A man's acts are always the truest index of his desires and purposes. Hence, if I find a professing Christian neglecting his Bible, yet finding abundance of time, yea, some of his choicest hours, for the newspaper, I can be at no loss to decide as to the true condition of his soul, I am sure he cannot be spiritual-cannot be feeding upon, living for, or witnessing to Christ.

The Individual Application.-In the individual ap-plication the lesson of Jacob's life is, as we have already seen, the fruitfulness of that holy discipline which Beth-el, the house of God, implies, and which out of such material as a Jacob can bring forth a vessel of exquisite workmanship to His praise. Here the literal history unites with the typical to develop a picture of the deepest interest to us. May He who only can, give us true blessing from it.

First, as a preface to the setting aside of Esau, we are told of his marriage, at forty years old, at once to two Canaanitish wives. This is the natural sequel of a profanity which could esteem his birth right at the value of a mess of pottage. These "forty years" are a significant hint to us of completed probation. In his two wives, married at once, he refuses at once the example and counsel of his father, and by his union with Canaanitish women disregards the divine sentence, and shows unmistakably the innermost recesses of the heart. It is a sign of the times that so little is thought of the character of man's associations. In truth, nothing gives us our character so much. To say of Enoch, or of Noah, that "he walked with God," describes the man fully in the fewest words; voluntary association with His enemies, can it consist with any proper desire after such a walk? Esau's Canaanitish wives set him finally aside from the blessing which the next chapter shows us becoming Jacob's.

On the other hand, crookedness and deceit are found in Jacob, the vices which belong to feebleness where there is no due counteracting power, of faith. Faith, which alone is wisdom and foresight, waits upon God and makes no haste. It walks erect and openly in the shelter of His presence secure of the accomplishment of His will, which alone it seeks, while cunning and craft blunder in the darkness. Jacob's deceit is not that which procures him the blessing:it procures him nothing but twenty years of toil and sorrow, of banishment from his father's house, and subjection to the will of others. The blessing could not be Esau's. Was Isaac or Esau more than God that they could alter His purpose? or did He need Jacob's feeble hand to uphold His throne? Alas! he is neither the first nor the last who has acted as if it were so. And this is what restlessness and impatience mean, -either some lust of the heart we must secure whether He will or no, or some doubt whether God be God:-rank unbelief or rank self-will; and these are near companions. How far off was Jacob yet from El-Beth-el!

True, there was strong temptation,-a mother's voice, the voice of affection and authority, to urge him on; the coveted blessing just slipping, as it seemed, away:but in the case of one with God, all this would only have made plain the power of God to keep a soul that confides in Him. With Him, no difficulties avail against us; it is not inherent strength or wisdom which avails in our behalf. The whole question is, Are we with Him ?

Jacob feebly opposes his mother's solicitation, but not in the name of God or of truth. He dreads getting a curse instead of blessing,-"-seeming a deceiver," rather than being one. He makes the whole question one of expediency, not of righteousness, hence has no power at all, or rather is already fallen. His mother boldly assumes the responsibility, and he has nothing more to oppose.

Once gained, he soon learns boldness; he can not only assure his father, once and again, that he is Esau, but dares to say that God has brought him what Rebekah's hands have prepared. What is holiness in us but the fruit of the shining of God's face upon us? If our faces are turned away, how soon does all the rabble of evil stalk abroad in the darkness! " The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth." (Eph. 5:9, true reading.)

Yet Jacob obtains the blessing, surely from grace alone, and not from his evil works; and Isaac, dim-sighted spiritually more than physically here, wakes up to find how far nature has misled him, and to own the righteousness of a stronger will than his own. Esau sees nothing but Jacob and his father.

He who has now got the blessing is still totally without ability to trust God for the fulfillment of it. Rebekah's voice again is heard, urging him to flee from his brother's wrath, and Isaac is wrought upon to send him to Padan-Aram, to take a wife from Laban's daughters. It is now that solitary, a wanderer and a fugitive, he arrives at Beth-el, and here for the first time God appears to him.

Already the chastening of God's hand was upon him, and heavily he must have felt it as he lay upon the hill that night at Luz. Under the pressure of it, he was now to have the interpretation as the holy discipline of divine love. He must stoop his neck to the yoke, and accept the fruit of his own ways; God can assure him of no escape from that:but in and through it all the blessing that is his shall be attained. He will be with him to accomplish His faithful word, and bring him back from all his wanderings into the land which he is now leaving. He sees the angels of God passing between heaven and earth in constant ministration to the heir of promise, for He whom they serve is Abraham's God.

Here all is perfect grace, for grace alone delivers from the dominion of sin. Holiness is the necessary rule of God's house, but to be in God's house supposes relationship,-nearness. Jacob's matters, wonderful to say, are God's own care. What a remedy for Jacob's self-seeking anxiety is in all this! Had he learnt the lesson, how much evil would have been spared him! how soon and how differently might Peniel have been reached! But it is evident he enters little into the spirit of this divine communication. He calls the place indeed Beth-el, God's house, and the gate of heaven, but he is oppressed with fear, rather than comforted. The magnificence of the promise which has just been made him shrinks into mere bread and raiment, and his father's house again in peace, and he answers with a legal vow, in which what he will do is all too manifest. So he goes on his journey to find in Laban's house what is more congenial yet than God's, and to learn slowly there by experience what faith might have learnt as speedily as surely, without the sorrow.

In all this Jacob is our type; for if he were responsible to receive and walk in the power of a grace so plainly revealed, how much more we who have received a revelation which is to Jacob's as noon to twilight! To us the God of Abraham and of Isaac is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and through Him our Father. For us the house of God is found on earth, all the fullness of God dwelling bodily in the Man Christ Jesus; and the promise, "1 will dwell in them and walk in them," being fulfilled to us also, as individually and collectively indwelt by the Holy Ghost. For us the throne of God is revealed as a throne of grace,-grace reigning through righteousness; our Saviour, Christ our Lord. How should all this purge out of our souls the leaven of subtilty and self-will, and conform us wholly to the will of God! " His commandments are not grievous," says the apostle:what say our souls? Practically, as day by day His will is declared, is it the conviction of our hearts, and what our lives manifest, that His yoke is easy and His burden light?

In fact it is more:it is the only true and practical rest for the soul, and the test of how far our hearts have been brought back to God. "Faith, if it have not works, is dead, being alone." " Whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him." It is divine love which, sown in the heart, produces in the life the necessary fruit of service. Faith is the heart's response; service, the life's. Nor can the one be very much below the measure of the other.

Grace is that which, in the knowledge of it, delivers from our own will and ways. We cannot, blessed be God, carry it too far or rejoice in it too fully. He whose life is unfruitful testifies (whatever his lips affirm) how little he has known of it, not that he has carried it too far, or abandoned himself to it too entirely. That is impossible. "Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under grace."

Israel's return to the spirit of obedience to the law, which will historically precede their recognition of Messiah. They here own God in creation, Jehovah in the law; and the latter as enlightening and rejoicing the soul. They own also, as convicted by it, how little they can understand the evil of their own hearts and lives, and are cast upon God for help in helplessness.

To the chief musician. A psalm of David.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse telleth the work of His hands.

2. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night whispereth knowledge.

3. It is not speech nor words, whose voice cannot be heard.

4. Their line is gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the habitable [world]. In them hath He placed for the sun a tent;

5. And he is as a bridegroom coming forth of his chamber:he rejoiceth as a strong man to run [his] course.

6. His going forth is from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the end of them; and nothing is hid from the heat thereof,

7. The law of Jehovah is perfect, restoring the soul:the testimony of Jehovah is sure, making wise the simple.

8. The precepts of Jehovah are right, rejoicing the heart:the commandment of Jehovah is pure, enlightening the eyes.

9. The fear of Jehovah is clean, enduring forever:the judgments of Jehovah are truth, they are righteous altogether.

10. More desirable are they than gold, even than much fine gold:sweeter also than honey, even the droppings of the combs.

11. By them also is Thy servant warned:in keeping of them the reward is great.

12. Who understandeth his errors? free me from things hidden [from me].

13. Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous [sins]; let them not have dominion over me:then shall I be perfect; I shall be innocent from the great revolt.

14. Let the utterance of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable before Thee; Jehovah, my Rock and my Redeemer!

Text.-(2) " Whispereth :" literally, "breatheth."

(4) "Line:" the Sept. read "sound," and this the apostle quotes in Romans 10:(II) ''Reward:" literally, ''end."

We now come to the types of redemption, the recognized theme of the book of Exodus. That it is related to atonement in the most intimate way is evident; for if atonement is by blood, so is redemption. They are nevertheless different thoughts; and their difference, as well as their relation to each other needs to be considered.

Redemption implies purchase-price in some way paid, as the Greek words for it especially show;* although it is far removed from mere purchase, with which it is, in many minds, as in some creeds, confounded. *Lutrosis and apolutrosis, and the verb lutroo, all from lutron a ransom price; with exagorazo, to buy out.* Two things are implied beyond purchase:deliverance from alien possession, and that as an object of special interest to the redeemer. Even where the redemption is by power, as often in Scripture, it is implied that there is cost, if only of labor, effort, or peril incurred. We see at once that the first promise is a promise of redemption:the woman's Seed the Redeemer; the redemption itself by power from the serpent; the bruised heel the personal cost incurred. Yet this bruised heel, as has been shown, is, in another aspect of it, atonement; and the word kopher, in Hebrew, stands for both. The atonement is the ransom-the price of redemption. The difference between the two thoughts is plainly this:that atonement has in view the divine righteousness; redemption, the divine pity and love :atonement has respect to guilt; redemption, to degradation and misery. But the two connect here, that in the provision of atonement is seen the love of the Redeemer; in the nature of the ransom, the righteousness of the Judge, become thus the Justifier. Atonement and ransom are two different aspects of the same blessed work. Thus it is evident why the epistle to the Romans, which dwells on the reality of atonement, has for its key-note the righteousness of God; while we are " justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." (Chap. 3:24.)

In the book of redemption, then, we would expect to find atonement a central figure, as indeed we do; and yet not to find so much its intrinsic character dwelt upon as its delivering power for those in whose behalf it is accomplished ;-that is to say, its manward rather than its Godward aspect. And this is how, exactly, the passover and the deliverance at the Red Sea present it to us. We must wait for Leviticus to realize in the sanctuary with God its full character for Him. Peace and deliverance must be first known and enjoyed before we are competent, and " at leisure from ourselves," to enjoy the manifestation.

Another thing that will help our apprehension of the types before us is to connect them with the epistle to the Romans, in which we find their real interpretation. Most evidently, the theme of Romans is the gospel salvation; and this also the types of Exodus show forth. In both, the deliverance is in two parts, or stages,-the first part having respect to the judgment of God; the second, to the bondage of one who reigns unto death. In the first, moreover, it is the blood that shelters; in the second, a passage through death (which the sea figures) by which we escape from the captivity in which we were enslaved.

The detail is of surpassing interest; and though a tale often told, it will bear retelling. Our present object requires the main points at least to be brought out, as we shall find in it a material development of the doctrine of atonement, as far as concerns its application to the need of the soul.

We must remember, as we consider them, that these are types of experience,-of realization and attainment,-as the salvation which the gospel brings is a known and enjoyed blessing,"the righteousness of God revealed to faith." The knowledge of shelter under the blood of the Lamb may long precede the knowledge of a new ground before God in Christ gone up from the dead to His place in the heavens. Blessed be God, the possession of the place does not depend upon the apprehension of it:it is ours before we can apprehend it to be ours. But let us remember, then, that we have here an order of apprehension which does not involve a corresponding order of possession.

Taking, now, Romans to interpret to us Exodus, Egypt is the world of nature, in which our standing is " in the flesh," and in which sin reigns over us unto death, as Pharaoh over Israel. It is a condition not realized as bondage until God works in the soul, but then an increasingly bitter one. Then the "law of sin" becomes a "law of death" also, and the soul groans for deliverance:this deliverance God's hand can alone accomplish.

And God's way is not as our way, nor His thought as our thought. Our way is, by the strength He gives, to deliver ourselves from the law of sin within us, and then to meet God, not as sinners, but as saints, and to find Him for us thus, accepting through Christ our imperfect obedience, and putting away our failures for His sake:God's way is to deliver us Himself, not by our own efforts blest of Him, but, first, meeting us as sinners and justifying us as ungodly by Christ's death for such.

Israel remain, subject to their old master, and not the first step taken of a walk with God, until they have learned that the judgment of God under which they lie in common with the Egyptians themselves is over, and they are safe,-saved by the blood of the lamb. The first passover is kept in Egypt, their journey not yet begun; but they eat it with girded loins and shod feet and ready staves, for that night they are to begin to go out.

They go out with judgment passed over and behind them; for us the wrath to come anticipated by faith and met in the cross, as we have already seen illustrated in the eight saved in the ark from the judgment of the flood. Israel start, "justified " instrumentally "by faith"-the faith by which they took refuge under the sheltered blood; "justified" effectively "by blood," which God saw, and passed over their houses. The blood declared the death inflicted upon the substitute:a penalty which in its very nature (as we have already seen) set the one for whom it was undergone outside the sphere of natural responsibility for evermore. Therefore says the apostle, " Much more, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him."

For the death threatened we here find plainly judicial; a death which, if it end not the existence of the one under it, (as with man it does not,) involves in the shadow of it all that after-state. Such indeed had death been in its real nature, apart from the mercy of God from the beginning; yet in fact the first death on earth had been that of one pronounced righteous-"righteous Abel." Here, and in the flood, it was a death impossible to be confounded with this,-a strictly penal death. And this taken, the shadow of it also is removed. This too the "blood" implies:blood shed, not in martyrdom, as Abel's, but by direct command of God, in exaction of penalty. How surely, then, "being now justified by His blood" insures our being " saved from wrath through Him "! All is settled,-completely, finally settled, according to the type here and the apostle's argument, when we begin to start on our path with God.

Settled forever Godward, but not yet are we outside the enemy's jurisdiction. But his power is apparently broken, and God Himself is with us. From this point, and before the sea is reached, "the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:He took not away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people."

This complete settlement is given to their apprehension in the feeding upon the lamb within the house. It is such an obvious type, that it needs no insisting on. Death here, as had been permitted, significantly, since the flood, becomes the food of life. But it is marked in this case, that the lamb must be, " not sodden in water," (or rather, boiled)

But the passage through the sea does not land us in Canaan, as the doctrine of Romans does not put us in the heavenly places. We must for this add Joshua to Exodus, and Ephesians to Romans. We thus find that the passage through the flood has been divided into two for us, each part expanded and amplified, that we may the better view it. Here we pass over much of this, for our object is one precious truth, central indeed in doctrine, as the fact in divine history. May its contemplation grave it upon our hearts so as to enable us to say with the apostle, " God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

"If Christ were to save me from the world and from Satan and not from self, what should I do? I have a self-will of my own. Christ must save us from self, and that is why we often get falls. Peter had a good opinion of himself, and the Lord let him alone. David was allowed to go down into the depths of evil, that he might learn how unlike he was to David's Lord. If any one knows Christ, he will know Christ's willingness to save from self; he will be able to say, 'Ah, there is One up there who if He has to break my heart to pieces in order to break self, will yet keep me unto that day.'"

Is it right that a believer should be a politician? This is the question before us. And to treat the matter clearly, let me state some points that belong to such a character, if they are not the very conception of it.

I understand, then, by a politician, one who takes a considerable and constant interest in the civil government of his own country, and of the world at large. He praises the rulers when he thinks they deserve it, and condemns them when, as he believes, they govern amiss. He lifts up his voice against injustice, fraud, deception, corruption, restraints on liberty. He will resist what is evil as far as he may by law. He exercises every civil privilege to which he is entitled to influence the government of his country. If opportunity were offered, he would take office and power in the world, and exercise it for his fellow-citizens' benefit.

I. How, then, can we tell whether this is right in a believer or not? By looking to Jesus as our pattern. His life is recorded to this end-" leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps." (i Pet. 2:21.) Every thing He did was pleasing to His Father. " I do always those things that please Him" (Jno. 8:29:Matt. 17:5); and, since every perfection was found in Jesus, whatever He did not do or sanction is not pleasing to God.

Was Jesus, then, a politician? Did He take any interest in the political government of His country? Did He pass judgment on the persons or measures of the civil rulers of Palestine? Did He stand up for the politically oppressed, and rebuke the political oppressor? Did He exercise authority of any kind in civil matters?

1. His conduct is the very reverse of the politician's. Had He been one, His political feelings must have been peculiarly drawn out by the circumstances of the day. In His days the last shadow of Jewish liberty departed, and His country was oppressed beneath the iron gauntlet of Rome. Such a state of things would have thrilled and agitated to its core the breast of the independent citizen, the lover of liberty. In the gospels we only gather the political changes of the land from the most distant hints of the narrative.

2. When occasions occur on which, if politics be right for the Christian, the Saviour must, have declared Himself, He uniformly puts them aside. One of His hearers beseeches Him to engage his brother to divide an inheritance with him. (Luke 12:13.) Here the politician would have shown himself. Jesus refuses to listen to the matter, or exercise even the lowly power of an arbitrator. " Man, who made Me a judge or a divider over you?" If the Christian's duty is to take the office of judge or divider, Jesus ought to have taken it as our perfect example of what is right; but He thrusts away with a firm hand the political element of the question, and only warns the disciples against covetousness.

