Q. 8.-" Were the fowl as well as fish in Gen. 1:20 out of the waters ?"

Ans.-The generality of modern commentators prefer the marginal rendering, "Let fowl fly." But Tayler Lewis, in a note to Lange's " Genesis," says that the words " cannot, we think, be rendered in any other way than as we find it in our English version, ' and fowl that fly ;' and in all the ancient versions, the Septuagint, and the Vulgate. The Syriac is exactly like the Hebrew in its construction, and can have but one possible sense, birds that fly. . . . The idiom of the Hebrew seems fixed, requiring us in such a case 'to regard the future as descriptive-like a participle or an adjective. In the Arabic, the corresponding usage is so established as to put any other translation out of the question. It occurs frequently in the Koran with the same subject, and in just such a connection as we have it here. The other rendering, 'and let birds fly,' would require a different order of the words. The more modern rendering has come from the fear -of what would seem gross naturalism, namely, the education of the birds from the water; but we know-nothing here except as we are taught."

Q. 9.-" How is ' eating the herb ' part of man's punishment (Gen. 3:18), when it had already been named as his food (1:29)?"

Ans.-It is ' the herb of the field' instead of the garden- paradise.

Q. 10.-"The 'sanctifying' of the Sabbath, was it not for man? And, while not mentioned in Genesis again, was it not owned as already given in Ex. 16:23 ?"

Ans.-The first question can only be answered in the affirmative. God could not 'sanctify ' a Sabbath for Himself, and we have no reason or authority for saying it was for the angels. But we must remember that this was while every thing was good. The fall came, and after that we have no history of the Sabbath till Ex. 16:, except it may be a hint of the weekly division of time in connection with the flood. (Gen. 7:4; 8:10, 12.) People may have kept it-or the godly ones, but "from Adam to Moses" there was no law.

Ex. 16:.23 is not conclusive; for the same or a similar formula is found elsewhere in connection with what is newly instituted (10:16,32). And in the law, " Remember the Sabbath-day" may only point back to chap. 16:This is a doubtful basis for any clear faith, but it seems all that in the wisdom of God, we are permitted.

Q. 11.-" What is ' perfect in his generations ' (Gen. 6:9.) ?" Ans.-Blameless among the people of his day.

Q. 12.-"Why in Num. 3:39 are the Levites 22,000? The total is 22,300,-more, not less, than the first-born ?"

Ans.-The total of 22,000 is right, evidently, and it would seem there must be a copyist's error in the text as to one of the tribes. Keil suggests that in ver. 28 the 600 should be 300. It would easily result from the dropping out of one letter (1).

Q. 13.-"Explain Acts 7:.16, ' sons of Emmor,' etc."
Ans.-There is again some mistake, apparently the word "Abraham" should be omitted ; but the MSS. give but little help. It is an old and well-known difficulty.

In the fifth chapter of John, we find the Lord Jesus as the Worker. In fellowship with the Father, He must work :" My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."

There could be no rest for Him in a scene where sin had defiled and ruined every thing. His rest was above the scene, in the One who had sent Him. What a lesson this for us ! How apt we are to be restless here, instead of workers! If indeed we find fully our rest in Him who has sent us, even as He was sent (Jno. 20:21), will it not lead us in fellowship with Him in His work in this scene of sorrow? Beloved brethren, what a place of privilege is ours! "Sent ones"! Sent by Him, as He was sent:sent to be workers here, in fellowship with Him. Our rest indeed in Himself, as His rest was in the Father.

And we find He lays down the principles, if I may so call them, that governed Him in His work. He says, " I can of Mine own self do nothing :as I hear, I judge :and My judgment is just; because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me." (5:30.)

"I can of Mine own self do nothing." Every thing was done in communion with and dependence on the Father.

What a word for us ! How much work is, so to speak, master, because we have not learnt this lesson! But again, He says, "As I hear, I judge." His was the listening ear. As on another occasion He tells us, "I have not spoken of Myself; but the Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak." (Jno. 12:49.) How much of vain speaking would this save us if it were true of us! Oh for a waiting, listening ear, that seeks ever the Lord's word, and acts and judges in accordance therewith !

" My judgment is just; because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me." Here we find the secret of true judgment. Just in proportion as we are seeking a place for ourselves do we fail to have a just conception of things. How much failure can be attributed to this! How self-seeking so often characterizes us in the Lord's service ! May we be led, in the power of the indwelling Spirit, to surrender ourselves unreservedly to the will of our blessed Lord, so that down here, as "His sent ones," we may have His mind, and thus be a help to the Lord's people in these days.

The call to-day is for unselfishness and devotedness in the ministry of God's Word. Seeking not the applause of men, but, through good report and evil, seeking to make Christ known to others, and giving a faithful testimony for Him in these days of unfaithfulness.

To this end, beloved brethren, ought we not to make continual prayer and supplication to our God? May this coming year, if our Lord tarry, lead each one of us to seek this blessing for ourselves and for the whole Church of God. J.J.S.

There is a danger of being disheartened and " vexed " through the prevalence of evil, " Because of the abounding of iniquity, the love of many shall wax cold." How perfect the blessed Lord was in this ! All was iniquity around Him, yet, in perfect communion with God, His spirit walked in peace, so that He could notice and recognize even all that was naturally lovely- the lily of the field-God's care of ravens-all that was of God here. But this is because He was perfectly near God (I speak of His mind as man); but, for the same reason, He judges perfectly man and all his thoughts and intents of heart.

But marriage is owned from the beginning-a child, in which simplicity, confidence, and undistrusting readiness of heart to believe, guilelessness, as not having learnt the world nor its vanity – beauty of character, when He looked on the young man who had displayed that character, He loved him; this is lovely, but the presence of God must try man-where was his heart? He went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. With the best dispositions and readiness to be taught, and plenty to make good use of, the state of the heart is found; "who then can be saved." With man it is impossible, but then with God all things are possible. At the very outset, the Lord had shown him he was all on the wrong tack, seeking goodness in man-God only was good ; the heart was detected-the cross alone would do, those who follow Him must take it up-death to what man was, the only path. But then there was a blessed starting-point for this, " He came to give His life a ransom for many." (Mark 10:)

The cross was first redemption, then the death of the flesh ; and we are, for ourselves, to take up the cross, and, for others, to serve as Christ did. He had in this character, as now calling souls, only the cup to give-His baptism and His cup, though there was large, ample reward for those for whom it was prepared.

Then comes the reference of this question to the disciples' path. Where the flesh is not crucified, the world and Satan have power-they follow trembling, when He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. There can be sincerity and blessing-Christ, the Son, revealed and holding fast by Him, but the flesh not subdued to the measure of that which we really believe, then there is fear and weakness, and it goes even to the point of being called Satan by the Lord. See the difference of Paul by the Holy Ghost-his righteousness, which was a gain to him, was loss to him, he needed it not ; had he any thing of this world ? It was dung and dross, and followed- this one thing I do. If he had forty stripes save one, or despaired of life, he had the sentence of death in himself; he looked to a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory-a bright example of the power of grace and the Spirit, so as to have an undivided and so undistracted heart, and power with him as in Christ, a perfect example of the good which Paul had to imitate-a heart perfectly free in its own self; tested, indeed, but perfect, and so perfect with God that it could, as above all the evil around it, deeply as it was felt, see and recognize all that was of God.

It is wondrously full of instruction to see man's heart sifted, yet all good of God owned ; that edge of the divine word, of the word of Christ, which can run its edge through all that to us is so mixed up ;-nature and fallen nature-nature from God, and nature from man- and in perfect goodness in the midst o:all, yet tell us plainly of the needed cross, and the grace of a needed redemption. J.N.D.

It is in the mercy of God that Scripture was not completed before the collapse of the Church which its very beginnings in uninspired history present to us had already in great measure taken place:so much so, that in the epistles to the seven churches we could have a picture of its whole after-course exhibited for our admonition. With this many of us are now familiar. By it God has awakened us to realize our position with reference to the passing of the night, and to see that the hands of the clock point to the near approach of morning.

But these epistles are not the only instructions of a like kind, exhortations which have all the character of prophecies, which we who live in the times to which they have especial Application can discern as that. Sometimes, indeed, they are, in fact, upon the face, combined with direct prediction, as in the second epistles, (Thessalonians, Timothy, and Peter,) which, as supplements to the preceding ones, are in direct view of the last days. On the other hand, the second and third epistles of John contain no prediction; yet they too are supplementary, and in them the features of the last times unmistakably appear. Antichrists are such features, as stated in the first epistle; and a warning as to them is prominent in the second. In the third, the Church is seen ruled by a Diotrephes, who withstands the apostle, and rejects and casts out the brethren,-a plain anticipation of what is now history as to the professing church at large.

It is not my purpose at all to take up this at present. The same tendencies and evils manifest themselves continually; and we may find more profitable application in what is nearer to ourselves than Rome. Better still it may be to take up the teaching of the epistle, and let it apply wherever it shall be found to apply. Certainly we can hardly be at a loss to realize its bearing upon our own day, and to many of us it will be of the deepest, saddest interest, as well as of the most practical importance.

The third epistle follows the second in an order which is moral as well as chronological. Together, they meet two contrary tendencies, which unite, however, in opposition to the Spirit of Christ. One is, the laxity which is not love, although it claims to be this, and will find many to concede its claim; the other is, the narrowness which is not faithfulness to Christ, though often masked under such a name. To both, the apostle opposes the love and light which are one in God, and which separated are alike destroyed:what can the love be worth that sets aside truth? or what truth can there be apart from the love which is the greatest truth ?

The union of these is insisted on in both epistles, truth being put foremost in the second, love in the third, neither for a moment any where forgotten. There is recognized the danger of our not holding them together, at least in even balance,-a strange yet a felt difficulty, the pendulum swinging so much more readily from one side to the other than resting in the center ; from laxity to harshness or the reverse is a smaller change than to the faithfulness of love. Love is the energy of the divine nature ; light, the manner of its display :where God acts, He acts in His whole character, although there may be to us a difference in His actions-a predominance of this attribute or that. But thus love itself cannot be described without bringing in other attributes ; and the Word of God needs to describe and define it as the apostle in the first of these epistles does, for in nothing do we mistake more. He gives, therefore, tests and counter-tests :if it be to God, yet "he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ?"if it be to our brother, "by this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God;" and here he has also to add, "and keep His commandments," and, to define further, "for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous."

Love must have its object, and this is carefully insisted on. It is first of all Christ in whom God has revealed Himself,-thus, then, those who are Christ's-the brethren. It is not that there is no wider range, but here is what characterizes it:"we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." Here the circle marked out shows sufficiently the center from which it is described. Lose the center, and all is lost. It is this, then, on which he insists in the second epistle. If you have not "the doctrine of Christ," you have not Christ, but Antichrist. Thus you must not greet the one who, coming in a Christian guise, brings not the doctrine of Christ. To make this as strong as possible, it is a woman who is warned. Subtlety of intellect is not needed in such a matter, nor official position :it is a question of heart and conscience,-of a soul that knows Christ. If you receive deliberately one who displaces Christ,-if you are an accessory to that displacement, you are "partaker of his evil deeds." Nay, he may be deceived, but you dishonor Christ with your eyes open. Association is in God's sight one of the most serious questions :fellowship with God and with what is opposed to Him cannot go on together.

Thus the second epistle of John comes naturally before the third. First of all, he fixes the center before he marks out the circumference. And Satan too, first of all, aims at the center ; for could he take away that, there is no more any circumference to mark out. People say it is not a question of the Lord's table ; but what table is it where the Lord is denied, or where He is named and insulted together?

But my purpose is not now to pause on this :doubtless even where the honor of the Lord requires separation there may yet be in fulfilling a plain duty a spirit of harshness which already needs the check of the third epistle. We have ever to remember what Christ's people are to Him, and with what discriminating care and tenderness He deals with them. How little, even here, have we learned to distinguish things that differ, and to take forth the precious from the vile ! How many have we repelled from the truth by the lack of grace that we have manifested ! How many have we abandoned to the evil whom we might have drawn out from it had we had a hand to put forth for their help ! Strange it is that those who have learnt their own need of grace can in their conduct toward others act so readily in the spirit of law, and expect to find results which only grace can produce! Sad indeed that we should be so little able to count upon and work in the grace which is in Christians, if they are indeed Christians, and that God's way of loving us out of our sins should be so little known to us ! Strange too that we should hear of that being righteousness which is not grace, as if it were possible from those who have received grace ! We need much searching of heart as to such things, which has engendered a cold, harsh spirit of suspicion, and at best a clear judicial wisdom, which is not the wisdom that winneth souls, but the very opposite. And especially where any departure from what is esteemed a most rigid orthodoxy is in question, tolerance is often counted mere latitudinarianism and indifference; and the needful "separation from evil" is in fact lost in a real biting and devouring one another which ends, naturally, except the mercy of God prevent, in being consumed one of another.

That which the third epistle of John is designed to meet is but the development of such a condition as this, and it will be found by some of us, what all the inspired Word is said to be, " profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." We need, however, for this to have the sharply marked individuality of the "man of God" to profit by it. If for any reason, in any measure, we have resigned our individuality, to become merely part of a mass, Scripture ceases in that measure to have meaning for us. Heart and conscience both belong to the individual alone.

The features of the day of the third of John are easily to be seen in the epistle. First of these, Diotrephes, individual enough he, with his controlling power in the assembly, loving to have the pre-eminence. If the epistle to the Corinthians shows us the Church of God on earth, with the already threatening invasion of primitive order, restless and ambitious spirits, dividing the saints into contentious parties, here we find a further stage, one disputant for power having succeeded (as is commonly the case) in reducing all the rest to obedience to himself. A kind of Romish unity had taken the place of the jangle of many tongues, and they perhaps vaunted it as Rome does, while in reality it was a further stage of decline. One individuality had absorbed into himself the corporate condition, and the assembly practically no longer existed :it was a tool in his hand.

How much for solemn consideration is there in such a state of things existing while yet a living apostle remained on earth ! Doubtless the assembly existed still in form and name,-nay, we see it did. The after-history assures that the " church "-the original meaning, however, soon dying out of the word-became a name to conjure by. Ecclesiasticism grew as the real ecclesia (the assembly) was lost sight of. The " ecclesiastics" were the clergy, from whom the people, or laity, were separated by a continually increasing gulf. When the transformation was complete, the church itself was really but the clergy, the name remaining only as a mystical halo of theoretic sanctity round the heads of the latter.

These things had their roots, then, in the apostles' days ; they were, in fact, fast developing, though by a quiet, noiseless development which startled, as it would seem, few. Nay, to most, perhaps, the growth seemed healthy. How much better than the strife of tongues at Corinth was the rule of Diotrephes! Nor was it yet called "rule;" it was but "pre-eminence ;" and are there not those who rightly, and of God, have the pre-eminence ? who would pull them down from this but those possessed with the spirit of independence-radicals and demagogues ? Had not Paul bidden them, " Obey your leaders?" and was there not true humility in such obedience ? None the less by such means Diotrephes may come to reign,-the parasitic growth of clerisy striking its roots into the very tree which it destroys, nourished by the sap which it perverts from its true purpose.

There is, in truth, but a narrow path for us, and a scarcely sensible line divides between good and evil. Every where are there ways that seem right, and whose ends nevertheless are ways of death. What help, what hope, save in the utter helplessness which needs an almighty arm, and a wisdom only found by those sensible of their folly ? God's Word even, apart from God Himself, what help is there in it? Nevertheless it is through that Word that help is ministered, but written out, as it were, only upon the road in which we travel with Him. Thus the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err in it, while the wisest of theorists may go even the more completely astray.

Are there not " leaders"?Yes, assuredly; Scripture plainly says so (Heb. 13:7, 17, Gr.). Ought we not to "obey " them? Undoubtedly, for here again we have Scripture. Nay, says the apostle, "We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake." (I Thess. 5:12, 13.) Here, "over you " is too strong, however :the word is, " who stand before you "-practically much as in the former passages, "your leaders." But there are such, then ? Yes, and we are to know them, a peculiar and important word:had they "known" a Diotrephes, they would hardly have followed him! If we are to know our guides, then plainly there is no responsibility taken off our shoulders, but the contrary:we are responsible for the guides we allow as such ; we are, first of all, to "know" before we follow, not to follow blindly. And how shall we know a guide but by the guidance? and by what can we judge as to " guidance " but by the Word of God ? So says the apostle once more, " Remember your leaders, who have spoken unto you the Word of God, whose faith follow." Believing obedience to the Word of God, then, must characterize such leaders, and we only follow their faith when the Word of God is to us what it is to them. The guidance is by it, and faith must be in it, not in them, and only those are to be followed who follow it.

Just so there are "teachers," who are special gifts of Christ to His Church :was, then, John the beloved a radical, or possessed with the spirit of independency, when he said, even to babes in Christ, "But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things"? And "the anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you" (i Jno. 2:20, 27) ? Here only true humility will keep us right; and yet there is no opposition between these things, and no real difficulty either. Any one of the least understanding would say, Certainly, the teacher is not meant to stand between me and the Word of God, but rather to bring it to me, to make plain to me what is there; and when I see this, it is not the teacher I believe, -it is God :I am not dependent on the teacher, though I thank God for him.

It is the truth which accredits the teacher; never, rightly, the teacher the truth :so with the guide ; if he can show me God's path for me, it is well and good, follow I must; but woe be to him who stands between the soul and God, and whom men "obey" upon the warrant of his superior knowledge, wisdom, or holiness! Our " walk " is to be " with God."

This will not satisfy one " who loveth to have the preeminence ; " and therefore he will soon be discerned by such a text. Human authority will be pressed in same way, and the demand for the Word of God treated as pride and independence. Here, the voice of the church becomes a ready resource, and apparently scriptural too :for "if he do not hear the church," he is to "be to thee as a heathen man and a publican." Upon this text ecclesiasticism builds, naturally enough, a lofty edifice upon a narrow foundation, even where there is added to this the words which lie in immediate connection, "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

I do not propose to dwell upon this now :it has been elsewhere done sufficiently. All that need be said about it is, that there is a sphere wherein this authority of the church is to be owned, and beyond which it cannot go, and that we must learn from Scripture the limits of this sphere. Thus, the church cannot define doctrine ; the Word alone is authoritative there. Moreover, the context shows that it is a question of trespass as to which the Lord is speaking. The Church is the witness of God's holiness upon the earth, and must therefore put away wickedness, is under responsibility to do that. How impossible, then, that it could have power against holiness, to give false witness as to what God is, to pervert righteousness, and force men to go with evil! The Church's authority is therefore in due subjection to the Word of God, from which it gets its authority, and conscience is bound by the Word and must listen to the Word:our walk is to be as absolutely with God as if there were no church.

Here, the apostle had written to the church, " But Diotrephes receiveth us not," and his will seems to have been law in it. Did the voice of Diotrephes in the church, which it had no power to resist, in no wise affect the authority of the church's voice which men had to "hear" ? If not, did Diotrephes' evil become good when the church assented to it? It is plain the apostle did not accept the casting out of the brethren, though the church must have accepted it. And if not, how many questions might have to be raised as to any given assembly-judgment ! Conscience is thus exercised at every step, never released from it :conscience, I say, which we must carefully distinguish from mere will; will, apart from conscience, is pride, independence, insubjection ; but a conscience exercised by the Word of God means humility, and the spirit of obedience.

The spirit of ecclesiasticism while it speaks loudly of the Church, cares nothing for the individual members of Christ. Its church is not a living organism, of which the Spirit is the practical unity, but a kind of unorganic mass whose component parts are atoms and no more – molded from without, not from within. With it, conscience is only a troubler, the fruitful cause of strife and division, with its cry, " We must obey God rather than men." In truth, no government can be effectual with such a living machine, except that of its Head, Christ Jesus. And His guides and leaders must be like Himself, – tender of the individual, careful to maintain the sense of responsibility in the soul, nurturers of the life rather than zealots of the form, realizing that the plants of God's garden grow best with the least handling, and that food and sunshine are their first necessities. God gives us guides like these-men who will speak to us the Word of God, and whose faith we can follow.

In truth, it needs faith :the consciousness that one is but in the hand of God, a worker under Him, having but one's own little bit of service to do, and incompetent to measure the result of that, having to leave results with Him, yet confident, in the face of all seeming failure, that no honest work for Him shall be in vain :His part, to order; ours-all of us-to minister, as witnesses and channels of His love to men. Such guides as those of which Scripture speaks, may His people " know," wherever found.

(To be continued.)

DR. WALDENSTROM AND NON-VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.

II. – Continued from p. 139.

The first point that he insists on with reference to the meaning of the Old-Testament sacrifices is just that which we have already considered, and without which he could not get on for a moment, – that' it is never said in the Old Testament that atonement, or reconciliation, was effected by the death of the sacrificed animal. No ; atonement was effected by the blood:" that is, for him, as we have seen, by life, not death. To which he adds here that " not by the shedding of the blood was atonement made, but by the sprinkling of the blood." " But what did this sprinkling signify ? It signified cleansing, or purging, from sin, as the apostle says, ' Almost all things are by the law purged with blood.'" For some reason Dr. Waldenstrom does not complete the quotation here, " and without shedding of blood is no remission." I may not assume to know his reason for the omission, but it certainly would seem to need accounting for. The passage thus completed lies, in fact, in the very teeth of his argument ; and it is safe to say that it is a complete refutation of it.

Why without shedding of blood was there no remission ? Probably Dr. Waldenstrom might suggest (for, as he has said nothing, we can only suggest for him) that the blood could not be sprinkled if it were not shed ; but this answer is not as satisfactory as it seems it ought to be. For, in the first place, the apostle should have said, and it cannot be conceived why in that case he did not say, " without sprinkling of blood," instead of " without shedding." We would insist as much as Dr. Waldenstrom on the exact force of Scripture words, and here plainly (for him), the apostle has put the emphasis upon the wrong point, and is in that measure accountable for the doctrine we have been getting from it.

But again. Suppose an Israelite who had sinned under the old economy. Should we say to him, The shedding of blood is not what makes atonement:it is sprinkling of blood ; and, acting upon our suggestion, he was to go to the priest and say, " Here is the fresh blood of a newly killed animal; put it, I pray thee, upon the horns of the altar for me." Would that avail ?

He might add, "And here is the beast itself for the fat to be offered, and for the priest." Still the priest would have to say, "Sir, is this beast your own sin-offering? Did you designate it as your own by laying your hand upon it, and then kill it in the place where they kill the burnt-offering before the Lord ?"

All this is nothing for Dr. Waldenstrom. The shedding of blood is not the point, but the sprinkling of blood. One cannot see why the animal should even die at all:for the type would be much more perfect, according to his view, if it were some of the blood of a living animal than as the blood of a dead one ; it would surely better signify life!

And why need every one that sinned have his own sin-offering? Why must there be this solemn shedding of blood for each one, and the whole of the blood poured out in each case-save what anointed the horns of it-at the bottom of the altar!

The sprinkling, however, says Dr. Waldenstrom, is the important thing. It is this that cleanses from sin, and atonement is just cleansing from sin ! Think of the Israelite again, as instructed in this new theology. He brings his beast according to the manner :it is slain, and the priest takes the blood. To do what with it? To anoint the horns of the altar, and to pour out all the rest of it at the bottom of it? The man looks anxiously. "But, sir, have you left none to sprinkle upon me? That is what atonement means ; it is to be sprinkled upon me, to cleanse me." " I have none left," says the priest; " I have acted strictly according to the ritual. The animal was killed before the Lord ; its blood is poured upon the ground, except what you can see upon the horns of the altar. I have no word to sprinkle any upon you ; but atonement is made nevertheless, and your sin is forgiven!"

