!" but He will answer, " Verily I say unto you, I know you not." Day of awful desolation! who can describe it?

How wise are they, then, who have laid to heart that day, and who neither forget nor neglect the salvation which God has prepared through Jesus Christ.

But what are our efforts, our works, our mightiest endeavors against the day " that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble" (Mal. 4:i)-the day when even for "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof " (Matt. 12:36) before that throne where a chief among the prophets had to cry out "Woe is me! for I am undone" (Is. 6:5), and angels have to cover their faces? What are we before that glory? What can we do to make ourselves meet for it? Man may talk proudly or boastingly away from it, but he who has the least sense of it must own himself a poor weak "cony," trembling at the sight of it. Where can we flee for refuge?"They make their houses in the rocks."Ah, there is security." In Christ"! what a safe place!

What is it to be "in Christ"?It is to be seen by the eye of God in such absolute oneness with Him that He can say of us, "As He [Christ] is, so are we in this world" (I Jno. 4:17), and again, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit."Of course He could not thus associate us with His blessed Son with our sins unremoved and our sin unjudged. Here moved our sins by laying them upon Jesus on the cross (i Pet. 2:24), and judged our sin by making Him to be sin for us and condemning Him (2 Cor. 5:21).Thus the way is all clear. To him that believes in His blessed Son He can say, You are "justified from all things" and you are "in Christ"-in Christ risen and glorified, seen in all His beauty:" as He is, so are we." Isn't this to have our house in the rocks? What matters it if we are a feeble folk,-if we cannot lift a finger for ourselves, since we have such a place of security? What is the weakness of that infant in its mother's arms but a means of displaying its place of security? What is the prodigal's need but the way to the Father's wealth and the Father's heart. Blessed conies! The storm may sweep all before it out- side. Their houses are in the rocks, and they rest in peace.

But if this blessedness, this place of security; be, as we see, the fruit of the work of Christ, we have had to be taught of God to enter into it. We have been born of Him, and this means, not an improvement of the old nature, but the imparting of a totally new one over and above the other, which has its instincts and desires in holiness as the other in sin. It makes us love God and all them that are born of Him. It gives us a family feeling, so that while tender and kind to all men, those of the "household of faith" ever have the prominent place, because they are near and dear. Wherever two such persons meet, they will be attracted to each other.-" Every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.", (i Jno. 5:1:) Thus the Lord's prayer is fulfilled:" That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us" (Jno. 17:21). " The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands."It is not an outward government that unites them, but the locust nature. So the family of God. The tie between them is by virtue of the divine nature which every one of them possesses, not by any outward organization. But this is not all. Another tie exists; dependent upon this, but quite different, and based on an entirely different thing. When Christ had accomplished redemption, risen from the dead, and been glorified, the Holy Ghost came down from heaven to introduce these children of God into a new and peculiar unity-a unity that would depend on no kings, no rulers, no laws, no walls, but in the living power of that blessed Spirit who was sent to form it. " By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body" (i Cor. 12:13),-"The Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23). Thus the children of God scattered about among Jews, Samaritans, or Gentiles were taken out of those connections through the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and in living power introduced into the unity of the Body of Christ. And it is in this unity every child of God in this dispensation is introduced.

But our practice agrees with our position and calling only in the measure in which the Spirit of God in us is ungrieved. He is the power, and only power, we have here as Christians. What must we expect, if we grieve Him in any manner, but inability to practice what we know, as well as to learn what we do not know? May we have a single eye. Thus, in the Church there may be leaders and rulers and teachers as there may be among the locusts, but its unity is not in their government as theirs is not in a king. It is a living unity; the creation of God; an established, unchangeable, eternal unity, the walking in which we learn ac-cording as we " walk in the Spirit" breathing the atmosphere whence all this comes.

But it is faith which is wise in all this wisdom. What but faith can't take God at His word? Unbelief wants to see, wants to feel, wants to reason, wants any thing but" Thus saith the Lord." " The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces."That is just what faith does. It lays hold of the word of God, and it goes in the palace of the King. " Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" (]no. 11:40.)

May we be " exceeding wise," though this wis-dom put us among the "things which are little upon the earth." P.J.L.

The Lord is coming! Most blessed, yet most solemn truth! The midnight cry has gone forth, " Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him." Far and near the cry is sounding. Loud and clear and long it rings through the midnight air, and the virgins are being aroused from their careless and guilty slumbers. Have you heard the cry? has your heart answered to it? Are your loins girded? Is your light burning? Do you know Christ as the heavenly Bridegroom? and are you waiting for Him in the joyous expectation of going " in with Him to the marriage " ?

The Bridegroom is coming. Most plainly has God spoken in His Word about this great event. " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." We are called to hear the very words of God. It is God Himself who speaks, and woe be to those who despise His word. " Incline your ear, and come unto Me," He says; "hear, and your soul shall live." Let us, then, bend our ear to God, and hear His word to us at this solemn moment, when the midnight cry is calling forth the virgins afresh, to meet the coming Bridegroom.

" Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom." (Matt. 25:) This well describes the first condition of the professing church, while the heavenly hope of the saints still shone bright in their hearts. Christian Jews went forth from the camp of Judaism, and converted Gentiles left their dumb idols, to wait for God's Son from heaven, who had said, " I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, / will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" I WILL COME AGAIN"! This was the blessed" hope of the saints! This the blessed Lord set before the Jewish disciples when He was about to leave them, and it was the comfort of their poor sorrowing hearts. They had been drawn to His person; they had marked the unfoldings of the divine, eternal life in Him as a man among men; they had seen, heard, touched, and handled the Word of life; they had seen the outgoings of eternal love manifested in Him; they had seen Him pressing on to the cross, and meeting the storm of human hatred and Satanic malice; they had seen Him bow His holy head under the tempest of divine judgment, as the Bearer of their sins; they had seen Him risen again from the dead, victorious over death and all the power of Satan, presenting to their wondering eyes His pierced hands and side as the proof that "it was Himself, their risen and victorious Saviour; they had gathered around Him on the mount of Olives, and heard His parting words, and seen His hands uplifted to bless them as He ascended up to heaven; and now, as the cloud received Him out of their sight, and they still stood gazing up into heaven, the men in white apparel assured them that this same Jesus should so come in like manner as they had seen Him go up into heaven. This was their blessed hope, their comfort, their joy. He was but gone to prepare a place for them, and would come again and receive them to Himself. What was the effect of all they had seen and heard? They were drawn to His blessed person, and their hearts clave to Him in love. The manifestation of eternal and divine love had bound them to Him, and as He ascended, their hearts followed Him on high. All the links that bound them to the world that had crucified Him were broken. Their links were with Him, and every chord of their hearts vibrated with holy joy at the words, " I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."He was coming again, and they went forth to meet the Bridegroom!

But this same Jesus was preached to the Gentiles also, and preached, not only as a Saviour to deliver them from the wrath to come, but as the One who would gather His own around Himself, and usher them into the deep, eternal blessedness of the Father's house. This was their, blessed hope. The Thessalonian saints were turned from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven. And if the enemy brought in confusion of thought as to those who fell asleep before the coming of the Lord, the apostle would not leave them in ignorance. He would let them know that those who fell asleep would not miss the blessing and glory of the kingdom. God would bring them all with Christ. But there is a preliminary event necessary to take place before this can be accomplished. "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 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.) Thus, when all the saints have been caught up to meet the Lord, and to be forever with Him, then God can bring them all with Him, as His co-heirs, to enter upon their inheritance, and fill their predestined place in the kingdom and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Such was the hope and such was the state of the Church when it was in the freshness of first love; but

"The Bridegroom Tarried."

More than eighteen hundred years have passed since He said to His disciples, "Watch." Why has He tarried so long? Is it because He is slack concerning His promise ? Oh, how could any one think this of Jesus, who died upon the cross in self-sacrificing love, that He might be " the Amen "-the verifier of all God's promises? " The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to usward, not I willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." (2 Pet. 3:9.)Ah! this is the wondrous secret of His having tarried so long. God is gathering a heavenly bride for Christ, and divine love still lingers over the lost in long-suffering patience, and one and another and another are being brought to repentance, and screened under the sheltering blood of the Lamb from the awful storm of coming judgment. And while the activities of divine love have been displayed in reconciling men to God, the time has not grown long to Him, with whom one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

Ought the time to have grown long to us ? Ah! if the saints had been in communion with their Saviour, and followed the outgoings of His heart as the great Shepherd of the sheep, they would have been but too willing to suffer and toil and wait, without counting the time long. They would not have forgotten their hope; but, having the secret of His heart, they would have kept the word of His patience. But, alas!-

"While the Bridegroom Tarried, They All Slumbered and Slept."

The hope of the Lord's coming ceased to be an immediate hope. The wicked servant said in his heart, " My lord delayeth his coming," and then " began to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken." Through how many centuries has the Church slumbered and slept, and the evil servant done his own will! Alas! the church-the great professing body-instead of keeping herself as a chaste virgin espoused to Christ, gave up the hope of His coming, and played the harlot with the kings of the earth.

But the Lord is coming; as it is said, "He that shall come will come and will not tarry." But does He want to come and find a sleeping bride, a bride not expecting her Bridegroom? Ah, no. He will have the saints, in conjunction with the Spirit, saying, " Come." He will have bridal affections in the saints answering to His own imperishable love. And oh! think of the grace that has sent out the heralding cry, "BEHOLD THE BRIDEGROOM; GO YE OUT TO MEET HIM!"- the cry that has aroused the slumbering virgins, and made them trim their lamps.

Oh, reader, have you heard this cry ? Are you awake? Have you trimmed your lamp? is it burning for Christ? Oh, sleeper, awake! awake! awake! The Lord is coming-surely coming, and coming quickly! Oh, awake from your midnight slumber! trim your lamp, and be ready!

But you have heard the cry, perhaps, and trimmed your lamp, and it is "going out." You have taken no oil in your vessel. So it is in the parable. " They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them; but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." There must be the oil of the Holy Ghost-the power of divine light in the soul-in order to have a place in that glorious procession that will light our coming Bridegroom in to the marriage.

Dear reader, will you have a place in that wondrous throng? Do you know redemption? Have your sins been washed away in the blood of the Lamb? Have you been sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise? Oh, remember, the mere lamp of profession will not do. You must have the oil; and you must get this now, while it is still the day of grace. When the Master rises up and shuts to the door, it will be too late. Now is the accepted time. Oh, will you not seek the oil now ? Christ will give it you. You cannot get it from the wise virgins:they have it only for themselves. You must get it from Christ:He alone can supply your need. And He sells " without money and without price."You cannot buy it otherwise. The Holy Ghost is the gift of Christ (as Christ was the gift of God the Father) to all those who believe the gospel of salvation. Having accomplished redemption by His death upon the cross, Christ was exalted to the right hand of God the Father, and received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, which He shed forth in power on the day of Pentecost. This is the oil for the virgins vessels-the oil that sustains the light of Christ in the soul amid the darkness of this world's night. Oh, have you received this oil? Your lamp will be worthless indeed unless you have the oil to keep it burning. If you have not the oil, you will be left outside, forever and ever to bewail your fatal neglect. Oh, be wise, and take the oil which Christ freely gives to all who come to Him. Believe in Christ, whose precious blood cleanseth from all sin, that you may receive the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and be numbered among the wise who took oil in their vessels with their Tamps.

"And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage, AND THE DOOR WAS SHUT." Reader, on which side of that door will you be when that solemn moment arrives? Will you be inside, to share the wondrous joys of that blood-washed throng? or will you be outside, to join the cry, " Lord, Lord, open to us," only to hear the crushing answer, "I know you not"?

Oh, what a moment will that be when the Lord comes and takes away His own which are in the world! What a separation will take place then! All the saints will be changed "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet," and caught up to meet the Lord in the air; while the despisers of the gospel will be left behind, to fall under the awful delusion of Satan, and be carried away in that terrible apostasy in which "the man of sin" will be deified and worshiped in the very temple of God, ' that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thess. 2:12.)

Too suddenly and swiftly, it may be, for human eyes to see, yet with divine certainty the separation will take place. Every believer will be taken away:every rejecter of Christ will be left behind. Education, rank, wealth, social position, will have nothing to do in deciding who shall be caught up and who shall be left behind. All turns on whether men have believed the witness of God, and received the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, or whether they have despised God's word and rejected His Son. The separation is between believers and unbelievers, and takes place among all classes and conditions of men-high and low, rich and poor, great and small. Wherever they are, in whatever employ, in city or country, house or field, believers are caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall they ever be with the Lord.

In one part of the globe it is morning. The morning light has dawned, and the sun has arisen, and all seems the same as yesterday. The family circle are in their accustomed seats at the table, . and all are partaking of the morning meal. Suddenly one and another are missed. They have vanished in a moment, and no earthly call can bring them back. They have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

In another part of the globe the inhabitants are at their daily occupations. There also the great separation takes place. In a moment God's people vanish from earth,-some from the streets of the city, some from behind the counter, some from the workshop, some from the field. Calls are unanswered, and all search is vain. They have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

In another part of the globe it is evening. The work of the day, and the evening meal are over. Some of God's people, perhaps mingling with the family circle, are, with the others, talking over the affairs of the day; some are at the prayer-meeting; some, perhaps, are preaching the gospel to sinners, and pleading with men to be reconciled to God, or, it may be, themselves listening to the old, old story they loved so well. Suddenly, and quickly as the lightning's flash, the summons comes, and as quickly all the saints are gone. The saint whose voice was just heard in the family circle is seen no more; the voice heard in prayer and supplication is silent; the servant of God proclaiming the word of reconciliation suddenly vanishes from the sight of his hearers; those who just now were listening with delight to the old, old story, or the teaching of God's blessed truth, have gone to behold the face of Him whom having not seen they loved. The great separation has taken place. The saints have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

In another part of the globe it is night. The inhabitants are wrapped in midnight slumber, but the Lord Himself descends from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and every saint answers to the heavenly call. The unsaved husband, or the unsaved wife, is left behind, and, it may be, slumbers on till morning, or awakes in the night to find the loved companion gone, and the children too, who had been taught the fear of the Lord by the faithful father or mother. Every where the separation goes, all classes are divided; all relationships are broken. Oh! moment of awful desolation to the unsaved! From field and city, counting house and workshop, stately mansion and lowly hamlet, royal palace and poor man's cottage, a cry more terrible than the cry of Egypt on the night when the first-born were slain, a cry of anguish and despair, ascends to heaven, " LORD, LORD, OPEN UNTO US." But alas ! it is too late ! too late ! " They that were READY went in with Him to the marriage, AND 'THE DOOR WAS SHUT"!
And now, what is the conclusion of the whole matter? "Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour." "Times and seasons" there will be for the waiting Jews after the Church is gone, but there are none for us. The Lord may come to-day, or He may come to-morrow. He may come at morn, or noon, or night. The one solemn word He left ringing in the ears of His disciples was, " Watch." " Blessed are those serv- ants, whom the lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. Verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants." "Blessed are those servants"! Who shall tell the unutterable blessedness and joy of those who have waited and watched for Christ, and who shall be fashioned into His glorious likeness at His coming ! " We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." (i Jno. 3:2.) And what is the power of this wondrous hope? "Every man that hath this hope?" We shall be like Him then; we want to be like Him now, "purifying ourselves even as He is pure." Shall we not then cultivate bridal affections in our hearts, and keep ourselves (as a chaste virgin espoused to Christ) unspotted from the world? Shall He find us walking with defiled garments? walking with the world that crucified Him, and now coldly rejects His message of grace? Are we members of its societies, guests at its pleasure-parties, attendants at its theaters, companions of those who by these things drown the voice of God in the conscience? He who was the light of this world is gone, crucified, and cast out. And now it is night-the long desolate night of His absence. Shall we seek shelter and comfort and carnal ease where He was slain ? Oh, may we rather cleave to Him with undivided affections, enduring the cold chill of the night, and keeping our lamps burning brightly till He comes. Let us go forth to meet the Bridegroom. "Surely, I come quickly" are His blessed words of cheer to our lonely and waiting hearts. Let the sound tremble on the chords of our hearts, making melody there to Him, whose heart will never be satisfied until He has us with Himself; and let us wait for that moment when His heart and ours shall be mutually satisfied-when " the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife had made herself ready.""Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."