3. John the Baptist, His own forerunner, the greatest of women born, is slain through the arts of an adulterous princess, and by the orders of an ungodly king. How does Jesus meet the event? Does He lift up His voice against the oppressor and murderer? No, John is imprisoned, but Jesus speaks not of the injustice; he is murdered, but He utters no cry. against the cruelty or tyranny of Herod. John's " disciples came and took up the body and buried it, and went and told Jesus. When Jesus heard of it, He departed thence by ship into a desert place apart." (Matt. 14:10-13.) The case is solemnly announced to Him by John's own followers. As pointedly He is silent. The Saviour was no politician.

4. Take another incident. " There were present at that season some that told Him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." (Luke 13:1:) A politician would have been on fire at this national outrage. Religious antipathies met with political. Here was a field whereon to inveigh against Roman cruelty, and to rouse the Jews against a tyranny that trampled on the true religion. A pagan profaning with bloody hands the worship of the true God! What would the politicians of our day have said had a party of the queen's troops fired into a dissenting chapel while they were at worship, and shot some dead while on their knees? Would not the politician account it almost treason to be calm ?

What is Jesus' reply? "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." The politics of the question are wholly passed by; the moral and spiritual views of the matter is alone regarded. This is an especial-a most decisive case. Doubtless it made the blood of every native Jew boil with rage; but Jesus drops no word of indignation against the governor's crime, nor applauds the as martyrs for their country. Jesus, no politician.

5. The politician must maintain his civil rights, (he would tell you) for his own sake, authority not to overstep its just aries. An unjust demand upon his purse in the way of tax he would esteem himself bound to resist. But how does Jesus act in such a case? The demand of the tribute-money is made upon Him. (Matt. 17:24.) He proves His exemption, but He works a miracle to pay the demand.

6. A question is raised by His countrymen, and referred for His decision-" whether it was lawful to give tribute to the Roman emperor or not." This critical question must have drawn out the politician. Involved in it lay the right of the Romans to rule Judea, and impose taxes at their will. The oppressions of the governor were before His eyes. The Caesar that swayed the scepter was profligate, cruel, a murderer. Yet He bids the Jews pay tribute even to an idolator, and though the emperor might apply the money to the support of idolatry.

Jesus, then, was not a politician. Am I a disciple of His? Neither, then, am I to be one. " It is enough for the disciple that lie be as his master." If Jesus did not intermeddle in civil government, it is because such conduct would not be pleasing to God. Jesus neither acted politically Himself nor sanctioned it in others. To be engaged in politics, therefore, either as an actor or speaker, is no part of my duty as a Christian, else the character of Jesus is not perfect. But His perfection is my pattern; and therefore it becomes me to refuse, as pointedly as He did, to mingle in politics; for this is my calling-to be not of the world, even as Jesus was not of the world. (Jno. 17:19.)

II. But did not Paul plead his Roman citizenship when they were about to scourge him? Did he not, when his life was in danger, appeal unto Caesar? True; and the Christian is permitted, therefore, when on his trial, to plead the provisions afforded by the law to save himself from death or injurious treatment. But neither of these points form part of the character of the politician, such as we have described him.

Take the strongest case. Paul and Silas are dragged by interested men before the rulers of Philippi. The magistrates, without any form of trial, scourge them and thrust them into prison. (Acts 16:19-24.) What would a politician have done in such a case? Would he not have thought it due to his Roman citizenship to carry the cause to Rome, and to make an example of these tyrannous magistrates, that all throughout the empire might know that the rights of a citizen were not to be trampled on? Does Paul do so? No. He requires, indeed, that the magistrates should not dismiss them privately, but come themselves and set them free. But he exacts no apology; he lays no information against them. This would have been to act the politician, and this he docs not do.

III. Many of the principles put forth in the epistles decide the present question.

I. What is the Christian's position? He is a "stranger and pilgrim upon earth." (Heb. 11:13-16; I Pet. 2:11.) Then lie has neither inclination, right, nor title to political power. By profession he surrenders it. Who may take part in the government of a country? Natives only-not strangers. What has an Englishman living in France to do with the government of France ? But he is, moreover, a pilgrim, and therefore has less reason still. If a stranger may not interfere in the policy of a foreign country, much less one who is not even residing in it, but merely passing through it on his way to another land. To meddle with politics, then, is to put off our character as strangers and pilgrims.

2. To take up the politician's character blinds the Christian as to his true place before God, and mars the testimony which he ought to give to the world. The witness of the Holy Spirit to the world (which, therefore, the believer is to take up and manifest by his word and life) is, that the world is sinful, because it believes not on Jesus, and that it is under condemnation, together with its prince, only spared from day to day by the patience of a long-suffering God. (Jno. 16:) The Christian is to testify that the Lord Jesus is coming to execute upon it the due vengeance for its iniquity, and that therefore it becomes all to flee from the midst of it to Christ. All who do thus flee to Christ become part of His flock-the Church, which is not of the world, but gathered out from it.

If, then, the Christian readily surrender the world's good things-pleasures, privileges, title,- he lives as becomes the child of faith, and, like Noah, condemns the world. Lot, escaping out of Sodom with nothing but his staff, bore a strong testimony that he believed that the wrath of God was about to descend on it. But how would the force of that testimony have been broken, if he had gone back into the city to purchase a house there? or had Noah, after declaring that in a year the flood would destroy the earth, bought an estate, would not the world have seen the inconsistency at a glance? Would not men have said, " Noah himself does not believe his own message. Why, then, should we credit it? If he believed that the flood were so near, would he buy, and plant, and build?" Apply this, Christians, to politics.

3. At this point the prophetic question comes in. They who think that the Christian should act as the citizen of the world, imagine also (and this fresh error is necessary to render them consistent,) that the world is becoming better, and that in the happier times that are approaching the gospel will, by virtue of the means now employed, prove triumphant every where. Is this the truth? What saith the Scripture? What is the motto of our dispensation ? " Many are called, but few are chosen" "God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name." (Acts 15:14.) And what is the close of it? "In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits." (i Tim. 4:1:) In the last days perilous times shall come" (2 Tim. 3:1:) When the world "shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape." (i Thess. 5:3.) The world is evil, then, and will be evil when the Saviour returns-will be caught in its iniquity, and smitten with His destroying judgments.

4. But if he may not rightfully use his political privileges as the private citizen, much less may he take office in the world. But it is said, "What! are not Christians the fittest persons to hold power? No:they are of all the most unfit, for they have a Master to serve whose laws are quite opposed in principle to those of the world, and the magistrate must execute the world's laws, as being the world's servant. The law of the world, when at its highest perfection, is strict justice. But Christ has to His disciples repealed this, and taught us mercy as our rule. (Matt. 5:38-48.) Could any worldly government act out the sermon on the mount? When one of its citizens had been assaulted and robbed, could it dismiss the convicted robber, because the Saviour commands us not to resist, or to avenge evil? Its principle is, "Punish according to the offense," and by that it abides. If so, the Christian (if he understands his place,) cannot be a judge or wield the power of the world's law. He is commanded, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (Matt. 7:I.)

As he stands himself on mercy before God, mercy is to be his rule toward man. Judgment now is to him judgment "before the time." (i Cor. 4:5.) God challenges vengeance as His own. " Vengeance is Mine" it is not, therefore, His saints' office. But the magistrate is " a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." (Rom. 13:4.) He, then, who sees this can never consistently touch the civil sword. The saints shall indeed one day "judge the world" (i Cor. 6:2); but now, because we are the sons of God, " the world knoweth us not, even as it knew Him not." (i Jno. 3:1:)

5. The same thing might be shown from Paul's rebuke of law-suits; for these seem matters of necessity almost, as men are apt to account them. How much more, then, would he have rebuked the seeking the world's privileges or honors? Paul had to counsel the believers in the world's loftiest, imperial city. He had to indite directions to those who lived amidst the perpetual strife for consulships, praetorships, quaestorships, and every kind of honor. Were the Christians, then, to engage in the struggle? "Mind not high things; but condescend to men of low estate." (Rom. 12:16.) Is not this decisive?

The epistles show the Christian is to conduct himself as a husband, a father, a master, a subject; but no rules are given to him as a magistrate or citizen. What must we infer, then? That God does not recognize Christians as acting for Him in either of these two conditions. The politician rebukes the real or supposed misgovernors of his country. The Christian is to " speak evil of no man, to be no brawler, but gentle." He is not to despise government or speak evil of dignities, or to bring against them railing accusation. (2 Pet. 2:10, ii ; Jude.) He is to "show all meekness unto all men." The politician's motto is, "Agitate! agitate! agitate! " the Christian's, "that ye STUDY to be quiet, and to do your own business." (i Thess. 4:11.)

6. To the extent that the Christian is a politician, his heart is engaged with the things of the world; a new thorn is planted in his breast to choke the good seed and make it unfruitful; a new weight is hung about his neck to hinder him in his race. To the extent that he is a politician, he comes under the censure passed upon the false prophets,-"They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them." (i Jno. 4:5.) He is a soldier of Christ, who, contrary to his Captain's will and pleasure, is "entangling himself with the affairs of this life" (2 Tim. 2:3, 4.) It is the Christian's condemnation to be living like others. How surpassingly strong is that word, " Are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" (i Cor. 3:3.)

Look to the practical results of this doctrine. Are political Christians the most heavenly-minded, useful, gentle patterns of their Lord? or have not the love and zeal of the Nonconformists sadly declined since they have come forward to take a prominent part in the world's strifes and partizan-ships? Do they not confess that the work of the Lord has not prospered ? This is one of the reasons. They have descended to the world's level, and have drunk into its spirit.

Let me exhort the believer, then, to surrender all interference in politics. " Let the dead bury their dead." Your concern is the kingdom of God; your city, the one to come; your citizenship, in heaven. 'Refrain from the world's politics, for Jesus was no politician. Refrain, else you mar your witness to the world, that it is evil and lying under judgment. Are you not a stranger and pilgrim? Then meddle not with that world which you left.

The world is ripening for judgment, and all your efforts cannot improve it in God's sight. Gather out from its doomed streets as many as you can, but leave the city alone. Lot cannot mend Sodom; but Sodom can-nay, will-corrupt Lot. (A reprint from an old tract.)

Q. 23.-What is the teaching of Ecclesiastes 11:3–" In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be" ? for what gees before and follows after makes a difficulty as to the way in which it is generally understood.

A. The words seem to me to speak plainly of the irrevocable character of the divine decrees, which cannot be altered, and from which there is no escape. This is in keeping with the preceding verse-the " evil that shall be upon the earth:" it is as irrevocable as unforeseen. Blessing and doom,-the rain-fall and the tree-fall are equally and entirely in the hands of God. This must not provoke a timidity which would stop all labor (5:4), but one must go on trusting in Him who "worketh all" after the counsel of His own will.

Q. 24.-In Rom. 2:7, in what sense is eternal life spoken of?

A. As often, as something we enter into at the end of our course. Chapter 6:22 thus speaks of it:"Ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." Grace it is that sets and maintains us in the way of holiness to reach this end. The apostle's language in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, which has caused perplexity to many, is simple enough when we remember this. Eternal life being in us, as it is when we are born again, is another thing not to be confounded with this, of which of course it is in no wise contradictory. These are truths of quite a different order:the one belongs to divine grace; the other, to divine government.

Q. 25.-What is the difference between the circumcision being justified by faith and the uncircumcision through faith ?

A. By faith gives the principle upon which God is acting:He is justifying the Jew by faith; but then if a Gentile have faith, is He not the God of the Gentile also ? Surely He is. Then it results that the Gentile also will be justified by the faith he has.

The theme of Leviticus is sanctification. Exodus closes with the tabernacle set up and the glory of the Lord filling the place of His habitation. Leviticus begins with the Lord speaking to Moses thence. His presence is in grace, but in holiness:"Holiness becometh Thine house, O Lord, forever." Holiness in grace is what sanctification implies.

First of all, then, as we open the book, we find given by God Himself the full details of those sacrifices which are the various aspects of that one Sacrifice in the power of which we are sanctified, or set apart to God. There are five, divided into two classes very distinct in character, according as they are or are not " sweet-savor offerings."

The term we have already had in connection with Noah's sacrifice. The burnt-offering, meat-offering (so called), and peace-offering are all said to be " for a sweet savor unto the Lord." The sin and trespass-offerings (which are quite distinct from one another moreover), are not that, although expressly guarded from disparagement, as " most holy." (Chap. vi, 17.) These last are indeed the special witnesses of divine holiness as against sin, while the former speaks more of the perfection of the offering on its own account. Judgment is God's strange act; in the self-surrender of One come to do His will in an obedience reaching to and tested by the death of the cross, God can have fullest and most emphatic delight.

It is evident that the burnt-offering has a very special place in the divinely appointed ritual of sacrifice. It not only comes first in order here, but in a certain sense is the basis of all the rest. The meat-offering is often spoken of as an appendage of it:" the burnt-offering and its meat-offering " (as Lev. 23:13, 18; Num. 28:28, 31; 29:3, 6,9, etc.). The peace-offering is burnt upon it (Lev. 3:3.). The altar, again, is especially styled " The altar of burnt-offering" (ch. 4:7, 10, 18, 25, etc.); and on it, night and morning, the "continual" burnt-offering was offered:God would keep ever before Himself what was so precious to Him.

The very name of it speaks really of that:it is literally "the offering that ascends"-goes up to God. All the offerings did, of course; but of them all, this is the one that does:as of all the offerings consumed on the altar this is the only one that is entirely burnt,-the " whole burnt-offering." It is especially God's side of sacrifice, as (of the sweet-savor offerings) the peace-offering was man's side. Yet, on the other hand, it was the offering "for acceptance," as that verse should read which we have in our common version as " He shall offer it of his own voluntary will." It should be, " He shall offer it for his acceptance." The measure of our acceptance is not simply that sin is put away:it is all the preciousness to God of that perfect "obedience unto death" by which sin is put away. This by itself would show us that the peculiar acceptability of sacrifice to God is what the burnt-offering expresses.

But this implies that, voluntariness of character which, spite of the mistranslation already noticed, is clearly to be found in it. This attaches, indeed, to all the sweet-savor offerings, as it could not to the sin and trespass. But here the perfect self-surrender of Him who says, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God," is tested in the substitutionary victim-place. The offering is flayed and cut into [not pieces merely, but] its pieces:all is fully and orderly exposed. Then, head, fat, inwards, legs, the fire tries all, and sends all in sweet savor up to God.
This testing by fire we must carefully distinguish from what is by some confounded with it- the judgment due to sin. It has thus been said that while every offering did not set forth death, every one (as the meat-offering, and the similar offering of fine flour, permitted to the extremely poor for a sin-offering,) did set forth that of judgment. Older expositors have inferred from it that the Lord suffered for our sins after death. The whole thought is entire misconception, which would introduce confusion into the meaning of all the offerings. Consistency would then surely require that even the burning of the incense should typify judgment also; but who would not perceive the incongruity? The meat-offering would also be true atonement. The sin-offering burnt outside the camp and upon the ground, the true figure of judgment borne, would be indistinguishable from the burnt-offering here. The distinction between the sweet-savor offerings and the rest, carefully made in these chapters, could not be sustained; and judgment of sin would be declared a sweet smell to God. Moreover, the answer by fire, as on God's part the token of acceptance of the sacrifice, which we find again and again in the after-history, would connect strangely with the thought of judgment upon sin. In a word, if any thing is clear in these types almost, it is so that the altar-fire must have another meaning.

Now, it is admitted that fire is the common figure of judgment; yet when it is said, "The fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is," we have another thought from that of wrath. " Our God is a consuming fire,"-not, surely, of wrath to those who can truly say, "Our God,"-but of holiness, yea, jealous holiness. It is this that implies of necessity His wrath against sin:it is no mere governmental display, but the result of His own nature-of what He in Himself is. But this holiness the Lord met indeed (as seen in all sacrifice) in the place of sin, and therefore of the wrath due to sin. All death-all blood shed in this way therefore was in atonement. Of the burnt-offering it is especially said, "It shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him." And of all blood connected with the altar it is said, " I have given it upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." (Lev. 17:11.) But while this is true of all sacrifice therefore, it is a very different thing to assert that judgment as distinguished from death is found in every offering, even where death was not and could not be. On the contrary, it may be maintained that death as the great public mark of divine judgment was what was kept prominently before the eyes of men in a dispensation which appealed to sight and sense, as all did more or less until the Christian. But then the judgment in this was not the judgment after death, but only the shadow of it:it was not judgment as distinct from death, surely. The blood was the atonement, so the law said; not the altar-fire which consumed the victim.

How different, the thought of wrath consuming its object, and of holiness exploring that which, exposed perfectly to its jealous searching, yielded nothing but sweet savor-"savor of rest"! Here the circumstances of the trial only enhance the perfection found. In human weakness and extremity, where divine power exposed, not sheltered, or sustained and capacitated for suffering, not rendered less; where upon One racked with bodily suffering fell the reproaches of those who in Him reproached God,-the taunts and mockings of heartless wickedness, taunting Him with His love; where the God whom He had known as none else, His all in the absolute dependence of a faith which realized human helplessness and necessity in all its terrors, in the utter loneliness and darkness from which all divine light had withdrawn:-there it was that the fire brought out nothing but sweet savor. Every part fully exposed and searched out,-" head, inwards, legs,"-mind and heart; spirit, soul, and all the issues of these in word and work and way,-all furnished that for God which abides perpetually before Him in unchanged and infinite delight. "Accepted in the Beloved," this delight it is in which we too abide.

Preceding the offering upon the altar was what was common to all these sacrifices-the laying of the offerer's hand upon the victim, and the necessary death and sprinkling of the blood. All these must be considered in their relation to the whole.

