What a discovery it is for us to make, in any measure, that the portion of Christ at this world's hands is our portion too ! It knew Him not, and, in proportion as we are simple and true as children of God, it knows us not; and we, too, know it not. We know that it exists, but we and it have nothing in common.

The blessedness of faith in Christ, rejected of man, but exalted of God to the throne in Zion, but which is also over the Gentiles, and to the ends of the earth; and which is to be established by a power overthrowing all opposition, when the time of present patience has reached its limit.

Why do the Gentiles rage, and the nations meditate a vain thing ?

2. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the princes take counsel together against Jehovah, and against His Anointed :

3. '"Let us snap Their bands asunder, and cast Their cords from us!"

4. He sitting in the heavens laugheth :the Lord mocketh at them.

5. Then speaketh Me unto them in His anger, and confoundeth them in His wrath.

6. " And I, I have set My King upon Zion, My holy mount."

7. "I will declare as to the decree:Jehovah hath said unto Me, 'Thou art My Son; I this day have begotten Thee.

8. "'Ask of Me, and I give Thee the for Thine inheritance, and for Thy possession the ends of the earth.

9. "'Thou shalt shepherd them with an iron rod; as a potter's vessel Thou shalt dash them in pieces.'"

10. And now, ye -kings, be wise! be admonished, ye judges of earth!

11. Serve Jehovah with fear and exult with trembling.

12. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way; for suddenly shall His anger kindle. Happy all they who take refuge in Him!

Text.-(6) "Set" is preferable to "anointed," because it is Jehovah's answer to the opposition of the nations. The critics are about equally divided between the two renderings.

(9) "Shepherd" is one of two possible renderings, but which the New Testament decides for, always quoting it thus.

(12) "Kiss the Son:" the Aramaic form, "Bar," used here instead of "Ben," has been the subject of criticism on the part of rationalists hostile to the rendering here given, denied also by all the ancient versions except the Syriac; but all have to change the word to translate it otherwise. " The context and the usage of the language both require "Kiss the Son." The Piel, nishek, means "to kiss," and never any thing else, and …. nothing is more natural here, after Jehovah has acknowledged His Anointed as His Son, than that Bar, which has nothing strange about it when found in solemn discourse, should denote the unique Son, and in fact the Son of God. The exhortation to submit to Jehovah, as Aben Ezra has observed, is followed by the exhortation to do homage to Jehovah's Son." (Delitzsch.) Gesenius, DeWette, and Rosenmuller, though all rationalists, agree in this rendering.

(12) "Suddenly" seems more in place than "but a little," since it refers, surely, to ver. 9.

Connections.-(1) Quoted and applied, Acts 4:25-58:the opposition manifested then has characterized the course of this world ever since; although never will it be so intense and bitter as at the final crisis in the days just preceding the appearing of the Lord.

(4) "He sitting in the heavens:" comp. Psalm 11:3, 4.

That there are twelve verses in this governmental psalm is surely significant. These divide regularly into four sections of three verses each:the first gives the attitude of the nations; the second, Jehovah's; the third is Messiah's voice; the fourth, the warning to the kings of the earth.

I have read these two passages together, be-loved friends, because I believe they help much, when so read, to the understanding of-either. I think you will easily see that the two scenes have close and designed relationship with one another. For although surely facts of history, it is a history so superintended and controlled by the providence of God, and so recorded by Infinite Wisdom in our behalf, that, as the apostle says, "the things that happened to them happened to them for types, and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come."

In the first place, we have in each of them God giving the water from the rock in answer to the need and to the murmurings of the people; and in each case the same name, for the same reason, is given to the place. " And he called the name of the place ' Massah' and ' Meribah,' because of the . chiding of the children of Israel;"-so it is said in Exodus. In Numbers we read, " This is the water of Meribah, because the children of Israel strove with the Lord, and He was sanctified in them." Then, in Exodus, immediately after, we have the conflict with Amalek, and the next thing after the scene in Numbers, the attempt to pass through Edom. The connection of these things is not so evident at first sight, but there is a very real one nevertheless; for if you will turn to Genesis 36, you will find, "And Timna was concubine to Eliphaz, Esau's son; and she bare to Eliphaz Amalek." Amalek was thus the grandson of Esau-that is, Edom; and as in the one book Amalek opposes Israel, so in the other does Edom, although it does not come to actual war.

The very difference we shall find to be instructive, and according to the line of truth proper to the two books. The book of Exodus is the book of redemption, the deliverance of Israel out of the land of Egypt being the type of ours out of that land of bondage in which we all are naturally. The book of Numbers is the book of progress, we may say rather, looking at it from the point of view in which we are now to do, although there are many other features. It is the history of the wilderness, as properly speaking Exodus is not, although it speaks of the wilderness, and part (and a large part) of its history is there. But the object of that part at least in which this scene occurs is to bring out the grace of Him who having redeemed them out of the hand of the enemy, provides also, with unfailing goodness and forbearance as to them, for all the need of the place into which He has brought them. Thus you have the bread from heaven, the water from the rock.

Numbers, on the other hand, is devoted to the history of the wilderness itself, as a place of trial, as the world through which we pass is, and where trial brings out as to them, what it does as to us no less, their proneness to constant failure, their readiness to start aside continually. Yet the grace that has laid hold upon them does not desert them here, does not fail to show itself in the fulfillment of its own unrepenting purposes in spite of all. God has engaged to bring them into the land of which He has spoken to them, and into it they must come. Spite of the failure, an essential feature of the book of Numbers, therefore, is progress. At the close, they are found, after all their varied experiences, looking from the plains of Moab over into the promised land. Blessed be God, the same strong and holy hand which carries them through is that which has undertaken for us also; and these are indeed our types.

Let us remember, then, that whereas in Exodus we have redemption and its fruits, in Numbers we have the path of progress through the world. This will be found to bear upon the character of the opposition in the two books,-the enemy in the one case, Edom; in the other, Amalek.
Esau got this name Edom from the red pottage for which he sold his birthright. It is connected with that which stamped him as " a profane person, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright." The name itself is but Adam, with the change only of vowels, which in Hebrew change in a way that modern languages know nothing of. Edom is but over again that first man, which naturally indeed we all are; for Christ is the Second Man:there is no second man until we come to Christ.

Even when we are Christ's there is that in us which connects us with the fallen first man. It is not scriptural, indeed, to say that the " old man" remains in us, but the " flesh " surely does. The "old man" is the man in the flesh,-identified with it and acting according to its lusts; and that " old man" is crucified with Christ:we have put it off. That is always said in Scripture. It is the man in the nature, identified with it before God. The flesh, on the other hand, is the nature:the lowest part of man now characterizes him as a fallen being. Edom is this flesh in us, if we take this scene in Numbers as a picture of internal experience; and such it surely is.

Now, in relation to the question of progress, what of Edom? Have you ever looked at the map of the journeying of the children of Israel toward Canaan, and noticed the position of this long, narrow strip of land, Edom? Right across their path it lies, an obstruction which to go round would cost them about six times the trouble (only looking at it as a matter of distance) that it would to go across. But the road across is not only the shorter, it is the more pleasant way. As you may see in Moses' message to the king of Edom, there are wells of water and a king's highway-a welcome exchange from the pathless desert-route. Which of us-had we been of Moses' council-would not have decided for the shorter and easier way? And if they had even to force a passage, could not He who had brought them through the sea without needing to strike a stroke in their own defense have as easily brought them through?

Assuredly; and this if is that conclusively shows that God's way for His people did not lie through Edom. Had it been of Him-this attempt to pass along the easier road, could He have allowed the King of so small a kingdom to stop His path?' No; but the path itself was human calculation, not where the pillar of cloud and fire led. The attempt only brought out fully the enmity that was in Edom's heart and the powerlessness of Israel in the matter. After all, God's way lay for them in another direction, where Edom was not.

And just so, right athwart the path of progress for the saint lies the barrier of the flesh – the old nature. Who would not say that God's way for His people was-if the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and is contrary to it,-by the conquest of the flesh ? How much less, according to our thought naturally, the simple injunction which . takes the place of such an one–" This I say, then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh"? How many have undertaken to prove for God that the former is His method! How much doctrine is there afloat of this kind, according to which the narrow strip of Edom is to be crossed, and Edom to be overcome and got rid of! Yet God's Word does not bid us fight the flesh, or destroy it; but, as Israel in the scene before us, to turn away from it. So the apostle Peter:"Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." To abstain from is not to fight, but to hold off from-keep away from. But to keep away from a thing is the very opposite of fighting it. It makes fighting impossible. If I am fighting, it is a proof, rather, I have not, been keeping away.

I think, beloved, friends, that some of you will be disposed to turn round upon me and say, It is all very simple to talk about; is it as easy in practice to do this? No, I do not say, or imply, that it is as easy in practice; but it is practicable, thank God, or of course it would be folly to speak of it. It is not only practicable, but the only practicable thing.

But let me ask you to observe how it is that the apostle addresses Christians here. He says expressly that he beseeches us " as strangers and pilgrims." It is only practicable for those who have this character; and while it is true that it is a character which rightly belongs to every follower of Christ as such, it is also true, as we must all sadly confess, that Christians may be very little Christian.

Are we pilgrims, beloved friends? What is a pilgrim? Does it make us that we are all drifting, as it must be confessed we are, upon that stream of time which is hurrying all the world,- every child of man,-on, fast on, to a near eternity? Are we pilgrims perforce, because what we clutch we cannot hold,-because it slips out of our grasp, or bursts as a bubble there, or we who grasp pass away ourselves and cannot retain it?

Nay; if this were to be pilgrims, all the world would be such, and one no more than another. But mere circumstances make no man a pilgrim. For that, we must be first, what the apostle puts first, strangers. We must be those whose real home is elsewhere; who are "heavenly," because "Christ is, and because He is there; our hearts being where out treasure is. Being strangers after this pattern, we shall be pilgrims, those with whom faith is not only the evidence of things not seen, but the substance of things hoped for. Thus we shall be those whose hearts are urging on their feet to a fixed point beyond the present; and thus alone shall we have power over the present. We shall be, in the spiritual sense, Hebrews; for that is the force of that word, inscribed, as you know, upon the epistle in which the stranger character of faith is put before us. Its first occurrence is a very beautiful one, and full of interest in connection with our present subject. It occurs in Genesis xiv, where, in the raid of the four kings from the east upon the plain of Jordan, Lot, Abram's brother's son, dwelling then in Sodom, was carried away captive. Abram is told, and arms the men of his house, and with certain of his allies pursues the plunderers, overtakes them, falls upon them in the night, and, defeating them, brings back all the goods and captives. But it is not there his great victory is gained. Many an one has conquered others who has never yet conquered himself. Abram has now to meet the king of Sodom's offers-" Give me the people, and take the goods to thyself." It is then he shows himself the man of faith.' " I have lift up my hand," he says, " to the Most High God, that I will not take from a thread to a shoe latchet; neither will I take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldst say, I have made Abram rich."

Now, Sodom is the plain type of the world, characterized, as the apostle characterizes it, by lust-" the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes." And here it is, in connection with this scene, that the word occurs," There came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; " 1:e., the " passenger," or, as we may say now, the "pilgrim." As such the lust of the flesh has not power against him; he does not fulfill it. How much more should it be,-will it be,-for him who " walks in the Spirit" now!

God has made Christ to be sanctification to us; and, speaking of this practically, according to the line of things before us now, how fully has He provided for the drawing our hearts out of this scene, by giving them an object, a completely satisfying object, outside the whole scene of the flesh's lusts altogether!
Sanctification is separation to God. In Christ, He who had been lost to our souls in the darkness in which our sin and unbelief had enwrapped Him again shines out in the true light come into the world. Here alone I know Him; I know Him, and I rejoice in Him. Meeting me in my sins, and putting them away by the offering of Himself, He has opened the very heart of God, and, by His mighty love, loved me into love. Risen again, and gone up for me on high, I look up to where in His face shines all the glory of God, and my life is (in its practical character) a life " hid with Christ in God." The object before the eye is power for the heart.

In the blessed place where He is, I am free to let my heart out. There is all that is real, of value, and abiding. I am free to covet there. There liberty is safe. I am free to let my heart out in a scene where sin never enters, where the flesh, the world, and the devil have no place, but where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.

Christ for our object, Christ for heart companionship, sanctification is secured. Even the world can say, Tell me who are your companions, and I will tell you who you are; and in Scripture, your associations form part, so to speak, of your individual character:you must purge yourself from vessels to dishonor, in order to be a "vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use." And if our hearts are in company with Christ, how truly we shall be known by the company we keep. We all with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, shall be "changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit."

If then where our treasure is our heart shall be, and our treasure is indeed in Him who has passed into the heavens, pilgrims and strangers we shall be of course. The apostle's admonition will be in proportion easy as we have this character. With our eyes on Christ, they will not be caught by the baits of the prince of this world; we shall be able to "abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul." What faith wrought in Abraham should be wrought tenfold more in us with whom things, unseen and eternal have brightness and blessedness of which he could know but little. Yet how God dwells upon his pilgrim character as that which had special value in His eyes! " By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise." " These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they set out, they might have had opportunity to have returned; but now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city."

By faith, then, thus manifest, the elders obtained a good report. We are thus, says the apostle, " encompassed with so great a cloud of witnesses;" not eye-witnesses (as some take it)-spectators of our course down here, but witnesses (those giving testimony) to this acceptability of faith with God. But there is One other, of whom the apostle speaks directly, not giving Him place among the other witnesses, but One who instead of showing merely certain characters of faith, as these, is "Author and Finisher of faith" in His own person. People mistake the meaning of this expression also, by version, which says, "Author and Finisher of our faith,"-taking it to mean that He begat it in us, and sustains it to the end. This is surely true, but the truth in that place it is not. For, as you will see by the italic letters, the "our" has been added by the translators, and is not found in the original; and this insertion, which the late revisers have unwisely followed, alters the meaning of the passage altogether. The true" thought is, that in His own person He is " Leader and Perfecter of faith "-One who has begun and completed its whole course, so as to be Himself the one perfect example and witness of what faith is. And thus the apostle goes on to speak of His path,- " who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

That cross endured was the complete trial and the perfect exemplification of faith. As the result, He is now at the right hand of God, pattern and object of our faith in one. " Therefore," says the apostle, " seeing that we are encompassed with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith."

Notice how similar that exhortation to what we had in Peter. It is as pilgrims that both passages address us, and those whose hearts are outside the scene through which we pass, stay upon that which is unseen and eternal-"abstain from fleshly lusts." "Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us." Quiet, however earnest, words! Strangely quiet, it may be, to those who are proving how easily indeed sin doth beset. To lay aside sin! how easy to talk of it! How gladly would many a soul do it, as he thinks, who finds that when he would do good, evil is present with him! But it is absolutely necessary to heed the order and connection here. To lay aside sin is not the first thing. Let us lay aside every weight, and sin. It is only as laying aside the weight that the laying aside of sin be-comes a possibility at all.

How important, then, to realize these first words in the depth of their meaning! What is a weight? Only as racers can we rightly estimate its force in this connection. Think of a pack of wolves behind you, and how you would flee, and what a weight would be to you then. How easy to see that to drop the weights would be the only possibility of escape from what was pursuing you. Sin is this pack at our heels, and the connection between the weight and the besetment should be very obvious.

What then is the weight ? Manifestly it is something different from the sin itself. It is something not in itself sinful; on the other hand, not a duty, clearly, for duties you have no right to lay aside. Duties, moreover, and for this very reason, are never a hindrance, never an occasion to besetting sin.

Some may be disposed to dispute this. Nay, to how many, conscious of the entanglement of a crowd of cares, which claim and possess them continually, will it seem almost self-evident folly to assert that duties are never a drag upon the soul; yet it is true nevertheless, and should be plain, that God would never impose upon us that which would drag us down from communion with Himself. It could not be. Of course there are states of soul that unfit for any duty; we must not confound what comes of our own condition with what is due to the nature of the things themselves. There is a state of soul (alas! how common!) in which, as the apostle says, "the good that I would I do not;" yea, and the "evil that I would not, that I do." It is the secret of power that is lacking in such an one, and such may be helped by what is now before us; but the fault is not in the duty, but in the personal state.

And again, we must distinguish between duties of God's imposing (which, of course, only are such,) I and those which people often consider such, which the artificial state in which we live, which custom, which society,-which the world, in short, imposes. How little we realize what the world is, and that all that is of the world-the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. We must not expect that if we accept a scale of duties which the fashion of the world imposes, that we shall not find them weights which if we seek to carry will hinder all progress and expose us to besetting sin. There are no duties to the god of this world, beloved friends; and he that will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God. Duties to society, duties (as they are subtly called) to one's family, to maintain a certain social standing for them in the world,-duty to lay up a competence, or a little more, for a possible old age, or a "rainy day;" with how many do such things as these eat out all the vigor and freshness of spiritual life. These are weights, not duties, and duties are never weights.

A weight is any thing you are at liberty to lay aside, but which you choose to retain instead. The retaining it proves you are not a racer in the full and proper sense. You have not the eye simply on the object before you. You do not, with the apostle, count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Things present-the seen and visible,-weigh somewhat against the things unseen and eternal. No wonder that the freshness of spiritual life is lost, that real duties drag, that sin easily besets. What miracle shall God work for you that it may be otherwise- that you may be able to save your life in this world and keep it unto life eternal too ? If, on the other hand, your eye is on the object? :and Christ that object, and your heart affected by your eye, you will not be endeavoring to see how much of this world you can carry, but how far you can strip yourself to run the race. Christ will be practical sanctification to you, and sanctification is separation, separation to God. It is only as we have this spirit that we shall even realize what is a weight.

But as surely as the weights are by God's grace laid aside, so surely shall we find that we are distancing besetting sin. It is a mistake, I believe, to suppose that this is some special form of sin. None can indeed deny that we have, each one of us, some special form to which we are prone, and that thus one man's temptations lie in one direction, another's in another; still, here, it is sin as sin.

Drop the weights, and you will distance the sin. I know, beloved friends, you will be tempted to look on this and that which you are clinging to, and to ask, as Lot of the city that he desired as a place of refuge, "Is it not a little one?" A thing, too, not in itself sinful; for, as I have said, we must carefully distinguish it from sin. How can it be, you ask, that such consequences can result from observing little points like these ? But the thing is, are they indeed little points? is that what in your inmost heart you say of them ? Alas! dear friends, it is a question of the whole tone and temper and spirit of your life. Is it a race you are running? Are you strangers and pilgrims here? Is it a little thing whether you are or not? It is just because a little thing, yea, a thing of naught, is really followed, as if it had value, that such immense consequences result to the soul.

Still, I can imagine, the question is asked, Is this Christianity-this wearisome observance of little things? No, dear friends; nothing of this sort am I advocating. I would not be of the company of those who would judge the tone of a man's spirit by niceties of style. A Saul might misjudge a Jonathan because of honey taken by the way, and Gideon's men who lapped seem to others not different from those who bowed down on their knees to drink; the deep and real question is, whether as before God our purpose is with him who said, " This one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and pressing on to that which is before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

If you are racers, you will find Out very soon what is a weight; and then the word is," Let us lay aside every weight, and [thus] the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith."

For Israel, the path of progress did not lie through Edom; for the Christian, the way of progress is not found in conciliating or in conflict with the flesh. That word of the apostle, " Reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin," if acted out, would exclude the thought of either. God's pilgrims and strangers have another, which if it lie through desert scenes is yet bright with the beckoning glory, which we follow to its home. The cross of Christ is at one and the same time the hopeless condemnation of the flesh, and our privilege to turn away from it altogether, to occupy ourselves with Him who, in that He died, died unto sin once, but in that He liveth, liveth unto God.

Do you even understand, beloved friends, this privilege to turn away ? To some, yea, to many here, it may seem yet mystery or unreality to speak of being dead to sin. You are so conscious of its presence, yea, and of its power in you, that you would think it a mere untruth to speak of being dead to sin. Yet Scripture not only speaks of it, but as true of every Christian. It is not any special class who are dead, nor does it speak of a gradual process of dying to it, as so many think. " How shall we that are dead to sin"-we-all Christians. But then notice, the word is, "Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin." It is not "feel," or "find." You are to reckon yourself to. be so, because you do not feel or find. It is faith's application of the death of Christ as putting one in a new position before. God. " In that He died, He died unto sin once, but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God:thus reckon,"-for " thus," rather than "likewise," we may better read it,-"thus reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus."

It is not mysticism, then, but only faith to say, if we are Christians, that we are dead to sin. For us, that death on the cross was our death. In it, for God and for faith, " our old man,"-that is, all that we are as sinners naturally, or for experience now,-" is crucified with Christ." In Christ there is no sin, no flesh; and in Christ we. are, Thus, from that which we find within us we are yet privileged to turn away, as Israel from obstructive Edom, its type in the scene before us in the book of Numbers.

Yet in Exodus we have conflict, and with what springs from Edom too. Amalek was Edom's offspring, as we have seen. And the apostle reads the type for us-" Fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." His words illuminate the scene in Exodus, for he does not say, Fleshly lusts against which we war. Israel had not sought out Amalek, and had no charge from God to make war upon them. The assault was on the side of the desert-tribe,-"Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim." The occasion, and the exact way in which this is stated here, deserve to be carefully examined; for we are apt to pass over what is of the greatest importance for the interpretation of the chapter. We have already seen that the giving of the water from the rock is the type of the gift of the Spirit, that living water which has flowed forth for us as the fruit of Christ's smiting. It will be no wonder to any instructed mind that in connection with the type of the Spirit we should have the type of the flesh or of its working. " The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other." It certainly confirms the interpretation already given as to Amalek that we find it so.

But let us not imagine that is the whole thing; and that because we have the Spirit, conflict with the flesh is the direct necessity. Nor if even we find continual conflict, that therefore what we find is the inevitable thing. The word is, "Reckon yourselves dead;" and dead, men are not fighters. You are called to reckon yourselves dead to that with which people suppose you must inevitably fight.

Notice, then, the connection in Exodus:" He called the name of the place ' Massah,' and ' Meribah,' because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, 'Is the Lord among us, or not?' Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim." Amalek's coming up is; mentioned in direct connection with the failure and unbelief of the people, when, their eyes being on their circumstances,-judging by sight, and not by faith,-they questioned the Lord's presence with them. That led to the attack of the enemy.

There could be nothing arbitrary in it. With such a Leader, such an one in their midst, how was it the terror of the Lord was no longer upon their enemies, as at the Red Sea they had sung it should be? The chapter, as we have seen, supplies the answer. Faith had failed, their divine Leader had been dishonored and the attack of Amalek was the result. Nothing is arbitrary in the government of God:if His ways are in the seas, they are in the sanctuary too. With us also, if the eye be not on Christ,-if the heart be not occupied with him,-if we be not abiding there,-the world will surely come in to fill the gap, and the lusts of the flesh find their opportunity. Amalek comes up:we are entangled, and must fight.

To abstain from fleshly lusts is that to which we are called. Dead to sin is what we are to reckon ourselves to be. But when we have failed to do this, and our hearts have become entangled with any of the thousand things which are ready to lay hold of them on every side, then we shall find it impossible, without a struggle, to be free. Conflict becomes a necessity, not merely to progress, but that we may not be captives to the ever-watchful enemy of our souls. An ordained necessity to progress it is not; and to view it as such, a serious mistake. What did Israel gain in this respect? Even their victory left them still but where they were, although fight they had to when the enemy was upon them. Their toils, their wounds, were so much hindrance only. In the wilderness, God's thought for them was that they should be pilgrims, and not warriors; by and by, in the land, they should be warriors, but not here.

You are inclined, perhaps, again to stop and question the truth of this. Alas! for how many of us the Christian conflict is a conflict with the flesh! and instead of its being an exceptional thing, how much it makes up of the experience of our lives! But do not let us on that account accommodate Scripture to our low condition, but judge our condition by the higher standard of Scripture. Take the epistle to the Philippians, for instance. It is, as most of us perhaps know, the epistle of Christian experience; and that not as laying hold of the heavenly places, but expressly as going through the world. It is the experience of one who was, perhaps of all mere men most, a stranger and pilgrim,-of one whose occupation was with one object,-to whom to win Christ and to be found in Him was all.

Does he give as his experience thus a constant warfare with the flesh and its lusts? Every one knows, the very contrary. The flesh is only mentioned to say he has no confidence in it. His experience is, " I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound:every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."

That was Paul. If you say, We are not Paul’s, I agree:alas! it is too plain we are not. Yet Paul bids us follow him; and the picture is but of what is proper to our common Christianity;. it is but the effect of the governing object upon his soul. Are we to allow any thing else than scriptural Christianity?

Faith said in Paul, "All things are dung and loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus." Can faith in any of us say less or else than this? Only let this be simple and clear in us, and how easy, how joyful, to cast aside dung and loss to win Christ! How gladly shall we lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith!

If our hearts are entangled, we must fight; but let us confess our hearts have been entangled. Still there is hope, blessed be God, and help. One is on the mount for us with God:One on the plain leads us to victory,-if indeed we are not willing captives. Can that indeed be for a moment a question as to any of those who have the Scripture-title to be called " saints of God " ?

Let us look at this conflict, then; it is a thing which surely our souls know well, and yet in its details we may have much to learn that will be profitable to learn. This Moses upon the rock, who is he? and this Joshua upon the plain, who is he? Upon these two, manifestly, every thing depends for us.

Upon the mount, Moses holds up the rod which has smitten the rock. That the streams of refreshing might flow out for us in this wilderness-world, the Rock of Ages must be smitten. Righteousness struck the blow; and thus righteousness it is that justifies the sinner. God's righteousness is toward all; it is over all them that believe in Jesus,-over them as their shield from all assault, from all accusation. It is the rod of righteousness which has become the rod of deliverance, the rod of power in behalf of the people. It is this that Moses holds up, appealing by it to God.

How wonderful that righteousness should be on the side of sinners through faith in Christ Jesus! It is the basis, as we know, of all our blessings. How can we escape from the power of the enemy, -what can bring in the help of God for us, if righteousness did not appeal through Christ's work in our behalf? It is Christ Himself who holds up this rod for us in the presence of God not with Moses' weary hands. Upon this all depends. Not even Joshua could avail for us in the plain if those patient hands of our royal Priest were not held up in the; presence of our God.

But Joshua in the plain is needed none the less. His name shines by its own light. "Joshua" is "Jesus;" the great Captain of our salvation is here again, and in a character which is of the deepest significance. Joshua, as we know, is the one who leads them into Canaan afterward, and he is the leader here no less. Let us look at this closer, for it is a point of great importance.

The world of sight and sense is what we have learned to be the antitype of Israel's scene of wandering. It is the place of need and of dependence, a need in which God's unfailing power and tenderness are made known to us every step of the way. How wonderful to think that all that miracle-history with which we are so familiar is but the shadow of our own history as we pass through this world! How it would brighten and glorify many a life that seems tame and dull enough, to remember this! We have only to realize that, as it was with them, blindness and unbelief may blot out all evidence of God being with us, and leave our lives, of course, to be poor and dull enough. Israel, in full presence of all the miracles, could question still if the Lord were really with them. To spiritual sight, the evidence and the miracles will be as plain for us as them.

But there is another sphere, into which not only are we permitted to enter, but to abide. We have a Canaan our dwelling-place, which even now by faith we take possession of; while nevertheless our feet are actually treading the wilderness sands. It puzzles many to reconcile a place in the wilderness with a place in Canaan, and the tendency is to drop out one of them. For most, the plain hard fact is, that we are in the world; and to talk of being in heaven is to them only mysticism. The typical meaning of the book of Joshua has thus dropped from the knowledge of the mass of even true Christians. They go to heaven when they die, after the experience of the wilderness is over; and they enter it, of course, not as Israel did-to fight, but to rest. Thus all the Canaan conflict is; as to any typical meaning, an inexplicable mystery. They know nothing of being in heavenly places, of being crucified to the world, or dead to sin. These terms are of course admitted to be in Scripture, but they are not in their souls, nor even in their minds. I cannot dwell upon this side of things now, and for most of you here, I trust, it will not be needful.

But on the other hand, there are those who having learned the blessed truth that they are already, for faith, and in Christ, in the heavenly places, are now almost unable to grasp the fact that they are in the wilderness at all. They too only enter Canaan when the wilderness is ended; only that for them it is already ended. At least, to be there is failure,-unbelief, and not faith. This is a complete mistake. It is to faith that the world is a wilderness. Unbelief will ever seek to settle down there. And, as we have seen, we are there, not as natural men, but as redeemed. In this way too all the experience of weakness, of need and dependence is lost sight of-lessons which every day and hour, one would think, would be teaching us; and along with this, the blessed lessons of the Lord's unfailing care and love.

To such, all this Amalek conflict must be a thing impossible to understand. They may think it no loss; but what about the manna, and the streams from the smitten rock?

In truth, the presence of Joshua in this scene in the wilderness is just a proof of the coincidence of our heavenly and earthly positions, and of how needed is the knowledge of the heavenly for power upon earth. For who is He who leads us in the struggle with the flesh but He who leads us into Canaan ? The knowledge of what is ours above is what is absolutely necessary to break through the entanglements of flesh and sense. It is only by the consciousness of our portion in that which is unseen and eternal that we can find power to overcome the world. The knowledge of Canaan is necessary to the encounter with wilderness trials and difficulties; and who, one feels tempted to ask, can be really ignorant of this ?