A.H.R.

It was something new. A horse, a plow, a beautiful field of corn, a fresh, lovely morning, nature singing all around. The work was simple -just pass up and down each row of the young corn cultivate its roots and destroy the weeds. And, in its own language, it seemed to be thankful, for it looked the greener in the newly stirred ground. Earnestly, and with a light heart, the boy at the plow went on, making nice headway. Bat the sun was going on too, and as he rose, the heat of the day began to be trying. It grew hotter Still, insects made the horse fretful, and this made the plow unsteady. Perspiration rolled down the boy's face, and his task assumed a painful aspect. At the end of a row, he stopped, looked back, and measured with a glance how much he had done. Another glance forward showed a field whose end he could not see; it was far off, beyond the sloping hill. Discouraged, he sat on his plow and wept.

Just then, from over the hill, where the end of the field was hid, a well-known figure came in sight-his mother. There she was, with a pitcher and a plate. Amid her many cares she had not forgotten her boy. Nor would sending a messenger with the refreshments do; she would go herself.

"Why, my boy, what is the matter?"

"Mother, I have worked faithfully since I commenced, and see, I have only an insignificant strip of the field done. I can never get through this whole field."

"My child, you have not the whole field to do, but only one row. Can you not do one row?"

"Oh yes, mother; that is easy enough."

"Well, that is all you have to do."

The boy's courage had returned, the refreshments had revived him, and by doing only one row he finished his task in peace and good cheer.

I leave the application of this incident of real life to those who, having tasted the freshness of the morning of another and better life, may now be lagging under the heat of the day.

There were three men in Old-Testament times with whom it pleased God specially to connect Himself. To Moses He declares Himself as " Jehovah, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," – and adds, " This is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations." (Ex. 3:15.)

Christians accordingly have been accustomed to trace in Isaac some of the lineaments of the Son of God, the Saviour. In Jacob, whose divinely given name is Israel, we may find no less, I believe, the Spirit of God; not personally, but in His work in man. While Abraham, at least in the memorable scene before us, (but elsewhere too, assuredly,) presents to us the Father. In His connection with these three men, then, God had already, ages before Christianity, foreshadowed its precious revelations.

In the history recorded in the twenty-second of Genesis, the apostle's words to the Galatians at least give us the hint of Isaac's presenting to us that greater Seed of Abraham, to whom God was in fact confirming His promise there. (Galatians 3:17 should read, "to Christ") And this is made clearer by what he states in Hebrews 11:19 – that Abraham received his son back, " in a figure," from the dead. It is in Christ risen from the dead that all nations of the earth shall be blessed indeed. This view of Isaac all his history confirms; but here is not the place to speak of it. Our purpose is to mark only what fresh features of atonement are given us in Isaac's offering, looked at as a type.

And here, the thing which we should first notice is, that here God Himself suggests a human offering. It has startled us all, I suppose, that He could do this; but we have only to connect it as a type with its antitype to see how gracious, in fact, this announcement was. Isaac did not, and was never meant to, suffer; but Another, in due time, was to take this place, and find no release from it, as he did. How the reality of what sacrifice pointed to bursts almost through the vail of figure here! Was it thus indeed that, as the Lord says, Abraham rejoiced to see His day; and saw it, and was glad? The bruised heel of the woman's Seed was in his mind assuredly. The Sufferer-Conqueror, acceptance by sacrifice, the blessing of all nations through his Seed, could but unite themselves with this suggested human offering, which was not Isaac, to give indeed a prospect full of joy, the deeper for its solemnity, to his believing heart.

The true Sacrifice was to be a human one, then. Man for men was to suffer and die; yet to be Conqueror in man's behalf over the serpent,-death only to Him the bruising of the heel. How this wrought in Abraham's mind we seem to see in what we know by the apostle's words was in it. A heel bruised is not fatal:death to the Conqueror here is not fatal. Isaac, the heir of the promises, must be offered up; and how then could these promises be fulfilled to him? In resurrection, answers faith, in Abraham's soul. " And he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, that in Isaac shall thy seed be called:accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure."

Only a figure, for Isaac does not really die:but if here is figured resurrection, it is the " Seed of the woman" surely (Abraham's true Seed also) that is to rise again; and in resurrection all promises are secured and fulfilled. Thus the Ark of salvation passes through the water-floods into the new scene of covenanted blessing, and thus we find our promised rest.
Is it strange to read, then, of Abraham and his immediate descendants, that "these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth " ?

But this offering of Isaac, seen in this manner, has a yet deeper significance. It is a father's offering of his son,-yea, as the apostle says, (for Ishmael has no place here,) of " his only begotten son." Here we can no longer speak of what Abraham's faith realized. For us, however, the type only becomes the clearer. If it is a man who offers himself, it is God who gives His only begotten Son. Isaac is here the example of perfect submission to the will of his father,-one with the will of God Himself. He but asks the question, as he bears the wood of the offering to the place of sacrifice, " Behold, here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?" Abraham answers, " My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering." And Isaac asks no more; but, in the vigor of his young manhood, silently surrenders himself, lamb like, to be bound and placed upon the altar. The voluntary character of the offering is here apparent, beyond what its being of the flock or herd implies.

But it is of the father that we think most. It is as Abraham's trial that Scripture presents it:" it came to pass that God did tempt Abraham." Point by point, the severity of the trial is brought out. "Take now thy son,-thine only son,-Isaac" (that is, "laughter:" for "Sarah said, 'God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear it will laugh with me;' ")-" whom thou lovest;-and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." He carries this three days in his breast, that it may be, not hasty impulse, but deliberate obedience. God knew His man; the man, too, knew his God. Promptly, " early in the morning," he starts, and in due time is there with unflagging steps, and faith in Him whom in his own body he has learned as " Quickener of the dead:" "I and the lad," he says to his young men, "will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." All the while that he spoke so bravely, what was the strain on the father's heart? " Now I know," says He who understood it all,- "Now I know that thou fearest God; seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me."

But how wonderful to realize all this trial of a father's love in connection with a type of atonement! the pain and stress of it dwelt upon as if to make our human affections illustrate that amazing statement, that God "spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." What a proof of infinite love is here! The Seed of a woman, the Victor in the conflict with the serpent, the willing Sacrifice for men's sins, is the Son of God sent of the Father to fulfill His will, and declare at once His holiness and His love. It is God Himself who in the manhood He has taken has acquired capacity to suffer and to die for man. He whose righteousness requires has Himself in love provided the atonement; humbling Himself to human weakness, suffering, and death. And we are not only brought to God in the value of so great a work, but know Him to whom we are brought as told out in the unspeakable gift of His Beloved, His only begotten Son.

Genesis thus, at the very beginning of Scripture, presents us with almost a full outline of the atoning work. Many are the important details yet to be filled in; but we have already certain fixed points which the fully developed doctrine will maintain and justify, not remove.

Atonement is by substitution; and in death, not life.

But death is the removal of the one who dies out of the sphere of his natural responsibility as a creature. Judgment is for the " deeds done in the body" only; if this also be borne substitutionally (and this is the "copher " of the ark:"atonement " which is something outside of and beyond death), then we are completely "covered;" sin completely removed from us before God.

But the substitution is not only of one perfect in the creature's place assumed, but infinitely more:it is the Eternal Son of the Father who, become man, makes this atonement. Hence the value of it is not to put us back into the old condition from which we fell, but to put us into a new condition altogether. The Second Man. risen from the dead, becomes the last Adam, Head of a new creation, Mountain of life for His people in a new power and blessedness. Upon those, partakers of His eternal life, death (but no longer a penalty) may be in the meantime allowed to pass; only until the time of reconstruction, which shall make them fully what (as man) He is.

This is man's side of the atonement; but God is glorified in it,-His righteousness vindicated, His truth maintained, His love revealed. We are brought, to God, know Him, and have our happy place as identified with the bright display of all He is. Good has indeed triumphed over evil, and it is the Seed of the woman who has bruised the serpent's head.

We are going through the world, and God has given us a testimony about the world, and about what is going to happen to the world-infallible judgment. He has "appointed," it is said, "a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained ; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead." (Acts 17:31.)" By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet [prophetic testimony], moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith."Warned of what is coming on the world, he owns and recognizes the judgment, and falls in with God's revealed way of salvation; and he condemns the world. Mark this:faith " condemns the world;" not merely is it belief in a sacrifice that saves, and power for walk with God; but it says of the world that it is altogether departed from God, and is going to be judged. We have the testimony of the Word of God that the thing that is coming upon this world is judgment. There is many a person who, as a saint, would rest in a saint's walk with God, but who shrinks from breaking with the world. The saint is so to act upon this testimony as to the judgment of the world as practically to condemn the world. Had we Noah's faith, as well as Abel's and Enoch's, we could not go with the world. If His people are saved by Him, He is coming to judge the world; and therefore they have their portion with Christ, and in Christ, so that when He comes they will be with Him. As sure as Christ rose from the dead, He is "the Man" God has ordained to judge the world-" this present evil world; " and so sure there is no judgment for you and for me if we believe in Him. That by which I know there will be a judgment is that by which I know there will be none for me. How do I know there will be a judgment? Because God has raised Him from the dead. What more has God told me of His resurrection ? That my sins are all put away.
J.N.D.

There are two reasons given in Scripture for the notable delay of Christ's coming into the world. The one, you will find in Romans 5:6; the other, in this chapter. The one is developed in connection with the Jews, the other has its development in connection with the Gentiles; but the lesson in both cases is for men in general,-a lesson of world-wide significance; of so much importance that God devoted four thousand years to make it plain, while now for nearly half that time men have slighted or refused it. And yet there is no blessing for man which does not depend upon the reception of it.

These four thousand years were needed to prepare the world for Christ; but how different a preparation from that which is ordinarily thought of as necessary. If education be, as it is rightly insisted that the term implies, the drawing out of the natural powers and qualities of the soul, then we may, if we will, call these ages the period of the world's education. It ended with a cross, which Jews and Gentiles combined to give their Creator and Saviour!

But that cross had its "due time" fixed in the wisdom and grace of God; "for when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." The moral question as to man was solved. What was he ? What had his education under law proved him to be? "Ungodly" and " without strength:" "yet"-after centuries of patient trial and long-suffering goodness,-"yet without strength."

And this was not Israel's merely, but mans trial. If Israel only had the law, yet who could contend that what it had demonstrated as to them was not as fully proved for every other people? "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." And thus says the apostle, " We know that what things soever the law saith it saith to those that are under the law,"-but for what purpose? "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God."

But the Gentiles too had their own special proving. If God had given up those who when they knew God, glorified Him not as God, but abased Him to the likeness of the lowest of His creatures, -and if for ages they had remained without revelation or open intervention on His part,-even in this silence there was not indifference. It was "in the wisdom of God " to prove that " the world by wisdom knew not God." Those to whom the apostle is here writing were familiar with all that culture, science, and philosophy had achieved in Greece; and where else had it achieved so much? It was their well-known characteristic that "the Greeks seek after wisdom." Yet in Athens, to believers in an " unknown God," could Paul declare Him whom thus in ignorance they worshiped. "For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe."

Mentally and morally, thus man's need was exposed. And indeed his mental defect is a moral defect, as his inspired history (the only competent one) shows. The world got its wisdom by the fall, and while it values highly what it bought so dearly, it necessarily cannot revoke nor remedy the judgment of sin. It cannot escape the sentence of "vanity" written now upon the fallen creature.

This double lesson as to a need met only by God's word and Christ's work is given us in two books of Scripture-not of the New Testament, but of the Old; for God has title to speak as to the issue of the experiment He was making, before it was in fact made, thus enabling faith to anticipate the result, and learn before hand the dispensational lesson. These two books are, of course, Job and Ecclesiastes. And here, remarkably enough, and as if to make us realize the universality of these conditions, the Gentile is taken up to preach to us of righteousness, the Jew to descant upon human wisdom.

The book of Job is that of "the penitent." So competent scholars interpret his name; and it is with his repentance that God's controversy with him closes, and the story finds morally its end. But who is this penitent one? Some chief of sinners ? No. When God is teaching us the greatness of His grace, He may and will take up the chief of sinners to emphasize it. But here His design is to teach us what man is, and for this He takes up "man in his best estate,"-a saint, not a sinner, -nay, the very chief even of saints. He does not leave us to form our estimate of Job; He carefully gives us His own estimate. " There is not a man like him upon earth," He says:"one that feareth God and escheweth evil." It is this man who in the presence of God is brought to say, " Behold, I am vile;" " I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Who then can expect to stand before God, sinner or saint, upon the ground of any mere human righteousness? And this book of Job is not only outside of law, but antidates it altogether. Yet it is bound up among the books of the law, for the instruction of those under it, abiding, side by side with the vail that with one exception, typical in its meaning, no foot of man could pass, the witness of universal judgment upon all that is born of flesh.

In Ecclesiastes we find, by no means the most perfect, but the wisest of men. Just as God has taken care to pronounce upon Job's goodness, so (with an evidently parallel purpose) has He pronounced upon Solomon's wisdom. For " Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men, . . . and his fame was in all nations round about." (i Kings 4:30, 31.)

Into the hands of one thus qualified God put resources otherwise as abundant that he might find, if possible to be found, " what was that good for the sons of men which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life."

We know well how this wisdom was baffled,- what he saw who looked upon the earth with these discerning eyes. A wheel of events ever passing, ever returning, but generations passing that did not return; a time for every thing, and every thing but for a time, and man, with his heart revolving the question of eternity,* driven back by the mystery of death, which levels the wise and the fool, man and beast together, and beyond which one may indeed speculate, but cannot know. *"The world" in chap. 3:11 should be "eternity."* Even as to things here, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happening to them all. " Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun; because though a man labor to seek it out, yet shall he not find it; yea, farther, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he riot be able to find it."

" What hope or answer of redress?
Behind the vail, behind the vail."

So says the modern prophet amid the open glory of Christianity, alas! Yet the vail is done away in Christ. But now as ever, for mere science or philosophy, God is inscrutable, life beyond death a possibility for hope; the wisdom of man is forced "ever to put questions of infinite moment for which it can find no answer. Eternity is the problem in his heart; his knowledge is all of time; his conscience only prophesies of judgment to come.

The wisdom of man is thus wholly incompetent, confessedly so, to settle one of those questions, which are of the deepest importance,-nay, we may say, of the only real moment. It is incompetent to deliver from the stamp of vanity a life which comes out of darkness and returns to darkness again, burdened the meanwhile with infinite care and sorrow and perplexity. The apprehension of sin, and of judgment because of sin, will explain it, but brings in itself no hope. In turning thus to God there may be hope indeed; but then it must be from Him, and man's wisdom own itself the wrecked and ruined thing it is, and that in God, and not in itself, deliverance is.

Nowadays the world vaunts its progress; but as to removing death, or the sting of it, which is sin, or any of the most real shadows which darken man's few years of life, no one believes in his heart there has been progress at all. Bring all that art or science has produced or discovered, and who supposes that in it all there is one whit of real advance beyond the preacher-king? Men have sought out, indeed, many inventions; and "necessity," say they, " is the mother of invention:" but how then did man get into necessity ? Scripture answers, for those that will heed the answer, that in eating of the forbidden tree of knowledge, his first attainment in it was to know that he was naked, his first invention an apron to cover his nakedness,-a conventional covering, not really one,-and these are but the types of his wisdom and inventions ever since. He has decorated the apron, if you like.