The "laying on of hands" we find in various connections both in the Old Testament and the New. It is given an important place in that summing up of the fundamental principles of Judaism, -the " word of the beginning of Christ"* (Heb. 6:I, marg.)-from which the apostle exhorts the Hebrew converts to go on to " perfection "-the full thing which Christianity alone declared. *Not, as in the text, " the principles of the doctrine of Christ," which surely we could not be called to " leave."* The fundamental points or"foundation of Judaism he declares to be such truths as "repentance from dead works, and faith toward God, a resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment." Four central and solemn truths these, but the real Christian "foundation," Christ come and dead and risen, is not among them. Consequently, as the apostle urges throughout the epistle, there was in Judaism no real "purging of the conscience from dead works," such as the blood of Christ gives, no perfecting of the worshiper for the presence of god, and now way of access into His presence. (Chap. ix, 10:) What then took the place of these for a believer, in the old dispensation now passed away? In view of resurrection and eternal judgment, what had he to assure his soul? The words I omitted just now from the statement of Jewish principles supply us with the answer. He had " a teaching of baptisms,* and of laying on of hands,"of those baptisms, namely, which in the ninth chapter (5:10.) The apostle puts in contrast with that work of Christ of which they were indeed the shadow, and only the shadow. *Baptismon didaches,-" teaching," rather than "doctrine." The difference is, that " doctrine " would intimate that the explanation of the baptisms was given, which was not:Christianity alone gives the "doctrine," as the apostle does in chapter 9:Again, it is really " baptisms," be confounded either with Christian baptism, or even John's, which are always Baptismata, not Baptismoi.* In place of Christian assurance in the knowledge of the one completed work of atonement, he had forgiveness of individual sins by sacrifices continually needing repetition. How immense the difference! Out of which, alas! the enemy of souls has cheated the mass of Christians, replacing the " perfection," which God has declared, by sacramental absolutions, or repeated applications of the blood of Christ, -the old Jewish doctrine in a Christian dress.

Here, then, as a central part of Judaism, the "laying on of hands" had its place. It was the designation* of the offering as the sacrificial substitute of him who offered it. *The actual solemn appointment. The transference of sin was implied in these cases, just because it was a substitutionary victim that was marked out; but no transfer of any kind was necessarily shown in the act itself. I cannot enter upon the question of its meaning in the New Testament, which would lead me too far from what is before us. But I believe it every where expresses the same thing.* Its importance lay in this, that it expressed thus the faith of the offerer for his own part. It said, " This is my offering." On the day of atonement, the high-priest in the same act said this for the people at large; but in these, each for himself said it Faith must be this individual self-appropriating thing, although I do not mean by that what many would take from it, and what is taught by many.

When, in the vision of Zechariah the prophet, the high-priest Joshua, as the representative of guilty Israel, stood in filthy garments before the angel of the Lord, " He answered and spake unto those that stood before Him, saying, ' Take away his filthy garments from him.'" But that was not enough. " And unto him He said, ' Behold I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee.'" (Chap. 3:4.) How beautiful this direct assurance from God's own lips! translated, too, out of the language of type and figure into the plainest possible words, that it may be fully understood. Just so in every case for solid peace must there be this direct assurance to the soul. It is God who appropriates the work of Christ to us:not indeed, in spoken words now, but in written ones. But when, then, does the Word of God thus appropriate Christ to us? This very scene may give the answer. It is when we repent.

Should I not rather say, "when we believe"? That would be quite true, of course. Surely it is true that he that believeth on Christ hath everlasting life. Yet there are those (and not a few) who stumble here, and say, "O yes, if I were sure that I believed!" And objectors urge, "Your faith that believers have eternal life Scripture justifies, but where is the word to say that you are a believer? This is your own thought merely, and you may be mistaken."

So I drop right down upon this:"Christ died for sinners." That surely is Scripture, and you will not say, I am not a sinner, or that I have not Scripture for that! Here, then, I have solid ground under my feet; here the everlasting arms hold me fast. And this Is repentance, when I take home to myself the sentence of God upon myself, and thus join the company of lost ones, whom (in contrast with those "just persons who need no repentance") the Shepherd goes after till He finds and saves. Search as you will, you will find no other representative of the " sinner that repenteth" but the " sheep that was lost." (Luke 15:) To such lost ones, " clothed in filthy garments,"the Lord says still, even by the mouth of Zechariah, "I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee." Our appropriation here is but the apprehension of what He has done.

But if I urge "Christ died for sinners" in my own behalf, I have, as it were, my hands upon the head of the victim; and thus it is that my acceptance is declared to me. People confound this sometimes with what Isaiah says,-"The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" but the hand of the offerer could not by any possibility be Jehovah's hand. And I can, however long ago the precious Sacrifice has been offered, by faith consent to it as offered for me. Without this there can be no acceptance, no salvation. It is here that the position of the one who denies atonement is so unspeakably solemn.

The death of the victim follows at the offerer's hands:priestly work has not yet begun. " And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord." It is thus emphasized that the death of Christ was our act;* not as being morally one with those who slew Him, (although that is surely true, and most important in its place,) but by our sin necessitating His death on account of it:" the Son of Man must be lifted up."*I cannot see that the offerer here represents Christ, and therefore as laying down His own life. It seems an unsuited act to represent this. The offerer when laying on his hands on the victim just before cannot , represent Him, moreover:nor where he offers "for his acceptance."* It is " before the Lord," as showing that the necessity on the other side was a divine one, proceeding from the holiness of the divine nature.

Thus the " blood that maketh atonement for the soul" is now provided. "And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tent of meeting." This sprinkling of the blood is in testimony of the work accomplished, and for the eye of God, as much as that passover-blood of which He declared, " When I see the blood, I will pass over you." If the blood it is that maketh atonement for the soul, that blood is of necessity presented to God, as the atonement was made to Him. It is not here put upon the person, and we have not yet got to consider that; but wherever put, the blood is for God. And indeed it is the assurance of that which gives it power, as the apostle says in Hebrews, to "purge the conscience from dead works to serve [or"worship"] the living God." Thus " the heart is sprinkled from an evil conscience." (Chap. 9:14; 10:22.) It is faith's apprehension of the efficacy of that perfect work.

After the blood-sprinkling comes the flaying of the offering, the skin of which, as we learn afterward (ch. 7:8), belongs to the priest that offers it. Christ is evidently the One typified by this sacrificing priest, and so we learn whose hand it is bestows that by which the shame of our nakedness is forever put away. It is the skin of the burnt-offering, not the sin-offering. It is not true that Christ's death merely puts away our sins:it furnishes (though not alone, as we may see hereafter,) the "best robe" for the Father's house. "Raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father," the place which as man He takes is the divine estimate of that "obedience unto death" of which He says, "Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father." (Jno. 10:17, 18.) This is
the true burnt-offering aspect of the cross-the full. sweet savor. But the place He takes as man He takes for men. This gives us the measure of our acceptance in the Beloved, by which our nakedness is indeed covered, and its shame removed.

The burnt-offering having been flayed, is divided into its parts; all exposed to the light of heaven, then to the altar-flame. The word for burning even is not the word for ordinary burning, but for fuming as with incense:all goes up, not as the smoke of judgment, but as pure sweet savor.

It remains but to speak of the grades of the burnt-offering, and with this of the different animals that are used. Of these the bullock, the highest, without doubt is the type of the laborer for God (i Cor. 9:9, 10.); Christ was the perfect Servant, the character in which Isaiah 53:especially presented Him.

The sheep speaks of meek surrender to the divine will, a more negative thought in some sense; yet it is the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." Here too it is the male sheep, which gives the more positive character of devotedness, as appears in the " ram of consecration," in the eighth chapter.

The goat is the type of the Sin-bearer as such, as our Lord's classification of sheep and goats would surely intimate. Hence it is the sin-offering for the ruler and common Israelite as well as for the whole nation on the day of atonement.

The turtle-dove and pigeon, birds of heaven both, naturally represent the Lord as come from thence. The type is brought out in great distinctness where in the cleansing of the leper the bird offered dies in a vessel of earth over running (living) water:a precious figure of that humanity full of the Spirit in which a Divine Being gained capacity to suffer.

The dove is the bird of love and sorrow:most suited associations of thought with a heavenly stranger whom love to God and man has brought into a world of sin. The pigeon-the rock-pigeon, with its nest (like the coney) there,-is as suited a thought of One come down to a strange path of faith.
All these are blessed types of our Lord in various perfections. They are connected with higher or lower grades of offering, not as in themselves of necessity conveying higher or lower thoughts. The lowest grade here is that of the birds, surely not the lowest thought of Christ's person,-rather the contrary. The reason is one which can be easily understood. Does not the very glory of His Godhead prevent many realizing the perfection of His manhood ? Do not many bring in the thought of the "bird," as it were, without the "vessel of earth" in which alone it could die? And the changes in the ritual here are quite accordant with this. The bird is not divided to the same extent as the bullock or the sheep:the internal perfection is not in the same way seen. There is little blood, too, for the altar; and there is no skin for the priest. * *The feathers are not rejected, as in our version:the margin is better.* Is it not the necessary result where the Lord's manhood is dimly realized? Thank God that this is still a sweet-savor offering to Him! What He finds in Christ is not measured by what we find, nor our acceptance by our apprehension of it. And these lower grades bring out our thoughts. Still we lose by their poverty. May He graciously bring His beloved people, even here, more to the knowledge of His own.

Q. 9.-Does Romans 7:8-11 give the experience of an unconverted man, whose conscience has, however, been awakened in presence of the law ?

A. No, but rather the experience which is worked out in detail from the fourteenth verse. We only learn what death is after we have come to live.

Q. 10.-Will you explain Romans 8:10 ?

A "The body is dead is dead because of sin:" does not receive the spiritual life which the man himself does. Faith and sense (the body), as tendencies, are opposed; faith having to do with things unseen. This life of faith which the Spirit produces and sustains is the only thing which produces practical righteousness, or is really, therefore, "life."

Q. 11.-John 6:56?

A. "Dwelleth in Me, and I in him" is the same expression as chap. 15:4,5, and applied by the Lord to Himself and the Father (ch. 14:10.). If the branch abides in the vine really, the sap, which is the vine in its living power (comp. 1 Jno. 3:15.), abides in the branch. This vital participation in Christ manifests itself actively as a life of dependence and communion, in which Christ is the sustenance of the soul; and Christ dead for us, His flesh and His blood apart.

Q. 12.-Leviticus 7:26, 27?

A. The prohibition of eating blood is explained in chap. 17:10-12 to be because it is the practical life of all flesh, given on the altar in atonement. God was thus to be owned as the sole and sovereign Disposer of it, and as the One who had provided ill grace the forfeit incurred by man. The decision in Acts 15:29 shows that we are bound by the terms of the Noachian covenant. Spiritually, we do drink the blood; entering by faith into the value of the atonement.

Q. 13.-In John 3:8, have we how a man is born again, or what? A. First, that he is born by the sovereign power of God, uncontrollable as the wind; secondly, that there is evidence-fruit of the Spirit,-as of where the wind is. " So " is every one that is born of the Spirit-1:e., this is the way with him.

Q. 14.-In 1 Timothy 2:15, is the " salvation " here deliverance from death ?

A. " She shall be delivered in the hour of her trial:that which bears the stamp of judgment shall be an occasion of the mercy and succor of God." (Synopsis.)

15.-The anointing with oil in James 5:14 is certainly not medical treatment, but a type and sign of the presence and power of the Spirit to heal.

An alphabetic psalm, the letters Vau and Kuph being omitted, while the number of verses is preserved.

Remarks.-Confession of sin is here for the first time explicitly, in suited connection with God acting for His name's sake, to display His grace. Comp. Psalm 20:i :the name of Jacob's God was in fact Jehovah, and under this He delivers His people (Ex. 3:) " Good," He takes up sinners, and " upright," guides them in His ways. The psalm is greatly in advance of all former experience-psalms.

"And Peter answered Him and said, ' Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee upon the waters.'And He said, ' Come.' And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the waters to go to Jesus." (Matt. 14:28, 29.)

The individuality of the path is what I would press upon our souls just now. How strikingly it is presented! This solitary man, amid boisterous winds and waves, forsaking the protection of the boat and the company of the other disciples, and inviting the word which bids him to a path at once so difficult and so resourceless. We often speak of a walk of faith. It is well to look steadily at such a picture as this, and to ask ourselves, have we ever realized it in our own experience? does it present really what corresponds in its features (even though more deeply drawn,) to the path as we know it?

Solitary;-but he had before him as the end of his path the gracious and glorious presence of Him who had called him, and for sustaining power the word which in its call was a promise for all difficulties that could be. If in the meanwhile he had lost the. company of others, every step on this road would make the Presence before him more bright and lustrous; and, at the end at least, even those now separated from would be restored. Was there not abundant compensation in the meantime? Would there not be an overpayment of joy at the end ?

I would press, I again say, the individuality of it. As we look back upon the examples of faith which God has given us in His own record, how they shine separately and independently out from "surrounding darkness! How seldom are they set even in clusters! Enoch, in that walk with God which death never shadowed; Noah, with his family, sole survivors of a judgment wrecked world; Abraham, with whom even Lot is a mere contrast. They stand out from the dark background as men not formed by their circumstances, no mere natural outgrowth from that in the midst of which we find them, but plants of the Lord's planting, maintaining themselves where no power but His could avail to keep them, north wind, as well as south, making the spices of His garden to flow out. In all these the individuality of the path is manifest. Lot is a warning as to the opposite course, of unmistakable significance. A walk with God means necessarily independence of men,-even of the saints; while if it is with God, it will be marked by unfeigned lowliness, and absence of mere eccentricity and self-will.

In the scene to which I am now referring, this solitary man, in that individual path in which nothing but divine power could for a moment sustain him, is the representative, as is evident, of the Church at large. The saints of the present time are as a body called to go forth to meet the Bridegroom, leaving the "boat" of Judaism, a provision for nature, not for faith. "The law is not of faith." To faith, God alone is necessary and sufficient, and other helps would be helps to do (so far) without Him :hindrances to faith therefore, really. Practically, it was a Jewish remnant that the Lord left when He went on high, and to a Jewish remnant we know He will return again, we in the meantime being called to meet Him and return with Him. This company Peter, not only here, but elsewhere, represents.

At first sight this may seem to take from the individual aspect. The path is the Church's path, and belongs to the whole, not merely to individuals:and that is so far true. In fact, as a company it has perhaps never walked in it; most certainly not for centuries:and Scripture-prescient as the Word of God must be-announced beforehand what history has since recorded. If then the Church has failed, is the Christian to accept for himself this failure? or is not individuality forced the more upon him,-a good which divine sovereignty thus brings out of the evil? But in truth it never was intended that the walk of a Christian should be different in principle or on a lower level than that which characterized faith in former generations. We were not meant to seek Lot-like companionship with one another, but Abraham-like with God. He is "the father of all them that believe." If Peter here, then, represent a company, it can only be a company of such as walk, each for him-self, with God:a course which would indeed secure the most blessed companionship. Communion with one another can only be the result of communion with the Father and with the Son.

In this way how striking is the path of this lone man!-a path that terminates only in the presence of the Lord, and on which every step in advance brings nearer to Him! Various as in some true sense our paths must be, it is this that alone gives them their common Christian character; it is this that makes us pilgrims; nay, as the inspired Word presents it, racers:our goal outside the world; our object-that which rules us-heavenly. If it be not thus with us, we are immeasurably below those of a dispensation darkness itself compared with ours, who nevertheless by their lives "declared plainly" that they sought a better country. And for this reason God was not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city.

This path of faith is one in which we may show, with Peter, not the greatness of our faith, but the littleness of it. It will never really make much of us. Do we seek it? The glory of Christ is what lies before and beckons us; for our weakness, if there be rebuke, it is only that of a perfect love. Not, Wherefore didst thou presume? but, "Wherefore didst thou doubt?" And with that, the outstretched hand of human sympathy and of divine support. Is it enough, dear fellow-Christian? Is there not for all the difficulties of the way an overabundant recompense? And the end-who shall declare its blessedness?

Yet let us remember that it is to one who invites his Lord's invitation to such a path that it really opens. The " Come " of Christ is an answer to him who says, "Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee upon the waters! " The word for the path is the answer alone to the heart for the path. And what to Him is the joy of such desire so expressed? Let ours go forth, if any have not yet, with such a cry:"Lord, if it be upon the waters I must come, and that path it is which alone leads to Thee, then bid me come to Thee, blest, gracious Master, even upon the water!"

The book of Numbers gives us the history of the wilderness, the testing of the people by the trials and difficulties to which they are exposed, their failure as so tested, and the triumphant grace of Him whose love and whose resources for His people cannot fail, and whose word is pledged to bring them through. The ordinance of the red heifer gives us the effects of atonement, not in forgiveness, but in the purification of the people from uncleanness, and this in a special form, which had its peculiar significance in relation to the wilderness.

For the wilderness is, of course, the world as the place of our pilgrimage,-a place where every thing about us echoes the divine voice, " Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest:because it is polluted." The seal of its condition in this respect is death, in which the life universally forfeited is removed and man given up wholly to the corruption, which has already been inwardly his state.

Death marks the world as a wilderness before God, and for him therefore who has the mind of God; it is a scene of death out of which we have escaped as dead with Christ, and partakers of eternal life in Him beyond it, and separation from which is an absolute necessity to real holiness. " Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this:To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world." (Jas. 1:27.)

The remedy for defilement is here typically put before us. It is not in a new sacrifice, nor in the shedding of that blood without which is no remission. It is in the application of that which speaks of a sacrifice once for all completed, of wrath exhausted and gone, the ashes alone remaining to testify of the complete consumption of the victim. In this way the red heifer, in opposition to the many sacrifices constantly being offered, represents alone among legal ordinances the abiding efficacy of that which has been offered "once for all."