In the book of Genesis, the life of Abraham,- pattern life of faith as it is,-is a lesson of the same kind. It is as dwelling in Canaan that he is a pilgrim and a stranger; any where else he might have settled down. These two things are beautifully united in his history, and they are never to be sundered in our own.

I would reiterate, finally, beloved friends, that conflict with the flesh, as we have it in the picture here, is not what we are called to; it is no element of progress, but the contrary. Numbers, in the scene we have been looking at, will show us that Edom does not lie on the road to our inheritance at all. As pilgrims and strangers, we are to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin; and laying aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith. May He quicken our steps on the path which Himself has traveled, and on which the light of the glory streams from the place to which He has ascended.
Plainfield, NH, July 29, 1882 F.W.G.

(1:)-Chap. vi-9:17. To Noah's life as a type, the third chapter of the first epistle of Peter is the key. His bringing through the flood is there declared to be a type of "salvation," but salvation of a fuller kind than ordinarily is reckoned such. The figure is a simple one enough to follow in the main, and will itself guide us if we cleave closely to it.

For, plainly, the ark is Christ, and the flood it saves through is the judgment of the whole world, which perished in it, while those preserved are brought through to a new world which emerges from the waters, and where the sweet savor of accepted sacrifice secures a perpetuity of blessing.

It is the third stage of new life as apprehended by the soul, resurrection therefore, as bringing in the place of which it is said, "If any man be in Christ, [it is] new creation:old "things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;"-words which remarkably correspond to Noah's position as come through the flood, making allowance for that essential inferiority of type to antitype which we have often had to refer to as a necessary principle for true interpretation.

Noah is evidently not the type of a sinner, taken up as such, nor could he be, to stand in the place he does in these biographies. He is a just man, a Cornelius rather, a type of those who, quickened and converted though they be-"fearing; God and working righteousness"-need yet to know the salvation which the gospel brings.

In the world around, corruption is total and universal. The judgment of the whole is pronounced, with one way of escape, and only one, left open to the man of faith.

The ark is built of gopher-wood. We know not this "gopher," but the resemblance is remarkably close to the " copher " or " pitch " named afterward, and the resemblance has been noticed by many. On account of it the gopher has been of old believed to be the cypress, and might well have furnished the " pitch " also for the vessel's seams.* *For there seems no scriptural proof or otherwise of "copher" being bitumen, although the Septuagint and Vulgate translate it so, and most modern interpreters follow these.*

And here, upon the ground-without an altar. The altar, as what "sanctifies the gift," is doubtless the person of the "Lord, as what gave value to His work; but in the sin-offering the altar is not seen, for the Victim stands in the sinner's place, and is treated as if He were not the Person that He really is.

The type would thus correspond more fully to the antitype, for there need be no doubt but that the gopher, like the shittim-wood of the tabernacle-ark, refers to Christ, while " copher " is the word used elsewhere for "atonement." That the tree should be cut down to provide a refuge from the waters adjudgment was not enough, the seams must be pitched with the pitch the tree supplied. And so death, as mere death, even though Christ's, would not have been enough to put the soul in security that fled to Him for refuge. The only blood, as the apostle teaches, that could be carried into the presence of God for sin, was the blood of a victim burned without the camp*.*And here, upon the ground, without an altar. The altar, as what "sanctifies the gift," is doubtless the person of the Lord, as what gave value to His work; but the sin-offering the altar is not seen, for the Victim stands in the sinner’s place, and is treated as if He were not the Person that He really is.* The place of distance due to the sinner and the unclean had to be taken by the Holy One of God, in order to our salvation. In such an ark we, with Noah, may make "nests" (for so, instead of "rooms," the margin more literally reads). The love that has provided all gives more than security; the house of refuge is not mere bare walls; amid the very storm of judgment the heart that craves may find its lodgment,.where more than a father's care, more than a mother's tenderness, are found.

The door of the ark was in the side, but the window above.* *This has been contested, but seems undoubtedly the meaning of the passage. And it is confirmed by the fact that not till Noah removed the covering of the ark could he see that the ground was dry.*

It is no new thing say that this is faith's outlook. The passengers in that rnarvelously guided and protected vessel needed not their eyes for pilotage, and were not to look out upon the solemnities' of the judgment taking effect around; while the waters, which were the grave of the world, floated them above its mountain-tops up to the blue heavens, calming as they rose. What a season for them-shut in by God, with God! and what a preparation for commencing that new life which they were to begin in the world beyond the flood!

And many may recall a not less solemn time, when they too, having fled for refuge from the storm of coming wrath, were made to pass through the world's judgment, and to find in Him who, dead for them and risen, has passed into the heavens, their own escape, not from judgment merely, but from the whole scene of it. They have come in Christ through the floods which fell on Him alone, and in Him have reached a "new creation," old things passed away, and all things become new.

For even Christ (as the apostle tells us) we know no more after the flesh. Plainly, the only Christ there is to know is one no more found among men; and if our being "in Him means any thing, it means this:identification with Him who stands as really for us in the glory of the heavens as once for us He hung upon the cross.

It must be remembered be remembered that not sense nor experience brings us there. Even Noah may have heard or seen little, if any thing, of that which he passed through; but none the less real was that eventful passage. For us, faith alone can make us realize a plan as to which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man" what nevertheless the Spirit of God through the Word has revealed to us. We are there (if in Christ) apart from all experience; and what experience we are to have of it will be the fruit of and in proportion to the vigor of, our faith alone.

The ark grounds upon the mountains of Ararat, and not long afterward occurs the well-known incident of the raven and the dove. As a type, this shows us how little is forgotten or denied in these Genesis-biographies, what we practically are, conscious as we may be of our place in Christ Jesus. Saved out of the world, and no more of it, we yet carry with us and may let out the raven. We have that in us which can take up with a scene of death from which the waters of judgment have not yet dried up, and like the unclean bird use the ark but as a means of pursuing with the more vigor its congenial occupation.* *Went forth, going and returning" (8:7, marg.) seems to indicate this.* Noah first sends forth the raven, but, as others have noted, he distrusts it and sends forth the dove; but the dove finds no rest for the sole of her feet, and returns unto him into the ark. Seven days after, she goes forth again, and returns with an olive-leaf, the assurance of peace and of the fruitfulness of the new world.

Shortly after, but at the word of God, and not at the suggestion of his own mind, Noah goes forth, and the first-fruits of the place into which he has been brought is an altar from which the smoke of a burnt-offering goes up,-a savor of rest to Jehovah. Neither altar nor burnt-offering have we had before, and who can doubt the suitability of their first mention here? for the altar is the person of Christ-that which gave its value to His blessed work, and the burnt-offering is that aspect of His work in which its value Godward is most fully shown. And here, in the new-creation scene pictured for us in this chapter, surely we know in a new way and with a new blessedness, not merely salvation, but the Savior; and not merely the human side of that salvation-its result for us, but its divine side-its Godward result. The knowledge of the salvation sets us free to be occupied with the Savior; and He who cannot be known I now after the flesh (for He is risen and with God) can only be apprehended justly when we have been brought from off the ground of the world that rejected Him, to find our true place where He is,-in the light, where He is the light, and the glory in His face is the true test and discovery of all else.

"And Jehovah smelled a savor of rest; and Jehovah said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done." Thus the hopelessness of expecting any thing on man's part, which was before the flood the reason for his judgment, is now, through the efficacy of accepted sacrifice, but a reason for setting man aside altogether as a hindrance of Messing and of establishing it in perpetuity upon an unchangeable basis. The new creation thus abides forever in bloom and beauty of which the earth under the Noachian covenant is but indeed a "shadow."

The heirs of this inheritance find next their own blessing. Their fruitfulness is certainly not more an injunction than a gift of the grace which is now manifesting itself for them (9:1:). And so in what these types speak of.

Then their authority over the lower creatures is restored:the fear and dread of man is to be upon every beast of the earth, and upon all that moves, and they are delivered into his hand. All things are his, and even death itself is now to furnish him with food. This is a fact of the deepest significance; it is death ministering to life, a principle of which God would keep us in constant remembrance. Scarcely a meal but thus testifies to us of the very basis of all real gospel, which the Lord's supper fully and formally declares. But it is only after known deliverance, and in the new place with God that this can be rightfully understood. We now go farther than the type, and overpass the restriction here imposed:we drink the blood also ; that which is God's only as atonement (for "it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul") is ours to sustain and cheer us as atonement made. " The cup which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?"

Thus are they set in the fullness of blessing:delivered, brought into a scene secured to them irrespective of their own desert, fruitfulness assured sovereignty of the whole bestowed, and death itself put into their possession and made to minister to their sustenance with all else. And now comes in, in its due and fitting place, the question of responsibility to judge the deeds of the flesh, for which before they were incompetent. When Cam shed his brother's blood, in the old world now passed away, God set a mark upon Cain, lest any one finding him should kill him; whereas now, in this new world, God speaks far otherwise:" And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man."

This is evidently the principle of all human government, which began from this date, established by God Himself. We have its history shortly epitomized for us in Noah's weakness and want of self-government, which exposes him to the "scorn of those whom he should have governed; and on the other hand, in Nimrod, high-handed power, abused to satisfy the lust of ambition and self-will. Yet the powers that be are ordained of God, while for the abuse of power, or for the inability to use it, they are accountable to Him.

On the other side of the flood also (in the typical sense) we are set in authority, for the use of which we are responsible to God. Power is in our hands from God to judge the deeds of the flesh, which before deliverance we could not judge, and to vindicate the image of God in which we have been created. And to this is appended once more the blessing of fruitfulness, which, however it be of God and of grace, is yet not possible to be attained where nature is unjudged.

Lastly, the covenant is ratified, and a token given to confirm it. The bow in the cloud is man's assurance; but it is more, it is God's memorial of the new relationship into which He has entered with His creatures. His eye, and not man's only, is upon the bow and thus He gives them fellowship with Himself in that which speaks of peace in the midst of trouble, of light in the place of darkness; and what this bow speaks of it is ours to realize, who have the reality of which all figures speak.

"God is light," and "that which doth make manifest is light." Science has told us that the colors which every-where clothe the face of nature are but the manifold beauty of the light itself The pure ray which to us is colorless is but the harmonious blending of all possible colors. The primary ones-a trinity in unity-from which all others are produced, are, blue, red, and yellow; and the actual color of any object is the result of its capacity to absorb the rest. If it absorb the red and yellow rays, the thing is blue; if the blue and yellow, it is red; if the red only, it is green; and so on. Thus the light paints all nature; and its beauty (which in the individual ray we have not eyes for) comes out in partial displays wherein it is broken up for us and made perceptible.

"God is light;" He is "Father of lights." The glory, which in its unbroken unity is beyond what we have sight for, He reveals to us as distinct attributes in partial displays which we are more able to take in, and with these He clothes in some way all the works of His hands. The jewels on the High-Priest's breastplate-the many-colored gems whereon the names of His people were engraved were thus the "Urim and Thummim "-the "Lights and Perfections," typically, of God Himself; for His people are identified with the display of those perfections, those "lights," in Him more unchangeable than the typical gems.

In the rainbow the whole array of these lights manifests itself, the solar rays reflecting themselves in the storm; the interpretation of which is simple. "When I bring a cloud over the earth," says the Lord, "the bow shall be seen in the cloud; and I [not merely you] will look upon it." How blessed to know that the cloud that comes over our sky is of His bringing! and if so, how sure that some way He will reveal His glory in it! But that is not all, nor the half; for surely but once has been the full display of the whole prism of glory, and that in the blackest storm of judgment that ever was; and it is this in the cross of His Son that God above all looks upon and that He remembers.

Still the principle is wider, and in every season of distress He does surely at last display His glory. At last the storm is banded with the brightness; and this too is a token of the covenant of God with His people that not destruction, but their blessing, His nearer manifestation and their better apprehension of it, is the meaning of the storm.

(2.)-Chap. 9:18-11:9. The story of the deliverance closes here, and we now come to a very different, in many respects a contrasted, thing- the history of the delivered people. The history begins with failure; it ends with. confusion, and from the gracious hand that but now delivered them. It is the humbling lesson of what we are, but which we have now to read in the light of what He is. This will make indeed the shadows deeper, but we can face them in the knowledge that God is light and in Him no darkness; and that for us, too, " the darkness is passing, and the true light already shines."

First, Noah fails, the natural head of all; and sin thus afresh introduced propagates itself at once in his family, and becomes the curse of Canaan and his seed. Noah's snare is the abundance of the new-blessed earth, a thing not easy to understand typically until we see (what will be more fully before us when we come to Abraham's life) that it is the earthly side of the heavenly life we have to do with in the succeeding histories. Thus Abraham is in Canaan as a pilgrim and a stranger, a thing that in our Canaan (for no one doubts, I suppose, what Canaan means) is an absolute impossibility; yet the earthly side is pilgrim and strangership, and the two things thus linked together derive a meaning from their connection they would not have alone. Just so with Noah; the earth side of the typical heavenly life is Nazariteship. and Noah falling from his Nazariteship exposes himself to his shame. The fall tests his children, as the presence of sin still tests the spirit of those who deal with it. Ham in further exposing it to his brethren reveals himself, not taking it as his own, while Shem and Japheth cover, without looking upon, their father's nakedness. " Ham " is " black,"-the unenlightened-or perhaps rather the " sun-burnt," -scorched and darkened by the very light itself; for light, if not received as light, becomes a source of darkness to the soul. And Ham is the father of Canaan,-the "trader," as his name imports. The parentage of evil in the professing church seems thus traced, even as in the world before the flood, to one who goes out from the presence of the Lord, only darkened and branded by the light in Canaan is in the professing church its fruit-the trader in divine things, who may be found in the land, and even in the "house of the Lord," but every-where true to his unhappy character:"bondsman of bondsmen," and no free-born child of light, he is finally driven out of the house which he has made a den of thieves, and finds his true place in Babylon the Great, whose " merchants are the great men of the earth."

Of Noah's two other sons we seem to read in their various blessing two tendencies which are apt to be sundered, and should not. Shem's is the recipient contemplative life, whose danger it is to run into the mystical; Japheth's, the practical, energetic life, which in its one-sidedness tends to divorce itself from faith. In the blessing of Shem, it is Shem's God, Jehovah, who is blessed, as it is indeed the highest blessedness of faith that it has God for its portion and its praise; while Japheth's blessing is in enlargement, and in dwelling in Shem's tents, for the practical life finds its home in faith alone, and true service is but worship in its outflow toward men.
Of the genealogies which follow in the tenth chapter I shall say-can indeed say-little. We may notice that the 'Egyptian (Mizraim) is also a son of Ham, the darkness of nature (as we speak) being not so much defect of, as resisted, light. The Philistines, too, are Egyptians, as we may by and by more consider. Then Nimrod, the son of Cush, the ‘rebel," as his name imports, the beginning of whose kingdom is in Babel, points too plainly to the apostate king of the last days to admit much question. Let us now proceed, however, to look at Babel itself, with the account of which this section closes. Here, without doubt, too, Babylon the Great is pictured, although not in the full development in which we look at it in Revelation xvii, 18:

The account is remarkable for its clearness and simplicity. The process by which the professing church settled down in the world, and then built up for itself a worldly name and power, could scarcely be more fully or in plainer terms de-scribed. How with one consent they turned their backs upon the sunrise (2 Pet. 1:19.), and leaving the rugged and difficult places in which they were first nurtured-too painful for flesh and blood-descended to the easier if lower level of the world,* -how settling there, ease and abundance wrought in them desire to possess themselves in security of the earth and make themselves a name in it; how Babylon thus was built, " a city," after Cain's pattern, whose builder and maker God was not, and a "tower" of strength, human and not divine; all this he that runs may read. *The meaning of Shinar is considered uncertain. Among others pos Bible is that of "waking sleep," which would at least be very appropriate.* Let us notice further, that this is a carnal imitation and anticipation of God's thoughts, and that thus the earthly city usurps the titles and prerogatives of the heavenly one. But Babylon cannot be built of the " living stone," which is the God-made material for building; they have moved from the quarries of the hills, and must be content to manufacture less durable "brick" out of the mere clay which the plain affords:they have brick for stone and slime (or bitumen) for mortar-1:e., not the cementing of the Spirit, the true Unifier, but the worldly and selfish motives which compact men together, and are but fuel for the fire in the day " the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is."

This was what makes a figure in men's histories -the Catholic Church of antiquity, singularly one indeed, whether you look at it in Alexandria or Constantinople or Rome, were most fully developed. The unity whereof it boasted was not God's, and if God came down to see what man was building, it was not to strengthen, but to destroy-not to compact, but scatter. The many tongues of Protestantism are but His judgment upon the builders of Babel; its multitudinous sects but the alternative of the oppressive tyranny with which when united she laid her yoke upon the minds and consciences of men, and under which the blood of the saints ran like water. They are but a temporary hindrance, moreover, for when the antitypical Nimrod shall make it the beginning of his kingdom, Babylon shall sit as a queen, anticipating no widowhood and no sorrow. Then, however, her doom shall be at hand, " in one day shall her plagues come upon her."

The Lord will give grace and glory:" this is the characteristic verse of the eighty-fourth psalm. And what is "glory," beloved reader? What does your heart connect with that word, or link with the thought of all the blessedness that is before your soul in that eternity into which we are so soon to enter? It is not a question of mere accuracy as to a word. Words mean things:and the question is really important, yea, of the deepest importance for our souls. What attraction is there in the prospect before us? What makes heaven bright? what quickens our steps toward it? That which controls our hearts, reveals them too. What then do we count glory?

It is plain that the mere deliverance from pain and sorrow and toil and care is not that; nor even from the sin which has brought in all this:It is positive blessing far beyond what is implied by freedom from all 99:What then is the blessedness before us, I again ask? "It is to see Christ and to be with Him," many of my readers will at once reply; and where it is not mere knowledge, but wells out of a full heart, thank God for that answer. Closely connected it is, moreover, with the true thought of glory. Glory is divine display.-" In His temple doth every one speak of His glory," (Ps. 29:9.)-or, as it should be rather, " doth every one say, ' Glory.' " It is to the tabernacle, not the temple, that the Psalmist refers; but whether tabernacle or temple, in the place of God's presence gold covered every thing. From the ark of the covenant to the boards over which hung the beauteous curtains, and even in the curtains themselves, gold shone every where. Outside, in the court, the brazen laver and the brazen altar had their place:inside, there was no brass, but only gold.

Gold has, I believe, its interpretation given us by the apostle, where, speaking of the golden cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat, he calls them "the cherubim of glory." The aptness of the figure, one would think, should strike one at a glance; much more so when we consider the things themselves which were made of gold, or which it covered. All these were Christ, and Christ in that which is His distinctively, the manifestation of God to man. His glory is just Himself displayed. You cannot put glory on Him; on Him no other light can be made to shine. All true light is His light-is Himself, for " God is light."

When we speak of God seeking His own glory, or glorifying Himself, what do we mean by it? If a man seeks his own glory, it is pride or selfishness that acts in him; and do not the thoughts even of God's people sometimes almost confound man's thought in this with God's, however much they would abhor the inference? But as God is the opposite of fallen man in all things, so it is here. Man in seeking his own glory claims and craves, but God in seeking His but loves and gives; for His glory is Himself displayed, is the blessing of His creatures:His glory is His goodness; what the angels' words unite is pledged by the Babe born in Bethlehem never to be sundered -" Glory to God in the highest," and " on earth peace, good pleasure in men."

Can we add, indeed, to His infinite riches? Does He whose are the cattle upon a thousand hills demand our sacrifices because He is hungry? the voice that said "Give Me to drink" to the woman of Samaria, was it that of the poor stranger merely that it seemed ? Ah, what should make our praises matter of concern to Him with whom all the nations are counted as grasshoppers, and who taketh up the isles as a very little thing?

It is love to which we are of account,-love alone that seeks to have our hearts (and thus our praises) full of Himself. And the method of His love is to make known what He is, to display His ways, His character, His perfections, to us, that the eye opened to behold might affect the heart, and the heart satisfied might give us competency to be His witnesses, not only among men, but "that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus."

And the glory to which we are going is a scene in which God will be every-where beheld, everywhere enjoyed, every-where adored. The madness of infidelity that scoffs at the ceaseless worship of heaven does not understand this worship to be just the witness and pledge of its endless felicity, while of the divine goodness thus revealed it is necessarily ignorant.

All man's good is in the manifestation of God thus to the soul. In a world which His hands have made, and into which, though fallen, still His mercies come continuously, where His sun shines on the evil and the good, and His rain falls on the just and on the unjust, men vainly deem that they can do without Him. Alas! with the goods of his father in his hand, man can enjoy his pleasure in a far-off country, disregarding the famine that will surely come. They can think of doing without God in a world from which, though hidden, He is not withdrawn. Once withdrawn, they will find too late what they have chosen; for as heaven is God's dwelling-place, hell is the place whence He is forever absent:if God is light, hell is the place of utter and unimagined darkness.

In this eighty-fourth psalm, it is God Himself that is the object of the soul's desire:it is for the living God that flesh and heart cry out; Jehovah's tabernacles, Jehovah's courts, Jehovah's altars, Jehovah's house. Nor is it a feeble desire after this, -the soul longs and faints:" How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord:my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." This is the breathing of a saint in Old-Testament times, beloved reader,-one by whom necessarily Christ was seen afar off, and the glory of God was connected with an earthly tabernacle, not with the heaven opened now to faith. And we, to whom so far greater a revelation has -been vouchsafed, have our hearts gone out with even equal longings after the Father's house, after the place of His presence? Is this indeed the glory for which we yearn as we rejoice in hope of the glory of God?

That expression, " the living God," gives a connection with the second part of the psalm, which speaks of the way by which the end here contemplated is reached; as for Israel the way to Canaan was through the wilderness, so for us also our inheritance is similarly reached. And our wilderness, as theirs, barren sand and rock though it be, has yet for faith its harvests. How glorious to see, in the glister of the morning dew, the manna -the mighty's meat! How wonderful to see the flinty rock pour forth water! How blessed from day to day to realize in the constant guidance of the cloud and fire, the tender care of the Lord their Shepherd! For us, how much more blessed to see in all these things the shadows of which we have the substance! In all these, the living God it is who is discovering Himself to us; the God who, unlike the gods of the heathen, has eyes to see, and ears to hear, and heart to feel for us, and strong arm to save. The wilderness has thus its harvest of rich experiences stored up for that time in which-

"He who to His rest shall greet thee Greets thee with a well-known love."

Guided by His hand, watched over and tended by His unfailing goodness, the heart that realizes it all longs after Himself. And this one thing lacking in our cup of blessing gives us the character of pilgrims, not carried on simply by the resistless stream of time, but oared forward by their hearts,-by the faith which is not alone "the evidence of things unseen," but also "the substance of things hoped for." And thus the path of the just becomes " as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day,"-the glory awaiting us ever brightening more our path as we approach it. There alone is our home-the place of our affections, the land of rest.

" Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young." The sparrow and the swallow are here our emblems; the sparrow, the social bird,-the sparrow alone upon the housetop, the perfect figure of desolation; the swallow, " the bird of freedom," as its name implies, the restless bird, ever on the wing, but which finds too, its place of rest, tamed by the power of love.

Thus will heaven be to us:the sparrow's house, the swallow's nest. God has formed us for social affections, and in heaven they shall be fully satisfied. We may be solitary in the wilderness, in heaven never. He who "setteth the solitary in families" has prepared for us a city. Cain's" thought was not the original, and was only wrong in the endeavor to realize in separation from God, and in rebellion against Him, what can be enjoyed aright but from His hand. Of the city which hath foundations, the builder and maker is God. And that city is the heavenly Jerusalem, not a city of earth.

This city is His " for whom are all things, and by whom are all things." The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; the glory of God shall lighten it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof. How that sweet penetrating light permeating the whole place with its pure radiance tells of what the joy of the presence of God shall be! Of this glory the Lamb is the lamp; and the city is the bride, too, of the Lamb. We cannot wonder, for "for Him were all things created, and by Him were all things created." And He it is who is the "Father of Eternity,"* as the prophet calls Him:the One through whom all things get their eternal shape. *Isaiah 9:6:not the "Everlasting Father;" of which phrase, in our common version, much mischief has been made.* Such is the true David of whom that one hundred and thirty-second psalm is written:who "sware unto the Lord, and vowed unto the mighty One of Jacob; Surely I will not come into my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty One of Jacob." Yes, if Jacob's mighty One is to dwell in grace among men, Christ it is who alone, at His own personal cost, must find Him a habitation. The psalm speaks of Israel indeed, and of God's dwelling-place on earth, but how fully is it true of the heavenly city! The Son has provided a resting-place for the Father's heart; and it is the Father's voice which says, " This is My rest forever; here will I dwell, for I have desired it."

But the Father's rest is the place of the Son's affection and delight-eternal delight, for He changes not. The city is the Lamb's bride, won for Himself, as the title implies, in the hour of His sacrifice, purchased by the shedding of His precious blood. Here He sees the fruit of the travail of His soul. This is the home, beloved reader, that God has provided for His own. Well may we long for an inheritance such as this. Here the sparrow will find a house. The ties of affection which unite us here will there receive their full interpretation, refined and spiritualized into links by which the redeemed will be held indissolubly to one another. The all-enveloping love of Christ to each and all will unite all in a tender and complacent delight which will be the reflection and response to that love of His. Yes, the sparrow will find a house indeed.

And the swallow will find a nest also. The bird of freedom, none the less free, held fast by the same cords of love, will spend her unwearied energy in the joy of service:she shall have a nest where she may lay her young. What man calls freedom is commonly, alas! but independence, and thus selfishness and mere unrest. The swallow's restless wing may well be its type. But the swallow serving at the nest is God's image of freedom, and of satisfaction, surely, too. Such service eternity surely will not divorce us from, or we should in one respect fail in likeness to our blessed Lord. He is a servant forever; and service never can be lacking to the kings and priests of God.

But this sparrow's house, this swallow's nest, where is it? How strange, at first sight, the answer! " Thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God!" Yet this is but the first thought, to which we return, and which puts the seal of perfection on the whole picture. God's altars were two, in those tabernacles to which of course the Psalmist refers here:there was the altar of burnt-offering in the outer court, the altar of incense in the sanctuary itself; the one was the atonement-altar, the other the praise-altar:we must look at both.

The altar, in every case, is Christ; the altar that sanctifieth the gift-all and every gift-could be no other. And it is simple that in Him the soul rests, and forever rests. But it is clear that not merely Christ in His own person is intended, but Christ in connection with that of which the altar in its purpose speaks.

First, then, the atonement-altar calls back our hearts to that which is the basis of all our blessings. If forever we are to enjoy a scene in which our hearts shall find joy multiplied as many times as we shall find others to share with us in it, we shall, then at least, forever realize how this is for us the result of that unequaled sorrow, when the accumulated sins of generations were borne by one solitary Man. The blessedness of communion with God and with one another springs out of the forsaking by God of Him whom all else had either rejected or forsaken. Upon this foundation shall we build forever, and here will our hearts adoringly and forever rest. The sparrow will find a house.

That service of love, too, will it not be the basis of all other service, even as our freedom will be the fruit of His purchase ?-" O Lord, doubtless I am Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds." Yes, surely, in the altar of sacrifice the swallow will find her nest.

The praise-altar is itself the fruit of the altar of atonement; in sign of which, the blood was put upon the horns of it:and this is the altar with which the priests in the sanctuary had to do. Our altar of praise is that upon which our whole life is to be offered, and this in the fragrance of the incense, which is Christ Himself. If already our life here, how much more the life to come, of which indeed the present is but the beginning! "Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house; they will be still praising Thee." There we shall rest, where they rest not day or night in the chorus of universal praise. Even now, true service is that; then, it shall be the whole outcome. " To me to live is Christ," says the apostle.-" 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." If of Jerusalem below it be true, how much more of the heavenly city, shall her "gates be called Praise"!

I may say that is part of the appendix to the epistle to the Hebrews, beloved friends. It is the appendix as to doctrine-the final word of the apostle to the Jews-to Jewish Christians,-telling them that now the decisive time had arrived at which they must go forth from Judaism altogether -they must go forth from the camp. They must not any longer serve the tabernacle. They could not serve the tabernacle and eat of the Christian altar.

I want to put a little completely before you the subject we have here,-a very connected one, as we shall find,-and of course to enforce and apply it for our days. We shall find that it is as applicable to us now as it was to the Jewish Christians then.

Now, in the first place, notice that already a long time (for this epistle was written long after it) the decisive period had arrived in which the glory of God for the third time had left its place in the midst of Israel. You remember that when God brought them out of Egypt, He took His place" in the midst of them and led them in the first place to Mount Sinai, and at that mount He proposed to them in view of what He had done,-He had done every thing to bind their hearts to Himself, He had displayed His power and His love toward them in Egypt, He had accomplished a wonderful deliverance for them, He had met their wants and their murmurings in the wilderness by repeated grace, and now He says, "You have seen how I have borne you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. If now you will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people:for all the earth is Mine; and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation." And the people answered, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do."