Is it any wonder, then, that the revelation of God seeks and finds no help from mere human wisdom? that, with its Author, it should say, " I receive not testimony from man " (Jno. 5:34) ? Is it not the natural and necessary consequence that the wise, and the scribe, and the disputer of this world should be set aside; that " not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble" should be called; but that God should choose "the foolish things of the world to confound the wise"? Nothing is more simple, nothing more inevitable, than what so many cavil at. By what right do the proud assertors of the value of this world's wisdom cry up, as they do, their article ? Every one knows that intellect and genius argue nothing as to the possession of qualities which we are compelled after all to value more. Brilliancy is not goodness. Cleverness and knowledge may be only the equipment of consummate knavery; but "the knowledge of the holy," as Scripture says, alone "is understanding." (Prov. 9:ii) How, then, can God put honor upon a wisdom gotten by the fall?

But we can go further. We can rejoice with Him who in the day of His rejection could answer and say, " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes." Had it been otherwise,-had revelation addressed itself to the wise as such, and the babes been compelled to wait for their sanction of it before they could receive it, how fatal would have been the consequence! how helpless the dependence upon those whose intellect is, as I have said, no guarantee for their integrity! how would the conscience be taken out of its true place before God and made subject to the guidance of His infirm and sinful creatures! But not only so:the lower level is the broader-the common-level. There is no hindrance, save the pride of knowledge, to the wise receiving upon its own sufficient evidence what equally commends itself to the merest babe, while the babe could not acquire (if that were necessary) the intellect of the other.

But what evidence, then, it will be asked, can Scripture furnish on which to base its claim to be believed ? The evidence that it can transcend the limits of mere human wisdom, relieve the conscience from its guilt, satisfy and purify the heart, and set man free from the stamp of vanity by bringing him to God, and transforming and trans-figuring the shadows of time in the light of a holy and blessed eternity. " Light," indeed, is the term used by Scripture itself for what in Christ has come into the world." The entrance of Thy word giveth light."And light is for the many, not for the few, nor needs outside evidence, nor aught but its own shining to declare it. All other things are seen by means of it, not it by means of other things. Christ is thus light for all,-light for the mind, conscience, and heart alike, witnessing to every man, independently of all other men. Faith in Him is the entire opposite to all credulity, while faith in the wisdom of the wisest else is but credulity and nothing more.

Think of One, of whom they wondered, " How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" -a Galilean peasant merely in the eyes of men, venturing to say, in the midst of a world of restless and unsatisfied hearts, " Come unto Me, and I will give you rest"! Think, still more, of One who could propose as a remedy for all the trouble and care that makes this life a burden, only increased by the thought of another, to believe in Himself as they believed in God! Yet every generation since has had its millions of rejoicing witnesses to the truth of these wonderful promises. The conscience has found rest in His blood as atonement for sin; the heart, in His love who in Himself has revealed the Father; sinful men have bowed their necks to His yoke, and found the path of obedience to His commandments the path of unfailing pleasantness and peace; in every tongue that man has spoken, new words have had to be found to give voice to the new blessedness wherewith He has filled men's hearts and lives. As the apostle says, who in his own person had proved it well, " to them who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ" has become " the power of God and the wisdom of God."

And it is of Him as the wisdom of God that this thirtieth verse speaks to which now I want to invite your attention. It is evident that " wisdom " is the apostle's subject both here and in the following chapter; and the language used puts an emphasis upon this which our common version, and indeed every version that I know, fails to bring out, but upon which the point of the passage largely depends. I read it very much as the margin of the Revised Version puts it, which is good sense, but bad English:"But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom from God, not only* righteousness, but also sanctification and redemption. *"This is plainly the force of διχαιoσύvη Γε χα, άγιασμός etc. τε χα after διχαιoδύvη disconnects "righteousness" from "wis-dom," and binds it to the following words. The margin of the Revised Version has "both," which can only connect two things-not three. There is no peculiar difficulty in the Greek.* "It is not four things which are given us side by side, but one which includes three others. Christ is made to us wisdom from God in that we find in Him the full meeting, and more than meeting, of man's need as a fallen and ruined creature. Human wisdom is lost and shows itself the merest folly in presence of sin and death and judgment; but the true wisdom, which is from God, and which we have in Christ, demonstrates itself as such by being able to deal with all, arid to bring men out of their ruin and guilt into greater blessing than was his unfallen, thus glorifying God in the place where He had been dishonored:- " that, according as it is written,' He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.' "

If we look, then, at these three things, we shall find that they meet, and in divine order, the threefold need of man:he is guilty, he is depraved, he is ignorant of and away from God; righteousness ministered to him meets his guilt, sanctification his depravity; redemption claims him for God and brings him to God. In Christ all this is found, and in Him therefore divine wisdom is displayed and glorified.

Let us ponder these things a little, and may God give us hearts to praise,-us who are yet to lead the angels' praises for a grace of which we are the subjects and shall be monuments forever.

Righteousness is the first need; for except guilt can be removed, God cannot interfere except in judgment. In the Scripture-statement, generally, indeed, sanctification comes before justification, and not in the order in which evangelical Christians ordinarily put them. In the order of application, sanctification must begin first; for only as believing are we justified, and where there is this faith, the work of sanctification has in fact begun. Nevertheless in another sense righteousness must be the foundation of all. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Thus the Lord speaks of the necessity of His death, for only in death-atoning death-could He lay hold upon us for blessing. Our life itself comes to us out of death, and only so,-out of righteousness accomplished for us. Thus only could God find way for His love.

Guilty, then, as we all are, God must minister righteousness; He must justify freely, justify the ungodly,-He, and He alone. Who else could do it ? what but His wisdom find any way?

Sinners, and already-condemned sinners, we find in Christ One who has gone into death for us be-cause we were that, taken our condemnation and our curse, and by His own perfect obedience, glorifying God in the awful place of sin, has risen up out of all,-raised of necessity by the glory of the Father, by His resurrection manifestly accepted of God; but O joy, then, accepted for us, and we in Him, "who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification."

If we ask for our title to account this ours, it is for sinners,-our sins are our title, if in this day of grace we bring them and put them down before God-a title that He assuredly never will deny. Every sinner as such has thus a title to the Saviour of sinners, but a title forfeited if not claimed in time, and which so forfeited will be the deepest agony of the soul forever. " If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

In Christ's blood, then, we find what justifies us; in His resurrection, our sentence of justification pronounced by God, under which, when we believe, we come, so as to be justified by faith. It is one justification only, not three, which we find; by faith, in Christ risen from the dead. But He is not merely risen, He is gone up to God, and gone up in the value which He has for God, and as Man for men for whom He suffered and died. It is there that He is our righteousness, as risen and gone up to God. Thus, not merely are we justified, (which is negative righteousness-cleared of all charge of guilt,) but, much more than this, the best robe in the Father's house is put upon us- upon returned prodigals bringing merely rags and wretchedness in the hope of-"Some lone place within the door."

How blessed, how wonderful, this matchless grace! How is it possible that it can ever be mentioned without stirring the whole depths of our being to go out in praise? How manifest and perfect the divine wisdom and power in Christ toward us!
Yet however wondrous the righteousness, more is needed. God could not merely cover the nakedness of a sinner while leaving him still the sinner that he was before. Man's guilt was plainly only the first need that had to be provided for; he was depraved no less than guilty, and here was a second need, no less impossible for any invention of man to meet, no less needing divine wisdom. This too in Christ is met, and more than met. Not only is He made righteousness for us, but also sanctification.

Now sanctification is spoken of in two special ways in Scripture. We are sanctified by the blood of Christ, and we are sanctified by the Spirit of Christ; we are sanctified positionally, and we are sanctified practically.

Positionally, the blood of Christ has set us apart to God:that is the meaning of sanctification- setting apart to God. The Lord speaks thus of sanctifying Himself when He is going to take a new position as Man with God:" For their sakes," He says, " I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth." (Jno. 17:19.) It is plain that this was no spiritual change in the Lord, which it were blasphemy to think:it was simply a new place He was taking for us Godward. And upon this our sanctification, positionally and practically, depends.

We have followed Him in our thoughts already up to that blessed place where now He sits in glory, and we have seen that He has taken it, not simply by virtue of His divine nature. He is gone there as man. " By His own blood He has entered in once into the holy place, [that is, of course, heaven,]having obtained eternal redemption." (Heb. 9:12.)This blood that He has shed for us then sets us apart to God, or sanctifies us in the power of this "eternal redemption." This is brought out in the epistle from which I just quoted:" By the which will [of God, which He came to do,] we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (10:10.) We are thus "saints," holy ones, separated to God from all impurity and self-service, by this perfect sacrifice. How far our character and ways correspond to this is another question, which presently the word of God will raise; but it raises none until it has set us in the place itself, separated to God, separate from all iniquity according to the power of the blood that has been shed for our redemption.

From thence results, as the apostle shows, the purification of the conscience:" For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve [or better, worship] the living God" (9:13, 14).And how complete the purification he urges from the completeness of the work itself, never to be, and never needing to be, (as the legal sacrifices were,) renewed! " Worshipers once purged" according to God, should have "no more conscience of sins " (10:2), for " by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified" 5:14).Thus the exhortation follows for us, " Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the vail, that is to say, His flesh, and having a High-Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith; having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."(10:19-22.)

How absolutely necessary for practical sanctification this purifying of the conscience by the knowledge of a perfect and abiding work! And then for us this open sanctuary, henceforth the place where with joyful and free hearts we draw near to worship God. This is indeed the spring of holiness, to be at home with God, worshipers necessarily, as all are there. Alas! how little do we realize the blessedness! There is no possible place of distance from sin but in nearness to God.

Practical sanctification has its two factors in new birth, and the operation of the Holy Ghost, through the word, upon the believer, taking of the things of Christ to show them to him. Of new birth I shall only say that here Christ it is who is our life, and that this new life is as really such, as that communicated naturally. It is thus we have a nature capable of responding to the word ministered to it, although still and ever the Spirit's work is necessary to make the word good in the hearts of the children of God.

But being born again, it is Christ as apprehended by the soul, in what He personally is, and in the place in which He is, who is the power of sanctification for us. And herein is the wisdom of God in Him fully and wonderfully displayed. By His blessed work He has not only put away our sins, and set our consciences at rest in the presence of God, but He has thus laid hold upon our hearts, and won us for Himself forever. His love to us has begotten love in us; and he who knows that he has had much forgiven will love much. Christian life,-what only can be called so,-is thus love's free and happy offering to Him who has loved us." He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for us and rose again."

But then if our hearts are thus Christ's, where is Christ? In heaven, And where then are our hearts? If it be reality with us, then in heaven too. And that is the power of practical holiness, an object-the object–for our hearts outside the world, outside the whole scene of temptation and evil. We have not to look about in this world to see what of good we can perchance find in it. Christ is in heaven. Holiness is for us by heavenliness; and how simply, and in what perfect wis-dom, has God provided for us by the power of an absorbing affection, the object of it withdrawn from us, outside the world, and becoming thus the goal of a pilgrim's heart and a pilgrim's steps!

Are you a pilgrim, reader ? It is a day of sad declension, in which even God's own children are, how many of them become blind, and cannot see afar off, and have forgotten they were purged from their old sins! But Christ has all the power and attraction yet He ever had, and if our feet are slow upon the road, it is not because He is less fitted to fill and satisfy and energize the heart than ever He was; it is because our eyes are too little fixed on Him. But thus if we are become dull and lethargic, He abides, with unchanged affection soliciting our hearts. If it be so, let us turn to Him, and own it, and pray Him so to reveal Himself that we shall yet know what it is, in calm and sober estimate, to count, with the apostle, all things but loss and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

Surely Christ as sanctification is Christ the wis-dom of God ; but we must pass on to the last point yet in which according to the apostle He is shown to be so:-this is " redemption."

And what is redemption ? It is God's love acting from itself, to satisfy itself, and at personal cost. It is more than purchase, for I may purchase, not because I care myself for what I get, but to give away, or for some other reason. But redemption is for myself, for what my own heart values, the getting back of something the worth of which to me is known by the price I am willing to give for it. Redemption brings out thus the heart of the redeemer.
And in Eden, amid all the goodness with which he was surrounded, man, taught of Satan, had learnt to suspect the heart of God. There and then he had lost God, for He is nothing if He be not good. Since then, "there is none [naturally] that seeketh " Him, that believes that there is any thing in Him for which to seek Him. Natural religions are religions of fear and of self-interest only, and men's gods the image of their own corruptions. God must reveal Himself; and He has, how gloriously! Not goodness merely for man innocent in Eden, but infinite love to those who in Christ could see and hate Him." God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Christ is the redemption-price which shows the heart of the Redeemer, and in His wondrous work, the Father's love and the Father's heart.

Thus in the wisdom of God man's need is completely met. His conscience and heart are effectually provided for, and Christ is this wisdom and this power of God. How blessed beyond measure thus to know Him! Human wisdom, humbled in the dust, finds alone its own gracious restoration in owning God's. Has it any evidence? men ask. He who finds it enter as light into his soul need be none of earth's wise ones to give the answer. There is but one Christ any where for a soul that has realized its need. The word is the revelation; and if man be abased by it, and no flesh able to glory in the presence of God, He is made known so that in Him, and in Him alone, they shall henceforth glory. And this, for those who know it, is the happiness and the holiness of eternity begun.

For such, redemption shall soon display its power over the body itself, that in the image of Christ fully they may enjoy the blessedness which is theirs in Him forever.

The divine meaning of Christ's sacrifice. Atoning suffering, the drinking of the cup of wrath:every other element of sorrow entering in, only to be contrasted with God's forsaking. As the result, grace flows out to men in ever-widening circles:(i)the remnant of Israel owned as brethren; (2) the "great congregation" of all Israel; (3) all the ends of the world; and Jehovah's righteousness in the cross is declared to the generations following.

To the chief musician, upon Aijeleth Shahar. A psalm of David.

My God*, My God*, why hast Thou forsaken Me? – far [art Thou] from saving Me, [from] the words of My roaring !

2. My God, I cry in the day-time, and Thou answerest not! and by night, and cannot be silent!

3. But Thou art holy, dwelling amid the praises of Israel.

4. Our fathers trusted in Thee:trusted, and Thou didst deliver them.

5. They cried unto Thee, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not ashamed.

6. But I am a worm, and not a man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

7. All they that see Me mock Me:they thrust out the lip, they wag the head, [saying]:

8. "He trusted in Jehovah,-He will deliver Him; He will rescue Him, for He delighted in Him."

9. But Thou art He who brought Me out of the womb; giving Me confidence upon My mother's breasts.

10. I have been cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou art My God* from My mother's belly.

11. Be not far from Me, for distress is near, but there is none to help.

12. Many bullocks have compassed Me about; strong ones of Bashan have beset me round.

13. They opened wide their mouth upon Me, as a lion tearing and roaring.

14. Like water am I poured out, and My bones are all disjointed; my heart is become like wax,- it is melted in the midst of My bowels.

15. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue cleaveth to My jaws; and Thou hast laid Me in the dust of death.

16. For dogs have compassed Me; the assembly of evil-doers have inclosed Me, piercing My hands and My feet.
17. I may number all My bones:they gaze, they look upon Me.

18. They part My garments among them, and cast lots upon My vesture.

19. But Thou, Jehovah, be not far from Me; O My Strength, haste quickly to My help!

20. Rescue My soul from the sword,-My only one from the paw of the dog!

21. Save Me from the lion's mouth! yea, from the horns of the aurochs Thou hast answered Me.

22. I will declare Thy name unto My brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.

23. Ye who fear Jehovah, praise Him; all ye seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and reverence Him, all ye seed of Israel.

24. For He hath not slighted nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted one; nor hath He hid His face from Him, but when He cried unto Him He heard.

25. Of Thee shall be My praise in the great congregation; I will make good My vows in the presence of them that fear Him.

26. The humble shall eat and be full; they shall praise Jehovah that fear Him; your heart shall live for aye.

27. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Jehovah; and all the families of the Gentiles shall worship before Thee.

28. For the kingdom shall be Jehovah's, and He shall be Ruler among the Gentiles.

29. All the fat upon earth have eaten, and worship :all those going down to the dust shall kneel before Him, and he who cannot keep his soul alive.