The victim is here a female,-a type of which I have already spoken. It is passivity, subjection, willlessness, which we may see in the Lord in Gethsemane, whose " cup" was in fact drunk afterward upon the cross; a red heifer, as the ram-skins of the tabernacle were dyed red, to show how far this willless obedience in Him went. "Without spot or blemish:"-with neither defect nor deformity; and "upon which never came yoke,"-not simply sin's, but any, for a yoke is an instrument to enforce subjection, which in Him could not be. At the same time when He was saying, "Not My will, but Thine, be done," He might have had twelve legions of angels and gone to the Father, but would not:His was the perfection of a willless will.

And how suited all this to express the perfection of the obedience unto death, by which our disobedience was met and removed, and which is to be fruitful in us as well as for us, in separating us from the lawlessness and lusts which characterize us as fallen creatures!

The heifer is brought forth without the camp and slain, like any sin-offering, even the blood being burned, except what is used in the sevenfold sprinkling before the tent of meeting, where the people went to meet with God. And into the midst of the burning of the heifer were cast cedar-wood and hyssop-types of all nature, from the highest to the lowest (i Kings 4:33), and scarlet- of the glory of the world:" if any man be in Christ, it is new creation," and by the cross is severed his connection with the old.
A man that was clean then gathered up the ashes of the heifer, and they were laid up in a clean place outside the camp, to be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel, for a water of separation, a purification for sin.

A person denied with the dead remained unclean for seven days; on the third day and on the seventh he was to be sprinkled with it,-running water being put to it in a vessel,-and on the seventh day at even he should be clean. The sprinkling on the third day was all-important:"if he purify hot himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean."

The reference to death as the stamp upon the old creation makes all this clear. The third day is the resurrection day, deliverance from death; the eighth,-first day of the new week,-speaks of new creation. One cleansed by the evening of the seventh day was brought in fact to the eighth:only by deliverance from the old creation could he be really clean; but into this resurrection,-the resurrection of Christ,-is the necessary introduction :therefore the insisting upon the third day.

Only in the power of resurrection could death become a means of purification for the soul. We cannot be in any true sense dead to the world except in the power of a life which is ours beyond it. But thus resurrection is not the revival of the old, but that which links us with the new creation. This is the united teaching of this third and seventh-day sprinklings. The power of the Holy Ghost (running, or "living," water) applies to the soul the death of the cross, that death in which for us the old world ended under judgment, to set us free from all the seductive power of things through which we pass,-free for the enjoyment ours outside it. The world is but the lace of the empty cross, and He who once filled it is now entered for us into the Father's house, our Forerunner. This is purification of heart for him who realizes it; power for true self-judgment, and deliverance from the corruption that is in the world through lust.

This is " water-washing by the word." The sacrifice is not again offered, nor the blood afresh sprinkled for him who is thus to be cleansed. Neither acceptance nor relationship are here in question, although just as " without holiness, no man shall see the Lord," so "he that purifieth not himself shall be cut off from Israel."

The lesson as far as atonement is concerned seems just this dependence of purification on it. The water as well as the blood comes out of the side of a dead Christ, with whom we too are dead. How shall we that are dead live any longer in that to which we are dead ?

We have now completed the types of atonement ; before our glance at the Old-Testament doctrine is complete, we have still to consider the prophets and the psalms.

The final issue:Jehovah the King of glory; the earth is His, and into His holy hill the righteous enter.

A psalm of David.

The earth is Jehovah's, and the fullness there-of; the habitable earth, and they that dwell therein.

2. For it is He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it above the floods.

3. Who shall ascend to the hill of Jehovah? and who shall stand in His holy place?

4. The man clean of hands and pure of heart, who hath not lifted up his soul to falsehood, nor sworn deceitfully.

5. He shall receive blessing from Jehovah, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

6. This is the generation of those that seek Him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.

7. Lift up your heads, ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
8. Who is this King of glory ? Jehovah, strong and mighty; Jehovah, mighty in war.

9. Lift up your heads, ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall
come in.

10. Who is He, this King of glory? Jehovah of Hosts, He is the King of glory.

The "mourning" here is not about this or that thing specially; still less is it over our own sins and failures. We have such, no doubt, to mourn over; but the Lord's words here seem to indicate something much more than even the "godly sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation not to be repented of." Such sorrow will no doubt be found in the one who possesses the character above named, but that is very different from giving to it any such meaning as " Blessed are the penitent." No doubt there is blessedness in being such.

But the Lord never mourned in such a fashion, clearly, and He was a mourner throughout His life-"a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;" and I may say that the thing that fitted Him to know that sorrow, which He did so well know, was the very fact that He could not know any thing like penitence. Knowing no sin,-having nothing in Himself to mourn over,-He had fellowship with God unbroken and unclouded. He came from God,-went to God,-was in the world solely as the doer of His Father's will, the seeker of His Father's glory; in this to learn the whole extent of the ruin into which man had fallen, and bring help to one who had "destroyed himself." What a scene for the Son of God to come into, upon such an errand ! that He had no where to lay His head,-that men denied, blasphemed, and crucified Him;-that was the manifestation of that lost condition which the death of the cross alone could reach. He bore it all in sorrow and in suffering in His soul all His life through, as at the cross He bore its penalty. Nay, " Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." Not a thing that He relieved but He felt it, and felt it as the fruit of the sin which had blasted a creation once so fair. That sin itself, to Him who could detect it in its most hidden shapes, and read it in the very heart,-aye, in the hearts of those who followed Him most nearly,-what a constant cause of terrible suffering it must have been we can little, (alas!) any of us, understand.

Are they not "blessed" who can mourn with Him? To judge sin, in a certain way, is very easy. The world itself can do so:every one can judge it when it is his neighbor's and not his own. On the other hand, to treat it lightly is just as easy, and a thing, too, which we often cover with the precious but abused name of " grace; " but to mourn-to weep in secret places over it-to bear it as a burden only to be relieved by casting it on God,-that is what is " blessed." indeed, for it is Christlike. It is what true and divine love alone is capable of. It is what unites the real judgment of evil with long-suffering patience. It is one most real and necessary part of fellowship with God,-a God so holy that He who knew no sin must be made sin for our salvation,–a God so gracious as to give His own beloved Son that we might be saved.

Turn where you will in such a scene as this, and how shall we, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, not "groan within ourselves"? The world going on to judgment, the Church sunk down almost to the level of the world, the truth every-where corrupted or opposed or neglected; where are our hearts if we are not mourners? But if heaviness endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning- yea, with "the Bright and Morning Star." We sorrow not without hope. Soon shall the day break and the shadows fade away. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

We cannot but feel deeply for our children growing up in such an atmosphere as that which at present surrounds us, and which will become yet darker and darker. We long to see more earnestness on the part of Christians in seeking to store the minds of the young with the precious and soul-saving knowledge of the Word of God. The child Josiah and the child Timothy should incite us to greater diligence in the instruction of the young, whether in the bosom of the family, in the Sunday-school, or in any way we can reach them. It will not do for us to fold our arms and say, " When God's time comes our children will be converted; and till then, our efforts are useless." This is a fatal mistake. " God is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." (Heb. 11:) He blesses our prayerful efforts in the instruction of our children. And further, who can estimate the blessing of being early led in the right way and having the character formed amid holy influences and the mind stored with what is true and pure and lovely? On the other hand, who will undertake to set forth the evil consequences of allowing our children to grow up in ignorance of divine things? Who can portray the evils of a polluted imagination-of a mind stored with vanity, folly, and falsehood-of a heart familiarized, from infancy, with scenes of moral degradation? We do not hesitate to say that Christians incur very heavy and awful responsibility in allowing the enemy to preoccupy the minds of their children at the very period when they are most plastic and susceptible.

True, there must be the quickening power of the Holy Ghost. It is as true of the children of Christians as of any other, that they "must be born again." We all understand this; but does this fact touch the question of our responsibility in reference to our children ? is it to cripple our energies or hinder our earnest efforts? Assuredly not. We are called upon, by every argument, divine and human, to shield our precious little ones from every evil influence, and to train them in that which is holy and good.-(Ibid.)

"In the heart of London city,
Mid the dwellings of the poor,
These bright golden words, were uttered :-
' I have Christ! what want I more?

By a lonely dying woman,
Stretched upon a garret-floor,
Having not one earthly comfort,-
'I have Christ! what want I more?'

He who heard them, ran to fetch her
Something from the world's great store;
It was needless-died she, saying,
' I have Christ ! what want I more?'
But her words will live forever ;
I repeat them o'er and o'er;
God delights to hear me saying,
'I have Christ! what want I more?'"

We have to get rid of the bad; and what is strange, the more good we get, the more bad we have to get rid of.

As long as the Lord Jesus was here, He was a solitary Man upon earth; but now He, being raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, forms a new class of men of the same order as Himself; and every believer is of this same class.

The problem for the believer is to live Christ in His body on earth. Nothing explains truth like practice.

When I hear a person say, I do not see the harm of it, I answer, It is just because you have not learned enough good. And that is why a worldly saint will go through the world the easiest, and also do himself the least harm by going through it. It is only the worldly man who can say, I do not find it does me any harm.

The man who knows most of Christ, is always the one who is the most apprehensive of Satan.

The body is the place in which all the evil has been done; but now the Lord says, I have redeemed it; it must now be My place-My garden ; it has been growing all the weeds that Satan could plant in it, but now it must grow flowers for Me.

I do not believe there is any moment of more ecstatic delight to the soul than the one in which it finds that God's place for it is its own. It is a moment of unspeakable delight; it has reached the climax of every thing, and it knows that it is there. It is a wonderful moment; but, I say, woe betide the person who is satisfied with stopping at it! What the Lord warns them about, on their getting into the land, is their state in it.

The present result:brought back from the dead through the blood of the everlasting covenant, the great Shepherd of the sheep tends them with divine love and care, leading them in paths of righteousness, prosperity, and peace.

A psalm of David.

Jehovah is my Shepherd:I shall not want.

2. He maketh me lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside quiet waters.

3. He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

4. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil:for
Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.

5. Thou spreadest a table for me in the presence of my enemies:Thou hast made fat my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in Jehovah's house to length of days.

Text.-(3) " Restoreth :" in the sense of " renewing, refreshing."

The remedy for care which the Lord proposes to His people in these verses is a twofold one. And we must take the two parts together. The failure which so many Christians-for I speak only to such now; no other person ought to be free from care, because Christ gives rest to those who have come to Him alone-the failure, then, that so many Christians experience as to this, is because they disjoin what the Lord has joined together.

Are there not some who read this who have found Christ, and to whom His blood has spoken peace as far as their consciences are concerned, whose hearts nevertheless have a burden of care that prevents true and proper "rest"? Why is it, beloved ? Ought not the one that has known Jesus to have found in Him a remedy as much for care as for fear,-for restlessness as for guilt,-for the troubles of this life as well as for the judgment to come? Surely it ought to be so. And why is not?

The answer I have already given. People would, with strange and willful disregard of the Lord's words, talk of their circumstances, as if they furnished the answer,-as if it were impossible for the Lord Himself to keep heart and mind at rest in the midst of their own peculiar surroundings! But what unbelief is shown in this! and what dishonor is done to Him by it! Whereas all the difficulties and trials of the way are but really the occasions for the display of the unfailing resources and the unchanging grace of Him who unwearyingly watches over and cares for His own.

And here is just the first thing to consider. He does care. The love that gave Jesus up for us upon the cross is not exhausted even by "that, but just proved inexhaustible. "He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Hun up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" Yes, says this blessed Exponent of His Father's heart, "even the very hairs of your head are all numbered." What you would not care to do for yourselves He has done; yea, what you scarcely care to have done for you He has done! Oh to realize in its full power that wondrous and sweet assurance! Do we think of the hairs that fall from our head? He does. Well, if Almighty Love cares thus for me, what a remedy for care on my part. Why should I be uneasy-I who with all my taking thought can never add one cubit to my stature, nor even make one hair "white or black? Blessed be His name, He who has given me a place before Himself in all the value and beauty of His own blessed Son has so dearly bought Himself title to pour out His love on me that surely He must delight to do it. And I, so blessed and cared for, how should I wrong Him, my Father and my God, by a single doubt as to the result!

Thus the soul enters into its rest. It is the real healing of the breach in Eden, the real " escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust." (2 Pet. 1:4.) For what is "lust" but the heart of man, away from its only place of rest in the unquestioning consciousness of the goodness and love of God, seeking its own things, because it must care for itself it none care for it? Thus our Lord's words rebuke our distrustful care about what to eat and drink and to be clothed with,-" For after these things do the Gentiles seek." Are we to be still " even as the nations who know not God " ?

But there is another thing connected with this. I believe many a soul would say, " Well, I know all this; but still, somehow it has not its proper power with me at all. I know it is foolish and wrong, and yet I am anxious and troubled for all that." Now then, beloved, suffer a plain, straightforward question:Are you "seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness"? are you, truthfully and honestly, out and out for God and His glory? That is the indispensable other ingredient in this remedy for care. God has been saying to you, His saved one, "I will take care for you; I will leave you without the need of one single uneasy thought; I will attend to all that concerns your interests, and I give you the privilege of undistracted occupation with your own things above and with My interests below."

You want "purpose of heart" in this, or you cannot know what freedom from care is. Can the world ? If you are bent upon making money, or upon "getting on" in the world in any way, you know you cannot count upon Him to be with you in it. Hence anxiety and care come in at once. And what wonder? Of course all the assurances of a love even as infinite as His are thrown away upon you, while you are not seeking to live to Him, but to yourself.

And you are weary. You have a restless, because a divided heart. Your worldly plans do not give satisfaction, but a bad conscience; and when you would turn to God, you find little satisfaction either, because you have a bad conscience. You are wasting your few moments here, heaping up sorrow for yourself under the sure government of One who has already assured us that "he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." There may not be any thing outwardly evil in your life, but the question is, what is it that your heart really turns to for its proper joy ? can you ask God Himself, " Whom have I in heaven but Thee?" and can you say to Him, "And there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee"? Are you willing to have Him-His word " search and try you, and see well if there be any way of wickedness in you"? It may be but, as you would say, some "little thing;" but you may let Satan cheat you out of all your proper rest and joy by just "some little thing."

" There be many that say, ' Who will show us any good?' Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased." (Ps. 4:6, 7.)

In contemplating the present condition of the professing church, we may discern two very distinct classes. In the first place, there are those who are seeking unity on false grounds; and secondly, those who are seeking it on the ground laid down in the New Testament. This latter is distinctly a spiritual, living, divine unity, and stands out in vivid contrast with all the forms of unity which man has attempted, whether it be national, ecclesiastical, ceremonial, or doctrinal. The Church of God is not a nation, not an ecclesiastical or political system; it is a body united to its divine Head in heaven; by the presence of the Holy Ghost. This is what it was, and this is what it is. " There is one body and one Spirit." This remains unalterably true. It holds good now just as much as when the inspired apostle penned Ephesians 4:Hence any thing that tends to interfere with or mar this truth must be wrong, and we are bound to stand apart from it and testify against it. To seek to unite Christians on any other ground than the unity of the body, is manifestly opposed to the revealed mind of God. It may seem very attractive, very desirable, very reasonable, right, and expedient; but it is contrary to God, and this should be enough for us. God's Word speaks only of the unity of the body and the unity of the Spirit. It recognizes no other unity; neither should we.

The Church of God is one, though consisting of many members. It is not local, or geographical; it is corporate. All the members have a double responsibility;-they are responsible to the Head, and they are responsible to one another. It is utterly impossible to ignore this responsibility. Men may seek to shirk it; they may deny it; they may assert their individual rights, and act according to their own reason, judgment, or will; but they cannot get rid of the responsibility founded upon the fact of the one compact body. They have to do with the Head in heaven and with the members on earth. They stand in this double relationship-they were incorporated there into by the Holy Ghost, and to deny it is to deny their very spiritual existence. It is founded in life, formed by the Spirit, and taught and maintained in the holy Scriptures. There is no such thing as independency. Christians cannot view themselves as mere individuals-as isolated atoms. " We are members one of another." This is as true as that " we are justified by faith." No doubt there is a sense in which we are individual:we are individual in our repentance, individual in our faith, individual in our justification, individual in our walk with God and in our service to Christ, individual in our rewards for service (for each one shall get a white stone, and a new name engraved thereon known only to himself). All this is quite true, but it in no wise touches the other grand practical truth of our union with the Head above and with each and all of the members below.

And we would here call the reader's attention to two very distinct lines of truth flowing out of two distinct titles of our blessed Lord, namely, Headship and Lordship. He is Head of His body the Church, and He is Lord of all-Lord of each. Now, when we think of Christ as Lord, we are reminded of our individual responsibility to Him, in the wide range of service to which He, in His sovereignty, has graciously called us. Our reference must be to Him in all things. All our actings, all our movements, all our arrangements, must be placed under the commanding influence of that weighty sentence (often, alas! lightly spoken and penned), " If the Lord will." And, moreover, no one has any right to thrust himself in between the conscience of a servant and the commandment of his Lord. All this is divinely true, and of the very highest importance. The Lordship of Christ is a truth the value of which cannot possibly be overestimated.

But we must bear in mind that Christ is Head as well as Lord. He is Head of a body as well as Lord of individuals. These things must not be confounded We are not to hold the truth of Christ's Lordship in such a way as to interfere with the truth of His Headship. If we merely think of Christ as Lord, and ourselves as individuals responsible to Him, then we shall ignore His Headship, and lose sight of our responsibility to every member of that body of which He is Head. We must jealously watch against this. We can m a look at ourselves as isolated independent atoms:we think of Christ as Head, then we must think of all His members, and this opens up a wide range of practical truth. We have holy duties to discharge to our fellow-members as well as to our Lord and Master, and we may rest assured that no one walking in communion with Christ can ever lose sight of the grand fact of his relationship to every member of His body.-(In "Life and Times of Josiah")
C.H.M.