Dr. Waldenstrom's doctrine does not consist with the facts. The blood of the trespass-offering is sprinkled upon the leper, as also the blood of the bird killed at the beginning of his cleansing ; the blood of the covenant is sprinkled on the people in Ex. 24:, but it is the blood of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings only ; the ashes of the heifer are sprinkled upon the defiled person in Num. 19:; and to these last two the apostle refers in Heb. 9:; we shall see the significance of this shortly :but the blood of the sin-offering, or of the ordinary trespass-offerings, was never sprinkled upon the person, while it was, nevertheless, again and again declared that atonement was made by it, and that the person was forgiven.

We see, then, that the apostle knew what he was saying when he declared that "without shedding of blood is no remission." He knew all about sprinkling, and insists upon it in the very same chapter; but had he said " without sprinkling of blood is no remission," the whole Jewish ritual would have borne witness against him, as now it does against Dr. Waldenstrom. He has made the exception the rule, and misinterpreted both alike; and Scripture, which is no " nose of wax," and will not speak as we please, but only according to the truth of God which it declares, witnesses decisively against him. The whole Levitical ritual, while it does say that atonement is by blood, unites to show that the blood is the testimony of death, not life, only of a death substitutionally offered to God, and so making atonement as lifted up to God upon the altar's horns. The blood is given upon the altar to atone. Thus is the sinner forgiven ; and " without shedding of blood"-death-"there is no remission."

In what follows, Dr. Waldenstrom repeats what is well known, that the Hebrew word "to make atonement" is literally " to cover," and that is in the sense of annulling,

-if you please, blotting out. But he is wholly wrong in interpreting this of a work done in the sinner :it is a thing wholly distinct. The blood of the sacrifice covers

-atones for-sins, puts them away from before God, because it is the blood of a legal substitute, the type of One precious, perfect Lamb of sacrifice, upon whom was " the chastisement of our peace."

But, asks Dr. Waldenstrom further, " Who is set forth in the first and foremost place as one that atones for sins ? Answer:It is God. But if God is the one who makes atonement for sins, then it cannot mean that He makes atonement for or appeases Himself in regard to sins"! A clever, bold, and absolute deception; though no doubt he is first self-deceived. If I were to ask, seeking answer from Scripture, " Who is set forth in the first and foremost place as the one who atones for sins?" I should have to answer, The priest, assuredly ; and that is not God. So says the Old Testament ; so says the New. " The priest shall make atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven him." God it is who forgives, and forgives on the ground of atonement, and the atonement is thus made to God, and to none but God. " A merciful and faithful High-Priest," says the New Testament, " to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb. 2:17). So the Revised Version ; and it is undoubtedly right. The thought of propitiation cannot be taken away from hilaskomai here,-the very word used by the heathen every where for it. But " propitiation, "-if there be such a thing at all-is Godward. The doctrine of the Old Testament and that of the New is one.

"Go quickly unto the congregation," says Moses to Aaron, " and make atonement for them ; for there is wrath gone out from the Lord." (Num. 16:46.) " Every day shall thou offer the "bullock of the sin-offering for atonement." (Ex. 29:36) " It is the blood that maketh atonement." "When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you." "He that offereth the blood of the peace-offerings." "Thou shall not offer the blood of any sacrifice with leavened bread."

In all this work of atonement, then, is il "set forth in the first and foremost place'" that it is God who makes the atonement, and therefore that the atonement cannot be offered to God, because God could not offer or atonement to Himself ? No :assuredly il is not who offers to God, and yet the atonement is offered to God, or words are altogether deceptive, and there is no use in discussing this or any other matter.

But what about the passages quoted by Dr. Waldenstrom as Ps. 65:3, for instance, "As for our transgression, Thou wilt purge them away," where, he says, "it is liter-ally, 'Thou will atone for them,' or 'cover them'"? Let us consider this, and we shall find assuredly that there is in it neither the difficulty which he sees for us, nor the doctrine he advances for himself.

Now it must be owned that there is a difference in some respects between the way in which atonement is presented in the Old Testament and our common way of putting it. When, for instance, on the day of atonement, Aaron goes in with the blood to make atonement in the holiest of all, and then coming out to the altar, sprinkles upon it and makes atonement for it,-though we are accustomed, no doubt, to the words, it can hardly be said that we are accustomed really to the manner of speech here. In our way of putting it these would not be separate atonements, but applications of atonement. The literal meaning of the Hebrew word (kaphar, "to cover,") perfectly accords with and accounts for this use, as our word "to atone" does not. In reality, for us, atonement is that satisfaction made to the holy and righteous nature of God which enables Him to manifest His grace ; and that work was not done in heaven-which the holiest typifies-but on earth, upon the cross. So God says of the blood, " I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls." That does not hinder, as we have seen, the making atonement with it elsewhere. This difference, it is plain, there is between the Scripture use and our own ; and it accounts for the expressions which Dr. Waldenstrom brings forward.

When God applies to this purpose or that, to this person or that, the value of the atoning blood, He would, as we see in Old-Testament language, be making atonement thus. With us it would be misleading to speak so. The corresponding expression with us would be that He " purges." And this is no more difficult to understand than that any other word should have different meanings or shades of meaning. Such almost every word has, and to confound them would produce just the confusion which has resulted here in Dr. Waldenstrom's mind. Every translation of the Bible, I suppose, makes the difference here which he would obliterate. And yet even he, if we translated Prov. 16:14, that "a wise man will atone the wrath of a king," would rightly admonish us that kaphar has other meanings. So be it, then, and the difficulty is ended, this special meaning being also fully accounted for in accordance with the general doctrine, as we have seen.

We need not, then, examine at length the passages brought forward to show that atonement is simply cleansing. It is never significant of an internal work. It is by blood shed, poured out; death, not life, offered up to God as on the horns of the altar, or the mercy-seat, turning aside the wrath of God from him on whose behalf it is accepted. All this is the teaching of facts that cannot be denied, and ought not to be misinterpreted.

But we must look more closely at what is said of the day of atonement, though I cannot agree with the statement that the sacrifice on that day was " the sum of all the sacrifices that were offered for sin." The atonement for the holy place, for the tabernacle, and for the altar, Dr. Waldenstrom urges, is not that " God should thereby become gracious toward " these, (who ever thought so ?) but "to cleanse and hallow from the uncleanness of the children of Israel."

He anticipates, however, an objection :-

" Some one objecting may say :' But the holy place could not really have any sins from which it needed to be cleansed. Answer :The cleansing of the tabernacle was a type of the cleansing of the people. Therefore, also, it is said that the holy place, the tabernacle, and the altar should be cleansed 'from' [thus, literally; the versions have it "because of"] the transgressions of the children of Israel." (5:16.)

This is surely arbitrary enough ; for the verse quoted can scarcely be contended for as proving that the tabernacle represents the people of Israel! It should, on the other hand, (if only he had quoted it entire,) have taught him better :"and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation which remaineth amongst them in the midst of their uncleannesses." The tabernacle that is specially marked as remaining amongst them cannot rightly be confounded with the people amongst whom it remains. And it should be plain that no typical significance of the tabernacle is at all in question, but the simple fact of God dwelling thus in connection with sinners.

But we have come to what is indeed utterly opposed to Dr. Waldenstrom's system, and which he seems to have no capacity to see. " The holy place could not really have any sins from which it needed to be cleansed." True, but could not the sins of the people defile the holy place so as to make it no fit dwelling-place for a holy God? Surely, it is plainly asserted here; but then the difficulty for Dr. Waldenstrom results :how could atonement meet such a case as this ?

For him it could not; for atonement with him is the cleansing of people, and this is expressly stated to be for the tabernacle itself. Look at the full specification in the thirty-third verse :"And he shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tabernacle of the congregation and the altar ; and he shall make atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation." The mention of all these distinctly in this way precludes the thought of the one being but the type of the other.

But here, then, as there are confessedly no sins belonging to the sanctuary itself, atonement for it is not the cleansing of sins, but of defilement from the sins of the people ; and this is accomplished by the bringing before God the precious blood which vindicates His righteousness so entirely that no patient going on with sinners in grace can raise a question of it.

But for Dr. Waldenstrom no atonement of this kind could be needed. God is always righteous, he would say, in going on thus with men ; just as it is also righteous of Him to show grace when they turn to Him apart from atonement altogether. How, then, can His tabernacle among men be defiled? The author's incompetence to explain such a thing is shown by his having to make the tabernacle only the type of the people themselves. The apostle's interpretation is, " It was necessary, therefore, that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these ;" although the blood could scarcely be the figure of life communicated in the case of "things in the heavens"!

The scape-goat, however, is to make all plain, it seems. There is confessedly a difficult phrase in connection with the scape-goat, that he is to be "set alive before the Lord, to make atonement with him, to send him away for a scape-goat into the wilderness." So the common version ; but the revised gives, "to make atonement for him," and this is allowed to be the regular use of the Hebrew words. This appears to suit Dr Waldenstrom, who claims that " atone for " means here the same thing as at other places,-to wit, make holy, sanctify, or cleanse. " That atonement should be made for the goat meant, therefore," he adds, "that in a typical or symbolical way he should be sanctified [separated or dedicated] for the purpose of carrying away the sins of the people."

But surely this is a strange reading of atonement. First, it means "to cleanse;" but where in Scripture do we hear of a sacrificial animal-and the two goats are one sin-offering (5:5), – needing to be cleansed for such a purpose? This "cleansing," therefore, has to be attenuated into a " dedication " with no thought of cleansing in it! But certainly kaphar never means this. Indeed the only "cleansing" by it is, not inward cleansing, but the removal of guilt-a very different thing. Moreover, this removal was by blood ; but no blood was shed for or sprinkled upon the scape-goat, and it would have been an extraordinary thing indeed in such a case.

But what are we to make, then, of an atonement for the scape-goat ? We must leave the phrase as it stands in the Revised Version, I believe. It is the regular force of the words :" atonement with " is not correct; "atonement upon"-the resort of many translators,-has no clear meaning, and what it might have scarcely seems consistent with the facts.

But what, then, does "to atone for it" mean? The facts will, I doubt not, themselves explain, if we will follow them only with attention.

The two goats are, as already said, but one sin-offering ; and the object of the sin-offering is to atone:the two goats illustrate atonement; they are a double type, like the two birds in the cleansing of the leper. One bird only dies, as one goat only dies :in each case the second one of the two is needed for a purpose for which its death, without a miracle of resurrection, would have incapacitated it; and this is the only reason why there are two at all.

Thus if atonement be by blood, only one furnishes the blood, only one properly atones. The atonement, illustrated by the two, is yet but actually made by the one, who in this sense atones for the other. And thus the words following in this case are explained,-" to make atonement for him, to let him go for a scape-goat into the wilderness." This is why the other must die, in a sense, for him, that he may be sent away alive, as, in fact, he is.

This, which is plain, is a complete answer to Dr. Waldenstrom's real perversion.

The Old-Testament doctrine of sacrifice is clear. It is the shedding of blood by which comes remission, and the blood shed is all poured out at the bottom of the altar, save what is put upon the horns in testimony of death, not life,-a death offered to God, as the blood upon the altar shows, for it is upon the altar, the place of offering, that it atones for the soul. It is not ordinarily sprinkled upon the person at all, but upon the altar; and thus the wrath of God is removed from the sinner that turns to Him. He sees the blood, and passes over. He says as to Noah, that He will not curse ; or as to Abel, gives testimony that he is righteous, testifying of his gifts.

The sacrifice is substitutional. The hands of the offerer mark it out as this. It is henceforth his sin, or sin-offering, for the words are the same. Death is entered into the world through sin, and "the soul that sinneth, it shall die,"-so the victim dies. The sword of judgment is sheathed, for the ransom has been found. The Old-Testament doctrine of sacrifice is the doctrine of vicarious atonement.

But we have still to inquire as to the New Testament:will it reverse or confirm what we have gathered from the Old ?

(To be continued.)

2. THE PANOPLY.

For this conflict we must have the panoply-the whole armor-of God. This is emphasized by repetition. (10:ii, 13.) It must be the whole armor, or we are as powerless against the adversary as if we had none. The whole man can be reached through any one part exposed. A city can be taken through a single gate unguarded. And our foe is subtle, and easily discerns what is lacking in us. Moreover, the armor itself is so made, to fit together,-one part is so necessary to another, that it cannot rightly be put on except it be all put on. How can we be girt about with truth and have no "breast-plate of righteousness" ? And so it will be found all through. No wonder! for this is just "integrity" in its true meaning,-that is, entireness. Who that is upright with God can pick and choose as to His will, what to do and what he may leave undone? Let us remember at the outset, therefore, it is the whole armor we are to put on.

The order too is important, and that will appear as we go on. The order in Scripture is far too little thought of. To take it into account would be by many considered too minute; but in fact there is nothing too minute for our attention in the Word of God; and this cannot be too seriously pressed.

The first part of the armor, then, is the girdle,-what might be scarcely thought a part of it, but according to this, the very first thing to be considered. What indeed could a soldier do with flowing garments about his feet? And here the Word of God gets its right place :truth it is that girds the loins.

"Sanctify them through the truth," is the Lord's own prayer:"Thy Word is truth." (Jno. 17:17.) In the world, men walk in a vain show, and disquiet themselves in vain:holiness is "holiness of truth." (Eph. 4:24, marg.) The Word of God brings into the soul the realities which separate from what is seen to be false and merely seductive. The things unseen, but eternal, stir and energize the heart. Torpor is gone ; earnestness and diligence possess the soul. It is kept with God, and at rest,-a rest which is full activity, and makes it untiring.

It is plain that this state of soul is a first necessity for conflict, and that the wiles of the enemy can only be met by one delivered from the illusions of that world which is his great instrument. It connects also with the second part of the armor, the breast-plate of righteousness, which is, of course, practical righteousness, a conscience void of offense, as of one walking in the truth he knows. Otherwise the truth itself becomes a reproach, and we are in danger of shipwreck as to it even:"holding faith and a good conscience," says the apostle, "which some having put away, concerning faith have made shipwreck." (i Tim. 1:19)

He who does not follow the truth he knows is sure to find, except God's mercy prevent, something that will accommodate itself, as the truth will not, to the laxity in which he indulges. The enemy here has full opportunity, and it is no wonder if the darkness should soon be proportionate to the truth once known.

The third part of the armor is, the feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. It is peace to which the gospel introduces,-not only through the blood of Jesus having no more conscience of sins, but God known as for us ; who can be against us? Thus in all circumstances there is peace. If God rule-our Father be the Lord of heaven and earth, to receive from His hand every thing is to be delivered from unrest, from resentment even of what is meant for harm :" As for you, ye indeed thought evil against me," says Joseph to his brethren, "but God meant it for good." (Gen. 1. 20.) To what a height of serenity can such a consciousness lift the soul ! How can one desire evil upon another for what in the hand of God had been only good ?

Israel's shoes were never worn out with all the flinty rocks of the wilderness; and such peace, maintained in communion with God, is proof against all the roughness of the way. Those who enjoy this peace are indeed armed against Satan; but it is only attainable in the order in which we find it here.

Fourthly, we have, "Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one." Some would read here, "in all things," but I believe the text is right as it stands, and that it means, not " more than all," nor " besides all," but, as Bengel reads, "over all." The shield covers even the rest of the armor, and can be moved so as to guard any threatened part. It is thus that faith is to protect all the other parts,-the faith which is not merely in the work accomplished for us, but a practical confidence in God at all times. This it is that quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked one,-the suspicions of His love and faithfulness, to a believer one would say impossible, but for bitter experience. What fiery darts are these ! and how well is he called "the wicked one" who can employ them !

Still, the head needs to be provided for, and here it is, "Receive the helmet of salvation." It is not a hope, it is a positive accomplishment. Saved we are ; and this consciousness enables one to lift up his head amid the tumult of the battle-field. We are conquerors before we enter the strife. Not that there is nothing at stake, nor that there is not real meaning and importance in the conflict. There is surely much; but salvation is not at stake :it is not for it we are contending. This we have as the fruit of Another's victory. And to mark this, it would seem, the word is changed here which has just been used for "taking the shield of faith;" it is really, "and receive the helmet of salvation." It is not an attainment, not something in which we are active, as before; it is the gift of Another, a gift of grace alone.

Then we have our offensive weapon-"the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." There is a slight correction to be made here; it is rather, "The sword of the Spirit, which is the saying of God,"-that is, the particular text out of the Word which you want for the occasion. And this is the sword of the Spirit, not simply because the whole Word is inspired of Him, but also because you need to be under His guidance in order to find the text. How wise may a mere babe in Christ be if with God ! how dull the greatest student if without Him ! But let us not imagine that deep and accurate acquaintance with the Word is therefore of small account. It is far otherwise. Growth is by the truth, and if the truth be slighted, and we are babes when we ought to be grown men, then are we "carnal, and not spiritual" (i Cor. 3:i), and He will need to make us sensible of our folly. To expect the blessed Spirit of God to minister to spiritual sloth and indifference is presumption; and here again the order of Scripture is instructive:it is only when all the coat-armor is fastened on that the sword can be grasped; only thus will it be effective.

But used thus, what victories may we gain with it! there is nothing else, indeed, by which victory can be gained. Satan dreads no mere human reasoning, which lies, after all, under the darkness of this world-cannot escape from it:it is "armor of light" we need, and light is heavenly, as even nature witnesses. Here faith alone can enter. Mere human apprehension cannot lay hold of Christ; and to the knowledge of the new man " Christ is all." (Col. 3:2:)

Let it not be thought that I am decrying reason :it is impossible to get on a step without it. Man without reason would be below the beast-an idiot. Those who declaim against it use it (however irrationally) in their declamation. Scripture is full every where of the most sublime reasoning; nor can we apply a text without it. Only, among things unseen, reason must be the handmaid of faith, and not her mistress; it must work by the light of revelation, or have none.

And now, lastly, we have that which is not so much a part of the armor as it is the spirit in which alone it can be used; connected indeed especially with the Word of God, as that in which we draw near to God, as in the Word He draws near to us:-"praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching there unto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints." No where else, perhaps, is the language as to prayer so strong and emphatic as it is here. Well it may be, here in the presence of the enemy, where, as we were at first reminded, our strength, if we are to have strength, must be "in the Lord." The exhortation of the apostle thus ends as it begins-with Christ Himself, the one absolute necessity for the soul at every moment. The consciousness of this is safety and power :its expression is in prayer; and this spirit of prayer is what the Spirit of God produces wherever He works. Let us remark, however, that where the soul is right with God, prayer becomes proportionately intercession for the saints. Christ on high is taking that place of intercession, to be in it ourselves is to be in fellowship with Him. Where the heart entertains Him, it will entertain His people also.

(Lev. 27:)

Our Lord's words in the Sermon on the Mount are illustrative and illuminative of the law of vows given in the final chapter of Leviticus-a chapter of the greatest importance to the book it closes, in which the great lesson is that of sanctification. The special or "singular" vow of this chapter is just the "sanctification," whether of person or thing, to Jehovah; but a sanctification which goes beyond what is demanded by the law-a voluntary undertaking, though it may be the result of the pressure of circumstances, as for instance in the case of Jephthah.

The words of the Sermon on the Mount seem at first sight rather to prohibit explanation than to explain. They do, in fact, for Christians, set aside any law of vows by the prohibition of vows :" Again, ye have heard it said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths :but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King ; neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black." Thus, plainly, what the law had permitted was now revoked :yet not as if the law had failed,-let not that be imagined. Jesus was Himself the Giver of that law ; and He has but a little before declared of it that " not one jot or tittle should pass from the law till all be fulfilled." Far from failing, it had done its work well; and it is because of this that the new commandment is now issued. For the law was intended to convince men of that moral weakness, and it is because of this weakness, which has been demonstrated by the law that the vow is now prohibited.

But the legal covenant itself, as Israel entered into it, was itself such a "singular vow." They therein dedicated themselves to Jehovah with the affirmation, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do, and be obedient." It may be asked, indeed, Was this a voluntary undertaking? had not the Lord invited them to make such an engagement? It is true He had said, "If ye will obey My voice, and keep My covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all nations." It was of Him that they should be tested, just because man, in his self-confidence, alas! welcomes the test. Nothing but the experiment will convince him of his impotence. But it was open for them to deprecate a conditional footing of this kind, and to cast themselves upon divine mercy as their only hope. On the contrary, they readily and voluntarily accepted it, and thus dedicated themselves to the Lord by a "singular vow."

The first eight verses of the chapter speaks of this dedication of persons ; and in this case, the Lord Himself, by the priest, estimates the value of the service to be rendered to Him. No one could be allowed to do this for himself:it must be done for him ; and here every one was valued according to his age, strange valuation as it might seem, – disregarding the manifest inequality between man and man, every man at the same age valued at exactly the same rate, which, physical absurdity as it might seem, only shows that we have here typically a moral standard, which is necessarily the same for every one, though admitting a certain difference in duties also, as for man, woman, child, etc. The ten commandments were thus the perfect appraisal on God's part of man's self-dedication. Yet if he were poorer than this estimation, as man is confessedly unable to pay full value according to the perfect standard, then the priest was permitted to value him according to his ability, so that he could no longer, in that sense, plead his poverty. And just so we find that while the law in the ten commandments was a perfect rule, in practice, something had to be abated. Thus, of the law of divorce the Lord had to say, " Moses for the hardness of your hearts gave you this precept." And in a similar way He revealed Himself as " forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin " at the second giving of the law, after the sin of the golden calf had shown Israel's deep poverty.

Yet law, however modified, is still a ministration of death and of condemnation ; and this is, in fact, said of the law as given the second time-not the first (2 Cor. 3:). Thus the " singular vow " fails, utterly. Only grace could say of any, "She hath done what she could." The Lord therefore, in mercy and justice-both, prohibits it. Man must own himself lost if it be a question of responsibility. He needs not any modification of the law, but grace and salvation.

How blessed, then, to find, in the very next place to the law of the personal vow, the law of the vowed "beast, whereof men bring an offering unto the Lord " ! If man has failed, and at his best, when he has vowed and attempted to devote himself, thank God, there is a life that can be devoted for him, though in death, and which the Lord accepts ! Here, let us note, there is no valuation, and no possibility of exchange or release. Who can value the inestimable, or change places with this precious Substitute for sinners ? An unclean beast may be redeemed, though, as we are made to know here, by what is of more value than itself ; a fifth part more must be added in this case to the priest's valuation. But the beast clean for an offering,-and there is but One whom this could represent,-for it there is no ransom. No, "the Son of Man must be lifted up." There was no other way, or would it not have been taken ? could the Son of God suffer needlessly ? Impossible. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground, and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." No saved soul but is the fruit of that precious death.

He indeed could be the subject of a singular vow. He alone could say, without a shadow of misgiving, " I will pay my vows before them that fear Him." (Ps. 22:) Power was with Him. though in weakness ; and on the awful tree where He bare our sins God Himself could turn away His face, and let Him bear the undiminished burden. Yes, the singular vow was His ; and that which mercy prohibits to others it appointed to Him. Here alone in all man's history the law of the vow becomes a law of salvation and blessing.

And next, therefore, we come in this chapter to the sanctification of the house. "And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy unto the Lord, then the priest shall estimate it, whether it be good or bad :as the priest shall estimate it, so it shall stand. And if he that sanctified it will redeem his house, then he shall add the fifth part of the money of thy estimation unto it, and it shall be his."

This is in regular and beautiful order. Not until He has a redeemed people does God speak of having a house among men. Israel had such a house, a " holy arid beautiful house," devoted to Him, yet theirs :for to de-vote what is ours to God does not make it the less but more our own ; and what house was there in Israel that was so truly theirs as God's house was? "And let them make Me a sanctuary," He says, " that I may dwell among them." This is the object of His heart which in Immanuel has been revealed to us, to bring His people near to Himself, and to abide among them. Bat for Israel's house to be theirs, it must be redeemed, and so the first house passed away from them because redemption had not given it perpetuity. They knew not, know not yet, bring not, as it were, to God the ransom-price. Hence the house is gone from them, and will not return until the glorious sixty-eighth psalm becomes the language of their hearts :" Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for men ; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them."
This truth in a still more blessed way is ours to-day, and after a twofold manner. For to us as redeemed, not a typical house, made with hands, but the heavenly sanctuary itself, is opened ; the vail rent, as Israel never knew it, and we are encouraged with the wondrous words, " 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." (Heb. 10:19-22.)