Alas! beloved, it was all simple that they ought to have obeyed His voice and kept His covenant; but on the other hand, had they known themselves better, they would have dreaded to promise as to what they would do. God then gives them the law from Mount Sinai-the ten commandments; His whole manner changing as He does it, for it was a fiery law He was giving. Alas! it was not a law under which they could stand. But they needed it, and God saw their need, to test their condition, that they might see where they were. And Moses goes up into the mount, in order to receive from the Lord those same commandments written on tables of stone, that they might be kept abidingly amongst them.

Moses was there forty days in the mount, and before he came down again, before as yet therefore the people had received the tables of the covenant, they had broken them, and were worshiping the golden calf before the mount that had shaken and trembled in the presence of Jehovah.

That, beloved, was the end of the first trial-a very brief trial, but a very complete end so far. The glory, as a consequence, or the tabernacle which was connected with the glory, moved out of their midst. " Moses took the tent and pitched it outside the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it," not the tabernacle of the congregation, for that is really a very wrong translation of the word, but he called it the "tent of meeting;" for all that sought the Lord, it says, now went outside the camp, or the congregation, to the tabernacle. It was not, therefore, the tabernacle of the congregation; it was not in the midst of the congregation at all, nor did it belong to them, but it was outside the congregation as a mass, and individuals who sought the Lord went out to meet Him there. It was therefore called the tent of meeting.
But this, the first trial, was over,-it ended in judgment; but it ended also in the display of God's sovereign mercy-" I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will, have compassion;" and He takes them up again. But now, if He gives the law a second time, He gives it, beloved friends, accompanied -with other declarations, different from any thing that had gone before,-He now couples His mercy with it, He declares the name of the Lord-the name of Jehovah; and as He passes by Moses He proclaims, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." Thus, while He gave them the law again, He now accompanied it with a declaration of His goodness and patience,-aye, and of His forgiving sin. It was still law,-they were still under responsibility to keep that; but now He was going to exercise patience, He would forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin; and yet, beloved, at the same time, He could not clear the guilty.

Now, that was a new state of things. As the first giving of the law tried man as to what he was as godly or ungodly-his present state (it proved, alas! that he was ungodly), so the second giving of the law was the testing of whether man (for I say, "man," not merely Israel; for "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man,")-of whether man, I say, with all the opportunity that He could give him, had power to recover. Still he had to keep the law, but God would give him abundant opportunity, and assistance to him who had failed, to try again. It was really what you find written in the prophet Ezekiel'-" When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness which he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive." You see, at the first giving of the law, there was no question of saving one's soul at all. It was not salvation, nothing was said of it. "Now, if a man were a wicked man, here was God's mercy toward him. He could say now, if you turn from your wickedness, and do what is lawful and right, you shall save your soul alive. That is, He would cancel the blotted page of his life and permit him to turn over a clean page-a new leaf, as people say. Only mark, if he turns over a new leaf, he must keep the new leaf clean,-he must do what is lawful and right. What is lawful is measured by law; he has to do that which is lawful and right.

Alas! beloved friends, it was as impossible at last as at first. It was impossible ever to produce for God that unblotted leaf He wanted. It was impossible to bring to God His requirement, how ever low that requirement might be. God could not accept the blotted leaf, and man could never bring the unblotted. Thus now the testing proved that he was without strength-not only ungodly, but without strength also. Those are the two parts of man's condition, and these the two givings of the law show.

I do not want to dwell on this now, but it is of immense importance, beloved friends; because, in reality, what many think is the gospel in the present day is just man turning from his wickedness to save his soul alive. And it is that the apostle says, in the third chapter of the second epistle to the Corinthians, that it is "the ministration of death" and "of condemnation." That is all it accomplished for man. True, that was something- nay, a great deal, and a very real "ministration." A strange expression perhaps you think it. A ministration of grace you understand, but you don't perhaps understand a ministration of condemnation. Now, that was man's first want:what he wanted was, to have the knowledge of himself, to see that he must be debtor entirely to God's mercy. What he wanted was, not mere help to save himself, but God's salvation.

Now, that second testing by the law lasted a long time, for God had revealed Himself as forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; so He went on, forgiving and forgiving, and trying generation after generation, to see if any one could be found who could fulfill His requirements. Under that covenant, with those tables in their ark, they went into the land; but, as you know, that ark itself went captive into Babylon. God had to disown the people after all, by the prophet Hosea, and say they were not His people. So that testing came to an end. The glory went outside a second time. Ezekiel, if you remember, sees the glory leave the city, and now you find a remarkable expression in the books that give that time of the Babylonish captivity, God is now called the " God of heaven." If you look back to the time when the ark passes through the Jordan to its place in the land, you will find that it is said, " the ark of the covenant of the God of all the earth passed through." God in Israel had His place on the earth; He dwelt between the cherubim; but after this time He is called the God of heaven.

Nebuchadnezzar comes and establishes his empire where formerly had been the throne of God. God takes up Nebuchadnezzar and delivers the kingdom to him. " God hath made thee a king of kings." He puts every thing into Nebuchadnezzar's hands as to the earth, and if He rules still, as He must, it is as Daniel says,-providentially- "in the kingdom of men."

But God allowed a remnant to come back from Babylon into the land once more-into the city which had been ruined through their folly and rebellion, to raise it up again, and again to build their altar and temple. But, beloved, there was this remarkable difference now,-there was no glory. When they came back, they came as "not God's people"-"Lo-ammi;"-under the Persian kings, which God had set over them for their sins; without the ark of the covenant; without the Urim and Thummim. The ark was where His throne was, and the Urim and Thummim were the means by which God spoke to them ordinarily. There was therefore now no dwelling of God amongst them:nothing but an empty temple, and no ordinary means of communication with God. He could raise up prophets, and so He did; and the prophets of that time, Haggai and Zechariah, look onward to a future time, owning the ruin which had come in, and basing all their expectations on the coming of the Deliverer.

It was the time in which the great lesson was the lesson of their failure; it was not now any keeping of the law, so to speak, at all. I don't mean to say that the law was repealed, but that was not the point. They had all failed. Their very return there under their changed masters was the thing which marked out the different condition in which they were from any thing before ; and now, as I say, the lesson was this:that they should accept humbly the judgment which was upon them, and wait in brokenness of spirit for the Deliverer.

But now, alas! you find again what the power of Satan is, and how subtly he can blind, through man's folly, the heart of man. It is very striking, and people generally notice it as favorable to them, that after their return, they were no more idolaters.

It had been their special sin. The prophet asks, you remember, " Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but My people have changed their glory for that which doth not prof-it." Even from the wilderness they had. There was first the golden calf, and all through the wilderness they had taken up " the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of their god Remphan, figures which they made to worship them." God had declared that He was the one God, but they were idolaters to the core of the heart.
But as soon as there was no God in their midst -as soon as the temple was empty and the glory had departed-as soon as they were in the ruin which their sin had brought about, then immediately Satan came forward, not in the garb of idolatry any more, but now to resist the sentence which God had pronounced upon them,-now to persuade them that after all they were not Lo-ammi-that they were God's people, and to say,

"The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." In fact, pharisaism was the growth of that period, and pharisaism was the self-righteousness which resisted God's sentence upon them, pretending to have a. righteousness when God had emphatically declared that man had none. So it was when that Deliverer prophesied of came, and when the glory, in a deeper and more wonderful way than ever, was once more in their midst,-aye, the "glory of the only begotten Son, in the bosom of the Father"-the Antitype of the glory of that tabernacle of old,-when He who was to come did come, and was amongst them in love and grace, ready to meet them with all the mercy and tenderness,-not coming to be ministered to, but to minister,-not requiring, but to give with both hands -to give without limit-to give as God,-alas! these Pharisees could turn comfortably to one another and say, " Which of the Pharisees have believed on Him?" Pharisees they were who slew the Lord of glory.

And when the Lord of life and glory died, the glory once more departed, the Lord went outside of the gate, outside of Jerusalem, outside of the holy city, outside of the people. I say, the glory went outside when the Lord suffered without the gate. It was the third time this had taken place, and a third is a more than sufficient witness. Two witnesses are true, but a threefold witness is given here that there is nothing in man's heart for God. Not only when he had the law he broke it, but, alas! the carnal mind was enmity against God,-a cross was all they had for the Saviour and Deliverer. The glory of God had gone without the camp when the Lord Jesus Christ suffered without the "gate, and now there was not only decisive rejection of the people, but a decisive sentence upon man as man. He was ungodly; he was without strength; the mind of the flesh was enmity against God:that was the threefold condemnation.

And now, beloved, as a matter of course, Judaism ends; and why? Because Judaism was the seeking, upon God's part, something from man, as long as there could be any hope of it, so to speak. Of course, He knew perfectly how it would be; He had pronounced upon man, in fact, before ever there was any law at all; He had said that every imagination of man's heart was only evil continually. And the testing could only bring that out. Man would not believe it, and forced it to be experimentally brought out. As I say, therefore, that which had been instituted for his trial,-that which was to be the means, if possible, of establishing his righteousness, necessarily passed away. As to this, all was over; there was nothing in man to be brought out, save that which God had pronounced long before, that" every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Now, if you look at Judaism, there was every thing to lay hold of man naturally in it. There was every thing for the eye, a brilliant ceremonial; every thing for the ear, all the concord of sweet sounds there could be. There was every thing naturally to make man religious; every tie of nature was to act on him,-the whole nation,–children with the fathers, rulers and people, to follow the Lord together. There was every kind of motive that could be brought to bear upon man:natural affection, gratitude, (his history,-nay, his present, full of divine intervention on his behalf,) self-interest, for if obedient, he would be blest in basket and in store. If he had an ear to hear, if he had a heart to understand, if there were any thing in him susceptible to divine cultivation, God would thus bring forth fruit unto Himself. All failed, and the cross was the solemn sentence upon man that there was nothing in him whatever for God; no righteousness, and more than that, no strength; more than that, no response in his heart to the fullest grace:he crucified the Lord of glory.

And now, beloved, you will understand how, though God did bear long with those who clung to Judaism,-although He took into account all the sanction which He Himself had given it for His own wise purposes for a certain time, and was slow to break the links that bound them to it, yet, of necessity, the time must come which should snap those links forever. There must be a weaning-time; but when Isaac was weaned, so to speak, Ishmael's nature was brought fully out. He and his mother must be put out of the house. The law and the children of law must depart; and now the apostle's word to these Christian Jews is, You must come outside the camp. There must be no more dallying-no more delay. There must be decision now:you must come outside of the camp altogether:God has gone out; it is a mere forsaken ruin.

Now, beloved, we want to apply this to ourselves. As I have said already, that was not Israel's sentence merely. Are we better? that is what the apostle asks-Are we better? God took up that nation, dealt with them by the law, but for what? "We know that whatsoever the law saith it saith to them that are under the law." But for what? "That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God." It was not merely that Israel, but that all the world, might become guilty before God. In fact, the cross was not Israel's sin alone. It was not merely the Jews that put the Lord to death, but the Gentiles also; and, beloved, that cross was, as the Lord Himself says, when He was looking forward to it, " the judgment of this world." It was the judgment of the world-not the judgment of Israel simply, but the judgment of the world.

Now mark, beloved friends, then, the Lord has gone outside the camp. If man is given up in that way,-totally given up as to having any thing in him whatever for God, what remains? Well, this:either absolute judgment or absolute grace. Nothing else will do, no middle ground is possible. That is where the world is left now. Not, mark, beloved friends, under trial with the issue undetermined. That is really how people look at it. They speak of being under probation, and they are doubtful as to how it will turn out with them; but there is nothing doubtful about it. People are not under probation, beloved; they have been under probation, and the result is, that " there is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." That is the judgment of the world, and man, as man, is a prisoner under condemnation, under sentence,-not on trial, but under sentence. But mark, then, what an aspect that gives now to the blessed gospel, that it is God's message of mercy in the midst of this state of things. The only question is now, Will man accept this grace? will he accept this wondrous grace of God? No question as to being lost,- "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost." No question as to being condemned, -all the world is guilty before God. No chance of getting a new trial; no pleading will avail for that. But now, blessed be God, God is in grace coming out to the lost,-to man without strength and ungodly,-to man a sinner,-aye, an enemy. Listen to the apostle Paul, who was the expression of that in his own person:he says, " When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly;" " while we were yet sinners Christ died for us;" and again, " When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." That is where the gospel meets those who are ungodly and without strength, as the two givings of the law have proved men,-enemies, as the cross has proved. God's own blessed grace nevertheless is here for every one who will accept it.

Now mark, if one accept it, he must, on the other hand, accept too God's sentence about himself. Unless he accept the sentence upon himself, he cannot really accept the grace that is offered him; and that is why those two things go together, which it is of the utmost importance to keep together,-repentance and faith. They were the two things, you know, which God bore witness to by Paul,-"Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." Repentance is acceptance on man's part of the sentence under! which he lies; faith is the acceptance, on the other hand, of the mercy which comes to him in that condition. I would dwell just a moment upon it, because of its real importance. You know, in many men's minds repentance is man's turning round and doing what is lawful and right, to meet God half way, and to save his soul alive. Now that is exactly what the second giving of the law showed man never could do.

But now the point is, Will man accept the sentence upon him ? Will he set to his seal that God is true? Will he learn his condition from the lips of God Himself, and bow his head and own where he is? The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. But, beloved, unless man believes he is lost, what then? He doesn't want such a Saviour. That is how in Luke 15:the Lord puts it there. The Pharisees find fault when the publicans crowd to Him. He puts this parable:" What man of you having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until he find it; and when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost."

Now, beloved, what is His own application of that? An application very plain in view of those by whom He was surrounded at that moment. But what was His own application? "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance:"- who, never knowing they are lost, never will be debtors to God's mere mercy. Such were those Pharisees who were finding fault with grace. What is the definition, then, that the Lord gives of a repenting sinner? A "lost sheep." You see, He was speaking to the heart-not mere doctrine. He was speaking thus in order to lay hold of the souls round about Him. These poor sinners, at least, would know that the lost sheep meant them, -aye, and these Pharisees too that the ninety-nine that needed no repentance were themselves. In fact, there were no such persons.

The lost sheep is one who has come to an end of himself, and is debtor wholly to the grace that comes after him, to seek and to save him where he is. To put it again-take as an illustration, beloved friends, what the Lord has given us elsewhere about this very thing-repentance. Who was, Job? The very best man upon the earth. When God wishes to teach us the lesson of repentance He does not go to the jails. People do that. God takes up the very best man on earth. He says deliberately of Job, " There is no one like him on earth." But what does He do? He passes that man through unexampled sorrows which have made his name a proverb, and, beloved friends, for what? What are the last words of Job? "I repent in dust and ashes"-"I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Was he turning over a new leaf? was he repenting of his sins? Why, beloved friends, he was the best man upon the earth at any rate; so if he had to repent and turn over a new leaf, it would be pretty hard for any body else. Was he a drunkard delivered from his cups? was he a criminal just let out of prison? He was the very best man on earth. What did he , repent of? Himself,-he abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes. What was Job's repentance? Turning over a new leaf and cleaving faster to his righteousness and all that? No, beloved:his repentance was giving up all pretension to righteousness, and taking his place in self-abhorrence before God. Job was a child of God, -a saint. That makes it so solemn. " Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified."

Oh, if there is any soul that needs God's blessed gospel, it is His gospel that God's grace comes to you just where you are;-just as it met Saul of Tarsus on the way to Damascus. What sort of man was he? The best man on earth? The chief of sinners. This wonderful grace can meet the chief of sinners as well as the best man on earth. He had done the best he could to blot out the name of Christ from under heaven; but God met him there,. not merely ungodly and without strength, but an enemy, and reconciled him to Himself through the death of His Son. Beloved, how outside of every thing in man's thought that is! Blessed be God, that is the only gospel that is worth any thing,-good news that comes to man where he is and as he is, and meets him with complete salvation, where he is and as he is.

But now mark, then, that is the giving up of Judaism. You see, Judaism is not given up because it is worthless, but because it has accomplished its work. The schoolmaster has given his lessons well; but the result is, for every body that has learned those lessons-there is none that has done good. If he takes his place there, grace can meet him; and thus Hagar is Sarah's handmaid, but not to be put in Sarah's place. Now mark, the exhortation to these Christian Jews is to go forth to Him without the camp. What a solemn thing that is! Look at His cross-there it is, without the gate. Here is a people whom God has been nurturing for centuries, whom He has dealt with in constant and tender love, delivering them again and again, making manifest His power before their eyes, giving them His commandments, line upon line, and raising up prophets and sending them to them, carefully educating them for this present time. And what do they do? When He of whom all the prophets have spoken comes to His own, what do they do? Reject Him utterly! Beloved, that is what we all of us are, apart from God's sovereign grace.

Therefore you will notice that when the apostle goes out to men, he tells us, " I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling; and my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of spirit and of power; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." "We preach," he says, "Christ crucified; to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness." We preach a Christ who could not commend Himself to the world. How vain to try by eloquence to win man's heart! How vain to try by any human power! It must be the power of God's own blessed Spirit, and nothing else.

But let us, beloved friends, before we pass on, look at this cross again-the wonderful cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to show you what atonement is here. It was death that was needed. Man was under death, and the Lord Jesus Christ had to come and take his sentence; but was it only death? was it only death? The death of Christ was God's sentence upon man, but is there not more than that? Ah, yes! Scripture says, "After death, the judgment."-"It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." If the blessed Son of God, then, would come into our place to save us, is it only death that He must take? No, He must take judgment also.

Mark, then, how it is put here. " The bodies of those beasts," says the apostle, "whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin, are burned without the camp." You see, it was only one kind of sacrifice of which the blood could go into the sanctuary to be presented to God. We have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. Where, then, is that blood? It is in the sanctuary, on the mercy-seat, right before God. But what was the blood that could penetrate there? There were a great many sacrifices,-there was the paschal sacrifice, there were the burnt-offering, the peace-offering, the trespass-offering, besides other grades of the sin-offering itself. Of all, there was only one offering whose blood could be put upon the mercy-seat, which could really avail to open the way to God. What was that? It was that in which the body of the victim was burned outside the camp.

What does that mean? It has the most unutterably solemn meaning, beloved friends. What it says is this:that death alone would not do; that a violent death alone, the shedding of blood-would not do. Outside the camp is where it is insisted the sacrifice must be; that is, outside the place of all recognized relationship with God; for such a place, while He remained in connection with the people, the camp was. If a man were a leper, for instance, and defiled, he was put outside the camp. Outside the camp was the place of the unclean,- of those who, as the leper, were cut off, not merely from the people, but from the approach to the Lord at all. So you find of Uzziah, the king of Israel though He was, but for his sin a leper.

That, only in the full reality of it, is the judgment which awaits guilty man; when, as rejecting God, God shall in His righteousness reject him. That awful distance! who knows (blessed be God that we do not know!) what it is? We are in a world where yet God's mercies come, as the sun upon the evil and on the good, or His tender rain upon the just and unjust. It is only here, encompassed by the infinite compassions of God, that one can dare to dream of doing without God; but to do without God is nothing short of hell. It is the " outer darkness " of which Scripture speaks, where no ray of light is; for God, the Light of lights, is absent! Thank God, we do not know it. May none among us here ever know it. Only One ever did, to come out of it again; and we, permitted, as it were, to stand by the cross in the awful hour of the Saviour's agony, may look at least upon its outside, if we cannot (as we cannot) penetrate its inner reality.

For what meant that darkness which in full day wrapped the cross? People talk about nature sympathizing with her Lord, and all that. It was no such thing. God is light, and darkness is the withdrawal of light. God had withdrawn. Out of the midst of it He proclaims its nature when there breaks from the lips of the Holy One that terrible cry, " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" That was the Sin-offering; that was the Victim burned outside the camp. It was the One away, in our place of distance,-away from God.

The very Son of His bosom He was, and yet when He was made sin for us, though He knew no sin, He must know its desert. Only the blood of a Victim burned outside the camp could open the way for us to God. There was no altar, therefore, in such a case; it was the holy Sin-offering, and yet it was burned upon the ground without an altar. And what is that altar? The altar that sanctifies the gift is surely the type of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. This it was that gave value to the gift; it was what He. was Himself that made His offering so perfectly acceptable ; and the gift upon the altar, as in the burnt-offering, showed the perfect acceptability of it all, -not the perfect judgment of sin; that was in the sin-offering, of which I was speaking,-but the perfect acceptability of the person and of the work of Christ.
On the other hand, in the sin-offering we look at the judgment of sin, and do not see, so to speak, who the person is. It is simply one in the sinner's place, and thus as if it were the sinner; no thought of His personal perfection comes in to prevent or turn aside the judgment due. Man's portion was death and judgment; He bore both-bore in His own soul the judgment before God, and, because man was under death also, died. Each of these has its place in the atoning work; and as corresponding to the one, the vail of the temple was rent in the midst; in correspondence with the other, the earth too was rent, and gave up her dead. How beautiful that testimony to the sufficiency of the work, and what it had accomplished! The vail of the temple was rent, because the darkness was gone from the face of God, and, man's judgment borne, he could draw near. For those who believe, in Him, the darkness gone is gone forever. But more:death too is gone; the keys of death and hades are at the girdle of the risen Saviour. Therefore the rent earth gives up her dead. Thus we find as to the work accomplished.

But thus we see that it was not only necessary that the Lord should die. Never mistake-never think of it as if mere death would satisfy. Look at the twenty-second psalm, and you will find His was such a death as never was before. It was the death of a righteous one; yet when was a righteous one ever forsaken? which of the righteous had God turned His face from? Outwardly, indeed, He might give them up to their enemies,- aye, let them go through death in its worst form; but after all, only to make their triumph more assured. For He was there to minister to them, to turn the shadow of death into morning. He was there to sustain their souls, and with His rod and His staff to comfort them. Yet here was He in whom God had proclaimed His delight, and, in the hour of His unequaled need, He was forsaken. Why, beloved ? Faith surely can give the answer. You will find, if you look closely, that the psalm itself gives it. Is it not the answer, when after that " Why hast Thou forsaken Me ?" the Sufferer exclaims, " But Thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." Thus alone could a holy God dwell amid the praises of His people.

But this, then, was the cross; and in the cross what do I find? Surely the complete judgment of man; his judgment taken, but his judgment owned by the One who comes to take his place. Beloved, we cannot lay hold upon that cross without accepting that judgment. We must go "outside the camp " to Him. He is there, to go outside. I must go outside too.

From this point it is, in the passage in Hebrews before us, that we find all the blessedness of these sacrifices beginning to be told out to us. We have come to God by the Sin-offering; what do we find next? An altar of which I have a right to eat. That is not the Sin-offering, for there is no altar there. It is the Peace-offering. An offering in which part went up to God, part furnished the table for the offerer, and part of it was for the priest. So that God and man, and the mediator between God and man (Christ in type), can sit down and rejoice in one common joy. An altar from which the sacrifice is gone up to God, on the other hand, furnishes from that same sacrifice a portion for man. " We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle." Do you understand that? He says, You cannot eat that and serve the tabernacle. How can you? Why, that death of the Lord Jesus Christ means the complete putting an end to all that is connected with Judaism. All Christian ground is outside this camp. You must go outside. Hasn't He gone outside? Yes, He has gone outside, and He remains there. You must go outside to Him. There is your altar-an empty altar. Do you see? Ah, if we are Christians, we have got to believe profoundly in that empty altar. The work is accomplished; it is not accomplishing; it never needs to be accomplished any more; it is accomplished once for all; it is done. And we have got an empty altar; empty, because the sacrifice is accepted and gone up to God. What is this empty altar for? Look at what the apostle says. " By Him therefore," he says, " let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually." The altar is what sanctifies the gift. The Lord Jesus Christ it is who gives our praises power to ascend to God. By Him we offer-no propitiatory offering now, but a sacrifice of praise for propitiation accomplished. Do you see, then, what you have done? You have crossed from the court of the tabernacle to the holy place; from the altar of burnt-offering passed to the golden altar, which is now-the vail being rent- right in the presence of God. We have left the altar of sacrifice, and we have come to the priest's altar in the holy place. We have come to offer our sacrifice of praise continually, that is, the fruit of our lips confessing ("giving thanks" it is, but in the margin "confessing") His name,-"that is, the fruit of our lips confessing His name." Oh, be-loved, what a sweet and blessed thing that is-to be able to come to God to confess His name-to utter the name of Jesus before Him! Oh, there is not any thing so sweet to God as the true confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is not any thing that so delights Him as when He sees a soul profoundly conscious of the value of Christ, who when he comes before Him has nothing to speak of but the name of Jesus.

But now mark, there is another thing. This golden altar is an altar of sacrifice of praise continually-nothing else but praise. Is there any thing else? Well, there is this, although it is not really any thing else in character,-" To do good and to communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." Here are more sacrifices, offerings for the same incense-altar-not the fruit of the lips now, but the life. That is the character of a Christian life. How beautiful it is! A whole volume of doctrine in it too. A Christian life is a sacrifice of praise to God in which the infinite value of the Lord Jesus Christ is confessed to Him. It is a sacrifice of praise to God, the heart thanking God for what He has done. Not a new claim upon God, not a claim at all; but the answer to God's claim, the answer of praise to Him for all that He has done for us.

Beloved, is there any one amongst us here who has any other thought of a Christian life than that?

Alas! many a so-called Christian has quite another; and many a true one also has thoughts that sadly mar the character of a Christian life. Praise is the instinct of every true heart; but there are prerequisites to be known before the life can be what it should be. And the first thing to be known (without which God Himself is not rightly known) is salvation,-full and eternal salvation. If all is not settled as to this,-if the grace of God is not apprehended by the soul, necessarily the only other principle will come, in, and the life will be lived for self, however religiously, and not for God. "Fear which hath torment" will take the place of that love by which alone faith works. How can life be a sacrifice of praise and thanks-giving to One known as a Judge at whose bar it is possible we may be adjudged to hell? No, the hired servant necessarily had no place at the Passover-feast; and we must know the value for us of the work of Jesus if our life is to be the thanksgiving of the incense-altar; for the sacrifice offered there is the confession of His name and of His worthiness, and that alone.

Now let us return to consider the exhortation of the apostle to the Jews here. What application to us has this going outside the camp? Has it "any? For you may say, If the camp be Judaism, we are not Jews. Hear me, then, as patiently as you can, while I seek as plainly as I can to answer this question. It is quite true for all of us, I suppose, who are here to-day that Judaism in the full sense has no attraction and therefore no danger for us, but it would be very light dealing with what is of the greatest possible importance to us to dismiss the subject thus. Judaism in its essence may be where ceremonial Judaism has no place at all. Nor, when I speak of its essence, must any suppose that the rejection of Christ is part of this. It is the sin of Jews, but not the fault of what God instituted, of course. It is this that God instituted at first that here by the apostle He calls on them to leave.

We have seen what Judaism in its essence was. It was the trial of man-an ordained and of course needed trial. Nor was it a trial of man only, but of man's way also. You can easily understand that God Himself had no need for Himself of any experiment. He knew and had pronounced upon man long before the law. But man knows not himself, nor will believe the simple statement of God; and not knowing himself, nor his inability to stand before Him, his thought is ever of keeping law in some sense. If Hagar be its type, as the apostle says, God found Hagar in Abram's tent. He could not have first put her there. Finding her in this connection with the man of faith, He sends her back that the experiment He is making may be fully made. Abram shall have his Ishmael, but only to find that Ishmael is not the seed, nor Hagar she by whom he is to be really fruitful.

All human religion merely is law in some way. Grace is God's thought, which man never could anticipate. Alas! even when God has revealed it he turns back from it, as they were doing in Galatia, to experiment with himself by the law still. If he does not deny Christ, he supplements faith in Him with legal commandments, ceremonies, means to work upon the flesh and make it fruitful. He instead of going to Him outside the camp. Hence the state of Christendom to-day. If you dare to look, you will find what is essential Judaism every where:in forms, in doctrines; disguised with Christian names, which no way alter its nature or hinder its effect.

Look at ritualism. It allows, of course, that Christ has come, and Christ has died; but it would seem as if only to insist on the inefficacy of His work. The value of His one offering is only to give mysterious virtue to a Jewish system of multitudinous offerings by which it is overshadowed and eclipsed. It is in fact the shadow, these the substance; in which, they say, He is continually offered,-equaling Him only with the beast-sacrifices, whose constant repetition, the apostle tells us, shows that they could never take away sin! Therefore, as the necessary result, they can never tell you that sin is taken away, as they quote, "No man knoweth that he is worthy of favor or hatred by all that is before them."

But we need not travel so far as Rome, or her would-be imitators in other ranks. Little less dreary doctrine is proclaimed ofttimes by those who are loud in their rejection of her enormities. By how many is assurance of salvation denied as strenuously; and by how many is salvation itself reduced to a mere conditional forgiveness which renders peace with God, for a soul conscious of its real condition, a mere impossibility. Whenever this is the case, it is certain that grace is so far unknown; and wherever grace is unknown, some system of works-that is, of law-is the sure accompaniment. These are the two things the apostle opposes to one another as mutually exclusive.-" If it be of work, it is no more of grace; otherwise work is no more work."And again, " If it be of grace, it is no more of work; otherwise grace is no more grace."