The Individual Application.-In the individual application certain broad features of Joseph's life are easy to be read, and these are all that I am able with confidence to speak of. It is plain how different in character is the suffering through which he passes to that of Jacob. Jacob's is disciplinary, the result, under God's government, of the evil of his own ways; Joseph, on the contrary, suffering for righteousness, the predestined path to glory:"if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him."

Child of old age is Joseph:how slowly, alas! the fruits of the new nature appear in us! Even for the saint, how true that " that which is first is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual"! Moreover, in the world through which we pass, all is hostile to the development of that which is of God. " He that separateth himself from evil maketh himself a prey ;" and separation from evil is a fundamental principle of the divine nature. Hence persecution for righteousness, not only from the world, but even at the hands of those who, chosen out of the world, are still practicing conformity with its ways. Nay, one's brethren are, alas! often in this case more hostile than the very world itself, just because their consciences are more awake to a testimony which condemns themselves. And indeed how few are there among the children of God who are thoroughly, and at all costs, subject to His Word! How many of all creeds, even the highest, whose code is liberty for self-will within certain wider or narrower limits! Thus, within the circle of professed Christian fellowship, how much real opposition which must be met by those who are Joseph’s, " adding," after the apostle's manner, disciples of the cross! Their path is individual, solitary often, save only for the God with whom they walk, and indeed because they have chosen to walk with Him. Yet it is thus a path of deepest, fullest blessing.

Rejected by his brethren, rejected by the world, Joseph carries with him the wisdom which interprets the scene around him, while master, too, of the circumstances by which he seems to be mastered. All things necessarily serve the One who is with him ever under all appearances, content Himself to find through seeming defeat His sure, eternal victory. Through all, he is preparing for the place where at last both his brethren are restored to him and also the world shall be his own:when Christ reigns, (of which we have been tracing the figures here,) His saints shall reign with Him.

Of this latter part, for the fullness of which we must wait to be with Him, we have nevertheless our anticipative foretastes. Even now, as the apostle tells us, the world is ours, long as it may be before we learn our spiritual supremacy over it. The word of life and of salvation is surely also ours as it was Joseph's, and it is ours to win to ourselves out of the world those who shall be in spiritual relationship to us also. This some would find as a type in Jacob's history, where it seems out of relation to the whole character and meaning of his life. It is Joseph rather, I believe, in whom we find this.

But while features of resemblance there necessarily are between the life of Christ as manifested thus in His people, and Him in whom alone it has been perfectly seen, yet the details, as remarked already, carry us continually away from the disciple to the Lord. This is surely designed and full of instruction for us. Is it not true that just so far as these features are developed in us it is the result of occupation with Christ Himself? "We all with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit." In preparation for the scene of His actual presence, He thus as we advance in spiritual life becomes the object upon which our gaze fastens. It is not we that live, but Christ liveth in us. He abides in our hearts by faith. We "grow in grace" as we grow "in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Thus, as the Nazarite's course ended, he came to the door of the tent of meeting to offer to God the various offerings in the value of which-not of his vows performed-he found acceptance with God; and there, thus standing, his hands were filled with the heave-shoulder of the ram, and the unleavened cakes of the meat-offering. Christ in the perfection of His blessed life, Christ alone upholding all things by the power of that in which in unique, matchless devotedness He glorified God, the Christ in whom we are accepted, fills, and for eternity is to fill and occupy, us only.

The subjective types of Genesis closing in the objective is thus not a defect, nor (I believe) a thought due to mere obscurity of vision as to what is presented here. It is to the " fathers " the apostle says, as characteristic of them, " Ye have known Him that is from the beginning." And there he closes. There Genesis closes too, with the vision of the glory of the Lord, suffering and exalted, the government laid upon His shoulder, the true Zaphnath-paaneah, revealer of the secrets of His Father's heart, Bridegroom of His Gentile Bride, Saviour of the world. Where He fills the eye and occupies the heart, all else finds its just place and completest harmony ; communion with the Father is the portion of the soul, the power of the living Spirit realized. And here what limit of attainment is imposed, save that which we may impose? The study of these Genesis-pictures will have done nothing for us, if it does not invite our hearts more than ever into the King's banqueting-house, where the everlasting arms inclose and uphold us, and "His banner" over us is "love."

The day of atonement was that upon which the efficacy of every sacrifice in Israel depended. On that day alone was the holiest entered and the blood of atonement put upon the mercy-seat be-fore God " once a yean" This alone sanctified for them the tabernacle and all its appointments, with the altar itself.

It is of the day of atonement that the epistle to the Hebrews mainly treats, interpreting and applying its lessons for our use, though not without a side-reference to Israel themselves, when in a future day they shall find in Christ the meaning of all their shadows. It will be of profit, before we begin to consider it in detail, to see the nature of this double application, or its dispensational character, as the apostle and the book of Leviticus together present it to us.

In the twenty-third chapter of this book it finds its place among Israel's holy seasons,-not feasts, for feast it is not, but a day in which they were to rest, not in joy but in sorrow of spirit, afflicting their souls. In the order of these, the passover, first-fruits, and Pentecost (or feast of weeks) begin the year; then there is a long pause till the seventh month, and in this the rest are found:on the first day the blowing of trumpets, on the tenth the day of atonement, and on the fifteenth begins the feast of tabernacles. These seasons fall therefore into two divisions, of which the first has special reference to the Church, the second to Israel. This last begins with the blowing of trumpets, which, as the gathering of the congregation, speaks of the reassembling of Israel; then the day of atonement speaks of their repentance and taking refuge under the work of Christ; while the feast of tabernacles is the anticipation of their millennial blessing. Upon all that does not concern our present purpose we of course do not enter here, but it is evident thus that the primary reference of the day of atonement is to the last days and Israel's apprehension of the work of Christ when " they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son," and " in that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness."

This gives its full meaning to the fact that in the day of atonement it is after the high-priest has come out of the sanctuary that he confesses the sins of the people on the head of the scape-goat and sends it away by the hand of a fit person into the wilderness. This is the application to the people of the work of Christ long before accomplished, and the apostle, in the epistle to the Hebrews, teaches us our part to be in connection with His going into the sanctuary, not His coming out. For us, the Holy Ghost is come out, to give us the knowledge of what is done in our behalf, adding for us two things which in the. type before us find no expression:the first, the session of our High-Priest at the right hand of God; the second, that for us the vail is rent, and by faith we enter into the sanctuary itself.

The day of atonement thus, while having peculiar significance in relation to the people of Israel in a future day, covers nevertheless the whole present period; and we are led to ask, Is this application made by the apostle to us as Christians to be found in the Old-Testament type itself? And to this we are able to answer undoubtedly in the affirmative. . The first offering,-for the priestly house,-is entirely distinct from that for the people; and it is Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, who teaches us to recognize our representatives in these (i Pet. 2:5). We shall find how much the apprehension of this distinction tends to make clear the doctrine of atonement itself.

The failure of the people had caused the forfeiture of the place conditionally promised them as " a kingdom of priests," and given Aaron and his sons their special priesthood. The failure of the" priests themselves had now shut them also out of the inner sanctuary. But all this only served to bring out the condition of man as man, and his need of the Mediator of whom on this occasion Aaron was but the type. He could only in fact draw nigh thus once a year, not in his garments of glory and beauty, but in simple linen garments, and with sacrifices for himself and all the people.

Typically, these linen vestments have a glory of their own not excelled by any other. They represent the personal righteousness which, tested as it was by the fiery trial of the cross, and the unbending requirements of divine holiness, alone insured the acceptance of His work and His deliverance out of the awful place which He took for men. Crying "unto Him who was able to save Him out of death," He " was heard for His piety. (Heb. 5:7, Gr.) It was God's "Holy One" who " could not see corruption." And this perfection of His it was by which as High-Priest of our profession He entered the sanctuary.

But in this respect therefore He was the total opposite of the Jewish high-priest, who, as one taken from among men, and so, like others, himself compassed with infirmity, by reason hereof comes with the blood of others in atonement for his own sins. He, on the other hand, " holy, harmless, un-defiled enters the heavens with His own blood as atonement for the sins of His people. The type in Aaron is necessarily thus deficient because but a type. It must of necessity bear witness to its own deficiency, and thus point forward to Him who should yet fulfill it. The deficiency itself is thus not an imperfection merely; it is rather a perfection :not meaningless, but full of meaning. And it is important to see this.

Before, however, Aaron carries in the blood of the sacrifice into the most holy place, there must be another witness to the preciousness of Christ personally. " He shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before Jehovah, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the vail, and he shall put the incense upon the fire before Jehovah, that a cloud of the incense may cover the mercy-seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not."

The witness of the high-priest's garment is here confirmed. If that might seem in question because of his personal need of cleansing by blood, here was an unmistakable witness. It is not sacrifice; it must not be confounded with it. It is the proclamation of the value of Christ Himself before there is the testimony to the value of His work with-God. Here the fire of God's holiness tests all,- how has it tested Him!-only to bring out the fragrance of " sweet incense." This covers the mercy-seat, that in safety and in peace the priest may sprinkle it with the blood of atonement.

The sacrifices are two, as we have seen; one for the priestly house, the other for the people. Both are sin-offerings; for, as we have seen, and as Hebrews 13:explicitly declares, only the blood of those beasts burnt outside the camp could be brought into the sanctuary. Here we find however a remarkable difference in the animals offered, the more remarkable when we contrast it with the regulations of Leviticus 4:There, for the congregation, as well as for the high-priest, the offering was the bullock. Here, for the high-priest it is still that, but the offering for the people is the evidently much lower one of the goat:and this will be found in the most beautiful way to confirm the interpretation already given of that chapter. There it will be remembered that we took the high-priest and congregation as figuring Christ and the Church. It is thus that the blood for the congregation is brought into the holy place to anoint the incense-altar:it is a priestly congregation that is thus figured; and this the Church is.* * The distinction in this respect cannot be maintained if in chapter 16:18 the ' altar" is the golden altar of incense, for in this case the blood of the goat for Israel would also be put upon it; but this is not so, and the expression "before Jehovah" is inadequate to prove it. How often, and even in this chapter, is this connected with "at the door of meeting" (as (ver. 7). On the other hand verse 17 shows the work completed for the sanctuary, and then Aaron "goes out" to the altar, which in 20,33, is named apart from the sanctuary and tent of meeting altogether. It seems to me that the blood on and before the mercy-seat accomplishes all the rest.* But the goat is for the ruler and the common person, which we have seen to give Israel's standing; and here the blood anoints only the altar of burnt-offering, not entering the tabernacle at all.

Now how striking it is to find that on the day of atonement the bullock is for the priestly house,- the Church,-while the goat is again for Israel. If we look deeper, we shall see how suitable this is. The bullock speaks of service; the goat, merely of the place of sin being taken. In the case of the last, if sin be removed, that is all; but the bullock speaks of service to God, the glorifying Him in the place thus taken; and "if God be glorified in Him, He will also glorify Him in Himself:" this opens the sanctuary to His people; He is not only their Substitute upon the cross, but their Representative in glory.

Thus in the millennium Israel, though accepted, will have place on the earth, not in heaven; and so, though in greater nearness in the new earth, while the Church has hers with her Lord according to His promise* (Jno. 14:3). *Of course it is not meant to confine this to the Church.*

The bullock is first slain, and its blood brought into the sanctuary, and sprinkled once upon the mercy-seat and seven times before it. Once is enough for God; the sevenfold sprinkling is the witness of perfect acceptance before the throne. The goat being then killed, its blood is then carried in and sprinkled after exactly the same manner. And so, it is said, " he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins; and so shall he do for the tent of meeting that remaineth among, them in the midst of their uncleanness." "And he shall make-atonement for himself, and for his household, and for all the congregation of Israel."

Then follows the-reconciliation of the altar, and then the ordinance of the scape-goat. We must look at this, and get the general features of the whole thus before us, before we look at the doctrine of atonement as expressed in it.

For the priesthood, there is but one sin-offering, -the bullock; for the people, there are two goats which together form but one sin-offering. Lots are cast upon the two goats; one, the Lord's lot, becomes the sacrifice; the other, when the work of atonement within the sanctuary is finished, has the sins of the people confessed and put upon its head, and bears them away to the wilderness-to an un-inhabited land. It is plainly the actual removal of the people's sins, and manifestly refers to the yet future history of the people as we have already seen it, when "they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced," at His second coming, and be cleansed from their sins. We have to look at these things to see what light they give us as to propitiation and substitution, or the Godward and man-ward sides of atonement for sin. In general, the Lord's lot is said to illustrate propitiation; the scape-goat, substitution; but we must inquire how far this is true, and their connection with each other.

Propitiation I have called the Godward side of atonement, using the latter word in the larger sense in which we generally use it now; but in our common English Bibles no distinction of the kind appears. Atonement in the Old Testament, we may rather say, is the equivalent of propitiation in the New, which replaces it.* * Atonement" and " reconciliation" in Romans 5:11 and Hebrews 2:17 ought, as is well known, to exchange places; and this is the only place in the New Testament in which the former word occurs. In the passage in Hebrews the word used is elsewhere translated " propitiation."* It has been urged that we never find God as the object of propitiation, but only " sins," and that thus the thought is rather " expiation " than propitiation. It is thus only more completely the counterpart of the Hebrew caphar, of which the same thing is equally true."

Yet it is also true that the Greek word used in the New Testament (λάσχoμαι) is one which, in its common use in that language, undeniably has the force of appeasing, and is even used once in the gospel of Luke in the passive form in this way,- our Lord putting these words in the mouth of the publican, standing afar off and smiting on his breast, and saying, " God, be merciful"-(λάδθητι) "be appeased," "propitiated"-"to me a sinner" (Luke 13:13). As put into the mouth of such an one, its force doctrinally must not be urged too much; and elsewhere the fact is as stated above. We surely, however, cannot avoid (nor would we) the meaning of propitiation as thus introduced into the thought of expiation itself. Divine love indeed never needed to be forgotten in the heart of God toward us; it was there from eternity, and the cross, where God gave His only begotten Son, is the expression of it; but it is the expression also of demands of righteousness which required satisfaction in order to its showing forth:and this is what we mean by propitiation; it is the propitiation of otherwise withstanding righteousness, which now is turned to be on our side fully as God's love is.

Propitiation is thus really the divine side of atonement; and he who accepts truly the one can make no difficulty as to the other:the expiation is the propitiation. Now let us look at this as exemplified in "the Lord's lot," "Jehovah's lot," on the clay of atonement.

First, let us realize what "Jehovah's lot" implies. It is not "God's lot" simply, although Jehovah is of course God, but God in relation to His people, God in the title by which He redeems them, as the third of Exodus fully assures us. The goat which is Jehovah's lot is the sacrifice by which He maintains in righteousness this relationship, as we see by what is stated. It is thus His dwelling-place and all the means of approach to Him alone can remain among them. But this involves of necessity atonement for the sins of the people among whom He thus abides, and so it is distinctly stated:" And he shall make an atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make an atonement for the tent of meeting, and for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation."

The goat which is the Lord's lot, moreover, as explicitly speaks of substitution as it does of propitiation. The goat (the type of the sinner,) is the, very thing which does speak of that:no figure could more precisely convey the thought. Propitiation it proclaims to be by substitution, and for the people therefore for whom the substitution is, and for no other. Let us mark these things, for they are of great importance, if we would see clearly the relation between these thoughts. If substitution is for a certain people, then propitiation is for that same people only; if propitiation has a universal aspect, then substitution must have the same.

Before we consider this in the light of Scripture, we must consider the scape-goat, however, and what is said of it. " Two kids of the goats for a sin-offering " (5:5) shows that the living goat is identified with the one slain, as if slain, although spared for a certain purpose. A dead goat could not " bear away " the sins of the people as the living one does; .but this going away of the goat represents its death, which clearly, if it take place, must take place after the sins are put upon its head, and not before. Thus it is said (5:10), "To make an atonement with it, to let it go for a scapegoat into the wilderness." This wilderness,-"a land cut off" (5:22, Heb.)-is, in figure, the land of the dead. * *g'zerah:used in Psalm Ixxxviii. 5:"Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou rememberest no more; and they are cut off from Thy hand;" and in Isaiah 53:8:"He was cut off out of the land of the living."*

Now propitiation here is inferred rather than presented, and substitution brought out clearly in its effects, as removing sin; while in the Lord's lot substitution is presented however none the less, as where, if not in the sin-offering, may we expect to find it? In fact for Israel when the Lord comes, they will need ,the special application to them of an offering long before offered, when the day of grace might seem entirely passed.

For the priests, who represent the Church, there is no scape-goat. Substitution for them is found simply and entirely in the bullock of the sin-offering. It must of course be found there in what exactly answers to. Jehovah's lot among the goats; and the apostle in Hebrews 10:applies the principle of the scape-goat to Christians in the Lord's words by Jeremiah (the words of the new covenant):" Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." And this is as far as the effects of substitution (as seen in the scape-goat) seem to reach. This, then, cannot avail to separate substitution from being essentially implied in the " Lord's lot," -in the propitiatory offering.

Propitiation, I repeat, then, is by substitution, and in no other way, and for the people alone for whom the substitution is. This may seem, to many, to narrow its application in an unscriptural way, or to widen that of substitution in a way just as unscriptural. In reality, it does neither; while it clears up many obscurities, and meets tendencies to serious error. But let Scripture.