This is what God's heart yearns that we may know, and this is what the person of Christ (God and man in-one) implies for us, and this is what His work has made fully ours. O to know it better, refuge and rest and sanctuary as it is, the place where God dwells ! This is our one escape from the world, from the burden of care, from the sin that assails us. Nowhere else is there a clean spot, nowhere else a place of security:" Thou shall hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man :Thou shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." (Ps. 31:20.) Yes, here man's pride is rebuked, his haughtiness is brought down, distraction ceases, the mind is cleared, the heart rests. " The name of the Lord is a strong lower :the righteous runneth into it and is safe."

But we can add more :for His " house are we " (Heb. 3:6). The words are fulfilled to us "I will dwell in them and walk in them." (2 Cor. 6:16.) The Spirit of God already dwells in us in virtue of redemption, and our "bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost." (i Cor. 6:19.) An amazing thought, which we realize how little ! And the Church also is His temple. How God presses upon us this nearness that we have to Him, the nearness in which He is to us ! Simplicity of faith in this, what would it not do for us!

But we must go on to the sanctification of the field; and here, if we think of Israel and her land, we have what is of the greatest interest. In Israel, the year of jubilee (which began on the day of atonement, after their sins had been taken away by the scape-goat into a land of forget-fulness,) restored to every one whatever he had lost of his original inheritance. If a man had devoted a field to the Lord, this became his own again in the year of jubilee. But there was an exception :" If he will not redeem the field "-before the jubilee-" or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed any more ; but the field, when it goeth out in the jubilee, shall be holy unto the Lord as a field devoted ; the possession thereof shall be the priest's." Now Israel's land had been thus devoted to the Lord, and has not been redeemed ; that is, the value of it has not been paid to Him, but it has, alas! been sold to the stranger, as we are all to-day witnesses. Consequently, when the time of blessing for the earth comes at the appearing of the Lord, divine grace will take out of their keeping what they have shown themselves to have so little power to keep. It shall be the priest's, Immanuel's land, forever secure from alienation, and Israel shall inherit with Him who says, "The land shall not be sold forever ; for the land is Mine :for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me."

And we too, in a higher and wider sphere, heirs of God, are joint-heirs with Christ. Our inheritance is secured also by the same strong hand. Grace has omitted nothing that is needful to eternal security; and in the Father's house the first-born children of the Father shall be at home to go no more out forever.

Thus ends really the law of vows ; but the chapter is not yet closed :we have had four divisions of a septenary series, and as in perhaps all such, we have in the last three a change of subject, though of course connected also with the preceding ones. They give us, in fact, distinctly specified as such, what cannot be the subject of vows, and that because they already belong to the Lord. What He claims as His depends not on man's feeble will or effort to make good as His. The vow as to these is necessarily therefore set aside.

And here as the first class of these we have the firstborn of beasts. Spared in Israel at the time when those of the Egyptians fell under the divine hand, God claimed them as His own. It was not left therefore to man's option whether they were to be His. Man's vow was here needless, and nothing left to his will in the matter. He claimed who had title and power to make good His claim.

And is not this too, in view of our own responsibility, and in the consciousness of the weakness of our human wills to yield themselves to Him, that which gives us rest, and animates us in the inevitable conflict, that our sanctification to God is secured by redemption and by birth ? Formed for His service as the beast for man's, claimed by Him who will not suffer aught to defraud Him of His claim, we are His, then, not in the weakness of our poor human wills, but in the might of His will for us. And therefore we are exhorted to " work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure " (Phil. 2:12, 13), " created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Eph. 2:10.)

But there is a second class of things or of persons that is equally His, and holy to Him in a strange and solemn way. These are the subjects of the ban, devoted to death as evil, and sanctified to God in the only way in which that which resists sanctification can be-by its destruction. Here ransom could not be, nor was it to be left to man's will what should be done in the matter. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." (2 Pet. 2:9.) They are His too by title, as are the righteous, and " God will be sanctified in judgment," demonstrated as against the evil and Master of it in the day of manifestation that is drawing nigh.

One thing alone remains to complete this picture. The tithe in Israel was the recognition of the sovereign rights of God over all their possessions. For God to have His own means fullness of blessing for all by whom it is yielded. If God has His place with us, every thing else has its place. When this shall be at last, then will have come the full eternal blessing :"God shall be all in all,"-the definition of the eternal state in the last book of Scripture.

And this, blessed be God, depends not upon man's feeble will for its accomplishment. The whole lesson of the ages from the first sin in Eden to the apostasy after the thousand years itself is but the reiteration of that word, "Cease ye from man." But God will only in this the more be glorified, when the creature being proved to derive all its stability from Him shall rest at last in Himself alone. The first man's vow ended in ruin, and his forfeiture is made up and more than this by the substitution of the Second ; in Him all the glory of God is fully and finally displayed; in Him too God and man at one forever, and united in His person, united by His precious work, now at last full satisfaction of heart is come, and this rest shall be eternal.

" I Feel that a desire to have been more spent and to have suffered more for my beloved Master in this theater of His humiliation is the only thing that could make me hesitate in my longing desire to be with Him who is and has been so abundantly with me."
Letters of Lady Powerscourt.

There is no service to Christ which is without a cross. As it is written, " He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me." (Matt. 10:38.)

The disciple is called to be as the Master (10:24, 25); and he will find faithful discipleship leads to much suffering ; and the worst of all is that which comes from what bears God's name upon earth, without the power of it.

Cruelty, shame, and disgrace are the three things which service to Christ will gain for you from earth. For the cross of Christ is not a thing that can be used merely to moralize, or to obtain a good or a healthful influence over men's minds. It is either eternal life, delivering a man into the liberty of a son of God, or it is the manifestation that Satan is blinding his eyes. G. V. W.

(An Extract)

I am inclined to think that this feeling in reference to ministry is intimately connected with a deep, personal longing after more profound, rich, abiding communion with the person of Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost. …. Nothing is of any value that does not spring from personal love to and communion with Christ Himself. We may have Scripture at our finger ends, we may be able to preach with remarkable fluency-a fluency which unpracticed spirits may easily enough mistake for power, but oh ! if our hearts are not drinking deeply at the fountain-head-if they are not enlivened and invigorated by the realization of the love of Christ, it will all end in flash and smoke. I have learnt …. to be increasingly dissatisfied with every thing, whether in myself or in others, short of abiding, real, deep, divinely inwrought communion with and conformity to the blessed Master.

" Crotchets I despise; mere opinions I dread; controversy I shrink from; all isms I esteem as utterly worthless. But …. I long to know more of His own precious person, His work, and His glory. And then, oh, to live for Him, to labor, testify, preach, and pray, and all for Christ, and by the working of His grace in our hearts.

I looked around upon the world,
And saw men prospering here and there,-
The flag "excelsior " wide unfurled,
And proudly waving through the air:
I looked,-but " What is that to thee? "
My Savior said, " Come, follow Me;
There's far above earth's greatest height
A glorious home for thee."

I gazed upon the warlike throng,
Hasting to glory and renown;
Heard the triumphant conqueror's song,
And half desired to share his crown,
Till Jesus said, "What's that to thee?
If thou wouldst conquer, follow Me;
There yet awaits a happier song,
A brighter crown for thee."

I listened to the statesman's voice,
And heard the wisdom of the wise,
And thought this heart would much rejoice
If to their height I could but rise;
But Jesus said, "What's that to thee?
If thou wouldst rise, come, follow Me;
Man's wisdom ne'er can reach the height
Of bliss designed for thee."

Still I desired the world's applause,
And shrank before its threatening frown,-
Well-nigh forgot my Savior's cause,-
The cross, the glory, and the crown.
" The world's applause! what's that to thee?"
He said, " 'tis thine to follow Me;
Tread in My steps, and there's My own
Approving smile for thee."

I mused upon the days of old,
And thought of times long since gone by,-
Of friendships warm, but now grown cold;
My heart was full,-tears dimmed my eyes; "
Why weep? " said Jesus; " what to thee
Are things behind? come, follow Me;
Right onward press, the joy's before
Of endless love for thee."
I sought no more this world so vain,
In which my Savior's blood was shed,
But looked upon the cross again,
Where He was numbered with the dead,
And thought, " What is this world to me?
My peace, my joy's to follow Thee:
There is throughout the narrow path
Rest in Thyself for me."

I looked upon the Church of God,
Scattered, divided, rent, and torn;
My heart was grieved, I felt the load,
And did the desolation mourn.
But Jesus said, " One thing's for thee:
Be faithful thou, and follow Me
On to the end, and I will give
A crown of life to thee."

I've often heard the bitter taunt,
And seen the smile of earthly scorn;
The memory still my soul would haunt,
But He, once mocked and crowned with thorn,
Whispered, "I've borne much more for thee;
Canst thou not thus far follow Me?
Bear now the cross; thou soon shalt wear
The crown laid up for thee."

I waited for my Lord to come,
And oft desired to know the day
When He would take me to His home;
But still the voice was heard to say, "
The day! the hour! what's that to thee?
Watch, mark My path, and follow Me ;
The time's at hand when I will come,
Will come again for thee."

Lord, let me not, with vain desire,
Seek what is unrevealed to know,
Nor let this foolish heart aspire
To wealth or honor here below ;
But let my aim, my object be,
My one desire, to follow Thee;
Whatever the path, the end will bring
Rest with Thyself for me.

This is the closing hallelujah, the praise of God in His sanctuary, His upper sanctuary, "the firmament of His power." The preceding was His praise in the lower sanctuary, "the congregation of saints." There, Israel was heard ; but here, the heavens. His acts and Himself, His greatness and His ways, are the themes of this lofty praise. " All kinds of music," as it were, dulcimer, sackbut, flute, psaltery (for loud joy will, in its place, be as holy as once it was profane, Dan. 3:), are summoned to sound it, and to sound it loudly, and all who have faculty to praise, to join the hallelujah. Every verse teems with praise. Every thought is about it. Every object awakens it. Every power uses itself only in this service.

The Levites have changed their service. No longer have they burdens to bear through a wilderness, but they lift up their songs in the house of the Lord, (I Chron. 15:16; 23:25, 26, 30.)

The heavens have changed their bearing also. They have ended their laughter at the proud confederates (Ps. 2:), for such confederates have been answered in judgment; and they are filled with joy and singing, and with that glory which is to break forth from them, and to be a covering over all the dwellings of Zion. (Is. 4:)

These are "the days of heaven upon the earth." (Deut. 11:21.) The kingdom has come, and the will of the Blessed One is done here as there. The mystic ladder connects the upper and the lower sanctuaries.

But these closing psalms, I may observe, do not spread out before us the materials of the millennial world. Jerusalem, Israel, the nations with their kings, princes, and judges, the heavens and the earth, and all creation throughout its order, are contemplated as in "the restitution " and " refreshing," but they are detailed, as there, in their mere circumstances. It is rather the praise of all that is heard. The Psalmist anticipates the harps rather than the glories of the kingdom ; and this is beautifully characteristic.

Praise crowns the scene. The vision passes from before us with the chanting of all kinds of music. Man has taken the instrument of joy into his hand ; to strike it, however, only to God's glory. And this is the perfect result of all things-the creature is happy and God glorified. " Glory and honor are in His presence ; strength and gladness are in His place." (i Chron. 16:27.)

What a close of the Psalms of David ! what a close of the ways of God ! Joy indeed has come in the morning, and struck its note for the " one eternal day." Praise ye the Lord! Amen.

Yes, praise, all praise ; untiring, satisfying fruit of lips uttering the joy of creation, and owning the glory of the Blessed One. This is righteous happiness.

And here, in connection with this, and on closing these meditations, let the thought cheer us, beloved, that happiness, and that forever, is ours. There may have been a path through Calvary, and the scorn of the world, and the grave of death ; but it led to joy and everlasting pleasures. The way for a season lay by the waters of Babylon, but Jerusalem was regained-as our psalms have shown us. The valley of Baca was the way to the house of God. "Tribulation," it may be; but, "I will see you again," said Jesus.
As to our title to it, there is to be no reserve, no suspicion in our souls. It is our divinely appointed portion. To come short of happiness will be the end only of revolted hearts.. Our title to look for it is of God Himself. It lies in the blood of Jesus, the Son of God, the God-man, given for us, in the riches of divine grace ; and faith in us reads, understands, and pleads that title. And there is no reason for hesitating to enjoy its fruit and benefit- none whatever. No more reason than Adam would have had to question his right to enjoy the garden of Eden because he had never planted it, nor for the camp of Israel in the desert to drink of the water from the rock because they had never opened it. The garden was planted for Adam, the rock was opened for Israel; and so has the Savior, and all the joy that His salvation brings with it, been as simply and surely provided for sinners. Our souls are to make it a question of Christ's glory, and not of our worthiness. He made it so when He was here. He never led a diseased or maimed one to inquire into his own fitness, but simply to own His hand and His glory. "If thou canst believe," that is, if thou art ready to glorify Me, to be debtor to Me for this blessing, then take it and welcome.

Then as to our resources. It is not merely love we have to do with, power is on our side also. Love and power together shall form the scene we are to gaze on forever, as they have from the beginning been " workers together " for us, teaching us our wondrous resources.

See them thus working together in some little instances in the days of the Lord Jesus. Five thousand are fed with five loaves and two fishes. Fed to the full-and twelve baskets of fragments left! This tells the wealth of the Lord of the feast, as well as His kindness. And what satisfaction of heart does this communicate ! If we draw on the bounty of another, and have reason to fear that we have partaken of what he needed himself, our enjoyment abates. This fear will intrude, and rightly so, and spoil our ease while we sit at his table. But when we know that behind the table which is spread for us there are stores in the house, such fears are forbidden. The thought of the wealth of the host, as well of his love, sets all at ease. And it is to be thus with us in our enjoyment of Christ. J.G.B.

Many souls have been led into spiritual darkness by giving heed to the monstrous delusion of so-called "Christian science"-which, in fact, is neither Christian nor scientific. Christians have allowed it to pass unchallenged because its egregious folly appeared to them unworthy of notice. Intelligent people having been ensnared by it, warns us that when professed followers of Christ lend an ear to teaching which is so dishonoring to Him and God's Word, they are punished by being given over to "strong delusion, that they should believe a lie."

Its dogmas are generally vague and confusing, but where doctrines are clearly stated, they are utterly antagonistic to the gospel. They deny the existence of matter, the atonement of Jesus Christ, and other distinctive doctrines of Christianity; declaring that the material world is not real, and what seem to be facts are only ideas. " God is all-there is no room for evil, hence any thing other than good is a belief, an unreality, that has no substance. You are well, for God made all things, and all that He has made is good. You are spirit, hence true and perfect." Of course this teaching dispenses entirely with the atonement; for if there is no sin, there is no need of redemption.

These false teachers assert that there is neither personal Deity, personal devil, nor personal man-a revival of old and oft-refuted heresies under a new name ; the errors of the Docetae, who taught that matter was unreal, and our Lord was born, died, and rose only in appearance ; and the Gnostics, who held that the body of our Lord was a myth ; also that spiritual beings could not be defiled by contact with matter, any more than a diamond by lying in the mire. St. John wrote a portion of his first epistle in refutation of the Gnostic heresy, wherein he sets forth, by divine authority, that Jesus was a veritable person. (i John 4:2, 3.)

It is a reproduction of the old idealism of Hume and Berkley ignoring the existence of matter or disease as a fact. It is related of Berkley that having fallen into a ditch a friend in passing said, " So you have really got into a ditch." " Not exactly that," replied the bishop, as he shook the mud from his clothes, "but you see I have an idea that I am in a ditch."

If as these teachers maintain, " disease is not a reality, but only a delusion of the mind-the effect of fear," how can they account for the physical sufferings of infants ? Our Savior treated sickness and disease as real and actual for we are told that He healed all who were sick, in fulfillment of prophecies concerning Him.

It has been urged in favor of some who set forth these doctrines that they cannot be anti-christian, because they quote Scripture in support of their tenets. When Satan made his most desperate effort to accomplish the everlasting ruin of mankind, he used the Word of God as a means of attaining his end.

Some of the expounders of this belief have been received with favor on account of their mental and moral graces-the loveliness of their daily lives. Satan is too clever to select ignorant disreputable agents for his most powerful assaults on Christianity. He craftily uses persons of scholarship, deep thought, refinement, benevolence, and amiability, as decoys to lure unwary souls to destruction. Some one has truly said that "one of the many hindrances to the cause of true Christianity is, that a counterfeit of the Spirit's work is often presented in the lives of refined moralists, devout religionists, benevolent philanthropists, who are yet as much disowned of God as the most notorious sinners." Never having been born from above, they do not belong to His kingdom, but are aliens and strangers to the covenants of promise, and without Christ.

Let Christians beware of any entanglement with this anti-Christian medley of oriental mysticism, German pantheism, and English deism, which is now presented to them under the misnomer of " Christian science."

Who among us who believe does not prove the truth of these words? It is a bit of experience that none can escape. In our friends-those we love dearest perhaps, in our circumstances, and in our own persons, there is something to keep us constantly reminded that sin is here, and has done its deadly work, and what is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is wanting cannot be numbered. Paul carries it further still in Rom. 8:, and tells us that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Not some of it, but the whole ; there is nothing that has sense and feeling but what has felt the damaging effect of the fall of creation's head, though the difference is immense between the physical suffering of the mere brute and that of man, with a mind and conscience beside,-a, spirit susceptible of the most intense anguish, capable of self-reproach and condemnation, and of reflection upon and anticipation of the deserts of sin. A buoyant heart may carry over for a time the terrible reality,-the multiplicity of occupations, be it with work or pleasure, may cause forgetfulness, but the time must come when every vail must be torn off, and the stern reality be known in a way there is no escape from.

Yes, "in this we groan," and creation groans, and for the unbeliever it is but the presage of an eternal night of woe. How solemn the thought! Men may live without God, but to pass into eternity without Him, this would be terrible indeed, and many in thinking of it have taken refuge in some of the forms of current unbelief with reference to the future,-setting up human judgment against what is revealed in the Word of God, in place of accepting God's simple way, so perfect and wonderful as it is.

But, "in this we groan " contemplates the Christian, of course, though the world groans too; and therefore the apostle adds to it, " Earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven." Yes, he brings in a hope,-the one only thing that really meets the difficulty, ministering a remedy divine and perfect. Hope is the anchor of the soul; it keeps it steady in the midst of storms and tempests. It puts God before the soul-the living God, the One who has brought into the scene of suffering and death a perfect and complete remedy. He alone could do it where death was at work, and if He has undertaken it, it will be done in a way to bring Him glory, and full blessing to us. It will be no patch put upon a rent, no plaster for a sore, but, the whole made new, and a body of glory given in place of the body of humiliation we now wear, and in which we groan. We have borne the image of the earthy, we shall bear the image of the heavenly; and whatever may intervene, faith bridges the whole, and looks on to that blessed moment which Scripture links with the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus Paul comforted the saints at Thessalonica, who " were turned to God from idols, to serve the living and the true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven," about those who had fallen asleep in Jesus. He did not say, "You shall die too and join them." No, he pointed them to that moment when the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God ; when the dead in Christ shall rise first, the living be changed, and all together be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. He pointed them to that day, that God has promised shall come,-a day known only to Him, for which saints here are taught to wait, for which those who are departed wait, and for which the Lord Jesus also waits,-the day when He shall see the fruit of the travail of His soul and be satisfied ; and if He is satisfied, how surely shall we be so too !

I do not ask, then, if you groan, dear fellow-believer ; I am sure you do, for Scripture says so, though no doubt the more we are in fellowship with God, in His thoughts and ways, so much the more shall we truly groan,-if not about ourselves, at least in witnessing what sin has done in man and brought upon a creature made in the image of God ; but now, alas! fallen so low. But may I not ask if you can add, as that which the faith of your soul has laid hold of, "earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, that mortality may be swallowed up of life." Yes, mortality,-the liability to death-will be swallowed up of life, for those who are called up to be with Christ without seeing death. While for all, living or dead, death will be swallowed up of victory at that same moment. Are you stumbled at this ? Do you not know the Scriptures, and the power of God ? Have you let man rob you of " the blessed hope " ? Then in this, at least, you share in what has shut out from your soul the true and solid comfort God would give. But it needs the power of God assuredly-the God who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, and whose Spirit shall "make alive our mortal bodies," working by that power by which " He shall subdue all things to Himself."

Have you, then, laid hold of that truth ? and is it to you "a blessed hope"-sustaining, comforting, when all may be most dark and trying-the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ? Are you watching, through the darkness of this world's night, for the One who alone can bring relief and remedy,-for the rejected One who is coming again-coming to reign over the scene of His rejection- to make His enemies His footstool, and to share His throne and glory with His redeemed ones?

You may say, "I do not understand prophecy." May I ask, Why not ? Are we not told to " take heed to it, as to a light that shines in a dark place"? Is the world not a dark place,-aye, growing darker every clay ? If you do not know this, you will surely despise the light that shines there; it will be unheeded by you, as perhaps it has been. Still it shines in a dark place, and it points to that one object who is the burden of the testimony of the Spirit of God in Scripture from Genesis to Revelation- Christ; and it marks out two periods and events of paramount importance:the coming of that blessed One to suffer and to die, the just One for the unjust ones, to bring us to God ; and next, to His coming to reign,-to be glorified in the scene of His rejection. How near this may be, who can tell ? Do not say, " My Lord delayeth His coming ; " still less take part with scoffers who say He will not come ; but hearken to His own word, "Surely, I come quickly." May you be able to add to this your " Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus." R.T.G.

(Luke 16:)

'This chapter is a consistent whole, and it is very easy I to trace the unity of purpose in it. The parable of the unjust steward at the beginning is illustrated by the story of the rich man and Lazarus at the end :itself not a parable, as people often say, but plain solemn truth, although the language is necessarily not exactly literal, but drawn from the present life, as constantly that which is unseen is conveyed to us in terms of what is seen. As to these things, " we see through a glass darkly," or; as the word is, " in a riddle,"-things which it is not possible in plain words to utter.

The unjust steward is the picture of man intrusted by God with the " good things " of this life, but by sin having lost his stewardship, death being plainly the limit of his possession, when he goes out naked, able to carry nothing with him. These are the " goods " of the previous chapter, which the Father of all distributes to His children, the witnesses of a love to which men are yet blind, whether they wander, as does the younger son, into the far-off country, openly away from God, or, with the correct elder son, only nurse the spirit of the far-off country in their hearts.

The steward of the parable is unjust, and so declared to be, acts in this character all through, is not commended for his justice, but for his " wisdom,"-a wisdom which is employed, as with the " children of this world " to whom it is ascribed, entirely for himself. Nor is it God commends him, but his lord. He is shrewd and careful of the future, judges truly of that future before him, that he must depend then upon other resources than his own, spends what he might have appropriated and laid up to secure himself against that day. In all this there is that which can be pointed out to us for imitation, while the unrighteousness, of course, cannot. When the Lord comes to the application, He makes careful distinction as to all this, and there is not the slightest room left for mistake.

Riches, says the Lord, are the "mammon of unrighteousness "-the god that the men of this world worship. All earthly gain to one's self is included here :plainly all that can be included among the good things of earth. Good they are, not in themselves evil at all, the gifts of One who is good and gives what is good. This is the misery of sin, that man perverts what is good to evil, and makes a curse out of a blessing.

Not only are the good things "good" as regards the present life :we may make to ourselves " friends " with them of that future which men dread, but which so little influences them. This is not the gospel, and is not designed to be. It is, and must be, consistent with the gospel; or the Savior of men could never have uttered it. Certain it is our lives here witness for or against us,- are thus friends or enemies. As the apostle says, and says to professing Christians, "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die ; but if ye through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." (Rom. 8:13.) This also is not the gospel, but it would be a woeful mistake to suppose it inconsistent with the gospel. It is how, as he tells us, the children of God are manifested :" for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." (5:14.) Such texts, therefore, have their use in searching the conscience, and testing how far the gospel has clone its work with us. "The gospel is preached . . . that men might live according to God in the Spirit." (i Pet. 4:6.) If the bent of the life is not changed, the gospel cannot have been received aright. It is an infallible remedy for a diseased life, so that if the life be not healed, we have a right to argue that the remedy has not been taken.

"Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness," says the Lord, "that when ye fail"-or, as the critics read now, " when it fails, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." And this is faithfulness, not, as with the unjust steward, unrighteousness. " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much ; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." How true is that! and how deeply important! Little and much make an immense difference in our eyes. How many there are who make conscience only of great things, and think of it as mere scrupulous nicety to regard the small! Yet these little things have tongues, like our children, to betray the disorder where all is outwardly correct. A child's chatter may reveal us to a stranger, sometimes to ourselves :and just so our inconsistencies of conduct reveal what is deeper than the surface, and as rottenness under what seemed living and true.

" If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches ; and if ye have not been faithful in that which is Another's "-not "another man's"-"who will give you that which is your own ? "

Thus righteousness is insisted on, the unrighteous element in the parable completely antidoted, faithfulness as stewards made to be that which is profitable in the future, with how sweet and tender an appeal to us on behalf of Him who has turned the very lapse of earthly stewardship into fullest gain for us, giving us in the things that are heavenly and eternal "that which is our own " !

Thus indeed now the grace of God speaks to bankrupt and beggared man. His dispossession from what is earthly becomes the voice of God calling him to " come up higher." And that same grace will reward with eternal riches the devotion to God of that which is after all His ! How good is He !

Let us make no mistake :this is not yet the gospel. But it is truth, self-consistent of course, and consistent with all other truth. Moreover, it has its solemn side, intense in its solemnity. " No servant can serve two masters :for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

How clear, definite, positive, is this, as the word of a Master! The perfect Master, Teacher of truth alone, is He who speaks. He does not, let us mark well, say, " Ye ought not to serve God and mammon." Man's will can get through any number of "oughts." No, he is not speaking of duty here, but of impossibility :"Ye cannot serve ;" " no man can serve two masters." Thus the question is immediately raised, which in this shape ought to be readily answered, "Who is my master? God, or the world ? where are my interests? in this life, or the life to come?" To have the face in one direction is to have one's back upon the other :with one's face toward God, there is no alternative but to have one's back upon the world.

This is not the gospel ; we have not come to the gospel :but it is plain, pointed truth of the most personal kind. And the Lord often insisted on such truth as; this :" If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake, shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt. 16:24-26.) Here He enjoins the most solemn counting of cost, and the alternative is put in the same decisive way :the present life, or the life to come -which will you have ? for both you cannot have :will you choose here, or there ?-in time, or in eternity?

The story at the end of the chapter, of Lazarus and the rich man, illustrates this choice on both sides. The covetous Pharisees, legal to the heart's core, but who never have penetrated the inner meaning of the law, are made to realize that the man upon whom the law seemed to have heaped its blessings might on the other side of the vail be found lifting up his eyes in hades, being in torment, and crying for but a drop of water from the tip of the finger to cool his tongue, while on the other hand the beggar, with his rags pleading against him-for who ever " saw the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread ? "-is taken to Abraham's bosom,-for a Jew, the chief place of honor,-carried there by angels' hands !

How solemn is that condemnation, " Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and . . . now . . . thou art tormented ! " What crime is alleged against him here ? Not even his having left Lazarus at his gate without showing mercy. Perhaps he did get the crumbs from the rich man's table, a dole for his need, never missed from his abundance,-just what practically many give, and count it liberality. But there is nothing but this,-nothing charged but this :" Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." How intensely solemn is this ! May its voice be heard in the hearts and consciences of many !

The vail of Christianity thrown over such a life could have done nothing for it. It would have been only worse,-more self-condemned. No white robe of a Savior's merits could avail to cover the wretchedness of a life like this. True, God's grace can come in wherever, whenever, the heart is turned to Him. But it needs to be maintained that where it comes in it comes in to reign and sin and it cannot reign together. The life is saved where the soul is saved. " The grace of God which bringeth salvation teaches us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." (Tit. 2:11, 12.)

On the other hand, there is a lesson in the fact that it is a beggar whom the Lord places in Abraham's bosom. True it was that as a beggar he had no legal righteousness. It is evident that to the rich man with his life wasted upon himself the beggar is not after all the contrast one might have expected. Had it been one who had sold all that he had to give to the poor, it would have been that. Is it not plain that the Lord has designedly given us something else than what the parable of the unjust steward might seem to have foretokened. He did not mean, then, to teach us that eternal happiness can be gained by human merit. Striking contrast indeed in this respect with him whose doom is gained by a life of self-indulgence, the beggar goes to bliss as every way a beggar ! Such surely are they who are justified through faith, and not by the works of the law.

At best, we are unjust stewards, and claim we have not. The grace of God stoops to us as sinners :when we have nothing to pay, we are freely forgiven. The cross of Christ was not needed for our righteousness :it was that on which He bare our sins in His own body, but that henceforth we, being dead unto sins, should live unto righteousness. Thus a new life begins for us, and with our faces turned Godward, our backs are upon the world. That world is as we were-godless :the cross which has brought us nigh is the full breach between God and it, and by the cross we are crucified to the world. Thus the gospel puts us upon a new path, qualifies us for the new life, conforms us to the divine conditions ; and all the joy, blessing and power of our life as Christians depends upon the steadfastness with which we maintain our course, our faces heavenward, our backs upon the world.

BY JAMES ERSKINE. (Published in 1825.)

It is possible that the doctrine of "the perseverance of saints" should be so perverted by the corruption of human nature as to lead to indolent security and un-watchful habits. But this is not the doctrine as stated in the Bible. The true doctrine is, that, as it was God who first opened the eyes of sinners to the glory of the truth, so their continuance in the truth requires and receives the same almighty support to maintain it. It is not in their title to heaven as distinct from the path to heaven that they are maintained and preserves. No ; they " are kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation." This doctrine, then, really leads to humble dependence upon God, as the only support of our weakness; and to vigilance, from the knowledge that, when we are not actually living by faith, we are out of that way in which believers are kept by the power of God unto salvation. The reality of our faith is proved only by our perseverance :if we do not persevere, we are not saints.

Any one of the doctrines of the atonement which can make us fearless or careless of sinning must be a wrong view ; because it is not good, nor profitable to men. That blessed doctrine declares sin pardoned, not because it is overlooked or winked at, but because the weight of its condemnation has been sustained on our behalf by our Substitute and Representative. This makes sin hateful, by connecting it with the blood of our best Friend.

There are many persons who may be said rather to believe in an ecclesiastical polity than in the doctrines of the Bible. In such cases, the impression must be similar to that which is produced by political partisanship in the governments of this world. And there are some whose faith extends to higher things who yet attach too much weight to externals.

Any view of subjects, that may be believed or disbelieved without affecting our faith in the atonement, which can produce a coldness or unkindness between those who rest in the atonement and live by the faith of it, must be a wrong view, because it mars that character of love which Christ declares to be the badge of His people. Such a view interferes with the doctrine of the atonement. Love to Christ, as the exclusive hope and the compassionate all-sufficient Friend of lost sinners, is the life-blood of the Christian family ; and wherever it flows, it carries along with it relationship to Christ, and a claim on the affection of those who call themselves His. What is a name, or a sect, that it should divide those who are to live together in heaven through eternity, and who here love the same Lord, and who have been washed in the same blood, and drink of the same river of the water of life, and have access through the same Mediator, by the same Spirit, unto the Father? This is a very serious consideration. It touches on that final sentence which shall be pronounced on the sheep and the goats, " Come, ye blessed ;" why blessed ? " Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me. " Depart, ye cursed ;" and why cursed ? " Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me." It is not a general benevolence that is talked of here; no, it is love to Christ exerting itself in kindness, and acts of kindness, to His brethren, for His sake. This is the grand and preeminently blessed feature of the Christian character. Its presence is the sea of heaven on the soul; its absence is the exclusion from heaven. We should take heed to ourselves; for any flaw in this respect marks a corresponding flaw in our Christian faith. The importance of the blood of Christ is not rightly perceived if it does not quench these petty animosities. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him. An undue importance attached to inferior points is surely not good or profitable to men.

Lecture III.-I. Kings 17:17-24.

In this last scene in the verses I have read to you we find the third thing in the discipline of the man of God,-and a thing that is above all needed to be known in order that he should really fulfill this character. As I have said, it is what we all are by position, it is therefore what we all must be practically, or else our very profession of Christianity condemns us. Being a man of God is not being something very exalted, and which God would leave, so to speak, to our choice, whether we would be so or not. As we have seen already, all Scripture is given to furnish the man of God thoroughly unto all good works. Mark well, it does not speak of furnishing any body else, and we are necessarily God's by the fact that we are purchased by the blood of Christ. Beloved friends, to be according to his mind, therefore, is what we are called to, and throughout history,-especially, I may say, that of the Church of God,-the very failure of His professing people has only forced those true to Him the more to take that character.

You have here, in the very last verse, something which especially makes known the man of God. The woman says to Elijah, " Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth." What is it that makes the man of God specially known to her, and gives specially to his testimony the character of truth ? It is this :not merely that he knows the living God, but that he knows and has had to do with the God of resurrection. Death visits the house of the widow of Zarephath. God has taken away her son. Not the widow alone, but Elijah himself is brought face to face with this fact of death ; a death which the woman's conscience realizes, as ours do if in activity at all, to be the fruit of sin.

Death is the stamp upon a fallen creation-the solemn witness upon God's part of the ruin which has come in. Every where, in every language, whatever the darkness of man's mind, whatever the religious corruption of those not wishing to retain God in their knowledge, it has testified plainly to men's souls of wrath against the creature He has made. Why else undo what he has clone ? Why take again the life that He has given ? He is not a child, to break and cast away His plaything of an hour.

Death is what we all have to do with,-the liability to which God has not delivered any one of us from here. If the Lord Jesus comes, of course we shall not die; but in the meanwhile, each of us is personally liable and exposed to it. And what we need is, surely, to know the. God of resurrection. We need a God of that character in two ways:for ourselves, of course, as a matter of simple power for our own life. We need to know this also as a power for testimony, as Paul the apostle,-" We also believe, and therefore speak:knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus;" or, as you see it here in the widow of Sarepta, " Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth."

Resurrection, God's power over death,-power available and displayed in our behalf, is thus God's testimony to Himself among men. But I may say, in these times it is particularly the testimony He is giving. You know, if you take the Lord Jesus through His life even down here, as you have Him in the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans, "He was marked out the Son of God." How? He was, on the one hand, Son of David after the flesh ; but He was " marked out the Son of God, according to the spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead." By the fact that He could meet death, and manifest divine power over it,-by that fact He showed Himself as evidently the Son of God; for He met it, not as Elijah meets it here,-by prayer and supplication, looking up to another for help about it, but in His own power and name alone. By His simple word He met it and dispelled it; a condition hopeless for man to deal with. Man says, " While there is life there is hope." When death comes there is no hope :he can only bury his dead out of his sight. That gives God the opportunity to come in. It is just there He testifies to Himself as One who has available for man the power of resurrection. The Lord thus manifested His power on earth before His own death and in His own name. He showed that He was the Son of God there with practical help for man,-a power that could deal with sin itself, or it could not deal so with its fruit and penalty.

When the Lord met death, He met it fully ;-Jordan filled all its banks for Him. He knew it in its full character as penalty, bearing in His own body what had brought it in. Three days and three nights He lay under it, and when He arose from the dead, there took place what had had its type long before, when for Israel the ark stood in the bed of Jordan ; when those who bore it stood on the brink of the waters, and they rolled away right and left till there was a road no woman's heart need fear to travel from shore to shore. Then His own words received their full interpretation which He had spoken to the sorrowing heart of Martha before that- " I am the resurrection and the life :he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."(10:25, 26.)

In the past, there had been death ; in the past, people had to go through it. No doubt He was with them :and so the Psalmist says, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me." (Ps. 23:) Still it had to be gone through, though resurrection eventually for them also should banish it, whereas now the Lord having been in it, and come through, there is no real death impending for us, but a clear path made right through it. " I am the resurrection and the life ; and he that liveth and believeth in Me "- has no death to go through at all,-"shall never die." Now are we not called as Christians to realize the truth of that? It is truth, of course, for faith ; it is not truth evident to sense and sight. Yet by and by, when the Lord Jesus comes, it will be manifested as to those that are in the body at that time ;-it will be manifested as to us then, if we should be, as we easily may be, here, that death has no title over us at all. He will take His own to Himself without dying. Until that time, it is a fact that faith has to realize. For faith it is simple, that Christ having passed through death and come up out of it, His resurrection no less than His death is ours. Divine power has shown its exceeding greatness toward us, "according to its working when God raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places." (Eph. 1:19, 20.) In Him, quickened and raised up with Him, we too " are seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Therefore in God's mind we have no death to pass through, for we have passed through it in Him who is as much our representative in the heavens as He was upon the cross. We are rightly expected, therefore, to know resurrection in a way in which even Elijah could not know it-in a way in which no saints of the Old Testament could possibly know it. We are called to know it as those who in themselves, in their own persons, are living examples of it.

True, we did not know what death was in passing through it :there was no water in Jordan for us. The waves and billows, so terrible as God's waves and billows, spent their force on Him alone. We have come through the dry bed only. But we have come through. This is the simple fact in God's account; and God's is ever the truest-the only true one. Being dead with Christ, we are also quickened with Him out of death, and raised up and seated together in Christ in the heavenly places.

It is one thing to have this, of course, in Scripture,-nay, -to recognize this truth in Scripture; but another thing for ourselves to have known what it is practically-to have got hold of it experimentally, to have apprehended in this respect that for which we are apprehended of Christ Jesus. It is this latter alone that makes us men of God, and gives us to be real witnesses for God, accredited witnesses of heavenly things. This makes us lights indeed in the world :for earth's ordained lights are heavenly ; sun and moon and stars light her up, otherwise dark. So, if the Church is the responsible witness for God on earth-the candlestick,-the true light, the "angel" is the heavenly "star." (Rev. 1:20.) Nature is one with God's Word in affirming thus the character of all true witnessing ; because it comes from God, it must be of necessity heavenly, for He is. Resurrection puts us there. Resurrection carries us outside of the world through death, its boundary-line. Left in it for a while, no doubt, in another sense, but even so pilgrims and strangers, merely passing through it. We belong to it no more than Christ belonged to it.

And is there not such a thing as getting hold of this in reality? It is a different thing to say, " I know it is there in Scripture," from saying, "I know it for a truth in my very soul." Such recognition will make us of necessity something of-in one sense much more than-what Elijah was. It will carry us into a new sphere of relationship, of thought, of interests; and where all is deathless and eternal. We shall appreciate the Lord's words to the lingering disciple, to " let the dead bury their dead." That will be no unintelligible mysticism, as to many a believer we fear still it is.

The simple recognition of the fact requires faith. All spiritual realization is by faith,-a faith to which the sure-est evidence and the highest reason are that God has spoken. And although the Spirit of truth must make it good to us, and to grieve the Spirit is necessarily to deaden spiritual sense and dim perception, yet it is as the Spirit of truth He acts-by truth, and our faith in it. Thus alone can we pass through death and beyond, to where Christ is before God, and there for us.

If you look at the eleventh chapter of John's gospel, you will find there the great chapter which speaks of resurrection as God's witness. All the way through, you find how even Christ's disciples are under the power of death. The sisters of Bethany send to Him to say that His friend Lazarus is sick. The thought is (one so natural), if Christ were there, he could not die. They want His presence in order to put off death, which yet could be merely a reprieve, staving it off for a little while. That is all they think of. He has other thoughts. He stays away, in his love to them (for it comes in here so beautifully, " Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus), and lets him die.

When the Lord proposes to go to Judea again the disciples say, "Master, the Jews of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again ?" Thomas says, " Let us go also, that we may die with Him." Death is upon all their souls,-nothing but death. When He comes, He finds them overwhelmed at the thought that death had come and touched one of the Lord's own. Instead of Lazarus being this making it better, it made it worse in one sense. Was He indifferent ? or was death master even over His ? What does He do ? He has said from the beginning " This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." Facts might seem to be against Him, for Lazarus does die. But even so is it seen, as else it could not, that He, not death, is Master. Lazarus is raised. And what is the consequence ? Such a testimony to Himself they never had before :crowds come out from Jerusalem to learn about this wonderful thing; and the very presence of Lazarus there, the man who had actually come through death, is the thing that draws them. They come, " not merely that they may see Jesus, but to see Lazarus also, whom He has raised from the dead." Think of a man who had actually come through death and come out of it! If we apprehended that we are just such a people,-if we did apprehend, in any proper sense, that we really belonged to another sphere, what a testimony for Christ it would be ! It would indeed bring persecution. It brought it in that case. It was then that the Pharisees consulted about putting Christ, and Lazarus also, to death, because by reason of him all men, as they thought, would believe on Him. They would like to put out the lamp which God had lighted ; but it just shows what the power of such a testimony is. And let me say again, there is no real and sufficient testimony-there is no proper Christian testimony now-but that.

Some may call it high truth; and some, again, to whom it is outwardly familiar, may think it truth that needs very little insisting upon. I wish it did. What is the fact, when practice comes to test the actuality and power of the belief we have? What, for men who really knew the power of resurrection, would be the serious business of their lives? Would it be their aim to make money, beloved brethren ? Trying to get things comfortable around them ? To keep up their station in the world, and live as well as their neighbors ? Of course we have got to get through it, and have to do with it in the way of business. He who was "the carpenter" has sanctified honest labor, and there is nothing at all derogatory or unspiritual in it. But I need scarcely remind you what He was down here, all the way constantly and absolutely a heavenly man. Let me ask you, beloved friends, do you think that Christ could have set his heart on making money? Do you think He could have come into the world in order to seek a comfortable place in it, or anything of that sort ? You know it was the very opposite of that. And what are we ? We are distinctly His representatives in the world, as He was Himself His Father's representative. " As My Father hath sent Me into the world," He says to us, "so have I sent you into the world." What is the consequence? Why, we must not talk about this being " high truth," and we must not think that after all the humble part is not to pretend to so much. We are Christ's representatives down here in the world. True or false, no doubt:that is what it comes to; true or false witnesses for Christ down here. The responsibility of the place is ours, and if we are Christians, we must frankly accept it.

It will not do to value ourselves upon our morality, honesty, benevolence, and that sort of thing. The world knows perfectly well there is no testimony merely in that, because it will find you honest men, benevolent men, and moral men, without the least pretense to religion. The world is keen-eyed, and knows that is no sufficient testimony. "If that is all you have to show," they will tell you, " we can do without your Christianity. We have just such people who have none." But if we appear as people of another sphere, people who have their backs upon the world, as having beyond it a sufficient and satisfying portion, such as in it they have not,-that is another matter. " There be many that say, Who will show us any good ? Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased."

Elijah of course could not know, as we now may, the power of resurrection. We have in this case the exhibition of it in a very different way, because we have Old-Testament truth, and not New Testament. Still it was resurrection that made Elijah known as a man of God, and the word of God in his mouth as the truth. So nothing else will make the word of God in our mouth known as truth in any sufficient sense, or approve us as men of God.

You will find, if you turn to the fourth chapter of the second of Corinthians, the apostle speaking very plainly about this. What opened his lips to speak? He was continually exposed to death, given up to it, not merely of his own accord, but by God's will too, God everywhere exposing him to that which he had given himself up to. " We are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." (5:2:) He was "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," (5:10.) and God gave him up to death, to meet it practically,- " in deaths oft."

That was the very thing which made life work in those around about. This death which was working in him (5:12) was the power of his testimony to them. Death, so to speak, had a fair opportunity to show its power over him ; but it only showed that it had none at all; all it could do was to make life shine out brighter. " Death worketh in us but life in you."

The power of resurrection opened his mouth :" I believed, and therefore have I spoken," (5:13), "knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen." (5:17, 18.)

That is where his eyes were ; that is what his heart was occupied with ; and you find at the opening of the next chapter how fully for him Christ had met death and judgment. To die was to "depart and be with Christ." The thought of the judgment-seat moved him for others :"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men."

Listen to him again:"We have this treasure (the treasure of divine grace,) in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." (5:7.)

What is the practical value of the "earthen vessel"? The bird of heaven, the leper's offering in Lev. 14:, needed an earthen vessel too !-to die in !

It was one thing impossible for God-to die. He who had that in His heart of love for us, if He remained that simply, could not die. He took an earthen vessel-a human body-to die in. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, and death works in us. God has taken us up as earthen vessels, in which He can accomplish something for Himself. He takes up what is just proper material to be broken into potsherds,-poor, weak creatures, who can stand nothing, we may say ; and then, like Gideon's men, having hid his lamps there, He breaks the vessel to make the light shine out. Death may have power over Paul's body, but the very fact manifests that there was that in Paul over which it had not power. His true life is beyond it, untouched by it. The life of Jesus-the risen heavenly life of Jesus-shines manifestly out in him.

" Death worketh in us, but life in you."

The life of Jesus belongs not to the world. It is eternal life, with the Father before the world was, and manifested to us in Him in whom the world found nothing kindred to itself, therefore no beauty. His home was elsewhere. His delights with the sons of men did not alter that. In us, too, it will manifest itself as that which has its source and attachment elsewhere, and there where alone no want, no unrest, no instability, is found. We manifest it when Christ is our realized sufficiency and strength, and our circumstances alter nothing, as with regard to this they can alter nothing. When we pass through the world debtors to it for nothing it can give. This is not misanthropy, not asceticism, not giving up this world in order to get another,-that is only living to ourselves in another form, and from that we are delivered. It is the very opposite,-giving up the world because we have what is beyond. God is our portion, and to the fullness which is ours in Christ the world can add absolutely nothing; nor, blessed be His name! can it take any thing away.

This is real testimony to Christ. It is when we can say, " He is enough for us ; and know how to be abased, and how to abound, for He strengthens us. Why, oftentimes God has to put us on a sick-bed, in order to show us practically what He can do. Blessed it is, surely, to see how He works thus,-to see how He proves His sufficiency to those whom He lays low. But the blessing of a sick-bed is often just that God takes away all other things to show us that in reality we have lost nothing, whereas before we did not quite believe this. And what Christ shows us there, He is ready to show us without the need of a sickbed at all. I do not say that all there need it in this way. I am not reflecting upon these at all:God has His own mysterious working, and there are many and diverse purposes worthy of Himself He can accomplish thus. Still this is often what we learn and have to learn there, to be weaned from nature's breasts, and find what is our sufficiency elsewhere.

The power of resurrection is divine power, and He who is in us, come down from His own abode to link our souls with the place to which they belong, is not limited in His power to do this for us. No doubt we, by our unbelief, may practically limit Him, and as with Elijah on the mount, the storm and earthquake and fire maybe needed to prepare the way for what after all must do His work with us-the " still, small voice."

Let us remember, too, one thing as to resurrection which connects itself with our first gospel-lessons. I have already spoken of it, but not as fully as it needs. Until Christ died,-until the work was done by which righteously He could do it,-God could not show Himself upon our side, or His heart out as He would. There was a time when the blessed Sufferer had to say, " I cry in the day-time, and Thou hearest not." He had to be delivered out of death, not from it,*-out of it as the One gone into it for others. *So the passage in Heb. 5:7 should be read.*

As soon as His work was accomplished, then God stepped forth and showed Himself at once on the same side as the One who took that place for us,-by raising up His Son from the dead. It was the acceptance of Christ's work. He showed Himself there upon our side. Therefore the apostle says, at the end of the fourth of Romans, " If we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification," (10:24, 25.) That is, believe on the God who is for us righteously by the death of Christ. Who is for us, and showed Himself for us the very moment He could ; and He could be for us now, with all His attributes displayed and glorified. He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father ; righteousness required it, while love shone out in it.

That is what resurrection makes us know. It is the full and bright display of divine glory now shining in the face of a man in the nearest place that can be to God in heaven; yea, and that man is God,-His image. To attempt to know Christ after the flesh, as the apostle says for himself he did not, is to lose all the blessedness of this. Nor is there any Christ to be known but up there in heaven. If our souls are occupied with Him up there, in the light over which never more comes a cloud,-there where all the glory of God is displayed, shining with perpetual sunshine down into our souls,-what will the world be to us ?

With our eyes and hearts up there, where Christ in the glory is the revelation of a divine object for a heart brought back to God, they will necessarily be off the whole scene from which temptation comes to us. He is for us there in the glory. We are before God in Him, those upon whom God's eye rests with fullness of satisfaction, His own beloved. And so, practically, outside all that now tempts and defiles and weighs down here ; that is what God has provided for us, and our first duty as Christians-taking the epistle to the Philippians-is to " rejoice in the Lord." To be happy where happiness is full and uninterrupted. The only possible power we can find for going through the world aright is the power of the enjoyment of Christ. If Christ is known in this way,-if Christ satisfies, in that is strength to do all things-to be abased and to abound-as the apostle ; to go down into the scene of death, and, while it works upon us, to give forth the testimony which God seeks from us. The Lord give us grace to realize what I have so feebly shown you here. Thus only can we be practically men of God.

The Lord enable us to realize what we are, as those who have learned the power of resurrection-the power which has raised up Christ from the dead, and which works toward His people in the same energy, raising us up with Him and putting us in Him in the heavenly places before God.

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII.

PART II.-THE TRUMPETS. (Chap. 8:2-11:18.)

The First Four Trumpets. (Chap. 8:2-13.)

The last seal is loosed, and the book of Revelation lies open before us ; yet just here it is undoubtedly true that we have reached the most difficult part of the whole. As we go on, we shall find ourselves in the midst of scenes with which the Old-Testament prophets have made us in measure familiar-a part which can be compared in this very prophecy to "a little open book." In the seals, we have found also what was more simple by its very breadth and generality. We have here evidently predictions more definite, and yet the application of which may never be made known to us, as they do not seem to come into that "open book,"-do not seem to find their place where the Old Testament can shed its light in the same way upon them. Yet we are not left to that mere "private interpretation" which is forbidden us; and it is well to inquire at the beginning, what helps we have to interpretation from other parts of Scripture. The series of trumpets is septenary, as we know-just as those of the seals and vials are. Not only so, but, as already said, the 7 here becomes, by the interposed vision between the sixth and seventh, in structure, an 8. And in this, the seals are plainly similar; the vials really, though more obscurely.

This naturally invites further comparison; and then at once we perceive that the vials are certainly in other respects also a parallel to the trumpets. In the first of each, the earth is affected ; in the second, the sea; in the third, the rivers and fountains of waters; in the fourth, the sun ; in the fifth, there is darkness ; in the sixth, the river Euphrates is the scene:the general resemblance cannot be doubted.

No such resemblance can be traced if we compare the seals, however ; though the similarity of structure should yield us something. The structure itself, so definite and plainly numerical, may speak to those who have ears to hear it, and we shall seek to gain from it what we can. But there is a third witness, whose help we shall do well to avail ourselves of, and that is, the historical interpretation, which just here-strangely as it may seem-is at its plainest. There is a very striking and satisfactory agreement among those of the historical school with regard to . the fifth and sixth trumpets at least; and the harmony pleads for some substantial truth in what they agree about. We must at all events inquire as to this.

Strictly, according to the stricture, the first five verses of this chapter belong to the seventh seal; but for our purpose it is more convenient to connect them with the trumpet-series, which they introduce. The judgments following they show us to be the answer of God to the cry of His people, though in His heart for them before they cry. This is what the order plainly teaches:" And I saw the seven angels which stand before God, and seven trumpets were given unto them." Thus all is pre- . pared of God beforehand ; yet He must be inquired of, to do it for them, and therefore we have next the prayers of all the saints ascending up to God. There is now a union of all hearts together:the common distress leads to united prayer; and He who has given special assurance that He will answer the prayer of two or three that unitedly ask of Him, how can He withdraw Himself from such supplication ?
But we see another thing,-the action of the angel at the altar of incense:"And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel's hand." Thus the fragrance of Christ's acceptability gives efficacy to His people's prayers; a thing perfectly familiar to us as Christians, and which scarcely needs interpretation, but which, as pictured for us here, has this element of strangeness in it-the figure of an angel-priest. Why, if it be Christ who of necessity must take this place, why is He shown us as an angel ? " For He taketh not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High-Priest in things pertaining to God." (Heb. 2:16, 17.) If, then, to be the priest men need, He must be made like to men, why does He appear here as an angel, and not as a man ? There is no need for doubt that what has been answered by many is the true explanation, and that the angel-figure here speaks of personal distance still from those for whom yet He intercedes. We have many like examples in Scripture, and one which is of special interest in this connection. Those who appear in the eighteenth of Genesis as "men" to Abraham, go on to Sodom as " angels " in the nineteenth. They go there to deliver Lot, but are not able to show him the intimacy which they show to Abraham. " Just man "as he is, and " vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked," he is yet one "saved so as through the fire." Found, not in his tent-door at Mamre, but in the "gate of Sodom," he is one of those righteous men but in an evil place, for whom Abraham intercedes with God, and when delivered, it is said of him 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." (Gen. 19:29.)

Lot may thus fitly represent this very remnant of Israel at the last, whose prayers are here coming up before God ; who have had opportunity to have known the Church's pilgrim path, but have refused it, and to whom Christ is even yet a stranger, though interceding for them. If we remember the priestly character of the heavenly elders in the fifth chapter here, and " their vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints " (5:8) we may see further resemblance between these pictures so far apart. And how touching is it to see how in the troubles which encompass Lot in Sodom, these angels begin to appear as "men" again ! (Gen. 19:10, 12, 16.) Sweet grace of God, shining out in the very midst of the trial from which it could not, because of our need of it, exempt us !

Thus the angel-priest, in its very incongruity of thought, exactly suits the place in which we find it. It is "the time of Jacob's trouble,"-needed, because he is yet Jacob, but out of which he shall be delivered when its work is once accomplished. (Jer. 30:7.) Thus their prayers offered are heard; and, as inheriting on the earth, the answer to them involves the purging of the earth. " And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it unto the earth; and there were voices and thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound."

This fire, because from the altar, some have difficulty in believing to be judgment. They remember how a live coal from the altar purged Isaiah's lips, and cannot see that which has fed upon the sacrifice can be any longer wrath against men. But this is easily answered ; for while, where the heart turns to God, this is certainly true, it is in no wise true for those who do not turn. For them, there is no sacrifice that avails ; rather it pleads against its rejecters :the wrath of God against sin has not been set aside, but demonstrated an awful reality by the cross; and where the precious blood has not cleansed from sin, the wrath of God rests only the more heavily on those who slight it. The signs of judgment following are therefore in perfect keeping with the fact that it is the fire of the altar that evokes them, as they are with their being the answer to the prayers of a people who cry (with the saints under the fifth seal, or with the widow to whom the Lord compares them,), "Avenge me of mine adversary." (Luke 18:3.)

Every thing finds its place when once we are in the track of the divine thoughts ; and in all this there is no difficulty when we have learnt the period to which it applies. It is a suited introduction to the trumpets which follow, and in which, according to the old institution (Num. 10:9), God Himself now declares Himself in behalf of His people, and against their enemies.

There is much more difficulty when we come to consider separately the trumpets themselves.

" And the first sounded, and there followed hail and fire, mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth:and the third part of the earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up."

Hail with fire we find in other parts of Scripture, as in nature also. It is one of the most solemn figures of the divine judgment which nature furnishes. It was one of the plagues of Egypt. In the eighteenth psalm it is found connected with similar judgment. "The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave His voice,-hailstones and coals of fire." Electricity and hail are products of the same cause, a mass of heated air saturated with vapor, rising to a higher level, and meeting the check of a cold current. It is a product of cold, the withdrawal of heat, as darkness is the absence of light; and light and heat, cold and darkness, are akin to one another. Cold stands (with darkness) for the withdrawal of God, as fire (which is both heat and light) for the glow of His presence, which, as against sin, is wrath. And both these things can consist together, however they may seem contradictory-"hailstones and coals of fire" be poured out together. God's forsaking is in anger necessarily, and thus what would be a ministry of refreshment is turned into a storm of judgment. There is a concord of contraries against those that cast off God; as for those who love Him, all things work together for good.

The blood mingled is of course a sign of death-a violent death,-and shows the deadly character of this visitation, by which a third part of the prophetic earth is desolated, a third part of the trees burnt up, and prosperity (if the green grass implies that,) every-where destroyed.

This judgment seems to affect, therefore, especially the lower ranks of the people, though, as necessarily would be the case, many of the higher also ; but it does not affect especially those in authority. They have not escaped, as we have seen, in the general convulsion under the sixth seal; nay, the heavens fleeing away might seem to intimate that the very possibility of true government was departed. Yet this might be while in fact governments go on, and we find in what follows here that they do go on, although never really recovering themselves. Under this trumpet now begins, as it would seem, what shall really cause them to collapse. A people impoverished by that which spares the governing classes, who does not realize the danger to these of such a state of things ? And the second trumpet seems to show us in reality what we might anticipate to grow out of this.

"And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain, burning with fire, was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood; and 'the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life died ; and the third part of the ships were destroyed."
The comparison of Babylon to such a mountain (Jer. 51:25) may put us in the track of the meaning here. It is a power mighty, firmly seated and exalted, yet full of volcanic forces in conflict, by which not only her own bowels shall be torn out, but ruin spread around. This cast into the sea of the nations,-already in commotion, as the " sea " implies-produces death and disaster beyond that of the preceding trumpet. Human life is more directly attacked by it. Such a state of eruption was in France at the end of the last century, and may well illustrate (as others have suggested) what seems intended. The fierce outburst of revolt against all forms of monarchy, the fruit of centuries of insolent tyranny under which men had been crushed, set Europe in convulsion. History is full of such portents of that which shall be, and we do well to take heed to them. Especially as the end approaches may we expect to find it so:there is growth on to and preparation for that which at last takes those who have not received the warning by surprise.

The third part of the ships being destroyed would seem naturally to imply the destruction of commerce to this extent, the intercourse between the nations necessarily affected by the reign of terror around.

(To be continued.)

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII.

PART II.-THE TRUMPETS.-Continued.

The Little Open Book.(Chap, 10:)

We have already seen that in the trumpets, as in the seals, there is a gap, filled up with a vision, between the sixth and seventh, so as to make the seventh structurally an eighth section. This corresponds, moreover, to the meaning ; for the seventh trumpet introduces the kingdom of Christ on earth, which, although the third and final woe upon the dwellers on the earth, is on the other hand the beginning of a new condition, and an eternal one. With this octave a chord is struck which vibrates through the universe.

The interposed vision is in both series, therefore, a seventh, with a meaning corresponding to the number of perfection. At least, so it is in the series of the seals, and we may be sure we shall find no failure in this case :failure in the book of God, even in the minutest point,- our Lord's "jot or tittle,"-is an impossibility. Nothing is more beautiful of its kind than the way in which all this prophetic history yields itself to the hand that works in all and controls all :thank God, we know whose hand. But the vision of the trumpet-series is very unlike that of the seals, and its burden of sorrow different indeed from that sweet inlet into beatific rest. We shall find, however, that it vindicates its position none the less. As in the work, so in the word of God, with a substantial unity, there is yet a wonderful variety, never a mere repetition, which would imply that God had exhausted Himself. As you cannot find two leaves in a forest just alike, so you cannot find two passages of Scripture that are just alike, when they are carefully and intelligently considered. The right use of parallel passages must take in the consideration of the diversity and unity alike.

In the vision before us there is first of all seen" the descent of a strong angel from heaven. As yet, no descent of this kind has been seen. In the corresponding vision in the seal-series, an angel ascends from the east, but here he descends, and from heaven. A more positive direct action of heaven upon the earth is implied, power acting, though not yet the great power under the seventh trumpet when the kingdom of Christ is come. This being, apparently angelic, is "clothed with a cloud,"-a vail about him, which would seem to indicate a mystery either as to his person or his ways. It does not say "the cloud," -what Israel saw as the sign of the presence of the Lord,-otherwise there could be no doubt as to who was here :yet in His actions presently He is revealed to faith as truly what the cloud intimates. It is Christ acting as Jehovah, though yet personally hidden, and in behalf of Israel, among whom the angel of Jehovah walked thus appareled. It is only the cloud ; the brightness which is yet there has not shone forth :faith has to penetrate the cloud to enter the Presence-chamber:yet is He there, and in a form that intimates His remembrance of the covenant of old, and on His own part some correspondent action.

So also the rainbow (which we last saw round the throne of God) encircles His head. Joy is coming after sorrow, refreshing after storm, the display of God's blessed attributes at last, though in that which passes, a glory that endureth. And this is coming nearer now, in Him who descends to earth. But His face is as the sun :there indeed we see Him; who else has such a face ? In our sky there are not two suns:our orbit is a circle, not an ellipse.
His face is above the cloud with which He is encircled:heaven knows Him for what He is; the earth not yet; though on the earth may be those who are in heaven's secret. But His feet are like pillars of fire, and these are what are first in contact with the earth, the indication of ways which are in divine holiness, necessarily, therefore, in judgment, while the earth mutters and grows dark with rebellion.

Now we have what reveals to us whereto we have arrived :"And he had in his hand a little book opened." The seventh seal opens a book which had been seen in heaven ; the seventh section here shows us another book now open, but a little book. It had not the scope and fullness of the other :we hear nothing of how the writing fills up and overflows the page. It is a little book which has been till now shut up, but is no longer shut up,- a book too whose contents, evidently connected with the action of the angel here, has to do with the earth simply, not with heaven also, as the seven-sealed book has. We have in this what should lead us to what the book is; for the characteristic of Old-Testament prophecy is just this, that it opens to us the earthly, not the heavenly things. Its promises are Israel's, the earthly people (Rom. 9:4), and it deals fully with the millennial kingdom, and the convulsions which are its birth-throes. Beyond the millennium, except in that brief reference to the new heavens and earth to which Peter refers, it does not go ; and the " new heavens " are not our blessed portion, but the earth-heavens, as Peter very distinctly shows. There is no heavenly city there in. prospect; there is no rule over the earth on the part of Christ's co-heirs, such as we have already found in the song of Revelation. All this the Christian revelation adds to the Old Testament; while in Revelation the millennium is passed over with the briefest notice. Here for the first time indeed we get its limits set, and see how short it is, while the main thing dwelt upon as to it is with whom shall be filled those thrones which Daniel sees " placed," but sees not the occupants (chap. 7:9, R. V.). Thus it is plain how the book of Old-Testament prophecy is, comparatively with the New, "a little book." It is fully owned and maintained that when we look, with the aid of the New Testament, beyond the letter, we can find more than this. Types there are and shadows, and that every where, in prophecy as well as history, of greater things. Earth itself and earthly things may be and are symbols of heaven and the heavenly. The summer reviving out of winter speaks of resurrection ; the very food we feed on preaches life through death. And so more evidently the Old Testament:for Revelation, completing the cycle of the divine testimony, brings us back to paradise, as type of a better one ; and the latest unfolding of what had been for ages hidden, shows us in Adam and his Eve Christ and the Church.

But this manifestly leaves untouched the sense in which Old-Testament prophecy may be styled " a little book." The application here is also easy. For in fact the Old-Testament prophecy as to the earth has been for long a thing waiting for that fulfillment which shall manifest and illumine it. Israel outcast from her land, upon whom the blessing of the earth waits, all connected with this waits. We may see now, indeed, as in some measure we see their faces set once more toward their land, that other things also are arranging themselves preparatory to the final accomplishment. But yet the proper fulfillment of them is not really begun.

In the meanwhile, though the Lord is fulfilling His purposes of grace, and taking out from among the Gentiles a people for His name, as to the earth, it is " man's day." (i Cor. 4:3, marg.) When He shall have completed this, and having gathered the heavenly saints to heaven, shall put to His hand in order to bring in the blessing for the earth, then the day of the Lord will begin in necessary judgment, that the inhabitants of the world may learn righteousness. (Is. 26:9.) This day of the Lord begins, therefore, before the appearing of the Lord, for which it prepares the way :the dawn of day is before the sunrise.
The apostle, in warning the Thessalonians against the error of supposing that the day of the Lord was come (2 Thess. 2:2, R.V.), gives them what would be a sign immediately preceding it:"For that day," he says, "shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." The manifestation of the man of sin is therefore the bell that tolls in solemnly the day of the Lord.

This would seem to be the opening, then, of the " little book." Thenceforth the prophecies of the latter day become clear and intelligible. Now the apostasy has been shown, as it would seem, in its beginning under the fifth trumpet, and the man of sin may well be the one spoken of there :thus the little book may be fittingly now seen as opened, and in the continuation of the vision here we find for the first time the "beast," the "wild beast" of Daniel, in full activity (chap. 11:7). All, therefore, seems connected and harmonious ; and we are emerging out of the obscure border-land of prophecy into the place where the concentrated rays of its lamp are found.

We see too how rapidly the end draws near :" And he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth ; and he cried with a great voice, as when a lion roareth." It is the preparatory voice of Judah's Lion, as "suddenly his anger kindles ;" and the seven thunders, -the full divine voice,-the whole government of God in action,-answers it ; but what they utter has to find its interpretation at a later time.

Meanwhile, the attitude of the angel is explained :" and the angel which I saw standing upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his right hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth forever and ever, who created the heavens, and the things that are therein, and the earth, and the things that are therein, and the sea, and the things that are therein, that there should be delay no longer; but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound"-when he shall sound, as he is about to do,-" then is finished the mystery of God, according to the good tidings which He hath declared to His servants the prophets."

All is of a piece :the prophetic testimony, (the testimony of the little open book,) is now to be suddenly consummated, which ends only with the glories of Christ's reign over the earth. Amid all the confusion and evil of days so full of tribulation, that except they were mercifully shortened, no flesh should be saved (Matt. 24:22), yet faith will be allowed to reckon the very days of its continuance, which in both Daniel and Revelation are exactly numbered. How great the relief in that day of distress ! and how sweet the compassion of God that has provided it after this manner ! " He that endureth to the end shall be saved,"-shall find deliverance speedy and effectual, and find it in the coming of that Son of Man whose very title is a gospel of peace, and whose hand will accomplish the deliverance.

There has been an apparent long delay :" There shall be delay* no longer." *There is no doubt at all as to this being legitimate, and being so, although the R. V. still puts it into the margin, there should be no doubt as to its being the true rendering.* Man's day has run to its end, and, though in cloud and tempest, the day of the Lord at last is dawning. Then the mystery of God is finished :the mystery of the first prophecy of the woman's Seed, and in which the whole conflict between good and evil is summarized and foretold. What a mystery it has been ! and how unbelief, even in believers, has stumbled over the delay ! The heel of the Deliverer bruised :a victory of patient suffering to precede and insure the final victory of power ! Meantime, the persistence and apparent triumph of evil, by which are disciplined the heirs of glory ! Now, all is indeed at last cleared up ; the mystery of God (needful to be a mystery while patience wrought its perfect work,) is forever finished :the glory of God shines like the sun ; faith is how completely justified ! the murmur of doubt forever silenced.

Thus the sea and the land already, even while the days of trouble last, know the step of the divine angel, claiming earth and sea for Christ. And now faith (as in the prophet) is to devour the book of these wondrous communications, sweet in the mouth, yet at present bitter in digestion, for the last throes of the earth's travail are upon her. By and by this trouble will be no more remembered for the joy that the birth of a new day is come,-a day prophesied of by so many voices without God, but a day which can only come when God shall wipe away the tears from off all faces. And it comes ; it comes quickly now :the voice heard by the true Philadelphian is, "I come quickly." Come, Lord, and "destroy the face of the covering that is cast over all peoples, and the vail that is spread over all nations ; " come, and swallow up death in victory, and take away the reproach of Thy people from off all the earth ; come, that faith may say in triumph, " Lo, this is our God:we have waited for Him, and He will save us :this is the Lord ; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."

(To be continued.)

(NOTES OF A LECTURE.)

Read 2 Sam. 15:13-16:14, and Ps. 84:

My object in reading the chapters I have is, that in them we find something that in this day is very rare, and which I am sure, as we look at it a little together, with the Lord's help, we shall say, " Would God I knew more of it! "

What I refer to is simply this, that we have here before us a. man passing through the most trying circumstances, and yet one who looks out of it all and puts his trust in God, and so goes on perfectly calm and at rest, come what will.

Now what we find ourselves constantly saying is, that if this thing were set right that is a trial to me, or if this difficulty were removed, I should be free to enjoy the Lord more.

But change the circumstances, and remove what appears to be a hindrance to our enjoyment, and what will be the result? Shall we be more happy than before? No, we should not; for though circumstances might be altered and brighter, yet what is at the bottom and causes the unhappiness is there still. Whatever I may be, I carry the same heart of distrust with me, and until we have learned to judge that, there is no true rest. How often do we try, and vainly too, to get things right here, and overlook all the time the blessings we might be enjoying where we are. We forget that He has said, " In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world;" and along with this, " These things have I spoken unto you that in Me ye might have peace." And if really in the sanctuary of God's presence,, we should say often, " I would not have it otherwise if I could." Not that our hearts should not feel the state of things around and amongst us, nor that there is not much in ourselves and elsewhere that should rightly exercise us :surely there is, but we have this in God's Word :" Be careful for nothing." What! not careful about anything? No, "careful for nothing" absolutely nothing. And how can this be ? Is it that there is nothing to give us care and sorrow down here ? There is much, surely. But we have in what follows how it can be, " In every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." (Phil. 4:6.) What a relief ! There is not a sorrow or a burden that I am not privileged to bring there and tell into His ear. And what then ? " The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds by Christ Jesus."

Just look at Paul, and see where he is at the time of his writing this, and how far circumstances are affecting him. We find him in prison at Rome, in bonds for the gospel, shut out from the work which was so dear to his heart, and what effect has it upon him? Does it cast him down ? No; look at what he says in chap. 1:He would have them know that his "bonds had fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel." " I do rejoice,-yea, and will rejoice." He thought of Him who was carrying on His own work notwithstanding all that came in seemingly to hinder; and with all the evil before him fully, and felt by him, he would tell the saints of a joy and rest above all the sorrow. What effect could circumstances have on a man like this? None whatever:circumstances can have no power when our confidence is in God ; but when that is wanting, we are easily affected by them. They only test how far we are leaning upon God, and simply trusting Him.

But we may give up our Nazariteship, and neglect to walk with God; our strength is then gone, and we are" weak as other men," and, just like Samson, say, in view of our enemies, "I will go out, as at other times before, and shake myself." But " he wist not that the Lord had departed from him." The provocation of the Philistines brings out this, but his strength was gone before ; and so with us,-the trials only prove where we are. They do not make us weak ; but if we give way before them, they prove that we have departed from the source of strength. And as we have God, by Jeremiah, when recalling to the hearts of Israel the cause of their ruin, saying, " My people have committed two evils :they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." God is practically given up, and something else taken up with.

We see again with Israel at Sinai the same thing. They had got a golden calf in the camp in the place of God, from whom they had turned away; and when Moses had been in intercession with God, and entreats for their forgiveness, God says that He will not go up in the midst of them, but will send an angel before to lead them into the promised land. His threat of judgment made them mourn ; but the land flowing with milk and honey, and an angel to lead them there, suited very well. But Moses goes deeper. Nothing suits the man of faith but God Himself. Israel may be satisfied with an angel by the way and the land at the end, but faith says, "If Thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence." Let us not move a step on the way without that. What was the angel's presence and the promised land to him if Jehovah withheld His presence?

And it was just this that brought Israel to Bochim, as we read in the book of Judges, and David into the place in which we find him in these chapters, " passing through the valley of Baca." The place of strength, because of self-judgment, had been left. It was there that the " ark of God " had made a way for them through Jordan. The reproach of Egypt had rolled away, and Gilgal tells of not only deliverance from the "iron furnace," but of entrance into the promised rest, and circumcision is renewed. In all their wars at first, they returned there, to the camp at evening. And where is our Gilgal but at the cross of Jesus, the heart returning there to meditate upon its glories and the results for us of not only deliverance from Egypt, but entrance into Canaan ?

There must be walking in self-judgment, denying the flesh a place, to walk in confidence with God and consequent strength. If this is not done, another thing will surely come-we shall find, instead of strength at Gilgal, tears at Bochim. ("Baca" and "Bochim" both from the same root, meaning "tears," or "weeping.") And may we not ask ourselves, Am I at Gilgal, and finding there strength through the circumcision of nature, the judgment of it as before the cross ?

But we get when Israel left that, God did not give them up ; they did not gain victories, 'tis true, but God still follows them. What wondrous grace ! and what comfort for our hearts!

So God uses Bochim to discipline and break us down, as he did with Israel, and here also with David.

David had sinned against the Lord, and is here driven from his throne into exile by his son, and he gets to Baca, and what he finds even there is refreshment and blessing, when bowed to the hand of God. He "makes a well, and the rain fills the pools." There is no place in which God cannot bless us, if we are in a state of soul to receive it.

The first thing I would notice here is the unselfishness that comes out in David. He would send Ittai back :he would not have others to go into exile and sorrow with him. But Ittai, true-hearted and devoted, would cast in his lot with him, and share his fortunes, whether in rejection or glory. And such is the path of the Church, sharing with Christ His rejection, as soon His glory.

But it is David under discipline we are engaged with now, and the next thing we have to witness is his telling Zadok and Abiathar to carry back the ark of God into the city. Now why was this ? Was it that David did not value it ? Witness the joy he had in bringing it from Ephratah (Bethlehem) to Zion, type of the journeying of the true ark, the Lord Jesus, from His birthplace to the cross-the place where (or the work, rather, by which) God could find a rest among sinners. Why, then, take back that ark, but to show us that God's rest is undisturbed- remains the same, notwithstanding all the ups and downs of His people, and that rest is where His people look in faith while passing through the trials of this scene ? "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts!" etc. And therefore he says, " If He find pleasure in me, then will He bring me back, and show me both it and His habitation."

And is it not so for our hearts amidst all the circumstances that summoned us here ! Where can one turn to for comfort and rest in this evil world? Is there one thing not spoiled by sin ? Well, if there is nothing here that the heart can find rest in, think of God's tabernacle being open to you. When man had spoiled all down here, both for God and himself, God opens heaven by the cross to sinners, and says, There is the place I have for you now. And where can our hearts turn from all this scene of failure and ruin? Not to the Church, or things being set right here, either in it or in the world, but to God's habitation, in the blessed assurance that He who has gone to prepare a place for us in there in the Father's house will come and take us to it, that we may be with Himself where He is.

All this with David is, "If He delight in me :" a question we cannot raise who are accepted in the Beloved ; but he adds, " If He say, I have no delight in thee:behold, here am I, let Him do to me as seemeth good to Him." What a blessed state of soul this was ! He says, God's will is best; if I am never brought back, yet He does what is right. What lies at the root of half our trouble is that we are not come to this in our souls-our wills are too unbroken ; the moment we are broken in spirit, we are happy; nothing but self-will hinders our blessing. We like to have our own way naturally, and practically deny God's right to order every thing in our circumstances for us. But God will be God, whatever people make of it; and He does what He pleases and where He pleases and when He pleases ; but what He does is always right. But can we say, " Let God do just what He pleases with me ? " There is this thing that is a trial, and that thing which I should like changed ; but whilst in prayer I can tell Him all these things, and find relief about them thus, my heart should say, " Let God do as seemeth good unto Him."

What we often do in circumstances that try us, and varied pressure that comes on us, is to turn to wretched expedients instead of the living God. But look at David here, his heart pressed with sorrow, his own son driving him from the throne and seeking his life, yet he accepts it all at the hand of God, and looks out to the place of His dwelling, and leaves all to God to order for him.

They speak to him of Ahithophel being among the conspirators. Now David knew him to be a crafty man, and one likely to do him much harm ; and what does he do? He turns to God, and says, "O Lord, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel to foolishness." He casts His cares upon God. He goes to the top of the hill and worships, and there receives an answer at once. He finds at once comfort for his heart and rest about the evil of Ahithophel, and there finds the suited man to do the needed work in Hushai.

In coming to the sixteenth chapter, we find what is sorrowful, in the easy way in which David was deceived by Ziba about Mephibosheth, but we pass from this to a brighter part of the scene. Shimei takes advantage of his sorrow to heap reproach upon him, and attributes his suffering to a wrong cause, and openly curses him. Deliverance is easy, and Abishai would go and "take off his head," and the Spirit of God marks out his being "surrounded with all his mighty men." He had power to deliver himself from his enemy. But for David, God is seen in it all, and deliverance must come from the hand of God, and he will have no other. He would have God put him right, and accepts at His hand the chastisement for his sins. God is the One who occupies his thoughts.

And this is what we have in Ps. 84:, which refers to this time. David's thoughts are about God's house, and His altars, and the One who dwelt there, when himself in exile, and passing through the valley of Baca. He is weeping as he goes along. And what about? About failure. And yet David in his palace, a great man, was not half so happy as when driven out into exile and looking to God's house. He was satisfied with the excellency of Him who dwelt there, and longing to be with Him.

David had enough to give him a bad conscience and a troubled heart ; and surely he felt it all, and rightly so. God had forgiven all, according to the word of Nathan, " The Lord hath put away thy sin;" but he was reaping the fruit of his sin, and that fruit was bitter in itself. Yet so gracious the God we know that there is no place in which He will not bless. Even here there is a well springing up in the place of discipline for failure. Have we not found it so ourselves, according to our measure, oftentimes? Peter got his heart into this scene; his self-confidence leads to a thorough break-down, and he denies the One he professed to love beyond the rest. A look from that Blessed One sends him out to weep bitterly and after He is risen, the Lord goes on to restore his soul; and did not he find a well there ? Surely he did. H:had his heart probed to the bottom, that the cause of failure might be seen and judged, and then the well was opened, an abundant spring.

But that is not all, "the rain also filleth the pools," Not only is a well springing up there, but blessing comes down from above, There is no thirst left. It is not saying," My moisture is turned into the drought of summer," but refreshment full to overflowing. May we not mote and more covet this place,-not the failure, of course, but the blessed sense of what God is to us? What He wants to do is, to get at our hearts; and to do that, He must break down our wills. He has a controversy with all that is of the flesh in us, and when our confidence in that s broken, He leads us on from strength to strength; " Every one of them in Zion appeareth before God:' And this is what He is doing with us, teaching us our weakness, bringing our hearts to own it, and then bringing in His strength for us. Now the end is all triumph and praise.

It is in the sense of this that David can say, although the world had spread out its glories before him, "A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand; I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness."

"The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory." " He will give grace ;" He has done this, and " He will give glory." You can only have it from Him, and He will give it. What blessedness is this, beginning with grace and ending with glory ! But there is more than that:" No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly." All along the way we have Him doing this, blessing us at every step. Does He give us every thing we want? Oh, no; but " no good thing will He withhold." He meets us in every need we have, giving, in His love, what is good for us. Are we happy in its being so? "O Lord of Hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee." R.T.G.

Q. 1.-" Had the Lord Jesus a soul ? and will the saved have souls in resurrection ?"

Ans.-Man is body, soul, and spirit; and the Lord was in every particular true man. "Thou wilt not leave My soul in hades, as "applied to Him by the apostle (Acts 2:27, 31), shows that He had a soul, and that He took it with Him beyond death. So does the human soul survive death (Matt. 10:28), certainly not to pass away afterward. Little as is made known to us of the resurrection-state, there need be no doubt whatever as to the eternal existence of the soul, as of the spirit.

Q. 2.-"To what time do the words, ' He was made a quickening spirit' apply ? "

Ans.-"The last Adam was made" this. In resurrection, after His work accomplished, He became last Adam, and as such breathes upon His disciples (Jno. 20:22) as God breathed upon the first Adam. There is connection, and as plain contrast also. As last Adam, He is the new-creation Head and Lord, as the first was of the old.

Q- 3.-"Was Adam perfect as he came fresh from God's hand?" Ans.-Surely, perfect in the sphere for which God made him,-"upright," innocent:holiness could not be when as yet there was not the knowledge of evil.

Q.4.-" Was it possible for the Lord Jesus to have departed from the path of obedience had He so chosen ? "

Ans.-It was not possible for Him to have chosen to do so. There is often a great mistake in our conceptions of freedom. God cannot lie, cannot repent :is He not free ? And so with the Lord Jesus:absolutely perfect and perfectly free.

Q. 5.-" It is said that Pentecost was the only baptism of the Spirit, docs not Acts 10:44, 45; 11:15, 16, show otherwise?-the expressions, 'fell on,' 'poured out,' 'baptized with,' 'as on us,' being used?"

Ans.-The brother who, I think, first advocated the view of baptism of the Spirit having taken place once for all at Pentecost says,-

"As to a person subsequent to Pentecost being baptized with the Holy Ghost, I should say he was introduced into an already baptized body but by receiving the Holy Ghost, by which he is united to the Head-Christ. I am not anxious as to the word ' baptism,' but it is not generally employed as to the individual reception. Acts 11:17 and 1 Cor. 12:are the nearest to applying it to an individual or individuals, but it is not actually used. But the receiving of the Holy Ghost is equivalent, they having what was originally treated as baptism of the Holy Ghost, and are looked at, as they are, as partakers of the same thing."

It seems to me to be in this way a distinction of very little moment, even if real:of which I have never been convinced. For 1 Cor. 12:13 positively says, "For by one Spirit have we all been baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks;" and there were no Greeks baptized on the day of Pentecost. Acts 11:17 certainly looks in the same direction.

Q. 6.-"Is the distinction 'came upon' and 'dwell in' sufficient to mark the contrast between Old-Testament and New-Testament times ? Is it not rather the fact of (1) the Spirit's abiding, instead of transient visits:and (2) forming the one body, instead of using individuals for special occasions ? In, the case of the prophets (1 Pet. 1:11), and of John the Baptist (Luke 1:15), 'in them' and 'filled with' are used, as they would be now."

Ans.-In the case of John the Baptist, we find, not even transient visits, but one filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. We read this of no other, and yet one such case is sufficient to show that the first distinction is not exact. Of even John, however, it could not be said, as to the Corinthians, "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost ? " Plainly, the Spirit had not yet come; and though controlled fully by Him, he was yet not indwelt. Then again, the Spirit of Christ was "in" the prophets, but only as prophets,-that is, in their prophecies. I still think, therefore, that the indwelling of the Spirit is truly distinctive of the present time.

Q. 7.-" What is the force of ' The supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ' (Phil. 1:19.) ?"

Ans.-The ministry of grace by that Spirit by whom Christ had been anointed for His work on earth.

"In the midst of the wreck and ruin of the creature, can you say, notwithstanding it all, 'I have found a spring in Thee, O God, and can count on Thee to give me all blessing in Christ; not to fill me once and then all gone, but to fill me again and again'? I would have you judge yourselves about the sort of faith you have. Is it a living faith ? It is the living God upon whom His people hang, drawing daily supplies from the fullness of the living springs in Him. Ah, if you have found that God, no depths can be too deep for the heart of that living God, who meets us according to the circumstances in which we are."

Q. 20.-"Is not the Jordan the eastern boundary of the promised land?

" I quote a few passages as to this :-(Gen 12:5.) ' Into the land of Canaan they came.'-' And the Lord . . . said, Unto thy seed will I give this land.' The tribes of Reuben and Gad said, ' Bring us not over Jordan.' (Num. 32:5.) And Moses rebukes them for objecting to going over into ' the land which the Lord had given them.' All this shows the Jordan to be the eastern boundary.

"But in Josh. 1:2, the word is, 'Moses my servant is dead; now, therefore, arise:go over this Jordan,-thou, and all this people, unto the land which I give to them, even to the children of Israel, . . . from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates-all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun.' Again, in Ex. 23:31:'And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river.'-the river Euphrates, no doubt.

"Does not 'from the desert unto the river' mean a north and south measurement? If so, what is meant by (Josh. 1:2) 'From the wilderness and this Lebanon,' since the wilderness was south and Lebanon north of the land? Does the land widen out north of the Jordan to the head waters of the Euphrates, the Jordan being the eastern boundary along its course?"

Ans.-In all the references to Israel's inheritance in the land, we have to distinguish between God's original (and unrepenting) thought for them, which is yet to be fulfilled, and the partial way in which they realized it under the legal covenant. When they are finally settled there in full blessing, Jordan will not be the boundary at all, but the portion of each tribe will cross it from east to west, so as practically to obliterate it. On the other hand, in Numbers, it is clearly failure in the two tribes and a half taking their inheritance on the east side.

These things are, as all else, types for us. God has called us with a heavenly calling, and to take up with earth is to renew the failure of Reuben and Gad. Yet, as co-heirs with Christ, we are to reign over the earth also in the day when God's full thought as to us shall be shown out,-the river of death completely obliterated.

In the present time of wide-spread disbelief in the inspiration of Scripture, and when one has so often to sorrow over the surrender of an orthodox faith on the part of those who had professed it, it is good to be able to record on the opposite side the working of God's grace in bringing those into subjection to His Word who have been conspicuous in their opposition to its claims. The clipping from a newspaper given below is an example of this kind in the case of the first contributor to the well-known Essays and Reviews which, published in 1860, aroused so much attention and opposition as to call forth in England alone, it is said, nearly four hundred publications. Dr. Temple was at that time head-master of Rugby school, and his appointment to a bishopric sometime after was naturally strongly opposed on account of the views to which he had given utterance.

Dr. Temple's essay was indeed one of the least offensive in the unhappy volume, where it appeared, however, shoulder to shoulder with the most pronounced and destructive rationalism. Yet in his own essay on "The Education of the World," he makes Scripture only a means of exalting man's " conscience " to a place above it, which is characteristic of the world's manhood, when, he says, "the spirit or conscience comes to full strength, and assumes the throne intended for him in the soul. As an accredited judge, he sits in the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides upon the past and legislates upon the future, without appeal, except to himself . . . He is the third great teacher, and the last." So supreme is he, indeed, and so strange is the manner of his adjudication, that even " Christ came just at the right time "* to escape it ; " if He had waited till the present age, His incarnation would have been misplaced, and we could not recognize His divinity; for the faculty of faith has turned inward, and cannot now accept any outward manifestations of the truth of God." (! !) *I quote from Hurst's "History of nationalism" here.*

These are published statements, and they are brought forward now only to magnify, as we may be sure Dr. Temple would wish us, the grace of God which has changed all this for him. The Churchman says,-

It is curious, as a piece of intellectual history, to compare the writer of " The Education of the World " with the Bishop Temple who has recently been lecturing on the Scriptures in London. In that number of Essays and Reviews, the conscience of the individual reader of the Scriptures was exalted above the written Word, and given the power to correct it. The dangerous admissions of this essay were recognized and condemned even by Bishop Thirlwall in his charge of 1863. In the Bishop of London's recent Polytechnic lecture, we find a complete and genuine palinode to his earlier utterances.

It is said, only fools cannot change their minds. The Bishop had no hesitation in saying, on the occasion referred to, that the more he read the Bible through from end to end, the more the things in it seemed to be master of him; so that if he differed from it, he was driven to the conclusion that either he did not understand it or that he was in the wrong. The spirit of it was so supreme over all that he could think or imagine of the purest and holiest things that it was absolutely necessary that he should accept Us authority. When, too, he studied the unique Figure in humanity which stood unapproachable by all philosophers or heroes, his conscience, which bowed before the Book, bowed still more before that majestic Royalty which spoke with authority, not as a learned man, not as a philosopher, not as a guide or a teacher who, having gathered knowledge from various sources, communicated it-with a voice which bore eternal truth with no qualification, and which was plain for every one to hear and to understand.

The italics are our own, and this lecture should be read by doubting minds of to-day as one of the most striking examples of a recantation from previous latitudinarianism which have ever been volunteered by a mind at once honest, strong, and thoroughly devotional.

May God in His goodness raise up many such witnesses ! and may it encourage prayer for those who as leaders in the present day unbelief may be all the more to the praise of that grace in their being turned from darkness to light, and to Him in whom that light has shined !

AND NON-VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.

II.

We now pass on to consider Dr. Waldenstrom's larger work – " The Reconciliation." " The term, reconciliation,' " he tells us at the beginning, "sets forth the real essence of salvation, for salvation consists just in the reconciliation of man to God." He confounds this with propitiation ; or rather, expunges the latter thought from Scripture to make way for the former, as we shall see :Mr. Princell, his translator and editor, assuring us in a preliminary note to explain the author's view, that " hilaskomai" (to propitiate) means, "in the two New-Testament passages in which it occurs, plainly this and nothing more :I show grace, mercy, or kindness with respect to, – that is, I pardon; Luke 18:13, rendered 'be merciful,' and Heb. 2:17, the A. V. rendering, 'to make reconciliation] the R. V. rendering, 'to make propitiation,' plainly meaning, to show mercy with respect to, – that is, to pardon." As we are to have the passages before us, I will not anticipate what will come before us then; but it is strange if it be really so, that the " aim " of the heathen "to appease God, "of which Dr. Waldenstrom speaks a few pages further on, should have found expression in this very word ! Any Greek dictionary will satisfy us that it did so.

" All their worship of God proceeds," says the author, " from the principle that God is angry with them," and this is so deep-rooted in human nature, somehow, "that men often consider Christ, whom God has sent in His grace to reconcile us to Himself, as One on whom God has poured out His wrath, in order that He might be gracious to us." "Contrary to all such perverse imaginations," he goes on, "the Scriptures teach that no change took place in God's disposition toward man in consequence of his sin; that therefore it was not God who needed to be reconciled to man, but that it was man who needed to be reconciled to God; and that consequently reconciliation is a work which proceeds from God, and is directed toward man, and aims, not to appease God, but to cleanse man from sin, and to restore him to a right relation with God."

Now that " God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son," is the text of many a sermon and the joy of many a heart, thank God, among those who yet believe that Christ's voice it is which in the hundred and second psalm speaks of having endured God's indignation and wrath (5:10; comp. 5:25 with Heb. 1:10-12); and it only deepens inexpressibly in their hearts the wonder of God's love. God's wrath upon sinners, Dr. Waldenstrom will presently himself assure us, is not enmity against them; and it is true that He does not need to be reconciled-His heart toward them needs not to be changed. There is no need for confuting what in fact is not held. Even those who do use the language rightly reprobated, as to reconciling God, do not mean by it in the least that Christ's work is the procuring cause of God's love to us, but rather the expression of that love, and that which enables it righteously to manifest itself toward us. But righteous wrath against sin there was and is, which when the soul is turned to God, needs to find holy expression also, in order that the sinner may be received. And thus Christ, "made sin for us, who knew no sin," proclaimed the righteousness of the penalty upon it, when bearing our sins in His own body on the tree (i Pet. 2:24), He was " made a curse for us." (Gal. 3:13.)

"There is not to be found" says Dr. Waldenstrom, "a single passage in the Bible setting forth the atonement as having its cause in this, that the justice of God needed satisfaction.'' Boldly, as always, he emphasizes this. Has he forgotten that Christ " was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him"? God's righteousness is expressed in giving us our place of acceptance as the result of His taking the place of sin. Substitution is here the very thing that proclaims God's righteousness :was it yet unrequired by it ? or when it said that " God hath set forth [Christ] to be a propitiation [or mercy-seat] through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins," (Rom. 3:25) was it still not righteousness that required this blood-shedding? If the passage required is not to be found, it is by blind men that it is not to be found. The whole warp and woof of Scripture declares the same.

"But," he says, again, "love and justice are never, in the Bible, set forth as being in conflict with each other, so that one can bind the other. On the contrary, it is right and just, both for God and men, to love-to have compassion on and to save sinners. It was right and just that God so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son for its salvation." Of course, but why give His Son ?-what need of that? Again and ever this utter blindness as to the meaning of the cross! Righteous to give His Son to "suffer, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God"! Righteous to "lay on Him the iniquity of us all"! (i Pet. 3:18; Isa. 53:6.) Was it all meaningless, this? Nay:it was " the chastisement of our peace," and by His stripes we are healed, (5:5.)

Yet Dr. Waldenstrom can quietly reply to the suggestion that God's punitive righteousness demanded satisfaction,-" It is nowhere thus written; and, as something outside of the Word of God, it is not well to assert any such thing "! And he can actually assert, " To punish in order to inflict evil on the one punished is unjust and unrighteous, and only he that is evil can do evil; but God is not evil, for He is love :but to punish in order to produce repentance is righteous, just, and good" !! What, then, was the chastisement [or "punishment"] of our peace which Christ endured ? And how can God punish the finally impenitent? Alas! Dr. Waldenstrom knows not the glory of the cross.

I may pass briefly over the whole of the next chapter, inasmuch as there is no question either of changing God's hatred of sin, or of changing God at all, or of averting His wrath from those that go on in sin. Many of the arguments here are very much like beating the air. Late in the chapter, however, is one that cannot but create astonishment. "For the unrighteous man (as such) there is no salvation, however gracious and merciful God may be; and for the righteous man (as such) there is no condemnation, however righteous God may be." And then, after his manner, he emphasizes the words, " Yea, it is the very righteousness of God which makes it impossible for the righteous to be condemned." No doubt; but who can claim for his own righteousness such recognition by the righteousness of God ? The apostle says of some who imagined the possibility, that "they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God." And the "righteousness of faith," which he goes on to contrast with "our own," is Christ as "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." (Rom. 10:3, 4.)

It will be said that Dr. Waldenstrom believes in justification by faith. Nominally, he does; in reality, rather by the change which faith produces. And this leaves Job's question (who was certainly a believer,) still unanswered:" But how shall man be just with God ? "Our author would make it a very easy matter.

In the third chapter, he turns to the consideration of the Old-Testament sacrifices; and here we must follow him more closely.
In the first place, he catches at the words of the apostle in Heb, 9:22, that "almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission," to point attention to the " almost," upon which he argues, "the apostle has laid special emphasis."But it is hard to realize this, as the apostle never refers to it again, and as his object is to insist on the rule and not the exception! Moreover, the position of the word at the beginning of the sentence merely extends the application of it, as he rightly says, to the whole verse. It is true that there were exceptions under the law to the general rule that all things were purged by blood, and without shedding of blood was no remission; but the apostle immediately goes on in a way entirely contrary to what might be gathered from the "almost,"-"It was necessary, therefore, that the patterns of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these."What becomes, then, of the great importance of the "almost" to the apostle's argument?

To his own also it is as difficult to see it. According to Dr. Waldenstrom himself, apart from the communication of the life which is in the blood, forgiveness there cannot be ! Why, then, insist on the "almost "? It looks as if he had begun to realize that the "shedding of blood" must mean death, and not life, and would as much as possible diminish the importance of a witness which is against him. Our wills often act in a way of which we are little conscious. But how much is gained by it ? The law puts forward a broad principle with a few exceptions:if the law be not the very image of the things (chap. 10:i), where is the wonder?

He goes on to the question of the vicarious character of the sacrifices. First, he asserts, in his usual manner, that God never puts forth such a principle anywhere in Scripture as that God's righteousness demanded That the "punishment must be endured by some one if sin should be forgiven." Now, if he mean's in the way of" abstract statement, it is very little in the manner of Scripture to put things in that way. God speaks of how He acted or will act, and that is enough; although really the passage in Hebrews comes very near to such a proposition. If the shedding of blood be necessary for remission of sins, then it is certainly the blood of another, not of the sinner, that is shed, and what is that but the principle of substitution? And what are we to learn from "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all " ?

He then, as in his smaller treatise, denies the Lord's work to be the payment of debt. I do not contend for it, and need not repeat what has been already said.

He goes on to what is more at the root of the matter, that "the Scriptures never represent, in any way, that it is just or righteous to punish the innocent instead of the guilty." He is here on common ground with Unitarians and others every where; but an essential element of this case he has omitted. It is the One who has imposed the penalty who stoops to suffer it:it is His own as well as the Father's glory that is to be shown forth; the Father and He are one. Who shall forbid Him, not to execute the law upon other sinless ones, but to bear its penalty Himself? Who shall bind the hands of the Holy One, that He should not be able to sacrifice Himself? and who shall be bold enough to stigmatize it as unrighteous?

Yet Dr. Waldenstrom affirms, " Neither is it ever said in the Bible that God has inflicted punishment upon Christ instead upon us. Yea, the prophet Isaiah represents it as a delusion that the Jews believed that Christ was punished by God. The prophet says, " We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted; but He was pierced through by our sins, He was crushed for our misdeeds.'

On the other hand, Delitzsch, than whom there is no better Hebraist, and with whom few critics can compare on such a question, says of the text quoted, " Here again it is Israel, which, having been at length better instructed, and now bearing witness against itself, laments its former blindness to the mediatorially vicarious character of the deep agonies, both of soul and body, that were endured by the great Sufferer. They looked upon them as the punishment of His own sins, and indeed-inasmuch as, like the friends of Job, they measured the sin of the Sufferer by the sufferings that He endured-of peculiarly great sins. They saw in Him nagua, 'one stricken,'-1:e., afflicted with a hateful, shocking disease (Gen. 12:17; i Sam. 6:9),-such, for example, as leprosy, which was called nega especially; also mukkeh Elohim, 'one smitten of God' . . . The construction "mukkeh Elohim" signifies one who has been defeated in conflict by God his Lord."

He adds, "In ver. 5, 'but He,' as contrasted with, 'but we,' continues the true state of the case as contrasted with their false judgment-'Whereas He was pierced for our sins, bruised for our iniquities:the punishment was laid upon Him for our peace ; and through His stripes we were healed. … As min with the passive does not answer to the Greek ύπό, but to άπό, the meaning is, not that our sins and iniquities had pierced Him through like swords, and crushed Him like heavy burdens, but that He was pierced and crushed on account of our sins and iniquities."

Further, he says, " We have rendered the word musar punishment,'and there was no other word in the language for this idea."

Dr. Waldenstrom now comes to the Old-Testament sacrifices themselves, which, he contends, "could not express a penal suffering instead of the sinner." Here, first from the peace- or thank-offerings, he finds "something which is of the greatest importance as to the question of the meaning of the sacrifices:to wit, that we must never draw the conclusion that a sacrifice expressed penal suffering just because it was bloody. When, therefore, it is concluded as to the sin- and trespass-offerings, that because they were bloody they expressed penal suffering, then is drawn an entirely too hasty conclusion."

The "hasty conclusion" is Dr. Waldenstrom's alone. He should have proved that the peace-offerings could not express penal suffering. In fact, it is Christ's work which, as bringing to God, is the foundation of peace, as our apprehension of it. is communion with God. Why could not a thank-offering, because such, speak of that blessed work, which is the ground of all our good,-for which the heart that knows it praises and blesses God forever ?

The author thinks, however, there is no need to tarry upon this, and goes on to the expressly atoning offerings. And here, his first objection is, that "sacrifices were never allowed to be made for other sins than such as were not to be visited with death or capital punishment. . . . how, then, could any one think that the animal which was offered suffered the punishment of death instead of the offender ? Why, his sin was not at all liable to be visited with the death penalty."

This is singularly inconclusive, however, and only reveals the objector's low thought of sin and its desert with God. Rome may distinguish between her venial and her mortal sins, but the Word of God proclaims, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Reason enough there was for not allowing a great offender to escape with the easy offering of a sacrifice ; but God would have all men know that death has entered upon the heels of sin, and that it has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Dr. Waldenstrom's argument is worse than poor :it is a revelation of the one who makes it.
The second argument is derived from the provision of an offering of fine flour as a sin-offering in a case of poverty. It was one of the few exceptions to the general rule, for it was emphatically proclaimed that it was the blood that made atonement for the soul. In case of deep poverty, God's mercy abated the demand; and so where a soul might be spiritually so poor as not to know what work was needed for his sins, yet clung to Christ as meeting them, such an one could be accepted of God ; not because sin needed not a true atonement, but because Christ's work has met the full need as God knows it.

The third argument is again weakness itself. Where a man-slayer was not discovered, the law decreed "that the people-mark, the people-should be forgiven [literally, atoned for or reconciled, 5:8] by the sacrifice of a young heifer." This could not mean, he urges, that it died instead of the people, for the people were not guilty of the sin, and had not deserved to die ; nor for the man-slayer, for it was forbidden to take ransom (or atonement) for him !

Did atonement mean nothing, then ? Suppose we were to argue that if atoning means reconciling or being gracious to the people or the man-slayer, should we not still have to say, the people did not need it, and the man-slayer could not have it? It is evident that if sin were not in some way imputed, it could not be atoned for, whatever the meaning of atonement; and that if it were imputed, God's one way of atonement was by blood ?

His fourth argument is, that the laying on of hands on the victim did not signify that the penalty was transferred to the animal; first, because this took place in the case of the peace-offering, where there was no question of penalty.-This has been already shown to be a mistake. Secondly, because in Lev. 16:21 it is "clearly represented to be an expression of the confession of sin " ! As if the confession of sin were not the suited accompaniment of the action which transferred it to a victim ! Thirdly, that "on the day of atonement, the hands were not laid on the animal which was killed, but on the one that was kept alive:-another of the exceptions to the ordinary mode; and for a plain reason, that God would show to the people the complete removal of sin, which could only be clone by the living animal. Yet it was identified with the other goat that had died as one sin-offering. (See 5:5.)

These are all the reasons given against the true expiatory character of the Old-Testament sacrifices ; but before we are entitled to come to the conclusion, we have yet to see what Dr. Waldenstrom believes to be their actual meaning.

(To be continued.)

Jno. 3:6; Gal. 5:17.

When we speak of there being two natures in the believer, as these passages, with others, plainly teach, it is needful, in the first place, to explain the words that we are using. The more so, as the word " nature" is not of frequent use in Scripture, and such expressions as "the old nature" and "the new nature"- in frequent use among ourselves-do not occur. I am not on this account condemning the expressions. They may be useful enough, and accurate enough, without being taken literally from Scripture; and he who would exclaim against them on this account would show only narrowness and unintelligence really.

But what such persons have a right to insist upon, and what we should all be as jealous for as they, is that these expressions should really represent to us things that are in Scripture,-not fancies of our own, but truths of the Word of God. Our business, therefore, must be to explain the terms we use, and justify them by the appeal to Scripture, by showing that the things themselves are there for which we use these expressions as convenient terms.

There is no word for "nature" in the Old Testament at all. In the New, the word translated so is, in every case but one, the word, phusis, "growth." In the exceptional case, it is genesis, a word familiar to us as the title of the first book of Scripture, so called from its describing the origin or "birth" of the world. The two words in this application come nearly to the same meaning; they express the result of what we have by our origin-the qualities that are developed in us by growth.

Now, for us as Christians, there are two births, and two growths, and thus we can rightly speak of two natures,- two sets of moral qualities that belong to us :the one as born of Adam, the other as born of God. Each is dependent upon the life received, and from which it springs. We are one thing as children of men merely ; we are another as children of God. Let us look at these separately now; and first, at that which is first in order of time.

Men we are, of course, all through. Here, again, we must learn to distinguish between what we are as men by God's creation and what we are as men fallen from the uprightness in which God created us at the beginning. We must distinguish between our nature as men and our nature as fallen men. Men we are, and are ever to be ; whatever change we pass through in new birth as to spirit and soul, whatever change awaits the body at the time when the Lord shall call us to be with Himself, we shall never lose our essential identity with what God created us to be at the first. We are the same persons all through,-the same individuals. No question of life or nature, such as we are about to consider, affects the reality of our possession of what we commonly call human nature all the way through. The youth differs much from the infant; the man from the youth ; yet the same human being, the same person, passes through these different stages. The caterpillar is the same being that is at first in the egg and that finally is the butterfly; so changed as to conditions that if we had not traced its continuity through these different forms, we should regard it as three or four different creatures; and yet we have the most absolute persuasion of its identity throughout. We might distinguish between the "nature "of the egg, the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the butterfly, and yet again affirm its insect-nature to be unchanged throughout, and its individuality to be maintained too all through. It would be even its "nature" as an insect to go through these several changes. So we must distinguish between such terms as "our human nature," "our fallen nature," " our new nature." The fall did not unmake us as men ; our new birth does not unmake us on the other side. What is essential to manhood we never lose, and our individuality too is never changed.

These distinctions are not useless, but on the contrary, most important. Did we keep them in mind, there could be no misunderstanding (such as there often is) as to the Lord assuming our nature, for instance. The words of the hymn, " He wears our nature on the throne," are objected to by some, because they do not make such simple distinctions; and on the other hand, some would press that taking of our nature into consequences as to our blessed Lord, such as every true soul would indignantly repudiate. He did take our human nature:He was in all respects true man; the consequences and conditions of the fall are as little essential to manhood as the fracture of an image is essential to the image.

Let us consider, then, briefly and simply, what is essential to man as man, in order to separate from it as far as possible what is due to the fall:human nature horn fallen nature, or what Scripture calls "the flesh." We shall find mysteries, no doubt. Mysteries surround us, into which all our researches will enable us to penetrate but a very little way. Our knowledge is very partial; our ignorance is great. And no where among created things, do we find more mystery than when we attempt to penetrate the secrets of our own being. But in keeping closely to the Word, we shall find a sure and unfailing guide here as elsewhere, and a means of testing whatever may be gathered from other sources.

Man is constituted of spirit, soul, and body. He has lost none of these by the fall; he has only these when born again and a child of God. Mind, judgment, and therefore conscience are properties of his spirit. The affections and emotions are faculties of his soul, which is also that wherein is found the link between the spirit and the body, and by which the former, while highest of all in its nature, and (rightly) controlling all, apprehends the things of sense.

Man is thus by constitution a conscious, intelligent, and moral being, but dependent, in his present state, upon his senses for the furniture even of his mind-a " living soul." as Scripture terms him, and not a pure " spirit," as the angels are. Yet, with other spirits, he is in relation to God as his God, and his Father too; only that in this last respect he has sold, like Esau, his birthright for a mess of pottage.

The fall has affected man in all his constituent parts. It has subjected the spirit to the soul, and the soul to the body. The scene in Eden, which Scripture represents to us at once so simply and so graphically, is recalled to our minds as we ponder the inspired descriptions of what man now is. The link of affection, reverence, and dependence which held him to God being broken, he is like a building in which the roof has fallen in upon the base. Named from his lowest part, into which spirit and soul have sunk, he is "flesh." Thus "flesh" is the scriptural designation of his old or fallen nature.

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food," – there the body, and in its lowest cravings, is first; – "and that it was pleasant to the eyes" – meeting the emotional desires of the soul; – " and a tree to be desired to make one wise," – there the spirit is, – last, but aspiring to independence of God. "Ye shall be as gods " had been the temptation. Yielding to it, his mental and moral structure had collapsed. A thing of sense rather than God he had chosen for his dependence :the things of sense became his necessity and his masters ; his wisdom, henceforth not from above, was "earthly, sensual," and so, "devilish."
And this word "sensual," which, while it may well have that meaning here, is in fact the adjective of the word "soul," is the same word as that translated " natural ". where we read, " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (i Cor. 2:14).

The spirit here has given up the reins to the soul ; the soul is swayed by the allurements of sense ; the body itself, unbalanced and perverted in its natural instincts and appetites, becomes in turn the tempter of the soul. The man is "sensual:" his nature is "flesh."

We must not expect to find this use of the word " flesh," however, in the Old Testament, for a reason which will easily suggest itself to one who knows the peculiar character of the Old Testament. The law being the trial of man in nature, as long as the trial was going on, the character of man could not be fully brought out. Nor is it even in those first three gospels in which Christ's presentation to man is God's last experiment with him. " Having yet, therefore, one son, his well-beloved," as the Lord Himself puts it in the parable, "he sent him last unto them, saying, 'They will reverence my son'" (Matt. 22:6). But in John's gospel, it is seen that this trial too has failed :" He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not; He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." That is the very opening chapter; and thereupon he immediately goes on to speak of "the flesh," and of new birth :" But to as many as received Him, to them gave He [not "power," but] authority to become the sons of God, even to those who believed in His name." And who were these ? " Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

One passage there is in the Old Testament, in which man is characterized as "flesh," in a manner which seems to approach the style of the New. And this passage is found in almost the beginning of Genesis. Before the flood, the Lord says, " My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." Yet even here the declaration seems more to point to the frailty of a creature with whom it would be unseemly for God to be always striving. And the limitation of his days seems to coincide with this interpretation. It is like the appeal to Job,-"What is man, that Thou shouldst magnify him? and that thou shouldst set Thine heart upon him? and that Thou shouldst visit him every morning, and try him every moment ?" Or, like that in that hundred and forty-fourth psalm, so striking a contrast with the eighth,-"Lord, what is man, that Thou takest knowledge of him? or the son of man, that Thou makest account of him? Man is like to vanity :his days are as a shadow that passeth away ! Bow Thy heavens, O Lord, and come down …. Cast forth lightning, and scatter them !"

All through the Old Testament, "flesh" is thus the symbol of weakness and nothingness :a use of it which is carried on also in the New. Witness a passage which is often cited in another way, and very falsely applied :it is the tender apology of the Lord for His disciples' sleeping in the garden:"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Here, the "weak" flesh is clearly not at all the old nature. It is bodily infirmity which prevents it yielding to the will of the spirit.

In the gospel of John, we find, for the first time, the " flesh " used in the other signification of an evil nature,- our sad inheritance by the fall. We hear of a "will of the flesh" from which new birth does not proceed. And in the third chapter of the gospel, the Lord enforces upon Nicodemus the absolute necessity of a new birth, from the irreclaimable character of this,-"That which is born of the flesh,"-of man characterized as this,-" is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit:marvel not that I said unto you, 'Ye must be born again.' "

Thus, out of man's fallen nature proceeds nothing that can be acceptable to God. Like a field unsown, the heart of man will never produce aught, so to speak, but thorns and thistles-fruit of the curse. Life of the right sort must be dropped into it in the living germ of the Word of God, as our Lord teaches in the parable, and from that alone is there fruit for Him.* *It is one of those lessons from the book of creation, of which there are so many, that wheat is only found in connection with the presence of mail -never wild.*

New life is thus introduced into the field, and while this does take up and assimilate material from the soil, and thus there now goes on an active transformation of this kind, yet how false an account would it be to give of this to make this transformation the whole thing, and ignore the new life which was effecting it! Yet in the spiritual change of new birth, people are doing exactly this. They look at the moral transformation going on, and ignore what Scripture speaks of in the most decisive way-the introduction of a positive new life from God, from which the moral change proceeds.

It is no wonder if, in trying to define this, we soon lose ourselves, and are made aware of mysteries which crowd upon us at every step. Even natural life is a mystery, which the mind of man, vainly seeking to penetrate, is trying in an exactly similar manner to deny. We are told that we may as well talk of a principle of "aquosity" in water as of a vital principle in a living thing. Yet as a cause of certain effects otherwise unaccountable, it is as vain to deny as it may be impossible to define. So spiritually we may learn lessons from experience which at least rebuke the folly of not listening to the Word. And Scripture points these out also, giving us, as needed explanation of what every child of God finds in experience, a doctrine which alone makes all intelligible, and enables us to learn and use the experience itself aright.

As for natural birth there must be, not merely certain processes, but the communication of a life-principle which produces, controls, and harmonizes these processes, so is there precisely for new birth. The voice that soon will quicken out of death natural-which all that are in the graves shall hear and shall come forth-now quickens similarly the spiritually dead,-"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God ; and they that hear shall live:for as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself" (Jno. 5:25, 26). Here there is a life communicated by One who has it in Himself to communicate,-a new life for those " dead ;" in whom, if there be not this first, no moral change is possible at all.

This new birth the Spirit and the Word combine to effect. A man is born of water and of the Spirit, the water here, as the symbol of purification, taking the place that the seed of the Word does in the parable elsewhere. As the apostle Peter tells us, we are " born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God …. and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you " (i Pet. 1:23, 25). And so the apostle of the Gentiles explains Christ's purification of His Church to be " with the washing of water by the Word" (Eph. 5:26).

To take up again the former figure of the seed, used. by both the Lord and the apostle, the seed is the incorruptible Word which gives form and character to the life-manifestation ; but the life itself must be in the germ, or it cannot be manifested. So the word of the Lord embodies and manifests the new life we receive, but the energy of the life communicated by the Spirit works by the Word, and there is "growth"-the development of a new nature, which is characterized by its blessed and holy attributes.

Thus Scripture speaks of "the ingrafted Word" (Jas. 1:21) ; and the apostle John, similarly connecting the new nature with the Word, says, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" (i Jno. 3:9). This is Peter's "incorruptible seed" of "the Word of God," but the life communicated by the Spirit, as already said, causes it to germinate; and, being "everlasting life," His seed remains.

The "nature" of the seed determines the form of life. The new nature, God's gift, is not a mixed or partially good thing. It is in itself perfect (though capable of and needing development), without mixture of evil from the very first. In the man in whom it is implanted, evil indeed exists, as thorns and thistles in the field in which wheat is sown:these things being not the imperfection of the wheat in any wise, though hindrances to the crop they are. The character of the seed we have just seen, where the apostle says that the child of God " doth not commit (or rather " practice ") sin ; for His seed remaineth in him." The new life, if obscured by the evil, is untouched by it, and in essential,-nay, victorious opposition to sin. It will vindicate its character in one born of God, and manifest him as born of God ; and where we do not see this result, we cannot recognize as a Christian the person in whom it fails, although granting the possibility of seed being in the ground that has not yet come to the surface. But "faith"-the first principle of the new nature- " worketh by love ; " and " faith," if it have not works, is dead, being alone :" "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." (Gal. 5:6; Jas. 2:19 ; Rom. 8:14.)

It is needful to insist on this at all times-never more needful than at the present time. It is no exaltation of faith to maintain it as justifying and saving, and yet possibly without power to produce fruit in the world, or to glorify God in a holy life. The apostle's faith was the power of a life devoted as his was,-" The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).

Such, then, in its character, and such in its energy, is the new nature. It will be understood that the gospel has to be received, and deliverance realized, before this can be properly known ; nor do I dwell upon these now.

But such is the new nature ; and being such, it is the means of effecting that wonderful change in a man which we speak of as "conversion." As the seed converts the lifeless elements of the soul into the beauty of the living plant, so the powers and faculties of soul and spirit are brought back from death to life. The spirit, redeemed from self-idolatry, and having learned the lesson of dependence upon God which faith implies, is reinstated in its old supremacy ; the affections of the soul are taught to trail no longer upon earth, and set upon God as their only worthy object. The body, yet unredeemed, and "dead, because of sin,"-awaiting its redemption at the time of the resurrection (Rom. 8:10, II, 23),-can only as yet be "kept under, and brought into subjection" to the man new-created in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 8:13 ; i Cor. 9:27.)

But now we must again draw some very important distinctions. We speak of the old nature, or "flesh," and of the new. We speak also of the "old man" and of the "new." Is there any difference between these? and if so, what is the use of the distinction ?

A nature and a person are in many ways widely different. Unconverted and converted, the person is of course the same. It is the one who was dead in sin who is quickened and raised up ; it is the same person who was condemned and a child of wrath who is justified, sanctified, and redeemed to God. It is the person too- the "man"-to whom accountability attaches, and not to the nature. Acts belong to the individual, and not to his nature ; and in the case of man, the only rational and responsible creature of whom we have something that can be called knowledge, we know that he is responsible to walk contrary to [not indeed his nature as God first constituted him, but yet] his nature as he actually now possesses it, fallen from its primitive state.

Only, in fact, by a license of speech do we speak of nature acting. To say of a person, "nature acts in him," whether said approvingly or disapprovingly, still implies that the man himself has lost command of himself, or does not exercise it. Many a Christian thus talks of the flesh in himself or others, as if its being flesh that was exhibited explained matters sufficiently. Yet, if he thinks about it, he will realize that he uses this language to escape responsibility, so little idea has he of responsibility attaching to a nature. Yet if this excused him, it would excuse every sinner that ever lived ; and how could God judge the world? In point of fact, men do use every where the truth of their sinful nature in order to escape condemnation; whereas if they would listen to conscience, they would assuredly find that not a single sin have they ever committed which they could truthfully say their nature forced them to. It inclined, no doubt; but they should, and might, have controlled the inclination. The essence of their guilt is, that they do not.

In the day of judgment, therefore, the award will be given, not according to the nature, (in which they are alike), but to their works, in which they are not alike. God "will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom. 2:6). And this, and this alone, will be the exact measure of guilt and responsibility.

It may be objected to all this, " How, then, can the man in the seventh of Romans, who is converted, and has a will for good, find, on the other hand, the flesh in such opposition, that what he desires, he is quite unable to perform ? How can there still be no ability, when the will is right?"

But the answer is plain, that the good he desires would not be good really if done in other than the sense of dependence upon God, which is the only right condition of the creature. The power of sin from which he has to be delivered lies in the self-complacent self-seeking which assumes the shape of holiness to a converted man. For a holiness that makes him something, he has to accept a Christ who shall draw him out of himself. The "good" (in one sense that,) which he is seeking, is really a phantom shape which God has to destroy, to give him instead the true and only God. Thus only crippled Jacob can become Israel.

" Power belongeth only unto God." True-ever true ; but were we right with Him, could it be lacking to us? Assuredly it could not. Still, then, it remains true that no one is shut up powerlessly in bondage to evil. The key of his prison-house is in his own hand.

It is the man, then, who sins, and is the sinner; it is the man who has to be forgiven and justified ; it is the man who is responsible to walk, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. It is the same person-the same individual all through.

Yet, in another way, we may surely say as to the Christian, that the man that was and the man that is are total 'opposites. I was a sinner in my sins, freely following the evil that I loved :I am a child of God, with a new nature, new affections, and a new object. Between these two persons there is a wide interval indeed. The first is what Scripture calls "the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts"(Eph. 4:22); the second is styled " the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (5:24), and "renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him who created him, where …. Christ is all and in all" (Col. 3:10, 11). The first it speaks of as being "crucified with Christ," as it does of our "having put off the old man with his deeds" (Rom. 6:6; Col. 3:9.*) *Eph. 4:22 is not different from this, although the common version might make a difficulty. But the ("putting off" here, and the "putting on," ver. 24, are really in the past.* The second, similarly, it speaks of our "having put on." What we were we are not, and never can be again. But while this is happily true of us, it is also true that the " flesh "-the old nature-we have in us still, and shall have, till the body of humiliation is either dropped, or changed into the glorified likeness of the Lord's own body.

The old man is gone forever, but the flesh abides:in those who are possessors of the Spirit, still " the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh ;" and the exhortation is, not to destroy the flesh, as if that were possible, but " walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16, 17). A poor conclusion this, to many in our day! but to those who know themselves, how great a relief to find thus an explanation of what experience testifies to ! It may be, and is, a mystery how we can have at the same time in us two natures, total opposites of each other,-how Christ can dwell in us, and yet sin dwell too; but Scripture affirms it, and experience also. If it is God's mind to allow us to know thus for awhile what evil is, not by yielding to it surely, but as realizing its opposition, can He not make this experience even both to serve us and glorify Him ?

The flesh remains, and remains unchanged :" I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing" must always be said by one who identifies himself with the flesh. " The mind of the flesh is death ; . . . because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God ; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be " (Rom, 7:18; 8:6, 7). Thus the Word speaks of the incurable evil of the old nature, which, attaching itself, as we have seen it does, to the things of time and sense amid which we are, God's remedy for it is Christ as an object for our hearts in heaven, and His cross as that by which we are crucified to a world which the flesh lusts after, and which in its moral elements consists of "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." We are not in the flesh; we are in Christ before God ; our life is hid with Christ in God. The knowledge of our portion in Him, as given us by the Spirit, divorces our hearts, and turns our eyes away from that which ministers to the evil in us. "As strangers and pilgrims," journeying on to a point which faith, not sight, beholds, we learn to, "abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" (i Pet. 2:2), and, as a consequence, to "mortify the deeds of the body" (Rom. 8:13). Our true power is in absent-mindedness,-a heart set upon that which stirs no lust, for it is our own forever, and we are invited to enjoy it.

This satisfies, and this alone. By " the exceeding great and precious promises" we "become partakers of (or rather, "in communion with,") the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Pet. 1:4). The new life within us is strengthened and developed, and this alone can divine things work upon. Christ seen and enjoyed by faith, we grow up unto Him in all things, from the babe to the young man and to the father, when we have but to sit down, as it were, and endlessly enjoy our infinite blessing.
Before closing this brief sketch of an important subject, let us look closer at this question of growth, as the apostle puts it before us here. Growth (mental, not physical,)- the growth of a babe into a man, is a matter of education; not merely what professes to be such, but the influence upon it of surrounding circumstances which call forth the hidden energies of the mind and heart, and of examples which stimulate and encourage to imitation. God has thus, on the one hand, for us His discipline of trial; on the other, His perfect example of what He would have us grow up to. In general, men reach about the level of what is thus before them. God puts before us Christ, that we may grow up into Christ. Our occupation will tell upon us. What we give ourselves to will make its necessary mark upon us. The exhortation to us is, "Set your mind on things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God."

The admonition, therefore, of the apostle to the babes and young men-to the fathers he has none-is to let nothing take away their eyes from Christ. The babes he warns as to Antichrist, not that he may perfect them in prophetical knowledge, but because in their little acquaintance as yet with the truth of what Christ is, they might be led away into some deceit of the enemy. Satan's first snare for souls is some distorting error, which shall in fact deform to us the face in which alone all the glory of God shines, or substitute for His face some witchery for the natural eye, in which the heart may be unawares entangled, supposing it to be the true and divine object before it. This is Antichrist,-not yet the full denial of the Father and the Son, of course,-and antichrists there are many.

Oh, that Christians did more realize the immense value of truth !-the terrible and disastrous effect of error ! What presents to me, when seen aright, the blessed face of God Himself, may through Satan's artifice darken, obscure, distort this, or present to me a treacherous and destructive lure instead.

The apostle therefore warns the babes as to false Christs doctrinally. The young men are not in the same danger as to this. They are strong, and the word of God abides in them, and they have overcome the wicked one. Their danger now lies from the allurements of a world into which their very energy is carrying them. The word to these is, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." For the eye affects the heart; and it is one thing to have seen by the Word that the world is under judgment, and another thing to have gone through it in detail, looking it in the face, and counting it all loss for Christ.

This the fathers have, however, done :therefore he says to them (and it is all he needs to say), " Ye have known Him that is from the beginning." It is all we gain by looking through the world ; yet it is a great gain to be able to say of it all through, " How unlike Christ it is ! " And what when we have reached this ? Has the "father" nothing more to learn? Oh, yes, he is but at the beginning. He has but now his lesson-book before him, for undistracted learning. But he needs not caution in the same way not to mix any thing with Christ, and not to take any thing else for Christ. How much toil to reach, how slow we are in reaching, so simple a conclusion ! But then the joy of eternity begins. Oh, to have Him ever before us, unfolding His glories, as He does to one whose eyes and whose heart are all for Him ! The knowledge of the new man is "Christ is all!" To the martyr, in the fire which consumed him, this knowledge broke out in the words which told of a joy beyond the torment-" NONE BUT CHRIST ! "

Jesus, when here, showed His estimate of man's doings. His withering denunciations of hypocrisy and pretense in religion are well known among us. When the church of Laodicea congratulated herself on her position and attainments, her character was exposed as mere slop-work, for Jesus said, " Thou knowest not," etc. They were sincere enough, and there was no doctrinal heresy in her bosom; but her crying heresy in practice was, having a religion that kept Jesus outside her door. "Ye do err, not knowing the Scripture, nor the power of God." That is the source of all heresy in creed and practice. When the Laodicean church appears again on the scene, it is as " Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots" in Rev. 18:, full of worldliness, and yet professing, with consummate impudence, to be the bride of Christ. She is seen as the mart of the commerce of the nations, and the consumer of the merchandise of the whole world ; and at the top of her list, as has been pointed out, is "gold," and at the bottom, " the souls of men" as if they were hardly worth a thought, coming in, as they do, after "wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots." But judgment is the end of it, "for strong is the Lord God that judgeth her." Religious profession in our day is fast hastening toward this condition of things ; and surely it is a peculiar privilege to stand, in this the crisis of our age, in the place of faithful confessors of Christ, and to be bold for Him as a Noah, a Paul, a Luther, a Knox, in their day was bold. It is a high honor to be living in a day like this, that we may witness for God and His Christ, against the world- not only in its worldliness, but its religion-and have that faith to which he commits Himself. Things are rapidly tending to the condition they were in before the flood. This world is still Cain's world, and its religion is still Cain's worship.

The question of the Lord's having been a priest on I earth is one to which, now that the attention of many is being drawn to it, should be given due and patient consideration. Mistake on this point may easily lead to further error, as should be plain to us, and there needs no apology for another review of the subject here, in which especially it is my desire to look at some things which as yet have had but brief and unsatisfactory notice in these pages, if any. I shall, however, briefly state the whole argument.

1. The main ground for the belief that the Lord was not a priest on earth is certainly Heb. 8:4, which, however, says nothing of the kind. Speaking of Christ as " a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man," it say's, " If He were on earth, He should not be a priest." And why? " Seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law." That is, the place is occupied already ! Well, but what place ! Plainly that of offering gifts according to the law. But would any of the Lord's work on earth have interfered with that? The question is idle, of course. So, then, is the argument which needs to raise the question :for it is this, and only this, from which the apostle argues, that there are priests already installed in the legal sanctuary, and doing the legal work. Could the work of the cross come in here ? Nay, if you will observe, with the perfect accuracy of Scripture, while in the third verse the apostle says that "every high-priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices," when he goes on to the argument of the fourth verse, he drops the " sacrifices," because in the Lord's present priestly work there is no sacrifice, and only says, " Seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law." Backward he does not look:he does not say, " When He was on earth He was not a priest"-how would that look in connection with what follows?-and to import this into it is surely unallowable. Put in its connection, the whole statement is, "If He, a minister of the sanctuary, were on earth, He would not be a priest, for there are priests that are already fulfilling that office as to the sanctuary on earth." This is surely clear, and we may pass on.

2. A second objection to the doctrine of the Lord's having been priest on earth is derived from the fifth chapter, where it is stated that being " made perfect "… He was " called of God a high-priest after the order of Melchizedek :" thus it is urged, if He were made perfect through the things which He suffered, as all will allow, then it must be after His sacrificial work that He became high-priest.

Two things need, however, to be considered :first, that the word for "called," in this case, is not that for calling to an office, and that the actual word for that occurs before, where His calling seems clearly grounded, not upon His work, but upon His person:" And no man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron ; so also Christ glorified not Himself to be made high-priest ; but He that said unto Him,' Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten Thee ;' as He saith also in another place, ' Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.'" Then there can be no just doubt that the call to office is implied in the acknowledgment of Sonship. Otherwise these words would be irrelevant, and the last quotation would be the true and sufficient one. On the other hand, it is really His being the Son of God in humanity that constitutes His fitness for the priesthood,-that is, for the mediatorial office. Aaron's anointing without blood shows that His work was not needed for this ; and the acknowledgment of Sonship would thus be tantamount to the call, and the two quotations exactly harmonize.

It is after this that His sufferings are introduced ; and then, "being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation. . . . saluted of God a high-priest after the order of Melchizedek." The work is done, and God greets the Victor by the title under which He has done the work. How suitable this when we know that every thing, with the great High-Priest Himself, had been under the cloud from which He has just emerged ! That here there should be the reaffirming of a title which was before His own, need cause no difficulty.

But it is affirmed that " perfected " means " consecrated," as it is translated in chap. 7:28, " consecrated for evermore." If, then, He was only consecrated as priest through the sufferings He endured, it is plain that He could not have been priest before His sufferings.

Yes, it is plain, if the basis of the reasoning be true :but is it true ? As to the word, " perfected " is truly the sense, as every one the least competent will admit; the margin and the Revised Version have it even in chap. 7:28. As to application, of course the force may vary according to this, and abstractly, the perfecting of a priest may be his consecration to office-may be not must; and the
application and the force are alike open to question here.

The application :-for the passage itself does not say " being made perfect as priest," nor is this connected in this way by the structure of the chapter ; and the strictly parallel passage (as it would appear), chap. 2:10, substitutes (if we may speak so) for priest, "the Captain of salvation :" " it became Him …. to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." Is not this very like :"And being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation " ?

But if the connection be admitted (and I for one cannot be unwilling to admit that the Priest is as priest the Author of salvation), the conclusion does not follow that is supposed. It must then be asked, In what sense are we to take "perfected"? If as consecrated through sufferings, was that not at least on earth? and if He were consecrated through sufferings on earth, is not that inconsistent with the thought of a consecration by His being saluted as High-Priest after death, or perhaps resurrection ?Take it as " perfected,"-the Scripture word- and you may say as Priest, and I for one have no question and no difficulty. I believe there was such a " perfecting" of our blessed High-Priest, and that the lack of seeing it occasions much of the perplexity that many are in to-day. For since the apostle is addressing Christians, who have their place as Christians as the result of His accomplished work, it is necessarily a risen and ascended High-Priest with whom we have to do, and whom we need ; and thus his words are very simply applicable to Him as He now is :" Such a High-Priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens." (Chap. 7:26.)Yet even such statements show that he does not mean to deny that Christ was not High-Priest before He was " made higher than the heavens," or " passed into the heavens"
even (chap. 4:14), but in fact affirm that He was:for his language would be, otherwise, that He was passed into the heavens, and become Priest ; but this he never says.

3. But does not the apostle say that, in contrast with the Levitical priesthood, in which those who were priests " were not suffered to continue by reason of death," "this Man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood" (chap. 7:23, 24); and does not this imply that only after He had passed through death could He become Priest ? No :this is but an inference, and a false one, derived no doubt from too close a reference to mere earthly priests. Death would remove one of these from his place of office :could it remove similarly a heavenly priest ? It would rather introduce him to it. And the "endless life" after the power of which Christ was made Priest could only be that "eternal life," though in man, over which death could have no power. But this will be supplemented by after-considerations.

4. We must now look at some other statements of the epistle to the Hebrews, which seem to affirm in the strongest way the fact of the Lord's priesthood upon earth. In chap. 8:4, we have already found the apostle saying, "For every high-priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices; wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer." Again :"For such a high-priest becometh us … who needeth not daily, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifices, . . . for this He did once, when he offered up Himself." (Chap. 7:27.) "Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High-Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation (R.V.) for the sins of the people." (Chap. 2:17.) " But Christ being come, a High-Priest of good things to come, . . . neither by the blood of bulls and calves, but by His own blood, He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." (Chap. 9:ii, 12.)

Now what is the consistent testimony of these passages ? Is it possible to say, in view of them, that it was not high-priestly work to offer sacrifice ? Surely not:they were ordained to do it. But was this typical of what Christ did as priest, or was it something in which the types failed to represent the truth, as shadows, but not the very image ? Nay, He was a merciful and faithful High-Priest to make propitiation-for that purpose,-and as the high-priests offered daily, so He offered up Himself. And then, as High-Priest still, by His own blood He entered the heavens.

Surely the texts are plain, and must be forced, to make them speak otherwise than upon the face of them they seem to do. Where did the High-Priest offer Himself up? In heaven, or on earth? How did the High-Priest enter heaven by His own blood, if He were not High-Priest till He entered heaven? Will the perfection of Scripture allow me to say that the High-Priest did these things, but not as High-Priest? and even where it is asserted that He was High-Priest to make propitiation, still that He did not make it "as" High-Priest?

No ; as believing in the perfection of the Word of God, we dare not say these things. If we were at liberty to interpolate Scripture after this fashion, it would soon cease to have authority over us, because it would cease to have meaning for us. Any body, in this case, could see how simply such passages could be altered for the better ; and if it be the exigency of what has seemed to us the meaning of some particular verse or verses which requires this, have we not the very best reason to see if indeed we have interpreted such passages aright? The apparent contradiction is the result only of partial views of truth :with the whole, the perplexity clears. Scripture has not to be perfected by our thoughts, but cleared from the mists which our thoughts introduce into it.

5. But, it is said, the priests did not kill the sacrifices, except where for themselves, and that this shows that Christ's work on the cross was not a priestly work. But in this way evidence might be brought against evidence:for the burning on the altar or on the ground, the sprinkling and pouring out of the blood, were so strictly priestly functions that no private person dare ever assume them. Yet these are but different sides of one blessed work. It is not even strictly true that the priest never killed the victim except where for himself ; for he did kill the burnt-offering of birds. (Lev. 1:15.) But in any case the burning upon the altar or upon the ground was the most strictly sacrificial part, and it belonged to the priest expressly. On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that in the death of Christ we have the victim side, as we have the atoning side, and that the death at the offerer's hands may represent the victim, as the priest's work the atoning side. This, I have no doubt, is the truth, the offerer for his part marking out thus the penalty of sin which he had brought upon an innocent sufferer, while the priest offers it to God as sacrifice, and so atoning. The slaying of the bird offered for the healed leper is not by the offerer, and that of the red heifer, between which and that of the leper there are strong points of resemblance, concurs with it, I believe, as showing Christ's death at the hands of the world ; and this is in connection with the truth in both cases of the crucifixion to the world implied in the cedar-wood, scarlet, and hyssop being in the one case cast into the fire, in the other stained with the blood of the victim. Both are lessons as to purification.

The offering, in any case, was exclusively priestly, and this was surely the representation of the death of Christ in its divine meaning.

6. One thing more in this connection. In Num. 17:, the true priest for God is known by the blossoming and fruit-bearing of Aaron's rod-a type unmistakably of resurrection. But this only marks out the priest, does not make him one, as in fact Aaron already was in office. Resurrection has the most important bearing upon priesthood, all the more on this account:for thus it is the acceptance of the work of Him who offered up Himself, and is by this shown to be the Author of salvation to those who obey Him.

7. If, then, the acknowledgment by God of His Son were the call to the priesthood, and if the anointing of the Spirit, and apart from the blood of sacrifice, marked out the great High-Priest,-if it was the High-Priest who offered up Himself, how clearly all this was fulfilled when at the baptism of John the Lord came forward to His public work among men. Then the Father's voice came forth in testimony, "This is My beloved Son," and the Spirit like a dove descended upon him. From that baptism to death which was the shadow of it, the Lord went on to another baptism, and a Jordan that filled all its banks for Him. Yet so was His priesthood perfected, and He entered heaven by His own blood. F.W.G.

By Aaron's work within the holiest propitiation was effected, for the blood was sprinkled on the mercy-seat. Thus the claims of God's holiness were met. The action of the throne in judgment, with which the cherubim were associated, was stayed; and their faces being toward the mercy-seat, they gazed, as it were, on the blood, which never, that we read of, was wiped off or washed away. Provision, as we see, was duly made for the blood to be sprinkled thereon, but nothing was said or provided for obliterating all trace of it afterward. There it remained; and because it had been put there, propitiation was made, and God was seen to be righteous in dealing in grace with sinners :for the action of propitiation is Godward,-the making good the ground on which God can righteously deal in mercy and favor with those who have sinned against Him; but that being made, it is evident that, as far as God's character and nature are concerned, He can righteously deal in grace with all sinners if He can righteously deal in grace with one. Whether all will submit now to God's righteousness is another matter. Propitiation, however, having been once truly made by the blood of Christ, it can avail for the whole world, as John the apostle teaches us."-(From "Atonement as set forth in the Old Testament".)

THE LESSON OF THE AGES AS TO HOLINESS.

Genesis 4:-(Continued.)

At the cross, as we have already partly seen, the controversy between God and man comes out in the most open manner. The " way of Cain "is seen reproduced in that Pharisaism which was ever the most earnest opponent of the Lord, and which He on His part denounced most earnestly. " Have any of the Pharisees believed on Him?" they could ask with assurance; and on the other side He could let them know, "The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you " (Jno. 7:48 ; Matt. 21:31). Pharisaism was indeed the most successful device of Satan to hinder the acceptance of that sentence of condemnation which the prophet had long since declared to have passed upon the people,-"Then said God, 'Call his name Lo-ammi; for ye are not My people, and I will not be your God' " (Hos. 1:9). Man, in Israel, had thus been fully tried and found wanting; and the Babylonian ax had thereupon cut down the doomed tree. And although a remnant had returned again to rebuild their temple, the glory had not returned. Their true hope was only in accepting the sentence upon them, and awaiting, in Messiah, their Deliverer.

Then arose Pharisaism, with its fierce blind zeal for a law which but condemned them, and its eager claim for a righteousness which refused, in Christ the Lord, their righteousness. Their fanatical enmity slew the King of Glory, and brought His blood upon themselves and on their children.

But the cross, if on the one hand the completed testimony as to man's guilt and ruin, is on the other the removal for faith of all that hinders blessing. Christ in man's place under death and judgment owns in his behalf the righteousness of God in the penalty which He bears and bears away from him; while He, the Second Man, as the Head of a new creation, brings those connected with Him into the enjoyment of a portion of which He is worthy, and which is theirs in Him. "In Him" affirms the setting aside of the old head, and all connected with him; "if any man be in Christ, it is new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new."

But how far does this go ? Is it as sinners only we are set aside by the cross ? and is the question here only, of righteousness and acceptance with God ? It is our " old man" that is crucified with Christ, and that is just ourselves as the men we were-sinners assuredly, and only that,-and this "that the body of sin might be destroyed [annulled], that henceforth we should not serve sin." Thus there is, at least, a practical purpose in it. We are to begin here a new life as saints, not sinners. The dominion of sin is broken for us. Holiness is that to which God has called us, and we are assuredly meant to realize our calling. Holiness is not a thing imputed, as righteousness is ; and it is a condition, not merely a position.

But here, more than one road opens before us, and it is once more to be realized that God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways. Thus, if there are two ways, we are prone to take our own. God's way, indeed, naturally does not present itself to us as an alternative. We do not look for the way-marks :we suppose, perhaps, that there are difficulties in the way, but not as to the way. Thus the "broad way" is still the by-path, and God's way narrow and overlooked. Man's way is self-occupation, self-satisfaction,-the method which changed an angel into a devil,-the very way by which sin came at first. God's way necessarily is the opposite, to turn man from himself, to occupy him with Another, give him an object which will draw him out of himself, satisfying him with Him who is alone competent to meet all the needs of the soul."I am crucified with Christ" is the language of one who realizes this:" nevertheless I live ;yet not I, but Christ liveth in me " (Gal. 2:20).Here is what has displaced self in its religious form as well as every other. It is Seth in the place of Abel, and the fruit of it is, no Lamech-no "strong man,"-but an Enos,-a frail one :but then the worship of the heart is God's,-"we worship God in the spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh " (Phil. 3:3).

Directly athwart man's way lies the fact that still in the child of God is found an evil nature, a "sin that dwelleth in" us, a "body of death" we loathe yet cannot escape from, so that " if we say we have no sin, we lie, and do not the truth " (i Jno. 1:8). Yea, he who is admitted by God to see in paradise what could not be told by human tongue, must then have "a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet" him, lest he should be exalted above measure. (2 Cor. 12:) Pride, self-exaltation, is the danger which we have most to dread, and which is ready to turn all good into corruption. Unlike all other sin, pride grows upon what is good, and thus God in His wisdom can use the very consciousness of evil which we have learned to hate, to subdue this monster evil.

Notice how, when Peter, in true love to his Master, but confident in himself, declares, "I will lay down my life for Thy sake," the Lord answers him with the forewarning of his denial of Him so soon to follow. There was no remedy but by the fall to allow him to realize his weakness that he might thus find strength, and so be able even to "strengthen his brethren." The open sin, with all its grossness, was less evil than that fatal self-confidence from which nothing but a fall such as his could awaken him.

So with a self-occupied soul under the law, as in the experience of the seventh of Romans, only the repeated check, "The good that I would I do not; the evil that I would not, that I do,"-so inexplicable as it is until we realize the divine principle,-can meet the need by blocking the road which, broad as it seems, leads to a precipice. It is God with whom we are at issue, while yet we think in our hearts we are but seeking His will. We "delight in the law of God after the inward man," and yet "find another law in our members, warring against the law of our minds, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin which is in our members."

Here, indeed, strangely, some would settle down. " This is the path," they would argue ; " but, you see. it is blocked,-progress is impossible :here we must stay until death opens the way for us." But what, then, means the anguished cry, "Oh wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me?" Has God indeed left His redeemed in the meantime hopelessly captive to a law of sin ? How, then, is it said, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under grace"? But are we not, then, "under the law"? If for righteousness we are indeed not under it, are we not for holiness? There is, indeed, the whole question. Let us seek the answer to it.

Two things face us at the outset:first, that "the strength of sin is the law" (i Cor. 15:56); and this certainly corresponds with the experience we have, just been realizing. It is not that it is that which condemns us,-true though that is,-but that it is the strength of sin.

The second thing is, that "the law is not of faith" (Gal. 3:12); and faith is that which is the very principle of fruitfulness :it is "faith that worketh by love "(Gal. 5:6).

These things go together, and are of the deepest import as to holiness. The law, in short, occupies me with myself ; faith's object is Christ. And Christ is made of God unto us "sanctification" as much as "righteousness" (i Cor. 1:30). It is here that we have the answer to that despairing cry, "Who shall deliver me?" and learn to "thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Here is the method of sanctification:"We all, with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18). This is the method of faith ; it is Seth appointed in the place of Abel, whom Cain slew; it is the apostle's "Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Cor. 12:9); it is the frail Enos instead of the strong Lamech; it is the spiritual circumcision in which we "worship God in the Spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."

How slow are we to perceive that all self-confidence is "confidence in the flesh"! When the disciples asked that question of the Lord, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ?" "Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, 'Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever shall humble himself, therefore, as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matt, 18:1-4.)

How this harmonizes with the whole tenor of that which we have been considering ! and how easy it would seem to make the attainment of that which is true greatness in the sight of God ! We have but to consent to be the little and feeble things we are;-we have but to find our strength .outside ourselves, in One who is almighty ;-we have but to recognize our nothingness, that Christ may be all things to us. "Christ is all:" that is. our practical theology; and who shall tell the extent or fullness of those three words?

Self-occupation, self-consciousness, self-complacency:these are the weeds that spring out of our cultivation of holiness, as still men commonly practice it, and which God's winter is required to kill. Defeat is as to these our one necessity; and if our efforts at self-culture meet but this, there is only one cause as there is one remedy. To be "changed from glory into glory" needs not effort- cannot be attained by it, but is attained by keeping in the Sun, whose rays thus glorify all they shine upon. With his soul penetrated with that glory, the apostle says, " I am crucified with Christ:nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me :and the life which I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."