And wherever these systems are found, necessarily a " camp " is the result-a people of God, on legal footing, under trial to see what the end will be with them, and as to whom you cannot pronounce whether they are really of God or not. No separation of children of God as such is possible:" tares arid wheat," as they apply this, " grow up together to the harvest;" nay, the world is often openly gathered in, to be put under Christian influences, and Christian services again are made to take a form attractive to the world.

Then the eye and the ear and all the sensitive man are appealed to, as of old in Judaism; heedless of the lesson of the cross of Christ, which has pronounced once for all that not only is man ungodly and without strength, but also that the mind of the flesh is enmity against God. This is the solemn reality. Were it ignorance simply, education might remove the ignorance, as men still dream. If we have gone out to Christ outside the camp, it is impossible to accept this. With the complete judgment of man realized, Christ and His Spirit, and these alone, are left as of avail for him.

For the third and last time, the glory is outside the camp. On the failure under the law first given, it went outside, as we have seen. The end of the second dispensation of law was when God had pronounced them Lo-ammi-"not My people." Ezekiel it was who saw the glory then withdraw; and Nebuchadnezzar could then come and plant his throne where God had left His. The testimony of law was really then complete. Already its sentence was given,-"There is none righteous; there is none that doeth good." And when a remnant gathered again under their Persian masters to rebuild their temple, it was not to reopen a question completely settled, but to wait in the sense of their utter ruin for Him who should come in grace to deliver. It was at this time, alas! that Pharisaism arose, the invention of the prince of this world to build them up in self-righteousness, and make them refuse divine grace. The Lord came. The glory of God in deeper reality then ever shone in their midst, only again to go forth outside the city, when upon a cross the Lord of glory died. The testing of man was now over, – the full discovery of his condition reached, – and Judaism passed away, to be replaced for us here to-night by the "precious faith" of Christianity.

How deadly and disastrous, then, must the confusion be which would bring back again under a Christian dress the old rejected system, the exact opposite of the grace"which has now been declared! Satan's work it is to destroy, if it might be, the glory of Him who alone is the wisdom and power of God for man's salvation. Are we clear of it, beloved friends? Have we gone forth from all that man has established of the Jewish camp, outside to Him, bearing His reproach? For reproach there still is, in various ways and different measures, according as our separation is complete or not; but reproach there is, and will be. Spite of the large going forth of the gospel now, for which, as God's mercy, we must surely praise Him, perhaps there never was a day fuller of schemes for man's improvement without (or up to) Christ; and these are very much one thing; and never perhaps a time in which there was so great a religious mixture and accommodation of Christianity itself to the thoughts of man. From the grosser systems in which Christ and his work are more openly set aside, to the singing of moving words to exciting music in an evangelistic meeting, men proclaim less or more openly that they have not given up hope of man, and that something else or less than Christ and the Spirit will avail toward his recovery. How different his spirit, who, preaching Christ crucified (to the Jew a stumbling-block and to the Greek foolishness) preached not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

I close, beloved friends; may He Himself apply it to our hearts. Honest hearts they need to be to endure the application. And yet if Christ be without the camp, to go forth to Him should not be cost, but gain. The real cost is what would keep us from the place where He is, and where communion with Him is fully to be enjoyed. "Let us go forth to Him without the camp." Plainfield, N.J., July 31st, 1882. F.W.G.

This closes the second part of the book. The general features of the scene are now before us. They wait yet to be transfigured and glorified by the presence of a Man in whom men are to see the glory of the Only Begotten, full of grace and truth. This is what awaits us in the third division of the book.

Deliverance of the persecuted remnant by the exaltation of the Lord to all authority as Son of Man, set over God's works in the world to come, and making Jehovah's name excellent in all the earth,

To the chief musician upon Gittith. A psalm of David.

Jehovah our Lord! how excellent is Thy name in all the earth:who hast set Thy glory above the heavens!

2. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou founded strength, because of all Thine oppressors, to still the enemy and the revengeful.

3. When I behold the heavens, the work of Thy ringers, the moon and stars which Thou hast established;

4. What is frail man, that Thou rememberest him, or the son of Man, that Thou visitest him?

5. Yea, Thou makest him a little lower than the angels, and crownest him with glory and majesty.

6. Thou makest him rule over the works of Thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet;

7. Sheep and oxen, all of them; yea, also the beasts of the field;

8. Fowl of heaven, and fish of the sea:whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas!

9. Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!

Text.-"Gittith," (?) "The Wine-vats:" which the LXX favors. The common opinion is that it is a musical instrument; according to Talmud, "A cithern from Gath." According to the subject, the reference might seem rather to the symbolic meaning of wine, as what "makes glad the heart of man."

(1, 8) "Our Lord," Adonim, a plural form, like Elohim.

(2) "Founded strength:" LXX, "perfected praise," quoted thus, Matthew 20:16 ; but the sanction here given does not show the reading of the Septuagint to be literally exact, but sufficiently so for the practical application which our Lord makes of the passage. "Thine, oppressors:" from tzarar, "straiten, distress." As used here of the Lord's enemies, does it not seem akin to Acts 9:4, 5- "Why persecutest thou Me?"

(4) There are three words for "man" commonly used in Hebrew; "Adam," generic for the race; enosh, which here as elsewhere may be translated "frailman," from anash, "to be sick or weak," and often used in contrast with Ish, implying his nobility.

(5) "A little lower than," literally, " wanting a little of." "Than the angels" has been rendered by some "than God," but the quotation in Hebrews 2:decides in favor of the rendering in the text, which is that of the LXX. Literally, it is "than the gods," and applied to the angels as sons of God, and representing Him to man; see Exodus 7:1.

The third chapter of Genesis is the real commencement of that series of lives of which, as is plain, the book mainly consists. It is where the first man ceases to be "a type of Him that was to come" that he becomes for us a type in the fullest way – figure and fact in one. The page of his life (and but a page it is) that treats of innocency is not our example who were born in sin. Our history begins as fallen, and so too the history of our new life in God's grace.

Figure and fact, as I have observed, are blended together here. We must be prepared for this, which we shall find in some measure the case all through these histories. Especially in this first one of all, what could be more impressive for us than the unutterably solemn fact itself? Children as we are of the fall, its simple record is the most are in what is now our native condition, and also of how this came to be such. It is the title-deed to our sad inheritance of sin. And yet what follows in closest connection may well enable us to look at it steadfastly; for the ruins of the old creation have been, as we know, materials which God has used to build up for Himself that new one in which He shall yet find eternal rest.

A simple question entertained in the woman's soul..is the loss of innocence forever. It is enough only to admit a question as to Infinite Love to ruin all. This the serpent knew full well when he said unto the woman, "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"-that is, Has God indeed said so? In her answer you can see at once how that has done its work. She is off the ground of faith, and is reasoning; and the moment reasoning as to God begins, the soul is away from Him, and then further it is impossible by searching to find Him out. Thus in Paradise itself, with all the evidence of divine goodness before her eyes, she turns infidel at once. "And the woman said unto the serpent, ' We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.' "

Notice how plain it is that she is already fallen. She has admitted the question as to the apparent strangeness of God's ways, and immediately her eyes fasten upon the forbidden thing until she can see little else. God had set (chap. 2:9.) the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and without any prohibition. For the woman now it is the forbidden tree that occupies that place. Instead of life, she puts death (or what was identified with it for her) as the central thing. The "garden of delight" has faded from her eyes. It has become to her the very garden of fable afterward* (where all was not fable, but this very scene as depicted by him who was now putting it before the enchanted gaze of his victim)in which the one golden-fruited tree hung down its laden branches, guarded from man only by the dragon's jealousy. *The garden of Hesperides.* But here God and the dragon had changed places. Thus she adds to the prohibition, as if to justify herself against One who has lost His sovereignty for her heart, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it"-which He had not said. A mere touch, as she expressed it to herself, was death; and why, then, had He put it before them only to prohibit it? What was it He was guarding from them with such jealous care? Must it not be indeed something that He valued highly?

She first adds to the prohibition, then she weakens the penalty. Instead of "ye shall surely die," it is for her only "lest [for fear] ye die." There is no real certainty that death would be the result. Thus the question of God's love becomes a question of His truth also. I do not want upon the throne a being I cannot trust; hence comes the tampering with His word. The heart deceives the head. If I do not want it to be true, to be true, I soon learn to question if it be so.

All this length the woman, in her first and only answer to the serpent, goes. He can thus go further, and step at once into the place of authority with her which God has so plainly lost. He says, not "Ye shall not surely die"-for so much the woman had already said-but "Surely ye shall not die." Her feeble question of it becomes on his part the peremptory denial both of truth and love in God:"Surely ye shall not die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

How sure he is of his dupe! and she on her part needs no further solicitation:" And when the woman saw that the tree was good"-she was Seeing through the devil's, eyes now-" that the tree was good for food"-there the lust of the flesh was doing its work-"and that it was pleasant to the eyes "-there the lust of the eyes comes o-t-"and a tree to be desired to make one wise" -there the pride of life is manifested-" she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat."

Thus the sin was consummated. And herein we may read, if we will, as clear as day, our moral genealogy. These are still our own features, as in a glass, naturally. Let us pause and ponder them for a moment, as we may well do, seriously and solemnly.

It is clear as can be that with the heart man first of all disbelieved. His primary condition was not, as some would so fain persuade us, that of a seeker by his natural reason after God. God had declared Himself in a manner suited to his condition, in goodness which he had only to enjoy, and which was demonstration to his every sense and faculty of the moral character of Him from whose hand all came to him. The very prohibition should have been his safeguard, reminding the sole master of that fair and gladsome scene, were he tempted to forget it, that he had himself a Master. Nay, would not the prohibited tree itself have proved itself still "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," had he respected the prohibition, by giving him to learn what sin was in a way he could not else have known it, as ''lawlessness,'' in subjection to the will of God?

The entertaining of a question as to God was, as we have seen, man's ruin. He has been a questioner ever since. Having fallen from the sense of infinite goodness, he either remains simply unconscious of it,-his gods the mere deification of his lusts and passions,-or, if conscience be too strong for this, involves himself in toilsome processes of reasoning at the best, to find out as afar off the God who is so nigh. He reasons as to whether He that formed the ear can hear, or He that made the eyes can see, or He that gave man knowledge know, or, no less foolishly whether He from whom comes the ability to conceive of justice, goodness, mercy, love, has these as His attributes or not! And still the heart deceives the head:what he wills, that he believes. For a holy God would be against his lusts, and a righteous God take vengeance on his sins; and how can God be good and the world so evil, or love man and let him suffer and die? Thus man reasons, taken in the toils of him who has helped him to gain the knowledge of which he boasts,-so painful and so little availing.

The way out of all this entanglement is a very simple one, however unwelcome it may be. He has but to judge himself for what he is, to escape out of his captor's hands. Self-judgment would justify the holiness and righteousness of God, and make him find in his miseries, not the effect of God's indifference as to him, but of his own sins. It would make him also at least suspect the certainty of his own conclusions, which so many selfish interests might combine to warp.

But still "Ye shall be as gods" deceives him, and thus he will judge every thing, and God also, rather than himself. And so, being his own god, he becomes the victim of his own pride,-his god is his belly, as Scripture expresses it; insufficient to himself, and unable to satisfy the cravings of a nature which thus, even in its degradation, bears witness of having been created for something more, he falls under the power of his own lust, the easy dupe of any bait that Satan can prepare for him.

It is thus evident how the fall from God-the loss of confidence in divine goodness-is the secret of his whole condition — of both his moral corruption and his misery together. For let my circumstances be what they may, if I can see them ordered for me unfailingly by One in whom infinite wisdom, power, and goodness combine, and whose love toward me I am assured of, my restlessness is gone, my will subjected to that other will in which I can but acquiesce and delight:I have " escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust," and I have been delivered from the misery attendant upon it.

To this, then, must the heart be brought back; and thus it is very simple how "with the heart man believeth to righteousness." The faith that is real and operative in the soul (and no other can of course be of any value), first of all and above all in order to holiness, works peace and restoration of the heart to God and, let me say, of God to the. heart. How fatal, yet how common, a mistake to invert this order! And what an inlet of blessedness it is thus to cease from one's own natural self-idolatry in the presence of a God who is really (and worthy to be) that! There is no such blessedness beside.

But we must return to look at man's natural condition. Notice how surely this leprosy of sin spreads, and most, surely to those nearest and most intimate. Tempted ourselves, we become tempters of others, and are not satisfied until we drag down those who love us-I cannot say, I whom we love, for this is too horrible to be called love-to our own level. Nay, if even we would consciously do no such thing, we cannot help doing all we can to effect it. We dress up sin for them in the most alluring forms; we invest them with an atmosphere of it which they breathe without suspicion. The woman may be here more efficient than the serpent. Herself deceived, she does not deceive the man, but. she allures him. The victory is easier, speedier, than that over herself:" She gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."

The first effect is, "their eyes were opened;" the first "invention," of which they have sought out so many since, an apron to hide their shame from their own eyes. Thus conscience begins in shame, and sets them at work upon expedients, whereby they may haply forget their sins, and attain respectability at least, if conscience be no more possible.

How natural such a thought is we are all witnesses to ourselves, and yet it is a thing full of danger. It was the effort to retain just such a "fig-leaf apron which sent the accusers of the adulteress out of the presence of the Lord. " Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone at her" had been like a lightning-flash, revealing to themselves their own condition. They were "convicted in their own consciences;" but a convicted conscience does not always lead to self-judgment or to God:and "they, convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest"-the one who naturally would have most character to uphold,-" even unto the last," and left the sinner in the only possible safe place for a sinner-in the presence of the sinner's Saviour. She, whose fig-leaf apron was wholly gone, who had no more character or respectability to maintain, could stay. This was what the loss of that still left to her; and so had He said to the Pharisees, " The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." This is the misery still of man's first invention, which in so many shapes he still repeats.

When the voice of the Lord God is heard in the garden, the fig-leaf apron avails nothing. He hides himself from God among the trees of the garden:"I was afraid, because I was naked" is his own account. This is what alternates ever with self-justification in a soul:the voice of God to it. These two principles will be found together in every phase of so-called natural religion the world over, and they will be found equally wherever Christianity itself is mutilated or misapprehended, making their appearance again. Man, in short, untaught of God, never gets beyond them; for he never can quite believe that he has for God a righteousness that He will accept, and he never can imagine God Himself providing a righteousness when he has none.

Hence, fear is the controlling principle always. His religiousness is an effort to avert wrath,-in reality, if it might be, to get away from God:and even with the highest profession it may be, still "there is none that seeketh after God." Notice thus, the Lord's picture of the " elder son " in the parable, who, hard-working, respectable, no wanderer from his father, no prodigal, but righteously severe on him who has spent his living with harlots, finds it yet a service barren enough of joy. The music and dancing in the father's house I are a strange sound to him:when he hears it, he calls a servant to know what it all means. His own friends, and his merriment, are all, outside, spite of his correct deportment, and he speaks out what is in his heart toward his father when he says, "Thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends."

There the Lord holds up the mirror for the Pharisee of all time. Plenty of self-assertion, of self-vindication, even as against God Himself; the tie to Him, self-interest; his heart elsewhere; a round of barren and joyless services. This must needs break down in terror when God comes really in:indeed, the principle all through is fear, -servile, not filial.

So Adam hides himself among the trees of the garden, but the voice of the blessed God follows him. "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, 'Where art thou?'

Here, then, we begin to trace the actings of divine grace with a sinner. Righteousness has its way no less, and judgment is not set aside, but maintained fully. And herein is shown out the harmony of the divine attributes, the moral unity of the God whose attributes they are. There is no conflict in His nature. Justice and mercy, holiness and love, are not at war in Him. When He acts, all act.

I have read these verses, beloved friends, not with the thought of trying to bring out, in any wise, even in outline, all that might present itself to me here, but rather taking them as the key to some thoughts with regard to our blessed Lord Himself, in that character which is His exclusively, the character of Mediator. He is the " one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus." And this word, Mediator, means, one who is in the midst-between two. Thus Christ is, on the one hand, with God, for God, and God; and with man, for man, and" man. The fact of what He is in His own person is, I would say, the basis-fact for all the rest.

How wonderful, beloved friends, that there is now in the presence of God for us, a Man,-yea, and upon the Father's throne! though there, of course, because He is, in the highest and most exclusive sense, Son of the Father. He is thus the only begotten Son in virtue of His deity as He is the first-begotten Son in virtue of His humanity- head of a race. In the tabernacle of His manhood was thus displayed, and without a vail, the glory of Godhead. " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt [" tabernacled," the word is,] among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." Thus, what answered to the glory dwelling in the tabernacle of old was the glory of the..Eternal Son. But the glory in Israel's tabernacle they could not behold. The glory of Christ we do behold" (that of which the other was but a type). And why? Because it is full of grace and truth. " No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him"-"told Him out."

Now, in this expression-"full of grace and truth "-we have, in brief, the two main thoughts of the breastplate. "Truth" is" the effect of the light, and God is light. Light is what manifests,- brings out the truth, is the truth. Christ, the light of the world, is the truth come into it:every thing gets its true character from Him. " Grace" while it is what is in God, is toward man. Look, now, at the breastplate. It was, as you know, what was on the heart of the high-priest when he went in to God. In the breastplate were the Urim and Thummim-"lights and perfections," as the words mean; and the Urim and Thummim must be upon the priest in order that he might give an answer from God.

Thus, in the day of the return from the captivity, when the remnant who returned found certain priests who could not show their genealogy, they were put from the priesthood, not because their claim could be disproved, but because it could not be proved. There was no one to decide the question whether they were really priests,-no recognized way of getting answer from God and they were tola that they must wait until there_ should stand up a priest with Urim and Thummim. God might raise up a prophet and send a message through him, as He did at that very time by Haggai and Zechariah, but there was no regular way of access to God, to get answer such as the case required.

Now, these Urim and Thummim are the things I want to speak of particularly. " Lights and perfections" the term means, as I have said. And these things are one:the "lights" are the"perfections,"- they are two ways of speaking of the same thing.

"God" is light;" He is "the Father of lights." That is to say, all partial displays glory", of whatever character, come from Him as Source. Light is a wonderful thing- a thing in which nature itself (now that we have the Word) speaks to us very plainly, and very beautifully too. According to the views of modern investigators, light is (as God is) a trinity – a trinity in unity. These primary rays, so called, make up the one ray of white, or colorless light. There is, at the outset, a very evident basis for the Scripture comparison.

But then there is something more, and more striking, I think; and it is this:that the color by which every thing in nature is clothed comes from the light itself – from the different combinations of express it better, from the partial display by the object of the light itself. To make plain what I mean:A blue object is one in which the red and the yellow rays of the white light are absorbed, and only the blue, therefore, are left to come out. The blue of the object is thus derived from the light itself. So with a green object – the red alone is absorbed, and the blue and yellow combined makes the color green Again, if the blue be absorbed, it is an orange; it the yellow, a purple; and so on for all the rest. Now, what a beautiful thought that is! and how true, that every thing here-every work of God's hands is the display, more or less, of some attribute or attributes in Himself. These colors are the diverse glory of the one light, displayed in a various beauty, which we have not eyes for in the one white ray. Yet, though invisible, these colors are all there, and by being separated from one another are brought to our notice, so that the distinct beauty of each is seen.

Now, that is how God delights to come out and spread Himself before the vision, of His creatures. As "light" in Himself, we could at least but little know Him; but as the "Father of lights," as He displays these before us, we learn Him so.

Take the gospels as an example, in which the one Son, whom in His fullness no man knows, but the Father only," is given to us in four separate ways, that, as Son of David, as Minister (not ministered unto), as Son of Man, as Son of God, we. might be able to discern Him better. So, in fact, the separate books of Scripture divide the truth for us into distinctly characterized parts, too little realized, indeed, for what they are, or accepted in the gracious design of God in shaping them.

So, again, in the Church,-collectively, the "epistle [not epistles] of Christ." No man could be an "epistle" by himself,-the parchment is not broad enough to write it; yet each one, reflecting in his measure some part of the divine image, and getting thus accordingly his character (or color), may help to manifest Him to the eyes of men. Thus, you may find in man, as in Job, remarkable patience; in another, as remarkable energy; seldom, perhaps, one who can display in equal measure the patience and the energy. Men are thus characterized by some overbalance – some one or more things prominently developed, and which often means, a defect of some quality; and yet to our dull eyes the predominant one is thus strikingly brought out.

And so, beloved friends, does God display, in His various dealings with us, His various "attributes; in one thing His holiness shining out preeminently, in another His truth, in another His love, and so on. Thus He adapts His greatness to our littleness, speaking to us in language that we are able to bear, that we may apprehend Him more as He desires we should.

A few words more as to the light. Not that I want to dwell upon this too much; and yet I think it is not in vain, especially in the present day, to speak of what nature presents to us, where Scripture gives the real and only key. We find, if we turn to the first chapter of Genesis, that light was before the sun. It puzzles the wise men to explain" it; nevertheless, for the natural to figure the spiritual, it must have been so. For what is the sun? Is it not a dark earth-mass which God has clothed with the glory of the light, His image? Now, that is what God has done in Christ. He has clothed humanity, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, with the glory of deity; and that is the Sun in Scripture-type. That "Sun of Righteousness" yet to rise upon the world with healing in His wings is Christ – Immanuel:manhood clothed with the glory of the Godhead – dark no more.

Thus the "lights" in the breastplate are the "perfections,"the various perfections, of God Himself. These many-colored jewels are the manifold display of the divine excellency. And mark, these jewels are crystallized lights – unchangeable perfections. It is not a display, passing however great. In the rainbow, the token of God's covenant with the new earth brought through the judgment, you have what is essentially similar in character, but it is the display of God in one act. The whole diversified display of divine glory, I believe,-the whole spectrum of color-banding the storm of divine judgment in the cross. Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him." But however God might thus be at one time displayed, it is for all time that He is displayed; for He is always the same, and that is what is marked here. The jewels never lose and never change their light; and so is God always the " Father of lights," "always " without variableness or shadow of turning.

Mark, now, where these stones are found. They are upon the breastplate. And where is the breastplate? Upon the heart of the high-priest. The stones press upon the heart of Israel's high-priest. Surely we know now what that means,-that the one who goes to God for man (and that is what the priest does) must be one who has upon his heart before he goes, and as going, all that God Himself is. Only Christ could be, or was, that; but all that God is, in every varied attribute of His- every color, so to speak, of the light-is there upon His heart abidingly; so dear, that He can never forget it, never lose sight of what is due to God in any one solitary particular.

But even that, taken by itself, would not qualify Him for a mediator. There must be something else, and there is. The mediator-priest springs from the tribe of Levi – "joined," – third Israel ; for in resurrection (of which these " thirds " manifestly speak)" alone can He "join or bring others to God. In Himself personally He is indeed, we know, a Levi – "joined" – only begotten and first-begotten – Man to God ; but in resurrection is He priest-Levite to join as Mediator others. This He is perfectly in heart as office ; for upon these jewels, " graven upon them with the engraving of a signet" ("Set me as a seal upon thine heart," says the spouse in the Song of Songs), are the names of God's people,- here, of course, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel ; for us, the type of all the people of God. These twelve names are engraved upon the jewels, so that you would have to break the jewels to pieces to get them off. There they abide, unchangeably as the jewels themselves. In the light of the jewels you read the names. They are identified with the display of the lights and perfections of God Himself ; so that here is One upon whose heart the people of God dwell, unfailingly and unchangeably connected with the display of the glory of God. Standing as He does on the one hand for God, on the other for man, it is not as if these were two separate or sep-arable things with Him, much less things that might be in opposition to one another; they are things seen together as the names written upon the Urim and Thummim-jewels – typically, the divine perfections.

Beloved, that is what the Lord Jesus Christ is ; that is how He abides before God now, the blessed One who can never forget what is due never the need of His people, never the righteousness which must be displayed in the blessing itself. Aye, for blessing, there must be righteousness! and again, thank God, for righteousness now (such the value of His work), there must be blessing! There is no discord then; there is the very opposite. The blessing of the people is the very way in which the glory of God is to be displayed. God takes them up for that very end; not merely to bless them and retain this too, but to show it forth in blessing them, to the end " that in the ages to come He might show forth the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."

Thus the names are upon the breastplate, and the breastplate upon the high-priest's heart. How glorious the Person in whom all this is fulfilled-in whom Godhead and manhood meet in one!-Immanuel!-in His own person " God with us." And oh, beloved friends, marvelous as the cross is, (surely, the most marvelous thing that could be,) yet we should do Him wrong if we thought of that prepared body of His as if it was only prepared that He might go to the cross in it. No, He has taken it to keep it forever and ever; He has taken it as the equivalent of those bored ears of the Hebrew servant which signified perpetual service when he might have gone out free. Think of One who looked down upon us when we had all gone astray from God-"turned every one to his own way "-and, seeing how we had fretted ourselves against the will of God, and esteemed as bondage His easy yoke, took up Himself that slighted path of obedience,-took up that service which we had so disparaged,-never again to relinquish it, becoming Himself the " Leader and Perfecter of faith," " learning obedience "-He to whom all was due- " from the things which He suffered "!

For that path of His lay not through a fair world, decked out as Adam's was, but in one such as the sin of Adam and our sin had made it,-a world to Him, beloved friends, such as we can scarcely have an idea of; yet He chose such a world in order to display in it, amid all its misery, how blessed the Father's will is.

See Him ministering to one poor needy soul, as at the well of Sychar, where hungered and athirst Himself He ministers to her and is satisfied." I have meat to eat," He says to the disciples, as they bring Him the food which they have procured,- " I have meat to eat which ye know not of."He is satisfied. His meat is, to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work. In hunger, in thirst, in weariness, in lowliest service to one poor sinner, the Son of Man finds His own satisfaction, and delights in the Father's will. And such He, was He is, however different may be His surroundings now. He has taken this place unrepentingly, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever."Yes, if I look at Him, I see how in His very person God and man have met in an eternal embrace impossible to be sundered. God's Fellow on the one side, owned such when He was upon the cross-"'The Man that is My Fellow.' saith Jehovah of Hosts;" on the other, the cross accomplished, "anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows.

What preciousness in the manhood of One of whom the apostle can say, " We have heard [Him] with our ears, seen with our eyes, looked upon and our hands have handled "! Notice how in these words all distance is put away, and He comes, as it were, continually nearer to us. For He might not be visibly in sight at all to be heard with the ears, so it is added, " seen with our eyes!" Then, it is no mere momentary vision,-" we have looked upon" Him-have had Him before us steadily and continuously. But more, "our hands have handled" Him. And yet this is the One who is God over all, blessed forever; One " whom no man hath seen nor can see, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto." And this it is that gives its infinite value to that manhood in which He gives Himself into our hands and hearts in all the blessed reality of unchanging love.

But if He is God with God and God for man, He is also man for God – true, perfect man, in whom manhood finds and fills its destined place forever, – God's thought from eternity. "Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" has its answer in the One made a little lower than the angels; His own title for Himself in the address to Laodicea-"The beginning of the creation of God." He is the Mediator.

But now look how this runs through His work. We have thought of Him a little in His path down here:what was He on the cross? Oh, beloved friends, it is there that we find indeed the very storm of judgment of which I have spoken, in which, after it has passed, we see the many-colored rays of divine glory. The rainbow was, as you know, the sign of God's covenant with the new world risen from the flood; and this blessed bow of promise is the sign of His covenant with the new creation forever and ever. Sin shall no more disturb. God has been glorified as to it, and being glorified, He has absolute title over it. Title, I do not mean, to put sinners into hell:that title, of course, He ever had; but title in goodness,-absolute title to show His grace.

But now, what was the cross, beloved friends? Surely the crisis in which was gummed, up the whole conflict between good and evil, and the victory of divine goodness over evil.

Sin had come into the world, and God had been dishonored by it. What was the hindrance to God's coming in grace? This:that He must first be honored where He had been dishonored, and about that which had dishonored Him. He must be glorified,-that is, He must be displayed in His true character:not indifferent to sin, and not indifferent to the misery resulting in a world of sin. He must not fail in love, nor in righteousness. In the work which puts away sin, the glory of God must be displayed,-that is, all the glory of divine goodness, for that is His glory. Goodness must be manifested supreme over evil, supreme as goodness. Not power must get the victory:that might put man in hell, but not bring him to heaven. Not, power, I say again, but goodness, and as such.

And on the cross, as is manifest, power is all on the other side. " He was crucified through weakness." You see the power of man, you see the power of the world, you see the power of the devil,-all these are manifested fully; and on the side of the One who is left to suffer there, no sign of power at all. There He is,-unresisting, helpless:men may do as they will with Him who made them. He will not withdraw Himself, will not hide His face from shame and spitting. He has taken the servant's place:"Man has acquired me from my youth," He says; and even to a slave's death He will stoop for man. " What are those wounds in Thy hands?" "Even" those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends."

And yet, "if God be for us, who can be against us?" And was He ever otherwise than for His people? Let all others leave them, what is it to them, if God be with them? Men have been in the fire itself and come out to ask, as one did- the first martyr in Spain, when supposing he was going to retract they had released him for the moment, – " Did you envy me my happiness ?"

How easily, then, could He, the Prince of martyrs, have gone through martyrdom, if it were only that. Much as He felt all that man was doing, and showing himself to be in all he did, yet in what perfect quietness could He have gone through it all if it were only man's hour – " your hour," as He said to the Jews, – aye, or Satan's! But oh, beloved friends, it was not that only. God must be against Him. That was what gave its" real character to the cross; that was what distinguished the death of the Lord from the death of any righteous man before or since; and it was "that which gave even His precious blood the power to sanctify us. It was not simply because He was what He was, but that because, being such, He took our place, our guilt, bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, His soul also being made a sacrifice for sin. This was man's double sentence – death and judgment; both dying in the outside place, type of the deeper and more dread reality. – " Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate."

But where was power in all that? Every-where against Him. This was not a victory that power could gain. Evil must be overcome by good alone. He must be left to drink man's full cup to the dregs. The One to whom God had given testimony-" This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," now cries, and is not heard. The One whom they had seen on the mount transfigured, above the brightness of the sun, now lies with that glory eclipsed in utter darkness. But not the pressure of that whole agony upon His soul could get from-Him aught in response but perfect submission, unfaltering obedience. The more the pressure, the more manifest the perfection-the absolute perfection that was His:goodness absolute-" the Son of Man glorified, and God glorified in Him."

Such was the cross. And thus, and thus only, could flow out, as how we know them, those "rivers of waters in a dry place"-yea, from the Rock itself, now smitten, the streams of abounding grace. There had been no compromise; nothing had been given up; He had borne all. Righteousness had been displayed, not merely conciliated. I look at the cross to see in its, fullness what the righteousness of God is. Righteousness, holiness, love,-all that God is, has been displayed and glorified, and now He can be what He will, He can be what He will, He can be gracious.

Such is the Mediator in His work Godward and manward. How the jewels shine upon the golden breastplate! Let us not think that God claimed from Him this work merely. God forbid. He who said, " Lo, I come to do Thy will,"-He whom zeal for the Father's house devoured,-He claimed the atonement, claimed and made it, both. And now, as the fruit of it, He is gone up into the presence of God, to take there His place in His presence, resurrection-priest and Mediator; no more on earth, for "if He were on earth, He should not be a priest," but "such a high-priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens." There, beloved friends, now He is for us, as we rejoice to know.

Let us look now at this truth of His priesthood, and of that-Other form of intercession of which Scripture speaks-of advocacy. The priest is the intercessor for infirmity"; for if you look at the epistle to the Hebrews, it is denied there that as such He has any thing to do with sin. He is now " separate from sinners." His work of atonement had to do with sin, and so complete is the efficacy of that we are perfected by that precious blood which has gone into the presence of God for us. "By the which will," says the apostle, speaking of that will which Christ came to do,-" by the which will we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all;" and again, he says, " By one offering He has perfected forever [perpetually, or without interruption, as the word means,] them that are sanctified."

Thus the priest has not to do with sin. He has to do with us as those who are down here in the wilderness of the world, the needy objects of His care. He is priest for our infirmity,-not sinful infirmity, but creature-weakness, only in a place of constant trial and exposure by what is in us to the danger of sin. " Seeing, then, that we have a great High-Priest who is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, …. let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."

On the other hand, " if any one sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Notice that character here:"Jesus Christ the"-what? The One who loves us? That is implied in the very fact that He is our Advocate, our Intercessor. No, it is "Jesus Christ the righteous" The same mediatorial character, you see, -the same jewels upon His breast, but the names of His people too-"the propitiation for our sins." Here again are the two things-never to be dis-joined, that make Him the Mediator.

People ask sometimes,-and many who do not ask have it upon their minds-why any need of intercession at all? Does it imply an imperfect work? or can it be that God the Father is not absolutely for us as is God the Son? Far be either thought. But what, then, does it imply? Well, this:that He is the Mediator. Tried, and proved how fully trustworthy His hands sustain the burden of every thing. " Son over God's house," the people of God are put under His charge, that, having wrought atonement for them upon the cross, He may work out in living power their complete salvation as now risen from the dead. Do you remember that wonderful seventeenth chapter of John? Do you remember how there where the Lord gives us a sample, so to speak, of His intercessory work above-how constantly He speaks of His people as of those whom the Father had given Him?-"Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me."-"Keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me."-"As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him." They are given Him, put under His hand and care, as of One of assured competency to bring them through. All the responsibility of their salvation rests upon Him who has done the work of atonement and gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to Him.

Beloved, He is competent:God is satisfied- satisfied! Why, He brought Him out in the face of man, of the world, of the devil, before His work was done, when He had just pledged Himself to do it, as in John's baptism to that deeper baptism . which was to follow,-He opened the heavens in testimony of unmingled delight in Him:" This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And what then? The Holy Ghost, just come upon Him, the seal of that divine complacency, carries Him up into the wilderness. Why there? "To be tempted of the devil." God says, "This is My beloved Son." I know Him; I can trust Him; I can rest all My glory safely in His hands. Take Him away; try Him; do what you please with Him; and see if He be not worthy of My delight.

Thus He goes forth into the wilderness, (complete contrast with all the surroundings of the first man,) to fast His forty days; not as a Moses or an Elias-to meet God, but that in weakness, and with the hunger of that forty days upon Him, He may meet man's adversary, and be fully tested. Did the Spirit of God ever bring up another to be tempted in most utter need, in all the reality of human weakness, by the devil?

Aye, God can trust Him. In a deeper need than that, in a darker scene by far,-nay, darkness at its height, upon that awful cross, (the last step in His self-emptying,) God could leave Him there in solitary weakness, with all the counsels of God-all that which was to be the manifestation of God in His own creation forever,-all His love and all His righteousness,-all the blessing of man,-all, resting with its whole weight upon Him;-He can rest it there, I say, and turn away His head, and leave all to Him, satisfied there shall be no loss of any one thing trusted to His care.

And now, shall He not carry out what He has begun? Shall He not, as the Captain of salvation, save to the uttermost (or bring right through, as that means,) all that come unto God by Him? Yes, He, as risen priest, shall have the responsibility of the people for whom He undertakes. Every thing shall be in His hand, and come through Him. Our Mediator-Priest, not interposed between us and (God, as if He had not brought us Himself to God; for in that sense He says, " I do not say that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loveth you." No, we have not to come to Him that He may go to God for us, as if we could not go to Him ourselves. That is not the meaning of His intercession; but It does imply His charge of carrying through to full result the blessed work He founded at the cross Whatever is in question here, He is the One who is with the Father, Himself also God. With man, on the other hand, about it too. He is the One who as Priest or Advocate goes to God, or as Guardian of His people charges Himself with all their need. He can take the basin and towel to wash the feet of His people, that they may have part with Him.

And how in this action once more the character of the Mediator appears! He is going up to God -He is going up, His work just accomplished. For although as a fact it had not yet been completed, He can, in the consciousness of what He is, already account it so. As the One, then, into whose hands all things are given, and who comes from God and goes to God, He rises from supper, and takes a towel and girds Himself. The jewels are upon His breast. He cannot give up what is due to God, nor we have part with Him except we are cleansed according to His estimate.

But then, mark, it is not merely, " Except you are washed," you can have no part with Me, but, " Except I wash you." Thus this most necessary work He will accomplish for us, stooping to the towel and the basin as in love the Servant of our need. Peter may resist, but Peter and all must bow. His embrace must hold us fast to God. Blessed be His name, if the jewels are on His breast, His people's names are engraved upon the jewels.

Let us ask ourselves, Are we submitting to this washing? Do not look at it, beloved friends, as if it were a question of souls gotten away from God. Don't let us think, if we are going on, as we may think, pretty well, and our consciences bear witness of nothing particularly against us, – don't think it implies that we have no need of this washing. It is not a thing of which we have need once or twice in a lifetime. We have constant need of being in the hands of this blessed One; not merely of taking the Word and judging for ourselves what is wrong,-of judging this or that,-but of putting ourselves into His hands and saying, Lord, I may not know even what is Wrong, but without reserve I come to Thee, that I may learn from Thee what cleanness is, not taking my thought at all.

You see what it implies, brethren,-that it implies an absolute surrender into His hands; and you and I are not right, not fit to have part with Him, if there is with us tonight a reserve,-if we would say, "Cleanse off that spot" merely. That is not it. It will not do if we are not looking up to Him and saying, rather,."Search me, O God, and try me; prove my reins and my heart; see well if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting."

Are you and I with the Lord Jesus Christ without reserve like that? Are we ready to be told, whatever the evil is; asking God to search it out? Not merely saying, I repeat, " I am not conscious of any thing particularly wrong." Are we exercising ourselves to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man? Are we in the consciousness of the failure of our own judgment, looking to Him whose eyes are as a flame of fire, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and asking Him to see well if there be in us any thing He cannot tolerate ?

For we must cleansed according to His own estimate, in order to have fellowship with Him.

Oh, beloved, how easy for our hearts to slip out of this fellowship, blessed as it is! Let us be jealous over ourselves, and not take for a heart in communion a heart at peace with itself because unexercised.

If our feet are in His hands, then, thank God, He takes the responsibility of our being cleansed. Basin and towel are His, with all things in heaven and earth also. We shall have part with Him even now;-in the midst of a poor, poor world, rotten to the core with sin, blessed, satisfying part with Him. Which of us would sacrifice it for aught else whatever that could be given us?

And now I want to point your attention to this before I close,-that, as I have said, the regular communication with God in Israel was by means of the Urim and Thummim. If they wanted an answer from God as to a certain thing, an oracular judgment about it, it was a priest who had Urim and Thummim who must go to God.

How can we apply this now? First of all, of course, to Christ our great High-Priest, who is passed into the heavens; but as a principle for us, and an important one, we may apply it this way:If we seek and obtain a divine answer as to any thing in the Church down here, what characteristics will it have to prove itself a divine answer ? Well, surely these two which the Urim and Thummim imply. God must first of all have His place in it. We must see the jewels, the lights and perfections, whole and altogether there. But then across the jewels must be seen the names of His people too. Love,-divine love-to His people must characterize it, as well as love for God. Nay, the apostle asks how he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, can in fact love God whom he hath not seen.

Here are two things that will surely characterize every divine "judgment-every" judgment of the Priest with Urim and Thummim. If God is light on the one hand, He is love on the other. As partakers of the divine nature, we must be doers of righteousness on the one hand; on the other, we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. Nay, as light and love are one in God, however much to us they may be two, so we may be sure of this:that whatever is not righteousness is not love, as whatever is not love is not righteousness.

Perhaps we have learned to say, if a thing be not righteous, it is not love; and it is most true and most important:for true love to my brother is not indifferent evil in him, and cannot be. How can I take no notice of that which is dragging down his soul, and dishonoring God in him? It is impossible that love can act so. Call it social good feeling, if you will; that is love according to man's idea:but it lacks the divine quality-it leaves out God. But leave Him out, and you have left out every thing. " By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments." That is the test. Emotions all well, but the test is not emotion. Obedience is the test, and nothing else.

"It is not love to our brother if in the way we show it we are not keeping His commandments; but on the other hand, it is not keeping His commandments if we are not showing Love. Do not imagine that there can be righteousness apart from love. As I say, these two things are really, at the bottom, one. If God has shown us love, for us to show it is but righteousness. What witness have we, if it be not witness of the grace we have received? Surely, of nothing so much are we the witnesses. Is there not sometimes a very sad and serious mistake, as if because it is grace we are called to show, that therefore as to quantity and quality, as it were, we may please ourselves about it?-may, as if it were a little something extra we were doing in showing it at all! Ah, but God will require from us what He has been showing us. It is not a work of supererogation to show grace. . Look at this man. He owes his master an immense sum-ten thousand talents, representing perhaps £2,000,000,-and he is bankrupt:he cannot even make composition, he has nothing to pay. So he comes and falls down at his master's feet, and beseeches him for time in which to pay him. But his master is moved with compassion, and he does more,-"he loosed him, and forgave him the debt."

Now, mark this forgiven man. "But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants, which owed him an hundred pence"- a pitiful sum in comparison, about £3 :2s:6d, calculated at the same rate,-"and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, ' Pay me that thou owest.'" Then, in words and action so like his own, you would think it must have smitten him to the heart,'" his fellow-servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, ' Have patience with me and I will pay thee all.'" Could you imagine a heart so hard?-"He would not, but went and cast him into prison till he should pay the debt." What does the lord of both men do when he hears this? " O thou wicked servant," he says, "I forgave thee all that debt because thou desiredst me. Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?" And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

Beloved, what a lesson for us,-that for those who have received grace it is but righteousness to show it. It is not, I say again, a little overplus-a little "more than duty,-something it is very good for us to do, and if we fail in it, it will not be required of us. It is a positive, absolute duty:God will require it of us.

And though it be in matters which concern God directly, and although it is true we cannot forgive debts that are due to God, we must not take it as if He could tolerate in us what He does not Him-self practice – mere exaction. . Neither must we forget, whether it be as regards our brother or ourselves, that grace, and grace alone, breaks the dominion of sin. The law is the strength of it.

Do not overset the balance on either side, beloved friends. Remember, the Priest who has the Urim and Thummim alone can give the divine answer. In a true judgment of any thing, God must be first ever, but in indissoluble union with His people, as He holds them together, blessed be His name, the true High-Priest, upon whom is the breastplate of righteousness; as He will hold them fast forever:He, the Mediator between God and the Man Christ Jesus. Plainfield, N.J., July 28th, 1882.
F.W.G.

God over all the flood of evil, and using this for the trial and final blessing of the righteous. To the chief musician.[A psalm] of David.

In Jehovah have I taken refuge:how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?

2. For, lo, the wicked bend their bow; they have fixed their arrow upon the string, that in the dark they may shoot at the upright in heart.

3. When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

4. Jehovah is in His holy temple, Jehovah's throne is in heaven:His eyes behold, His eyelids try, the sons of men.

5. Jehovah trieth the righteous; but the wicked and him that loveth violence hath His soul hated.

6. Upon the wicked He shall rain snares:fire and brimstone and a burning wind-the portion of their cup.

7. For Jehovah is righteous; righteous deeds He loveth:the upright shall behold His face.

PSALM XII.

The words of pride on mans lips contrasted with the pure words of Jehovah, the resource and assurance of the righteous, and which the day of trial only approves.

To the chief musician upon Sheminith. A psalm of David.

Save, Jehovah; for the godly hath ceased; for the faithful have disappeared from among the sons of men.

2. They speak falsehood, every one with his fellow:with a smooth lip, with a double heart, do they speak.

3. Jehovah shall cut off all smooth lips,-the tongue that speaketh great things:

4. Which have said, " With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own:who is lord over us?"

5. " Because of the spoiling of the humble, for the groaning of the needy, now will I arise," saith Jehovah:" I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."

6. Jehovah's words are pure words:silver refined in a crucible of earth-seven times refined.

7. Thou shalt keep them, Jehovah; Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.

8. The wicked walk on every side; for vileness is exalted among the sons of men.

PSALM XIII.

Deliverance from the very gates of death. To the chief musician. A psalm of David.

How long wilt Thou forget me, Jehovah ? Forever? How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?

2. How long shall I take counsel in my soul, with sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall my enemy be exalted over me ?

3. Regard, answer me, Jehovah my God! lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the death.

4. Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; [and] those that straiten me exult when I am moved.

5. But I have trusted in Thy mercy:my heart shall exult in Thy salvation.

6. I will sing unto Jehovah, for He hath recompensed me.

PSALM XIV.

The folly of the ungodly, as against God, and against His people.

To the chief musician.[A psalm] of David.

The fool hath said in his heart, "No God." They have acted corruptly; they have done abominable deeds:there is none that doeth good.

2. Jehovah looked from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.

3. They all of them are turned aside; they are together become corrupt:there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

4. Have all the workers of vanity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread. They have not called upon Jehovah.

5. There were they in great dread; for God is in the generation of the righteous.

6. Ye turn to shame the counsel of the humble, when Jehovah is his refuge.

7. Who shall give salvation unto Israel out of Zion? When Jehovah turneth the captivity of His people, Jacob shall exult, Israel shall be glad.

PSALM XV.
The final blessing of the righteous according to the eternal principles of righteousness in God Himself

A psalm of David.

Who shall sojourn in Thy tent, Jehovah? who shall dwell in Thy holy mount?

2. He that walketh in integrity, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh truth in his heart.

3. That hath not slandered with his tongue, nor done evil to his fellow, nor taken up a reproach against his neighbor.

4. In his eyes a reprobate is despised, but he honoreth them that fear Jehovah:he hath sworn to his own hurt, and changeth not.

5. He hath not put out his money to usury, nor taken a bribe against the innocent:-he that doeth these things shall never be moved.

The cross of Christ is the central fact in the history of man. To it all former ages pointed on; from it all future ones take shape and character. Eternity, no less than time, is ruled by it:Christ is the " Father of Eternity." (Isa. 9:6, Heb.) The new creation owns Him as last Adam, of whom the failed first man was but the type and contrast. The wisdom, the grace, and the glory of God are displayed, for the ceaseless adoration of infinite hosts of free and gladsome worshipers, in this work and its results.

The doctrine of atonement is thus the center and heart of divine truth. Unsoundness here will be fatal to the character of all that we hold for truth, and in exact proportion to the measure of its unsoundness. Again, all fundamental error elsewhere will find, of necessity, its reflection and counterpart in some false view of atonement, if consistently carried out. Thank God, this is often not the case, because the heart is often sounder than the creed; but this, while admitted fully, scarcely affects, for a Christian, the seriousness of such a consideration.

In taking up this subject for examination, we must remember the gravity of such a theme; one in which a mere critical spirit will be as much at fault as out of place; where we must be, not judges, but worshipers, yet thoroughly alive to the importance of testing by the Word of God every thing presented. The blessedness of a devout and believing contemplation of the work to which we owe our all will be at least proportionate to the gravity of error as to it; while our preservative from this will be found, not in neglect or slight treatment of so great and important a truth, but in deeper, more attentive and prayerful consideration.

Here, too, we have to avoid, as elsewhere, the opposite dangers of an independent and a weakly dependent spirit. We dare not call any man master, for One is our Master, even Christ. On the other hand, and for that very reason, we dare not despise His teaching, even were it from the babe. There is need continually to remind ourselves of this, simple as it surely is. For while the multitudinous voices of Christendom rebuke our belief in the authority which they claim, we cannot doubt that the Spirit of truth has been communicating truth in proportion to the simplicity of the faith that trusted Him. We may listen to and gain by teachers just in the measure that we realize the apostle's words, that we have an unction from the Holy One, and need not that any man teach us.

Let us take up, then, the great subject before us, and see reverently what we may be able to learn from Scripture as to it, not refusing to consider along with this, as it may seem profitable, current views, not for controversy on a theme so sacred; testing for the gold and not the dross. The failure of others, where we may have to judge they fail, should surely only serve the purpose of making us cling more humbly, but not less confidently, to the Hand that alone can lead us safely. Just as the works of God need the Sustainer still, so does the word of revelation still need the Revealer.

Before we come to consider the fact and truth of atonement, we have need, first of all, to consider the necessity that exists for it. That it was absolutely necessary, Scripture settles decisively for him that will listen to it. " For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so MUST also the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Nothing can be plainer, nothing more authoritative, than such an announcement from the lips of Him who came into the world to meet the need that He declares. Whatever is implied in that lifting up of the Son of Man,-the cross, most assuredly,-was necessary for man's salvation:and that the cross was an atonement, or propitiation, for our sins, I need not pause to insist on now.

But while the necessity of the cross is thus put far beyond dispute for all such as I am writing for at this time, it is still needful to inquire, What is the nature of that necessity. It is to our need that God reveals Himself, and as meeting it, while more than meeting it, that He has glorified Himself forever; and to know His grace, we must know the state to which it answers. It is thus that through repentance we come to faith in the gospel. Scripture alone gives the knowledge, in any adequate way, even of man's condition; it is well if we do not resist God's judgment when He has given it.

Man is a fallen being:" all have sinned; and all are " by nature children of wrath." In the order of statement, in that epistle which takes up most fully what we are; as prefatory to the unfolding of that salvation which is its theme, the first is insisted on first, and as if wholly independent of the other. Men excuse their sins by their nature, with how little truth their own consciences are witness; for what they excuse in themselves they condemn in another, and especially if it be done against themselves. God has taken care that within us we should carry a voice which sophistry can never completely silence, and which asserts our responsibility, spite of our natures, for every sin of our hearts or lives. In that day to which conscience ever points, "the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ," He "will render to every man according to [not his nature, but] his deeds" And for which of his deeds could he excuse himself with truth by the plea that he could not help it? Surely not for one. The free-will of which man boasts comes in here to testify fearfully against him. His nature, whatever its corruption, is not, in the sense in which he pleads, prohibitory of good or obligatory to evil. Conscience, anticipating the righteous judgment of God, refuses to admit the validity of such a plea. It is the intuitive conviction of every soul that sins, that for that sin it is justly liable to judgment.

On this ground it is that the law brings in-every man for his own sins,-"all the world guilty before God." In all that part of Romans, from the first to the middle of the fifth chapter, in which this as to man is taken up, the apostle will raise no question as to his nature,-speaks as yet no word of Adam or the fall. Before he can bring it forward at all, it must be absolutely settled that as all have sinned, so "all have come short of the glory of God." That which for Israel the impassable vail of the holiest declared, is what is affirmed by the gospel as to all, without exception. It is upon this common basis of judgment lying upon all, that justification for the ungodly is proclaimed to all.

The question of nature comes in the second part of the epistle, in connection with the power for a new life. It is after man's guilt, proved to be universal, is met, for all that believe, by the precious blood of Christ, and " being justified by faith, we have peace with God," our standing in grace, "and rejoice in hope of the glory of God," that the apostle goes on to compare and contrast the first Adam and his work with Him of whom he is the type:" Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; . . . therefore as by the offense of one [or by one offense] toward all men to condemnation, so by one righteousness toward all men for justification of life. For as indeed by the disobedience of the one man the many have been constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the One the many will be constituted righteous." (I quote this from a version more literal than our common one, which is very faulty here.) Afterward, this corruption of constitution is fully dealt with, and the remedy for it shown; but of this it is not yet the place to speak.
It is evident, however, that this increases the gravity of man's condition immensely. The apostle, following the Lord's own words to Nicodemus, calls this fallen nature of man flesh, stamping it thus as the degradation of the spiritual being which God had created, hopeless naturally, as the Lord's words imply:" That which is born of the flesh is flesh." The apostle states it thus:"The mind of the flesh is enmity toward God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God."

With the many questions which spring out of this we are not now concerned; but such are the solemn declarations of Scripture, with which all the facts of observation and experience coincide. For man thus guilty and alienated from God, atonement is necessary ere there can be mercy. "Deliver him from going down into the pit" must have this as its justification:"I have found a ransom."

The penalty upon sin is the necessary expression of His essential holiness. He can neither go on with sin nor ignore it; and this is a question not alone of His government, but of His nature also. To be a holy governor, He must be a holy God. Government would be simply impossible for God that did not represent aright His personal character. If, then, in His government He cannot let sin escape, it is because the holiness of His nature forbids such an escape. This we shall find to be of very great importance when we come to the consideration of what the atonement is; but it is important to realize from the outset. Law, whatever its place, can never be the whole matter; while yet its enactments must be in harmony with the deeper truth upon which it rests.

" To men it is appointed once to die, but after this the judgment." This is the inspired statement as to what he naturally lies under. Both these things have to be considered in their character and meaning, for as to both of them many a mistake has been made.

Death entered into the world by the sin of Adam. It is not necessary "to take this as applying to the lower creatures. No express word of Scripture affirms this, and the whole web and woof of nature seems to contradict the thought. Life, without a miracle to prevent it, must be destroyed continually, apart from all question of carnivorous beasts or birds, by the mere tramp of our feet over the earth, in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the plants or fruits we consume. The herbivorous animals thus destroy life scarcely less than the carnivorous. Scripture, too, speaks of the "natural brute beasts" as "made to be taken and destroyed," and of "man being in honor and understanding not becoming like the beasts that perish." But unto the world-the human world,-by one man sin entered, and death by sin; " and so death passed upon all men [he speaks only of man], for that all have sinned." It is the stamp of God's holy government upon sin; the outward mark of inward ruin.

This death which came in through sin we must distinguish from the judgment after death, as the apostle distinguishes them in the text already quoted. This has not always been done, and yet not to do it is to make difficult what is simple, and to obscure not a little the perfection of the divine ways. The sentence upon Adam was not a final sentence, but one in which the mercy is evident amid all the severity of righteous judgment. Without the ministration of death, sad as has been the history of the world, it would have been much sadder; but upon this I do not now need to pause. The sentence on Adam is sufficiently clear from what is actually passed upon him after the transgression, and whose meaning no one can doubt:- " Until thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Of the second death this may be, and is, a type, and a warning:but no more.
Again, to confound the penalty upon sin with sin itself would seem almost impossible did we not know that it had been really done. It is true that man's sinful state is spoken of as death-a " death in trespasses and sins." But unless God could inflict sin as such, which is impossible, this would turn the penalty into a prophecy merely. The testimony of conscience should be enough in such a case; but the words of the sentence when actually given, as I have just now quoted them, should preclude the possibility of doubt.

Yet here too it is a type-the outward manifestation of the state to which it answers; for as the body without the spirit corrupts into sensible abomination, so with man away from God.

Death is judgment; to the natural man, how solemn an one! smiting him through the very center of his sensitive being, and sending him forth from every thing he knows and values into a gloom surcharged with the foulness of corruption, and with the terrors of God, to which he goes forth naked and alone.

Death is judgment, but not "the judgment." For this, the "resurrection of judgment" must have come in,-judgment claiming for this the body as well as the spirit-the whole man, in short. And here, that separation from God, chosen by the soul itself, becomes manifest in its true horror, and its definitive portion forever. This is the "outer darkness," when God the light of life is withdrawn forever.

But not in every sense withdrawn. For the second death is not only darkness, though it is darkness. The second death is none the less the " lake of fire:" a figure indeed, but none the less fearful because a figure:" our God is a consuming fire." Worse than withdrawn, the light has become fire. For God cannot forget, cannot simply ignore:where sin is, there must be the testimony of His undying anger against it. Here, "according to the deeds done in the body," there is the searching, discriminating apportionment of absolute righteousness.

Death then, and after death the judgment:this is man's natural portion; these are the two things from which he needs to be delivered. For judgment he cannot abide; if he dream of the possibility of it, it is but a dream:" Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified." This is what Scripture with one voice affirms. If it were but believed, how many wrong thoughts would it not set right! how many theological systems would it not utterly sweep away!

This, then, is the portion of man as man:this is the burden that atonement has to lift from off him.

Q. 1.-If one has sinned, and has it not in his power to undo or make amends for what has been done, and pressed down with a sense of failure, what ought he to do ?

A. If restitution be really impossible, and full confession have been made already, nothing more is of course possible, so far as man is concerned. The great thing is to have one's feet in the Lord's hands, without reserve, that He may show all that is amiss, and not only the sin be judged, but the root detected also.

With regard to the question as to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is sufficient to refer you to Hebrews 13:8,-"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."

Q. 2.-Why does it say in Romans x, " If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord"?- Is it the same as "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," in principle ? or is it something special for a Jew who had rejected Jesus as the Christ? Is it Jesus as Lord, referring to His being made Lord as man, as in Acts ii, or like Peter in Luke v ? and should we make it a condition with souls that they confess Jesus Lord with their mouth, "calling on the name of the Lord," to be saved ?

A. The controversy between God and man throughout the present dispensation is as to the rejection of Christ, as in the old it was with regard to idolatry. Man has crucified Jesus; God has made Him Lord and Christ. He who bows really to the authority of the Lord Jesus-that is, "whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord,-shall be saved." Of course it must be real. "Confess," I believe indeed, points to this. To confess is something more than to "profess." In a day of abundant profession, the owning Christ with the lips is very little :none but an infidel would deny Him to be Lord; yet it is not in vain to press confession; but it is that sort of confession, in the face of a still really unbelieving world, which brings one out of the enemy's ranks into the ranks of those openly His. The passage connects with Acts ii, clearly; the word to the jailor does not speak of outward confession, but that would be the fruit of it. There can be no question that immense blessing to the soul flows from the full and unflinching owning of Christ before men. The world is composed of two great camps, and neutrality there can be none; the line between Christ's people and His enemies is the limit of salvation; and hesitancy between the two must undoubtedly cloud the soul and hinder peace; but "with the mouth confession is made unto salvation" is true in the most absolute way:"Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of the Father with the holy angels."

In regard to another question asked, I would say that I do not believe salvation from sin is enough preached. Salvation from wrath to come is however the first necessity in order to realize the other; and thus the passover is the basis of the Red-Sea deliverance. I have touched upon some other points in another paper.

Q. 3.-Is one put away from the Lord's table handed over to Satan, as in 1 Corinthians v ? or was it only apostolic power that could do this ?

A. The formal delivering to Satan was only apostolic; the assembly can only put away from among themselves; its power is confined to the sphere of those "within," and one ceasing to be within was outside its jurisdiction. Apostolic power was not thus limited. It is of all possible importance not to exceed the strict limit of (I do not say, authority, but) duty, or lack of all true power will be the result.

Q. 5.-In the new-born man, what is the difference between soul and spirit ?

A. If Hebrews 4:12 be referred to-"the Word of God piercing even to the dividing asunder between soul and spirit," the difference is this:The soul is lower than the spirit, the emotional, sensitive part, the link between the spirit and the body. The knowledge of the things of a man, the mental and moral judgment, are ascribed to it in Scripture. Man is a living soul, just as the animal is; and the "natural," or unconverted, man is, according to the meaning of the word, a soulic, (or, as we may better say in English,) an animal man. He is moved by sight and sense, and without God, as the beast is. To " divide," therefore, "between soul and spirit" is to distinguish between what is sensual or emotional merely and what is morally right or of God. The unconverted man has of course a spirit also, but being away from God, it has no proper knowledge of Him or of eternal things, and no rightful control over the lower nature.

Q. 6.-Will you explain the difference between Acts 9:7 and 20:9 ? In the one case, those who were with the apostle heard the voice, and in the other, they did not.

A. There is a difference in the Greek, which the English does not express. In 9:7, they heard "of the voice," literally; meaning that they heard it, but not what it said. In 20:9- "They heard not the voice of Him that spake to me,"-here, it is the accusative, the full-length voice, as we may say,-the utterance.

Q. 7.-Please explain Romans 8:16. In what way does the Spirit bear witness ? by the Word, or apart, or both ?

A. Not apart from the Word. It is the co-witness of the Spirit of God and our spirit that the passage affirms, raising inference to positive knowledge, direct consciousness.-"In that day, ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you."

Q. 8.-How do you reconcile Moses speaking face to face with God as with a friend, the pure in heart shall see God, and other passages, with such as 1 Timothy 6:16 and " No man can see Me and live"?

A. As to the last, it is the characteristic of the legal dispensation, in contrast with the Christian; for he that hath seen Christ hath seen the Father. As to the passage in Timothy, it is God in His essential Being, necessarily beyond the gaze of finite creatures; yet this does not preclude such sight of God as is elsewhere expressly spoken of.-"They shall see His face," yea, "their angels in heaven do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven." It would be a strange thing to be in the Father's house and never see the Father, while yet there will be inner glories, which no creature eye can see. In this sense, of the Son also it is written that "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father." After Moses had seen God face to face, the apostle could write that "no man hath seen God at any time," and then adds, "The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." We see and know Him now in Christ, as Moses did not. In this saying the apostle refers to the character of God, in Christ fully displayed.

"We are no more than fairly entered upon our subject as yet ; and of all that we have learned hitherto the examination of other scriptures will confirm, extend, and render more precise our knowledge. We have seen the need of man, which atonement has to meet, to be fourfold:first, his actual sins; secondly, corruption of nature; thirdly, the penalty of death, proclaimed by God in Eden, and in which clearly all men share as well as the first sinner; fourthly, the judgment after death. As to this last, so far as we have reached in Genesis, it is rather a dread undefined shadow than a thing plainly taught, an inference rather than an announcement. Correspondingly we find in atonement, so far as we have hitherto gone, the emphasis laid upon death as borne by a substitute, – a truly vicarious death, by which sin is "covered " or expiated before God, and the shame of man's nakedness put away.

But yet the one who obtains witness that he is righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and though dying in his substitute, dies himself, as all mankind but two have ever done. Why this? Surely because that while atonement is in behalf of sinners of Adam's seed, its purpose is not to restore the first man or the old creation, but to bring those saved into the new. While, of course, as to power over the soul, death is "abolished:" "Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."

That to which we now come will bring, and is designed to bring, this change from the old to the new creation vividly before us. The ark which Noah prepared to the saving of his house is a figure of Christ, as we surely know, and of Christ as One with whom we pass through the judgment of the world into that new scene where all abides in the value of the accepted sacrifice. " If any man be in Christ, [it is] new creation:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

For faith anticipates that judgment yet to come, meets it in the cross, and passes through it, leaving it behind. The death of our Substitute is for us what death ever is-our passage out of the world. Sheltered and safe ourselves, we pass through it; our Ark alone breasting the flood, and lifted above it by its own inherent buoyancy; for the Holy One could go through death, but not be holden of it. By the might of His own perfection He rose into the sphere to which He belonged, carrying with Him the hopes and promise of the new creation.

The gopher-wood, the material of the ark, I can say little of, but, it speaks of death (the tree cut down), as that by which alone death could be met for us. The "pitch" is copher, near akin, as it would seem, to gopher, not bitumen (or at least there is no proof of this), but, as would seem most probable, a resin from the gopher-wood itself; identical, too, with the word " atonement" in one of its forms.* *Translated "ransom," Ex. 30:12; 1 Sam. 12:3, marg,; Job 33:24; 36:18; Ps. 49:7; Prov. 6:23; etc.; " satisfaction," Num. 35:31,32.* Here, it seems to me, is the first hint we find in Scripture of something beyond death which is implied in and needed for atonement. Not the gopher-wood alone would have kept out the waters of judgment. Not death alone lay upon men, and for true substitution not death alone needed to be borne. It is indeed the wages of sin; but not, as some would have it, the full wages. So, if death be judgment, as for man it is, it is "after death the judgment;" which is not a repetition of the first death either, though it be the second:for the first death is not repeated. " It is appointed unto men ONCE to die, but after this the judgment."

The penalty borne by our Substitute, then, is something more than death. The copher must pitch the seams of the ark of salvation, that it may bring its freight of living souls in safely through the flood. Thus, and thus alone, is there perfect security, and the new scene is reached in peace. Salvation, as known and enjoyed here, if Scripture is to be at least our measure, does not stop short of this. Christ " gave Himself for our sins," says the apostle, " that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father." "Ye are not of the world," says the Saviour Himself," even as I am not of the world." " If any man be in Christ," says the apostle again, " [kaine ktisis] it is new creation:old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

For if Christ was our Substitute only upon the cross,-and this is true,-His identification with us does not and cannot cease there. We are in Him risen from the dead, and gone up to the glory of God. The manhood which He took up here He has taken in there. Nay, it is in resurrection, and only so, that He becomes "last Adam," as we have already seen, and as a "quickening Spirit," communicates that " more abundant life " of which He spoke, while yet on earth, to His disciples. (John 10:10.) As naturally we are children of the first man after his fall, and inherit from him its sorrowful results, even so as quickened of the last Adam, after the accomplishment of His work in our behalf, we are born into His status, and inherit the results in justification and acceptance with God, who " hath taken us into favor [echaritosen] in the Beloved." (Eph. 1:6.) Already are we "seated together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

We are thus past death and judgment. The Ark has brought us through. The old world, as that with which we are connected, is for faith already gone. In Him we are brought into a place of which me new world just emerged from its baptism was but the shadow; and here again we find a fresh aspect of atonement, and fresh results of it, in the burnt-offering, the altar, and God's covenant with creation.

If we have read God's words to Cain aright, Abel's offering was doubtless also a sin-offering. The distinct mention of the fat, as a thing apart, may go to prove this; for in the sin-offering, as afterward detailed, the fat was dealt with separately from the animal itself. It was, so to speak, ' the burnt-offering side of the sin-offering:for as the various sacrifices were but various aspects of the one great sacrifice, so there was in each some link of connection with the others, in witness of their common theme.

The development of these offerings as yet we do not find; still, so far as" developed, if they be types or divine pictures of the great reality, we look for harmony among them, and shall assuredly find it from the very first. And in the order of application, which is the order observed here, the sin-offering comes naturally before the burnt-offering, to which now we come in Noah, in significant connection with the new place in which he appears.

For what is the burnt-offering? Literally, "the offering that ascends," or goes up to God. As we find here, it is what is sweet savor to Him; and though we shall find other offerings which are of sweet savor to God, as the meat and the peace-offering, yet is this the great and fundamental one. The term is inadequately given as "sweet savor:" it is properly, as in the margin, " savor of rest" or acquiescence, complacence. It thus unites with what is stated to be the purport of the burnt-offering, in a passage obscured by mistranslation in the common version. " He shall offer it of his Own voluntary will "-(Lev. 1:3.), should be rather, "He shall offer it for his acceptance:" and this is the key-note of the burnt-offering. In contrast with the sin-offering, which represents the solemn judgment of sin, it speaks of that perfect surrender of Christ to the will of God, tested and brought out by the cross, which brings out the supreme delight of the Father:" Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again." That is the measure of our acceptance with God.

And to express this perfection in its manifold character it is that, we read, "Noah took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." The burnt-offering was thus very frequently multiplied in a way that the sin-offering was not, and could not be. One sin-offering was ample for the putting away of sin, while to express the perfection of our acceptance with God, the burnt-offering is multiplied many times. Thus compare especially, in the twenty-ninth of Numbers, the sacrifices of the seven days of the feast of tabernacles; or those in Hezekiah's day (2 Chron. 29:), or in Ezra's (ch. 8:35.).

The presence of the altar too, for the first time, is full of meaning; for the altar is not of little significance in connection with the sacrifice. Our Lord Himself declares that " the altar sanctifieth the gift." We read of none in the case of Abel's offering, and in the fullest type of the Levitical sin-offering. (Lev. 4:12, 21.) But what could sanctify the Lord's own gift? Certainly, nothing external. It was the perfection and dignity of His Person that gave value to His work, and the divine direction as to the altar afterward makes certain that it is Christ Himself who is before us in it. Thus fittingly from the sin-offering it is absent; for " He who knew no sin " being " made sin for us," the person is hidden, as it were, in what He represents, as the serpent of brass elsewhere conveys to us. On the contrary, in the type before us the altar necessarily finds its place. The dignity of His Person adds infinitely to the value of His work, and both together unite to lift us into the blessed place we have in Him. The ark and altar have thus a kindred meaning; and we find that atonement itself, necessarily getting its character from Him who makes it, does not restore man to his original place, but becomes the foundation and security of that new creation which the type here-depicts, and with which God abides in unchangeable covenant.

The bow in the cloud, the token of this covenant with all that go out of the ark, I have elsewhere dwelt upon. It is typically the token of how God has been glorified (that is, revealed in the work of the cross; His holiness, love, and truth banding the darkness of the most terrible storm of judgment ever seen. The storm passes, and the bow too to sight is gone, but faith finds its glories permanently enshrined in the jewels upon the foundations of the heavenly city, the pledge of its eternity. God is vindicated, satisfied, at rest; and where He rests, all things must needs abide too at rest.

The cloud is passed Godward; and as to the persecutor, he can plead uprightness and practical guiltlessness before the righteous Judge, now ready to interfere.

Shiggaion of David, which he sang unto Jehovah, about the words of Cush the Benjamite.

O Jehovah, my God! in Thee have I taken refuge:save me from all my pursuers, and rescue me!

2. Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, and there be none to rescue!

3. Jehovah, my God, if I have done this,-if there be iniquity within my palms,- . 4. If I have recompensed evil unto him that was at peace with me, (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is my oppressor,)-

5. Let the enemy pursue my soul, and overtake it; yea, let him tread down my life to the earth, and make my honor dwell in dust. Selah.

6. Arise, Jehovah, in Thine anger! lift up Thyself amid the rage of mine oppressors, and awake for me to the judgment Thou hast commanded;

7. And the assembly of the nations shall compass Thee about; and over it do Thou return on high!

8. Jehovah shall govern the peoples:judge me, Jehovah, according to my righteousness, even according to mine integrity upon me.

9. Oh let the evil of the wicked cease; and establish the righteous; even Thou who triest the hearts and reins,-a righteous God!

10. My shield is with God, who saveth the upright in heart.

11. God is a righteous Judge; and God hath indignation every day.

12. If one turn not, He will whet His sword:He hath bent His bow, and made it ready.

13. For him hath He made ready also instruments of death:He maketh His arrows burning.

14. Behold, he travaileth with vanity; yea, he hath conceived labor, and brought forth falsehood.

15. He hath digged a pit, and holloweth it out, and falleth into the pit he is making.

16. His labor returneth upon his own head, and upon the crown of his head doth his violence come down.

17. I will celebrate Jehovah according to His righteousness; I will sing psalms to the name of Jehovah most high.
Text.-"Shiggaion" means, probably, "A Wandering Ode;" or, "An Ode composed on occasion of Wandering." DeWette gives "A Song of Lamentation ;" Conant, "A Plaintive Song ; " Gesenius, on the other hand,"A Song of Praise," and Paulus,"A Responsive Song."

(6) "To the judgment:" "to" is omitted in the Hebrew, but is not always expressed. "Thou hast commanded judgment to be executed; therefore execute judgment Thyself."

(7) "Over it:" "Take Thy rightful place of supremacy at its head." This agrees with the next verse.

(9) "And establish" is literally future, but after the imperative becomes an imperative.

(11) "God," the second time, is "El," the Mighty.

"All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come,-all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." (1 Cor. 3:21-23.)

Death is here mentioned among the "all things" which belong to those who are Christ's. As the apostle is evidently speaking of privilege-of blessing, it follows that death must be understood as being that-as coming in blessing, if it come at all, to such as are addressed in these words.

It is a common thought in Christendom that when death comes, even to the household of faith, it comes as a penalty. But is this a true thought ? Did not Christ bear the whole penalty of sin on the cross? and are not believers divinely seen to be "dead with Him"? Then, are they not beyond death in the sense of a penalty? If so, should death come to such, before the Lord comes, does it not come as a servant, to take off the fetter which keeps them in absence from the Lord ?

It is worthy of remark that Grace not only bestows actual blessings-that is, things which are blessings in themselves, but it takes those things which are not blessings, but which are the results of sin, and having put away the sin through the cross, it uses those results for blessing, making them act as blessing. In this way all things work together for good to those who love God.

This blessed truth applies even to death, Grace having put a silver lining into that dark cloud,-in other words, made a road of light through the dark valley. This is clearly taught in our passage,-"All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come."

What is meant by death being ours,-how it became ours; and the blessedness of it being ours, are questions which suggest themselves. May the Holy Spirit guide and bless.

As to the first of these questions-What is meant by death being ours?-we get the answer, in part, in our text. It will be readily seen that death is here placed in company with certain things, namely, "the world," "life," "things present," "things to come,"-some of which are blessings in themselves; and all of them are represented as being in some sense blessings. It is also placed in company with persons-blessed persons, as " Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas." In. what sense could it be said to those who are here addressed that Paul and Apollos and Cephas "are yours"? The context will aid us to a true answer. The next verse reads, " Let a man so account of us as the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God." In the fifth verse of the chapter before us we have these words:"Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed?" Thus Paul and Apollos were ministers of Christ-that is, His servants, by whom these Christians had believed, and by whom they were being helped. In the second epistle to the same assembly, the apostle says, "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." (2 Cor. 4:5.) Mark the expression, "your servants for Jesus sake." Thus Paul and Apollos and Cephas were the servants of believers for Jesus' sake. But the Holy Spirit in our passage puts death in company with these servants of Christ and His people. This being so, it may be said to those who are Christ's, Death is your servant.

This view of death, of course, can only be taken with reference to believers. To those who do not receive Christ, death is a tyrant, a king-the king of terrors; whereas to those who receive Him,- to those who are a new creation in Him, all is changed; death is theirs-their servant.

But it may be asked, Is not death an enemy? Yes, for the Word says so; yet an enemy is not always in a situation to do harm. If you are in the hands of an enemy-if he can say, You are mine, then he can harm you; but if he is in your hands, or in the hands of your all-powerful Friend, then he cannot harm you, but may be obliged to render you service. It is just so with death for those who are Christ's-a conquered enemy, retained as a servant.

It would not be well for all the household to remain awake during the long, dreary night; so this dark servant is used to put them to sleep, one by one, until the day dawn and the Lord come.

What has thus far been said will perhaps be sufficient to make plain what is meant by death being ours.

The next question which seems naturally to arise is, How did death become ours? We owe this, as well as all else of blessing, to the Lord Jesus and His death. He who knew no sin, gave His life in love as an atonement for sin,-thereby dethroning death, and assigning it a new place, even that of serving those who accept God's salvation.

We read that " our Saviour Jesus Christ . . . hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." (2 Tim. 1:10.) It is not here said that He will abolish death, though He will do that in another sense in God's own time; but it is affirmed that He "hath", done it. He has abolished it as a king, and detained it as a subject-abolished it as a master, and detained it as a servant. Precious truth for faith!

These words to Timothy simply inform us that we are indebted to the Lord Jesus for this victory over death. A few passages will show that He gained this victory for us by His death.

Two in the epistle to the Hebrews are very plain and blessed on this. In the former, after a quotation from Isaiah, in which the Son is saying, "Behold I and the children which God hath given me," it is added, " Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." (Heb. 2:13-15.) In what sense had the devil the power of death? He had not power to take life-he could not kill people; but he managed to induce man, the representative man, to sin-to disobey God, and of course the penalty previously and divinely announced must follow. This was the nature of the devil's power over man; getting him to do that which according to God must bring in death. It is as though you have an enemy who has no direct power to injure you, but who by some deep-laid plan draws you into the doing of that which is contrary to the laws of the land, thereby bringing you to grief. In this way he gains his point, and exults over you through your own misdoing and its penalty. This may aid in comprehending the sense in which the devil had the power of death.* *It may be added that the devil has the power of death in the sense of being able to portray death, even to the children of God, in a way to bring them into bondage, through fear of it. In this way he has ever actively used it since he got man to do that which brought it.*
How did God in His grace counter work the enemy? How did He foil him who had thus the. power of death? Our passage replies that " as the children are partakers of flesh and blood," the Son of God "took part of the same," being manifested in flesh, "that through death,"-His own death as an atonement for sin, "He might destroy," that is, annul, dethrone, or bring to naught, " him that had the power of death." Thus the divine Son became man, that through death He might put away from before God that which gave the devil his power. And having fully done this,- having conquered him who had the power of death, it follows that death is in the hands of the Conqueror, and therefore those who are His may say in happy confidence, Death is ours. In this way it got in company with Paul and Apollos and Cephas, yea, all things, in working for good to those who are Christ's. How mortifying, then, must it be to the great adversary to see that which he meant for evil used in grace in the service of those whom he sought to destroy! And how happily may the children of God pass their days in this scene, instead of spending a lifetime, through fear of death, subject to bondage!

In another part of the same epistle, we get the same precious truth, freedom from judgment being added.-" Now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation." (Heb. 9:26-28.) Here we have the awful situation in which "men" are,-appointed to death and judgment,-death as the result of the first sin, and judgment in view of personal guilt. How did Christ meet all this for those who believe? The answer is, "He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many;" thus taking them from under that appointment; and, therefore, " unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation." Hence, instead of believers coming into judgment as to their sins, Christ, who bore the judgment for them, appears unto their salvation. One cannot but be reminded of His own blessed words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life." (John 5:24, Revised Version?) Instead, therefore, of mournfully singing,-"How long shall Death the tyrant reign, And triumph o'er the just ? " is it the privilege of the believer joyously to sing,- "Death and judgment are behind me, Grace and glory are before;

All the billows rolled o'er Jesus,
There exhausted all their power.

"First-fruits of the resurrection,
He is risen from the tomb;
Now I stand in new creation,
Free, because beyond my doom.

"Jesus died, and I died with Him,
Buried in His grave I lay,
One with Him in resurrection,
Seated now in Him on high."

What claim can death and judgment have on those who are thus seen of God as having died with Christ, and who are now seated in the heavenly places in Him ? Yet those who are thus saved will be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, and be rewarded according to the fruit they have brought forth. A full salvation through Christ, and Christian responsibility, are alike taught in the Word of God, and are to be alike maintained in Christian teaching and ways. But then, those who have preached a full gospel, however much they have taught and practiced holiness of walk, have ever been charged with being antinomian, and therefore we need not be surprised that it is so now.

But I must give a little more testimony from the Word, on the question, How death became ours. The apostle, in the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians, after stating the gospel which he had preached unto them, and by which they were saved, namely, that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again;-and after stating the blessed results, he exclaims, in the present confidence and triumph of faith, " O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Yes, Christ died and rose, that those who are His might thus exult over death and the grave. He went down into death as an atonement for sin,-went down into death to extract its sting, bearing the full curse of the law (sin's strength); and as a proof that He had done it,-that He had fully satisfied divine righteousness and holiness, that He had perfectly glorified God in finishing the work which was given Him to do, God brought Him out of death, yea; set Him at His own right hand. In this way death became ours. Its sting being gone, it cannot harm. Visiting, then, the household of faith, it must do so in grace,-it must do so in service. In any other capacity, it has no place there. This is a part of the gospel-a part of the glad tidings which Paul, with others, preached. Blessed truth to the believing soul! Precious thought-the cross endured! · and the tomb empty! Surely those who enter into the divine meaning of this may joyously exclaim, even now, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" and not wait till the resurrection-morning for the utterance of this note of triumph.

The apostle John, in telling of the sight which he had of the Son of Man in His judicial glory, in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, says, " When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead, and He laid His right hand upon me, saying, ' Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of hades.'" (Rev. 1:17, 18, Revised Version.) The One whom John saw in such glory was the One who had died in love to put away sin, and whose soul was not left in hades, nor His flesh suffered to see corruption. He is alive for evermore,-thus telling us that all is done, that the keys of death and hades are at His girdle, that through His death He has acquired full authority over them, that He, the First and the Last, has title to put His gentle hand on His own, and to say, " Fear not." Death is conquered, and coming to the believer, it comes subject to its Conqueror. All is in grace to those who are dead with Him, for such are " under grace."

In the first epistle to the Thessalonians, fourth chapter and fifth verse, we read, " If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." The word here rendered "in" is the one usually rendered through. Though the Revised Version retains in the text, it gives through in the margin as being the Greek. Mr. Darby in his translation renders it through,-"those who have fallen asleep through Jesus." Dean Alford reads the passage, "them also which fell asleep through Jesus will God bring together with Him." Those who have departed this life in the faith of Jesus owe their happy death to Him, and to His death. Having part with Him in "the resurrection of life," and in His manifestation in glory, will follow.

Thus, by the light of the sure Word, we are guided to the conclusion that death is ours, not through any thing in us, or of us, but through what grace has wrought for us on the cross. We owe all to the love of Jesus in giving His precious life for us. We may sing,-

"His be the Victor's name
Who fought the fight alone,
Triumphant saints no honor claim,
His conquest was their own.

"By weakness and defeat
He won the meed and crown,
Trod all our foes beneath His feet
By being trodden down.

"He Hell's dark power laid low;
Made sin, He Sin overthrew;
Bowed to the grave, destroyed, it so,
And Death, by dying, slew.

"Bless, bless the Conqueror slain,
Slain in His victory;
Who lived, who died, who lives again,
For thee, His Church, for Thee!"

When Christ was praying, Peter was sleeping; when Christ was submitting, Peter was fighting; when Christ was suffering like a lamb, Peter was cursing and swearing. This is just the flesh-in energy when we ought to be still; sleeping when we ought to be working.

growth in grace manifests itself by a simplicity- that is, a greater naturalness of character. There will be more usefulness, and less noise; more tenderness of conscience, and less scrupulosity.

if any one, instead of looking for the Holy Ghost's guidance, dabbles with his own mind in Scripture, he will see either something in the book which is not there, or the contents of the book out of their proper order and relative importance.

"So Levi made Him a feast:and He, as understood and welcomed, took and maintained there His place of Welcomer; was fed in feeding, rested in giving rest; and the Spirit His Witness testifies His satisfaction with the fare He got. For of all who received Him, not all understood Him so; of all who welcomed, not all feasted Him. Is any desolate heart now needing to be made aware of such a Christ so seeking sinners, that where'er He feasts He must have open doors for them ?"

"CHRIST Himself is that which feeds our hearts, and His love so realized that it becomes the one object of our hearts to love Him."

The trouble, deepening to the apprehension of death, though at the hands of enemies, felt now as divine displeasure. The plea is now for mercy alone, and it is heard.

To the chief musician, on stringed instruments, upon Sheminith. A psalm of David.

JEHOVAH, rebuke me not in Thine anger; neither chasten me in Thy wrath!

2. Be gracious to me, Jehovah, for I am wasting away; heal me, Jehovah, for my bones are vexed.

3. My soul is also sore vexed; and Thou, Jehovah, how long?

4. Return, Jehovah, deliver my soul:O save me for Thy mercy's sake!

5. For in death there is no remembrance of Thee:in hades, who shall give Thee thanks?

6. I am weary with my sighing; all the night make I my bed to swim:I make my couch to run down with my tears.

7. Mine eye is consumed with vexation; it is waxed old because of all that straiten me.

8. Depart from me, all ye workers of vanity; for Jehovah hath heard the voice of my weeping.

9. Jehovah hath heard my supplication; Jehovah receiveth my prayer.

10. All mine enemies shall be greatly ashamed and terrified:they shall return, they shall be ashamed in a moment.

Text.-(5) "Hades," in Hebrew, Sheol, the place of the departed spirit; never the grave, for which there is another word altogether. The key to the thought here is to be found, not in materialism, but in what death was to the Jew, as judgment under the divine hand. The subject is treated of at large in "Facts and Theories as to a Future State."

This psalm is the fourth of the series, a number which speaks of testing; the ten verses, of responsibility.

(1) "Happy the man:" comp. psalm 2:12; here, obedience ; there, faith.

(2) Contrast with psalm 2:1:here he meditates on Jehovah's law; there they meditate rebellion.

(3) Compare the fig-tree blasted for its fruitlessness (Matt. 21:19.), the figure of that generation of the Jews. The next figure of the chaff also John the Baptist uses.

(5) "Nor sinners:" see Isaiah 4:3, 4:Israel will thus become a nation all holy, according to the terms of the new covenant; none shall have need to say to another, Know the Lord.

(6) "The way of the wicked:" comp. 2:12.

Prophetic anticipation of judgment on the wicked in Israel and on the nations, maintaining the remnant's cause, and putting out the name of the wicked forever. Jehovah is known by the judgment which He executes, and judges the world from His dwelling-place in Zion. To the chief musician upon Muth-labben. A psalm of David.

ALEPH.

I will celebrate Jehovah with my whole heart:I will declare all Thy wondrous works.

2. I will rejoice and exult in Thee; I will sing psalms to Thy name, O Most High !

BETH.

3. When mine enemies turn back, they stumble and perish from before Thy face.

4. For Thou hast maintained my right and my cause; Thou satest on Thy throne, judging righteously.

GIMEL.

5. Thou hast rebuked the Gentiles; Thou hast destroyed cities; their remembrance is perished with them.

VAU
7. And Jehovah abideth forever; He hath established His throne for judgment.

8. And Himself shall judge the world in righteousness; He shall govern the nations in uprightness.

9. Jehovah also shall be a high place for the afflicted one; a high place in seasons of distress.

10. And they that know Thy name will trust in Thee; for Thou, Jehovah, hast not forsaken them that seek Thee.

ZAYIN

11. Sing psalms to Jehovah, who dwelleth in Zion:tell His deeds among the peoples.

12. For He who seeketh out bloodshed hath remembered them :He hath not forsaken the cry of the humble.

CHETH

13. Be gracious to me, Jehovah; behold my affliction [at the hands] of them that hate me, – raising me up from the gates of death.

14. That I may declare all Thy praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion, – that I may exult in Thy salvation.

TETH.

15. The Gentiles are sunk down in the ditch which they made; in the net which they covered up is their foot taken.

16. Jehovah is made known; He hath executed judgment:'the wicked one is snared in the work of his own hands. A meditation. Selah.

JOD.

17. The wicked turn back into hades:all the Gentiles, forgetful of God.

CAPH.

18. For not for evermore shall the needy be forgotten:the expectation of the meek shall not perish for aye.

19. Arise, Jehovah! let not frail man be strong; let the Gentiles be judged before Thy face.

20. Put them in fear, Jehovah ; that the Gentiles may know themselves to be frail men. Selah.

Text.-Title. "Muth-labben,"-"Death for the son"- taken generally as the name of a melody to which the psalm was to be sung. As the Exodus is to be repeated in some main features in Israel's history in a future day,-a day to which this psalm refers,-a reference to Exodus 1:22 is worthy of consideration.

(4) "Maintained my right" is literally "wrought my judgment."

(5) I have endeavored to mark out the various expressions for eternity, although accomplishing nothing in the way of additional clearness of translation:1. Leolam, "forever," and when in the plural, rather "for ages," or "the ages." Olam is as nearly as can be equal to the Greek aion. The expression found so often in the New Testament, "for the ages of ages," occurs but once in the Old (Isa. 14:17.). 2. Ad I translate by "aye." 3. Lanetzach, "for evermore." The many shades of difference in expression it is perhaps impossible to render into English. It has not, at any rate, been done, if indeed attempted, hitherto.. My own rendering merely distinguishes, and nothing more. (6) The construction is a difficult one here. Most translate it as above. Some (with the A. V.) make it a direct address to the enemy-"O enemy."

(2) ABRAHAM’S INNER LIFE, (ch. 15:-21:)-It is evident that in the fifteenth chapter we have a new beginning, and that we pass from the more external view of his path and circumstances to that of his inner life and experiences. Abram is now for the first time put before us as a man righteous by faith, a thing fundamental to all spiritual relationships and all right experiences. It was not, surely, now for the first time that he believed the Lord when God said to him under the starry sky of Syria, "So shall thy seed be." Yet here it pleased God first openly to give the attestation of his righteousness:words which lay for a gleam of comfort to how many sin-tossed souls, before God could come openly out with the proclamation of it as 'His principle, that a " man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."

There are two things specially before us in this chapter; and they come before us in the shape of a divine answer to two questions from the heart of Abram. The two questions, moreover, are drawn out of him by two assurances on God's part, each of which is of unspeakable moment to ourselves.

The two assurances are, (i) "Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward;" (2) " I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." As we would read this for ourselves now,-" God is our portion," and " Heaven is the place in which we are to enjoy our portion."

To the first assurance Abram replies, "Lord God what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless?" to the second, "Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" Strange words, it may seem, in the face of God's absolute assurance; which do speak to us of a man's heart which not merely God's, word, but God's act must meet; questions which thus He takes up in His grace, seriously to answer, and that we through all time may have the blessedness of their being answered.

The answer to both, no Christian heart can doubt, is Christ; for Christ is God's answer to every question. Here it may be figuratively and enigmatically given, as was characteristic of a time in which God could not yet speak out fully. None the less should it be plain to us now what is intended, and unspeakably precious to find Christ unfolding to us, as it were, out of every rose-bud in this garden of the Lord.

"After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:'Fear not, Abram:I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.' "

Had Abram been fearing? The things that had just transpired, and to which the Lord evidently refers, were his victory over the combined power of the kings, which we have already looked at; and secondly, his refusal to be enriched at the hands of the king of Sodom. Brave deeds and brave words! wrought with God and spoken before God who could doubt ? Yet it is nothing uncommon, just when we have wrought something, for a sudden revolution of feeling to surprise us,- for the ecstatic and high-strung emotion upon whose summit we were just now carried, to subside and leave us, like a stranded boat, consciously, if we may so say, above water-mark. The necessity, of action just now shut out all other thought. That over it no longer sustains. We drop out of heroism, to find-what? Blessed be His name!-God Himself beneath us! We who were shielding others find more than ever the need of God our shield:we who were energetically refusing Sodom's offers need to be reminded, " I am thy exceeding great reward." Thank God, when the boat strands there!

God our defense! what shaft of the enemy can pierce through to us? God our recompensing portion! what is all the world can give ? In this place of eternal shelter, oh to know more the still unsearchable riches!

"Of Christ," adds the apostle. Did not Abram feel the lack of our revelation there,-unintelligent as he may be as to what was wanted,' and utterly unable, of course, to forestall God's as yet but partially hinted purpose ? Grasping, as it were, at infinity, and unable to lay hold of it, he drops from heaven to earth, and cries, with something like impatience, as the immensity of the blessing makes itself felt in his very inability to hold it, " Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? …. Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed; and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir."

How flat all God's assurances seem to have fallen with the pattern man of faith! And yet we may find, very manifestly, in all., this pattern. It is all very well to say that Abram's faith was not up to the mark here. In truth it was not; but that is no explanation. Do you know what it is, apart from Christ as now revealed to us, to grasp after this immensity of God your portion? If you do, you will know how the wings of faith flutter vainly in the void, and cannot rise to it. Thank God, if you cannot rise, God can come down; and so he does here to Abram. Serenely He comes down to the low level of Abram's faith, and goes on to give him what it can grasp:" And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, 'This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.' And He brought him forth abroad, and said,' Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them:so shall thy seed be.' And he believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness." .

The many seeds and the One are here; and the many to be reached by means of the One. Abram's " One Seed " must be familiar to us all. Through and in Isaac we read Christ:" He saith not, And unto seeds, as of many; but as of one, ' And to thy Seed,' which is Christ." To us, at least, is it an obscure utterance of how this first assurance is made good to us, and possible to be realized ? The Son of Man, here amongst us, where faith shall need no impossible flights to lay hold of Him, and the infinity of Godhead shall be brought down to the apprehension of a little child. Himself "the Child born," Himself the "Son given," the kingdom of peace is forestalled for those with whom, all the faculties of their soul subdued and harmonized under His blessed hand, "the calf and the young lion and the fatling" dwell together, and a little child leads them.

God our shield, and God our reward:we know these, we appreciate them in Him who is God manifest, because God incarnate.

The second question now comes up.-"And He said unto him, 'I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.'And he said, ' Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?' "

Here too the question is plain, and to be answered by deeds, not words. The land for us is the good land of our inheritance, the land upon which the eyes of the Lord are continually – not earth, but heaven. A wonderful place to enjoy our portion, when we know indeed what our portion is! " Where I am " is the Lord's own description; and thus you will find it most apt and suited, that it, is not until He stands before us upon the full clear revelation of an inheritance in heaven is made to us. He uncloses heaven who ascending up there; carries the hearts of His disciples within its gates. Did they open to admit us without this, would not our eyes turn back reluctantly to that earth only familiar to us ? Did they not open now, would they not be an eternal distance-putting between us and our Beloved? "That where I am, there ye may be also" explains all. The stars shining out of heaven are thus in this chapter the evident symbol of the multitudinous seed.

But how is man to reach a land like this? A place with Christ, reader ! Look at what you are, and answer me:what is to raise a child of earth to the height of God's own heaven?

No work of man, at least; no human invention of any kind. How could we think of a place with Christ as the fruit of any thing but God's infinite grace? He who came down from the glory of I God to put His hand upon us, alone can raise us up thither. No human obedience merely, even were it perfect, could have value of this kind, because it would be still merely what was our duty to do. He to whom obedience was a voluntary stooping, not a debt, alone could give it value. And He, raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, and gone in as man into the presence of God, brings us for whom His work was done into the self-same place which as man He takes.

Thus God answers Abram by putting before him Christ as the pledge of inheritance:" Take Me a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon." God delights to accumulate the types of what Christ is, and press their various significance upon us. These are all types which are brought out more distinctly before us in the offerings after this. The three beasts-all tame, not. wild, nor needing to be captured for us, but the willing servants of man's need" each three years old-time in its progress unfolding in them a divine mystery. The first two, females, the type of fruitfulness:the heifer, of the patient Workman; the she-goat, of the Victim for our sins; the ram, in whom the meek surrender of the sheep becomes more positive energy, -afterward, therefore, the ram of consecration, and of the trespass-offering. (Lev. 5:15; 8:22.) The birds speak of One from heaven, One whom love, made a man of sorrow (the turtle-dove), and One come down to a life of faith on earth (the rock-pigeon, like the coney, making its nest in the place of security and strength).

To unfold all this, and apply it, would require a volume. No wonder, for we have here our occupation for eternity begun. These, the fivefold type expressed in one perfect Man, Abram " divided in the midst, and laid each piece one against another, but the birds divided he not; and when the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away."Thus upon all these types of moral beauty, and that they may be fit types of Him whom they represent, death passes, and they lie exposed under the open heaven, faith in Abram guarding the sacrifice from profanation, until, " when the sun was going down, a deep sleep passed upon Abram, and he slept; and, lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him."Faith's watchfulness is over; darkness succeeds to light; but this only brings out the supreme value of the sacrifice itself, which not faith gives efficacy to, but which sustains faith. God Himself, under the symbol of the "smoking furnace and the burning lamp," passes between the pieces, pledging Himself by covenant* to perform His promise of inheritance. *See Jeremiah 24:18, where God announces the doom of those who had not performed the covenant made with Him, when they " cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof."* Purifier and enlightener, He pledges Himself by the sacrifice to give the discipline needed in faith's failure, and the needed light in the darkness it involves; and thus the inheritance, not apart from the suited state to enjoy it with God, but along with the conditions Which His holiness (and so His love) necessitates.

How complete and beautiful is this, then, as the answer to Abram's second question ! If, with his eyes upon himself, he asks, " How shall I know that I shall inherit it?" he is answered by the revelation of the infinite value of all that puts a holy God and a righteous One, in both characters, upon his side:under propping faith in all its frailty, and securing holiness as fully as it secures the inheritance itself. These types and shadows belong assuredly to us, to whom Christ has become the revelation of all, the substance of all these shadows. Ours is indeed a wider and a wondrous inheritance. But so ours is a sacrifice of infinite value, and which alone gave their value to these symbols themselves. How precious to see God's eye resting in delight upon that which for Him had such significance, ages before its import could be revealed! How responsible we whom grace has favored with so great a revelation!

Thus all is secured to Abram by indefeasible promise on the ground of sacrifice. It is of promise as contrasted with law, as the apostle says. Abram believes the promise, but does not yet know this contrast. He believes God, but not yet simply; alas! as with all of us at the beginning, he believes in himself also. He is a believer, but not yet a circumcised believer. Do you perchance even yet know the difference, beloved reader? It is this that Abram's history is to make plain to us.

"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children." Sarai is, as we have seen, the principle of grace, and this is one of the strangest, saddest things in a believer's experience, the apparent barrenness of that which should be the principle of fertility in his life and walk. " Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under grace." And yet it is the justified man, and who thus far at least knows what divine grace is, who says, " When I would do good, evil is present with me;" and " The good that I would I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do." It is impossible to read the lesson of the seventh of Romans aright until we have seen this. The struggle that it speaks of is not a struggle after peace or justification; nay, cannot over. The whole until this is break-down, not of a sinner, but be known aright secret of it is the of a saint. That efforts after righteousness before God should be vain and fruitless is simple enough; but that efforts after holiness should be fruitless is a very different thing, and a much harder thing to realize. It is Sarai's barrenness that troubles us. Alas! how in this distress Sarai herself, as it were, incites us to leave her; persuading us, she may be builded up by Hagar!

Of Hagar also we have the inspired interpretation. She is the covenant " from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage:" the only form of religion that man's natural thought leads him to, and that to which, if grace is left, we necessarily drop down. Hagar is thus an Egyptian, a child of nature, or as the epistle to the Galatians interprets, " the elements of the world." The principle of law, however much for the purposes of divine wisdom adopted by God, was never His thought. He uses it that man being thoroughly tested by it may convince himself by experiment of the folly of his own thoughts. It is thus Sarai's handmaid, though exalted often even by the roan of faith to a different place. The tendency of law, as it were, to depart from this place of service is shown in her very name-Hagar, that is, " fugitive;" and thus the angel of the Lord finds her by the well, going down to Egypt. When she is finally dis-missed from Abram's house, she is again found I with her son, gravitating down to Egypt; and I upon the wilderness upon its borders Ishmael dwells afterward. How little Christians suspect this tendency of that by which they seek holiness and fruit! Yet even that which, as given by God, is necessarily " holy and just and good," speaks nothing of heaven or of Christ, or, therefore, of pilgrim-life on earth. But thus all of power is left out also; for Abram's pilgrim-life springs from his Canaan-place ;and " in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision," – the whole condition of man as man, – "but a new creation."

Abram takes Hagar, however, to be fruitful by her, just as believers in the present day take up the law simply as a principle of fruitfulness, not at all for justification :it is their very thought that is being tested here. And the effect at first seems all that could be desired once. It is only when God speaks that it is seen that Ishmael is, after all, not the promised seed. The immediate result is, Sarai is despised :" And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes."So it ever is. Once admit the principle of law, and what is law if it be not sovereign?' Faith may cling to and own barren Sarai still, but the principle introduced is none the less its essential opposite. "Sarai dealt hardly with her," and " she fled from her face."

The scene that follows in the wilderness is, I doubt not, a lesson from the dispensations. It is the instruction, not of experience, as in Romans, It is the explanation of the divine connection with the law. It is between the promise of the seed and its fulfillment that Hagar's history comes in. The law was given, not from the beginning, but four hundred and thirty years after the promise was made ; and it was added till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made. Again, it was not God who first gave Hagar to Abram, but Abram who took Hagar:that the experiment might be worked fully out, God sends her back to him; that is all. So in like manner the covenant at Sinai was not God's own proper thought, but what was in man's mind taken up of God to be worked out, under true conditions, to its necessary result. The whole scene is here significant:God's own voice now recognizing, and insisting on, that which alone Hagar filled; the " fountain of water " by which Hagar is found, the symbol of that spiritual truth which, connected with law, is not law; that characterizing, before his birth, of the " wild-ass man," Ishmael-child of law, and lawless,-just as the law from the beginning foretold its own necessary issue:" Every imagination of the thought of man's heart" being " only evil, and that continually." Therefore the vail before the holiest, and the declaration, even to Moses, " Thou canst not see My face." God in all this, we may note, appears to Hagar, and not to Abram:for thirteen years more we read of no further intercourse between God and Abram.

But "when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said unto him, ' I am the almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect.' " This is the period to which the apostle refers in the epistle to the Romans, when his body was now dead, being about one hundred years old; and it is striking to see how completely the intermediate years from the taking of Hagar are counted but as loss. "And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb:he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able also to perform :and therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness" (Rom. 4:19-22.)

Now here it should seem as if the apostle had confounded times far apart. It was at least fourteen years before that Abram had "believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness." Before Ishmael was born his body was not dead, for Ishmael was born " after the flesh," or in the energy of nature merely, in contrast with the. power of God. It could not have been at that time, then, that he considered not his body now dead. Thus the faith that the apostle speaks of is really the faith of the later period. All the intervening time is thus covered, and the two periods brought together.

Natural power had to reach its end with him before the power of God could be displayed. It was now an almighty God before whom Abram was called to walk. Mighty he had known Him; not really till now almighty. The apprehension of power in ourselves limits (how greatly!) the apprehension of so simple a fact as that all "power belongeth unto God." By our need we learn His grace; by our poverty, His fullness; and the Christian as such has to receive the sentence of death in himself, that he may not trust in himself, but in God that raiseth the dead, and as a child of Abraham find his place with God according to the covenant of circumcision.

" For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh;" " having put off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." The cross is our end as men in the flesh, not that we should trust in ourselves now as Christians, but in Christ:that as we have received Christ Jesus our Lord, we should walk IN him. How little is it realized what that is! In our complaints of weakness, how little that to be really weak is strength indeed!

What comfort is there for us in the fact that thus "sprang there of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable"! How serious and how blessed that upon all the natural seed is the very condition upon which alone they can call him father! the token of the covenant was to be in his flesh for an everlasting covenant, the token of the perpetual terms upon which they were with God. How striking to find that under the law the very nation in the flesh must carry the "sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which Abraham had being yet uncircumcised"! and that at any time, spite of the middle wall of partition still standing, any Gentile could freely appropriate the sign of such a righteousness, and with his males circumcised sit down to the feast of redemption- the passover-feast!

Another reminder is here:"And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man-child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed." Every child of God is both born in the house and bought with money; not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:and the "eight days old" shows to how fair an inheritance we are destined; for the eighth day speaks, of course, to us of new creation, the first week of the old having run out. It is in the power of the knowledge of this that practical circumcision can alone be retained. In the wilderness Israel lost theirs, and on reaching Canaan had to be circumcised the second time. So too the water of separation had to be sprinkled on the third day:in the power of resurrection only could death be applied for the cleansing of the soul. The sense of what is ours in Christ alone qualifies us to walk in His steps. It is only what His own words imply,-" Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me." "As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk ye in Him."

In the second part of this series we have a mingled story of two lives-of many individuals, but still only of two lives-essentially contrasted with one another. It is already the commencing fulfillment of that prophetic word which had spoken of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The story belongs, not to one generation only, but to every generation from that day to this; for while it is assuredly true that the real and fundamental victory which insures every other is His to whom belongs in its full sense the title of " Seed of the woman," yet it is true, too, that in every generation the great opponents have their representatives among men, and the conflict and the victory are in principle continually repeated.

The world has been from the beginning as all history attests, a scene of unceasing strife; but its strife has been very generally a hopeless contest of evil with evil; for evil has no internal unity nor peace. Its elements may compact, but cannot concord. " Corruption is in the world through lust," lust is its essential feature, and we have had this already traced to its beginning in paradise itself; but lust means strife, means war, the conflict of jarring interests, each pursuing his own:"Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts, which war in your members?" In such a collision there can be no true victory any where. Such history may fill men's chronicles; with God it is a mere unmeaning blank.

God's history is but the tracing, amid this darkness, of one silver line of light, light come into the world, a foreign element in it. With this the record of the six days' work begins:" Let there be light, and there was light." With this, too, begins the story of that of which we have already seen these creative days to be a type. We do not know how long the earth lay " waste and empty " under darkness; we do know that for man not long was the darkness unbroken. God's word again brought in light, although light at first long struggling with the darkness which it found; yet from the first God benediction was its pledge of final victory. "Evening" might be, but not henceforth total "night;" while each "morning," as it follows, presages and brings nearer the full and perfect! day, God's Sabbath-rest, when darkness shall be| gone forever.

But here, then, is conflict, if mysterious, yet most real, where there are victories to be recorded, and where, thank God, the final victory-is sure:a conflict just where the light is, and not elsewhere; a conflict to which every human heart in which God has spoken that out of darkness light may shine, is witness, and which is seen on a far grander scale in the field of the world at large. It is to this that the chapters now before us invite our attention; and as we shall see in these two spheres, where the inner world of the heart is but the miniature representative of the world without. We may see it more plainly if we trace it first upon the larger scale.

Here the blood of righteous Abel speaks to us of what often causes to the soul such deep perplexity, the apparent prevalence of evil over good:a perplexity which is not removed until we see it as the law of the conflict we have spoken of. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head; but then the serpent shall first bruise the heel of the woman's seed. This applies first of all and pre-eminently, as already said, to Christ as the conqueror over man's mortal foe. In Abel's death we may thus see Christ, whose blood indeed speaks better things than that of Abel, but of whom Abel is none the less, as the first martyr, dying at a brother's hand, a perfect type.

If this be true, however, Cain must be a picture especially of the people, Christ's brethren, too, after the flesh, at whose hand he really died and here at once the whole type assumes meaning and consistency.

Cain, then, is the Jew, the formal worshiper of God, bringing the work of his hands, the fruit of his own toil, not doubting that it ought to be accepted of God. Not irreligious, as men would say, he ignores the breach that sin had caused between man and his Creator, but of which the very toil whose fruit he brought was witness. So coming, he is necessarily rejected of God; and such is Pharisaism, of whatever grade or time. Just persons, having no need of repentance; diligent elder sons, serving the Father, but without getting so much as a kid to make merry with their friends; self-satisfied legalists, ignorant of God and grace:such is the Lord's picture of a generation of which Cain was prototype and father. Pharisees were they, who always were most zealous for commandments and against Christ, " going about to establish their own righteousness, and not submitting themselves to the righteousness of God."

Abel, on the other hand, draws near to God, bringing nothing of his own handiwork, but an innocent victim, a life taken which no sin had stained or burdened, a sacrifice most unreasonable if it were not faith. What pleasure could God take in death ? or how could the death of a guiltless substitute atone for the guilty? Thus man still reasons. But the very folly of Abel's sacrifice [to the eye of reason should suffice to assure us that he was not following the promptings of his own mind in it. His was not will-worship, but faith; and if plainly the death of a beast could not take away sin, his eye rested upon what that substitution foreshadowed." By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain."And in this he might well speak to us of Him who, not for Himself indeed, but as Man for men, offered to God that one acceptable offering in which all others find their consummation and their end.

"Witness" and "martyr" were from the beginning one. The self-righteous heart of Cain resents the testimony to man's guilt and God's provision for it, resents the testimony of God Himself to the acceptance of Abel and his offering. In vain does God graciously demonstrate with him; Abel is slain, and Cain goes out from the presence of the Lord, not to be slain of man, but to be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth. . How like the people who bought Aceldama with the blood of Christ-"the potter's field to bury strangers in"! for the whole earth has been to them since then a strangers' burial-ground. As a vessel marred upon the wheel, they have been witnesses for Him in their rejection that they are but as clay in the hands of Him against whom they have sinned.

Yet, though wanders upon the earth, the nation subsists; for He who has ordained their punishment has also ordained its limit. They subsist with the mark of Cain upon them, a people who strikingly fulfill the character of Cain's progeny to this day, away from the presence of Jehovah, according to one of their own prophecies, " without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim."

With Lamech and his sons the line of Cain ends:one in whom self-will and impenitent abuse of God's long-suffering reach their height. A polygamist and would-be homicide, his name speaks of the human " strength " in which he rejoices, his wives' names of the lust of eye and ear after which he goes, his sons' names and their inventions of how, then as now, a soul away from God will use His creatures so as to be able to dispense with Him.* *Lamech is "strong;" Adah, "ornament;" Zillah, "tinkling" ("music player" some interpret rather than translate it); Jabal, "the traveler;" Jabal, "the trumpet-blast;" Tubal-Cain is variously rendered, "worker in ore," "brass of Cain," "issue of Cain:" Naamah, "lovely."* This is a generation such as those of whom the Lord said, "The latter end is worse than the beginning." With Cain, seven .generations, and in the last still Cain, only developed further:progress in a race away from God, who will possess themselves of the earth in His de-spite, and be prosperous citizens in the land of vagabondage.

Happily this is not all; nor is that which is of God, though down-trodden, extinct upon earth. In Seth (appointed in the place of Abel, whom Cain slew) we have its resurrection, and hence-forth its perpetuation. The line of Cain perished with the old world in the waters of the deluge; with Seth, God begins, as it were, the race of man anew (chap. 5:), Cain and the fall being now omitted. Seth is the son of man, so to speak, in his likeness who was made in the likeness of God and blessed. With Seth, there are nine generations unto Noah, in whom once more the earth is also blessed:three triads, for God manifests Himself in as well as to His people; at the end of the second of which Enoch goes to heaven without seeing death, while Noah is God's seed, brought through the judgment to replenish and find his blessing on the earth beyond. The Church of first-born ones and Israel find here very plainly their representatives, to those who have learned from Scripture the respective destinies of each. Fittingly, therefore, does Enoch become the earliest prophet of the Lord's approach (Jude 14.), while the days of Noah are expressly likened, by the Lord Himself, to the time of the coming of the Son of Man.

The more we look, the more we shall see the force of the comparison. Infidelity has invited our attention to a correspondence between the two lines of Cain and Seth, and there is a certain correspondence which it will be well to examine. The resemblance of some names pointed out is no doubt superficial; but there are undoubtedly two Enochs and two Lamechs, and the latter close upon the end of the old world. Of the two Enochs, all that is noted is but contrast. The first gives his name to the city which Cain builds as it were in defiance of his sentence, a city whose builder and maker God is not. Enoch, one of a line which have no earthly history, walks with God, and is not, for God has taken him. The two Lamechs have more in common, for alas ! the separateness which at first obtained between the worshipers of I Jehovah and those in alienation from Him narrowed as time went on. It was when Enos was born that men began to call upon the name of the Lord, for "Enos" is "frail" or "mortal man," and those content to bear that title learn the mercies of a covenant-keeping God. But as time goes on, Lamech succeeds to Enos – strength to weakness, the world and the Church approach; and thus Lamech, like his Cainite representative, has his memorable saying also:pious, and largely true, but with one fatal flaw in it. Lamech called his son's name " ' Noah,' saying, ' This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands because of the earth which the Lord has cursed.' "

And the comfort came, and in Noah, real blessing for the earth from God. Lamech was thus far a true prophet ; but the people to whom he spoke, or the survivors of them, with their whole posterity, save Noah's family alone, were all cut off by the flood that preceded the blessing.

Is there nothing similar now, when boundary-lines are nearly effaced, and the Church has shifted from the Enos to the Lamech-state, and peace is preached in the assurance of good days coming, while intervening judgment, universal for the rejecters of present grace, is completely ignored and set aside?

Seth's line has warning as well as comfort for us, then; yet is it after all the line to which God's, promise and His blessing cleave, and while the world profits naught by their inventions, it is beautiful to see how He numbers up the years of their pilgrimage. With them alone there is a chronology, for He who telleth the stars "numbers their steps " and " telleth " even " their wanderings."

Thus far, then, as to the interpretation of this primeval history as it applies to the larger scale of the world around. But there is a world within which corresponds certainly not less to what these types signify, and which lies apparently yet more within the scope of these Genesis biographies. In this inner world, wherever God has wrought, the same conflict is found, and subject to the same laws. Through death, life; through defeat, victory.

In this sphere of the individual experience the conflict is between two natures-the one which is ours as born naturally; the other, as born of God supernaturally:and here, evidently, the order is, "first, that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." The law of Genesis is thus that the elder gives place to the younger. Cain | represents, therefore, that in us which we rightly and necessarily call " the old nature." His name signifies " acquisition, possession;" Abel's, " vapor, exhalation." The contrast between them cannot be questioned, and was prophetic of their lives:i Cain possessing himself of that earth on which for man's sake the curse rested, while Abel's life exhaled to God like vapor drawn up by the sun. We may be very conscious, as Christians, of these opposite tendencies:the "flesh," so designated because in it man is sunk down from the spiritual being, which he was created, into mere " body," as we may say, or dust, while the new nature rises Godward.

Not that the flesh cannot have a religion of its own. It can bring its offering Cain-wise, the fruit of a toil which should convict it as outside of paradise, and (expecting it to be received, of course,) be roused to anger by not finding the tokens of acceptance which a mere prodigal, coming home as that, obtains;-the spirit of him who was, again, "the elder son," and who, while professing, "Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandments," had still to add, " and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends." How many of those even in whom there is begun in the heart some true desire after God, are yet destitute of all knowledge of acceptance with Him, because they are endeavoring to approach Him after Cain's pattern, taking their own thoughts instead of His! Faith still, taught of His Word, brings Abel's offering-the surrender of a life unstained by sin, and yielded therefore on account of others, not its own; and faith is the character and expression of the new nature:we are "all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."

The interpretation of the type runs smoothly so far. The difficulty will be for most that Abel should die, and by his brother's hand-a difficulty quite parallel to that which it represents, that when we have so begun to live, we should find in practical experience a law of sin overmastering, death in the place of life.-" For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died."-" For sin, taking occasion by the commandment deceived me, and by it slew me."
Thus, while it is surely true that the life which as children of God we partake of cannot be slain, it is nevertheless true as to experience, from which side the type presents things here, that it is after we have begun to live the true and eternal life we have to learn what death is-to pass through the experience of it in our souls, and learn deliverance from "the body of this death." '

In the struggle with evil, we too (though in a very different way from Him who alone is fully and properly the woman's seed) find victory from defeat. We need, on our own account (as He did not), the humiliation of it. Jacob, though heir of blessing, must halt upon his thigh before he can be Israel, a prince with God; and what seems on the one side to be unredeemed evil and its triumph only, shall in another be found the mighty and transforming touch of the "angel that redeems from evil."

We must have the sentence of death in ourselves, that we may not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead. The possession of life-of the new nature-is not power over sin; and this we have to learn, that all " power is of God." Trust in a new nature which we have got is still trust in ourselves as having got it; and self-confidence in whatever shape is still a thing alienate from God, and to be broken down, not built up. We must come to the self-despairing cry, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" before we can learn, as we shall then surely learn, to answer, "I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Thus Abel dies, and Cain lives and flourishes; away from God indeed, but not permitted to be slain. The flesh abides in us, though we are born again; we cannot destroy it when we gladly would. Nay, we have, before we can find the fruit we seek for, to see the flesh in its fruit, under its fairest forms, the evil thing it ever was. To its seventh generation, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh,"-from Cain to Tubal-cain, "Cain's issue." But then we have reached a new beginning, and for other fruit find another tree-Seth, appointed of God as a seed "in the place of Abel, whom Cain slew."

Just so when the fruits of the flesh are manifest, and we have proved the inefficacy of the right and good desires which come of the new nature in us:when we have failed to work deliverance for ourselves, and have had to cry in despair, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? " we find the answer in a fruitful seed bestowed in place of Abel-"I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and the " law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" makes us "free from the law of sin and death;"-not "the life," but "the Spirit of life,"-not our effort, but divine might,- not self-occupation, but occupation with Him in whom we are before God, and in whom the divine favor rests upon us full and constant as upon Him (and because on Him) it rests. " I, yet not I, but Christ in me." This is a second substitution which for deliverance it imports a soul to know:the substitution of the power of the Spirit for the power of a right will and human energy, the substitution therefore of occupation with Christ for occupation with holiness; for then and thus alone is holiness attainable.

From Seth, then, " Enos " springs.* We can take home the sentence of death; we can glory in weaknesses, that the strength of Christ may rest upon us; and His power known-the living God for us, as we find Him whom our weakness needs, we " worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."*Frail" or "mortal man."*"Then began men"-from the birth of Enos- "to call upon the name of the Lord."

And with Seth, Adam's line begins afresh as if sin had never entered, as if it had never blotted the page of human history. Like the genealogy in Luke, where, the Son of Man having come in, Adam again shines forth in the brightness of his creation as " the son of God;" so here begin once more "the generations of Adam," with no record of the fall to touch the blessed fact that " in the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him." No Cain, nor even Abel, enters here. The record is of a life in all its generations not of this world, yet the days of which in the world God numbers:a life which is fruitful, but whose fruit it is not yet the time to show; a life to which alone is appended the record of a walk with God, and which not only finds its home with God in Enoch, but with Noah also, in due time, after the long-suspended judgment is poured out, inherits the earth also by perpetual covenant of a! covenant-keeping God.

BOOK I.-The Genesis of the Psalms. (Ps. 1:-41:)- Christ the basis of blessing for His people (Israel).

BOOK II.-The Exodus. (Ps. 42:-72:)-Their ruin, and redemption in grace in the latter days.

BOOK III.-The Leviticus. (Ps. 73:-89:)-The holiness of God in His dealings with them.

BOOK IV.-The Numbers. (Ps. 90:-106:)-The Perfect Man replacing the failed first man, and the earth committed to His charge. –

BOOK V.-The Deuteronomy. (Ps. 107:-150:)-The moral conclusion as to the divine ways.

BOOK I.

Section 1. (Ps. 1:-8:)-Christ rejected by man, exalted by God; this characterizing and limiting His people's sufferings,

Section 2. (Ps. 9:-15:)-Antichrist and the enemies of the people set aside.

Section 3. (Ps. 16:-41:)-Christ amongst the people:in His life and sacrificial work; the basis of all blessing.

SECTION 1.

The counsels of God as to the exaltation of Christ, rejected of man, to the throne of David and of the world; and the connection of this with the deliverance of the remnant of Israel in the latter days, suffering and persecuted during the time of His patience; but whose sufferings give them needful exercise of soul, preparing them for final blessing.

(1) Ps. i, 2:-The blessing of those obedient in heart to the law, and believing in Christ, in contrast with the portion of the wicked who reject Him and perish by judgment when He comes. ' These two things,-the spirit of obedience and of faith,-are the prerequisites for blessing, not only for Israel, but for all. See as to Israel, Deuteronomy 30:1-3 ; and 18:18, 19.

(2) Ps. 3:-7:-Exercises of the remnant during the time of Messiah's rejection and patience, in the land, amid the mass of the ungodly; exercises which deepen continually in character, until they are completely searched out in the presence of God, and brought to reliance on divine mercy alone.

(3) Ps. 8:-Deliverance of the persecuted people, by the exaltation of the Lord as Son of Man to all authority, set over all God's works in the world to come, and making Jehovah's name excellent in all the earth.

PSALM I.

The blessing of the remnant, separated from the evil around, and in heart obedient to the law; in view of coming judgment, which will completely and forever separate.

Happy the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of scoffers;

2. But in Jehovah's law is his delight; and in His law doth he meditate day and night.

3. He is even like a tree planted by the water-channels, which giveth its fruit in its season:his leaf also withereth not; and whatsoever he doeth he carrieth through.

4. The wicked are not so; but they are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

5. Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6. For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous ; and the way of the wicked shall perish.

The character O, the wicked one :-Haughty contempt of Jehovah, and oppression of the poor, His people.

LAMED.

Why standest Thou afar off, Jehovah? concealest Thyself in seasons of distress?

2. In the haughtiness of the wicked doth he hotly pursue the humble:they are being taken in the plots that they have devised.

3. For the wicked one boasteth of his soul's desire; and he blesseth the covetous, he scorneth Jehovah.

4. The wicked, in his disdain, [saith,] " He will not seek it out:" in all his plots there is no God.

5. His ways are at all times secure; Thy judgments are a height out of his sight:all his adversaries, he puffeth at them.

6. He hath said in his heart, " I shall not be moved; from generation to generation one who shall not be in any evil."

7. His mouth is full of oaths, and deceit and cruelty; under his tongue are trouble and vanity.

8. He sitteth in ambush by the villages; in secret places doth he slay the innocent:his eyes lurk after the wretched.

9. He lieth in wait in the secret places like a lion in his covert; he lieth in wait to seize the humble:he doth seize the humble when he draweth him into his net.

10. He croucheth ; he boweth down ; and the wretched are fallen by his strong ones.
11. He hath said in his heart, "God hath forgotten:He hath hidden His face ; He will not see it for evermore."

KOPH.

12. Arise, Jehovah! lift up Thy hand, O God! forget not the humble.

13. Wherefore hath the wicked one scorned God? He hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not seek it out.

14. Thou hast seen it ;for Thou lookest upon trouble and provocation to requite it with Thy hand ; the wretched one committeth himself to Thee ; Thou hast been the helper of the orphan.

SCHIN.

15. Break Thou the arm of the wicked and evil one ; seek out his wickedness till Thou find none.

1 6. Jehovah is King forever and aye; the Gentiles are perished out of His land.

TAU.

17. Thou hast heard the desire of the humble:Thou wilt confirm their heart; Thou wilt cause Thine ear to hearken, –

18. To judge the orphan and the afflicted, that frail man from the earth may no more alarm.

Text.-(2) Or, "doth the humble burn."

(3) "Boasteth of;" literally, "praiseth."

(4) "Disdain;" literally, "lifting of his nose." (12) "God:" El,-Mighty One.

If ever a text were turned from its exact opposite, this is perhaps the one. It is not only misapplied, but mistranslated; and not only mistranslated, but even then misquoted. People quote it as "diligent in business," and use it as their justification in throwing all their energies into the pursuit of money-making; the very next words of the apostle being swamped in the fulfillment of the prior duty. How hard indeed do Christians find it to be " diligent in business" and " fervent in spirit" at the same time! The occupation of heart with that which is in fact "the mammon of unrighteousness,"-how impossible to combine this with true devotedness to the Lord, He Himself declares. " No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will cleave to the one and despise the other:ye cannot serve God and mammon."

But while these are owned, of course, as the Lord's words, how few realize their solemn meaning! How few of those to whom money has become a most real object would willingly own that they were serving mammon! It is an object, they would have to acknowledge, but it is not the object, and surely at the bottom of their hearts one would trust it was not; but it is the admission of another object at all that the Lord warns of. If to get money is the object of the heart at all, a divided heart is a divided service, the very thing that He who knows so thoroughly pronounces incompatible with service to Himself.

How shall the heart be kept free from what the hands must needs be busy with? In one way alone. By really recognizing that what we handle is Another's, and not our own; that what is ours is what is unseen and eternal:that we are really stewards, and that the solemn result of unfaithfulness will be what is emphasized in that momentous question, " If 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, who will give you that which is your own ?

" Faithful:" in real use of your Master's goods as His; beloved reader, are you indeed seeking to be so? not putting Him off with a tenth, or a fifth, or any measured portion, but using as in His sight, all to Him as His?

If that is indeed your desire, how little will your business hinder spirituality! You can take the admonition of the verse "not to loiter in earnest purpose," for that is its real force. Your counting-house or workshop will be as holy as any other place of your companionship with God; neither cares of this life nor deceitfulness of riches can choke in you the seed of the Word, and make you unfruitful; and this is the only way in which all this can be accomplished. As for all need of yours, it will be His care:you are privileged to care for Him, and to let Him care for you, to realize that while " it is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of carefulness,"-He giveth to His beloved sleeping." So says the true version of the one hundred and twenty-seventh psalm. How blessed this deliverance! How precious the privilege of this life of faith, to which not one more than another, but all the Lord's people are called! Dear reader, have you understood your privilege? How many of God's people are walking in heaviness because they are not faithful in the things that are Another's, and therefore cannot enjoy their own! May the Lord waken His own to the reality before eternity comes to awaken us all. May we be "not loitering in earnest purpose, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."

Love is the fullness of all Christian graces. The apostle urging to the complete development of the divine nature which we have received (2 Pet. 1:5-7.), ends necessarily with love, as the perfection of this, beyond which he cannot go, for God is love. At the same time it is manifestly, and for the same reason, that out of which all else is developed. How important the right apprehension of what is so vital to all practical Christianity!

Even the world does homage to it, by making it essential to good manners to assume its livery, however little it may care for the reality of service. The Christian, walking as such, is. that which the world would fain get credit for, apart from that which alone produces it, which in fact it is unable even to discern.

Even with the Christian, not only, as all would own, is there failure in practice, but a very great want of apprehension of the thing in itself. In nothing perhaps do we make greater mistakes; although I doubt not we shall find, what is so serious to find, that these mistakes are not so much real errors of judgment as self-deceptions. Alas! down in the bottom of our hearts there may be a truer knowledge which we dare not admit even to ourselves we have. The apostle's warning, " Let love be without dissimulation," may it not apply, not only to the grosser imposition practiced upon another, but also to these deeper forms of self-deceit?

Love is not rightly tested by emotion, although the consciousness of it should assuredly be ours. Love is an emotion, but we dare not take the witness of our own hearts about it; therefore he who most speaks of it in Scripture most insists on the necessity of testing it by what it produces practically in our lives:" Hereby we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments." In fact, in how many ways may we mistake here! Social feeling, amiability, even the satisfaction we take in what ministers to personal gratification may all usurp the name. And even where the test is made a practical one, how often is the liberality, so called, which is mere indifference to truth and good,-liberality in the things of another, not our own,-a servant's liberality in dispensing with his master's commandments,-miscalled by this blessed name! We have therefore to test practically, and according to the Word:"This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments."

It is its character manward that the apostle is speaking of in the thirteenth of first Corinthians, and indeed especially toward the children of God, and members of Christ's body. In the chapter before, he has been speaking of that body, and of the "gifts," the several parts in their relation to the whole. In the following chapter he goes on to consider the use of these gifts for edification in the assembly. Here, he is speaking of the spirit in which alone this mutual service could be rightly carried out-the spirit of devotion to the common blessing-the love of that which Christ loved and gave Himself for. The love of God, although unnamed, characterizes it of course all through, and two properties are plain in it,- self-forgetfulness in devotion to the good of others, and holiness. Light has to come into the definition of love, or it could not be divine love.

And how clearly we see at the outset where it has been learned, as the streams bear witness of the lands in which their birth-springs are! For "the long-suffering of the Lord is salvation," and therefore "love suffereth long and is kind." Not passive merely can be what is so learned; inspired of the great sacrifice, it must have the same character. "He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren:" so says one who has learned; and that he was an apostle does not subtract from the value of the lesson. But how much shall we find of this apostolic character? It is little, as it would seem, to say after this, " Love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up:" more suited perhaps, for that reason, to these days of littleness. How can it envy the good it is ever seeking to convey? In which it must therefore rejoice wherever found. Yet here, what a wealth of joy for those who can find in every joy another has the material for their own! How easy for such to understand the Lord's words as to receiving "now, in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and lands" ? and what will heaven be, where the joy of each will be in fact thus the joy of all? The Church is God's method for the realization of this even now. Why, O why, is it not more realized? Why does such an interpretation of our Lord's words seem dreamy and far-fetched to those for whom the words of the apostle are but an unworked mine of treasure-"And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me"?

This individualizing appropriation of Christ it is which divorces from self, and which alone does. It is then " no more I that live, but Christ liveth in me;" and " what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ." It is not enthusiasm, but the soberest possible estimate of "unsearchable riches." Do you not wonder at the man who has millions he can never spend, toiling to accumulate hundreds? But that is nothing to the folly of pursuing what, if gain to me, separates me in heart and interest thus far from Him in whom alone I really live.

This is our qualification for the accomplishment of the central words of this definition, " Love seeketh not her own." She has no need; she is no beggar, but a Prince's daughter, rich enough to pour out wealth with both hands. The luxury of the rich is to give:" It is more blessed to give than to receive." He who is over all, blessed forever, who, "though He was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich," has left us, not a precept merely, but an "example, that we should walk in His steps." This is path and power in one. "His steps"! Yes, but without the awful shadow to which on our account those steps of His led down! No; " the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."

Sorrow? Yes, sorrow is on every path; but for them in whose heart are the ways, the valley of Baca becomes a well; the rain also filleth the pools:they go from strength to strength.

Is it necessary to argue that the love which draws its motive from such a source will be holy? Only for those who do not know what sin is, or have forgotten at what cost they were purged from it. Or is it necessary to plead that not natural conscience, but the Word alone, can give us the measure of sin? If to me to live be Christ, what is not Christ is sin. There is nothing neutral-nothing negative merely. The measure of a Christian life is, "As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk ye in Him." Love cannot possibly forget that, for it must have its object:"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."

To imitate love is vain, even though its excellence is seen; and so it is, therefore, to imitate a degree of love which we have not. Are we, then, to sit down baffled, to complain, " The good that I would I do not" ? Assuredly not. Christ is, as I have said, power as well as pattern. " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink," is our whole, our abundant resource. Thus, and thus only, " he that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

The body is of Christ, and He loves it as He loves Himself; and every one who would serve it will best learn to do so by knowing His heart and purposes toward it. In a word, it is Christ who serves, though it may be through us. We are but "joints and bands." If we are not derivative and communicative from Christ, we are useless. To be useful, my eye and heart must be on Christ, and not on the issue of my service. He who judges of his service by present appearances will judge by the blossom, and not by the fruit; and after all, the service is not for the sake of the Church, but for the sake of Christ; and if He be served in the Church, though the Church own it not, yet, Christ being served, He will own it.

(1:) His path. (11:io-14:)-The life of Abraham is the well-known pattern-life of faith, as far as the Old Testament could furnish this. It connects, as already noticed, in the closest way, with the story of Noah which precedes it, and alone makes it possible. For the essential characteristic of the life of faith is strangership, but this founded upon citizenship elsewhere. Faith dwells in the unseen, substantiating to itself things hoped for. This is exemplified in Abram, called to Canaan, his possession in hope alone. He dwells there, but in tabernacles, the bringing together of two things typically-the heavenly calling and its earthly consequence. Canaan is here Noah's new world beyond" the flood, and, as we all know, heaven; but the earthly aspect of this is, as all through Genesis, the prominent one. We must wait for Joshua be-fore we get a distinct type of how faith lays hold even now, of the inheritance in heaven. Here, tent and altar are as yet the only possession.

The introduction to this history is the record of Abraham's descent from Shem. It is a record of failure, of which the whole story is not told here, for we know that his line whose God Jehovah was were worshiping other gods when the Lord called Abraham from the other side of Euphrates (Josh. 24:2.). The genealogy itself may tell us something, however,-in Peleg, how men were possessing themselves more than ever of the earth, and at the same time the days of their tenure of it shortening rapidly,-by half, in this very Peleg's time (comp. ch. 10:25.). Reu lives two hundred and thirty-nine years; Serug, two hundred and thirty; Nahor, but one hundred and forty-eight; Terah, again, two hundred and five; but Haran dies before his father Terah. God yet numbers the fleeting years of those who have forgotten Him.

Now we find a movement in Terah's family, the full explanation of which we must look for outside of Genesis. Here, it seems to originate with Terah, for we read that " Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife ; and they went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan :and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." Terah fulfills his name (" delay "), and ends his days at Haran, so called from his dead son. Natural things hold him fast, though death be written on them, and memory but perpetuates his loss. "Haran" means "parched," yet there he abides (and Abram with him) tin he dies. Then we find that whom he had led he had been holding back ; and Abram rises upon the power of a divine call which had come to him and to him alone in the first place, and by which he was separated from country, kindred, and father's house alike, to be blessed and a blessing in the land pointed out of God for his abode. And now there is no further delay :" they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came."

Which of us does not know something of these compromises, which seem to promise so much more than God and to exact so much less, but in which obedience to God goes overboard at the start, and which end but in Haran, and not Canaan? Who would not have thought it gain to carry our kindred with us, instead of a needless and painful separation from them? Why separate, when their faces can be set in the same way as ours? and why not tarry for them and be gentle to their weakness, if they do linger on the road? [ How hard to distinguish from self-will or moroseness and unconcern for others, the simplicity of obedience and a true walk with God! But the lesson of this is too important to end here, and Lot's walk with Abraham is yet to give us full-length instruction upon a point which is vital to the life of faith.

But now Abram is in the land. We hear of the first halt at Sichem (Shechem), at the oak of Moreh. The first of these words means " shoulder," the second, " instructor;" and it is in bowing one's shoulder to bear that we find instruction. He that will do God's will shall know of the doctrine:he that will learn of Christ must take His yoke. This is the "virtue" in which still is " knowledge " (2 Pet. 1:5.). The oak of Moreh grows at Shechem still.

And it is surely "in the land" we find it:power for full obedience in those heavenly places, where we are " blessed with all spiritual blessings," and where "to the principalities and powers are made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God." It is as Canaan-dwellers the secrets of God's heart are opened to us; and Christ, in whom we are, becomes the key of knowledge as of power. In Him,"in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," we are "filled up."

Jehovah now appears to Abram, and confirms the land to his seed as their inheritance; and here for the second time in Genesis we read of an " altar," the first that Abram builds. He worships in the fullness of blessing, and then first also his "tent" comes into view:" he removed from thence into a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east.""Hai" means "a heap of ruin," and is the city which in Joshua resists the power of Israel, after Jericho falls to the ground. It is as if the very ruins of Jericho had risen up against those who had lost the victorious presence of God their strength. Typically, Hai is no doubt the ruined old creation, and thus between a judged world and the "house of God" Abram's tent is pitched, in view of both. Here, too, once more he builds an altar, and calls upon Jehovah's name.

But Canaan is a dependent land. It is contrasted with Egypt as not being like it watered with the foot, but drinking directly of the rain of heaven.* *Egypt of course must needs be dependent also, but not so immediately. Its river was its boast, and the sources of supply were too far off to be so easily recognized:a vivid type of the world in its self-sufficiency and independence of God. They are yet sending scientific expeditious to explore the sources of their unfailing river; and by searching yet have not found out God.* And although the eyes of the Lord are there continually, that does not exclude the trial which a life of faith implies and necessitates. Thus Abram finds a famine in the land to which God has called him, and to avoid it goes down to Egypt. There it becomes very evident that he is out of the path of faith, and he fails openly.

But we must note that the secret failure had begun before, and the famine itself had followed, not preceded this. A famine in Canaan cannot be mere sovereignty on God's part-sovereign though He be. And thus we find that when Abram, fully restored in soul, returns to the land, it is "to the place of the altar, which he made there at the first." There, between Bethel and Hai, he had been at the beginning; but there he had not been when the famine came, but in the south-his face toward Egypt, if not yet there. This border-land is ever a dry land, and Abram found it so. Famine soon comes for us in our own things when we get into this border-land. But who that;, has known what God's path is but has known the trial of a famine there? And when we find such, how Egypt tempts-how the world in some shape solicits to give up the separate place which we have taken. Few, perhaps, but have made some temporary visit to Egypt in the emergency. But the price of Egypt's succor is well known. Abram's fall there has been bat too constantly repeated, and its repetition upon the largest scale has been one great step in the failure of the whole dispensation. Sarai in Pharaoh's house is but the commencement of that which reaches its full development in the guilty commerce of the harlot-woman with the kings of the earth. But the germ is yet very different from the development, and Sarai is of course by no means the apocalyptic woman. She is, as the epistle to the Galatians tells us, the covenant contrasted with the Sinaitic, as grace with law. The grace in which we stand God has linked with faith, and with faith alone. It belongs not to the world in any wise. We are not of the world:"we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."But who can maintain that testimony, when the world's help is wanted, and association with it sought? It is evident some form of universalism must be preached. Sarai (grace) must not be held as Abraham's exclusive possession, but the world allowed to believe it can obtain what divorced from faith is sufficiently attractive to it. Give Sarai up, and you shall have wealth and honors-be the king's brother-in-law; and by simony such as this has the Church bought peace and prosperity in the world; but the world will yet learn by judgment (as did Pharaoh) that Sarai is "not its own. This manifest, its favors cease, and Abram is sent away.

And now the true character of Lot comes out. His story (one of the saddest in Genesis) is most important to be noticed in a day when, God having revealed to us the truth of our heavenly calling, it is but even too plain that there are many Lots. The word "Lot" means "covering," and I under a covering he is ever found. With Abraham I outwardly, he is not at heart what Abraham is; and with the men of Sodom outwardly, he is not after all a Sodomite either. He is a saint and therefore not a Sodomite, though in Sodom. He is a saint untrue to his saintship, and herein Abraham's contrast, even of his companion. His is, however, alas! a downward course. First, with Abraham, a pilgrim; then, a dweller in Sodom; finally, he falls under deeper personal reproach, and his life ends as it began-under a covering. There is no revival, no effort even upward, throughout nothing but mere gravitation, dragging down into still deeper ruin lives associated with his. His wife's memorial is a pillar of salt; his daughters', a more abiding and perpetual infamy, linked with his own shame forever. How terrible this record! How emphatic an admonition to remember, in him, how near two roads may be at the beginning which at the end lie far indeed apart! Reader, may none who read this trace this by-path, save here where God has marked out for us the end from the beginning, that with Him we may see it; not, as having trod it, the beginning from the end.

The beginning is found here:-

" And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son … to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there."

Nature, taking in hand to follow a divine call, which, it had never understood nor heard for itself; leading without being led; settling down short al-together of the point for which it started, to dwell) in a scene of death to which it clings spite of dis-satisfaction:-these are the moral elements amid which many a Lot is nurtured. Terah shines out in him when, having under taken to walk with Abram, the plain of Jordan fixes his eyes and heart:once again, when in the presence of judgment, the messengers of it laid hold upon his hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and brought him forth and set him without ,the city,-because " he lingered.."

But there is another beginning, after this; for now-

"Abram took Sarai his wife,, and Lot his brother's son, . . . and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came." Not nature now, but the man of faith leads, and they no longer linger on the road; but Lot merely follows Abram, as before he had followed Terah. Abram walks with God; Lot only with Abram. How easy even for a believer to walk where another's bolder faith leads and makes the way practicable, without exercise of conscience or reality of faith as to the way itself! How many "such there are, practically but the camp-followers of the Lord's host, adherents of a cause for which they have no thought of being martyrs, nearly balanced between what they know as truth and a world which has never been seen by them in the light of it. For such, as with Lot, a time of sifting comes, and like dead leaves they drop off from the stem that holds them.

Egypt had acted thus for Lot. The attraction it had for him comes out very plainly there where the coveted plain of Jordan seems in his eyes " like the land of Egypt."But beside this, it is easy to understand how Abram's failure there had loosened the moral hold he had hitherto retained upon this nephew. Yet still true to the weakness of his character, Lot does not propose separation, but Abram does, after it was plain they could no longer happily walk together. Their possessions, increased largely in Egypt, separate them, but Abram manifests his own restoration of soul by the magnanimity of his offer. Lot, though the younger, and dependent, shall choose for himself his portion; and he, not imitating the unselfishness by which he profits, lifts up his eyes and beholds the fertility of the plain of Jordan, and he chooses there.

The names unmistakably reveal what is before us here. Jordan ("descending") is the river of death, flowing in rapid course ever down to the sea of judgment, from which there is no outlet-no escape.* *The Dead Sea, it is well known, lies in a deep hollow, twelve hundred and ninety-two feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and there is no river flowing out of it.* There, in a plain soon to be visited with fire and brimstone from the Lord, he settles down, at first still in a tent though among the cities there, but soon to exchange it for a more fixed abode in Sodom, toward which from the first he gravitates.

Lot-like, even this he covers with a vail of piety. The plain of Jordan is " like the garden of the Lord "-like paradise:why should he not enjoy God's gifts in it? He forgets the fall, and that paradise is barred from man, argues religiously enough, while under it all the real secret is found in this:It is "like the land of Egypt." How much of man's reasoning comes from his heart and not his head -a heart too far away from God! It is significantly added, '.' As thou comest unto Zoar;" and thus indeed Lot came to it.

But Abram dwells in the land of Canaan, and God bids him walk through it as his own. Thereupon he removes and dwells in Madre (" fatness ") which is in Hebron ("companionship, communion"). The names speak for themselves again sufficiently. May we only know, and live in, the portion of Abram here.

In the next chapter things are greatly changed. Abram himself is in connection with Sodom, as well as with another power, which we may easily identify as essentially Babylonish. The names are difficult to read, and two at least of the confederated countries are just as doubtful.* *For the attempt to make Ellasar Hellas, or Greece, though favored by the Septuagint, can scarcely be maintained. It is more probably Larsa. Nor is Tidal, king of nations, a very satisfactory representative of the Roman power, as some take it.* But in the first enumeration Amraphel, king of Shinar, stands first, the undoubted representative of the kingdom of Nimrod, although Chedorlaomer appears the most active and interested. They all seem but divisions of this Babylonish empire however, though changed no doubt into a confederacy of more or less equal powers.

These four kings-and our attention is specially called to the number here (ver. 9.)-are at war with the five petty kings of the plain of Jordan. Typically, these last represent the world in its undisguised* and sensual wickedness; the Babylonish kings, the religious world-power, always seeking to hold captive (and in general successfully) the more open form of evil. *Undisguised indeed, if Gesenius is right as to Bera being equivalent to Benra," son of evil," and Birsha to Ben-resha," son of wickedness."* Indeed the Sodom of heathenism never yielded but to a spiritual Babylon which had already obtained supremacy over the Christianity of Scripture and the apostles; and in no way was this last ever really established, nor could it be. But the world craves some religion; and nothing could suit it better than one which with external evidences to accredit it, such as undeniably historical Christianity had, linked its blessings with a system of ordinances by which they could be dispensed to its votaries. This exactly was the character of Nicene Christianity, and hence its conquest of the Roman empire. The leaven was already in the meal:the adulteration of the gospel had already advanced far; but leaven (evil as in Scripture its character undoubtedly is) has certainly the power of rapid diffusion, and rapidly the popularized gospel spread.

These, then, are the powers represented here. The portion of Abram lies outside the whole field of conflict. Lot, on the other hand, is already in Sodom, and of course is carried captive in the captivity of Sodom. It is the spiritual history of those who, having known the truth, fall under the power of the world-church which Babylon represents. It is their link with the world by which they are. sucked in. And such is the secret of all departure, from the truth. The Lord is top faithful to allow mere honest ignorance to be deceived; and although men may credit Him with it, the record still stands:"Whosoever willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."

The secret of Abram's power is revealed in one pregnant word, which as here used of him flashes light upon the scene before us:" There came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew." That word, patronymic as it may be, is yet significant:it means " the passenger." So Peter exhorts us, "as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts "-the destruction of Sodom, while to the pilgrim, Babylon, claiming her kingdom now in the yet unpurged earth, can only be the persecutor, "red with the:blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus." Here may seem a difference between Abram and the spiritual sons whom he represents; but typically he none the less may rep-resent those who, after their Lord's example, conquer by suffering. There never were more real conquerors than were the martyrs.

So Abram brings back his brother Lot and all the other captives; whose deliverance indeed was, as we see, merely incidental. For as between Sodom and Shinar how could Abram interfere, or what deliverance would it be for a mere child of Sodom to be delivered from the power of Babylon ? Even as to Lot it is once more solemnly made manifest that not circumstances have made him what he is, and that change of circumstances do not change him. Freed by God's hand working by another, he is not really free; and soon we shall find him needing once more to be delivered from what, having escaped judgment, falls under God’s.

But if Lot's eyes are still on Sodom, those of his pilgrim-brother find another object. For as he returned from the slaughter of the kings, "Melchisedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the Most High God." The type is explained to us by the apostle in the epistle to the Hebrews; and we all know in Christ the Priest after the order of Melchisedek. The apostle's words are remarkable for the way in which they bring out and insist upon the perfection of Scripture, in what it omits as well as what it inserts. " Without father, without mother, without beginning of days or end of life," are words which have been thought to show that the mysterious person before us was no other than Christ Himself ; but this the apostle's very next words disprove; for "made like unto the Son of God" could not be of the Son of God Himself. It is simply of the omissions of the narrative that the apostle is speaking; these omissions being necessary to the perfection of the type. He is our High-Priest, not finding His place among the ephemeral generations of an earthly priesthood, but subsisting in the power of ah endless life; Priest and King in one. Whilst, however, the Lord is thus even now a Priest after the order of Melchisedek, it is not after Melchisedek's pattern that He is now acting. Here, His type is rather Aaron. It is at a future time – a time, as we say, millennial – that He will fulfill the type before us, as many of its features clearly show. Thus. Melchisedek is priest of the Most High God,-a title always used of God in the coming; day of manifested supremacy. This Melchisedek's own words show:" Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth." The interpretation of his name, and the name of his city, confirms this:" First of all,' King of Righteousness'; and after that,' King of Salem which is, ' King of Peace.' " This is the order in which the prophet gives the same things,' when speaking of millennial times:"Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field; and the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever."

His place in this chapter is in perfect and beautiful keeping with all this. For we find the timeliness of Melchisedek's appearance to the vic-tor over the kings, when the king of Sodom says to Abram, " Give me the. persons, and take the goods to thyself." It is to the " Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth "-the One of whom Melchisedek has spoken to him,-that Abram declares he has lifted up the hand, not to take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet.' Christ seen thus by the pilgrim man of faith claiming on God's part all that is his own, is the true antidote to the world's offers. If Christ could not accept the kingdoms of the world at the hands of Satan, but from His Father only, no more can His followers accept enrichment at the hands of a world which has rejected Christ for Satan. And that bread and wine which we receive from our true Melchisedek, the memorial of those sufferings by which alone we are enriched, for him who has tasted it, implies the refusal of a portion here.