Propitiation is evidently for no select number merely. It is for " the whole world," as i John 2:2 explicitly teaches. " And He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Here "the sins of" are in italics in our common version, showing that in the Greek there are no words exactly representing them:it is contended therefore by some that they should be omitted, and, that this preserves an important difference; while the propitiation is for the sins of Christians,-so removing them,-it is only for the world,-their sins not being removed. And some have a similar objection, while owning that Christ died for all men, to saying that He died for the sins of all.

Now, assuredly, it is not true that the sins of all men are removed by the death of the Lord; and if that were meant by saying that He died for them,
the use of such language in Scripture (for it is used) would involve the deepest perplexity. Some moreover have rashly put forth this as the gospel, that Christ has borne the sins of all, and that now men are called to believe this for themselves, being condemned only for their unbelief of it.

But this is utterly false, for in the day of judgment we are assured that men shall be judged " according to their works," not merely for their unbelief; and Scripture no where says that Christ has borne the sins of all men. Faith can say in believers," The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" but it is true of believers only.

Yet propitiation is for the sins of the whole world, and the passage in i John 2:is conclusive as to this. The words which are sought to be omitted are necessarily implied; for what else does "not for ours only " do but imply them? Had it said, "not for us only," it would have been entirely different; but " not for ours only " necessarily infers, then for the sins of others also.

Moreover, when the apostle is reminding the Corinthians of the gospel which he had preached to them, he says it was " that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures" (i Cor. 15:3). But he could not preach as gospel that Christ died for other people's sins:" ours" is there plainly general, as in the epistle of John it is distinctive.

But if propitiation has this general aspect, and propitiation be by substitution, can substitution be general also? and if so, in what way? For this we must look deeper, for even the word in question is not in Scripture, although the thought is, and we" cannot therefore have a simple text to appeal to, as in the other case we have.

What then is meant by substitution ? It is One taking the place of others, so that they for whom He stands shall be delivered from all that in which He stands for them. The cross is thus the complete taking of death and judgment for those whom there He represents, so that for them salvation was absolutely insured. This is the substitution which the sacrifices speak of to us, and we have again and again considered it. A substitution in death and judgment can mean nothing less than the necessary salvation of those for whom it is made. It is clear, then, we cannot speak of the world in this connection. A substitute for the world the Lord could not be, or universalism would be the simple necessity, and there could be no judgment for a single soul. But this is terrible error, and not the truth in any wise; and error which is now deceiving thousands. What have we on the other hand ? " Substitution," is the thought of many," for the elect." This is, of course, limited atonement. It is not possible to make it unite really with propitiation in any real sense for the world. You may say it is sufficient for the whole world. In itself it may be of value enough, but available it is not. Could one coming upon this warrant plead the value of that which in its design was absolutely for a limited number, of which he was not one,-Christ being really the Representative of so many millions and no others? If you say they will not come, it may be very true they will not; but you cannot say the work is done for all, if it be not so; and the blood of propitiation is the blood of substitution-of an offering offered for so many.

Another consequence follows. This offering has been offered, accepted, and Christ's resurrection is the justification of all for whom He died. Our sins were on Him, and were put away-when? Eighteen hundred years ago! But how then could we ever have been accounted sinners? How is justification by faith possible,-that is, justification when we believe?

These are not imaginary difficulties or results; they are actual and operative. And they are the effect-as so much error is-of misplaced truth. Election is a truth of Scripture; but election is not, in Scripture, brought in to limit the provision made in atonement,-a provision really made and sufficient for all the world. On the other hand, Christ is not a substitute for the world, for substitution implies the actual bearing and bearing away of the sins of those who are represented in the Substitute, and the sins of the world are not so borne away. He is the Substitute of His people, but a people not numerically limited to just so many, but embracing all who respond to the invitations of His grace, though it were indeed the world for multitude.

Thus even in Israel, though the offering of the day of atonement was for the people of Israel alone, even here the door of circumcision was kept ever open, by which the stranger might take his place at the redemption-feast, and be as " one born in the land." And circumcision was, as we know, "the seal of righteousness by faith." How precious this open door of divine grace, through all the darkness of the legal economy! Thus we have an intimation of how the actual Substitute for the sins of His people may be (in language suggested by another) the available Substitute for the sins of all. Only as come in among the number of. His people can we say, " The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all;" for if justification be by the resurrection of the Substitute, as it truly is, it is none the less by faith we are justified; only as believing does it become our own.

With this the doctrine of the last Adam is in fullest accord, as the fifth of Romans represents it. For the principle is that of representation, the one for the many, and the connection between the one and the many a life-connection; yet is there in the last Adam's work an aspect toward all:"Therefore, as by the one offense toward all men to condemnation, even so by one righteousness toward all men unto justification of life."The family position and blessedness are open to all that will; but on the other hand, "as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous."

Propitiation is, then, by substitution, and only so; yet the substitution itself is not for a fixed number before determined, but for a people to whom men can be freely invited to join themselves, because of the infinite value of the work accomplished, and of the infinite grace which that work expresses. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life."

The sovereignty of God is what alone gives rest to the Christian heart in view of a world full of evil, which is gone astray from Him. To know that after all, spite of the rebellion of the creature, things are as absolutely in His hand as ever they were,-that still with the apostle we can adore "one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all,"-this brings, and alone brings, full relief. Still He rules over all, and where evil cannot be turned to good, limits and forbids it:He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath (what would go beyond this?) He restrains.

The shepherd-rod, the type of power exercised in love, out of the hand to which it belongs, and become a serpent, is the vivid picture of what we see on every side. The prince of this world is not Christ, but Satan; but it was the sign of a deliverer for Israel that he had but to stretch forth his hand and take back to him what was already his for it to become a rod in his hand once more. For us, how sweet is this assurance! The rod had not slipped out of Moses' hand, but was cast out; and even when cast out it was fully under his control:so is it with the government of this world; for Him who rules it, even disobedience works obediently; Satan, meaning nothing less, accomplishes His purposes as do the holy angels which wait around His throne. Through all, spite of all, He yet " worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." "He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him What doest Thou?"

We rest, for we know who reigns. It is not mere sovereignty, the almighty despotism of mere will, to which we bow because we must, but the sovereignty of wisdom, holiness, and goodness,-of One in whom love is revealed in light. How strange and saddening that in any phase of it the sovereignty of God should be an unwelcome theme to a Christian heart! Surely, one would say, there must be something very wrong with the state of such an one, or with the manner of its presentation to him, or with both, for it to be the case. Yet is it not so, that the sovereignty of God in salvation, -and where else is the thought so simple and so necessary?-is by the large mass of Christians perhaps a thing most vehemently denied; and even where entertained, is entertained with coldness and suspicion. The truths of election and predestination, while the favorite cavil in the mouths of unbelievers, are undoubtedly, by many who receive them, received with inward shrinking,-as at most necessary, rather than really approved. And both causes named no doubt contribute to this result.

Yet if God be (what He must be to be God,) perfect goodness, and wisdom without fault, what could one possibly desire, but that every thing should be absolutely in His hand, plastic to and molded by His blessed will, working, according to plan and forethought, His eternal purpose? It is not possible to conceive objection on the part of any, worthy of the least respect. But this is all that predestination can at all imply. It is the simple and necessary result of a really divine government,-of the supremacy of One who lacks neither wisdom nor power, nor benevolent interest in the work of His own hands.

I know, of course, the objection that will be raised. " Open your eyes," it will be said, " and look around! Is the world as you see it just what you would expect as the fruit of a wise and perfect and omnipotent will? What of the suffering that abounds on every side? and what of the sin? Can you say of that it is the will of God, and attribute to Him still nothing but perfection?"

It is of course true that we find around us a very different state of things from what we could have at all imagined from the necessary perfection of an almighty Creator and Governor. Nor dare we ascribe moral evil to the direct will of Him from whom it is a revolt. Nevertheless the doctrine of predestination remains our only comfort and support in this perplexity:to give it up would be to abandon ourselves to the despair of good as the final goal to which all tends. If the rebellion of His creatures has thus far thwarted the will of God, and filled the world with an unanticipated or unavoidable confusion, who can say how this may perplex the final result? On the other hand, complete foresight of all being His, with full power to avert whatever will not fall into harmony with His purposes, predestination of all things may be safely maintained. God is neither made the Author of sin, nor compelled helplessly to admit defeat at the hands of men. And this is what Scripture asserts as the truth of His government:"He worketh all things after the counsel of His own will."-" Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee; the remainder of wrath"-foreseen in its issue as not glorifying Him,-" Thou shalt re-strain." (Ps. Ixxvi. 10.)

It may be said by some, " This is not predestination :this is only government." But what is" worthy of God to do, it is worthy of God,-and only worthy of Him,-to determine before, or from eternity, to do. This fore-determination, or predestination, alters in no wise the character of what He does in its appointed time. It frees it only from the character of after-thought, which would imply weakness and change in Him. And thus we can say, "Known unto God are all His works from eternity [π απvός]." (Acts 15:18.)

Thus, take the worst act the world has ever seen -the crucifixion of Christ; it can be said, " Of a truth, against Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done." (Acts 4:27, 28.) If in this act then, in all acts whatever we are privileged to read the hand and foreordination of God; and thus alone every where the darkness is no more unrelieved. The will of man is recognized in all this, and not set aside. Certainly we are no where led, from Scripture, to think of him as a mere intellectual machine, moved necessarily by influences external to himself, but as a being free and responsible, though now, alas! fallen, and become the willing slave of sin. As to this, we shall see more directly. It is certain that in no wise are we to think of God as determining to evil the wills of His creatures, or as involving them, whether by (what is to them) the accident of their birth or in any other way, in irretrievable ruin. This Scripture unites with our own consciences to assure us of. There may be difficulties, and there are; but however even insoluble may be the mystery, God has given us that within us which witnesses unfailingly for Him, that man's evil and man's ruin are of himself alone.

How, spite of contrary and conflicting wills, God is yet as absolutely "over all, and through all, and in* all," " working all after the counsel of His own will,"-this is beyond our skill to fathom. *The editors omit "you" in Ephesians 4:6.* But so it is:and blessed it is to recognize that, as the apostle witnesses, it is as " God and Father of all" He is so. This is in fact the very web and woof of Scripture. This is what so irresistibly appeals to us in those tears wept over impenitent Jerusalem by Him who could pronounce its sure and approaching doom,-a doom to be executed by the hands of men ignorant and careless of Him whose sentence they fulfilled.

This predestination extends to every thing. Foresight and omnipotent will are every where. Thank God they are! In the moral as in the physical universe, no where can one escape from His presence, save, alas! by such an insensibility as the mass of men have sunk into. For the Christian, it is joy unspeakable to recognize this pervading presence, which recognized brings light into darkness, order into disorder, peace into whatever circumstances of distress. In the strain of triumph with which the apostle closes his development of the Christian state in Romans viii, the basis of all is this precious doctrine. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to those that are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, them also He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the First-born among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? "

But this leads us to another doctrine, closely connected with this of predestination, and suffering the same reproach, even from those who owe their all to it. I mean, of course, the doctrine of election. Election is so plainly taught in the word that it is surely only the opposition of the heart to it that can account for its not being universally received among Christians. Nor is this an election nationally or individually to privileges or " means of grace" such as plainly Israel and for long the nations of Europe have enjoyed, but to salvation; and to salvation, not on account of foreseen holiness or faith, but through, or by means of, these." But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you unto salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto He called you by our gospel." (2 Thess. 2:13.)Nothing can well be plainer than this; nothing more positive than the assertion by the same apostle which was just now quoted of that " chain of salvation," link riveted to link, whereby predestination issues in calling, and calling in justification, and justification in glory. A hundred texts would fail to convince where two such as these would. But in truth, the difficulty is not textual; it lies elsewhere.

Election involves many another truth most humbling to man's pride of heart, and this is in a large number of cases the real hindrance. On the other hand, it is quite true that in the conflict of minds upon a subject which has been in controversy for centuries, the balance of truth has been very much lost (although I could not say, equally,) by those who contended on either side; extremes on either part have tended to throw men off into the opposite extreme. Thus Calvinism and Arminianism, or what are commonly so called, have nearly divided Christians between them, each refusing to recognize, for the most part, any truth in the other. Yet each has in fact its stronghold of texts and arguments, and its unanswerable appeals to conscience, never fairly met by the other. The mis-take has been in the supposition that what was really strong on both sides was in necessary opposition. The fact is, that, as another has said, in general, the strength of each lies in what it affirms; its weakness, in what it denies. The truths of Calvinism cluster about the pole of divine grace; those of Arminianism, about that of man's responsibility. The world revolves upon its axis between the two. (To be continued?)

The issue:Christ seen as the true Israel before God, and, heard amid the sorrows of death, the ground of their deliverances, from Egypt to the last days. He is delivered from the strivings of the people (Israel), and made the head of the Gentiles, and all serve Him.

To the chief musician, [a psalm] of the servant of Jehovah, of David, who spake to Jehovah the words of this song, in the day when Jehovah had delivered him from the grasp of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. And he said,-

I do love Thee, Jehovah, my strength. 2. Jehovah my rock, and my stronghold, and my deliverer! my God*, my strong rock, in whom I will take refuge; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation; my high place!

3. I call upon Jehovah [as] object of [my] praise; and I am saved from mine enemies.

4. The toils of death faced me about, and the torrents of Belial put me in fear.

5. The toils of hades compassed me round; the snares of death overtook me.

6. In my strait 1 called upon Jehovah, and cried for help unto my God:He heard my voice gut of His temple, and my cry came before Him, into His ears.

7. Then the earth quaked and shook; and the foundations of the mountains moved and quaked because His anger burned.

8. Smoke went up out of His nostrils, and fire out of His mouth devoured:coals were kindled by it;

9. He bowed the heavens also, and came down, and thick darkness was under His feet.

10. And He rode upon the cherub, and did fly:yea, He swooped upon wings of wind.

11. He made darkness His covert; His pavilion about Him darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.

12. From the brightness of His presence His thick clouds passed:hailstones and coals of fire!

13. And Jehovah thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave His voice:hailstones and coals of fire!

14. He sent forth His arrows also and scattered them; yea, He shot out lightnings and discomfited them.

15. Then the channels of the waters were seen, and the foundations of the habitable earth were uncovered at Thy rebuke, Jehovah,-at the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.

16. He reached from on high, He laid hold of me, He drew me out of many waters.

17. He rescued me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated me; for they were too strong for me.

18. They overtook me in the day of my calamity; but Jehovah is my stay.

19. And He brought me forth into a large place:He delivered me, because He had delight in me.

20. According to my righteousness hath Jehovah recompensed me; according to the cleanness of my hands He hath returned me.

21. For I have kept Jehovah's ways, and have not wickedly departed from my God.

22. For all His judgments were before me; nor did I put away His statutes from me.

23. I was also perfect with Him, and kept myself from mine iniquity.

24. And Jehovah hath returned me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands before His eyes.

25. With the merciful Thou showest Thyself merciful, and with the perfect man Thou showest Thyself perfect.

26. With the pure Thou showest Thyself pure, and with the perverse Thou showest Thyself tortuous.

27. For Thou savest the humble people, and bringest low the lofty looks.

28. For it is Thou that lightest my lamp:Jehovah my God enlighteneth my darkness.

29. For by Thee I run through a troop, and by Thee I leap over a wall.

30. As for God, His way is perfect; Jehovah's word is tried; He is a buckler to all who take refuge in Him.

31. For who is God beside Jehovah? and who a rock except our God?

32. The God who girdeth me with strength, and maketh perfect my way!

33. That maketh my feet as hinds'; and setteth me on my high places;

34. That traineth my hands for the war, so that a bow of bronze is bent by my arms.

35. Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation, and Thy right hand upholdeth me; Thy condescension also maketh me great.

36. Thou makest room for my steps under me, so that my ankles have not wavered.

37. I pursue my enemies and overtake them; nor do I turn till they are made a full end.

38. I wound them so that they cannot rise:they fall under my feet.

39. For Thou girdest me with strength unto the war:Thou castest beneath me those that rise against me.

40. Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies; and them that hate me I cut off.

41. They cry for help, and none saveth; to Jehovah, and He answereth them not.

42. And I beat them as small as dust upon the wind, and as mire of the streets I pour them out.

43. Thou shalt deliver me from the contentions of the people, and Thou shalt set me for head of the Gentiles:a people I have not known shall serve me.

44. As soon as they hear they shall obey me:sons of the stranger, they lie unto me.

45. Sons of the stranger shall wither away, and be forced by fear out of their coverts.

46. Jehovah liveth, and blessed be my Rock! and exalted be the God of my salvation!

47. The God who giveth me vengeance, and subdueth the peoples under me;

48; That delivereth me from mine enemies:yea, Thou raisest me above those that rise against me; Thou rescuest me from the man of violence.

49. Therefore will I give thanks unto Thee, Jehovah, among the Gentiles, and sing psalms unto Thy name.

50. He multiplieth salvations for His king, and showeth mercy unto His anointed, to David and his seed, forever.

Notes.-Ver. 1-3 give first the praise for the deliverance. 4-6, the Lord in His sorrows as in Gethsemane. 7-9 seem to blend the deliverance out of death of the Lord personally, and that of the people from Egypt.

20-27, the ground of deliverance in His personal righteousness.

28-42, power and victory in Him for them.

43-45, millennial rule of Christ.

46-50, closing praises.
The latter part of ver. 23 must be carefully guarded in any possible application of it to the Lord. Here, "my iniquity" could only be whatever would have been that to one in His position.

If I have asked any thing of God and received His answer, I then act with assurance, with the conviction that I am in the path of His will:I am happy and satisfied. If I meet with a difficulty, it does not stop me; it is only an obstacle for faith to overcome.