30. A seed shall serve Him:it shall be counted to the Lord for a generation.

31. They shall come and declare His righteousness to a people that shall be born, in that He hath done [this].

Text.-Title :"Aijeleth Shahar "-" Hind of the dawn," the first morning beams being compared to the horns of a hind. This is so beautiful a significance when applied to that work in which the darkness in which man had got (the face of God being hidden from him,) was put away, and the true light broke forth upon him, that it is needless even to allude to other proposed meanings.

(8) Perhaps more literally, " Rolling [it, or Himself] on Jehovah, He will deliver Him."

Remarks.-This psalm gives unmistakably the sin-offering aspect of the work of the cross. It divides evidently into two parts, of which the twenty-one verses of the first part give the work itself, the last ten the results. This number 21 is surely significant, especially when we compare it with the thirty-six verses of the trespass-offering psalm (Ixix). 36 is the number of the books of the Old Testament or law, and give, as 3 plus 12 (the divine and the governmental numbers), " God in government." Here, the 21 is 3 plus 7, the last, as in the days of creation, the expression of accomplished, perfect work. In the sin-offering it is the divine nature that is in question; in the trespass-offering, the divine government, as the requirement of restitution shows, a precise estimate of the injury being made.

What is emphasized and put in contrast with all else is the forsaking of God ; and this is what the holiness of His nature implies with One who, though He knew no sin, was made sin for us. The fourth verse shows that was no mere being left in the hands of His enemies, for the fathers had not always escaped these :it was a real desertion of soul, which the three hours' darkness symbolized, the light withdrawn, and God is light. To this, on the light breaking forth again out of this darkness, the title, as I have said already, points.

If riches will thus do them good, all things shall concur to make them rich:if poverty, all things shall concur to keep them poor:if it be good for them to be healthful and strong, all things shall concur to prevent sickness:if it is better to be sick or weak, all things shall concur to impair their health:and so in every thing else that can be named. So that every thing that happens well for them-the best that can be, in that it helps to the subduing of some vice in them, or to the regulating of some passion, or to the breaking of an ill custom, or to the preventing some occasion of falling into sin or mischief, or to the diverting some temptation, or to the arming them against it, or to the making them more watchful over themselves, or to the exercising some virtue in them, or to the putting them in mind of their duty or to the keeping them close to it, or to the giving them an opportunity of doing some good which otherwise they could not do, or else to their growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and so to the fitting them better to serve God here and to live with Him hereafter. Whatever conduceth to these and such like ends is truly good for them, and therefore all things concur to effect it. They may be sure of it, for they have the word of God Himself for it, assuring them here, by His apostle, that " all things work together for good."

Beveridge

Abraham.

Circumcision known, we find in the next chapter God in communion with Abraham (now indeed Abraham) after a manner never before enjoyed. The Lord not only comes or appears to him, but openly associates Himself with him as with one of whom He is not ashamed. No one can doubt, that looks at it, the suggestive contrast with the next chapter, in which Lot for the last time comes before us, the very type of one " saved so as through the fire." This has been seen by others, but the more we look at it, the more striking and instructive will it be found. I shall dwell at more length than I have usually permitted myself upon lessons of such intense and practical interest as are those which God in His mercy has here given us.

It should be evident that the foundation of all this contrast expresses itself in the different position of these two men-the one, in the door of his tent at Mamre; the other, in the gate of Sodom. In the one, we see still the persistent pilgrim; in the other, one who has been untrue to his pilgrim-ship, and is settled down amid the pollutions of a sinful world. Striking it is, and most important to remember, that he is a " righteous man," expressly declared "so by the word of inspiration:"That righteous man, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their ungodly deeds." He is thus an example of how " the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." (2 Pet. 2:7,9.) This is a complete contrast with the way in which the book of Genesis represents him. I need scarcely say, there is no contradiction; and the contrast itself is a very beautiful instance of the style of Scripture. In the actual narrative he is spoken of as one of whom God is ashamed:" And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in the midst of which Lot dwelt." Lot has been under the cover, and God must use the cover toward him. He is the God of Abraham; how could He call Himself the God of Lot? How solemn this treatment of one of His own! Reader, how is it with you this moment as before God? Is He confessing, or denying you ? This is not a question which you can turn off by saying, I am a Christian. It is on that very ground that it appeals to you.

In the history, then, we find God making Himself strange to Lot. This was what His governmental ways required-the discipline that the need of his soul called for at the time. The need past and gone, as He looks back upon that history now, He can pick out of it the good He had marked all through, and say how precious to Him, even in a Lot, was the trouble of soul which the iniquity of Sodom gave him. Such is our God! such is His holiness, and such His grace!

But then how clear this makes it that it was not because Lot had taken part in the wickedness of Sodom that the Lord was thus displeased! It was simply on account of his being there, even as of Abraham that tent-life of his is marked out for His special approval:" By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise …. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. …. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God ; for He hath prepared for them a city." (Heb. 11:9, 13, 16.)

Thus, then, we are right in saying that the tent at Mamre and the gate of Sodom are characteristic and contrasted things. Faith, looking for a city which hath foundations, is content to scratch the earth with a tent-pole merely. This was Abraham's place, pattern as he is, and father of all them that believe; and God comes to commune with him, in the broad open day-" in the heat of the day."

The style of His coming is as noticeable as all else:there is no distance, there is intimacy:it is three men who come; in fact, two angels, and One before whom the angels vail their faces. But they come as men, and keep this place-the more strikingly, because in the next chapter we find those who had left Abraham still as two men appear in Sodom explicitly as angels. Clearly, this difference has meaning in it. How sweet a foreshadowing of what in due time was to take place-the tabernacling in flesh of Him in whom faith realizes the glory of Immanuel, now no more to faith a Visitant merely.

And Abraham's practiced heart knew under all disguises Him who stood there. We learn this plainly from the first words with which he welcomes One whom yet in this garb he has never seen before. " Lord," he says, distinguishing Him by a title only given to God, " if now I have found favor in Thy sight, pass not away, I pray Thee, from Thy servant:let a little water, I pray you be fetched you and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree:and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on :for therefore are ye come unto your servant."

The faith that recognizes, entertains in the same simplicity Him whom it recognizes. There is none of the unbelieving cry so often heard, " We have seen God, and we shall die." In beautiful confidence of faith, he meets Him who has come to him as man, and as man gives Him human welcome. If He stoop to come so, he will not say, " That be far from Thee, Lord," but receive Him as He comes, putting undoubtedly before Him whatever he has, and being met with unhesitating acceptance. " He stood by them under the tree, and they did eat."

And do you, beloved reader, in the like unsuspicious way receive the grace which has now come to us in a Christ made fully known? or do you, alas! draw back from His approach, as if He knew not the full reality of the place which He has taken with us, or else the full reality of what. we are, among whom He has come ? I cannot find that Abraham even put his dress in order to appear before the Lord Almighty. His best and his worst were not so far apart as to make him think of it. There was no preparation of himself to appear before Him who knew him through and through. Just as he was, whatever he was, the love that met him was worthy of reception, then and there:all the sweeter and more wonderful the more he was unworthy.

But in fact, if we translate these figures, Abraham has that which may well, wherever He finds it, bring the Lord in to have communion with us. These "three measures of fine meal," and this "calf, tender and good:" do you not recognize them ? Surely wherever such food is found there will still be found the Lord in company. It is Christ of whom these things speak, and occupation with Christ is still the essential and only prerequisite for communion. It is when the apostle has introduced to us, in just such nearness as was Abraham's here, that eternal life which was with the Father, and heard, seen, looked upon, and handled with the hands among us here, that he says, " That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye may have fellowship with us," and then he adds, " and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ."

If, then, our souls lack fellowship,-if we are out of communion,-ought we not to ask ourselves if the great primary lack be not of occupation with Christ? Other things, no doubt, will enter in where this is absent, and we shall not be able to return to feed on Him until these things be judged and removed. But here is the first point of departure, as with Israel the turning from the manna.

Abraham's tent is provided, then, with that with which he entertains a heavenly guest. First, the three measures of meal tell of Christ personally. The "meal" is not merely this:it is the "fine flour" of the meat-offering afterward, which we all know represents Him. It is Christ as man, the Bread of life, the food of His people. But what then are the "three measures"? What is the measure of the Man Christ Jesus ? Nothing less, surely, than this, that "in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." And is not this what the number three, the number of the Trinity -that is, of divine fullness, speaks?* *The same exactly as in the parable in Matthew 13:I cannot but understand, therefore, that it is Christ also that is represented there:it is the food of God's people which the professing church, having assumed the teacher's chair, is leavening with false doctrine.* The "calf," on the other hand,-not necessarily what this implies for us, but a young, fresh animal-no less clearly reminds us of Him who was the true and perfect Workman for God. And here that mystery, which we have before seen after the flood began to be pressed upon man, that life given up must sustain life, is once more told out.

In Scripture thus the person and work of Christ are kept ever together:it is not a work alone, but a living Person who has accomplished the work. Where we have Him before us really, communion with God there cannot but be. How sweet that thus, Lord's day by Lord's day at least, the bread and the wine are to be before us, to occupy our very hands and eyes-so busy with the things of time and sense as they are-with Him who claims the whole man for Himself,-that is, for fullest joy and blessing; that afresh and afresh He in His person and work may make communion with God our power to go though a world which has rejected Him.

And now Abraham is to receive the final message that the long-expected promise shall be fulfilled. Intimately connected, surely, with the scene before us (if we look through the figure to that of which it speaks,) is the birth of Isaac now announced. It was a "son born" that was to make Abraham's heart glad ("Isaac" means "laughter"), and we know of whom Isaac is the type. It is not of Christ come to dwell-no more to visit merely-that the figure speaks? Thus we have here what filled the apostle's heart so afterward for the Ephesians, and bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ:" That He would grant unto you, according to the riches of His glory, to be filled with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints the length and depth and breadth and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God."

But this we shall have to look at more in another place. We have now to see as the fulfillment and fruit of communion, the Lord disclosing to Abraham the doom of Sodom, now just ready to overwhelm her. How striking are the words in which He counsels with Himself as to this permitting us also to hear that counsel! "And the Lord said, ' Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? for I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham all that He hath spoken of him.'"

How beautiful this testimony to one who could be called " the friend of God! "How sweet the encouragement in maintaining in one's household an authority rapidly being given up in these days -an authority from God and for God! " He will command, . . . and they shall keep the way of the Lord." Do we not see the connection also between the man of God and the prophet? It was the constant title of these-:-men of God:Abraham too is called "a prophet." "And surely," says Amos, "the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets." To be with God is the way to penetrate the reality of things even of the world itself. And it is in this way that the book of Revelation addresses itself to Christ's servants, " to show unto them the things which must shortly come to pass."

How carefully and patiently God judges, moreover, as to Sodom,-no indifference, with all His apparent slowness! How that full oversight and patient judgment of every thing are affirmed! " And the Lord said, ' Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether -they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know.'"

"And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom; but Abraham stood yet before the Lord."

And now Abraham takes the place which it was surely one part of the design of this gracious communication to put him into-the place of intercession. For us whose characters are to be formed by the apprehension of Christ, and who know Him now as in this very place of intercession, how important it is to realize what is before us here! It is His people for whom the Holy Spirit intercedes below. Abraham's prayer too follows the same pattern:"And Abraham drew near and said,' Wilt Thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city, wilt Thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked; and that the righteous be as the wicked, that be far from Thee:shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'"

How strange the implied doubt here in Abraham's mind! What poor weak questions do not these minds of ours raise! An Abraham praying the Judge of all the earth to do right! Is it not a first principle that of course He must? How could he doubt? we say. Beloved, do we never? and how much more do we know of God than Abraham could do possibly! How large a portion of our prayers, if they were analyzed, would be resolved into this, the asking God to do right! Alas! what infidelity, even as to first principles, cleaves to us when we little suspect it! God will do right! Why, of course. Oh, but when every thing on earth seems as if it were going wrong,- when with Jacob we are tempted to say, "All these things are against us,"-when with Job we have to take our place upon the dust-heap, has there never the bitter question sprung up in our hearts, if it brake not the door of our lips,-do we never at least have to still our hearts with it,-" Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

But it is beautiful to see how Abraham flings it all out-doubt and all, casts it down before God. " Pour out your hearts before Him," says the Psalmist; " Be careful for nothing," adds the apostle ; " but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." In these very requests, what a multitude of things unworthy of Him! but He who has known them in the heart before would have us pour them out in His presence, and oh the relief that the heart gets so! How many of these workings of unbelief do the psalms thus give us! but they are poured out before God, and the soul stills itself in that blessed presence as no where else can it be stilled. What! we have been asking God if He is God! " O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted," peace! He is indeed the " God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

On the other hand, the intercession is right, and of God. He will do all things well. He will care for His saints whether we ask Him or not:Christ intercedes; could we add any thing to the efficacy of His intercession? is it not all-prevailing? does it not cover all? Yes, yes,-yes, He into whose hands God has given His people is surely the merciful and faithful High-Priest, never forgetting those whom He bears upon His breast before God. Yet none the less is it ours to pray "with all prayer and supplication for all saints." He has ordained, in His grace to us, that flow of abundant blessing which He pours out upon His people should flow, in part at least, through channels of our own providing. He has given us fellowship with Himself in His love and care for His people. How blessed this fellowship! Is it not, I ask again, in a peculiar way our privilege who are one with Him who as man has entered into the presence of God, and with whom we are one, surely not in position only, but in heart and spirit also ? Thus the Spirit maketh intercession for the saints according to God ; and in our hearts where this intercession is made, if there be prayer "in the Holy Ghost," it will still be " intercession for the saints:" not for me or mine (in the narrow human sense), not for individual saints dear to me merely ; not for sect or party ; but "for all saints"! O for more power for this broad and blessed outlook, with Christ for the whole field of those that are His! O for more ability to throw ourselves in with them into their joys, their sorrows, their cares, their exercises; to " bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ;" to realize our oneness with Him, as we take His own into our arms and hearts in real and hearty recognition of eternal kinship!

Sodom's judgment is indeed, alas! near at hand; and little does the proud and self-sufficient world dream, (just ready to throw off openly the rule of the ordained Ruler of the scene of His rejection,) that it is the " fifty righteous " that alone have suspended divine judgment hitherto. How solemn their condition for whom presently no prayer will any more avail!

There is no rebuke with God, but a full answer. " And the Lord said,' If I find fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sake.'" Abraham goes further. But it is not needful to go through the detail, so familiar as it is, of these requests which, pressed on and on, find nothing but acceptance from the patient goodness of God; until at last Abraham's faith fails, but not God's goodness:for we read that "it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in the midst of which Lot dwelt."

The testimony of the prophetic books, distinctively so called, is full and constant to the person and glory of Christ:the announcement of His sufferings and atoning work on the other hand infrequent, and of the latter scarcely to be found, except in one passage of one book,-the fifty-third of Isaiah. Here, indeed, it is full and explicit; but we must not expect the wondrous reality to break often through its vail of type and figure while that dispensation of shadows lasted. The sacrificial system, at which we have been looking, was of course all through in existence; and Isaiah it is who is prepared for his mission, as peculiarly, and even by his very name,* the prophet of salvation, by what is in effect a sacrificial anointing. This is indeed remarkable in its character, and as the prophetic seal upon the Mosaic testimony. *Jeshaia, the "salvation of Jehovah."*

" In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim:each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, ' Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.' And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that spake, and the house was filled with smoke." The holiness of God was necessary wrath in a fallen world; and in such a presence, what is man, whoever he be? "Then said I, 'Woe is me! for I am undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.' " But if this be the necessary confession, how blessed the grace which is, in equal necessity, the divine response! "Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, 'Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is cleansed.' "

This touching of the " lips with sacred fire," how often has it been the subject of an allusion which has missed the whole point of what is here. It is quite true that it is a prophet whose lips are touched, and that his call (whether to the prophetic office itself or to some special mission) follows directly after; but the touch is nevertheless not that of inspiration, and the fire does not energize here, but " cleanse." And striking it is to find such an instrument employed in such a way. The live coal would seem more the symbol of divine wrath against, than of mercy for a sinner; nay, it does undoubtedly speak of that very character in God which the seraphim had celebrated, and which made His presence so insupportable to a guilty conscience. How could such a God give sentence in favor of one confessedly a sinner? :It is easy enough out of His presence to imagine this,-easy enough to say that mercy becomes Him as well as righteousness; certainly, if He be (as He must be) merciful, no one was ever afraid of His loving mercy. But He must be righteous in His mercy:righteousness must guarantee and condition all its acts; nay, justification (if this be possible,) must be the act of righteousness, and of righteousness alone. And this it is that produces terror at the thought of His presence.

How blessed is it, then, to see in this live coal, the very figure of that implacable righteousness in God which must be, here actually that which, applied to a man's sin-stained lips, cleanses and not consumes them! " Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged." But why? and how? The answer is most easy and most precious. It is a coal from off the altar which the seraph applies. It is a coal which has been consuming the sacrifice for sin:the type of a holiness which, while it remains of necessity ever the same, has found its complete satisfaction in that which has put away sin for every sinner convicted and confessed. Righteousness, because it is that, can only for such proclaim that " thine iniquity is taken away, thy sin is purged."

This indeed opens the prophet's lips to speak for God:"Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send? and who will go for Us?' Then said I, ' Here am I; send me.'" It is no wonder that he who in this (as the apostle tells us) "saw [Christ's] glory, and spake of Him " should be the instrument to declare His blessed work with a clearness which is no where else to be found outside of the New Testament. This we must look at now, although for our purpose it will be only a few statements that we shall consider.

The prophecy begins with ver. 13 of chap. lii, and goes down to the end of the fifty-third chapter. All the typical vail is dropped, and we see One manifestly in a sacrificial place for men,-a sin-bearer. The details of the death by which He would be cut off from among men are minutely given, as well as the perfection of character and life which fitted Him for an offering. He is, moreover, Jehovah's servant in all this, fulfilling His gracious purposes of blessing, and exalted by Him to glory unequaled as His sorrow.

Let us take this first, which to Him was first. It is as Jehovah's servant that the prophecy begins with Him. The wisdom with which He acts, the glory resulting, hinge upon this. God is glorified in Him; and being glorified in Him, glorifies Him in Himself. In the depths of that terrible agony to which He stooped,. in the heights of supreme glory to which He is lifted, He is still and ever the steadfast servant of Jehovah's will. It pleased Jehovah to bruise Him:Jehovah hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all; Jehovah's purpose prospers in His hand; He is "Jehovah's arm" of power for the deliverance and blessing of His people. How indeed like a track of light through the darkness of this apostate world is such a course! This is the bullock of the burnt-sacrifice, offered indeed for us, but " without spot, to God."

In the world despised and rejected, that was the necessary effect of what was His true glory. In His humiliation, carnal eyes discerned but weakness; to God, He was the "tender plant" of perfect dependent manhood; but therefore not formed by circumstances-not growing out of them, as far as they were concerned with His resources in Himself, a root out of a dry ground, life conquering death, but in strangership necessarily unknown and misconceived by those who, not being Wisdom's children, justified her not.

Yet not apart from men, to whose wants and sorrows, in no mere patronage, but as one bearing them in His own soul, He ministered; a death of shame and agony, to Him the necessary price of relieving even the least of the consequences of sin, -that death which those unconscious of their need took but as the decisive token of His own rejection. In fact it was but the antitype of those vicarious sacrifices which for centuries had been prophesying day by day in Israel, " He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities." Chastisement was it truly, still for our purification, corrective discipline for us whose peace it made,- " the chastisement of our peace;" for " with His stripes we are healed." " The iniquity of us all Jehovah has made to meet on Him."

Under the pressure-what? Only the full proof of absolute perfection:no violence (the sin of power), no deceit (the sin of weakness); taken away by oppression with the form of judgment, stricken for the sin of others, not even a word but in meek surrender to the full weight of woe, which transformed with agony His whole frame and features. Nor was this therefore merely bodily agony:His soul was made an offering for trespass, travailed with men's salvation, and was poured out unto death; He numbered with the transgressors, bearing the sin of many, making intercession for the transgressors.

Already we are following the track of the white-robed priest into the sanctuary. In truth, that entrance could not long be delayed. Even in death, the appointed grave with the wicked is changed into the rich man's tomb. Life follows- length of eternal days, and the portion of a conqueror. But it is Jehovah's purpose prospers in His hand:a seed is given Him among sprinkled nations, fruit of the travail of His soul, by His knowledge turned to righteousness.

Such, in brief, is Isaiah's vision of Christ; but the Conqueror-Sufferer, here depicted is without difficulty recognized as the One of whom the prophet has before spoken in terms which are full of the deepest significance. He is the " Child born," the "Son given," whose "name is called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace" (ch. 9:6). Weakness and omnipotence are here united; and in Him we rind the Founder of that eternal state in which the purposes of divine wisdom being fully accomplished, divine love can rest without possibility of any after-conflict. The work which we have here been contemplating is that in which the foundation of this is laid. Jehovah's wondrous Servant is Himself Jehovah; and in Him God meets man in the embrace of reconciliation and of love eternal.

This is surely the gospel of the Old Testament, but we must remember here the caution of the apostle of the circumcision as to the real intelligence of even those who wrote of such infinite glories:"Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you; searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Which things the angels desire to look into." (i Pet. 1:10-12.)

For our purpose, it would be evidently a diversion to take up the various applications of the sacrifices which we find in the book of Leviticus or elsewhere; but where we find variation in the sacrifice itself, we may expect a development of new features in that one great offering which all these foreshadow. Such variation we have in that which is enjoined for the cleansing of a leprosy which was already healed; and if we passed it over, we should manifestly miss designed instruction as to the work of atonement.

Here, "two birds, alive and clean," are to be taken, one only of which is to be killed, and this in a remarkable way, namely, "in an earthen vessel, over running [literally, living] water." "As for the living bird," it is added, " he [the priest] shall take it and the cedar-wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the living water; and he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field." In the cleansing of the leprous house, the same thing precisely is enjoined.

We have already, in the burnt-offering and sin-offering both, become familiar with the type of the bird. In the case before us there are, however, some notable differences from these, which all tend to show that here we have the type in its fullest character,-the most typical of all its forms. Thus it is neither dove nor pigeon nor any particular species that is prescribed, but simply two " birds." It is the bird as such, irrespective of specific qualities,-" the bird of heaven," according to the constant phraseology of Scripture,* a being not of earth. Its dying in a vessel of earth, by its plainly designed contrast, only brings out the more this character, and is interpreted for us by the apostle's application of the figure (2 Cor. 4:7) so as to render mistake impossible. *In our common version, most generally given as the fowl of the air."*

Again, while the bird-type, in the sin-offering ""plainly, and in the burnt-offering no less really, is placed higher thought, in fact a lower one, the other hand, it is the manifestly divine one remarkable as being defined neither as any other offering, but standing by itself, (in this first part of cleansing which restores the leper to the camp,) as if representing complementary thought, if I may so which while not entering into the idea of sacrifice as such, and therefore not found in these distinctive aspects of Christ's blessed work, must yet have its place in order to any just conception of what has been done.

The bird, then, represents the Lord as a heavenly Being, acquiring capacity to suffer and die in that manhood which He had taken, and which is symbolized by the earthen vessel; the living water here as ever type of that Eternal Spirit through whom He offered Himself without spot to God. It is striking that the figure does not, as we might at first imagine it would, represent the breaking of the vessel, while the bird itself escapes unhurt, but on the contrary the death of the bird itself; and Scripture is always and divinely perfect:such apparent slips are not in fact blemishes, not even the necessary failure of all possible figures, but things that call for the deepest and most reverential observation.

For it is one blessed Person, in whom Godhead and manhood unite forever, who has been among us, learned obedience in the path which He has marked out for us through the world, suffered the due of our sins, and gone out from us by the gate of death, risen and returned to the Father. We lose ourselves easily in this depth of glory and abasement, where the abasement too is glory; but no Christian can give up the blessed truth because of his ignorance of explanation. In ourselves we have such inexplicable mysteries, not on that account doubted, as where every nerve-pang that thrills the body is felt really not by the body, but by its (as reason would say) untouched spiritual inhabitant. Here it is not needful to explain, to accept the lesson:He who came upon earth to do the Father's will has taken as the means of His doing it that " prepared body " which was the instrument by which He accomplished it. Thus, rightly, according to the figure, the bird of heaven it is that dies in the earthen vessel. This stooping is the unparalleled marvel and power of the weakness in which He was crucified. We must not take the glory that was His to deny or lessen that weakness, but accept it as adding to it the wonder of such humiliation. How beautifully is this preserved in that one hundred and second psalm, in which, if any where, we have just this type!

" Hear My prayer, O Lord, and let My cry come unto Thee. . . . For My days are consumed as a smoke. … I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled My drink with weeping; because of Thine indignation and wrath, for Thou hast lifted Me up and cast Me down. My days are like a shadow that declineth. . . . He weakened My strength in the way; He shortened My days:I said, 'O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days; Thy years are throughout all generations!' "

Who then is this that speaks? who is this who suffers under the wrath of God, and that to death; whose days cut off contrast so with the divine eternity ? How does this psalm proceed ? and what is the astonishing answer to this lowly prayer?

" Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure:yea, all shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt change them, and they shall be but Thou art the same, and Thy years have no end!"

If He go down into death, then, He must needs low Himself master of it. Resurrection must vindicate Him as the Lord of all:"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Accordingly in the type before us it is of resurrection that the second bird speaks. Let loose into the open field, he carries back to the heavens to which he belongs the blood which is the witness of accomplished redemption. The second bird represents the unextinguished, unextinguishable life of the first which has come through death, taking it captive, and making it subservient to the purposes of divine goodness, which, by the blood shed in atonement, cleanses us from the defilement of spiritual leprosy.

Here, for the first time, in connection with the legal sacrifices, we have the type of resurrection as necessary to the application to us of the great Sacrifice itself. " He was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification." (Rom. 4:25.) In Isaac, long since indeed, we saw one received back in a figure from the dead, but there the results were personal to himself:there was no application of blood, no announcement of justification by resurrection. These are important features, which this type of the birds for the first time adds to the picture of atonement.

And thus it is throughout Heaven's ministry of love:not so much the Son of Man necessarily lifted up as on the other hand, so far as such types could reach, that God has given His only begotten Son. It is divine love that has been at charges to bring such ready and effectual help to human outcasts. It is to the degraded and polluted leper that the purity of heaven descends. How precious this contrast! In truth man's case was hopeless to any other than divine resources. If "it is God that justifieth," who but He could righteously justify those expressly designated as " ungodly " ?

This justification of ungodly ones who are content to trust themselves as such in the hands of Christ has been once for all pronounced in the raising from the dead of Him who for our sins went into death. Abraham needed a special word in his day from God, and that availed for himself alone. For the rest, the apostle distinguishes between the "passing over of sins that had been before " the cross, and the justification at the present time of him that believeth in Jesus.* *See the Revised Version of Romans 3:25,26.* Under this public justification by resurrection, announcing the acceptance of that which actually justifies,- the blood of the cross,-we come individually as soon as we believe, and need no individual declaration.

As the burnt-offering gives especially the divine side of the work of Christ, so the peace-offering dwells rather upon its effects with regard to men. This must not be taken in too absolute a way as respects either. The burnt-offering is for man, of course, and in atonement; and the skin removed undoubtedly carries us back to the coats of skins which clothed our first parents, as we have already seen. On the other hand, in the peace-offering, who could forget the Father's joy in that which brings the prodigal to the Father's table? And this is what the peace-offering presents to us. Still this " peace" is what the offering effects for man with God. It is rather an effect of the work which is contemplated than a new aspect of the work itself.

For this reason we have necessarily, in connection with our present subject, less to do with it. The main peculiarities connect with the necessary distinction of destination of the offering, of which only the fat is burnt upon the altar, while the rest of the animal belongs either to the priest or to the offerer himself,-the only sacrifice in which the offerer does partake. In the lower grades of the sin-offering the priest has his part; the offerer no where but in this. Here, then, the peace-offering fulfills its name, and finds most evidently its distinctive character.

The peace-offering may be of the herd or flock, male or female, bullock or sheep or goat. Birds are omitted, with a manifest propriety, which confirms fully the meaning ascribed to them. " The bread from heaven," as the Lord says in the gospel, is what "the Son of Man shall give you." If we speak of communion, which we have seen to be the point here, it must be the Son of Man, sealed of the Father, that must be the basis of it. True, if He were not God over all blessed forever, all the preciousness would be lost for us. Nevertheless it is in His manhood that we apprehend Him doing that work which alone brings us to God. Even in the burnt-offering we see that the bird, though a higher thought, comes in necessarily as a lower grade. Here it disappears. It is in the joy brought out of sorrow that I find what establishes my soul in peace with God. It is the value of His manhood's work in which I draw near, although none but such as He was could have had power to lay down His life and again to take it. In the peace-offering and sin-offering alone is the female permitted,-in the latter indeed enjoined, although only in the lower grades, It seems clear that it gives thus the character of comparative feebleness or passiveness to the offering, but it is not clear that is all we are to gather from it. We have seen that the lower grades of sacrifice represent in general thoughts true in their place, but here misplaced. Yet in Numbers xix, the female is commanded where there is no other grade at all. Here, it is surely impossible that mere feebleness can be intended. Passiveness may indeed have its suited place with reference to the sin-offering, but here, and in the peace-offering also, the type of the sheep seems by itself to represent this; and in the sin-offering, the sheep is expressly to be a female too. Taking all these together, I have little doubt that those are right who believe the female to be the type of fruitfulness, which in connection with the thought of passiveness or quiet subjection to suffering seems here not out of place, but eminently in place. Is it not true, as there are in man and woman characters which complete each other, and give, as thus seen together, perfection to the divine idea of man, so in our Lord, as the perfection of all human excellency, the male and female characters find both their place?

Jehovah's Servant, in the accomplishment of those counsels of love and wisdom which were laid upon Him, giving up His life in meek surrender, even to that cross in which the full due of sin was His to meet and put away for us forever:-these things seem fitly to unite here to give the complete character to the peace-offering. They may seem to connect with other offerings, as the goat especially with the sin-offering, but they seem all rightly to meet and give character to this central sacrifice, where in a common joy Blesser and blessed, Saviour and saved, God and man, stand. Thus we find here no grades really, as in the burnt-offering we have found, and in the sin-offering shall much more find them. Here, the details of the sacrifice, whether for cattle, or sheep, or goat, seem almost absolutely the same.

The details are such as we have already sought to trace the significance of. The animal is presented to Jehovah, designated as the substitute of him who offers it, killed, and the blood sprinkled on the altar round about. Then all the fat is put upon the altar, upon the burnt-offering, which is on the wood that is on the fire; and it is emphatically pronounced a sweet-savor offering.

That which I have emphasized is very precious. Our communion is founded upon nothing less than the full acceptance of the beloved Son of God,- acceptance in all the perfection which we have already seen the burnt-offering expresses. This gives the measure of communion as God intends it; the measure of our apprehension is quite another thing.

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ."-(2 Cor. 5:17.)

The apprehension of the above cannot fail to produce a blessed experience in a simple, honest soul. But the passage itself is not experience; it is fact. It is true of every believer in Jesus whether it is apprehended or not. Many read it as if it were written thus:If any man be in Christ, he ought to be a new creature:old things ought to be passed away; behold, all things ought to become new, etc. Now, it was not so written, and to read it thus is to lose the whole blessing and hinder the consequent experience.

Child of God, you now belong to a new creation, beyond death, of which the risen Christ up there is the Head, and the Holy Ghost down here the Witness. Would you enjoy the new-creation experiences and delights? First, then, accept simply by faith the place grace has given you in it, giving glory to God " who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ," having "made Him sin for us, [He] who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

Q. 21.-Is there scripture for saying that the curse upon the ground was partially removed after the flood?

A. I think Lamech's prophecy in connection with Genesis 8:21, 22 would establish this. The words in the last verse seem hardly to refer wholly to the flood,-"I will not again curse, neither will I again smite," and this with direct reference to the regularity of the seasons. The last might refer to their necessary interruption by the deluge, but Lamech's words clearly go farther back.

Q. 22.-"Where is it that a woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered dishonoreth her head ?

A. Wherever it would be wrong for a man to cover his head it is right for a woman to cover hers. This is very simple in application.

Seven is the perfect cycle, the week of divine accomplishments. In its highest form, nothing can succeed it:its Sabbath is an unbroken eternity,- perfect rest because God's rest (Heb. 3:4). In lower forms, however, it may be succeeded by other cycles, and hence the significance of the number 8.

The eighth day is the first of the new week, which it contrasts thus with the old one passed away. Thus the eighth psalm gives the " world to come" of Hebrews ii, with Christ as Son of Man over it; while the hundred and nineteenth psalm, with its twenty-two groups of eight verses each, gives the law written on Israel's heart, according to the terms of the new covenant.

Nine has, so far as I am aware, no other significance than what it obtains as a multiple of 3 by 3, an intensifying of its meaning. It illustrates the truth that as to the larger numbers they derive their meaning generally from the smaller ones of which they are compounded:forty, for instance, is simply a 4 by 10, as twelve is a 4 by 3.

The number ten, too, seems to fall under this rule. As in the ten commandments of the law it is the measure and mark of responsibility toward God. This is the effect upon man of all divine testimony:and as 5 is the human number, so 10 is 5 by 2. Judgment too is measured by responsibility. Thus ten times Pharaoh hardens his heart, and ten times God in judgment hardens it, while ten plagues fall upon the land in recompense.

Eleven I have at present no light upon, but twelve I have already stated to be 3 by 4. It is the number of divine government, although it may be administered by man. Twelve apostles to regulate in the kingdom of heaven, with twelve corresponding thrones when the Son of Man takes His throne. Twelve gates and foundations for the metropolitan city, New Jerusalem; twelve tribes correspondingly of the royal people upon the earth. The numbers that make up 12 are 3 and 4, the divine and world number, as are those that make up 7. If the one is 4 by 3, the other is 4 plus 3. In both it is thus divine acting in the sphere of the world, but in the former case more directly than in the latter. In this, faith recognizes the divine hand surely working out its own purposes, but in the meanwhile the world goes on, and there is until the close no outward transformation of it; in the former, there is a direct manifest work and transformation. The one traces the steps of secret government; the other, of open and publicly recognized authority.

This closes the regular series of symbolical numbers, so far at least as I have been able to follow it. There remains but one number mote, of which we may fitly speak.

Forty is the well-known number or measure of perfect probation; and here again the numbers of which it is compounded speak for themselves. It is plainly 4 by 10:the latter, the measure of responsibility to God; the former, the sign of the testing of man in the world; the product of these two, the perfect probation of man in the full measure of his responsibility. Such was the character of Israel's forty years' sojourn in the wilderness; of the Lord's forty days' temptation; of Esau's forty years which ended with his marriage with two Canaanitish wives, and the loss of the firstborn's place and blessing.

These, then, are the numbers. Their significance will be emphasized by their application. And in all this, I am only glad to say, there is nothing very new; what is so, is mainly in the extension of principles admitted by many to a new field, where indeed, however, the application should be easy and indeed necessary, if only it be once seen that numbers have this significance. In the hundred and nineteenth psalm we have just seen how plainly significant is the number 8 which is to be found, not in its text, but in its structure. A more familiar case for many will be found in the division of the seven parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13:Here, the first four are spoken in the presence of the multitude, and give the public aspect, while the last three, spoken to the" disciples in the house, give the internal and spiritual side, the divine meaning understood by faith alone. Here the numbers are found again in the structure, and are clearly significant.

Instances are to be found on every page of Scripture, but I need not now dwell upon what we are so shortly to have fully before us. I only assert emphatically here that the whole structure of the Word, and of every part of it, is as really governed by the significance of numbers as is the hundred and nineteenth psalm. These alphabetic acrostics are only encouragements to look further and more deeply to find every where what, if less obvious, is as really there; and being there, has its power and blessing in the design of God's love toward us, which surely we cannot and would not slight, and will not without loss. But before we proceed with this, I would notice some other examples of the way in which numbers are used by . Him. We can adduce, if I mistake not, chronology also in proof of this; and here I again quote what I have said elsewhere.

According to the common reckoning in our Bibles, Christ was born into the world in the four thousandth year of it. There has been much contention about the date, as is well known, and it will be instructive to examine it according to already established principles. For forty centuries, then, the world's probation lasted (for that was the character of those ages at the end of which He came, and whose history is found in the books of the Old Covenant), and forty we have already seen to be the sign of complete probation.

But whence the other factor?-whence the century? Let us only consider that Isaac was a type of the true child of promise, and then we shall easily remember that his birth took place when Abraham's body was "now dead, when he was about a hundred years old;" and God left him to this that Isaac might not be "born after the flesh" The flesh in Abraham had its probation for that hundred years; and when in the issue of this it was seen as dead, the power of God brought life out of death in the birth of Isaac. How significant and easily applicable to One greater far! born in the fortieth century of the world's probation, when all flesh was seen as dead, and in the power of God new life began in Christ.

Take as another instance from chronology the important period of Daniel's seventy weeks. They are weeks of divine working to accomplish blessing,-" to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sin, and to bring in everlasting righteous-ness." Here, seventy sevens remind us of the steadfast, if secret, working out of divine counsels.
This is emphasized by the double use of 7; while the 10, the other factor in the number, reminds us that we have here also responsible man, with the sins, alas! which come so surely from him.

This is the character of the whole period; but the separate parts are no less strongly marked. The first portion, of seven weeks, or seven sevens, is thus marked as one in which divine energy is working in a high degree; and if one will but glance at the margin of his common Bible, he will find that "from the going forth of the commandment to rebuild and restore Jerusalem," in Nehemiah ii, (B. C. 445,) forty-nine years will bring us to B. C. 396; and turning to Malachi, Israel's last Old-Testament prophet, he will find 397 B. C. as the date of his prophecy. Thus these seven sevens cover the time of prophetic ministry in Israel till its close. "

The sixty-two weeks that follow are symbolically silent; but the silence is itself significant. It is a time of expectation for Messiah. Inspired history and prophecy lapse together. The deepest of the night precedes the dawn; but even that dawn is not yet for Israel. Messiah comes, and is cut off.

The last week again tells us, in its simple seven, of divine power once more at work; but the week is violently broken in upon and interrupted. Opposition to God is at its height, spite of which the divinely determined time runs on to its conclusion, and the divine purpose is consummated at the close of the seventy weeks.

Take still one instance from the types, which gives remarkable meaning to the silence of Scripture. In the twelfth of Exodus the beginning of the year is changed, the passover being the foundation of every thing for Israel, as for us the blood of redemption, of Christ our passover.

But the month does not begin with the passover itself. It is not till the tenth day that the lamb is taken, and then it is kept up for four, when on the fourteenth day at even it is slain. Here, 14 is 2 by 7; it is the number which speaks of the perfection of divine work, multiplied by that which speaks of testimony:the blood of the lamb is indeed the witness of the precious work upon which all depends for us.

But what, then, of the ten days silently passed over, and the four of keeping up? The first speaks of responsibility, and applies to the time as to which a very similar silence is preserved in the gospels, at the close of which the Lord comes forward to be proclaimed by the Father's voice as the object of His delight. This testimony comes at the close of His private life, in which He has been fulfilling, as man, His individual responsibility. Therefore the silence up to this, and the seal put upon Him now; while from this point He begins His testing (as the four gospels show it) as the appointed Sacrifice and Saviour. He begins this, therefore, with His forty days' temptation by the devil. At the close of this whole period He is offered.

Thus the types, the structure, and the chronology of Scripture all unite to insist upon the significance of numbers. We must yet look more particularly at what is closely connected with this -the place of the books of Moses, the Pentateuch, in relation to the other books; but this will of necessity lead us into the heart of our subject.

Q. –What is the force of λoυτρόv in Ephesians 5:26? Has it the same meaning as in Titus 3:5? Are all Christians being bathed now? or are we only regenerated by the bath once for all, and then throughout our wilderness-journeys get our feet washed?

A. In both places λoυτρόv mean "washing," as it is translated in the common version. The passage in Ephesians is quite general, and speaks of the whole process of cleansing by the Word. On the contrary, the "washing of regeneration" in Titus speaks of the change from the natural to the Christian or new-creation state to which the "renewing of the Holy Ghost" practically conforms us. Of the former, the flood in which the old world perished and gave place to the new seems the Scripture-figure. The latter is not "renewing" in the sense of refreshing, restoring, but vακαιvσις, making entirely new.

Q. 27.-Romans 7:9. How "alive without law once," and when the "commandment came, sin revived, and I died" ?

A. Because the law of God, while holy, just, and good, is the "strength of sin" (1 Cor. 15:56) and not of holiness. This is the sad mistake that so many are making, who suppose, because the law is holy, it is the strength of holiness. It was given for the "very purpose of convicting (Rom. 3:19.) and proving man's im-potence for good, and this it effectually does. The prohibition of sin arouses it, and self-occupation, the necessary effect of being under law, gives no power over it. On the contrary, "I died" is the expression of absolute, utter helplessness, a state of felt corruption and impotence out of which God only can deliver:"O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" The deliverance is found in the apprehension of our place before God in Christ, and ability to turn away from ourselves, and occupy ourselves with Him. "We 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."

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Q. 28.-Romans 8:C. Does this refer to the believer:"To be carnally minded is death" and if so, in what sense is death referred to?

A. It is really, in this and in the following verses, the " mind of the flesh," "the mind of the Spirit,"-that is, of the old nature and of the Spirit of God.

(2.) The Individual Application.-We now come to the individual application. And here the apostle's words in the epistle to the Galatians are precise enough,-" We, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. …. We are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." As Ishmael represents the child of law then, so does Isaac rep-resent the child of grace. And this, as he has shown us in the beginning of the same chapter, is not merely the true child, but the child in the child's place It is simple that he who stands on the one hand for the Son of God should on the other represent the sons of God. It is sonship, then, that is presented to us in Isaac,-the place of the child.

In contrast with Ishmael, we find one born by divine power, not natural strength,-of grace, not law. His name, " Laughter," speaks of the father's joy in him,-for us, how precious a thought, the Father's joy! Our joy in such a place we naturally think of, and it may well be great; but how much greater, and how it deepens ours as we apprehend it, the Father's joy! The different interpretations of the parable of the pearl are in similar contrast. Who can wonder at the thought that a pearl of great price, precious enough to be bought with the surrender of all one has, must needs be Christ? But what a revelation to the soul that finds that under this strong figure is conveyed Christ's love or His Church! Thus Scripture, in its own unapproachable way, puts the arms of divine love about us.

How striking too is the fact of Isaac's persistent dwelling in Canaan, in this connection! Abraham is found outside, and Jacob for many years, while Joseph spends most of his life outside:Isaac, of all of them, is the only one who is never found any where but in the land of Canaan. If it be a question of a wife of his kindred, still he must not leave to seek her; when he is in the Philistines' land, and thus on the border, God interferes by a vision, and says, " Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I tell thee of; sojourn in this land, and I will bless thee." And to us, surely, the Church of the first-born ones, whom first of all among men God has claimed for Himself, the land in which we are to abide is marked out with all possible distinctness:we are claimed by Heaven, destined for the Father's house; and when revealed with Christ in the glory of heaven, then shall be the "manifestation of the sons of God." Meanwhile it is for us to remember the words to us so full both of warning and encouragement, " Go not down into Egypt; . . . sojourn in this land, and I will bless thee."

Isaac's life is indeed full of blessing, with little incident, a striking contrast to Jacob and his varying experiences; he sows and reaps, and digs his wells of water in a security little disturbed. He is thus the fitting type of the child of God abiding in the serene enjoyment of his unchanging portion. This is the real Beulah of Bunyan's allegory, " where the sun shines and the birds sing day and night;" or, as Scripture better says,"a land which the Lord thy God careth for; the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it." Bunyan's land, however, is at the close of his pilgrim's course; and there indeed it is too often found, if found at all. But it would be a sad mistake to suppose that one must wait till then to find it. Blessed be God, it is not so:the joy of our place with God is ours by indefeasible title, and cannot be lost, save by our own connivance. God's word for us all is, " Sojourn in this land, and I will bless thee."

Yet peaceful and full of blessing as is this life of Isaac, the entrance to all its blessedness is found by a narrow door-way of exquisite trial. Isaac's sacrifice is the true beginning of his history, and the key to all that follows. This we have seen when regarding him as the undoubted type of the Son of God. It is the self-surrender of the cross which explains all that after-history. And if here, at first sight, the application to us might seem to fail, it is only to a very superficial glance. Nay, the precise aspect of the cross here is such as to bring out the lesson for us in the most striking and beautiful manner. It is as self-surrender into a Father's hands that it is presented in the type we have been considering; and seen in this way, not only is there no difficulty in the application, but the whole becomes at once a vivid picture of significant and fruitful beauty.

" I beseech you therefore, brethren," says the apostle, " by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your intelligent service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." (Rom. 12:i, 2.) How admirably this expresses the meaning of the type before us! It is a sacrifice, a living sacrifice, we are called to,-a sacrifice in life, although as such it speaks of death:-how clearly Isaac's presents this thought to us! Here, what might seem a difficulty in the larger application becomes a special beauty in the individual one. Isaac, given up to death, does not really die. In will and intent he does; in fact, it is his substitute. So Israel, at an after-time, coming to pass through Jordan to the land of their inheritance, find Jordan all dried up, and a broad way made over its former bed. There is no need to interpret. Death in the reality of it we do not know:we do not die, but are dead, with Him who is "resurrection and life" to us. The sorrow, the bitterness, the sting, of death was His who is now, as the consequence of it, in the glory of God for us; but by virtue of it, our position is changed; our place is no more in the world; we belong to Him and to heaven, where He has gone for us. On the one side of it, this is in fact our salvation, our perfect blessing, our highest privilege; but it involves, on the other, the living sacrifice of our bodies, of that which links us with the world out of which we have passed. Alas! that we should have to speak of this as trial, but this is surely what all sacrifice implies, and "sacrifice" the apostle calls it. But it is a living sacrifice-a sacrifice, not in death, but life,-a holy offering, acceptable to God,-a surrender to Him, in which we prove what is His good and acceptable and perfect will. Trial there may be here, to such as we are; but to faith, only unspeakable privilege- the entrance upon a path which is perfect freedom. " God forbid that I should glory," says the apostle, " save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world."

Do you understand this, beloved reader? can you appropriate so strong and triumphant an expression? To glory in that which puts away one's sins is easy, and it is the cross which does this; but the apostle is not speaking of glorying in that which puts away his sins, but in that "which crucifies him to the world and the world to him! The joy which he manifests here is that alone which gives power for the path we are considering,- alone makes it really practicable. Joy is an essential element of the spirit in which alone God's path can be trodden. It is a Father's will to which we are called to surrender ourselves,-the will of One who alone has title to have one; His will by which we have been " sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ;" a self-surrender into a Father's hand, to whom we are far, far more than Isaac was to Abraham!

And yet, indeed, there is trial and sorrow in this path, as upon what path that man's feet have ever trodden is there not? Can the world give you one upon which it can insure you freedom from suffering for a moment? Do the "lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life " promise more to you ? and can you trust its promises better than those " exceeding great and precious ones by which we are made partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" ? No; if you be Christ's, you know you cannot. But then, beloved, if this be your decision, (and the Lord seeks deliberate, "intelligent " service,) let it be whole-hearted, and unwaveringly maintained. Surrender must be real:there must not be limitation and reserve. If God be worthy of trust, He is worthy of full trust; and full trust means full surrender,-nothing short!

Alas! it is the foxes, "the little foxes, that spoil the vines." It is the little compromises that destroy the vigor and freshness and reality of Christian life. It must be so, unless God could connive at His own dishonor. There is no such reserve with Isaac. He yields himself implicitly into his father's hand and will; and bitter as the cup presented to him may be, in result it is to find life in the place of death, and all the promises confirmed to him. For us, if in the world, there must be tribulation; not only is this the appointed way to the glory already revealed to faith, but even now we may with the apostle " glory in tribulation also, because tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us."

Thus Isaac's offering has the most pregnant meaning with reference to his after-life. In the two following chapters, the individual application seems to fail, and give place to the dispensational, as I have already remarked, although on the other hand it may be mere dimness of spiritual sight which cannot find it. Rebekah should at least have some significance here, and her taking her place in Sarah's tent seems to identify her as a form of that principle of grace which there can be no question Sarah represents. Her name also, " binding," seems in this way to add to the idea of grace that of assured perpetuity, as having found its justifying and abiding ground. Rebekah would remind us thus of that which the apostle tells us- that God hath " accepted us [the word is literally "graced"] in the Beloved." How this suits with the typical teaching of Isaac's life is plain enough, —-sonship implying, surely, the perpetuity here spoken of.

" And it came to pass, after the death of Abraham, that God blessed his son Isaac, and he dwelt by the well Lahairoi." These dwelling-places are certainly characteristic and distinctive, as Abraham's at Hebron, and Lot's in the valley of Jordan or at Sodom. A well, too, was a natural and suitable accompaniment for the tent of a pilgrim:water is a first necessity for the maintenance of life, and so is for us the " living water"-the Spirit acting through the Word. "The words that I speak unto you," says the Lord, "they are spirit and they are life."

The way that water ministers to life and growth is indeed a beautiful type of the Spirit's action. Without water, a plant will die in the midst of abundance of food in actual contact with its roots. Its office is to make food to be assimilated by the organism, and to give power to the system itself to take it up. Although the word may sometimes be otherwise used, yet in Proverbs 5:15 the well is distinct from the cistern as the place of " running," or " living," water. Such wells were those that Isaac digged, not mere artificial cisterns, as we find in chapter xxvi, " And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water." Such wells should not all the children of God covet to dwell by? where not only our energy is manifest, but much more-the energy of the Spirit of God. Our diligence depending absolutely on God for its success, but where nevertheless He meets without fail the heartfelt diligence that craves for its urgent need the living water. May not and should not every one of God's Isaacs be, in his measure and way; a well-digger? What blessedness for him who has thus not simply the ministry of others, but his own springing well!
Isaac's well, where above all he loved to be, was this Lahairoi.-the well that told to him, as once it had done to Hagar, of the gracious superintending care of an ever-living, ever-present God. What a world is this where sin has made Him a stranger, -which has made it necessary to seek God at all! How much stranger still a world that can do without Him! For the heart convinced of the desolation of His absence, what cry like that for the living God ? Sonship in Isaac speaks to us here of this cry answered and the heart's home found. And the very essence of Christianity is in this, that we are acknowledged sons.

To the realization of this living presence the Word is ever necessary. The word of God is that which (by the power of the Spirit) reveals to us the presence of God; and thus the apostle in the epistle to the Hebrews links the two together:"For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do."This, it is true, may seem to speak more of our manifestation than of His; but the one is the effect of the other, and how important it is to remember this! An exercised conscience and habitual self-judgment will be the sure results of a true walk with God. A profession of intimacy where laxity assumes the name of grace is the worst deception and dishonor to God's blessed name.

And now we find with Rebekah, as with Sarah, that fruitfulness cannot be according to nature, or by its power. Grace as a principle implies dependence and intervention of the power of God. More than this, that which is first is natural,-Esau is rejected and the younger is taken up (though himself no better) in the sovereignty of God alone.

Striking it is that Isaac's history ends (for in chapter 27:it is rather Jacob,) with a scene in the Philistines' land, the similarity of which, too, to that in Abraham's life must be plain to the dullest reader. The repetition of the lesson gives it emphasis, of course. The sin here must be one of special importance, and to which the believer must be specially prone, to be thus emphasized. We cannot but remember that these Philistines are the great enemies of Israel at an after-period, and that the history of the Judges ends really, leaving them captive to these. If we take Scripture,-the announcement of the sure word of prophecy, and remember the meaning which attaches to this Philistine power, is it not a decisive confirmation of the truth of the interpretation already given? For the history of the outward church does assuredly end in the prevalence of that worldly successional power which in our days is again with so much energy asserting itself. Into this it is not now the place to go; but prophecy is not for us the mere prediction of the future, but the warning for the present:we are taught to judge now beforehand what is then to meet God's judgment, and here Isaac's failure and Isaac's final superiority are alike instructive.

First, let us note that the Philistine's land is part of God's land for Isaac, but that it is famine drives him there, which recalls, and is meant to recall, that in Abraham's time which drove him down to Egypt. God interposes to prevent Isaac also going down there:"And the Lord appeared unto him, and said, 'Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I will tell thee of; sojourn in this land"-not necessarily or merely the Philistines'-" and I will be with thee and bless thee; for unto thee and unto thy seed will I give all these countries; and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; and I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries.'"
The Philistines' land, then, is included in this ground. It is part of the land, yet only the outside border toward Egypt, with the corresponding danger as a dwelling-place for the man of faith. This low border-land alone, as 1 have before remarked, could the Philistines occupy, although they might make their power felt far beyond. It will be evident the line of things we have to do with here, and that it is as we approach to this borderland of external truths that we reach the place where the traditional church has built her strongholds. She can parade her ceremonies and proclaim her mysteries, and make out the land to be her own; yet it is a land in which an Abraham may dig and an Isaac re-dig many a well of living water which the would-be possessors of it treat as the sign of a hostile claim, and contend for but to stop with earth. How effectually for ages did they do this! How much have the men of faith yielded for peace's sake, as did Isaac here, until God gave them a Rehoboth. Indeed this is a ground noted for the yielding of timid saints.

The practical title to the land is the possession of the well. With it you may still find wonderful harvests, for it is a place of abundant fertility. In the region of outward things, if we have diligence to dig beneath the surface, we may find the sweetest refreshment and the fullest satisfaction, and may sow and reap a hundredfold. Here Isaac gamed his riches and became great, for the Lord blessed him. And what is Judaism?-what is the Old Testament, but such a country as this Philistines' land, where men, seeing nothing but the letter, and misinterpreting that, have built up once more a system of carnal ordinances, darkening with shadows long since done away the blessed light which has visited them? And yet in this Philistines' land, which is Israel's really, (and which God's Israel has always been so slow to claim,) how much awaits an Isaac's diligence and care, to repay them with untold riches!

This final scene in Isaac's history closes with his altar at Beersheba, and with the acknowledgment, even by the Philistines themselves, that Jehovah is with the man of faith. To the angel of the church of Philadelphia saith the Lord, " Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee."

"Ye need not that any man teach you." (1 Jno. 2:27.)

In a day when growing confusion is on every side, and more and more a darkness that may be felt is falling upon men, how strange to the unbelief even of believers, how cheerily to faith, the apostle's words ring out. Scripture, at least, now that the light of Christ has dawned, knows no "authority of darkness" (Col. 1:13, Greek.) for the disciple of Christ. It does not philosophize-not " seek after wisdom," but present it; and the "unction from the holy One"-the anointing of the Spirit, where indeed received, sets free from dependence upon all human teachers.

Of this, however, we need continual reminding, as the apostle here in fact reminds Christians. The evident helpless, hopeless confusion into which God has allowed all that could pretend to human authority to fall, is not enough to deliver them from again and again, and under various pretexts, seeking some standard of truth other than the simple Word of God itself. Yea, in the minds of many this confusion unsettles souls rather in the practical infallibility of the Spirit of God as a Teacher, because "good men so disagree," and makes them cling the more to "opinions," which seem to stand as good a chance as others of being right. From the dogmas of creeds, fast losing now their hold, men flee to the relief of an uncertainty equally dogmatic, and which will at least not add to the troubles of the present the troubles of a more or less problematical future. It is a downward path this, leading through many "phases of faith" (or of unbelief), into utter skepticism; and the masses are, alas! fast traversing it toward an " apostasy " which Scripture surely predicts (2 Thess. 2:), and from which alone it renders escape possible.

O for a voice that might arrest these wanderers -that might say to souls feeling in any measure the desolation of this darkness, There is yet hope in God! But my object is now to urge the admonition of the apostle upon the Lord's people themselves; and, in whatever position we may be, it is not unneeded. If Christ has given teachers, he who makes light of them makes light of the gift of Christ; but on the other hand, the danger for most lies rather in the tendency which the apostle's words warn against in so consolatory a manner. How blessed and inspiriting to be brought face to face with the fact of our possession of a completed volume of revelation able to furnish thoroughly unto all good works, and of a Teacher infallible and divine, to give us that Word in its fullness and power!

" But we are not infallible. How shall we preserve for ourselves the blessedness of an infallible Teacher, in such a way as to consist with the recognition of our own fallibility?"

Certainty is very distinct from infallibility. The latter, indeed, we never can pretend to:the former we ought to have, and without limit also wherever God has spoken. We are responsible, with Scripture in our hands, to possess ourselves of what it says upon any question that may be before us as needing answer. Otherwise, if the truth govern my walk, this last will be vacillating and uncertain, my conscience uneasy, and my heart distressed, in proportion to the cloud which is upon my understanding. It is all well to be humble, and to own the imperfection of my knowledge ; but if the truth make any demand upon me, how shall I answer to it if I am uncertain that it is truth ? and if God has spoken, and spoken for me to hear, how shall I excuse myself for having not heard?

Thus the duty of obedience shuts me up to the blessed necessity of certain knowledge. The true humility is to listen to what God has spoken, and not to impute folly to His wisdom, by supposing that He has spoken with so little clearness as to be practically unintelligible, or insists upon knowledge where He has taken from me the means of knowledge.

Now, what does the apostle mean by the assertion before us? Not, certainly, that God does not teach by teachers:He surely does; but that however much He uses these, He so teaches, Himself, that the soul can set to its seal that God is true. It is God's Word whose entrance has given light, and the hand used to bring in the light adds positively nothing whatever to the authority of the light. But who does not see, then, the immense danger, such as (alas!) we are, of a mistake in a matter so really simple? Who (one would think) could be guilty of so stupendous a folly? Who, on the other hand, in fact, has not fallen into it ? It may be-how easily!-that while in the first place it was the truth that commended the teacher to my soul, it has become thus, through my perversity, that now the teacher, on the contrary, commends the truth. The teacher established to me as that (and rightly), by what through him God has made known to me, I sit down to learn from him, second hand, what may be by him received on divine authority, but is by me on human; and which therefore will not be living truth at least for me,-may be, so far as I know, error!

If all that we have thus received from man merely were blotted out of our minds, and nothing left there but what had been graven ineradicably by the hand of God Himself, what gaps might there not be in our knowledge! and yet that would give us the measure of our true knowledge.

The clashing of interpreters of the Word,-the differences that obtain even among those most truly and deeply taught,-humbling as they are, and ought to be, to us, does not God use them sovereignly to avert a still worse evil, and make it a necessity to judge, whether we will or not, between discordant interpretations? and does He not, again and again, bring out of His Word new truths or aspects of truth which may seem or be conflict with somewhat hitherto received as in truth, that it may test us whether we can receive upon the authority of His Word alone, apart from all human authority?

Every movement among men perhaps, that we recognize as from God, has been characterized by the fresh presentation of some truth in this way, which had to make its way through more or less opposition from the mass of Christians themselves. Having conquered this, and established a recognized place for itself; and got a following, within a generation or so it crystallized into a creed, and was no more a living thing. Teachers who themselves, with more or less clearness, yet followed the Word, became in turn the oracles that men followed; and God had to raise up another testimony. History thus repeats itself; for we are the same, and not better than our fathers. Alas! our abuse of His gifts compels the faithfulness of God to deal thus with us. And now at last, every thing that we have is challenged and in question. The old lines are being fast obliterated. The routine of old-fashioned conventionalism is being rudely broken up. Not orthodoxy, but living faith alone, can abide. The Word of God, blessed be His name, was never before so realizing itself as that; Christ Himself never before so manifesting Himself; the Spirit of God never more glorifying Him than now. But withal, never was there more need of a faith that can with the disciple of old leave both the boat and the company of the other disciples, as it says' to Him who is thus revealed to it, " Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee upon the waters."

We now come to a class of offerings distinguished broadly from those classed as " sweet-savor," by the fact of their being in no wise voluntary, but the specific requirement for actual sin. The burnt-offering and peace-offering both clearly recognized, of course, the condition of men as sinners. Apart from this, they had indeed no meaning. But in no case are these offered for specific acts of sin. In their case we find, " If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord;" in those now before us, " If a soul shall sin, he shall bring his offering."

The sin and trespass-offerings both speak of the judgment of sin, that judgment which is indeed no sweet savor to God, but His "strange work,"-not the delight of His love, but the necessity of His holiness. The sin-offering deals with sin in view of the divine nature; the trespass-offering, in view of the divine government. The words "sin" and "trespass" well convey this difference, the thought of restitution having a prominent place in the trespass-offering, as the sin-offering alone exhibits that necessary separation of God from sin which is at once the necessity of His nature, and its most awful punishment.

Yet it is striking that this, the most essential and characteristic feature, is only in fact found here in the sin-offering for the priest and for the congregation of Israel. In these cases alone do we read of the victim being burned without the camp, not upon the altar, the consecrated place, but in the outside place of the leper and unclean. It is to this the apostle refers in the last chapter of Hebrews, where he points out the absolute necessity of the Lord's taking such a place as is typified here in order to any true atonement:" For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate." It is a striking thing indeed that, of all the various sacrifices offered by the law, no blood but that of a sacrifice such as this should have power to penetrate into the sanctuary at all. The burnt-offering spoke of that which to God was precious beyond all else, but the blood was simply sprinkled round about upon the altar:the peace-offering spoke, according to its name, of peace made with God, and communion established between God and man, but here also the blood was only sprinkled on the altar round about; nay, there were various forms of the sin-offering itself where the effect was plainly stated to be to " make atonement for his sin " who brought it, but where, the body of the beast not being burned without the camp, the blood at the most anointed the horns of the altar of burnt-offering. Only in two cases, as I have already said, among the seven that are specified here, is that done in which alone lies the essence of true atonement.

This shows clearly in what manner we are to regard these other forms, namely, as lower grades, or less complete views of what only in its full completeness could satisfy God. In the lowest, indeed, they are plainly said to be provisions for the poverty of the offerer:" if he be not able to bring a lamb,"-"if he be not able to bring two turtle doves." In the case of the ruler, and in the first case of "one of the common people"-both, of course, on the footing of the Israelite simply,-it is or should be clear that they neither of them represent the place or the knowledge of the Christian; yet they are most instructive to us as enabling us to see just what is and what is not dependent upon clearness of knowledge upon a theme so all-important as is this. However, it will be all no doubt plainer as we look at the details of the type before us.

The first case, then, is that of the "anointed priest," clearly the high-priest, he who represents the whole people before God, the well-known figure of Christ Himself. Typically, this seems a departure from the usual order, for the offerer in other cases seems not to represent Christ, and this change must have a meaning. Naturally, we think of the day of atonement, where Aaron and his sons are distinguished in their offering from the people of Israel, and where we as Christians are represented in Aaron's house. In the offering of Leviticus iv, the high-priest stands alone; but the next offering, parallel in every particular to this one, is for the "whole congregation of Israel,"-those manifestly whom the high-priest represents:in the application must we not say, the Church? It is evident that this gives us two classes on essentially different footing,- those for whom the sanctuary is opened, and those who while accepted are outside worshipers.

But why, then, is Christ here first of all by Himself, and the people apart, and not rather, as in the day of atonement, the high-priest and his house, or Christ and His people together? It seems to me to bring out representation more clearly, but especially, as I think, makes way for a comparison with the two next offerings, where the ruler and one of the common people take the place of the priest and congregation, and the character of the whole is lowered.

The literal application supposes the sin of the high-priest himself, and his place as such secured, his incense altar anointed with the blood of the sin-offering. As a type, it is Christ confessing the sin of His people, and the place which through His offering He takes before God, He takes for them, and they in Him. Thus for the people the blood in the same way is sprinkled before the vail, and anoints the golden altar of incense.

It is here only that we find, as already stated, the burning of the victim without the camp, upon the ground also and not upon the altar. It is thus Christ made sin for us-not seen in the perfection of His person as in the burnt-offering, but identified with those for whom He had undertaken. No where but in this outside place could He reach the objects of His grace to bring them up out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay in. which they were hopelessly engulfed, and in which alone His feet could find footing. How important, then, to have a right apprehension of this essential feature of His wondrous work! Yet there are those among evangelical Christians so called who see no difference between the Lord's sufferings in life and those in His death,-between Gethsemane with its bloody sweat and the blood of the cross! They see not the contrast between a time of which He yet says, " I am not alone, for My Father is with Me " and that of His cry, " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The three hours' darkness while He hangs upon the tree is almost universally misinterpreted as the sympathy of Nature with her Head and Lord, whereas it is the manifest expression of the withdrawal of Him who is light, and finds, therefore, its true interpretation in that cry of forsaken sorrow.

We come, then, here for the first time to the full and undeniable type of wrath borne, and needed to be borne in order to atonement. The copher of the ark had hinted, as we have seen, at such necessity; but it only hinted. Now, the truth was plainly set forth. Every sacrifice had shown what is announced as a principle a little later, that, as the apostle says, " without shedding of blood is no remission."But here we see what blood alone could meet the atonement of righteousness upon the sinner. Not death merely, but death and after this the judgment, is man's doom. The full reality of sacrifice, of which each separate sacrifice was but a fragment, must meet both parts of this. The cross as death and as curse did this.
But how beautiful to see even in the sin-offering the type preserved of that inward perfection which was necessarily and ever God's delight and the basis of all the acceptability of it. Only He could be " made sin for us" who Himself " knew no sin." Accordingly the fat here, as in the case of the peace-offering, is put upon the altar, and in the case of one of the common people it is even said to be for a sweet savor. While this is not said with regard to the first two cases, the word used for the burning on the altar is the ordinary one for that, different from that employed for the burning of the victim on the ground outside the camp.

Wrath endured, the due of sin in its full measure reached, God can open the sanctuary, and give a place in His presence where in the complete security of the seven-times-sprinkled blood we can stand in unquestioned nearness, and the heart pour itself out in praise, the blood anointing the incense altar. For us the vail is rent, as we know, but as we do not find in the type before us:we have boldness to enter into the holiest itself.

Thus far the divine thought, the perfection of the offering. In the next two cases the whole character of it is lowered. We have now the ruler and one of the common people taking the place of the high-priest and congregation in the former two; the burning outside the camp is no longer found; and the blood of course does not enter the sanctuary at all, but is first put upon the horns of the altar of burnt-offering, and then poured out at the bottom of the altar.

All this speaks evidently of a lower grade. Whatever may be the difference of the offerer, and although this might account for the blood not being brought into the holy place, the apostle's words link these rather with the body of the victim not being burned without the camp; and of the absence of this who can find a reason thus? For the least as for the greatest atonement must be the same. It is clear, therefore, that we have in this only the sign of the commencement of a descending scale of offerings, in which we find the poverty and confusion of man's thoughts allowed to have their place, in order that on the one hand we may realize the consequence of falling short in the apprehension of divine grace, while on the other we learn that that grace will still manifest itself as such, and that God's actual acceptance of us is not measured, after all, by our apprehension of it, but by His own estimate of the value of the work of His beloved Son.

The goat here still speaks of substitution, of Christ in the sinner's place, for the Lord's own Use of it, as contrasted with the sheep in the picture in Matthew 25:assures us fully of this. But while seen as a substitute thus, what substitution implies and necessitates is not seen. The sin is none the less forgiven, but the offerer remains an outside worshiper merely. Christ is for him a " ruler " in the heavens, not a representative proper, as the priest is. He remains, as people say, " at the foot of the cross;" does not see that through the work of the cross Christ has entered heaven, and taken a place before God in which he as a believer stands. This is, alas! where the mass of so-called evangelical systems leave their adherents,-the Jewish place, clearly, for the standing of one of the common people of Israel is not even a type of ourselves. We are, as the apostle tells us, " a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."We therefore are brought nigh, and belong to the sanctuary as did Aaron's house,-with the unspeakable difference here also of the vail being rent:"Therefore," says another apostle, "having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say, His flesh; and having a High-Priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith."
For the goat a lamb might be offered, and here we see again how a type higher in itself may give from its connection a lower because a less congruous thought. The latter speaks, as we know, of the personal perfection of Christ, but here it displaces the goat, so that the thought of real substitution is fading away:the ritual of the offering is otherwise the same.

In the next cases, however, the ritual itself is changed; for now we find first the trespass-offering . (which is nearest to the sin-offering), and then the burnt, and finally even the meat-offering introduced. The inability of the offerer is now, moreover, more distinctly recognized. It is plain, therefore, that the mention of the trespass-offering in this place does not imply, as some have imagined, that there is no essential difference between it and the sin-offering, or else it would prove the same for the others mentioned. There is a very marked and unmistakable difference. It is distinctly " his trespass-offering for his sin which he hath sinned … for a sin-offering." Even as a trespass-offering it has not its full character:it is a " lamb, or a kid of the goats," not a ram. I do not doubt that here we have the case of those who look at atonement as a mere provision of divine government instead of a necessity of the divine nature. It is one truth substituted for another, the less deep for the deeper; but of all this we shall have a more fitting place to speak.

The substitution of the burnt-offering, or its introduction rather into the ritual of the sin-offering, is remarkable, as it is distinctly a provision for poverty:"if his hand cannot reach to the sufficiency of a lamb;" and, moreover, the sin is called a " trespass," while here, again, the two turtle-doves or two young pigeons speak of what is highest in itself, lowest because of its incongruity, in fact the lowest type of the burnt-offering, as we have seen; for a sin-offering most incongruous of all.

Lastly, if he be not able to attain to this, even a meat-offering of fine flour is permitted, and here, although no blood at all is shed, it is distinctly offered and accepted as a sin-offering, and his sin is forgiven him just as before. How clearly and beautifully does the grace of God shine out in all this! If it be Christ trusted in view of sin, God knows the nature and sufficiency of His blessed work, and reckons the value of that work to the offerer, unknown though to him it be. It is a point which if seen aright will deliver us from much narrowness, and comfort us with the largeness of the grace of God.

It is evident to roe that sin in the nature as much as in the act is dealt with in the sin-offering. We must not be misled as to this by the consideration that it is only for actual sins that it is offered. The fruit manifests the tree, and it is in this sacrifice alone that we find the judgment of God taking effect upon the whole victim. The burnt-offering, although wholly burnt, does not in this give the type of wrath or condemnation, as we have seen, but the very opposite. The very word for the burning is different; it is sweet savor and nothing else. Here, on the contrary, judgment has its full course. This complete judgment of nature and practice alike is absolutely necessary, in order that the blood of propitiation may be able to enter the sanctuary.

It is a deeply solemn thing to learn truth; for there is not a principle which we profess to have learned which we shall not have to prove practically.

It was a terribly solemn thing for the Pharisees to " resist the counsel of God against themselves." They stiffened their necks and hardened their hearts, and would not hear God's message through John the Baptist.

John came preaching repentance, exhorting the people to the confession of their sins, and faith in the One coming after him. "The people and publicans justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John; but the Pharisees and lawyers resisted the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him." (Luke 7:29, 30.)

Two classes we find here,-those who justified God, and those who resisted His counsel against themselves. The one moved by the word of God, and took their place in self-judgment before Him, owning themselves sinners and needy; while the other built up in self-righteousness, and instead of yielding to the divine counsel which sought to lead them to repentance and blessing, they resisted that counsel, and were offended at His word. And when the One came of whom John spake, and told out the tale of divine love to a ruined world, and piped the sweet notes of grace, they were as far from receiving Him as they had been from receiving John. They neither mourned when John preached repentance, nor danced when the Son of God proclaimed the grace of God. Of the one they said, " He hath a devil;" of the other, " Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." " They resisted the counsel of God against themselves." How terribly solemn! God would lead them to repentance, but they would none of Him. All was resisted, despised, and set at naught.

" But Wisdom is justified of all her children." (Luke 7:35.) What distinguishes Wisdom's children from the unbelieving mass is that they justify God, and, in the reception and belief of the truth, they take their place as ruined and guilty before Him, and cast themselves upon His mercy. They resist not His counsel which leads to repentance, but own in full all that they are, and find pardon and eternal blessing at His hand. Their prayer is, " God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" and God answers their prayer by justifying them. It is God in grace meeting the repentant soul with a full salvation. This is how God is revealed in the gospel. The sinner, therefore, who justifies God and condemns himself is in return justified of God " freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." (Rom.' 3:24.)

In this very chapter (Luke 7:36-50) we have a lovely instance of one of Wisdom's children finding her way to Jesus, and what she received at His hand. In a way, her experience is the experience of all who return, for " Wisdom is justified of all her children."

Jesus was invited to eat with a certain Pharisee, and He accepts the invitation. And while there, a woman, a known sinner, crosses the threshold of the man's house, and finds her way to where Jesus was sitting. What has brought her there? Unbidden, and undesired by the Pharisees at least, she had come; but the burden of her sins, and the sense of her guilt, had driven her to the One who had come to seek and to save such as she, and had said, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." He had come from heaven to save such ; she comes to Him to be saved. His counsel drew her; she resisted not His gracious counsel against herself. She finds herself in His blessed presence, and with confidence in God already replacing itself in her heart, she had brought an alabaster box of ointment, for she felt that He was worthy. She stands at His feet behind Him weeping, washing His feet with her tears, wiping them with the hairs of her head, and anointing His feet with the ointment. Blessed place indeed! A repentant soul in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is a blessed picture. It furnishes joy for the unjealous hosts above, as it is written, " There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." (Luke 15:10.)

In the presence of this sovereign grace of God the hideous spirit of self-righteousness could not rest. The man who had bidden Jesus said within himself, " This Man, if He were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him, for she is a sinner," Self-righteousness would upset the poor woman, but grace would draw her to the Saviour. Man's religion, as cold and heartless as death, would create a wide gulf between the sinner and the would-be-righteous people, but the sweet story of love divine told out by the lips of the God-man could but win her to Himself.

Jesus, who read the thoughts of the Pharisee's heart, said, " Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee." " Master, say on," he replies. " There was a certain creditor which had two debtors:the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty:and when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him most?" "Simon answered and said, ' I suppose that he to whom he forgave most.'" "Thou hast rightly judged," responded the Saviour. " And He turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, ' Seest thou this woman ? I entered into thine house, thou gavest Me no water for My feet; but she hath washed My feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest Me no kiss; but this woman, since the time 1 came in, hath not ceased to kiss My feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint; but this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved much:but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.' And He said unto her, ' thy SINS ARE FORGIVEN.' "

Again the murmurs of self-righteousness are heard, " Who is this that forgiveth sins also?" but they are answered with a more positive expression of grace than before. "And He said to the woman, ' THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE :GO IN PEACE.' "

How very beautiful is all this, as far as the Saviour and the poor woman are concerned! Condemned by the Pharisees, He is nevertheless justified by Wisdom's child, who is in repentance at His feet, and He lavishes upon her, poor needy sinner as she is, all His love and grace. She came believing, and He pardons and saves, and sends her away in peace. " "THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN." "THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE:GO IN PEACE." Pardon, salvation, peace. Oh the precious grace of God! To the God of all grace, and to His adorable Son, be eternal praise!

Beloved reader, are you one of Wisdom's children? Are you pardoned, saved, and in peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ? or are you careless, indifferent, unbelieving, self-righteous, and therefore resisting the counsel of God against yourself? If the latter, O sin of all sins, which will blight and ruin your soul for eternity! E.A

Q 16. —-is not an exhortation needed as regards a reverential posture in prayer and worship? Formality we all desire to avoid, but is not the too prevalent custom of remaining seated during prayer a hindrance to simplicity, and itself a formality, which tends to chill the hearts of the worshipers? Certain forms are the natural expression of certain feelings, and their absence is an inconsistency and a loss. A few passages are added, as affording examples we may well take heed to. "And Solomon had made a brazen scaffold, …. and upon it he stood, and kneeled down upon his knees, and spread forth his hands toward heaven." (2 Chron. 6:13.) "O come, let us worship and bow down:let us kneel before the Lord our Maker." (Ps. 95:6.) "And He was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed." (Luke 22:41.) " And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down, and prayed with them all." (Acts 20:36.)

A. Though put in the form of a question, our brother's words need no answer, and should need but little enforcement for souls before God. Scripture is surely clear, and all that is needed is subjection to it. Such as we are, body and soul react upon one another; and although we can become familiarized with an irreverential habit until we cease to feel the irreverence of it, it will and must have its effect. It is a subject on which a word of exhortation is quite timely, and many will thank our brother for it.

Q. 17.-Do not Luke 3:38, Acts 17:28, 29, and Eph. 4:6 teach that in a certain broad sense God is the Father of all men?

A. Assuredly; and Hebrews 12:9 explains how. He is the "Father of spirits," as He is the "God" also "of spirits." (Num. 16:22.) God is a Spirit, and man by his spirit (which is his highest part, and that which knows human things-1 Cor. 2:11) is His offspring, as the beast is not. Genesis 2:7, although in a way suited to a primitive revelation, shows us man in his creation receiving thus something peculiarly from God. This is his link naturally with immortality.

Q. 18.-Is angelic ministry a feature of this age ? Who are "those who shall be heirs of salvation" (Heb. 1:14.)?

A. The epistle to Jewish believers, partakers of the heavenly calling-Christiana therefore, of course; although there are passages in which, as has been said by another, the branches seem to hang over the wall, for the Israelitish remnant of a future day. The passage in question certainly applies to the present time, though "those who shall be heirs" might mislead one to suppose those of a future time intended. It should read, "those who are about to inherit salvation."

Q. 19.-Kindly explain 1 John 3:9.

A. The middle clause of the verse is the key to it.-"His seed abideth in him." He is born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God" (1 Pet. 1:23.); has thus a new nature from Him, with no principle of evil in it, but wholly at war with it. He cannot practice sin (the true force of the word), nor "be sinning," as he once was. He cannot go back to the old condition, out of which God's grace has once for all brought him.

Q. 20.-Is not the Lord's supper a memorial of His death ? and therefore should we not be occupied wholly with what was the other side of resurrection ? and should not the scriptures and hymns used be in harmony with this thought ? or is it proper to think of Christ in any relation whatever, as is commonly done?

A. Of course we " show forth the Lord's death," and it is of this the bread" and the cup speak-the blood and the body separate,-the blood shed. But while this is true, and should be the central thought, there are other things to be considered. Must we not think of and celebrate who it is that has thus died ? It is the first day of the Week-the resurrection-day, and we have the Lord risen with us leading our praise. How then can we forget resurrection, which tells of the value and acceptance of that work in death ? Doubtless it should be the central thought, but to strip it of all that really sets forth its blessedness and value would not exalt it or give it its right character for our souls.

"We must either be subject to one who would like to tear every thing to pieces, or to One who delights to bless. Every man living is either in one or the other,-either nothing but a foot-ball of Satan's, or a poor withered flower picked up to be worn by Christ in His infinite grace."

"Be ye also patient; establish your hearts:for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." (Jas. 5:8.)