But if I have not this assurance, I am uncertain, and know not what to do. May be it is a trial for my faith, or may be a direction which tells me not to do what I am doing. I am in suspense, I hesitate. Even if I do the will of God, I am not sure as to that will, and I am not happy. I have need, therefore, of being assured that it is the will of God before I begin to act.

Let us notice, in passing, that God disposes all, according to the desire of Eliezer; and this will necessarily be the case with them who find their joy in the Lord. All the wheels of the providence of God will move in the course of His will which I am doing. The Holy Spirit, by His Word, gives me the will of God. That is all I need. God will I see that every thing contributes to the accomplishment of His will. If, through spiritual intelligence, we walk with God, He helps us in the accomplishment of His will and purposes. We have need of this spiritual discernment, that we may abound in all wisdom and spiritual intelligence. " If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light." (Matt, 6:) I cannot tell where this will lead me, but this is the step I have now to take in the path I am called to tread.

The servant of Abraham came into the house. " And there was set meat before him to eat; but he said, 'I will not eat until I have told mine errand;' and Laban said, 'Speak on.'" What firmness of character there is with the servant! Look at the man who is not decided:he consults with this one and with that one when it is a question of knowing how he is to act; and even when he desires to do his own will, he will seek the counsel of those who have less faith than himself. Paul advised not with flesh and blood. (Gal. 1:) He saw it was Christ calling him, and he went ahead.

Eliezer, occupied with his mission, does not accept the food presented him. He does what he has to do. One of the secrets of the Christian's life, as soon as he knows the will of God, is to do it, to occupy himself with his work, to allow nothing to interpose, not even the question of the needs of his body. That is the effect and the sign of the work of the Spirit. Eliezer must attend to his mission.

And what was in question? The interests and the honor of Abraham his master. Abraham had intrusted him with the interests of his son Isaac, and God has intrusted us, here below, with the glory of His Son Jesus; and that glory occupies us by the Holy Spirit given us-that is, where the eye is single and there is a spiritual discernment according to the place God has set us in. If we are there, there will be no hesitation; being in our place, we will act freely and with joy.

If I think of my convenience, of my interests, of what concerns me, of my family, (and there are a thousand things contrary to prompt obedience,) it is advising with flesh and blood; but if I ask, What are the interests of Christ, the thing is clear at once. If I think of any other thing, whatever it be, I have not at heart that glory intrusted to me, and I have not confidence in Him who put me there. (Translated from the French of J.N.D.) J.N.D.

In reading the gospel, I am very much struck with the way in which every hour of the time of the Lord Jesus is filled up. There is no " loitering" in the path of the blessed One through the world; no seeking (like we seek) for ease :life with Him is taken up with the untiring activities of love. He lives not for Himself; God and man have all His thoughts and all His care. If He seeks for solitude, it is to be alone with His Father. Does He seek for society? it is to be about His Father's business. By. night or day, He is always the same. On the mount of Olives, praying; in the temple, teaching; in the midst of sorrow, comforting ; or where sickness is, healing ; every act declares Him to be One who lives for others. He has a joy in God man cannot understand, a care for man that only God could show. You never find Him acting for Himself. If hungry in the wilderness, He works no miracle to supply His own need; but if others are hungering around Him, the compassion of His heart flows forth, and He feeds them by thousands.

"If any man serve Me, let him follow Me." (Jno. 12:26.)

A Recollection of a Lecture at Plainfield, Aug. 2nd, 1884.

(Psalm 108:6-13.)

This psalm is the second of the Deuteronomic book of the Psalms. The Psalms are divided in the Hebrew into five books, which have been styled amongst the Jews" The Pentateuch of David."As some of us are aware, it is in fact a real Pentateuch, answering, book for book, to the five books of Moses. The fifth and last book begins with the one hundred and seventh psalm, and is therefore the Deuteronomy of the Psalms. If we look at this one hundred and seventh psalm, we shall find that in it Israel is seen prophetically as gathered together out of their dispersion, and just ready to enter into possession of their land. It is the celebration of His mercy by there deemed of the Lord, redeemed out of the hand of the enemy, and gathered out of the lands from the east and the west and the north and the south. He has brought them out of the wilderness, out of the solitary way, where they found no city to dwell in. Their distress has made them cry to the Lord, and He has led them forth by the right way, to go to a city of habitation. His ways with man are thus celebrated:ways of discipline necessitated by what He is and by what men are, the end of which is blessing, and that men may praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men.

In the book of Deuteronomy you will find, in exact accordance with this, the people gathered in the plains of Moab, looking across into the land which they were shortly to have in possession; and before they enter it, Moses recounts to them the story of their journeyings, and all the Lord's dealings with them,-how He had caused them to hunger, and fed them with manna, which they knew not, neither did their fathers know, that He might make them to know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Such lessons are they to carry with them into the land of their inheritance, to be their practical wisdom there.

Deuteronomy thus gives us the ways of divine government, to which men must needs be con-formed in order to find blessing from God's hand; and these ways are found, in the fifth book of the Psalms, illustrated in the whole history of Israel until the time when sovereign grace brings them to the final blessing which from the first had been designed for them. But these ways with Israel are just His ways with man as man. Ways of sore and various trial, from which alone He can deliver, and which make Him known to their souls in this absolute necessity. The end is, He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. But how terrible oftentimes the way by which one must be led to the experience of these circumstances out of which no hand but one can deliver, and there the consciousness of sin, which forbids all claim upon Him, men sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, bound in affliction and iron (in hopeless incapacity to escape), because they rebelled against the words of God and contemned the counsel of the Most High; their heart brought down with labor, they fall down and there is none to help? Have you, be-loved friends, realized such a condition? Except you have, you can scarcely have realized the grace and power of a living God. "They cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder."

But it is not only when we are first brought to God that we are called thus to experience His power and grace:it is "they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep." The place of need is still the place in which the God of salvation discovers Himself. The living God, making Himself known as such. It is thus the apostle commends us to God as well as to the word of His grace,-to the God who is made known in Christ, made known by the word of His grace, but a distinct and living reality. It is thus the way of trial is the way of blessing, and the deeper the trial the greater the blessing. David and all his afflictions are the theme, we may say, of the Psalms, in which are foreshadowed the un-equaled sorrows of One infinitely greater; but David is none the less the beloved, as his name means, because of these afflictions. They are the school in which the sweet psalmist of Israel finds his necessary training,-the means by which his heart is tuned to be an instrument of many strings to make melody to the Lord. ' For this there must be the deep tones as well as the high ones. The song is the song of salvation:no angel is ever said to sing to God. God gets His song of praise from the redeemed of the earth:the Holy One inhabits the praises of Israel.

The one hundred and eighth psalm is a very remarkable one. Could you imagine an inspired psalm made, as one may say, with a pair of scissors ?Such, in fact, is this. We have the latter half of two psalms-the fifty-seventh and sixtieth -joined together to produce a third, an instance which the rationalist would hold up to scorn as impossible to be a divine procedure; but "the foolishness of God is wiser than man."It is just this which gives its character and beauty to the psalm in question. The ends of these psalms are taken, cut off from the experience of their former parts, to illustrate the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. It is in Israel, of course, that this mercy is seen,- Israel who, brought out of her sorrows, is to sing the praises to God among the nations. And the latter part, which I have specially before me, is God now claiming the land for His redeemed, securing their inheritance, putting down finally all their enemies. Israel, as His beloved, are delivered, saved with His right hand. And God having spoken, and able to speak in His holiness in their behalf, Shechem is divided, and the valley of Succoth measured out; He claims, or Christ in His name, Gilead and Manasseh, Ephraim and Judah. Moab, Edom, and Philistia are put down forever. These two psalms, therefore,-the hundred and seventh and the hundred and eighth-give us the way and the end of the Lord with regard to His people.

And I may say that the psalms which follow these, in perfect accordance with them, illustrate also God's way and His end; but as before with sinful and fallen man, so now with Christ the one perfect One. Here the hundred and ninth psalm shows us the Lord also in the depths of distress, rejected of man, and in poverty and need cast upon God alone for His answer and help. But here it is not discipline. Evil is on the part of His adversaries only. Their enmity is without a cause, and in the hundred and tenth psalm God lifts up the head of Him who has been thus content to drink, in lowliness, of the brook in the way. He sets Him at His right hand in royal priesthood, His people made willing subjects to Him, and His enemies His footstool. The last three psalms of the first section of this book give us, then, a threefold hallelujah. Jehovah is praised for His wonderful works in the hundred and eleventh psalm, for His ways in the hundred and twelfth, and for His mercy in the hundred and thirteenth. This is the final issue to which in God's infinite grace we shall all come at length. But now let us return to this hundred and eighth psalm, to look more closely at it.

It is seldom that I speak of merely personal experiences., but there are times when it is fitting to declare what God has done for one's soul. That which illustrates the actuality and power of the living God is quite within the scope of our present subject, and the manner in which the inner meaning of this psalm was declared to me was in very striking answer to a deep personal experience.

It was a time when my soul had been passing through as deep a conflict as perhaps I have ever known. Satan, the accuser of the brethren, had been bringing up against me things which lay in the depths of my soul, skillfully interwoven with his own malice and wickedness, until it seemed with me, as John Bunyan says of his pilgrim, I no longer knew the sound of my own voice. Cling indeed I did to God, and to the work of His Son, with a grip from which by grace nothing could detach me; and yet when I looked into the face of God, it seemed as if over it were written these terrible things,-as if, at least in this life, they could never more be blotted out or forgotten, and my soul sank in misery which words are feeble to express. Out of this, in a wonderful way, God delivered me, and as it were in a moment, by the words of this psalm:and how do you think? He to)d me Gilead was His and Manasseh was His!

I was in no condition, as you may imagine, for entering into nice points of Scripture-interpretations, nor for flights of fancy in any direction; nor had I ever attributed to these words other than their obvious meaning. I knew that they had reference to Israel's possession of their land in the last days; but what this could have to say to me, I knew no more than, I will venture to say, any of you here may now know. The thought of any meaning in the names had never occurred to me; and yet in the depths of my distress I found myself repeating, how or why I knew not, " Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine."

A moment after, and God interpreted it to me. The meaning of "Manasseh" is of course, as you know, " Forgetfulness:" it was the name Joseph gave to his son born in Egypt, where, he said, " God hath made me to forget all my kindred, and my father's house." That, then, had some meaning for me, although a familiar thought enough. I knew God could forget:I knew that our sins and iniquities He remembered no more; and if this were all, it might be only imagination, and not the Spirit of the Lord, that applied it to me.

What, then, about "Gilead"? "Gilead" is "a heap of witness." It is the same, essentially, as Jacob's Galeed, set up upon this very Gilead as a witness before God of his covenant with Laban. Who could doubt the designed contrast between " Gilead," the perpetual memorial, and " Manasseh," forgetfulness ? I had been fearing just this perpetual remembrance-this ineffaceability of what, uneffaced, could be only darkness and distress. God told me that Gilead was His as Manasseh was, that there was no real contradiction between the two. He could forget at the same time that He remembered. He could remember without in the least impairing the blessedness of His forgetfulness; and if He could thus remember, so could I too, and forget also, even while remembering.

How blessed to realize that these things are true of God! If there were one thing that had ever been done on earth which needed to be absolutely blotted out of the book of remembrance forever, in order either to the glory of God or the blessing of His people, that thing would be indeed a real derogation to the glory of God. He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath He restrains. When God judges the secret things of man, every work will come into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil, and God will be glorified about the whole. It is only thus that there is no more for us any hopeless darkness. Sin will be seen, of course, and seen in all its terrible reality as that, but it will be seen as that which God has triumphed over, and made His people sharers of His triumph. Hell will be the perpetual restraint upon an evil which, if permitted, would now no longer glorify God. It is not, as men suppose, a place in which sin will be permitted a certain activity forever; nor therefore will there be, as some imagine, a continual increase of punishment brought down upon themselves by its hopeless inhabitants. Judgment, although it be eternal, will be measured by the sins done in the body, and thus even in judgment the mercy of God becomes apparent. In hell itself every knee shall bow to Christ, and every tongue confess that He is Lord. Men will remain indeed essentially unchanged, but let any one look at the sixteenth of Luke, and see the Lord's own picture there of a sinner, though in hades yet, and not after the final judgment, and he must needs see the power of repression that is in God's hand upon him there. These texts are not universalist in character, as so many are maintaining now, and to accept them frankly will only deliver us from all the appearance of truth in universalism.

But thus as to our former lives we must not think or hope for forgetfulness, as any part of the element of our eternal happiness. Would we forget the cross? but the cross is Gilead and Manasseh both in one. It is there that we find our sins put away forever, so that God can say, " Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." But it is there that we have the abiding memorial of those very things. Would any of us be thankful to enjoy eternity as angels instead of sinners re-deemed by Christ? Surely we would not. It is just the apprehension of grace which will give us a song indeed-a song which none can sing but the redeemed of the Lord. The enjoyment of everlasting love will be only infinitely sweeter and more wonderful as we realize the depths out of which it has drawn us-the lower parts of the earth into which He had to descend who has ascended up again for us far above all heavens. Gilead is His, and Manasseh is His. We shall find these parts of our inheritance, as we find them in the inheritance claimed for Israel. Had we skill to realize it, what features of our inheritance might we not trace in this land possessed by the earthly people. We may trace not a few things, in fact, in this very psalm. Going back to the verse preceding, how beautiful to see again the contrast between Shechem and Succoth! She-chem is a shoulder, a ridge; Succoth is a valley. Shechem is the place of power; Succoth, the low place, the valley. The meaning of "Succoth" is "booths," and it carries us on to the day in which Israel will enjoy their final feast of tabernacles, when they will make booths to dwell in, in remembrance of their wilderness-journey, now indeed passed forever. But of all these wilderness experiences they will enjoy then the fruit, in that very lowliness so painful in the learning, so happy as finally attained. It is to the valleys that the heights minister;-it is to the valley that they send down all their streams:it is there that fruit-fulness is secured ;–it is there that all the wealth of blessing is found. Whatever we may know of Shechem,-whatever heights of power and glory may be ours,-our rest will be still in Succoth, in a scene whose moral characteristics are described in the pregnant words, " God all in all." There, dependence will no longer have the least trial in it:there, our creature-needs will be the avenues of eternal blessing:there, the restlessness of our spirits will have passed away for evermore.

Pass on to the eighth verse, and we find a beautiful thing. " Judah," says God, "is My lawgiver." The word is better " scepter." The meaning of "Judah" is, as we all surely know, "praise." Praise is God's scepter, the sign of His dominion alone thus fully maintained among His own. What can insure, if one may speak thus, the obedience due, so well as this praise that rises up to God from every heart unceasingly? The consciousness of perfect blessing; the contrast with the known effects of evil now left behind; the sense of how God has displayed Himself in His dealing with the evil and the deliverance of His own; the Lamb Himself upon the throne; His voice, too, that which leads the praises of His people; the divine authority will be established in a manner thoroughly according to God's own heart. The Father's throne, the Father's kingdom, where all the subjects are children also, will give that character to which eternity will put the seal of divine satisfaction. Judah will be His scepter.

In verse nine we find the enemies, and here too God's power is manifest, and in behalf of His own. We find Moab, Edom, and Philistia. Moab, the expression of the impurity of evil; Edom, of enmity and antagonism; Philistia, of heavenly things held in unreal possession by those who are in heart strangers to heaven. All these God triumphs over. Moab, the unclean, God uses as His wash-pot. Did you ever realize why God allowed the flesh, defined as that, to remain in His own? Did you ever realize how God uses the knowledge of evil so acquired by the Christian man in effect to purify him? Understand me that I am not talking of the breaking out of sin, still less of any laxity in the judgment of it. Of those who could use the argument that because God is glorified about sin, therefore it will lose its character as that and be incapable of judgment, the apostle says, " Whose damnation is just." But the sin in us, however little it may come out, the constant cause of sorrow and humiliation to us, God has some purpose in leaving us still to be tried with, as He surely makes also all the out breaking of corruption in the world around us to be a daily discipline to our souls. Moab, enemy as He may be to God and to His people, God uses as His wash-pot.

Edom, on the other hand, the steady and malignant foe, is brought to thorough humiliation and ignominious defeat. The casting of the shoe over it is the expression of this. It is brought into final and disgraceful submission. Thus surely will all opposition to the divine counsels end. Philistia too, the last enemy before the kingdom in Israel, for us the type of the last form of evil as we see it in Laodicea,-the form of godliness without the power of it,-truth only used by those who can glorify themselves with it, instead of its abasing them in the dust. The empty hollowness which we feel too, every one of us, so much, as an internal enemy as well as an external:-over Philistia will be final triumph. No more traffic with unfelt truth; no more self-complacent pretension in that which is our shame; no more pride of knowledge, holding the living Truth outside. Philistia in that day will be dispossessed forever, smitten by the true David into the dust of His feet. Then shall there be no more adversary or evil occurrent. That which will be true for Israel when she sings praises to God among the nations will be true in how deep a sense to the heavenly saints, brought home and possessing the many mansions of the Father's house. Beautifully thus the internal sense of this wonderful psalm agrees with its first literal application, the earthly being here as ever the type of the heavenly. We are admitted now by, faith, if faith be in activity, to the joy of it all. We are permitted to go already through the dried-up Jordan into the land of our inheritance, assured that every place that the sole of our foot treads on is our own. Shall we not covet this joy ? shall we not seek to possess ourselves more than ever of that which thus lies invitingly before our eyes? God is opening these things before us to attract our hearts. Shall we not seek His grace that there indeed we may abide, in that which is eternal ? there where no rust or moth corrupts, there where no thief enters, there where to covet and acquire delivers us from the corruption that is in the world through lust, there where already we may breathe the purity of an atmosphere where the tabernacle of God is with men, and He dwells with them, and is their God, and God is all in all?

The record of our Lord's sail over the Sea of Galilee, accompanied with His disciples, as given in Luke 8:22-26, is exceedingly interesting. It contains a lesson rich in instruction, and of deep practical value for the children of God.

It pictures very vividly our passage across the sea of this turbulent world. It is a reflection of our journey through a scene of incessant though ever-varying activity, on to the haven of rest eternal.

The proposal to go to the other side was the ' Lord's:it was no rash undertaking of the disciples. It was the Lord who said, " Let us go." One has come to us from the bright "over there." The Father has sent to us His Son from His own house, and He has told us of the Father-of the Father's house-of heavenly things. We have heard His voice, we have received His words, we have bowed in our souls to His heavenly communications. Owned now as His brethren and companions, He shows us that His blessed home over the other side is ours, and He says, " Let us go."

His saying to His disciples " Let us go over to the other side of the lake " was the expression of His will, the authority for the journey, and the sure pledge or promise of its successful end. Beside this, He was Himself present with them- present to share their lot, whatever that might be.

Beloved, what these disciples had we have. We have His word and His presence. We know His will is, that where He is, there we may be also. He has said so. " It is written " is faith's answer to the question, " What reasonable ground or authority is there for denying ourselves and following a despised and rejected Christ?" Through His word the eye of faith looks upon things " un-seen and eternal," and all is assured. Possessing in His word these three things of such incalculable value for faith-His word being all this to the heart, how free are we to enjoy the blessing of His presence along the journey. But if His word is not thus dwelling in our hearts, we shall not be keeping Him company, though He be with us. He was asleep on this ship as they were gliding along toward the land over the other side. He was oblivious to all around before the storm came and during the storm. A smooth sea, a balmy breeze, the beauties around, occupied neither His eye nor His heart. His disciples did not keep Him company in this obliviousness to the things of sight and sense. So when their circumstances changed, -when the smooth sea became rough, and the gentle breeze turned into a terrific gale,-the joy and pleasure of a beautiful sail was superseded by distress and fear. Now they think of Him, but they cannot bear to gaze upon His peaceful face. How descriptive this of ourselves! Bo long as the scene through which we pass contributes to our comfort, how we enjoy the journey! but when trouble comes-opposition, persecution for the word's sake, such things as the path necessitates,- not troubles our own failures and sins bring upon us, but troubles which are the necessary result of following after a rejected Christ,-when such trials come, what unhappiness! what discontent and murmuring! how much fear and trembling! How impossible to be quiet! How unbearable the quietness of the Lord! Like the disciples here we must invoke His activity. They went to Him and said, "Master! Master! we perish." He heard their cry. He answered their prayer. He arose, spoke to the winds and commanded the waves, and there was a great calm; but He said to them, " Where is your faith ? " Oh, what a rebuke!

Beloved, are the days evil and difficult ? do the winds blow fiercely? are the waves rising higher and higher? He is with us. We have His word and His presence. Is that sufficient? Are we desirous of an easier path? Is this heaving and tossing unbearable? Is His peacefulness, His mastery, His undisturbed supremacy unbearable ? Well, if we cannot endure, He may respond to our desire-gracious One that He is; (have we not known Him to do so?) but if so, be assured it is a rebuke. It is to ask us, "Where is your faith?"

The disciples here were ill at ease in the calm. The solemn quiet and stillness of the calm was dreadful, too. They were not free and happy in the presence of Him who had produced for them such a thorough change. They little knew the personal glory of their Master. " What manner of Man is this?"-who is He, to do such a wondrous thing? We, too, often say, What a wonderful providence! what a remarkable interposition! while yet our hearts are ill at ease in His presence ; so slow are we to learn Himself and the glories of His wondrous person.

What losers we are through our lack of faith, forgetfulness of the word, and indifference to the presence of our ever-calm and restful Lord! What we would gain by allowing His word its full power in our hearts, who can tell? Let us cultivate His company, and never weary of gazing upon His peaceful face.

C.C.

The book of Exodus is divided manifestly into two parts, and that whether it be interpreted as type or letter. The first eighteen chapters treat thus of the deliverance of Israel from their old tyrant; the rest of the book, of their taking fully up the service of their Deliverer. In the typical view, to which the whole sacrificial system (with which we have now to do) essentially belongs, the first part gives us redemption from the slavery of sin; the second, redemption to God. The one is the complement of the other:the "service" of God is the only "perfect freedom."

We shall have yet to inquire as to the relation of the law to atonement; in what I propose just now, we have nothing to do with law as such. Typically, it becomes the symbol of that divine government to which as redeemed we are at once freely and necessarily subject. This is too much forgotten in interpretations of the book, and nothing seen except strict law – the ministration of death and of condemnation, as then it must be:

Typically, if the first part answer to the epistle to the Romans, the second answers (although much less completely) to the first epistle to the Corinthians. In it, the main feature is that habitation of God which Israel themselves are not but Christians are. This tabernacle and its services we have now to consider, so far as it develops new features of atonement, the central figure in all these types.

The new features that the tabernacle-service presents to us are the mercy-seat, upon which the blood is presented to God; the priest who offers the sacrifice; with the full completion of the altar of burnt-offering.

The mercy-seat, with the ark upon which it rests, is the throne of Him who has taken His place in the midst of His people. He is the God who dwelleth between the cherubim, and appears in the cloud upon the mercy-seat.

Christ is this mercy-seat, as the apostle in Romans Hi. 25 declares; for the word "propitiation" there is the word so translated in Hebrews 9:5, and that by which the Septuagint constantly renders the capporeth of the Old Testament. This Hebrew word is a noun derived from that intensive form of caphar, which is used commonly in the sense of atonement. Atonement is plainly stated to be made in the holiest on the day of atonement when alone the blood was actually brought in there and presented to God. And while shed actually for the sins of priest and people-the whole congregation of Israel,-it was declared to be made for the holy place itself, and for the whole " tabernacle of the congregation " (or " tent of meeting" rather, because there the people met with God). Afterward, atonement was made for the altar of burnt-offering by putting the same blood upon it. Thus the divine intercourse with men was sustained and justified. The sins of the people could not defile that upon which rested the precious blood of sacrifice. The capporeth, the seat of atonement, became indeed the mercy-seat,-the throne of righteousness a throne of grace. Toward the mercy-seat the faces of the cherubim, ever the symbols of judicial power, and thus connected with the throne, bent to behold the blood which proclaimed and satisfied the righteousness of God. All this in Israel was indeed but type and shadow:there was thus as yet no actual way of access into His presence. For us, the substance is come, and we have " boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the vail-that is to say, His flesh."

The apostle adds here the second thing which the tabernacle-service sets before us,-" A High-Priest over the house of God." (Heb. 10:21.)

The priest was the special minister of the tabernacle; the word in Hebrew signifying " minister." The apostle applies this in Hebrews 8:I:"We have such a High-Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." The word used for " minister" here is leitourgos, one performing duties for the public good; and this completes the idea of the priest, as one serving in behalf of men in the sanctuary of God. Christ is thus " entered . . . into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." (Ch. 9:24.)

From Levi, third son of Israel, sprang both the Levite and the priest. This " third " speaks of resurrection, always connected with the third day* (Comp. Hos. 6:2.). *In beautiful connection with the spiritual significance of numerals, far too little thought of; for 3 is the number which speaks of divine fall-ness-of the Trinity, and thus of divine manifestation; as it is only when this is reached that, in Father, Son, and Spirit, God is fully revealed. But resurrection is that also which reveals God,-a work proper to Himself alone. (See Romans 1:4.)* And so the sign of the true priest (Num. 17:8.) was the dead rod blossoming and fruitful in the sanctuary. Levi's own name also, "joined," is full of meaning:it is the Mediator, in whose person and work God and man are really joined, who becomes the Priest.

If then in the tabernacle God's dwelling with man is foreshadowed, priest and mercy-seat are the necessary witnesses of how alone this can be.

His work of sacrifice accomplished, He Himself carries in the token of it into heaven, the place henceforth of His priestly ministration. By Him we draw nigh to God:His acceptance, who is our representative there, the measure of our acceptance. The high-priest thus represented the people. "In the presence of God for us" He who once died for us ever lives.

Access to God, no more afar off, but abiding with us,-access in the sanctuary of the heavens itself, and by One who represents us there:this is the new feature of the tabernacle-types as they speak to us today of the power and value of the blood of atonement.

But the altar also gets its full place and character. Indeed, while we find frequent mention of it in the book of Genesis, we have no description at all until we come to the second part of Exodus. The word in the Hebrew simply means "a place of sacrifice." The first command as to its construction we find in chapter 20:24-26. This was to be the general construction which might have been adhered to, as some say, in the brazen altar, the frame-work of brass and wood being superimposed upon a substructure of earth.

"The altar sanctifieth the gift," If, then, the sacrifice represent the work of the Lord Jesus, it could not be sanctified by any thing outside. The person of the Offerer alone could give value to His offering. The character of the altar brings out and develops this.

The material, in chapter xx, is first of all, (and, as one might say, preferentially,) earth:" An altar of earth shalt thou make unto Me." We have evidently the thought of that which is fruitful. All fruit both Scripture and man's speech naturally call "fruits of the earth." But what is it that, in contrast with stone or sand, constitutes the fertility of earth? It is the readiness with which it suffers itself to be broken up into ever finer particles; and to this its name in different languages seems to refer.* *Parkhurst gives Crete, "earth," from ratz, "breaking in pieces, crumbling;" χθv, from Heb. kath, "to pound, beat in pieces;" the Latin, terra, from tero, " to wear away;" and the Eng. ground, from grind.* The spiritual application is readily made; and the yielding of the creature without resistance" to the hand of God is that in which all real fruitfulness is found. In Him who gave Himself in manhood to know (in what other circumstances!) that path from which His creature had departed, Gethsemane and Calvary proved the perfection of His self-surrender. It was here the altar of earth symbolized Him:only one of many ways in which what was so precious to the Father is told out. " Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life. . . . This commandment have I received of My Father."

The altar of stone is of course a different, and in some respects a contrasted thought. Stone is of the material of rock, the type of unyielding strength, a thought that we shall find repeated in the brazen altar, and linked there as here with that in which the secret of it is discovered. The Son of Man is the Ancient of Days. The rejected "Stone" is the "Rock of Ages." It is this that again gives value to the cross, and makes Christ the power of God unto salvation. Everlasting arms are they that are thrown around men. The human Sufferer is a divine Saviour.

It may seem to militate against this that Elijah builds his altar of twelve stones, expressly according to the number of the tribes of Israel; but this is no more against the interpretation I have given than it is against Matthew's application of Hosea's prophecy to Christ, that, according to the prophet himself, it is Israel, whom as a child God loved, and called His son out of Egypt. Whoever looks at Isaiah 49:3-6 will find how of necessity the place of the failed servant must be taken by One who cannot fail. Substitution may be as rightly stamped upon the altar as on the sacrifice; and this is surely the explanation here.

So the stone of the altar must not be hewn stone, nor must there be steps up to it. It is the intervention of God, not work or device of man. His attempt at this would only expose his shame:by any effort or contrivance he cannot rise above his own level. God could come down, and He alone exalt.

We come now to the brazen altar, where the brass covered a frame of shittim-wood, as in the ark, the table, and the altar of incense the gold covered it. In these, the two materials have been rightly held to speak of the two natures of our Lord:the shittim-wood, from a wilderness-tree, life conquering death, a growth not governed by its circumstances. Such was He who, growing up within the narrow circle of Judaism, ever spoke of Himself as " Son of man;" who, obedient to the law, breathed of divine grace; who was light shining out of darkness, life indeed, in the midst of death.

The gold I cannot conceive simply as "divine righteousness; " for who can conceive all the display of it in the tabernacle furniture speaking of nothing else but that? It is obvious, and often remarked, that it was characteristic of the sanctuary itself; and the sanctuary was the place where God manifested Himself; we having to consider it as with the vail rent, and the "first" tabernacle merged thus in the holiest of all. Moreover, in the things themselves there was this common character.* *" First, then, there arc the things which arc found in the Holy of holies and the holy place. The ark of the covenant, the table of the show-bread, find the candlestick with seven branches. This is what God had established for the manifestation of Himself within the house where His glory dwelt, where those who enter into His presence could have communion with Him."-(Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. Vol. I, p. 72.).* If the shittim-wood also represent the humanity of the Lord, the gold must needs represent, one would say, His divine:that by virtue of which alone He could manifest God in full reality. This it would be too narrow to limit to "righteousness," while of course this is contained in it. It is rather " glory," as the apostle calls the golden cherubim of the mercy-seat " the cherubim of glory." (Heb. 9:5.)

In the altar of burnt-offering brass (or copper) replaces the gold, and for the same reason must surely represent the divine nature in our Lord, yet with an evident difference. It is not the type of divine manifestation, but of unchangeableness- endurance. It is constantly thus associated with iron, but which is a lower type, without the brightness and sheen of the copper. In the successive degradation of the Gentile empires, the gold fades into silver, and the copper into iron. "Thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass," Moses warns the people, "and the earth that is under thee shall be iron:" words that sufficiently illustrate both the similarity and the difference between these two things. Again, in the blessing of Asher, he says, "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be." And the Lord even asks, in Jeremiah, "Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel [copper] ? "

In connection with the altar of burnt-offering, this significance of the brass is of easy application. It was no mere creature-strength that was in Him upon whom rested the accomplishment of all the divine counsels of grace through the cross. " I have laid help upon One that is mighty" may indeed be said of Him. But how wondrous this character of endurance in Him who learns obedience through the things that He suffers:to whom it can be said, (His strength weakened in the way, and His days shortened,) "Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands" (Ps. 102:25.)! Nay, the very power to stoop to such a place was the attribute of a nature necessarily divine.

And what does the brazen grate "beneath," "in the midst of the altar," speak but the deep capacity for suffering here implied? True, as, to be His type, the bird of heaven must die in the vessel of earth (Lev. 14:5.), so He must in the verity of manhood acquire capacity. . The capacity is not thus to be measured by a mere human standard:He was one blessed Person in whom Godhead and manhood met; and in the depths of His being, as the grate within the altar, the fire of the cross could and did burn in abysses of nameless suffering to which no other sorrow could be like. To attempt to fathom or define would be presumption.

These, then, are features which the tabernacle-service adds to the idea of sacrifice. With this,. we shall be prepared now better to come to that sanctuary-book, Leviticus, in which, in some sense finally, the whole heart of atonement is opened up to us.

Christ, "Leader and Finisher of faith," the Shepherd going before the sheep, Jehovah His Lord and satisfying portion, the saints His delight,

Michtam of David.

Preserve Me, O God, for in Thee have I taken refuge.

2. I have said unto Jehovah,"Thou art the Lord:My goodness adds not to Thee;

3. " [It is] for the saints which are upon the earth, and the excellent, in whom is all My delight."
4. Their sorrows shall be multiplied who have run after another; their drink-offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take their names upon My lips.

5. Jehovah is the measure of My portion and My cup; Thou maintainest My lot.

6. The lines are fallen unto Me in pleasant places; yea, fair is My inheritance to Me.

7. I have set Jehovah before Me continually:because He is at My right hand, I am not moved.

8. I bless Jehovah, who giveth Me counsel; yea, by night My reins detain Me.

9 Wherefore My heart hath rejoiced, and My glory exalteth; yea, My flesh shall rest in confidence;

10. For Thou wilt not leave My soul in hades; Thou wilt not give Thy godly one to see corruption.

11. Thou wilt show Me the path of life; fullness of joys in Thy presence; pleasures at Thy right hand for evermore.

Text.-Title, "Michtam:" probably a "golden" psalm, from kethem, " gold."

(1) "God:" El, the "Mighty."

(2) This and the following verse are very variously translated. They are a pregnant illustration of the fact that a knowledge of what is in the mind of the Spirit is of value far beyond mere critical acumen. If we see David here only or principally, the difficulty of consistent rendering is very great (as see Moll in Lange's Commentary).It is Christ seen prophetically taking His place as man upon earth, subject to Jehovah as His Lord, and recognizing creature-nothingness before Him, yet a goodness which avails in behalf of the saints, in whom His delight is.

"I have said:" so the Sept., Pesh., and Vulg., with most modern commentators, taking it as a defective form, which is found in the later Aramaic. It seems preferable to assuming an address to the soul, with the Rabbins and the A. V.

"The Lord," confessedly the ordinary word for this,-Adonai. There is no need for "My," which takes from the force.

"My goodness (lit.) is not [al] additional to Thee." Most translators say, "My good," in the sense "I have no good in addition to Thee." But this is only what we find in verse 5, and effaces an important thought.

(8) " [It is] for the saints." This is only a slight change from the A. V. A common sense of I' with the verb "to be" (often understood) is "belonging to;" and so many understand it here. We cannot join it with the previous "I have said," as many suggest, because the construct form addirei, the "excellent," requires us to say "in whom" rather than "in them." Nor will the critics allow "as for them." It seems to me that the third verse is said to Jehovah as well as the second.

(8) "Detain:" literally, "bind me." It is often used in the sense of admonishing, correcting, but not necessarily.

Connections.-(4) To understand this we must see the Lord's position as the ideal Israel before God according to Isaiah 49:1-6 and Matthew 2:15 comp. with Hosea 11:1. God's great contention with them all through was on account of their idolatry. And though that unclean spirit had gone out when the Lord was on earth, it will return as He warned them. (Matt. 12: