The Cross, the Blood and the Death of Jesus Christ

14. Both the place to which it thus leads, and the blessings of the place (as well as the people for whom they are) are connected with it (Heb. 9:18-28). It is

15, the taking away of sin, the setting apart of the saints to God, and that by which they are already perfected (Heb. 10:11-14);

16. The power of heavenly filial service (Heb. 10:19);

17. The sanctification of those that know it (27-31 and 13:12);

18. The measure of our obedience to God (Heb. 12:1-4);

19. The testimony of good things to us, but judgment on the world (Heb. 12:24);

20. The sanctification as of an eternal covenant (Heb. 13:12, 20);

21. The knowledge of it is the proof of election (1 Peter 1:2); It is

22. the saint's ransom (1 Peter 1:18);

23. The saint's daily resource for cleansing (1 John 1:7);

24. God's witness upon earth (1 John 5:8);

25: The cleansing of our persons-so sung of on earth (Rev. 1:5);

26. Our redemption so sung of in heaven (Rev. 5:9);

27. The cleansing of our robes (Rev. 7:14);

28. The victory over Satan. (Rev. 12:11).

The blood, the death, and the cross of Jesus (though all found together in THE one great act of man's rebellion against God), are often presented by the Spirit as having different things more immediately connected with each of them. At present I shall only speak of the blood. The blood, when spoken of as known so as to be valued, always seems to involve, more or less remotely, the idea of atonement. In itself it is atonement; even that by which alone God can be just, and yet the justifier of the sinner; and, so it is that which not only enables God to bless, but the sinner to draw near for blessing. And yet it has more uses and applications in connection with atonement, than most are aware. For it may be looked at as presented with the view of giving eternal life to them that believe; as in itself propitiation; as the removal of sin; as justification, forgiveness, nearness, peace; as that which alone cleanses the conscience of a sinner, or can keep a saint's conscience clean; which has cleansed the person in one place, and the robes in another; which is redemption-an approach to the holiest-the securer and retainer of that place-our purchase money-our sanctification-the proof of our election-our power over Satan, the power and measure of our obedience to God, that in which we have communion one with another, the seal of the everlasting covenant, &c., &c., &c. In such various lights does the Spirit make mention of the blood! May the saints, however weak, know God's estimate of the blood in all the varied applications of it, and, through the Spirit, learn to adopt God's estimate, and to set aside their own.

Ignorance of the blood, or carelessness to it, is the world's condemnation. Passages bearing upon this I shall not now notice, except as connected with the saint's victory over the world-writing merely with the view of endeavoring to help Christians to see the blood as connected with themselves. May the Holy Spirit, who bears witness with the blood, reveal to us that which flesh and blood cannot, while we muse on these things!

The Blood Part 1

1. The blood of Jesus Christ connects the disciple of Christ with a covenant. For it is written:-" This is my blood of the new testament [or, covenant; there is but one word in Greek for testament and covenant], which is shed for many." (Matt. 26:28.) " This is my blood, of the new covenant, which is shed for many." (Mark 14:24.) " This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you." (Luke 22:20.)

The character of this covenant, the Holy Ghost tells us:-" This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." (Heb. 10:16.)

Observe, the blood is presented here (neither as calling for vengeance, nor, as, in the obedience which led to it, our ensample, but) as shed FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS. And the covenant to which it belongs is called (Heb. 13) an everlasting covenant; and it is one which cannot fail, for God, in it, has set Himself to forget our sins and iniquities, to put His laws into our hearts, and to write them in our minds. And who are we that we should withstand God, when recognizing all our guilt, and misery, and ruin, He undertakes to save us thus?

The Blood Part 2

2. The knowledge of the blood of Jesus Christ shed upon the cross, is God's way of giving eternal life to the poor perishing sinner. As it is written:-" I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. This is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.... Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.... Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." (John 6:32-69.)

Here we learn, that if any one receives the death of Jesus, and the atonement by the blood in death, he hath, (from that time onward) everlasting life, and can therefore never come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. To eat and to drink are very simple acts, such as we do every day, and know that we do them, so that we could not believe a man who said, I do not know if I have ever eat or drunk. Well, the figure, as applied to our souls, is very simple likewise; and though no man can tell if another has done it, it seems to me impossible for a man himself to have turned in heart to the broken body and shed blood of Jesus, and to have said, " Here are the proofs of God's grace toward sinners, and His way of being merciful-I am a sinner, and I will trust to God's grace as thus expressed," and not to know that he has done so. But if he has done so, he has (though he may not know it) everlasting life, I say if he has in heart, as before God, said, " The broken body and shed blood of Jesus are God's way of receiving the sinner, and they shall be my way of being received; and if I perish, I perish in this way." Jesus's answer to such an one in the Bible is, " Thou hearest the voice of my blood, then thou art mine. For it is my sheep which hear my voice, and I know them.... and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." Ponder the cross of Jesus, and receive His blood as atonement, then, poor sinner.

The Blood Part 3

3. The blood was the expression of the death of Jesus. As it is written:-" When they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And, he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." (John 19:33-35.)

Here is presented to us what and whence the blood is. This was in our Lord's mind when speaking to the Jews, as is recorded in chapter vi., and which, though he saw and understood it all, neither could the Jews receive, nor could the disciples understand. But oh, what a tale of love! such love as many waters could not quench; such love as was stronger than death, does this foreknowledge on Jesus’ part tell us of. The separation of the liquid blood into blood and water, showed death to have taken place: it is never so save after death. Some think the water here was that which fills the vessel in which " the heart " is placed, the breaking of which, they say, is what produces a broken heart; if so, then also, whether broken by the convulsions of sorrow, or pierced by the spear, death must have taken place. I would only add, that I doubt not but that this fact had a further typical meaning. For not only is Jesus on the cross pouring forth His blood unto death, in atonement, our only resource, but there also I get not only that which cleanses me from all charge of guilt-the blood; but also that Spirit which is righteousness, and which seems typified by the water-even the Holy Ghost, which coming consequent upon Christ's death, is the pledge to those that have it of their being accepted in the beloved; partakers of the divine nature; and who makes the rivers of living water to flow out of their bellies even while in this life.

The Blood Part 4

4. The blood of Jesus Christ is the purchase money of the flock;- already paid. As it is written:-" Take heed.... to.... the flock.... to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood." (Acts 20:28.)

I notice here that the flock is God's; even the church in its poor, militant, wilderness state: and it has been purchased already, and a goodly price paid for it. Judas and the priests fixed the price of Jehovah of Hosts, when He was in the temple, at thirty pieces of silver. (Zech. 11:12, 13.) God's price for the church is the blood of Him who was the Son of God. As we wonder that Judas should have kept to his covenant, and done such an act for so mean a price; so, surely, the greatness of the price God has paid assures us He will not depart from His covenant. If a man buys anything he longs for, and pays for it, we know how tenacious he is of his right to have it; so that nothing but want of power can cause him to leave both purchase money and goods bought in the hands of the seller. The greatness of the price God fixed, show was the measure of His desire; the price is paid, and has He not power, in His own time, to appropriate that He has purchased?

The Blood Part 5

5. The blood of Jesus Christ is, to them that have faith in it, propitiation. As it is written: " Christ Jesus.... whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood." (Rom. 3:25.)

The question at issue in this chapter is, " How can a sinful transgressor be received by God? " And the answer is, "If he come as a sinful transgressor, he will be received, freely, by God's grace, through Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth as a propitiatory, or mercy seat, for them that have faith in His blood. For this blood tells how a just God can be the justifier of the sinful transgressor, who receives the account He gives of the blood, and trusts to it. This word translated "propitiation " occurs only once more in the New Testament, in Heb. 9:5, and means, propitiatory or mercy-seat-which was the, place where God dwelt, between the cherubim, and it shut up, and was over, the law in the ark; before and upon it the blood of atonement was sprinkled.

The blood as thus, first, upon, and, secondly, before, the mercy-seat, expresses (as in all the Old Testament sacrifices wherein atonement was made), the two great uses of the blood. The first, as connected with God, the way opened and the means provided by Himself, wherein He could be just and yet the justifier of the sinner: this is shown by God to man. The second is connected by God, through His grace connected, I say, with him that believeth; and so the thing which gives such an one boldness to draw near to God. The former also washing the books in heaven, as a poor dumb boy once described in writing his view of pardon: " The bleeding hand of Jesus passed over each page in my account, so that none can read it through the stain of His blood." The second cleansing also the conscience. Read the chapter from verse 19-26, and see whether this is not the outline of it. Verse 19 having said that God had pronounced the whole world to be guilty in His sight, that every mouth might be stopped, Paul first shows (ver. 20) that this is a proof the law could not justify a man-for then the Jew would not be guilty, but justified, for he had the law. And if the law, which was a round of duties, given to man by God, could not justify him, how much less can a round of duties, of a man's own devising, which God never gave, do so! Well, but if God (in so summary a way) pronounces all to be guilty, and, as far as they are concerned, irrecoverably so (so that every mouth must be stopped, and all the world become guilty before him), what can any one do? Why (ver. 21), he may have recourse to that method of justification which is, not by law, though witness of both by law and prophets, even (ver. 22) trust to God Himself, graciously to justify him by Jesus Christ. And then Paul goes over the ground, in measure, a second time. (Ver. 23.) All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; yet (ver. 24) any man may be justified by God's grace, freely, through the redemption that is in Christ. " What is that?" says the soul. Why (ver. 25) it is the, person of. Jesus in heaven (compare Rom. 8:32-34) set forth as a propitiation-and it is the property (made so by God) of every one that trusts to His blood: it is set forth to show God's way of justifying those He has pronounced guilty-and tells how God completely remits all past sins-forbearing to see them even. And verse 26, it is a way which tells the justice as much as the mercy of God to the sinner-that He is just, though He does Himself justify the very one He has pronounced guilty, if so be he, trusts to Jesus; for it skews Jesus actually to have borne the sinner's punishment, and to have paid his debt. Has God already said, we are all guilty? that there is no hope for us in ourselves? Has He raised Jesus from the dead? And does He say, that if I have taken Christ's blood as my trust, then Christ bore my sins in His own body on the tree? is risen for me? and intercedes for me? Yes, He has said so, and through His grace I have said, " The blood of Jesus Christ is my trust." Reader, have You also said so?

The Blood Part 6

6. The blood of Jesus Christ is the finished justification of every one that believeth. As it is written: " God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we- were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being or rather, having been now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." (Rom. 5:8-10.)

OBSERVE, " being now justified," cannot mean " being about to be, or in the hope of being justified;" but it necessarily, implies that the justification is both finished, and its sufficiency known and satisfactory to us; just as if I said, "I am satisfied." The thing which satisfied would necessarily be known to be in existence, and to be mine, and to be known to be as mine, and as sufficient, in itself and by itself, to meet my desires. Just so is it with the blood of Jesus, by which, Paul says, " being now justified by his blood." The blood is shed; the sinner that knows it is the one for whom it is shed; he that believes knows it is for him, because God says so; it is sufficient in itself and by itself, fully to justify him from all things and to give him rest before God.

The Blood Part 7

7. The blood of Jesus Christ is the center of union among Christians while on earth. As it is written: " The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion [or fellowship] of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" (1 Cor. 10:16.)

And thereby, secondly, it is the power of separation from false worship of every kind; " Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils." (Ver. 21.) And further, observe, thirdly, this is the saint's principle of separation from evil generally-for, chapter 11:25-27, " This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord."

From this context in the Corinthian epistle, I learn three things: first, where the saint is to be in communion. Even there, where all who know and trust to the death and blood of Jesus are received. For they that have done so have the Spirit, or they could not have done it (1 Cor. 2:11); and having this Spirit, they are thus " one Spirit with the Lord," and so " members one of another," one bread and one cup. The knowledge of the death and blood (which can be only by the Spirit, for who knoweth the things of God save the Spirit of God, 1 Cor. 2:11, 16) is the condition of salvation, of church-fellowship, and of a place at the marriage-supper of the Lamb.

Secondly, I learn where the saint is not to have communion. Even there where, instead of the Holy Ghost gathering simply by the blood, Satan is found displaying principles of his own-which, whether it be teaching Christians to worship demons, false mediators, &c., or the bringing' of the condemned worldling into the place of worshipper of the true God as well as the pardoned Christian; or the establishment of schism, by saying that in addition to knowing the blood, which is by the Spirit, a man must always have light upon other truths, as baptism, or church order, &c., in order to be on an equal footing with all there; or again, whether it be by setting an order of man's making, and gifts of man's cultivation, in place of the order and power of the Holy Ghost, as edifier; these things the saints should shun.

Thirdly, I learn that those who are in such communion together are watched over by the Lord, and that if any of them live in sin, or carelessly, and do not search after, and confess, and put away whatever is evil, the Lord will judge and chasten them, that they may not be condemned with the world.

How plain are the directions for the communion of saints! How separate is it from the allowance of evil, as from Satan, the world, or the flesh! How safe is the position! God to watch over them! And how needful, if this is not to bring present discipline, is self-examination and confession for the saint!

The Blood Part 8

8. The blood of Jesus Christ is freedom from guilt, so as for God to adopt us as sons, by the remission of transgressions, or removing of the guilt of offenses. As it is written: " In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." (Eph. 1:7.)

The Blood Part 9

And thus-

9. The blood of Jesus Christ is nighness to God, even for the Gentiles; and what a nighness! It is written: " Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace." (Eph. 2:13.)

The nighness here has a wondrous character, for (as the first and second chapters set forth) it includes these three things: being " children of God the Father;" " the bride and joint-heir of Christ;" and "the tabernacle of the Holy Ghost"! And this to all that believe, whether Jew or Gentile, for there is no difference.

The Blood Part 10

10. The blood of Jesus Christ is redemption, even the forgiveness of sins. As it is written: " Delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." (Col. 1:13, 14.)

This expression, "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins," is just what is found in Eph. 1:7. There is, however, a difference in the contexts of the two; for in Ephesians it is put in a More general way; in Colossians it seems especially connected with cleansing us from evil-the evil of the kingdom of Satan. In Ephesians, if you look at the two passages in, which the blood is referred to, you will see that it is mentioned in the first, in order that we might know ourselves to be free, to be sons of the Father, the bride of Christ, and the residence of the Holy Ghost. If you compare the quotation from Col. 1:14 with what follows, you will see that in this epistle the blood is likewise referred to twice, but that the remission mentioned in the first place, is in this epistle connected more particularly with the bringing us from out of the dark kingdom of Satan, under the power of the kingdom of God's dear Son.

The Blood Part 11

11. The Blood of Jesus Christ is the means of taking us out of Satan's kingdom and putting us into Christ's. As it written:-" And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself." (Col. 1:20.)

Observe, this verse takes in more than the reconciliation of the church now, for it looks forward to the time when every knee shall bow to Jesus (compare Phil. 2:10, Eph. 1:10), and also to the time when God shall be all in all. But it is still true of the church now, and is so quoted.

The Blood Part 12

12. The blood of Jesus Christ is the secured approach of man as a sinner to the holiest where God dwells, and where Christ, who is the giver of good things to come, is. As it is written:" The way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing. (Therefore, also, when Jesus died, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, as showing that then the way was manifest. See. Matt. 27:51.) " But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place." (Heb. 9:7-12.)

The Blood Part 13

13. The blood of Jesus Christ is to be known and acted upon as the secured approach; for it is written (see vers. 12-14), He did this——" having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"

I notice here the difference in these two; in the first, the blood secures the way for the sinner right up to God Himself; in the second, it gives the conscience of the sinner cleanness. We shall see this referred to more at length presently.

The Blood Part 14

14. Yea, and for our greater assurance, the blessings He gives and the place to which He leads, are, as well as the persons of the blessed, connected with the blood; for it is written-(read

from vers. 18-28), verse 22-" Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these.; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is.... entered.... into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us."

Two more things are taught us here; first, that the place to which we go is secured for us by the blood; and, secondly, that all the blessings, " the good things to come," are also blood-bought and in some sense blood-adorned, or scented with the sweet savor of the blood, while its being for " us" connects the persons of the blessed likewise with the blood. Thus we see (as in Rev. 4 and v.) the throne of God Himself is not without the Lamb that was slain, nor is there one spiritual blessing in heavenly places (Eph. 1) but what is ours, and all of them in Christ Jesus, who was the Lamb that was slain and is alive again for evermore. This is important; for as we now stand in grace, and are "rejoicing in hope of the glory of God " (Rom. 5), so, when in the glory, we shall see around us every memorial of grace. Now we see glory from the position of grace in which we stand, as it is written, " Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of GOD." Hereafter we shall be in glory, but the brightest part of its effulgent brilliancy will be that which still tells of grace as the way by which we got there. Thus, in Rev. 7, the post of peculiar honor, of the innumerable multitude whom no man could number, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, is thus characterized; it is-" before the throne and before the Lamb." Their lovely chorus too brings Him in-" Salvation to our God.... and unto the Lamb." And if their robes be so white-whiter than any fuller could whiten 'them-they "have washed them and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." And if their portion be a full one (that they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat), it is a portion they find at the hand of Jesus; as it is written: "For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water." And no sooner can it be said (Rev. 19:6) " Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!" than we see the first-fruits of His power in what is added, " Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.

And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me [telling out the fullness of his joy in the thought of giving it as an abiding known portion to us on earth], Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And.... these are the true sayings of God." Yea, and the very "city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God," tells the same tale of grace even in its glory. It is (chap. 21:9) there where the bride, the Lamb's wife, is to be seen. And its twelve gates bear the names of Israel; of whom redemption in its earthly progress treats; of whom, concerning the flesh, Jesus was born: the chief trial of God's patience, and grace, and faithfulness in time; and in eternity, THE proof of the Lamb's worthiness and fullness. Its foundations, too, have in them (ver. 14) the name of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb (ver. 22); and the Lamb is the light thereof. (Ver. 23.) The Lamb's book of life is the registry of its inhabitants (ver. 27); and its refreshment, a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb (chap. 22:1); for the throne there is the throne of God and of the Lamb. (Ver. 3.) And they who are His servants now shall then serve Him perfectly, seeing His face, and bearing " His name aloft upon their foreheads "-a diadem of beauty and glory indeed! Into what a sphere of grace and truth does hope launch the soul-a world where all the moral worth, and all the moral glory of the Lamb who shed His blood shall be known-where not one hindrance shall exist to the full manifestation and full apprehension of grace and truth, as revealed by Jesus Christ. How tender toward us is all this, and how cheering the prospect! The good things to come, of which Christ (Heb. 9:11) is become a high priest, will each and all have some fresh tale to tell us of that redeeming love in which as sinners we have taken refuge, being all fresh links of communion with the Lamb that was slain.

As to the other point, referred to first, THE PLACE itself being secured for us by the blood, I need only mention the heart and mind of Him who, now being gone there to prepare a place for us, will come again, and receive us unto Himself; and who as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast. entereth into that within the veil; whither as the forerunner He is for us entered, even Jesus, made a high priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.

This is all the result of His one finished and now long ago accepted sacrifice of Himself.

And the thoughts of His mind, now, are not about making a way to God, for that He has done; but of coming back to receive to glory those that honor that way. Now (ver. 26) once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself... yea.... Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation. The guilt, ALL the guilt of the believer, has then been put away by the sacrifice of Christ, who was once offered to bear their sins: His sacrifice and offering were not in vain, and unto them that knowing this sacrifice, look for Him, He will appear again unto salvation.

The Blood Part 15

15. The blood of Jesus Christ is the taking away of sin; the setting apart of the saints to God; and that by which they are already perfected.

For it is written-(read from Heb. 10:1-14) Heb. 10:4: "As it was not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins," Christ came to do God's will.. "By the which will we are sanctified [or set apart to God] through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.... for this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, forever-sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting until his enemies be made his footstool.

For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified" (or. set apart to God)... (15) and of this "the Holy Ghost is a witness," having said (17) " their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."

The blood, then, was by God's will, the taking away of sin; and the setting apart of the saints to God; that by which the church is already perfected. It is said of Noah. the creatures went in to him in the ark "as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in." How completely has He shut us thus in a place of better blessing, by a covenant in His own blood! There can then be no more offering for sin-because there has been remission of all the believer's sins and iniquities; but the blessing does not stop here; the knowledge of the remission sets a man apart to and for God-saying 'to him, as it were, " You need look for nothing more either to cleanse you or to make you meet. I, the Blood, am all you want as to the question of acceptance: by me you are perfected forever; go, go away from thinking about self; go, go and serve God; for you are set apart to Him-yea, perfected for Him. Let Him be, your study, your delight, your end in everything you do, or think, or say."

The Blood Part 16

16. The blood of Jesus Christ thus leads into service of quite a new character: even into heavenly and filial service. As it is written, " Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having an high priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; for he is faithful that promised; and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching." (Heb. 10:19-25.)

OBSERVE it is the service of filial confidence and of heavenly character; boldness is a great word by which to describe the proper service of a sinner in heavenly service. Are you in this service-in Spirit, and by faith living within?, the veil, right in the holiest of all; in the very place where God and Christ are, with boldness and in full assurance, and therefore helping on, in every way, the practical holiness and fellowship of the Brotherhood of Christ on earth?

And thus it must be, for-.

The Blood Part 17

17. The blood of Jesus Christ has sanctified those that know it, for it is written, that it is made known by the Spirit of grace and is the blood of the covenant. If then I should use the peace which comes from the knowledge of grace, for any other purpose than for service unto God, my conscience would immediately have a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation (ver. 27), for the Lord will judge His people (ver. 30), and when (1 Cor. 11:32) we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. As it is (ver. 31) a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, let us see that we use our ease of conscience for service to God, not for self-advancement in this world; for of what " punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?" (Ver. 29.)

The Blood Part 18

18. The blood of Jesus Christ is the measure by which we are to limit our obedience to God; even as did Christ., As it is written (Heb. 12:1-4), " Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." This Jesus did-0 holy honor! may we desire to be like Him in all things; conformed to the fellowship of His sufferings, that we may be also to the likeness of His glory.

Suffering (I would notice) and affliction, and tribulation, are here inevitable. Man is born to misery as the sparks fly upward. God does not change this with His people; but I may suffer with and for Christ, having the joy of the Father's love, and all the sweetness of His presence and promises to comfort me, while I leave the world, and mortify the flesh with its affections and lusts, always more than conqueror through Him that loved me; or I may stiffer for being an inconsistent disciple, while endeavoring to avoid the cross; and then I shall have the feeling, God is chastening me, and doubt as to futurity perhaps. Abraham found God could make the world, which he for God's sake had renounced, a place for discovering God's grace and his own high calling in; Lot found the world, not renounced, could hide even God's favor toward him and his calling; so that he had to pick up life and liberty at faithful Abraham's feet. Which would you be like?

The Blood Part 19

19. The blood of Jesus Christ is the testimony of good through to us, but of judgment on the world which we are. That "blood of sprinkling, speaketh better things than that of Abel." (Heb. 12:24.) The voice is from heaven, " God speaking peace to us by the blood " (ver. 25), and telling us also of judgment coming upon all things that can be shaken, yea, upon everything save that kingdom which is ours, which cannot be shaken. Thus does He not only lure us on by descriptions and pictures of Canaan's lovely land to which we go, but also push us out of Egypt, the house of bondage and the land of captivity, by the threatening aspect of the judgment coming from Himself upon Pharaoh's people. " Up, get ye out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city," was the solemn word of Lot. " And the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city... [Remember Lot's wife]."

The Blood Part 20

20. The blood of Jesus Christ is our sanctification as of the eternal covenant. As, it is written, " Wherefore Jesus also, that he might, sanctify the people with his own blood" (Heb. 13:12),.... the blood of the everlasting covenant.,, I shall not say much about sanctification now, save that it does not mean exactly the same thing as purification. This is plain, because first, Christ said, " I sanctify myself " (John 17; 19), He could NOT have said, " I purify myself," for He was always pure, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners; in whom Satan had nothing. And secondly, in 1 Cor. 1:30, Christ is said to be our sanctification; but we are told we are to purify ourselves. (.1 John 3:3.) To sanctify means to set apart to God. In John 17:19, Jesus meant, " I set, myself apart as a victim." God sanctified or set apart the Nazarite, as Samson, and was his sanctification; so that when Samson did not keep himself pure he came into judgment. Every Christian is spiritually a Nazarite, and Christ is his sanctification; if the Christian, therefore does not purify himself, he is judged of the Lord that he be not condemned with the world.

The Blood Part 21

21. The blood of Jesus Christ is, in the knowledge of it, the proof of election. As it is written, " Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, ... ... unto ... ... sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1:2.) The knowledge of the blood is the proof of election. Observe this, for many do not see that if I have come to the sprinkling of the blood, I am proved to be an elect one, and would set you to prove your election by other things; but this is THE first and the simplest proof of all ... ... "Elect ... ... unto sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" ... ... If I know the blood I am an elect one. Many say, you must prove you are one of the elect before you can say, " The blood is mine," but this is contrary to scripture altogether: for no one, in scripture, is even supposed to know anything about covenant, election, or counsel, until he has known the blood. And the whole benefits of the blood are yours, if you believe in God that raised Jesus from the dead. It proves our election, for this simple reason, that-

The Blood Part 22

22. The blood of Jesus Christ was the ransom of the saints. As it is written, " Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things,.... but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world; but was manifested in these last times for you; who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God." (1 Peter 1:18'-21.)

Will any honest man keep what belongs to another, what another has bought and paid for? Let alone all other thoughts, we are dishonest if we do not give: ourselves wholly to God, for He has bought 'Us. Let not a hoof then' be left behind in Egypt, for body, soul, and spirit are God's; bought with a price. But ah! what a price! and for what a purpose bought! If God gave up His Son to make you His own son and heir, will you murmur if the road to the glory, your own glory, be a little rough? Shame, shame and folly indeed!

The Blood Part 23

23. The blood of Jesus Christ is the saint's daily resource for cleansing. As it is written:-" If we walk in, the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the 'blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all, sin. If we [i.e. saints] say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:7-9.)

Notice this, because many get a doubting whether they are Christians at all, on account of their discovering evil in themselves. Now this is to make one of the proofs God gives of my being a Christian-the proof that I am not one: which is a strange argument. They that walk in the light, as He is in the light-What? have no sin? No: but have an incessant application of the blood-the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth such from all sin. For as light discovers darkness, so it is impossible for one that walks in the light, as He is in the light, to say, "I have (at this present time) no sin." If he said so, he would prove the truth was not in him. Well, but if he confesses the sins thus discovered, God- is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Observe, "faithful and just," to forgive "us "-for he is here speaking of those who have been set apart to God Himself and Christ by the blood; and not of God's mercy and grace by the blood toward the poor world. If I walk out and can see pits and wells in the ground, it is the proof there must be some light; for if there were no light we could not see them: and the stronger the light the more manifest is the darkness of any pit you look down into. Just so the nearer the saint lives in communion to God and Christ, the more does he know and see of his own vileness and badness in himself; and discovering the evil in his heart, he finds power from God to judge it and not to walk according to it.

The Blood Part 24

24. The blood of Jesus Christ is part of God's witness on earth. As it is written:-" There are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." (1 John 5:8.) This water and blood seem to me to be the same spoken of in verse 6. This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood." It refers, I think, to John six. 34. The water and blood in death by which Christ Jesus came (not into the world), but INTO THE PLACE WHENCE He speaks to us, and is God's witness to us.

In verse 5 you will see the thing is connected WITH VICTORY over the world: "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood," &c. If I understand this aright, it makes the knowledge of Jesus risen to heaven, after shedding His blood upon earth, the power of victory over the world. The blood on the mercy-seat speaks better things than that of Abel: but the same blood as shed upon earth shows why God has, for the present, ceased to recognize, as to religion, all such earthly places and things as once He did among the Jews; it cries also for vengeance on them that despise the mercy proffered through it, and LAYS NAKED AND BARE THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE WORLD.

Let us consider the blood of Jesus as looked at in connection with the earth, in Jerusalem, and with the world as among the Gentiles. According to God's estimate, earth's fairest portion, since the fall, has been Judea; its bravest city, Jerusalem; and of all its goodly edifices, the noblest and the best, the temple. What portion of earth, since the deluge, could compare for real importance with Judea; what nation so honored as the Jews; what city so distinguished as Jerusalem; what part of it so renowned as the temple? Well, who undertook to count the value of the blood of God's Lamb? The priests and high priests of this temple. They could count it and buy it too. Aye, the Jew and Gentile-the people Israel (with its double headship in kingly and ecclesiastical power, Herod and the chief priests), and the Gentiles (as well the Roman soldiery as Pontius Pilate), pronounced their own character in their connection with the blood. The money-changing temple (a fit house of merchandise for the sale of the Lamb of God) would give as much as thirty pieces of silver for His blood!! though the coffers of the holy temple might not be defiled with the money when returned; nor the holy city itself be stained with His blood; " He suffered without the gate." (Heb. 13:12.) Neither could they go into the judgment-hall, lest they should be defiled (John 18:28); nor allow their sabbath to be defiled by the bodies remaining on the cross. (Chap. 19:31.) How nice-how delicate! how fine-drawn the earth's and the world's estimate of right and wrong! And where did the sin of the blood rest? upon the priests in any sense? They thought NOT; for they remonstrated (Acts 5:28) with Peter and John:," Ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us." And surely their remonstrance availed them as much as Pilate's protest against the deed he did. Observe, he and Herod shake hands, and make up their quarrel, when the scent of this blood is first found: just as the ravening wolves forget their feuds and contests, and cheer one another on, when any worthy, any noble prey is afoot. But Pilate would not admit the deed was his, or that he had part in it; so he gravely calls for water and washes his hands before the multitude, saying, " I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it." Alas! though vain was his act, as to himself, there was a band of volunteers ready to undertake the burden. " Then answered all the people, and said, his blood be on us and on our children." (Matt. 27:21, 25.) " That upon Jerusalem might come all the righteous bloodshed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias." (Matt. 23:35.) And to crown the whole, and bring in the Gentile mob as much as the Gentile nobility, it was the Roman soldiers who mocked, and their spear which pierced the side.

O earth, earth, earth! how has she disclosed her blood-been unable to cover her slain! Observe, in the above scene the earth and the world are both unmasked. The religious Israel, and the Gentiles without God in the world, were united to shed the blood-and so. Satan was recognized as god of. the whole world. And thus we get the cause of such words as, " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him—for the friendship of the world is enmity with God;" and get too the character not only of the world, but of all that she is mother of: " The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." The mother and her daughters, however specious and fair their disguise, are thus unmasked. It is an awful thing to think how little the world knows that it " is condemned already." Men wish the question of their guilt to hang upon a comparison of their lives with what is right and wrong; instead of seeing that the question is, Are you a citizen of the world; have you any connection with the earth; are you a man? Even as when David sent to avenge his messengers on the cities of Ammon (2 Sam. 10): the question was not to each, " Did you insult my messengers?" but, " Are you one of Hanun's subjects?" The count on which condemnation stands now is wider-Do you belong to the earth, which murdered the Lord's Christ? But the blood tells not only thus the badness of earth's subjects and the world's citizens, when in the place of power appointed by God, as Herod; or in the place of power allowed of God, as Pontius Pilate and the Roman soldiers; or in the place of leaders of the earthly worship; but it tells still more, I think, if rightly considered-for the blood here, as connected with the shedding of it, tells only of their cruelty, and coming condemnation as being of the world: and thus it unmasks the world's character to the disciple, and so gives him power over it. Yet it tells me more than this: for-

I see in it, as to flesh itself, two things. First: the blood of the Son was shed in atonement and propitiation for our bad flesh. Surely thus it speaks volumes about the badness of our flesh: all that can be told about it is said, to my mind, in Rom. 8:3: " God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh " (visiting the guilt of our sinful flesh even upon Him in holy flesh). And what was the judgment, but the forfeiture of the blood? Yea, the very life was given in atonement, for " the blood is the life of the flesh." This is the measure of our flesh's badness. What an awful one surely an end of all hope as to at is here pronounced, and pronounced in a way to silence our hearts and still our minds. But not only does the shed blood of the Son tell the end of bad flesh; but more: it tells, secondly, as to the pure and holy Jesus, of that deeper glory that was in Him as God manifest in the flesh. The blood is the life of all flesh. The life, which is in the blood, was originally given in good flesh in Adam, and was found in perfect flesh in Jesus. And He is the only one that could say to God (Psa. 63:1), " My flesh longeth for Thee;" or (Psa. 84:2), " My flesh crieth out for the living God," &c. And He was God manifest in the flesh. Now let us see in this connection what the blood teaches us. First, it was not the simple fact that He was pure and holy as a man which gave the real character, virtue, and excellency to the blood of Jesus. Adam's blood, as he was set in purity in Eden, could not have made atonement. But Jesus was God manifest in the flesh -and it was through the eternal Spirit that He offered Himself without spot to God. But for His being God, His blood would not have availed. Second, the blood was given out in atonement-the way by which God could be just and yet the justifier of the sinner-yet the blood was not in its shedding, taken alone, enough even for this -for (1 Cor. 15:14), " if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." " Ye are yet in your sins." Third, the insufficiency of the life of flesh altogether for the glory is asserted in 1 Cor. 15.50; " Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." And accordingly, though (Heb. 2:14), " Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same;" yet He shed His blood upon the cross and rose without blood. And surely it was as new a thing for a man to live without blood, as for a virgin to conceive a child: yet so it was, and He could say (Luke 24:38, 39), " Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." Observe, He could let them here (as with Thomas in John's gospel) handle the body, with the wounds still open-for He was still flesh and bones; though not flesh and blood. And how did the life that was in the blood seem to labor even to sustain the agony of the exceeding weight of sorrow in the blessed Lord! (Luke 22:44) "His sweat was as it were great drops of blood;" so an angel came and strengthened Him. (Ver. 43.) Yes, and it is written, "He was crucified through weakness;" much less was the life which was in the blood found to be the root or sustainer of that exceeding and eternal weight of glory which He brought in, and for which the shed blood opened the way; for the first Adam was made simply a living soul; the last Adam was a quickening spirit. Now though both living soul and quickening life might be found in Him, it was not till He had laid aside the life which was in the blood for atonement-that the streams of the spiritual life began to flow freely. (John 7:39.) But when declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead (Horn. i. 3), then did He begin to manifest the new life, and its glory, and sphere and bearings; among His disciples: and almost the first word of Jesus risen was, " Go tell my brethren, Behold, I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Though heaven and heavenly glory were once and again opened to Jesus, and He was even while on earth in heaven (John 3:13), yet He did not appear actually in heaven in the character of the quickening spirit, save by and after death; for this name bound Him up in one bundle of life with sinners, and He could not quicken save those who were atoned for. I see this also (namely, the insufficiency of human nature) in such passages as Matt. 16:17: John 1:13; Gal. 1:13: and as in 2 Cor. 5:16; Though we have known Christ [observe; Christ Himself] after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." The seeing this-that the whole life and privilege and glory of the church are resurrection things, not proceeding from the life of the blood which Jesus shed, but from the life of the Spirit of the Son, is of great, immense importance. Yet though not found in the life of the blood, they were found by the blood of that life, for but for atonement, Christ could not have given spiritual life or glory; neither could we have received them: and atonement is only in the blood.

I would also notice here that the blood of Jesus, as connected with Satan, the prince and god and living energy of this world, is his death warrant. Abel's blood cried to God for vengeance against Cain. And Uriah's blood cried for vengeance against even David. Assuredly, Jesus' blood cries for vengeance to God against Satan. Yea, it is more than a cry for vengeance, it is the expression of judgment coming upon Satan. " Now is the prince of this world judged:" and as it is the thing which, to the soul standing in nakedness before God, tells of the love of God, and of the rich and varied provision made by His grace for the poor sinner in all his necessities, as before God; as in the world, though not of it; as in the flesh, though not debtor to it; so also toward Satan, it is the thing by which we may resist the devil, and he shall flee from us. (James 4:7.) He knows the blood is his death-warrant, and when presented to him, it is not only an answer to all he can say, but victory over him. (See Rev. 12) If Satan could have killed Adam, when first put in Eden, before the fall, any one would feel that it would have called to God for vengeance; well, he did kill Jesus, holy, spotless Jesus, and shall suffer for it.

Observe, I learn then here, by the blood of Jesus, the true character,

First, of the world which is thus unmasked, and shown to be already condemned.

Second, of the flesh: the thorough badness of which, as it exists in us, is hereby exhibited; it needed His blood for atonement: and the thorough goodness of which in Jesus is thus commented on. First, Though most pure and perfect as a man, the value of His blood for atonement derived its character not from His being a holy man, but from His being GOD manifest in the flesh. Secondly, He gave the life that was in His holy flesh, even the blood (which had, from His being very Son of God, an eternal excellency in it) in atonement to meet God's justice, and give sinners peace. Thirdly, He gives, as risen without blood, honor and glory and immortality, as by and in the Spirit of the Son of God.

Third, Of Satan, as the god of the world; for it is his death warrant.

The Blood Part 25

25. The blood of Jesus Christ is known on earth as having cleansed our persons. As it is written, " Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood." (Rev. 1:5.) Observe, it is us, that is, our persons here; and a portion so known to the soul as for it to be its song, not on the housetop only, but (as with John here) its theme to tell over all the world, and to every age, till the redemption of the purchased possession come. But if it be sung through time by the church on earth-

The Blood Part 26

26. The blood of Jesus Christ is known in heaven as our redemption, and is sung there too. As it is written, " Thou wart slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." (Rev. 5:9.) Thus it is sung in heaven as our redemption, in the ears of God and the Lamb and heaven's host, by a company set there by appointment, and in excellent dignity and glory too, to represent the church still militant. Their song was heard in John's day, and has been onward from that time, to this. Heaven, therefore, cannot forget we are redeemed, though some of us may.

The Blood Part 27

27. The blood of Jesus Christ is that which alone cleanses our robes, and will give entrance to the glory of the temple. As it is written, " They have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat," &c. (Rev. 7:14-16.) Observe, the entire and sole cleansing of the robes is by the blood of Jesus. In some places they find the finer kinds of lace very difficult to cleanse; their secret of cleansing is to wash them in bullock's blood, and then put them into running water. So the saints' robes are washed in blood-but it is the blood of God's Lamb applied by the living power of the Holy Ghost through faith.

The Blood Part 28

28. The blood of Jesus Christ is victory over the enemy. As it is written, " They [the martyrs who knew his power more than all else] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death." (Rev. 12:11.)

Having now just traced out in part (and we know hut in part, so can we but prophesy in part), some of the testimony about the blood of Jesus, as God estimates it in its uses and purposes, I close. Whilst writing, so many fresh views of the blood have opened upon me, that I feel almost discouraged to present that which I have here written. But if I forbear, and retrace the thing again and again, I am aware it would still but be in part; blessed be God's name for the unsearchable fullness of His truth! If there be any sweetness in the truth in these pages (and to me there is very, very much), 0 that the saints would learn from it the sweetness of the word of the Lord, as contrasted with the thoughts of man's teaching: for all that has been attempted here has been whilst tracing out the testimony, just ever and anon to repeat, in other words, what, the scriptures say: and occasionally to bring other scriptures to bear upon points, supposed to be less understood by the saints generally.

I add some references from the Old Testament, of places in which the blood seems to me, in the

Spirit's mind, to have looked forward to the blood of Jesus in some way or other.

Gen. 4:10, 11. Abel's.

Gen. 9:4, 5, 6. The prohibitions to Noah as to blood.

Compare Lev. 3:17; 7:26, 27; 17:14, 10-12; 19:26;

Deut. 12:16, 23, 27; 15:23; and 1 Sam. 14:32-34.

Gen. 37: 22, 26; 42:22. Joseph's blood and the guilt of it.

Gen. 49: 11.

Ex. 4:9. Here it is judgment resting on the waters and rivers turned to blood. Compare

Ex. 7:17, 19-21, 25, 26. Moses' wife.

Ex. 12: 7, 13, 22, 23. The passover. Judgment past because faith.

Ex. 22:23. N.B. As a mark of righteousness under the law, a night breaker-in might be killed; not a day breaker-in.

Ex. 23:18. Not to be offered on altar with leaven. Compare 34:25.

Ex. 24:6, 8. Blood of the covenant.

Ex. 29: 12, 16. The Altar; 20, 21. The priests; Lev. 8:15, 19, 23, 24, 30; 9:9, 12, 18.

Ex. 30: 10. Yearly atonement-Lev. 16:14, 15, 18, 19, 27.

Lev. 1:5, 11, 15. Burnt offering; and 3:2, 8, 13; 7:33, Peace offering.

Lev. 4: 5-7. Sins through ignorance; and verses 16-18, 25; xxx. 34.

Lev. 5: 9. Defilements.

Lev. 6:27. The holiness of the blood.

Lev. 6:30. No sin offering if the blood brought into the tabernacle to reconcile in holy place, to be eaten. Compare 10:18.

Lev. 7: 2, 14. Trespass offering.

Lev. 12: 4, 5, 7. Purification after child-birth.

Lev. 6, 14, 17, 25, 28, 51, 52. Purification of leper.

Lev. 15:19, 25.

Lev. 17:4, 6. The provision for supply of blood.

Lev. 17:3. The blood to be poured out to the Lord of, &c.

Lev. 19:16; 20. 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 27. When the blood or life of man to be taken away.

Lev. 20:18.

Num. 18:17. For the maintenance of the priests.

Num. 19:4, 5. Red heifer.

Num. 23:24.

Num. 35:19, 21, 24, 25, 27, 33. The avenger of blood and city of refuge. Compare Deut. 19:6, 10, 12, 13; Josh. 20:3, 5, 9.

Deut. 7:18.

Deut. 21:7, 8, 9. Of uncertain murder. 22: 8. Guilt on a house.

Deut. 32:14, 42, 43.

The Cross of Jesus Christ

What are its uses and applications, by the Spirit in Scripture?

The cross seems to me to be used in scripture as especially connected with shame and disgrace. The cross was in itself a cruel and a disgraceful heathen mode of death-kept, even by them, for the very vilest. It seemed to say-This is a wretch, who has no feelings to be considered, and whose sufferings may be protracted so as to scare others from committing what he has done. By the Jews seeking it for Jesus, it was saying, either " We are not Jews," or "He is no Jew;" for then, if a sinner, he should have been stoned -and in it they were saying that He was not their king (as you will see in John 19), nor their prophet much less Son of God; as done by the Gentiles also, it was the denial of His being the Son of God from whose hand the Gentiles had received their kingly power. (See Dan. 2) The cross is used in scripture as the thing which, in one word, tells what is the present result among men of serving God; of being a disciple; of becoming one; and this not only at the hands of the world, but of the professing world. The cross of Jesus proved this as to Jerusalem and its law; while at the same time it told of His thorough self-renunciation, perfectness of obedience, and of the estimate the world had of God:-Jew and Gentile would crucify His Son. The priests of His temple, they would seek it for Him; Pontius Pilate would rather yield it to them, though he knew Jesus was innocent, than have it said himself was not Caesar's friend. It was God's way of telling what He felt about man's sin; about the old man in each of us; about carnality, self-righteousness, and human wisdom; about there being no ground of justification or means of purification, in whole or in part, in us; no door open by which a new life could come in to us; of making the Jew and Gentile shake hands; of stripping all of boasting, specially from the Jew, the., &c. In so many different connections is the cross presented. May the believer pass and repass through the testimony of scripture about it, and learn to use the cross of Jesus for the purposes for which it is given and made known to him!

Death was the penalty of sin. Death, therefore, when Christ undertook to endure the penalty, was all that we should have looked for; but His blood was needful for atonement also. Perhaps those who had understanding then would have thought, " The Father loves Him, and therefore you will see His death will be one of peculiar ease: how it will be we know not, but perhaps the veins will open outwardly of their own accord, and that quiet stupor pass over Him which comes in bleeding to death, and He will, gently fall asleep, without a struggle or a groan." But this was not God's way. For He came not only to endure the penalty and to give the blood in atonement, but to be the standard by which God might measure the world and the flesh in man. And in the cross we see the effects on Him of His really drinking that cup of trembling to the dregs which was our doom. The poisonous draft could not take that effect on His pure human and perfectly divine person which it would on our impure human and only mortal persons. But O what an effect it did take! for it cut off all intercourse between Him and God. The whole vital energy of the relationship between the creature and the Creator was drained, and the relationship severed; and even that Holy Thing had no refuge left to Him save in the relationship between Himself and God in deity: these two things seem expressed thus:-

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" -" FATHER, into thy hands I commend my Spirit." And why was this? Because He had presented Himself as the Lamb, and was looked upon as already filleted and garlanded for the sacrifice with the wreaths of our sins and follies. How plain is it then that God can hold no intercourse with sin I He saw it laid lightly, only as by imputation on Jesus, and He hid His face from Him, and would not look upon Him. O how He has told out here His hatred to sin, and the unmendableness of the sinner, in himself, as such; and the impossibility of any one whatever treating with Him until all his sins have been forgiven him, and all his iniquities been covered!

PASSAGES TO BE CONSIDERED.

1. There is no SERVICE to Christ which is without a cross (Matt. 10:38; compare vers. 32-42); -For

2. The disciple is the DISCIPLE of the cross (Matt. 16:24; compare Mark 10:21 and Luke 9:23);-

3. People who may think of becoming disciples, as well as disciples, ought to know the cross is the disciple's present portion (Mark 8:34);-

4. and such is the cross, as that it is a hard thing, and to nature impossible, to, become a disciple (Luke 14:27, read the chapter);

5. Jesus knew that Jerusalem would give Him up to the Gentiles to crucify, and told the twelve so (Matt. 20:18, 19);-For,

6. Jerusalem, that place so highly favored for religious privileges, had a way of its own; and if God's way did not bend to it, it would murder and crucify His messengers (Matt. 23:34);-And,

7. first and foremost among them the Son of man Himself should suffer on the cross (Matt. 26:2, &c.);-

8. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, each describe the scene of the cross;-

9. Jerusalem might not be scandalized by the bodies remaining on the cross on the sabbath-day; for it was a high day! (John 19:31-33);-

10. Interest in the crucified One led the angels to honor several, &c. (Matt. 28:5);-

11. The cross on earth the contrast of the glory of the Lord in heaven (Acts 2:23, 24); -

12. And that place of honor in heaven was one sought for in grace toward man even as the cross was endured for man (Acts 4:10-12);

13. The cross is God's sentence against the old man in us 'atom. vi. 5-7);-

14. The cross is God's sentence against all that is carnal in the church (1 Cor. 1);-

15. Even as it is the sentence of God against all that is carnal in the world (1 Cor. 2:2);-

16. The cross was, in Jesus, the proof of how He had emptied Himself-" being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (2 Cor. 13:4);-

17. The cross was that to which the Jews (Peter and Paul among them) had to flee from Moses' law, for justification, purification, and the power of a new life (Gal. 2:20); -

18. The cross, therefore, strongly condemns any one who, having heard of it, would in any way share the honor of salvation between Jesus who died on it and self (Gal. 3:1); -

19. Offensive as the cross is, it was Paul's only testimony for justification or purification (Gal. 5:11-24); -

20. The cross, therefore, by itself, as giving nothing but shame to nature, will not do for popular preachers; yet it is the Christian's only stay (Gal. 6:14-16);-

21. The cross is the power of union to Jew and Gentile, as throwing a shade over the ordinances of the one, and the intellectual pride of the other (Eph. 2:16);-

22. The cross was the measure of the obedience in humiliation of the Son of God (Phil. 2:8-13); -

23. The cross, therefore, is the sine qua non of a true Christian-in other words, " no cross, no Christian" (Phil. 3:17-20);-

24. The cross is God's estimate of everything great and noble in the world which He will reconcile to Himself (Col. 1:20);-

25. Especially thus connected with the Jew under Moses' law (Col. 2:14);-26, The cross was the measure of the Lord's willingness to endure (Heb. 12:2);-

27. The cross was the world's and earth's estimate of the value of the Son; What is the religion of the earth!!! (Rev. 11:8.)

The Cross Part 1

1. There is no service to Christ which is without a cross. As it is written, " He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me." (Matt. 10:38.) This chapter is the Lord's " charge " to His apostles, telling them what they and the church would have to expect from the time of His death. The part of the chapter more immediately connected with this verse is from verses 32-42, which seems to me to read thus:- " According as those who on earth standing in the place of my servants confess or deny me before men, so will I confess or deny them before my Father in heaven: [nature would say, 0 we will all confess Thee; therefore Jesus goes on to tell the difficulties of so doing, for the result is both painful, and, among men, disgraceful]: the result of so doing will be family discords of the worst kind." If any man says, " Christ is in God for me; henceforth I will live here only by and to Christ," he gets thus at once out of the center man knows, and everything and everybody is against him. Man judges of everything by its present RESULTS; the present results of the truth are painful, and as man thinks disgraceful: yea, most shameful! " A fine religion," he would say, " to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother," &c. Therefore, "he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me." This was addressed to the twelve more particularly, as servants of God; yet in principle it is true of every disciple's service. If you read the chapter you will see this.

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

The formalist, the moralist, the philanthropist, the amiable man, the improver of society, the devotee, the bigot, the socialist, can all, though self is working in them differently, find grounds to go upon peaceably together; in fact they have one center, " self," though it may work differently in them; and therefore self-love in the whole party will vindicate self for the others. But let a man get God's grace in the cross as his center, made known as it is by the power of the Holy Ghost, and he becomes a speckled bird on earth: and he can bear it; for if earth and Satan its prince, and men his subjects, are against him, heaven, and God, and Christ, and the Holy Ghost are for him.

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2. The disciple is the disciple of the cross. "If any man will come after- me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." (Matt. 16:24.) Chapters xvi., xvii., and xviii. contain the Lord's instruction to the Jewish remnant about discipleship. When Peter heard that "the Teacher" was to be insulted and killed in Jerusalem and by the priests, he said, Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee. But Jesus said that this care by Peter of His body was Satanic and offensive to Him; for it was the result of not looking up to God's feelings and will, but to man's: Peter had not the same center herein as Christ: and then conies verse 24.

The disciple is called to be as the Master (chap. 10:24, 25); and he will find faithful discipleship leads to much suffering; and the worst of all is that which comes from what bears God's name upon the earth, without the power of it. But the disciple cannot help this, or stop in it-for to stay would be to sit down for eternity in what will be shortly judged by God in His wrath with eternal fire. The avenger of blood is behind him-and onward he will rush; though the way into the city of refuge be rough the place is safe when he gets there-for there there is no avenger, no judgment, but peace, and safety; and though the way be rough to the city, it is short.

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3. People who may think of becoming disciples, as well as disciples, ought to know that the cross is the disciple's present portion. In Mark 8:34, we find the same account as above: but it is added here that He "called the people with his disciples also," which shows how He wishes those who think of becoming disciples to know it is present suffering they come to. Unless a man does see what Christ has to give, in reality, and from what to deliver, he had better stop a moment ere he says, " I will be thy disciple." Stop and count the cost. But let him also, while so stopping, count both sides of the question;-what the issue will be if he tarries where he is; that is, what fearful wrath is coming on the place, and how there he cannot have the kingdom and glory which Christ gives to those that come to Him; and then let him look to it, that he set not out on the way in his own strength.

In Luke 9:23, Peter's objection to Jesus' suffering is not mentioned; which shows that that was not the whole reason for the Lord's remark. And that this is the principle of discipleship is proved again by the Lord's saying to the rich young man, " Come take up thy cross daily and follow me." (Mark 10:21.)

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4. Such is the cross, that it is a hard thing, and to nature impossible, to become a disciple. I cannot pass on from the cross, as connected with discipleship, without noticing that passage in Luke 14:27: " Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple." Read the passage (chap. 14); it is the account of the difficulties to nature of becoming a disciple. Chapter 15 tells how a man, through grace, is made so. Chapter 16:1-13 tells what a disciple is to be; and chapter 16:14 onward, the difficulties of being such. The outline in chapter 14 is this: -in verses 7-14, the Lord was telling the principles on which His Father made feasts. One admiring, said, "It would be good to be there!" (ver. 15); Jesus' answer says, " Men do not think so, for they find all sorts of foolish excuses; so that nothing but the fullness of my Father's grace and power can fill the table." All the respectable people decline; so first He sends out to bid the offscouring of the earth-anybody that wants a supper-to come; and those that come, come simply on the plea, They are going to the house of Him that wants to have His table filled; but even as this will not do, He sends out to compel them to come in. (Vers. 16-24.) Then follow the difficulties told to the multitude. In order to be a disciple, a man needs to find a love which can make all earthly loves, in comparison, hateful ( ver. 26); which can enable him to count what nature dreads an honor. (Ver. 27.) A man should consider this; for who in himself has resources to build a tower for God to dwell in in the midst of the devil's world (vers. 28-30); and that a tower, whence war is to be carried on against the devil! (Vers. 31, 32.) In order to do this, a man must indeed know Christ's resources, and be acting and living upon them, not upon his own.

Young disciples sometimes interpret this passage wrongly. Self does not mean my outward body only, or even chiefly. There are three places the enemy wishes to establish self in. He tries, first, to get us to take self in our own doing as a foundation to stand upon before God: this is to dishonor Christ's finished salvation; for grace says, Whosoever believeth in Jesus is pardoned and accepted by God for Christ's sake; and truly, a pretty sort of denial of self it is to claim for self and its works the place of JUSTIFICATION which God has given to Christ His Son. Secondly, he tries to make us take self in our energy as a power by which to hold and to profit by Christ: this is to dishonor the Holy Spirit, and put self in His place; and a strange denial of self it is to rob the Holy Ghost in order to do self honor. Thirdly, he tries to make us take self as the end of salvation; as though, if we were saved, all God's object was accomplished: this is to dishonor the Father; for He saves us not for any other reason than that Christ may be honored, and now He (Christ) may have an obedient people in the world. What is it then, say you, to deny self? Why he alone denies self who says everything about myself is bad and failed;-but to me, a poor leprous bankrupt, God has given Christ for justification and righteousness; and He has given me the Holy Ghost for guardian. Now then, He, the Holy Ghost, shall lead me on by faith in Christ Jesus, drawing out His resources, and so making me live to God. By His grace I will neither please my bad nor my good self, but only please God, and my neighbor for his good to edification. Such an one was Paul-a thorough self-denier.

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14. It seems to me just on this ground, " That the cross is God's sentence against all that is carnal in the church," that in the opening of the first Epistle to the Corinthians we have so much mention of the cross. Had the question been one about cleanness of conscience, or access to God, or power over the world, the flesh, or Satan, I conceive Paul would have brought forward the blood of Jesus. But here it was no case about learning to do well, but about ceasing to do evil -ceasing to lie under and cherish the flesh and its proceeds; and therefore the cross is brought forward. For the cross of Jesus was the reproach of nature; having no wisdom in it to man's thoughts; yea, a perfect foolishness; and here the blood of atonement was found. Did any at Corinth say, I am of Paul? (1 Cor. 1:12.) " Was Paul crucified for you "? (ver. 13) says he. Did any glory in Apollos, because he was mighty in the scriptures? or in Paul, because of his deep wisdom? his answer is, " Christ sent me.... to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness."

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5. Jesus knew that Jerusalem would give him up to the Gentiles to crucify, and told the twelve so.

The next reference to the cross may be where Jesus says to the twelve, " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles [so far for Jerusalem] to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify." (Matt. 20:18, 19.) Thus we see that the crucifixion of

Jesus was done by the Gentiles: given up by the Jews to them for this purpose, and they executing it. And the blessed Lord foresaw it all; but He hid not His face from spitting, nor His cheek from them that plucked off the hair.

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6. Jerusalem, that place so highly favored for religious privileges, had a way of its own; and if God's way, did not bend to it, it would murder and crucify His messengers. Summing up Jerusalem's state, and marking the serving disciple's portion from it, He says, " Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify" (Matt. 23:34); that is, be so far gone as to use Gentile cruelties toward, God's servants. And this, too, said of Jerusalem.

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7. First and foremost among them the Son of man Himself should suffer On the cross. And the first and foremost of these witnesses referred to (chap. 23:34) was to be HIMSELF, as He says to His disciples (chap. xxvi. 2): "Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified." The immediate connection of this with the instruction in chapters 24 and 25 is important. There He had been telling them-Jerusalem is to be overthrown and remain in desolation till I come in glory. (24:1-44.) But after Jerusalem's overthrow there will be a house (44-51) and a kingdom (25:1-13) of mine; both of which, however, before my return, will become degenerate. The principles of their degeneracy are simple. (14-30.) Then I shall come in glory to judge the Gentiles, as the harbinger of the general judgment. (31-46.) "And it came to pass, when he had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified." (Chap. 26:1, 2.) Then (vers. 3 and 4) the' Jews sought to kill him.

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8. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, each describe the scene of the cross. It was a confederacy of the chief priests, scribes, and elders, held in due order at the palace of the high priest, that led to the murder of the Lord. (Matt. 26:3, 4.) The chief priests paid the money. (Ver. 15.) The multitude that came to take Him were from the chief priests and elders of the people (ver. 47); there was a servant of the high priest among the number (ver. 51): and they led their prisoner at once away-to Caiaphas the high priest, at whose palace the scribes and elders were assembled. (Vers. 57, 58.) Then comes the effort of the chief priests, the elders, and all the council to find false witnesses against Jesus to put Him to death. (Ver. 59.) Taken to the governor He answers nothing; but the people, to whom Pilate appeals in His favor, persuaded by the priests and elders, refuse the appeal, and demand that He should be crucified: "Let him be crucified." (Matt. 27:22, 23: compare Mark 15:13, 14; Luke 23:21-23; John 19:6.) Pilate proposes they should crucify Him (John 19:6); and in order to make Jesus speak, threatens to crucify Him. (John 19:10.) On the Jews again demanding Him to be crucified (John 19:15), he asks, Shall he crucify their king? They reply, they will have no king but Caesar. Pilate delivers Him to be crucified. (Matt. 27:26; Mark 15:15; John 19:16.) The Roman soldiers lead Him away to crucify Him. (Matt. 27:31; Mark 15:20.) Then they lay the cross upon Him. (John 19:17.) Afterward, forcing Simon the Cyrenian to bear His cross (Matt. 26:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26), they crucify Him in a place near to the city (John 19:20), and part His garments, casting lots. (Matt. 27:35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:34; John 19:23, 24.) And two thieves were crucified with Him; He, however, having had the superscription over His head. (Matt. 27:37, 38; Mark 15:26, 27; John 19:18.) This (from John 19:19, we-find) was put by Pilate's order. And observe the scene; they that pass by are reviling Him, wagging their heads, and saying, If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. (Matt. 27:39, 40; Mark 15:29, 30.) The chief priests mock with the scribes and elders, saying, if He be the king of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. (Matt. 27:41, 42; Mark 15:31, 32); and the two thieves crucified with Him cast the same in His teeth. (Matt. 27:44; Mark 15:32.)

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9. Jerusalem might not be scandalized by the bodies remaining on the cross on the sabbath-day; for it was a high day! We read also this (John 19:31-33): The Jews, therefore, that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath day, besought Pilate that their legs might be broken. But Jesus was dead already; so they brake not His legs as they did those of them who were crucified with Him. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in it a new sepulcher.... there they laid Jesus. (John 19:41, 42.)

Observe what a disgraceful kind of death, and how man did everything to add insult and shame and disgrace to Him in it. I think if those who did it had understood how the Lamb's sufferings were the expression of what was God's estimate of man's vileness: how nauseous and loathsome man's sin was to Him, they could not, in their self-righteousness, have more strongly expressed themselves against such an estimate of themselves than they did against Jesus. I do indeed think that this was in Satan's mind while leading them on. And 0 poor self-accusing sinner! stop thy self-accusations, and listen to God's charge and accusations against thee in the cross, for there He she wed His utter detestation and abhorrence of thee; and 0, there He was bearing the judgment of His own detestation of thee, that while He condemned thy sin, He might pardon thyself!

His being crucified was indeed a thing to be noticed; and it is but a little onward and we find the fact made a title for the Lord by the angels, and an interest in it that which made them love those that felt it.

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10. Interest in the crucified One led the angels to honor several, &c. " Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus that was crucified" (Matt. 28:5; Mark 16:6); yea, the two men in shining garments comfort them herewith. Remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be.... crucified, and the third day rise again. (Luke 24:6, 7.) And Cleopas journeying to Emmaus, tells it to the unknown stranger: The chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and have crucified Him. (Ver. 20.)

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11. The cross on earth the contrast of the glory of the Lord in heaven. In Peter's address to the Jews we have these words:-"Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." (Acts 2:23, 24.) They are summed up, a little farther on: " Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same

Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." (Ver. 36.) It seems to me that there is a contrast here presented between the extremity of the degradation and the height of the glory of Jesus. Earth and the Jews even crucified Jesus, but God and heaven yield Him the very highest name and place and title they have to give.

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12. And not only so, but that a name and place such as His grace coveted; one whence he could give gifts to men-as Peter and John put it forward in chapter 4:10-12, " Be it known unto you all [ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel], and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

And this is God's way of acting ever-to take up as means that which is in itself contemptible and despicable, as was the cross; though indeed it told what a heart was in Him. For thus He presents Himself, willing to endure all things, if He may but gain the place of Blesser; and while indeed the cross comports not well with man's high thoughts about himself and God, it most blessedly lays mercy as a suppliant at the poor self-reproaching sinner's feet. And oh! though to proud nature it is a very offensive thing, to see in the cross what torture it gave God to meet man in his present state-and how, in the way He did meet him, there is the full expression likewise of God's disgust at what we are in ourselves-yet oh! 'tis sweet to know the virtue of that blood which though in nature it speaks of sin and vileness, in the Spirit and grace whispers of its healing and cleansing power; and throws open to the sinner those deeper depths in God than any of His handiworks could speak. God used the Fall as the opportunity of opening grace, and so angels and principalities and all intelligent creation have a fuller display of God than ever was known before. And thus we see how That place of honor in heaven was one sought for in grace toward man, even as the cross was endured for man.

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13. The cross is God's sentence against the old man in us. " If we have been planted together [with Christ] in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin." (Rom. 6:5-7.) The Holy Ghost is here telling us how, because God looks upon believers as having died with Christ when He died, they ought so to think of themselves, and live the life which they do live as " alive unto God through Jesus Christ." (Ver. 11.) But I observe that we do not only get "dead with" and " alive with," &c., in such passages, but here " that our old man was crucified with." And herein doubtless we get one reason of our

Lord's death being by the cross as well as a word of warning and comfort to ourselves. God not only sought blood for atonement, but Jesus did indeed stand in our place and experience the treatment we deserved; and He was therefore crucified, or put to open shame in His death, as to the mode of it. Well, says Paul, Christian! have you hope because God tells you to think of yourself as one who died with and revived in Christ? then remember that where you found this comfort, in God's declaration about Christ crucified, there you found God putting your old man to open shame in a cruel lingering death. And when you think of the cross, and that the cross of the Son, O see how utterly God abominated and loathed, from the very bottom of His soul, the evil nature which is in you; so that when its guilt was seen by Him on Jesus, He hid His face even from Him. And as Christians, we see there is in this verse a word for us-for it is a constant memento of God's detestation of the old man in us, on the ground of which Christ was crucified.

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15. Even as it is the sentence of God against all that is carnal in the world. "For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." (1 Cor. 2:2.) This to the apostles was connected with the mystery of wisdom, which (ver. 8) none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

I learn here that if carnality or worldliness in any shape is marring testimony for Christ, as leaven working to fill the whole lump, the way to meet it is by a reference to the cross-Christ degraded in death for us-whereby, as it were, God has most lovingly yet deeply expressed His abhorrence of our old man altogether.

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16. " For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God.... We also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you." (2 Cor. 13:4.) Thus, The cross was in Jesus the proof of how He had emptied Himself-" being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."

And two things are taught here. 1St, that the cross told of the weakness of the living-soul life of Christ when He would appear in God's presence-as the sinner's substitute, bearing by imputation our sins-He was crucified through weakness; though that might and did only make manifest the deeper quickening spirit-life. He had as Son of God from before all worlds; by which, and according to the pleasure of God, He rose Himself; and rose for us through the value of the blood just shed. 2ndly, it tells that so likewise weak as the fruits of the testimony of a saint may show him to be, it tells, in them that are converted, by the power of God in them, that the testimony is of one who has life with God. The Corinthians said, "Paul, can you prove you are an apostle, and that Christ has spoken by you?" (Ver. 3.) " Yes," says he (ver. 4, for he had preached the gospel to them, and they had been saved by it), " poor thing, as you think me. If I am not an apostle, I am a liar, and there is no hope for me; but I am not afraid of this, for God gave you the Holy Ghost when you heard me preach, and this shews I have the truth, and shall live... I am therefore an apostle, for otherwise (ver. 5) you cannot be Christians."

Here, as in the first Epistle, he reads in the cross his own nothingness, and that even when in testimony for God.

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17. The cross was that to which the Jews (Peter and Paul among them) had to flee, from Moses' law, for justification, purification, and the power of a new life. In 1 Corinthians we saw Paul meeting carnality of flesh by the cross; in this epistle he argues against the law upon precisely the same ground. The law was part of a religion of the earth when God was ruling in the world over Israel: a Christian who rightly understood the cross, would see in it not only God's estimate of our old man, but God's estimate of the earth and of worldly religion, and therefore no man that understands the cross can Judaize.

"I am crucified with Christ." (Gal. 2:20.) This, observe, is his grand argument against being under the law for justification. The law cannot take hold of a dead man. Well, then, I am crucified with Christ. Then, lest any one should say, " But are you not alive," he adds" nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." The law cannot take hold of Christ, for He fulfilled it. And neither will he admit it to be his standard of life, for he adds, " and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me [and then, observe, he goes on]-I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." This was his own clear ground to go upon. The cross of Christ had said to him, There's nothing good to come from your flesh, neither can Moses in all his search through you find anything; therefore Christ was put to open shame, through grace for you; look away from self and religion of the earth, to Christ Jesus, who is risen. And so much did he feel the power of this voice from the cross, that he contents himself with saying to the Galatians,

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18. " 0 foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" (Gal. 3:1.) The cross, therefore, strongly condemns any one who, having heard of it, would in any way share the honor of salvation between Jesus who died on it and self.

As though he had said, Why you must either be fools or out of your minds to have heard that he

that knows the cross is one with Him that died upon it, and now to be thinking about going to be justified! or, from the law, a religion of earth, everything of which the cross condemns! or, by your own lives which God put to open shame upon the cross.

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19. Offensive as the cross is, it was Paul's only testimony for justification or purification. " And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offense of the cross ceased." (Gal. 5:11.) Here was the grand truth. If a man is justified by the cross, in itself and by itself, simply by the knowledge of it, then he is justified, but that comes entirely and solely from God: and it is a thing too which thoroughly condemns the world and all its wisdom-for the cross is a stumbling stone to the Jew, and foolishness to the Gentile, and a thorough condemnation from God of all that is natural to those whom He justifies by it. Nature, therefore, seeks to add some little thing to it; but whether we add circumcision or reformation, or a new life, or anything else, then is the offense of the cross ceased. It is the cross, in itself and by itself, for justification, which is God's instrument; arid not only is it His instrument, in itself and by itself, for justification, but also for purification; 'for, " they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." (Ver. 24.)

Observe, if I know the cross of Jesus, I know pardon for myself; but I know it there where my flesh was put to an open shame, a cruel, lingering, disgraceful death: for that cross was not the expression of God's feelings to Christ's own, flesh, but toward ours, when the spotless Lamb of God stood in our place in judgment. This, you will observe, is just in substance what we saw before in chapter ii. There, however, it was said to have been Paul's argument with Peter, when inclined to turn back to the law: as though he had said, Why I told Peter, the apostle of the Jews, that he and I were justified and purified from the world by the cross, not by the law; how much more then you. (Gal. 3:1.) In this fifth chapter he shows how the same thing is the theme of his own preaching; and in the sixth, how it ought to be the experience of the Galatians: three times repeating the same things in different connections.

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20. The cross, therefore, by itself as giving nothing but shame to nature, a ill not do for popular preachers; yet it is the Christian's only stay. For " as many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.... As many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them." (Chap. 6:14-16.) As though he had said, Now observe, ye Galatians, if we Jews had to leave the law, that we might get justification at the foot of the cross, and there also find power over the evil which was in us (see chap. 2) such is my preaching everywhere (chap. 5)-such is my individual experience; and there is no blessing whatever for any of you in any other way. And those who teach another way are false teachers, and teach what, though it may give them occasion to glory in your flesh, will not give you power over the world.

I would press every one to ask themselves this question, Is what I hear preached as the gospel, and on which I rest for acceptance, the cross of Christ, in itself and by itself, received simply by faith? and that it leads to victory over the flesh and world through justification given to the poor sinner, before he begins to work.

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21. The cross is the power of union to Jew and Gentile, as throwing a shade over the ordinances of the one and intellectual pride of the other. In Eph. 2:16, the cross is presented as the Lord's power over flesh in the Jew and the Gentile, both before God and toward one another. He is speaking of the union of Jews and Gentiles to Christ and to one another... That He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.... The Jew was far off from God, while his nature was boasting in the law: the Gentile was without God in the world: they find the cross before them; and the Jew that believes says, " What a deadly thing man's heart and mind and soul is! what a nothing man's strength, if this is God's estimate of me!" " Aye," says the Gentile, " it is nature, human nature's estimate this." Now, observe you the Jew is humbled, and his religious pride laid low before God; and the Gentile's sin in being without God in the world, is brought to light. "But," says the Jew further, " the cross! that's a Gentile thing. 0 Gentiles, my legal righteousness and boast in Moses is put to shame; there's my hand!" "Well," says the Gentile, "I take it heartily; for all my wisdom, I see, is foolishness."

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22. The cross was the measure of the obedience in humiliation of the Son of God. The Epistle to the Philippians skews us, in a peculiar way, the fellowship which Paul had with the brethren in Christ; it is written:-God the Son ... ... " being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.... Wherefore, my beloved, ... ... now ... ... in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Phil. 2:8-13.) As though he had said, "You see because He went so low He is lifted now so high. And observe the object-that every one may go down low before Him. This is God's object. And since such is God's object as to you, He is present to help you. Do not care then that I am away from you; yea, rather rejoice, and use it as a means of going down low before Jesus."

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23. And then he goes on to warn them against those that do not so act:-" Mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. For many walk.... as the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ," &c. (Chap. 3:17-20.) Thus teaching us that the cross is the " sine gild non" of a true Christian-in other words, " no cross, no Christian. And is not this word of comfort and of warning needed now? May each of us learn to join the apostle (2 Cor. 12:9, 10) and say, " Most gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong:" for if we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him.

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24. The cross is God's estimate of everything great and noble in the world which He will reconcile to Himself.-" Having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself." (Col. 1:20.) Here the cross of Jesus is spoken of as the way by which He in whom all fullness dwelt, marked, and stamped, as it were, " was an enemy" upon the things He would bring near to God. The full application of the passage I think is future, and refers, like Eph. 1:10, to the time of the display of the mediatorial glory. Afterward, speaking of the means and energy by which the whole present reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in one virgin espoused to Christ has taken place, speaking of the Jew, he says, neither the means nor the energy were found in the law as to us; for we know Him as-

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25. " Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross " (Col. 2:14); so that the cross being the taking out of the way of our ordinances, not giving us power to fulfill them, He that hung on the cross has all the glory of our salvation. And the estimate just referred to is thus especially connected with the Jew under Moses' law. Closely connected with this, as contrasted with it, is Heb. 6:6, " Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame."

This epistle was written to Jews, and the apostle is saying what it is for a Jew who has once recognized and acted upon what he says of himself in Col. 2:14, to turn back from Him that was upon the cross to Moses and his ordinances.

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26. The cross was the measure of the Lord's willingness to endure. In Heb. 12:2, it is written of Jesus, " Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." This, believer, is thine example. For the joy set before thee, endure the cross, despise the shame, and soon the bosom and the throne of Jesus shall be thy rest.

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27. The cross was the world's and earth's estimate of the value of the Son. What is the religion of the earth!!-Rev. 11:8, " where also our Lord was crucified" is said of Jerusalem-a sort of parting word for the Jews as a nation. Christ was crucified there, and till they repent as a nation, they are aliens from Jerusalem. And to us it is a word of warning, as reminding us that if we be faithful the worst persecution is always to be looked for from what bears the name of God in the earth, and has most self-complacency in thinking of itself, " The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we!"

Yet a little while, and the same scenes that were seen in Jerusalem at the close of our Lord's life may be seen in Christendom, at the close of the church's sojourn here. Are you ready for it?

The Death of Jesus Christ Part 1.0

What are its uses and applications, by the Spirit, in the Scripture?

THE death of the Lord was,

1. the expression of Israel's rejection of Him; and His way of getting by resurrection upon the new ground proper to the church. (Matt. 16:21.)

2. As connected with the resurrection, it was His secret to the disciples till He took the ground proper to them as the church. (Matt. 17:9.)

3. It was man's act-the Gentiles (Mark 10:34; Luke 18:33) did it, though the Jews might have first sought it while His opening. of it to His followers was the proof of His love to them. (Matt. 17:22.)

4. Yea, of His God-like care and sympathy, knowing the while their wretched selfishness. (Matt. 20:17-19.)

5. The desire of it was mentioned by Him as the proof of the nation Israel's rejection of Him. (Matt. xxviii. 38.)

6. But it was not the desire of the people only, but the planned counsel of the chief office-bearers both in religion and in state. (Matt. 26:3, 4.)

7. In the anticipation of what was before Him, His soul was sorrowful even unto death. (Ver. 38.)

8. It was the deep, settled, unwavering desire of the heads of the Government, ecclesiastical and political. (Matt. 27:1.)

10. Against which the judge three times protested, inasmuch as both himself and Herod had found no fault in Him. (Luke 23 l3-22; John 19:7.)

11. Nevertheless it is hurried to a close, though shown to be tinder the over-ruling hand of God in that the circumstances were predicted in prophecy. (Luke 23:32.)

12. Yet He died not by the death of the cross, though He died upon the cross: His suffering was cut short before the wonted time; for this, among other reasons, that the scripture might be fulfilled, "not a bone of him shall be broken." (Mark 15:44; John 19:33.)

13. Their dread of its being reported He had obtained the victory over the grave and had risen leads them to protect the place where His body is laid by means which become unquestionable evidence of his resurrection. (Matt. xxviii. 64.)

14. Yet. His victory over death and the grave by resurrection is fully evidenced; and that not only by their own guards. but by the disciples, and the angels also by whom it was first communicated to them. (Matt. 28 '7; Luke 24:5.)

15.. Though these disciples had heard, like many now, in vain the Lord's instruction concerning what was coming upon Him. (Luke 24:20; John 20:9.)

The Death Part 1.1

1. The death of the Lord was the expression of Israel's rejection of Him, and His way of getting, by resurrection, upon that new ground proper to the church-" From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." (Matt. 16:21.)

From WHAT time? From the time that, having experimentally discovered that the Jews were prepared to reject their Messiah, He had for the first time declared that " The knowledge of Himself as the Son of the living God, should become the foundation of a new kingdom, to be called the church." (Read vers. 16-20.) His being killed, therefore, is here to be looked at not only as in itself (as ver. 21) the expression of Jerusalem's. rejection of Him, and of the hatred entertained against Him by false professors of that day; but also as connected with the church in the resurrection; for it was only by resurrection that Jesus got into a place where He could gather Jew and Gentile unto Him, as now gathered in the church.

Let persons who think themselves as religious as those around them, see how the great grace of Jesus in being willing to be killed, proclaimed the utter vileness of all that looked fair in the accredited religion of that day. For where and by whom was the Lord slain? Let us observe also the effect its announcement had upon a true-hearted disciple by reason of his ignorance: "'Then [ver. 22] Peter took him, and began to rebuke him "!!!

How gracious of Jesus to open the interests of His God and Father as soon as possible to the disciples! to tell them too the subject exercising His own mind; and to invite them thus to enter with Him into the sorrow into which His faithful service to His Father and tender love toward them was leading Him! Compare Mark 8:31 Luke 9:22.

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2. As connected with the resurrection, it was His secret to His disciples, till He took the ground proper to them, as the church.-" As they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.' (Matt. 17:9.)

The next thing was to show His followers the glory and kingdom; compare chapter 16:28, and 2 Peter 1. A foretaste of the rich harvest to be reaped from His humiliation was thus given to them, to cheer and strengthen them in their sympathy with Him, and in their sorrowful anticipation of having themselves likewise to follow Him in it. For Jesus had said plainly (chap. 16:24-26), that His followers must, share the humiliation with Him. Here, then, having shown them the fruits of His humiliation that they might be the better able to sympathize with Him, He tells them not to tell others of it until his humiliation being past, theirs would have to begin: compare Mark 9:9. The vision presents the triumph of more than Jesus over death by glory, for Moses and Elias were there in it, as representatives of the church in that day of coming glory, for which we wait, at Christ's second coining. (2 Peter 1:16-21)

Surely the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us!

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3. It was man's act-the Gentiles (Mark 10:34; Luke 18:33) did it, though the Jews might have first sought it; while His opening of it to His followers was the proof of His love to them.-" And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: and they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry." (Matt. 17:22.)

Thus did He again remind them of the burden that was upon His soul, and prepare them all for it; while at the same time He confirmed to the three who had been with Him in the mount, His reason for having taken them there, and guarded them all from trusting in man.

In Mark 9:32, it is added, "But they understood not that saying [They shall kill Him; and after that He is killed, &c.,] and were afraid to ask him."

In Mark 10:34, it is said of the Gentiles, They shall mock and scourge, and shall spit upon and shall kill him; skewing that the Gentiles are guilty not only of reproaching Him, but of His death; see also Luke 18:33.

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4. Yea, of His God-like care and sympathy, knowing the while their wretched selfishness" And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again." (Matt. 20:17-19.)

What tender guardian care!, what gracious solicitations for sympathy! what fixedness of purpose! what divine self-repose and self-possession is His with whom we have to do. 0 how unlike to us-and what patience of love! His eye seeing, while He so spake, the question which was going (ver. 20) to be preferred to Him for the two most honored seats in His kingdom, and the anger, too, ready to rise in the other ten disciples against the two for whom the preeminence was sought-His own soul meanwhile saw that the glory was the fruit of the humiliation. (Read vers. 20-28.)

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5. The desire of it was mentioned by Him as the proof of the nation Israel's rejection of Him. The next passage I would revert to is-" When the husbandmen saw the son they said.... This is the heir; come, 'let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and 'cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him." (Matt. 21:38; compare Mark 12:7, 8; Luke 20:14, 15.)

Having arrived at Jerusalem, in the appointed way (chap. 21:9), riding on an ass, He was received there with shoutings, and "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" was rightly among the cries. But a little onward it appears that though the right words were used, they were wrongly used by them, for they used them only in a subordinate sense; for the words in their full import pointed out Jesus as Jehovah of Hosts-and so shall they hereafter he used; but they used them of Him simply as " the prophet of Nazareth," sent by God, and so came in His name, instead of Jehovah Himself, personally present in His own character and name.

He purges the temple (ver. 12); heals the sick in it (ver. 14); and when the chief priests begrudge Him even the lower title of Son of David (ver. 15), He will not sleep in the city, but retires from it. (Ver. 17.) On the morrow in the fruitless rig tree, He typically curses Israel (ver. 19); meets and confounds the foolish question put in the temple, " By what authority doest thou these things?" &c.; and then in parables shows, first, the hypocrisy of the religion around Him (ver. 28); and then, secondly, its selfish independence and direct opposition to God in the parable whence I have quoted. (Ver. 33.)

0 what an awful picture is this of the character of those who have the form of godliness but deny the power of it! And how beautifully does it present the implicit obedience and self-renouncing devotedness of Him who was the true servant of God.

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6. But it was not the desire of the people only, but the planned counsel of the chief office-bearers both in religion and in state.-" Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest ... ... Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtlety, and kill him." (Matt. 26:3, 4; Mark 14:1; Luke 22:2.)

Nothing short of His destruction could satisfy the malice, or still the fears of these, the conductors of His temple worship, and the rulers of His people;-as His people were in the last quotation shown by Him to be ready to kill Him, so here the same is shown in the chief leaders of the religion of that day.

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7. In the anticipation of what was before Him, His soul was sorrowful even unto death.—

" Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; tarry ye here, and

watch with me." (Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:34.)

Had sorrow killed the Lord here, He would not have been its first victim; but though many have died simply from anguish and the fear of coming trials, and though the sorrows of Jesus at this point of time were enough to have killed any man, Him it could not kill; for divine strength was in Him, and death in Him was reserved for a special purpose of grace and love; and though nature might thus faint, its cords could not break till His hour was come, and He said, " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

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8. It was the deed; settled, unwavering desire of the heads of government, ecclesiastical and political.-" When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death." (Matt. 27:1.)

How painful a proof have we here of the deep, settled, unwavering desire of the chief priests and elders of the people for the Lord's death. And this is always God's way, even to cause such delay to man in his doings and labors as to give him time to see clearly the true character of the principle and motive on which he is acting. And this, I conceive, it is which so strikingly exhibits the patience of God, both in judgment and mercy; and leaves those that walk in their own way without excuse, while oft (as doubtless in this case) it is the preparation in the consciences of many of the transgressors for the outpouring of mercy.

" How unsearchable are his ways, and his judgments past finding out."

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9. Though they could find no plea in truth, nor even by false witnesses establish a fair appearance of a plea, but were obliged to make the Lord's grace and truth (that He was the Christ the Son of the Blessed) the plea for His death." The chief priests and all the council sought for witness against Jesus to put him to death; and found none. For many bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together," &c. (Mark 14:55-65.) It is deeply instructive, in comparing this with the two citations which will follow, to see how ecclesiastical apostasy is always the leader in insult to God, persecution to the people of God, and bloodthirsty cruelty-for, in truth, nothing so thoroughly sears the conscience, hardens the mind, and steels the heart, as the form of godliness without the power.

The fuss and busy activity of outward religious worship and service, where grace and truth are not the rest of the mind and the stay of the heart, has ever destroyed even the kindlier Feelings of humanity.

In this awful scene we have the failure of the attempt of the chief priests and rulers, not only to find any fault in Jesus worthy of death, but to establish even the appearance of it by false witnesses; and then the horrid wickedness of our nature exhibited in their making His true confession, that He was the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, the ground of their clamorous concurrence.

Ah! willful human nature! how wilt thou ever, when left to thyself, turn to thine own condemnation thy hatred of grace and truth: how dost thou hate that in which all that ever was most dear to God is found, that which is the only seed of hope to thyself or others.

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10. Against which the judge three times protested, inasmuch as both himself and Herod had found no fault in Him.-" And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, said.... Behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him: no, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. He said.... the third time-Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him." (Luke 23:13-22.) " By our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." (John 19:7.)

It is striking how the want of all semblance of justice in the death of the Lord is brought out at every point. In the last quotation, we had the want of all evidence of guilt proved, in the failure of the ringleaders of the conspiracy in their attempt to get even false witness against Him, which might seem to hang well together. Here, where the conspiracy, in spite of this, is found before the judge, even he is constrained to confess that he can find no fault in Him; no nor even Herod, to whom he sent Him. Yea, and to this, his prisoner's innocence, he is constrained three times to bear witness. Nevertheless, the accusers were clamorous; and though their charge, as then advanced, was one apparently calculated only to alarm the judge, " that be said he was the Son of God," yet, in spite of all that reason might suggest against the Roman governor acting upon such a charge, or venturing to condemn the innocent One who laid such a claim, He is given up to be murdered. How strangely, in this sinful world, do things almost intuitively combine together against God-God's Son was in the world, the fallen world, lying under Satan: as its prince, surely neither it nor he would allow God's Son a place in it, iii its then state of alienation from God. The intelligence of man, reason, &c., &c., seem to man all important points in connection with man's conduct under given circumstances, but, in fact, these things do but lie upon the surface to beguile those that lean upon their own understandings and judge by the sight of the eye: to faith, the deeper governing principles are open, and it can see how these now, as in the case we are considering, will rule somehow or other, and, so far as this world is concerned, always act against God. The high priests, the elders, the people of Israel, Herod and Pontius Pilate, had each one of them the very strongest reason to pursue the opposite course, but, some in one way, some in another, all had their minds brought round by the master-mind that ruled them to murder the Lord. Poor, blind nature! How blind, though ever boasting of its power of perception and judgment!

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11. Nevertheless it is hurried to a close, though shown to be under the over-ruling hand of God, in that the circumstances were predicted in prophecy.-" There were also two other, malefactors, led with him to be put to death." (Luke 23:32.)

Two things strike me here-first, the overruling hand of God in so leading their malice, which was all their own, as that they should fulfill the prophecy in Isa. 53, in associating Jesus with the malefactors; secondly, the rapidity of the action, He is seized upon unlawfully one night, and, in spite of all Roman law and justice, executed the next day. Barabbas had not been so treated by man; neither were James, Peter, nor Paul afterward allowed to be so treated. A longer interval at least was granted to them, though denied to Him who was the Prince of life.

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12. Yet He died not by the death of the cross, though He died upon the cross. His suffering was cut short before the wonted time; for this, among other reasons, that the scripture might be fulfilled, " a bone of him shall not be broken " -" Pilate marveled if he were already dead, and, calling the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead." (Mark 15:44.) " When they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs." (John 19:33.)

Rapid was man's wicked movement in its hurried enmity against the Lord to murder Him! And He yielded Himself to their hands; yet when all was accomplished that man could do, He was content and lingered not for the usual death of the cross-Having cried with a loud voice, He yielded up the ghost. In Psa. 69:20, we read, Reproach hath broken my heart; and it seems as though this indeed was the immediate cause of the Lord's death. Sorrow upon sorrow had burst in upon Him, when, having cried with a loud voice, He ceased to breathe. That it was unusual for one crucified so soon to die, is evident from the first of the above quotations. And one reason for its being so is seen in the second; for it was written, " a bone of him shall not be broken "-so graciously had God, by the predictions of His prophets, set a stamp upon every step of the path through which His beloved was to pass; and thus not only skewing how greatly He loved to ponder all those steps of the lonely way of His Son, but how anxiously He desired to give every confirmation possible to them that should draw near to Him through Jesus.

" Lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, he is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first." (Matt. 27:64.)

Was this conscience at work, or was it the deeper plan of the enemy, forecasting what would be the issue, and trying to anticipate the report of the resurrection, and by such an anticipatory report to discredit it when it was really reported? That it was from beneath is too evident-and how completely in this, as in other things, does evil outwit itself. In guarding against the report of an event they gather witnesses to behold it. Yea, they make the seal fast and the guard sure, in the full complacency, doubtless, of their own minds; but both the one and the other became the unquestionable witnesses against themselves in the result: for it is but a little onward and we read-

" Go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead: and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you." (Matt. 28:7.) " Why seek ye the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5.)

But all their precautions were in vain-His was the mastery over death and the grave; and no sooner had He lain there the appointed time than its power was broken and the joyful news spread abroad-He is risen! Welcome news indeed to one who understands the resurrection; for in it, as we shall see, the whole proof of the value and acceptance of His sacrifice was presented. It is a sorrowful thing to think how few now know the value and importance of the resurrection. I do not mean that they do not assent to it as a point in their creed-surely every Christian does-yet very few see it and know it themselves in the spirit before God, so as for it to be a reality with themselves, as in the presence of God, and not merely a point of mental agreement with men around them.

"Our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death." (Luke 24:20.) " For as yet they knew not the scripture that he must rise again from the dead." (John 20:9.)

The entire unpreparedness of the disciples for the event of His death, notwithstanding all that Jesus had said to them to prepare them for it, is evidenced by these two passages. Their heads full of Jewish notions and hopes about the land and themselves, there seemed no room for the words of the Lord with them, it was new truth to them, and instead of laying up in their hearts till further light might dawn upon it, it seems to be hardly attended to by them. Surely we may be warned by this; and the more so, as there is not the same excuse for such conduct in us as there was in them-Jews-and without that deeper gift of the Spirit proper to us as Christians-living too in the very day of transition from one dispensation to another-such a thing in them can be more accounted for than the almost similar state we find now in many, as to those truths which open to them from the word, or may be heard by them from others. Surely the truth which has been brought to light within the last thirty years in England from the word, has brought with it deep responsibility to all that have heard it. May the Lord deliver us from all blindness and hardness of heart!

The Death of Jesus Christ Part 2.0

1. DEATH, powerless to the Lord because it was revealed in scripture as His appointed passage into conferred blessing. (Acts 2:23.)

2. His death and rejection the measure of Israel's sin. (Acts 3:14, 15.)

3. Victory through the Lord, in resurrection over death, the preaching of the apostles, and that which offended the religionists of that day. (Acts 4:2.)

4. His death and rejection laid home as the sin of the ecclesiastical rulers. (Acts 4:10, 11.)

5. And so, to the apostles, that which neutralized the commandments of the priests and rulers. (Acts 5:29.)

6. Testified of by Stephen as the expression and climax of the nation Israel's ways before God. (Acts 7:52.)

7. The special way of blessing to any beyond Israel. (Acts 8:32.)

8. As connected with remission of sins to them that believe, and the office of Judge of quick and dead, the testimony which let. in the Gentiles by Peter. (Acts 10:38)

9. His death and resurrection to Israelites out of the land, and to Gentiles, the basis of fuller and more gracious testimony than to Jews in Jerusalem, compare xvii. 3. (Acts 13:28, 34, 38.)

10. The resurrection of the Lord out of death, the proof of His being Judge of the world, and, therefore, the subject of derision to those wise in their own conceits. Acts 17:31, 32.

11. The death of the Lord reckoned among men as His end, and the assertion of the resurrection by the apostles attributed to madness, and the whole considered a question subject to intellect. (Acts 25:10.)

12. Testimony thereunto the sure place for the presence and power of the Spirit and of boldness. (Acts 26:23.)

13. Victory over death the proof of Jesus being the Son of God, upon which all the church's blessing hangs. (Rom. 1:4.)

14. And the pattern to which in principle every saint is conformed. (Rom. 4:23.)

15. The death of Christ God's mode of commending His love toward us. In all our weakness, ungodliness, hostile character and sinfulness, God gave His Son to die for us, and thus are we reconciled. (Rom. 5:6, 8.)

16. The Lord's death, that through which the saint is free from sin, grace counting us one with Him in it by the Spirit. (Ram. vi. 2-13.)

17. The Lord's death, in like manner, our exemption from the power and claim of the law. (Roma vii. 4.)

18. The Lord's triumph through God over death, the pledge of the perfection of quickening power to them 'that have the Spirit. (Rom. 8:11.)

19. His death the clearing from all condemnation, as the resurrection is the proof thereof. (Rom. 8:34.).

20. Therein as the expression of God's grace is the contrast of the law, which was God's search into what was in man. (Rom. 10:6-9.)

21. Christ's object herein the basis of the disciples' general conduct. (Rom. 14:8.)

22. And His constraint in brotherly love. (Rom. 14:15.)

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1. " Him.... ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death; because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. For David speaketh concerning him," Sic. (Acts 2:23-25.) To the sin of Israel's cruel rejection of the Lord is here contrasted God's action toward Him so rejected. They slew Him, God raised Him: and then the cause of this, in the Lord's high personal glory. He loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that He should be holden of it. For David speaketh, &c. The hindrance to death's power, as here assigned, is not the innate power of the Lord, as we have it in Rom. 1, declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, but the personal glory and dignity ascribed to Him by the counsel of God as the one witnessed of by the Spirit in David; and not in David only, but in all the scriptures. There is no truth more manifest to the spiritual mind, or more important to the student of scripture than this, that Jesus is the sum and substance of the Spirit's testimony in scripture. His name the clue and thread to what (if this is not seen) are to our poor foolish minds the mazes and obscurities of scripture. Reader, when you study scripture what do you look for in it? Testimony to Jesus, or something about yourself? If the latter, the book will be a dark book to you, for the saint's portion all flows through Jesus; no scripture touches the saint save immediately through Jesus, and if you will thrust self forward to see how much can be forced to apply to it, so losing sight of Jesus as the center of it all, you will find a poor-poor portion.

What I learn here is, death powerless to the Lord, because represented in scripture as His appointed passage into conferred blessing. May we adore the grace which in God counseled, and which in Christ undertook, and which in the Spirit revealed, such a path for Him to obtain a glory He could share with us.

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2. " Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses." (Acts 3:14, 15.) The sin of the nation Israel seems strikingly measured in this context. Israel's God, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of their fathers, had sent His Son Jesus Christ among them; they had betrayed Him, and denied Him, and prevented Pilate's desire to free Him. This one, whom they had denied, was the Holy One and the Just, though they had preferred a murderer to Him; and He was also the Prince of life, though they had killed Him. Everything which ought to have bound Israel broken and despised, and everything which could magnify their rejection of Him found in the act. And yet, as we see in the whole context, this very sin of theirs, this very slaying of the Prince of life, was but the occasion of fresh grace. As the, rock, when smitten, poured forth its needed and refreshing streams in the wilderness, so here this murdered Prince of life is presented as the One through whom there, were not only gifts of healing, but the present proffer to Israel of all those things of which God had spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. Who can see the lingering of the heart of this Prince of life, who, though rejected by Israel, still sent the first testimony of His most highly honored servants to it with such proffers, and not be bowed down with the fullness of His grace and goodness? without seeing, indeed, that He was and is full of grace and truth?

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3. " Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead." (Acts 4:2.) This chapter records the first movement of the ecclesiastical rulers against the truth after the resurrection. It says they were Sadducees: this, in measure, accounts for their hatred to the resurrection, but not entirely; for the doctrine here taught as the resurrection from the dead was not merely the general resurrection which their antagonist party the Pharisees held-which would have been rather the resurrection of the dead. This latter was simply that there would be a resurrection of the dead, that is, of all men, but the former was a much more specific and blessed thing, even that there was through Jesus a resurrection from among the dead-that is, the first resurrection. So that I conceive it was not the mere bruit of the resurrection which these Sadducees feared might strengthen and be upheld by the faction to which they were opposed, but in addition thereto, the presenting so alluring and winning a hope before the people, one too so full of grace and blessedness as that God would grant to those that followed the banner of Christ here below to arise first, (1 Thessalonians) of which the resurrection of the Lord Himself was a sort of pledge and type. And this surely it is which is of such power to the saint when known, and which is so little known in our own day among the saints. How few comparatively even know or are established in the truth of the first resurrection. Reader, art thou? If not, surely thou hast overlooked one of the richest fruits of Jesus' resurrection and of God's grace, and hast one thick fold of the veil of nature's darkness still over thy mind. And if this were more clearly preached, would not both the manifest tendency of it and the practical results in them that believe lead to more persecution? Nothing but this hope will give victory over the world, because nothing but it enables the Christian to see the worthlessness of the world.

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4. "Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him doth this man stand here before you whole." (Acts 4:10.) In chapter 2 we had Peter's testimony to the death and resurrection of Jesus as the only way of salvation for the remnant. In chapter 3 the same is again brought forward, as the only way by which the covenanted blessings of the nation can reach them; and in this fourth chapter, when brought up before the ecclesiastical rulers, their testimony is the same, presenting the miracle of the healed body of him that was lame, as the testimony of the grace of Him whom these builders in their folly had rejected. " This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

How different was testimony in the apostles' day from what men count preaching now-a-days! They were content to make the simple statement of the few facts connected with the Lord, and to reiterate them in all simplicity of speech, leaving the matter then in the hand of the Spirit. The power was His, and if He gave witness with the word it was enough to quicken any soul, and in itself enough to draw forth the enmity of the heart of man where not bowed down by grace. Now the stores of intellect must be searched to deck and dress the truth, to commend it, if possible, to the flesh, and at all events to present something with it which the flesh can value and appreciate, so as to pardon in some measure the feeble covered statement of truth. It is singular that when the apostles, in the full power of the Spirit, should have thought the naked truth, pure and by itself, the best, men, at the close of the dispensation, should have discovered that there is danger in administering it without some medium of fleshly talent or wisdom.

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5. " We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up: Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him." (Acts 5:29-32.)

How simple and yet how beautiful is the spirit and conduct of the disciple as here exhibited in the apostles! They exhibit no self-will, they plead no liberty of their own to do as they like, they murmur not against the injustice exercised upon them; but they simply take their stand as in their known recognized responsibility to God. God was in all their thoughts; and the single eye toward Him could see no intricacy, no difficulty as to their conduct or course here below. In the first place, it could see this truth, and to the creature it is a universal truth-" We ought to obey God rather than men." And how does this simplicity of subjection to God always clear the path for him that walks in it! See it here. The eye which has just, in grateful dependence, looked up to God as its only guide and center, next turns on these ecclesiastical rulers, and, gazing upon them in the light of God, and notwithstanding all the paraphernalia of priestly array, and the manifestation of power and rule, what does it read?-" The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree." Thus it detects, first their opposition to God in His works and ways- to the God of the fathers of the nation and to Jesus the Lord; then the character of the opposition, murderers and man-slayers; and then the continued contrariety of their present conduct to the grace presented. " Him hath God exalted ... ... to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness." These things alone would have sufficed to have shown to the eagle eye of faith, that the rulers' command, however apparently accredited, was powerless; but much more so, when this same single eye passes onward to measure and estimate the position and standing of themselves, the apostles. "And we are his witnesses.... and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him." Such passages surely are very precious, as showing the quick scent and keen eye of the fear of the Lord, and so presenting one of the great provisions God has made for the protection of those that are His. A provision, however, powerless, save when we really walk near to Him.

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6. " Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which skewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers." (Acts 7:52.)

The death of Jesus, though the climax of Israel's sin, was not in character a new sin with them. The report of His coming had been enough, in times that were passed, to make that-nation abhor and murder all the prophets sent to them. What an enmity this bespeaks! not only that when He appeared they should murder Him, but such inveterate rancor, that even ere they saw Him, any one that prophesied of His coming was put to death! This their bloodthirsty subjection to him who had been a murderer from the beginning, is here charged home by Stephen upon the council as having been exhibited against the Lord, and as the nation's crowning sin. And him they murdered-the first martyr in the church. It may be well for us to remember that in Israel God was making trial of human nature as such—-and therefore in their conduct we see what Gentiles would have done, had opportunity been given to them: for the trial in Israel was, as we have said, of human nature [our nature], as such.

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7. " He was led as a sheep to the slaughter: and like a lamb dumb before her shearer, so opened he not his mouth." (Acts 8:32.)

At every turn, under all circumstances of testimony, how does the humiliation of the Lord unto death stand prominently forward. In the case before us, the eunuch was reading Esaias when Philip was bidden to go and join himself to the chariot. In considering the last quotation we saw how the murderous spirit, which issued in the betrayal and murder of the Lord was the permanent trait in Israel's character, and if so of human nature. Here, on the contrary, the universal applicability of that death as a cure begins to open upon us. In itself the ground of Israel's rejection in nature, it was yet, through grace, the open door for the Lord to deal in grace with Israel. But grace was beyond promise, higher up, as it were, nearer the fountain-head, and as open to Gentiles in itself as to the Jews. The promises and covenants, they were Israel's; but grace, which alone secured them through the death of Jesus, knew no such restraints; and in this very context we get it, as it were, traveling in the gladdened heart of the eunuch into the far country of the Ethiopians, so bringing before us the first thoughts of that wider range, apart from. Jerusalem, which grace was about to take. In the record of the preaching to the Samaritans, the fact of the preaching is merely stated, none of the particulars of it; but both here and in the next citation, where the circle of testimony is widening, the humiliation of the Lord unto death is distinctly mentioned. I think this observable: for the mercy to the Samaritans was in their being noticed at all by the Spirit; and as we see, from our. Lord's conduct with the woman of Samaria, they were not reckoned as being altogether and entirely upon different ground to that on which Israel in His day stood but to the Gentiles, as such, He had nothing to say until rejected unto death by Israel, whereby He gained in resurrection the place of blessing whom He would.

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8. " God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.... whom they [the Jews] slew and hanged on a tree: him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly: not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before Of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins." (Acts 10

Such was, in part, the testimony of Peter to Cornelius and the Gentiles when first, through the grace of God, he went to open their way into the kingdom. It is remarkable, that the office of the Lord, consequent upon death and resurrection, of being the appointed Judge of all men; is mentioned first by Peter here, and secondly by Paul at Athens-that is, in both cases when bearing testimony to the Gentiles. I think it important as shewing how God's Spirit in testimony would ever act, upon the recognizable responsibility of those to whom He speaks. With the Jew there were other and greater, and nearer glories in the Messiah, the responsibilities of which they had neglected and despised, which therefore were taken up. With the Gentiles, no such deposit as the law or the oracles of God rested, and therefore we find, in the first chapter of Romans, creation and its testimony: here the office of Judge of quick and dead, together with the power of pardon in the Lord's name when received, and in Acts 17 creation, God's display of providence, combined with this same office of judge, pressed upon the attention of the Gentiles. It is of interest, as showing how God, while never leaving His own principles of judgment, does not arraign man upon them abstractedly, but brings them all to bear upon man's own mind and conscience, arguing each case as it were in the arena of man's own mind, so as to leave all, upon their own principles, without excuse. From the context before us it appears that Peter knew that Cornelius and they that were with him had heard of the life of Jesus, through whom God sent preaching peace. His death is presented as Israel's sin and the contrast of God's estimate of Him raising Him from the dead and setting Him as Judge of all, yet as now speaking peace and forgiveness to them that received Him. It is a solemn thought, reader! that there is a judgment to come, and oh! how blessed a one, that He that is the ordained Judge is He through whose name is now preached remission of sins to all that believe, while surely the same is a most solemn and fearful thought to them that believe not, that they will meet in the person of the Judge the very one whose grace and truth they have despised and rejected.

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9. " They that dwelt in Jerusalem.... though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain." (Acts 13:28.) " But God raised him from the dead." (Ver. 30.) " And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David." (Ver. 34.) "Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." (Vers. 38, 39.)

In this context, we get the testimony, in part, of Paul; when sent forth with Barnabas, by the Holy Ghost, from Antioch for the preaching of the gospel, he was testifying, before the Jews of the dispersion, in Antioch in Pisidia. What heart-felt pity and unbounding grace, does this looking after Israel on the part of our God bespeak! Jerusalem had killed all the prophets; yet the Son would come to them if haply they might repent. Him they crucified, yet, His pity and love they could not quench. Risen from the grave He sought no revenge upon His enemies, but in grace caused the word of the value of faith in His name to flow abroad " beginning at Jerusalem." Three times rejected in His witnesses, and so driven as it were out of the city, His eye is still in pity upon His kindred according to the flesh; and His grace allows not even the servant, whom He had formed as the Apostle of the Gentiles, to get his full range or proper sphere of service till Israel will have none of his testimony. The deep, the unwearied character of His love, while any door of hope remains untried is very precious!

It is remarkable, if we compare this scale and the auditory, presenting Jews, out of the land, and Gentiles, to see how much more full the testimony is to the blessedness of the results of the Lord's death and resurrection than where the testimony was given in Jerusalem. The reason is obvious. The evidence and facts of the case are stated, and the sin laid home upon Jerusalem, its inhabitants, and their rulers; but no charge of sin against those present (though all alike before God guilty of the fact) is pressed, but the glad tidings of the fulfillment of the promise made to the fathers announced, even of Jesus risen from the grave. Gladsome news to Israelites, for it was on this wise God said, " I will give you the sure mercies of David "-though they knew it not, the blood of the covenant opening grace to them and securing every blessing of dominion, righteousness, and power to them-that blood, I say, flowed in the veins of Jesus while on earth. Gladsome news therefore to them that it had been poured forth and yet Himself risen in the power of an endless life because the Son of God, ready and able to dispense all the blessings which were His own as Son of David! and gladsome news to the poor Gentiles, in whatever way looked at, for when David's Son stands in glory, the distributer of these sure mercies, then shall be brought to pass the saying -" Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people." And even ere that, to Israelites and Gentiles alike, there is this blessed word: "Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses."

How completely, how perfectly does this, poor sinner, whoever thou art, meet thy case! the only door of hope, a door into immediate present rest! What words could be stronger than these -" and by him all that believe ARE justified from all things?" May God grant thee, reader, to know this as true of thyself. If thou believest in Him, "thou art justified from all things." What Messed grace! And if one who has believed in Him, but yet will not admit the value of belief in Him to be so great as this, even complete present justification from all things, if one such reads this, let such attend to the word which follows-the sure result of unbelief and the tendency of all those doubts which so many, in so ungracious a way, cherish, and God's sentence against them.

" Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you."

Compare also with this, chapter 17:3: "Paul.... reasoned.... opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead."

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10. " God.... now commandeth all men everywhere to, repent: because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter." (Acts 17:31.)

Such was part of the testimony of Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision, to the Gentiles at Athens. The reference to the Lord in the character of " the judge " is of interest, as was noticed in connection with chapter x. 38. There Peter, speaking to the Gentiles in measure acquainted with Jewish worship, presents Him as ordained Judge of quick and dead; here as a " Judge of the world in righteousness." The testimony begins with the declaration of God as Creator of the world and all things in it, and as witnessed thus by all His works as well in the originating of them as in the sustaining of them daily and hourly, and then passes on to the assertion before us.

The character of the Lord's resurrection (as is seen in Rom. 1) declared Him to be the Son of' God with power: and to this Son, as we read in John, all judgment was committed. "-The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father." '(John 5:22.) In this way, the resurrection of the Lord becomes a pledge of the coming judgment to all: for His victory over death proved and spewed who and what He was, even the eternal Son of the Father, and to Him belongs the judgment to come. How humbling the contrast between the thoughts of God and man! The victory of Jesus over the grave and death, and this victory, the way of all blessing to poor lost man, was God's high wisdom and glory. A full expression of divine wisdom, and power, and grace was in it. The joy of God was in it, even of the Father; and He who was the Son rejoices in it, as meeting His Father's mind, fulfilling His own glory; the happy subject of testimony to the Spirit, the theme, triumph to His saints, and of praise to every power that loved Him. The blessed Spirit found rest and satisfaction there at last in connection with man and with mankind; the church also led by Him was tasting of its sweetness, and the proud persecuting Pharisee had left his all in the sense of the joy of it to go and tell the wondrous tale. But when they beard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. Alas, poor nature! in self-sufficiency ready to laugh at that which God glories in; and even in its better and more decent mood postponing to some more convenient season the troublous matter where alone its peace with God, for time or eternity, could be found. And but for grace so should we have been; but that same distinguishing grace which reaches unto us was present then also, and we read " Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed." Blessed God of all grace, how is thine hand ever ready to save!

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11. " But bad certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive." (Acts 25:19)

In this context Festus is explaining to Agrippa Paul's ease; and we get in this, their intercourse,-no unfair specimen of the world's estimate of the death and resurrection of the Lord: for what Festus in simplicity felt, they do practically likewise, so many as have not known the quickening power of the Spirit. Festus looked upon the death of the " one Jesus " as the close and end of the matter as to Him; and upon the assertion of Paul about resurrection as something peculiar to himself, and upon the whole matter as involving nice questions, connected with superstition, of which it was very hard to make anything definite, though from circumstances, it might be needful to twist and turn the subject about till something reason could lay hold of could be made of it. I fear greatly that professing Christendom knows the death and resurrection of the Lord much in the same way. Circumstances place the subject before nominal Christians, and their reason runs upon them and converses-yet always, like Festus, considering their connection with these subjects to be of an official character; they are born Christians, Christians by country, nationally believers, and so it is unreasonable quite to overlook these subjects-though they, alas, have conscience enough not to make them, as did Festus, so familiar as to be the topic of interest to any coming visitor. The poor worldling, and the poor (so called) evangelical, seem to me sadly represented by Festus and Agrippa. May our souls humbly adore the grace that has saved us from such hardness and such folly; and has placed us, through grace, with the third party in the scene-in fellowship with Paul, suffering for Jesus' sake.

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12. " I continue.... witnessing.... that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first to rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people, and to the Gentiles." (Acts 26:23.)

Called upon by Festus and Agrippa, Paul is here giving his testimony; in doing which he relates his heavenly vision and call to the apostleship, and the result-that he, having obtained help of God, continued witnessing of that which was the burden of the prophets, and Moses, even "that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people, and to the Gentiles." How clear, how strong, how distinct the disciple's assurance when in testimony; how blessedly contrasted with the worldling in his estimate of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Surely, when we see the power of the Spirit in the apostle, in such positions, we may take courage, for the same Spirit who witnessed in him is ours, and is by very nature above all that can be found in circumstances to oppose him. And it is this which most especially strikes me in this context-the invincible boldness of Paul, though alone, when testifying to the death and resurrection of the Lord; though Festus might say with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad,".... or Agrippa but add, " Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian;" and though there was none to stand by him, on earth, still, the Lord stood by him in power and might, because he stood near the Lord in witnessing to His death and resurrection.

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13. " His [God's] Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." (Rom. 1:3, 4.)

The connection of this verse with the substance of the Epistle is very close. The Epistle might be entitled, to distinguish it from the other Epistle, as " a vindication of Christianity," for it not only presents a most comprehensive summary of all the doctrine connected with the dispensation, but also meets and answers all the difficulties which might arise upon the first observation of the entirely new ground taken by the dispensation. The epistle naturally divides itself into parts. The first, contained in chapters 3 to verse 10, shows the entire fall, bankruptcy, and condemnation of nature. The second (containing chapter 3:19 to end, and chapters 4, 5.) argues the grace of God, through faith, as the mode God had chosen in which to show out His love. Part third (comprised in chapters 6, 17) argues the question of law as bearing upon one so found by faith of grace. Part fourth, chapter 8, the blessing, in all its fullness, into which such an one is brought. Part fifth (that is, chapters 9, 10, and 11.), the bearing of this upon dispensation, in which it is shown that the Jewish dispensation passed, though the remnant according to the election in

it stood, and that so this dispensation likewise shall pass, making way for another, though God will not forget His own in it, thus establishing the difference, all important as it is; between God's objects in revealing grace upon earth, for time, and for eternity. He reveals it among men, and in time it proves how irreparable man is-no dispensation which grace has formed in man's hand has stood or will stand; but though such be in time the issue, in eternity it will be found that they that were in Christ have stood, and are there presented as fruits of its blessing. And then the epistle closes with part fifth, a beautiful outline of the duties of the saved. To many a high-minded self-sufficient Gentile, it never may have occurred that there was a difficulty, and that a very great one, likely to occur to any mind, as to God's dealing to all with the Gentiles upon an equal footing with the Jews. Alas, so high-minded are many that they would monopolize the whole interest of the Spirit in scripture to self, and entirely forget, not only God's ancient people, whose are the covenants, but the Lord Himself also, and hardly look at or care for any of His work, save that which bears upon self. Yet to one who knows how the Old Testament prophets are full of the testimony of the earthly glory of Messiah, in connection with the house of Israel and the land, surely the heavenly blessing now thrown open to both Jew and Gentile alike, must be a strange, and a new, and a wondrous thing. The case is argued at length as to dispensation in chapters 9, 10, and 11, but the whole principle of the answer as to God, and Israel, and us, is presented in these short words, "Jesus Christ.... made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead."

Messiah, a Jew of the royal family of David, dead. And how so? Rejected by Israel-and in His death that glory bursting forth, which plainly told that He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. For in death His glory shone forth as one that had life in Himself; and that He was the very Son of God was declared by the resurrection from the dead. Of none, save Him, could it ever be said, " Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may 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." Of no one could this ever be said save of Him, who being indeed Son of man, was at the same time very and indeed Son of God. Jesus rose not in the power of that life which is in the blood, but in the power of that which was and is His own as Son of God -as the life-giving Spirit. And this is what is referred to here; for though as man He was called " the Son of the Most High," as having been conceived by the virgin Mary, by the overshadowing of the power of the Holy Ghost-it is not that which is here referred to in this passage, but that deeper, and fuller, and more wondrous glory which was His, as the eternal Son-one in the Trinity; one with the Father and the Holy Ghost; God over all blessed for evermore: and His resurrection distinctly marked Him off from all others as the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness-His in Sonship. His being dead who was the heir of David's throne, showed the ground of Israel's rejection, while His resurrection set Him in a position to deal in grace with all whom He would; in that there was no kindred tie with earth, and though, indeed, the sure mercies of David were thus, and thus alone, secured; this was simply because Israel lay in the purpose of God to bless them; for the position obtained by resurrection was one binding Him by ties alone to God, and His purposes. I would notice, also, that the effulgence of the divine glory here brought out in Him, according to the spirit of holiness, was inseparable from the church's true standing. His death closed the door, for a time at least, on Israel; His resurrection set Him in a new place, where he could deal with things, not according to earthly order, but in prerogative grace, and that to Gentile equally with Jew; while that Son-ship, according to the spirit of holiness, herein manifest, was the basis and formative principle of the church's hope, standing and blessing, as is most largely seen in chapter 8 of this epistle, and in the whole of the Ephesians.

Thus it was death which became the Lord's path into the position in which we know Him, and, in His victory over it, the means of manifesting that divine power and glory in Him, without which the church has no place, or portion, or even being.

The Death Part 2.14

14. " Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification." (Rom. 4:23.)

In this passage and chapter we may see the saints conforming to the principle exhibited in the Lord. He got into His position of blessing and of exercising the power of life-giving Spirit, through death by resurrection-in this it was that the power and glory that were in Him shined out. Now in this fourth chapter, we find the father of the faithful, as the representative of the whole family, assimilated in measure to the principle fully carried out in the Lord. And so is it with every believer. The promise is given to us in all the barrenness and unfruitfulness of surrounding circumstances, and the sentence of death passes over every means in us, or around: yea, but we have the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, hut in Him that raised the dead. But Abraham's faith was in God, and nothing could touch or remove that; the deadness of Sarah's womb, the suggestion of nature about his own great age; none of these things even came near to touch his faith. They might, indeed, have distracted him from faith, and led him to give up hope, if rested upon, but the ground of hope they could never touch; that was in God: God had promised, and He was faithful, and able, and true: but they did not prevent his faith, for it also was of God, and had, therefore, in it that resiliency of life, which being of God, gave it. Oh that the saints remembered this more surely, there would be less fear and trembling than there is in many, as the aspect darkens around them. Perhaps, with all its self-complacency about religion, there never was an age in which there was so little trust in God as the present!

And how does Abraham's faith shame us: he had, as it were, only a promise to rest on, though it were the promise of the faithful and true God-the way how God could be just while dealing with a sinner and imputing righteousness to him, was not then fully opened-to us it is, and that as a thing once done and accomplished forever. He was delivered on account of our offenses, and has been raised on account of our justification, and, as it were, in the very presence of this past work, God says, Trust yourselves in all your wretchedness to Me, and I will clear you. Shame, shame, shame, on the unbelieving believers, who still doubt. Surely, to do so is not only to make God a liar, but to give a judgment, as it were, against the worth and value of that death and resurrection so presented, and to grieve the Spirit.

The Death Part 2.15

15. " When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled we shall be saved by his life." (Rom. 5:6-10.)

Is there any who, in false humility, would doubt the love of God and Christ, because of what he is in himself? Let such an one read this passage, and see how, as it were, the Lord, the Spirit, gathers the group of them that are without strength, the ungodly, the enemies, sinners, as those to whom He would tell how, in the death of Jesus, God sought to commend His love to us. Wondrous, surely, the love as discovered in God towards us; but more wondrous still, how amid all the discouragements to it in us, it should yet not only not be able to shut itself up, but seek to commend itself to us. To how many an object does a man feel pity, aye and love too, to whom he will never attempt to communicate it, for to do so he would prove a desire of fellowship, and the recognition of power of response in the object loved; and surely our God's seeking to commend His lave to us does tell His desire of fellowship, while, where it is made known, it gives the power, through grace, of response, and we, reconciled by the death of His Son, love Him because He first loved us.

The Death Part 2.16

16. " How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." (Rom. 6:2-13.)

The argument of Paul seems here to be towards the proving by God's estimate of the death of Christ for the church, and the church's fellowship by the Spirit in that estimate, that the church is free from sin, and so free as to have no pretext for continuing to live in it. If God's object, says he, was, that as sin hath reigned unto death even so might grace reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord, no one can say, We will continue in sin that grace may abound: And then the context quoted follows-the grand truth of which seems to be that our exemption from the charge and guilt of sin comes by God reckoning us dead with Christ by the Spirit: being planted in the likeness of His death, we were baptized thereinto and buried with Christ by baptism into death. That is, God, having given to us the Spirit of Christ Jesus, looks upon us as one with Him, and so imputes to us all that was true of Christ. Now He died under the charge and the power of sin imputed-but when He had died it had done its all, and being raised from the dead He dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him-for He liveth unto God. And now, if all this has been done by God to His Son for the church, let every member of it reckon himself dead indeed unto sin, so as neither to allow it to reign in the mortal body by obedience to its lusts, nor to yield the members of the body as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. The whole weight of the argument seems to me to turn upon the mode in which the church got her freedom from sin, in the power and guilt of it, even by being identified of God, through grace in the Spirit, with that which was the all that the charge and power of sin imputed could effect upon Christ Jesus.

This passage has often been taken as if it applied to the death of Christ as presented to the world. That such a view involves a complete violation of the characteristic marks of the whole context, as well as very unsound doctrine, is plain. Perhaps the saints do not look enough at the inseparable union of their blessing and the life of the Son of God. If we know Him we must have His Spirit, and this Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, and identifies us fully in all things with Him, so that God looks upon us by virtue of it, as having that true of us which personally was only true of Him whose Spirit, we have received, and thus retrospectively we are said to have been crucified together with, died together with, and been buried together with, Him, as well as quickened together with Him: for though the life that was in the Lord was not fully manifested to man till the resurrection, when He became manifest the second Adam; yet I need not say that He was not intrinsically and personally, after the resurrection, other than what He was from the beginning, the only begotten Son of the Father, the Lord of all glory. The death of the Lord in this place seems presented as the place of the saints' and church's clearance from all the charge and power of sin.

The Death Part 2.17

17. " Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God," &c. (Rom. 7:4.)

In the last citation the death of the Lord was shown as the means of clearing the church in principle, from under sin; here it is presented as having the same effect as to law, and on this simple ground, that the claim of the law having been met by Christ fully, they who are looked upon as one with Him are free from it. This to the individual believer is of immense importance in connection with obedience; for as long as the mind of the christian turns to law, as though it still rested upon him, he will be under that which stirs up the evil of the flesh, and, God knows, we need not either that, or the sorrow consequent upon it, in addition to the difficulties of our walk. I would only further notice that the expression, " that ye should be married to another," should rather be "that you should be for another," for it refers to the saints' present connection with the Lord, and that is one of espousal, not yet marriage. And again, in verse 6, " that being dead wherein we were held " should rather be " that we being dead to that wherein we were held," as a closer and more literal rendering, as well as one more consistent with the sense of the context.

The Death Part 2.18

18. " If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." (Rom. 8:10,-11.)

What blessed consolation and comfort is here! Having in the seventh chapter traced the practical effect upon the mind, and its thought of regeneration as in a Jew, so regenerated, considering the question of law, and then shown how sorrow and depression were the result, here we find the apostle presenting, as it were, the same individual, with the question of law disposed of, in the blissful meditation upon the work of redemption wrought for us by Christ. The question of regeneration had turned his thought inward, and then the question of the spiritual character of the law had scared him: redemption lifts up his mind from self to Christ, to all accomplished by Him, and no Condemnation established-and more than this, it meets the very thoughts awakened about the body of sin, and death in us proves that our bodies are so, or Christ need not have died; and throws the mind therefore not upon anything in self, but upon the faithfulness of God, who, having delivered Christ for our sins raised Him again, and will quicken into newness of life all those who make that death the ground of their acceptance before God. And thus, believer, as thou well knowest, is described both thine experience and thy hope as to thy body-it is dead because of sin; but it shall be quickened because the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ from the dead dwells in thee.

The Death Part 2.19

19. " Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." (Rom. 8:34.)

0 that the saints more simply understood the death of Jesus in this light! For then, instead of the uncertainty of guilt being removed, as we find in so many, there would be a clear, and steady, and abiding joy in their exemption from all death. No saint reads the death of Christ aright, but he who reads in it " no condemnation for me;" and this not simply as a surmise, or a hope, but with that certainty, as here expressed, as to enable him to challenge a condemner, while himself standing in the midst of those whom he knows not only seek to condemn but proffer those charges with indefatigable perseverance. Let Satan, let the world, let conscience condemn as they may and will, if their sentence is contrary to that of God, well may the believer say, " Who is he that condemneth?" And the more so, because the power of his heart in this challenge is not in the thought of innocence from sinfulness, but in the fact of the very fullest expression God could give, of having seen all his sin, yet met it and put it away, in and by the death of Christ. And He having died under sin once, now lives in resurrection, and His very life is the pledge and proof that there is no condemnation, and no one that believes in Him can say, " I am guilty still," without disparaging and denying the value of His sacrifice, and arraigning the truth and grace of God's testimony about it.

The Death Part 2.20

20. " The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, ... ... Who shall descend into the deep? that is to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what saith it ' If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." (Rom. 10:6-9.)

The substance of what was said upon the last quotation (namely, that the death of Jesus is, under God's estimate, the clearing of the believer from all condemnation), is here argued in a comparison of the principles of righteousness as proposed by the by-gone and by the present dispensation. The former, which was the law, was God searching man, and its word was, " Do this and live;" the latter, which is grace, is God shelving the exceeding riches of His own grace in the person of Christ, risen from the grave; teaching us sin not indirectly, that is, by giving a commandment, which sin in us has disabled us from keeping; but directly, that is, presenting His Son, in resurrection, as the One that has borne sin in His own body on the tree, and now is at His right hand, the pledge of acceptance. And so plainly and distinctly is He presented, that there can be no "'Lo, here," or, " Lo, there," to them that know Him; neither a descending into the deep to see what has become of Him, nor an ascending into the height to bring Him down-for, risen and ascended there where He is, has He presented Himself to God for us, and our consciences, and to learn peace from seeing how God has made peace, and not to suppose that till we feel peace, God has not, made peace. May God grant unto us all to walk in the light of this finished work, therein knowing our peace perfected forever with God, and so becoming His servants.

The Death Part 2.21

21. " Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord for to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living." (Rom. 14:8, 9.)

There is a passage somewhat similar to this in Corinthians; yet with this characteristic difference between the two. This presents the conduct of the Christian with the basis of Christ's object in His death; that presents rather the motive in the Christian's mind resulting from the apprehension of Christ's object in His death. And this distinction is both worthy of observation, and of importance. For blessed as it is to have right motives for conduct, and a right understanding of what conduct becomes us, much more blessed is it to have fulfilled practically that which we see becomes us as disciples. And of this, as true in Himself, and them that are Christ's, the apostle here speaks, " Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord." And does not this present a certainty of conduct, a steadfastness of purpose, and an accomplishment of desire, very unlike the Christianity current in our own day? Alas! how few servants of the Lord there are, compared with the number of saints; how few who can truly say as to their daily walk, " In all things more than conqueror through him that loved us." I would we might all think more of this, that practical obedience is that which the Lord looks for, and that rightness of motive and rightness of understanding as to what should be done, are of no value, save as means to an end-that is, as stimulating and guiding into outer obedience. I say, again, I would this might rest upon our minds; for it is a sad fact that many are satisfying themselves in having right motives, and clear understanding of what they should be instead of evidencing that they have these motives and this light by their actions.

The Death Part 2.22

22. "If thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died." (Rom. 14:15.)

The preceding citation looked at the death of the Lord as the basis of the disciples' general conduct as before God; this presents it as the light in which the brotherhood is seen, and thereby presents both the constraint and the measure of our love to a brother in Christ. And how much need is there to pray that the memory of this may be revived among the saints; for in these many thoughts of doing this and doing that, alas! how sadly is the Lord's new commandment forgotten and neglected. Dear reader, if a saint let this be thine especial care before man-to show that indeed, thine eye can read in every, even the weakest saint, one for whom Christ Jesus died, and for whom thou also oughtest to be ready to lay down thy life also.

The Death of the Lord Jesus Part 3.0

1. The death of Jesus, God's executed judgment against the law of leaven in us-because executed on Him, we are free from its guilt, and thereby called to purge out all practical leaven from ourselves. (1 Cor. 5:7.)

2. The Lord's death, as exhibited in the supper, the guard against the abuse of that which God has made the center of the church's gathering upon earth. (1 Cor. 11:26.)

3. The Lord's death, His only way of putting away our sins, and having the church in fellowship with Himself in resurrection. (1 Cor. 1-7.)

4. The memory thereof, the Christian's stimulant to be ready to be always delivered unto death himself for Jesus' sake. (2 Cor. 4:10.)

5. As (in the last context) His preparative for suffering, so also for doing all the will of Christ; yea, for living entirely to Him. (2 Cor. 5:13.)

6. The Lord's death, the entire rupture and breaking up of all Jewish and earthly order, and blessing, and authority. (Gal. 1:1.) And this on account of the imbecility thereof, through man's sin-for no righteousness could be found for man, but by and in the death of Christ. (Gal. 2:21.)

7. The Lord's death, His clearance of the church from all charge against her, being the power of the judgment He bore for her, ere He rose into newness of life with her, in Him. (Eph. 1:20.)

8. Jesus' death, the measure of His obedience, and the procuring cause of His redemption honors. (Phil. 2:8.)

9. Conformity thereunto, the believer's path to glory as to outward experience (as in Rom. 4:23, in the trial of faith). (Phil. 3:10.)

10. The Lord's victory, in resurrection, over death, the precursor and mean of all resurrection. (Col. 1:18.)

11. The Lord's death the means of our privilege of being reconciled unto God in Him, presented holy, unblamable, and unreprovable in His sight. (Col. 1:22.)

12. Fellowship in the benefits of the Lord's death and resurrection inseparable. If the believer can plead any benefit from the death, he has all benefit from the resurrection. (Col. 2:12.)

13. This leads him into practical freedom from subjection and bondage to ordinances as of the world, and the conceits of man's mind about service and duty. (Col. 2:20.)

14. The knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus, by God, from death, the church's and the saints' secret of power, and health, and strength. (1 Thess. 1:9, 10.)

15. The death of Jesus, the pattern of what we have to expect from man while so standing. (1 Thess. 2:15.)

16. And this to the saint is no sad commandment; for in the pattern he sees the judicial act whereby his own sins are forever put away, and the pledge given to him of his coming in glory with Jesus. (1 Thess. 4:14.)

17. For Jesus' death has been to him the mean of fellowship in the present life of the Lord, so as to enable him to live as in the power of his life, who is upon the Father's throne. (1 Thess. 5:9, 10.)

The Death Part 3.1

1. "Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." (1 Cor. 5:7.)

There is much worthy of observation in this context. Every believer, as we see from chapter 8 of the Epistle to the Romans, has in him the carnal mind which is enmity against God, yet power withal provided for him to walk contrary to it; for he knows that though this be so, yet he has also the spirit of life in Christ Jesus in him, and that God estimates him according to this-one with Jesus, and free from all condemnation through the death of the Lord upon the cross vicariously for the sin of the church. But these Corinthians not only had this evil in them, but had been walking according to it; and we find that fornication (and that of a very offensive kind) had been allowed. It is about the correcting the working of this leaven that Paul is here writing: " Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened." Observe they had leaven in principle in them in nature, and this leaven moreover, had been allowed to work, and therefore the apostle was rebuking them: and yet he says, " as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." Were they, then, at one and the same time, leavened and unleavened? Yes, in two different ways. In Christ they were, as we all (who are Christians) are, unleavened, for Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. This sacrifice has made atonement for the sin in us; and in His Person we find full unhindered access to God, to whose eye the principle of leaven in us is not counted as sin, so long as it be not allowed to work. In Christ they were unleavened; but this very thing brought with it the claim and responsibility to purge out the working of the old leaven. This they had neglected to do, and so in themselves not only they contained leaven, but had leaven working. The principle they could not purge out; the working they could, and were bound moreover to do. There were many offerings of the old sanctuary which typified this state in the church, such as loaves having leaven but baked; as having leaven, unfit to be offered up to God; yet as being baked leaven, in a state not able to work. Now, as it was the death of the lamb in the passover which was the sign for the leaven to be put out of the house, as it were, so truly, antitypically, it was the death of the Lord which did put the leaven out in principle, and as before God, from the church. "Ye are unleavened, for Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." And this, dear brethren, is universally the way of our God in teaching us obedience. You have a spiritual privilege in Christ, which requires you to act in practice in this way and that way. Oh! this is a loving way, in which He leads us on into the perfect liberty of His service. May we all then keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. A little, and not a grievous commandment is this, if we remember in whose house, and at whose cost, the Lamb has been provided, and we have eaten of it! Too poor., and our family truly too little, to provide a lamb, our lot in this matter has been thrown into the hands and house of another, according to the liberty given even to Israel of old. (Ex. 3:4.) Our God has provided Himself a Lamb-truly one without spot and blemish-and in His house have we fed upon that Lamb. The door into this holiest is by a new and living way consecrated for us, even the rent veil of Jesus' flesh. Surely if in spirit, and by faith within the veil, feeding in blissful security in God's house (as one with Jesus) upon Him, as the Lamb slain and alive again for evermore, it is a little thing, in the ample and rich provision there found, to put away our own poor, stale, defiled, and defiling provender. And if we feel there is a little self-renunciation in so doing, what is it more than the children of this world do daily, in the hope of regaining health of body-giving up the food they love for, or exchanging it with, bitter, nauseous medicines? May we be wise in our generation, as they in theirs.

The Death Part 3.2

2. " As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come." (1 Cor. 11:26.)

The especial sins which drew from the Spirit the portion in which this is found, were these defiling the supper of the Lord, by making it a place of riotous eating and drinking, and neglect of brotherly love thereat. And both of these sins had their cure in the meaning of the supper, if rightly understood. Death, the Lord's death, the death of the Son of God, was God's estimate of man's way of choosing to please himself. In the supper, this too was presented as being the subject of mutual delight to God and the church; to God, because therein was the expression of His own grace and truth, and of the inestimable value of His Son; to the church, because therein she found that by which alone she could rejoice in the holy justice of God, as being, through grace, for herself, though most strongly against her sins. And how, while so exercised in such delights, could so filthy a mean of self-pleasing be indulged? Impossible. Ere the body could be given to such scenes, the soul must needs have lost its fresh savor of the very truth of the supper. And, on the other hand, if the truth presented in the supper met man's passion in their very root and source of self-pleasing, how distinctly does the way in which that truth is presented correct the attendant sin of neglect of brotherly love. He died for the church collectively; and no man can know his own fellowship in the blessing, without having at the same time strongly brought to his mind those who are thus bound up in one bundle of life with Himself; and this most especially at the supper, where the many brethren are always assembled together in celebration.

These seem to have been the two sins at Corinth. But it is blessed to see how the Bible is a book of principles, and how, therefore, the failure in one instance brings in from the Spirit a correction to ten thousand others. Had man been looking at the case, he would have satisfied himself by setting the failure in practice to rights. Not so the Spirit; in doing this, he will so do it as to give the church a principle to guide her, not only in a case exactly similar, but also in others, in which, though the form of the evil may be different, the principle of it is the same; and therefore, he goes on (ver. 27), " Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." Here is the universal rule, as it were, of which the former is but one instance-eating this bread, and drinking this cup of the Lord unworthily. And then He first blessedly defines the church's mode of escape, " Let each examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup;" and, secondly, guards what he has said, lest any (as so many have) should suppose that even this sin could unchristianize them. It is not so; if judged, they are chastened, that they may not be condemned with the world. If they fail, He fails not, and though it may be by chastening and discipline, yet will He keep His own in spiritual separation from the evil of the world, the ways of which, as well as its character, tend to judgment.

I would only further notice the expression, "Ye do shot; the Lord's death till he come" (ver. 26), as proving (like chap. 10:16, 17, &c.) the supper as the rallying point of the saints upon earth.

The Death Part 3.3

3. " I declare unto you the gospel which preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved ... how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures: and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of about five hundred brethren at once ... after that ... of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all.... of me also, as of one born out of due time." (1 Cor. 15:1-8.)

The assertion I am about to make may seem to many strange (nevertheless I believe it to be truth), that great and general as is the profession of religion in our own day, so little and so rare is the understanding of the gospel, that not one out of ten of the religious would be able to give a simple and a scriptural answer to the question, What is the gospel? " If any one calls this assertion in question, let him go into the coteries of his religious society, and try whether the question, simple as it is, will not elicit answers so various, as to prove that either there are many gospels, or that the one gospel is most strangely misrepresented in the minds of most. The vagueness of the answer, when the question has been raised about this or that minister's preaching the gospel, also has often struck me forcibly. "Is the gospel preached where I attend? Oh yes! I thought you knew what an excellent, or what a pious, or what a devoted man our minister is," is a frequent reply, as though there were no such a thing as distinct truth in the world. And so, I believe, in many minds the case is, that there is no clear, simple, distinct truth known; but truth, instead of being known in that firm, unvarying form in which it has been presented to us by God in the word, is looked at rather in the fickle, changeable forms in which it has been received by man, taught the fear of the Lord by the traditions of men. To illustrate what I mean, I would say, that in any mixed religious society, the mooting such a question as, What is the gospel? would be felt to be throwing down the gauntlet, or perhaps something worse. The Baptist, the Wesleyan, the Independent, the Nationalist, each has his own points in connection with the subject peculiar to himself to be defended. True, he may tell you they are minor points of difference, and that essentially they all agree: but this is a mistake; for, in the first place, they are so far major points, as to constitute, practically, that which fills and holds the mind: and secondly, if you hear the answer, you will find it is not the same gospel at all which is stated. Moreover the effect of introducing the division of clergy and laity (a division which practically holds quite as much among Dissenters as in the Establishment), has been to make almost every Christian who is not pledged in some way by office to the work, to feel that the task of answering questions is not his; and I do believe, that three out of four of Christians you might meet, would feel this was one of the questions which it would be expedient thus to avoid answering. Not that I mean to say that they have not their own statements of the gospel, but that, in the known multiplicity of thoughts about it, they would rather not risk, as it would seem to them, entering upon controversy. Now it does seem to me a most gracious thing on the part of our God, to have given us such a testimony upon the subject, as forever to set aside all reasonings thereupon; while if I have been right in my estimate of Christianity in our own clays, most fully to exhibit its poverty. The statement to which I refer, is that which precedes these remarks. The way in which the apostle gets upon it is remarkable; not saying simply, now I declare unto you the gospel; but introducing it as connected with so many little circumstances affecting those to whom he wrote, as to give it the more point. " I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you.... which also ye have received ... and wherein ye stand ... by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain... For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received," &c., &c. Such a way of introducing his subject was, in a peculiar way, calculated to call attention to it. And how blessed that subject! " That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.... so we preached, and so ye believed." This is the gospel! an artless simple tale of what befell Jesus. Observe, it is all about Jesus. The only actor, the only sufferer here is God. Man may be a spectator, and, through grace, a witness and a recipient, but the whole tale is about God, and his Christ. God, the Holy Ghost, had traced in the word many of the Father's thoughts about Jesus; and here we have this One anointed of the Father gleaning them all up for Himself, and fulfilling them all. Now, do let us remark how the whole action, from first to last, in the gospel, is God's, and how there is no place assigned to man in it, but that of standing still, and seeing or telling of what God wrought. If we look also a little closely at the text, we shall find the matter dividing itself naturally into four parts; the death, burial, resurrection and manifestation of the Lord. And I think I may justly say here, that the maintaining the proportions of the component parts of truth is not an unimportant matter. To make the ointment used in the sanctuary, not only was the presence of all the appointed ingredients needful, but due attention to the just proportions was requisite likewise. Surely, in like manner, we corrupt the truth, when, knowing all the parts of it, we give a prominence to any one of them beyond or less than that which the Holy Ghost in the word has; and, indeed, I do see truth now-a-days constantly so misused, and rendered of little effect. And is it not so with this very truth? The great stress which is now laid is upon the death of Jesus, so much stress, indeed, as almost to overlook the other three points: but here THE great stress is upon "the manifestation of the blessed Lord after the resurrection; " even as throughout the. Acts we find the theme of testimony to have been Jesus and the resurrection. So strongly, indeed, does the apostle (Acts 17) seem to have pressed resurrection, that the poor ignorant ones to whom he spake thought that resurrection was a person as well as Jesus, saying (ver. 18), " He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods," because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. Just so here, the great stress is upon his manifestation; for while his death, burial, and resurrection are each of them mentioned but once, his manifestation is repeated six times over-to Cephas, to the twelve, to five hundred brethren at once, to James, to all the apostles, to me also.

It is a blessed word, " that Christ died for our sins.". I need hardly say that this is true only of the Christian; for though Christ bore the sin of the world, he is never spoken of as having died for its sins, the extent of the value of vicarious suffering being limited to the church.; but yet to the intelligent Christian, the whole force and value of it is seen to be in the resurrection, for this is the proof of the success of the other. He was delivered on account of our sins, and (when they were all put away), raised on account of our justification; for if Christ be not raised from the dead, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. But Jesus is risen, and we know all our freedom, and liberation, and coming glory, as well as present privilege, to have been brought by Him through the narrow gate of His death, without which-his vicarious substitution-we, through sin, could not have shared in His joy; " for except a corn of wheat fall into the ground arid die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." And this is what the Spirit goes on to show out. (Ver. 12.) " Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead." I lave quoted the whole of this context, because it seems most blessedly to show how everything, as to the Christian, turns upon the Lord's resurrection from the dead. To man it may seem a little thing; for those who lived in times past to deny the resurrection; and a still less thing for those who live in times present, so to overlook it practically, as that orthodox faith does which is current about it, where men believe it rather because the church has laid it down as a thing to be believed, than because found in the word of God; but truly both the one and the other to the sound Christian are very fearful things. Resurrection is the fundamental doctrine of scripture, and involves the questions of God's estimate of Christ, of the personal glory of the Son, and the glory of all those offices, which by resurrection have been manifested as His, in which He is to display God's glory. I would press much the careful study of chapter 15 of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. It is divided into three parts; the first, the statement of the gospel (vers. 1-11); the second, the opening of the paramount importance of the Lord's resurrection; and third (from ver. 21 onward), the fruits, pleasant and blessed, of this resurrection, so presenting us with a most beautiful summary and outline of truth. And this stands upon the surface of it-the whole glory was Christ's in resurrection, that is, in newness of life, after having died for us, his Father's poor church, that we might share the glory with Him, and there in death He rolled off the heavy burden of our sins vicariously borne by Him, and then rose as the firstfruits, the pledge and pattern to us of victory over death and the grave.

The Death Part 3.4

4. " Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." (2 Cor. 4:10, 11.)

Two very different things are taught us here, yet the two blessedly united together, and in an order in sweet harmony with the rest of scripture:-The dying of Jesus as the indwelling thought of the believer, and the deliverance of the believer in circumstances always to death for Jesus' sake. Alas! how we forget Jesus dying here, and therefore how strange, oft, does that experience outwardly of the cross, and trial, and deliverance unto death of us always for Jesus' sake seem. Nothing but the memory ever fresh of Jesus' experience while in the world, can make a similar path a matter of course with the believer. But as surely as we are one with Him, one in spirit, and hope, and life, so surely must we have here in the world that which

He had. May we then learn to bear about while in the body, the memory of His dying; and thereby learn to count upon being alway delivered unto death ourselves also for His sake.

The Death Part 3.5

5. " Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead, and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." (2 Cor. 5:13-15.)

As in the last context, the memory of the Lord's death was presented as the Christian's power of being willing to be alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake-so here we have, on the other hand, the connection of the Lord's death with all the believer's conduct-for all his suffering and all his action alike grow up out of the Lord's death.

The passage is evidently a church portion, and should be more correctly read, " if one lied for all, then all died;" for "then were all dead" means the church in Him. And observe how sweetly it all flows out-the love of Christ constrains us, ah, this is the secret of our happy obedience-service, not because the things we do are right in themselves, or because the saints around expect us so to act, or only because we know that such things are commanded us; but this blessedly given to us in the intelligence of love to Him who seeks and commands our obedience. His love constrains-a strong yet sweet power of restraint! and how, but by the blessed exercise of our souls in the privilege of reading the connection between the thoughts of His mind, and the love of His heart; as shown in His wondrous work. We thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died. Ah I this is judgment beyond that of mortal man's, for it traces the vital union between Christ and the church; sees them one with Him: sees them reaping, in present blessing, the fruits of the travail of His soul. None but the new mind can broach such judgments-" If he died, all died." But this is not all it can do; it can tell you also its estimate of His object herein, " and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again;" and then, having thus judged, it has told its own simple tale of the reason why it does His will. May it always be thus with us! Surely, such service is perfect freedom.

The Death Part 3.6

6. " Paul, an apostle (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead)." (Gal. 1:1.)

The apostleships of Peter and of Paul had their respective peculiarities and points of difference: Peter received his from the Lord while on earth; Paul his from the Lord in ascended glory. In the opening of this epistle his great desire seems to have been to prove that neither he nor his doctrine were, before God, subject to the work at Jerusalem; but, if anything, upon a higher and more glorious standing, though both entirely of grace. And this he sought to establish, not in pride or self-importance, but as showing the folly of those who having learned Christ from him had turned to Judaism. It could not be said of any of the other apostles, " not of man neither by men, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him, from the dead;" for, to say the least, they were apostles before God the Father had raised Jesus Christ from the dead: and the pre-eminence of glory as to Paul's apostleship will be found, by those who read the New Testament carefully, to attach itself also in a peculiar way to our standing, which is not, in any sort in nature, a Jewish one; but, every natural tie of connection with the Jews and with the earth having been broken by the crucifixion of the Lord, He, when raised from the dead by God the Father, has given Himself in resurrection and ascension-glory to the church. And this seems to me the Spirit's object in here introducing the subject of the Lori's death; namely, to skew the entire rupture and breaking up of all Jewish and earthly order, and blessing, and authority.

" I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." (Gal. 2:21.)

The law was given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And the law could not give righteousness; it described health to the sick patient, but gave him neither medicine nor a cure-if it could have done so, there would evidently have been something good in man, and then why need Christ have died? But this was not so; and there could be nothing done for man, no righteousness found for him, but in and by the death of Jesus Christ. Oh, that we might cleave fast to grace, and get our hearts established therein and filled therewith: it is a sad thing, even in this present day among the saints, to see how little establishment in grace there is. Believer! let it sink down into thy mind, that every question thou dost entertain, such as, " Am I accepted of God?" (for that is righteousness) goes toward frustrating the grace of God, toward making the death of Christ to have been in vain, and therefore must be false. And most clear it is that if thou halt not acceptance of God (and there is no acceptance now but acceptance in the Beloved), then thou art entirely without any blessing, a lost thing, under judgment. Marvelous have been God's ways! Out of blessing in Eden man cast himself; and now he must either be blessed and loved together with Christ, the Son and Heir of all God's glory, or cursed and damned with Satan, the enemy of God and man. But we are not of those that are cursed, for we have known the grace of God, and seen in Israel's history the entire irremediableness, under the best circumstances, of man; and grace (the grace of God, which, when righteousness could not come by the law, caused Christ to die) is our plea and boast.- May our hearts be filled therewith continually.

The Death Part 3.7

7. "That ye may know.... what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.... and you who were dead in trespasses and sins.... hath he raised up together, and made sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. 1:18-20; 2:1-6.)

The wondrous mystery of the union between Christ and the church is here presented to us, and the blessed truth that when God raised His Son from the dead, the church was raised up together, and made sit together, with Him in heavenly places. The truth here taught is not, as some would have it, that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is a type of the quickening of the soul' from its death in trespasses and sins, but a much more blessed and marvelous display of grace; even that the whole body of the saints were seen by God in Christ Jesus, when He, Jesus, was raised from the dead: just as the rib which God took out of the side of Adam, and wherewith He builded the woman, was seen by God in Adam when Adam laid, him down in sleep. And this blessed truth it is which meets the soul in its weakness; not setting it upon the unhappy question' (as such a mis-explanation as I have referred to would) " How far am I quickened? never honoring God's word and promises at all, by resting the whole matter upon experience of what is to be seen within, but upon rejoicing in God's blessed testimony that we were seen by him in Jesus, when. Jesus rose from the dead and sat down at His right hand. And, surely, if we credit this assertion of our God, it must give strength and peace, as showing how completely our blessing is secured; the whole work been finished, and seen to God as finished, now more than 1800 years: for observe if we were raised up together Christ was raised up 1800 years ago, therefore, so we must have been; aye, and made to sit together with Him even then in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Blessed and wonderful mystery, gracious and glorious privilege! how completely does faith herein meet all the reasonings and cavilings of nature, and how blessedly does it enable us to plead the death of our Lord as the answer to all the strivings and workings of death in us! We were raised up together with Him; we were morally dead, He judicially dead in our place, and when He arose we arose with Him; so likewise does it most blessedly enable us to use Christ in life, as our reservoir of life and blessing. And I would notice that, though men call this the mystic union of Christ and the church, it is a most true and real thing; not merely a union supposed or reckoned to exist by God, yet having, no real being, but contrariwise, a most true, and real, and substantive thing, being in the power and work of God the Holy Ghost, and through that new nature derived from Him in us made known to us.

The Death Part 3.8

8. " He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore,” &c. (Phil. 2:8, 9.)

There is not, perhaps, a more deeply interesting portion in scripture than this; and, like all the rest of the word and thoughts of God, it has a fullness and unsearchableness about it which are altogether infinite. The outline of the matter it contains is, the presenting as a pattern to the believer, the humiliation of the Lord as His way into the glory which has been conferred upon Him, with this blessed additional thought, that such is that glory to Christ as to involve the fullness of power for all such service to the believer. " Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth: and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." The first thing which may be noticed, as standing upon the very 'surface, is that the mind which was acted upon by the Lord, is presented to the believer as that on which he is to act. But then, secondly, we have the range of the Lord's obedience as connected with the church presented to us; and this ought to be noticed. The sphere of His service extended from the throne of the Father, where He was before the world was, down (through death upon the cross for atonement, with all the circumstances of the world, the flesh, and the devil connecting themselves with that death) to that full exercise of supremacy and power which He shall yet exercise over all things in heaven, and in earth, and under the earth. I would notice this particularly, because it is the obedience of the Lord herein which constitutes the church's righteousness; not His obedience simply in fulfilling Adam's duties as set in the garden of Eden, nor simply as a Jew in legal righteousness loving the LORD His God with all His heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and loving His neighbor as Himself; though, of course, that was true of Him, and formed a part of His obedience, even that which will constitute strict Jewish righteousness, and wherein, as wrought by Messiah, the nation shall stand accepted. But the church, though she knows and surely glories in these things, knows much more; for the unction of the Spirit upon her eye has opened it to see these things afar off, higher and deeper and fuller and broader; even the Son leaving His own rightful place upon the Father's throne, and, through all the tissue and entanglement of things present, so acting as to put each one of them into the place of subjection, and, as it shall be hereafter manifested, subjection to God; so that be it what it may, all things are to the glory of God. I would notice, thirdly, as connected more immediately with the course of thought I am endeavoring to pursue in this paper, the Lord's death is here presented to us as at once the measure of His obedience, and the procuring cause of His redemption-honors. " He humbled himself [it is said], and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Surely none but He that can measure fully and aright the contrasts between that cross and the throne of God, whence He had come, can tell the extent of the obedience expressed in His bowing to it. True He saw the grace of His Father's heart in it, as the way for the revelation of His own character bringing glory to God in the highest, and in earth peace, good-will toward man; but while His own soul fed on these things, and the glory to Himself and the joy to the church, still the bitterness of the cup was in it, and all for Himself alone. At His proper and alone charge and cost the whole was to be effected-and He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And with Him it was no obedience as of constraint or of expediency; but to obey was all His heart's desire and the very thought of His mind: " I delight to do thy will, 0 my God; yea, thy law is within my heart." Blessed Lord! how does Thy perfect obedience shame us, yea, cause us to blush before Thee! Was obedience of such beauty in Thy sight, and Thy way in it so perfect and so complete; and shall it stand with us upon such low grounds as it does? Shall our ways in it continue weak, so uncertain? But not only is this obedience to us most humbling, as contrasted with ourselves; it is likewise most consoling and encouraging as connected with its reward from God, and with that which is involved in that reward. " Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." This is the reward-the redemption-glory conferred on Jesus; and surely, as knowing our oneness with Him; that we are one spirit with the Lord-made for His glory the church of God, which He loved and for which He gave Himself, that He might, in all the fullness of His glory, present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, we must rejoice therein with exceeding joy and with great delight. And besides this joy in His reward, which we have as able (because we have the mind of Christ) to rejoice both in God's joy, and so honoring Him, and in His joy in having such a proof of His God and Father's love to share with the church (and He fully knows the joy of that word, in His own soul, "It "is more blessed to give than to receive "); beyond this, I say, as well as beyond the blessed security His possessing such glory, with such a heart as He has, gives to us of blessing in ourselves-there is to us this comfort, that God is now acting in the church upon the principle of the glory so conferred on Jesus; and because He is, we have assured to us the full power of serving the Lord.

" Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." This, as I have shown elsewhere, is just a spewing of the church as the place in which the Lordship of Jesus is now displayed and recognized, in the power of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost-and enables me to say, because I know the counsel of the Lord and stand in As all service is but a recognizing of the Lordship of Jesus, for what service to which I am called can there be a deficiency of strength-seeing it is God that worketh in me to will and to do of his own good pleasure! " Alas! how do we come short here. Perhaps our failures are very much from looking at the Lord's death as in itself redemption, instead of His resurrection from death,; for this last it is which is as well the power to faith, as the real security of the blessings of redemption.

The Death Part 3.9

9. " That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his ' sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." (Phil. 3:10.)

How impossible is it to the natural mind to understand such passages as this! The most it can know of God, is as the God of nature; now, with this light, it must do one of two things, either recognize that there has been some great event intervening between His creation of the world and its present standing, in which view, attributing all the manifestly existing evil to such an event as the fall really was, it would surely, recognizing God's goodness, calculate upon the present exercise of His power in behalf of those that serve and faithfully obey Him, to deliver them from the present evil; or, on the other hand, not adopting, indirectly from scripture, any such view about the fall, it must, gathering its judgment of God from the daily experience of the creation, most sadly misapprehend the real character of God, and suppose Him to take pleasure in the sorrows which- sin and Satan brought into the world. Contrasted with both these views, the context before us presents God, in all the grace of His love, giving up His own Son to redeem from under the hand of Satan and the power of the fall, and yet, in His wisdom, so far from granting present deliverance to His servants from sorrow and trial, making it, because part of their association with His Son, a most especial part of His love toward them and proof of His favor for them. Such is the general instruction I should glean from this desire of the Spirit in the apostle to know Jesus, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death-the inseparableness of God's favor and suffering; at the same time it may be well to notice that there is clearly a stress upon the fellowship of his sufferings "-suffering in itself not necessarily being the fulfillment of the. Spirit's desire here expressed. As Peter expresses it, " Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings;.... If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye;.... but let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. Yet if any suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him, glorify God on this behalf.... Wherefore, let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator." There are two classes of sufferings, which may be ours as Christians: 1, Those which come upon us only because we are Christians, as persecution for His name's sake, and for testimony; 2, Those which, though they may be ours in common with the men of this world-the sufferings of fallen humanity-we yet bear fur Christ's sake; for instance, a Christian may be subject, in common with others, to a great deal of oppression and tyranny, it may be-the worldling will bear it only just so far as his own advantage makes useful; the Christian will bear it all for Christ's sake-because he can say, " All things are of him who hath reconciled us unto himself." This differs from the truth taught in Rom. 4:23, in that it presents trial of circumstances-that, in Romans the trial of faith as the believer's portion. The passages (2 Cor. 4:10; 5:13) present the same subject, only as connected with "the motives of the mind."

The Death Part 3.10

10. " He is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence." (Col. 1:18.)

That He should be pre-eminent in all things, was the good pleasure of God; but the church heartily coincides, as having the mind of the Spirit, that so it should be. Having received all things through Him, and knowing Him as her treasury of blessing, to magnify Him is to fill her with delight. Blessed position to find oneself in, blessed in its many points of contrast to the world-blessed point of agreement with the mind and will of God! And surely there never was either death or resurrection comparable to the Lord's; and His resurrection from death was the precursor and mean of the resurrection of all others; well, therefore, may it be said that in it also He had the preeminence! I say His resurrection was the precursor and mean of all resurrection, for surely the general resurrection at the last day, as much as the first resurrection of the saints, is owing to and flowing from the incarnation death, and resurrection of Jesus.

The Death Part 3.11

11. " And you.... hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable." (Col. 1:22.)

The apostle is here speaking (or rather the Spirit by the apostle) of the reconciliation of those Colossians who, in a double sense, as heathens, had been reconciled in the body of Christ's flesh through death, that they may be presented holy, and unblameable, and unreproveable in His sight. In mind they had been alienated, and enemies by wicked works, but now had been reconciled in Him. The first part, their past experience, seems to refer to their state of mind; the second-their blessing in Christ, to the privilege true of them in Christ; the root and means, surely, when known, of a reconciled state of mind in them, yet a very distinct thing from it, though, through grace, ever connected in the believer with it. And oh, what a blessed thing it is, notwithstanding the memory of all the proofs in wicked works-of years past, and the sense it may be, by the carnal mind still strong in us, of our natural enmity to, and alienation from, God; yet to know that in Him we are reconciled unto God-presented holy, and unblarneable, and unreproveable in His sight.

The Death Part 3.12

12. " Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him." (Col. 2:12.)

The Spirit is here arguing the question of the full assurance of understanding, as found in connection with the mystery of God, even of the Father, and of Christ. And He presses this most gracious truth, that in place of the believer morally dead, Christ became judicially dead. And by the same grace, that actual union in the Spirit, whereby, through Christ's death, under judgment, the believer gets free from all charge; the same union, I say, makes him one with Jesus in resurrection and all its blessings. No benefit has the believer from Christ's death without full benefit from His resurrection; blessed truth this, and all security for him in Christ Jesus, and seen by God as his, out of himself, and in spite of all his weakness and infirmity, in the Beloved. The saints in our own day have most sadly separated Jesus and the resurrection, and tried to rest upon His death apart from this resurrection. The early Christians' salutation one to another is said to have been, ".The Lord is risen." The Lord is dead, would have been no gospel; for if Christ is not risen, we are yet in our sins; and, be it remarked, that in pressing this we do not set aside, in any way, the Lord's death from the saint's thoughts, but contrariwise establish it, for there can be no resurrection where there was no death; but the important thing is to see, which can alone be when the two are kept together, what death was to the Lord-a thing most dreadful, as it might be, yet voluntarily undertaken and borne by Him, and which had no power whatsoever over Him, but over which, even when underlying it, He was more than conqueror.

The Death Part 3.13

13. "If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances? " (Col. 2:20.)

Following up the same subject of the full assurance of understanding, the apostle here turns from the side of privilege to that of practice therewith connected. Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are, ye subject to ordinances (touch not, taste not, handle not, which all are to perish in the using), after the commandments and doctrines of men? How many poor weak believers are there just in this state! not walking as having their citizenship and conversation in heaven, but living down on earth, and in the world, and making their -religion to consist very much in self-imposed ordinances, after the commandments and doctrines of the foolish thoughts of themselves or other human minds, and not after scripture. Let such look well to it; such a state is not merely a loss of comfort to themselves, or a state of christian weakness or infirmity; it is a state most inconsistent with the faith they profess; so that Paul could say, "How is this, if ye be dead with Christ? " It goes very close to prove that word of Paul as being true of them, " not holding the Head; " and savors most sadly of anything but grace and truth. Show of wisdom it may have in will worship, and in false humility, and in vain neglecting of the body; but before God it is not in any honor, being, after all, to the satisfying of the flesh, and conformity to the world. Dear reader, is it so with thyself? If so, plead simply what Christ has done for thee, and so get thy mind enlightened in the full assurance of understanding, and thou wilt find power to live as one freed, by thy knowledge of thy death and resurrection with Jesus, from all such follies.

The Death Part 3.14

14. " To wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come." (1 Thess. 1:10.)

There is a blessed fullness about the whole of this epistle, as indeed about which of the scriptures is there not? a divine fullness. Yet perhaps to us, in the close of this dispensation, some parts seem more sensibly to address themselves, and among others this in a most peculiar way. For this epistle to the Thessalonians shows how the hope of the glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus, is the power of the church's strength and health, and forasmuch as we are daily learning more and more of the church's weakness, failure, and infirmity, this truth, so strikingly exhibited in this part of the word, becomes in a peculiar way commended to us. It is blessed to see, as elsewhere, how privilege and responsibility hang together. In no other epistles have we such a title of address to the saints used, as, " To the church which is in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ; " this Was doubtless for the meeting of those shrinking feelings of nature, when the coming of the Lord is recognized as near, 'but the saints' true place before God, both now and then, not also borne in mind': and no one surely can read the epistle, and not be struck with both the character of the service of the Thessalonians, and the powerful exhortations of the apostle. This was the position they held, " serving the living and true God, and waiting for his Son from heaven." Blessed position! oh that the saints in these last days might return to it, at once and fully-you and I, dear reader, among the number. But mark, I pray you, the connection of this with what follows "... whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come." Aye, mark this, for this was the secret of the ability of these Christians to hold the position we admire and covet for ourselves. 'We cannot serve God unless we know Him as the creditor to whom we owe this debt-He raised

Christ for us from the dead; He raised Him and set Him at His own right hand that we might have hope in God; hope that when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we also shall appear with Him in glory. This enables the soul to count itself, and to act, as a servant of the living and true God; this and this only enables it likewise to wait for His Son from heaven. So that we find the Lord's resurrection from death here presented to us as the power of the church's strength, and health, and service. Had He not died, our sins could not have been borne by Him, yea, and He could not have been raised; and had it not been God that raised Him from the dead, the deep sin of our hearts would not have been met; we could not have served God, nor waited in confidence for Him who is coming forth as God's avenger, if not knowing God to be our sure friend.

The Death Part 3.15

15. " The Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets." (1 Thess. 2:15.)

The Spirit is here tracing the outline of the experience of those who, knowing themselves to be of that church (made so of God) which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, are serving the living and true God, and waiting for His Son from heaven. " For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus; for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles, that they may fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." Jesus treated by His own like all the prophets-put to death-is then to be the saint's expectation, if, knowing his fellowship with that which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, he really is serving God and waiting for His Son from heaven. I do not say, that because such things befall us not, therefore we are not Christians; but I do say, and with confidence, that the want of preparedness of mind, yea, and expectancy of such things among Christians, does show most painfully how far those things which are outside of God the Father and of the Lord, yea, often opposed to these, how far these things have gotten a wrong place in many of our hearts, even as they have leavened the whole lump of the professing body. And there is this too we may lay to heart, if not ready to be killed for Him, we are not ready to die daily for Him. This may startle some who think they could give up much for the Lord, only reserving life; but I believe their calculation is in the flesh, and that there is no dying daily save in the Spirit in grace, and that where this is there is both the sense of innate weakness, and also preparedness for all surrender to the Lord. Religion not built upon grace, not based upon Jesus and the resurrection, not sustained by the Holy Ghost and the hope of the Lord's coming, may enable us to do many things, but sooner or later it will break down and shew, not our want of more religion, but want of true religion altogether. This is a hard saying, but so are all those sayings which are the counterparts of the glorious privileges given us in Christ Jesus; and indeed I do not know but one thing that can nerve the soul for this, and that is a most simple yet blessed truth-part of the believer's portion in Christ Jesus; namely, that-

The Death Part 3.16

16. " If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." (1 Thess. 4:14.)

And who that knows the church to be in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, but must believe that Jesus died and rose again-since the Lord, in whom the church is, bears the form of the Lamb as it had been slain. The saint does and must believe this; but, oh most blessed grace! he cannot do so but by the Spirit, and simply because he does so he knows he has the Spirit, and therefore is one with Jesus: and so most simply and naturally it comes to pass that he can say, " If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." They are one with Him, bound up in one bundle of life with Jesus-no more two, but one; and that which God has joined together let no man put asunder. God has joined them-the church and Jesus. He will not put them asunder. Devils and the world cannot! Oh that we might, in more childlike simplicity, cleave to the portion our God has given to us, and walk worthy of it. A poor pitiful way it is to be one day filled with thoughts of union with Jesus, and therefore of the Father's love and our coming glory; and the next to be filled, through want of watchfulness or a little self-denial, with thoughts of the world and self and sin! May we learn that we are in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that therefore our portion here is to be dying daily; and may we be sustained therein, in patience of hope, knowing that if Jesus died and rose again, even so them which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. Amen and amen.

The Death Part 3.17

17. " God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him." (1 Thess. 5:9, 10.)

This little word comes in as a very sweet little close to the testimony of the Spirit in this epistle to the subject we are considering. Some might, looking at the last quotation, covet to sleep in Jesus, but, as He goes on to show, even in that context, when Jesus does come the sleeping and the waking shall be all together with Him; though, as it is ever the way with our gracious Lord to show grace first and foremost to that which is in greatest weakness, " the dead in Christ shall rise first," here He proceeds to show how the matter He is anxious about is one- of daily, hourly moment -and He does it by bringing in the gracious yet deep thought of God toward us. He hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus;-this would have been most gracious, but how much more the opening to us of His own deep thoughts about the way in which the blessing came to us-" He died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do." It is not simply the saint is to live to God or as Jesus lived, but" live together with him," which is just this, being a channel for that fullness, which is ours in God the Father and in Christ Jesus the Lord, to flow out by. Yea, even more wonderful still, what our reptile thoughts cannot attain to, to live together with Jesus-that the lives, that is, which we live in the body, should be in the power of His life who is seated at the Father's right hand. And thus in the saints, while in the world, is to be seen in their lives the verity and reality of their portion being in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, for He died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. I would only add that while assuredly this takes in the question of pitting off the body before, or remaining in the body until Jesus comes, it goes -a great deal farther, even to that morning waking and evening sleeping, the natural extremes in our daily lives of the actings of our bodily service. God grant we may know the power of these things.

The Death of the Lord Jesus Part 4

1. Death, the terminus of suffering, as in the Lord, so to each saint. (2 Tim. 2:8.)

2. Death, the object proposed in the humiliation, was the result of God's grace, and is presented for the church's admiration, as that by which Christ united the two extremes, namely, the divine glory which He saw in God, to be the church's, and the abject thraldom in which she lay under the devil; thereby redeeming the church from under the hand of the devil, destroying his power, and bringing her into the liberty of that divine nature which, in God, He saw to be hers (Heb. 2:9-14)

3. Death, the especial subject of the Lord's fear. (Heb. 5:7.)

4. The redemption of transgression under the first covenant, and the ratification and confirmation of the second. (Heb. 9:15, 16.)

5. That from which our Lord Jesus, as the great Shepherd of the sheep, was brought by the God of peace, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, as the security to us of all power of obedience. (Heb. 13:20.)

6. That, His victory over which, through the grace of God, was the begetting of us to a lively hope. (1 Peter 1:3.)

7. That deliverance from which into glory, was God's claim upon the church for her faith and hope to rest in Himself. (1 Peter 1:21.)

8. The death of Christ, God's sentence, and the believer's plea against the sins of the flesh. (1 Peter 3:18.)

9. The Lord in victory over death the strength of the saint amid the wreck of apostasy. (Rev. 1:5, 18; 2:8.)

10. The leading thought of heaven and its hosts, and their measure of the worthiness of the Lamb. (Rev. 5:6, 9, 12.)

11. Death, the Lord's title in connection with the book of life, and the exoneration of those who worship not the beast. (Rev. 13:8.)

The Death Part 4.1

1. " Remember that Christ Jesus, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel." (2 Tim. 2:8.)

The leading thought of the Spirit's mind in this epistle seems to be the hardships to which the followers of Christ must expect to be subject; see chapter 1:8, 12, &c., &c.; 2:3; 3; 4:5, &c., accompanied by exhortations to patience therein. The citation is in harmony with this, the stress being, I conceive, laid upon the resurrection being from the dead. And if the captain of our salvation had to suffer even unto death; if even He, who was of the seed of David, to whom all the promises in connection with Israel's glory belong, could only come at them by being rejected in death; if the blessedness of the gospel, Paul's joy, and Timothy's joy, and the joy of every saint, is the Lord's victory, though, slain-surely suffering must be a most integral part of Christian experience. And Paul did suffer trouble, even as an evil-doer, unto bonds, though the word of the Lord was not bound. Surely we greatly fail herein. Some few of us see it so far Clearly as to be able to talk about it, though not all the saints, for many seem rather to think that ease and comfort here are our proper portion; yet of the few who can see that suffering is our portion here, how few have the loins of the mind girt up so as patiently to abide therein. Yet it is written, " If we suffer, we shall also reign with him." It is blessed to see the cause of our suffering and the rationale of it-the cause, says Paul (ver. 10), "I endure all things for the elects' sake, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory,"-the rationale of it, " It is a faithful saying, for if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him." And I would just notice, that while, in the context before us, Jesus' passage through death is His way into the possession of the promises of David, and the place of the testimony, death is likewise clearly marked as the extreme bourn, the terminus of suffering. The looking a little carefully at this, and at the blessed rest which to sleep in Jesus is to the believer, might give many a poor, weak, shrinking one, nerve and boldness to endure hardness as the good soldier of Christ; for our sufferings are not like Jesus, nor are ourselves like Him as to our capability of suffering; His sufferings were infinite even as His capability for suffering was infinite; and death came to Him, not simply as by the exhaustion of nature's powers-for then to Him it never could have come at all-but having fully accomplished His Father's will, He bowed His head and gave up the ghost. In nature little suffering drains all our strength, and we sink into blissful sleep through exhaustion and weakness, though not without direct permission of Him, without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground; and the greatest suffering the greatest saint can bear is in truth but as nothing when measured aright, that is, when compared with Christ's. It is true our sufferings may seem to us great, and I believe all suffering does so while We are occupied with it; but this is owing to our inability to bear any in ourselves, and to the fact that as the Lord's object in sending suffering is to exercise us in. dependence upon and submission to Him, He apportions the measure of strength for the suffering, to the measure of suffering; often, too, giving more sensible support under the greater than under the less afflictions, that we may learn in the little ones the nothingness of our, own strength and competency, and in the greater and more trying scenes the grace of His love present with us, and how His strength is made perfect in weakness. Surely His ways are lovely, and gracious, and perfect; may we learn to mark and understand them more; and may this be the abiding thought of each saint, beloved of God, that he has a debt of love and gratitude to pay to God and Jesus, even the life which is left to him. We owe our life, our all, to Jesus, and His love covets earnestly the testimony of love from us; His love, I say, longs to receive from us the pledge and proof of our love to Him, and to see us hold life itself as something due to Him. His love is a jealous love; it cannot, because true love, rest without a return-yea, and that return of love from us is bound up in all the holy associations of the Lord's mind. Where did He learn His love toward us-was it not-in His intercourse with the Father? There He saw love to the church; there He learned to But His jealousy of love to the Father makes Him heedful that there should be reciprocity of love in us—else would the Father's love be dishonored. Moreover, His Own love, though, if we may so say, guided to the church by the counsel of the Father; is a genuine, true, and personal love. I speak of Christ's love; and true love, as I have said, rests not till it sees the response of love awakened. And it has been taught us-how? By the Holy Ghost shedding it abroad in our hearts, a sure and mighty and unfailing way. May we watch against the flesh and the world, and see that body, soul, and spirit are sanctified, wholly set apart for the Lord; and may we, in the sense of His love, and the way in which it was shown, through death, be strong and faithful in the purpose of our souls to Him-not loving our lives unto the death. Father! for Jesus' sake, strengthen by thy Spirit the purpose of our souls to suffer all things.

The Death Part 4.2

2. " We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For 'both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.... Forasmuch- then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who though fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." (Heb. 2:9-14.)

We cannot rightly understand the various parts of this context without looking at it as a whole; for it gives us a very beautiful summary or outline of the gracious purpose and work of God in behalf of the church, with the way wherein it has been accomplished. And there is much to be admired in the way in which it is first presented to us-for first of all is presented to us that which does in fact first of all meet our notice in the world, the object above all others worthy of attention, the humiliation of the Son, made a little lower than the angels; but why thus humbled? Why is He (of whom it is written, " Thy throne, 0 God, is forever and ever," and again, "Worship him, all ye angels ") made lower than the angel?-for the suffering of death. And what is the needs be for that? Was not God's blessedness and felicity perfect in itself? Was it not enough for urn to enjoy that which He had and was? Nature, man's nature, poor fallen nature may have such thoughts as these; but they are far removed from God's thoughts, as well in connection with others as with Himself. As to Himself, He never has been, nor can as God, be contented to rest, as it were, either in Himself or in His own; He lives to display His own glory, and loves to do so; and again, as to others, His creatures, He cannot rest without displaying to them, which can be -done alone in works, that blessed character, and grace, and wisdom, and power, and goodness, the knowledge of which is enjoyment and delight to those who, being in dependence upon Him, enter into the understanding of that which He has ministered to them. But while this shows us why He acts (surely the very desire to act in Him is most blessed and gracious, for it is the desire of presenting, ever more and more clearly, that One, whom to glorify and to know is blessedness), the needs be for the humiliation in connection with His action, if for blessing in this world, is found in our sadly fallen state. For man to be met by God, as God, with His glory, would have been destruction. But God meets him as one with Him in the meek and lowly Jesus, the man of sorrow, though God manifested in the flesh. And yet, what avails even this meeting? True, they may thus be able to meet, and the glory of God being veiled awhile, poor man be enabled to stand in His presence, and hear His mind, and goodness; but alienated in heart from 'God, the very holy anxious care for God and man in Jesus only moves him to displeasure-it condemns him-it shows him what he should be and what he is not. But this was not all that was proposed in the humiliation; this was not even the object in it, but rather death was the object; which, while it teaches us the same blessed zeal in Jesus for God and man, does it in a way to lead us not to turn from the loveliness of His obedience to the loathsomeness of our disobedience, and then in self-condemnation, to hate Him as the standard, but rather to turn from all that is in us to the blessed grace in Him, who in that death put away our sins, and so filling our hearts, with the joy of restored favor to God, and our hands with the spoils of His victory, He leads us captive in His love, rejoicing in Him and in His perfectness of obedience (for in that is our security); and so He makes us willing to condemn ourselves as self-convicted through the light of His love.

But after presenting us with this, the Spirit would lead us into the spring of it; for neither He nor Jesus would have us know the love of Jesus as a thing separate from God; and thus we have it here said, " That he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man." This is most blessed-most blessed! His tasting death was "of God"-the God we had sinned against, the God we had to meet in judgment-of that God it was that Jesus tasted death for us. Well may it be said to be by grace. Surely it was an unmerited display of goodness-a free gift; for nothing could be seen by God in us (much as there was in Himself) which could have suggested such a thought. By grace I understand a free gift; a gift not merited, not deserved in any way, and that in God which leads Him to make such gifts the spontaneous rising and flowing of His own superabundant goodness; and such it was which in this case led to this mercy. Mercy and grace are not the same thing; for mercy is the overlooking of sin, and the communicating of goodness to what positively deserves wrath and judgment. Grace might be shown, I conceive, to an unfallen angel; mercy or the pity of God, toward the rebellious only, to poor fallen man. And the form in which His free gift embodied itself toward us, was that of giving His Son to taste death for every man. But while we most surely have to adore His thoughts toward us herein, the next verse reminds us that He had thoughts about Himself too in the matter, and that in so acting He meant to put the Church into the association with Himself in those thoughts concerning Himself in the matter. For we read, " it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren; saying [and that too in the midst of glory], I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee."

" It became him "-surely such expressions as this would lead us at once to look at the subjects in connection with which they are used, as presenting, in a peculiar way, the wisdom and grace of God, while they constrain us likewise to recognize the marvelous place the church is set in, as able to have such an appeal made to her. And such expressions are not rare or uncommon. In Luke 15 we have, " It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." In 1 Cor. 2:6, " Howbeit we speak wisdom among them which are perfect; yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to naught: but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory." Again (Col. 1:19), " For it pleased the Father [or, it was pleasing, that is, to Godhead] that in him should all fullness dwell;" and indeed there are many others of similar character which present that which is the expression of the divine mind for the church's admiration, thereby at once teaching her God and His ways, and that her own high calling is to possess the mind of Christ, which alone can enter into the admiration of that which was pleasing to God. And surely it becomes us with holy reverence to endeavor to trace what there was which "became" God in all these things. Now here we have it said, " It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth, and they that are sanctified, are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." The church is God's church, and has been so from before the foundation of the world; in God the Son first saw her, and tracing, in the divine purpose and counsel, both the oneness in divine nature of God that sanctifieth, and the church so sanctified (for her new nature is derived from God- as it is written, John 3:6, " that which is born of the Spirit is spirit;" and 2 Peter 1:4, " partakers of the divine nature "), and the glory to which she was set apart, He was not ashamed to call them brethren. But the way in which these many sons were to be presented in glory was even then before the foundation of the world, and therefore long before the fall, -thus manifested as necessarily involving the captain of their salvation being perfected through sufferings.

The humiliation of the Son, as Captain of salvation, was no merely remedial step brought in after the fall-no last resource of the benevolence of God to man, perversely departed from by him as far as possible, merely: these things it was truly; but to us, as able to enter into the -deep things of God, it was also far more, even the settled purpose of the divine mind from before the fall and the foundation of the world, for all things are for God; and all things are by God; and so even the mystery of iniquity neither began nor has run its course, save by His permission and for the manifestation of His glory. The setting of the many sons in glory was not to be immediate-the mere expression and opening of an additional proof of His power and Godhead to the many displayed in creation: it was to be by redemption from evil; a presentation of the grace and patience of God in bright contrast with the dark wickedness of His adversary the devil, and of His amazing love in turning the hearts of many of those taken captive by him at his will, and then giving them escape from him. The sons were sons of redemption; and grace was to be the song and burden they should sing. The pit whence these sons were to be brought, and the object connected with their redemption thence (the revelation of salvation) seemed to have the needs be, to have constituted the propriety referred to in its being said, " It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect -through sufferings."

And death-the Lord's death, thus became the wondrous link between the marvelous purpose and grace in God toward the many sons, and the monstrous position of thraldom and sin out of which they were to be redeemed. From the throne of God He stooped down in humiliation and suffering to earth, where He could meet and converse with those there known to Him as brethren; but He stooped lower still, even beneath that which was the burden that kept them bound there, the sense of which ever veiled their hearts in darkness and fear before God-death, the judgment of their sin and guilt: and in this there are these two distinct things, the grace, great and marvelous as it is of his becoming associated with us in our scene and circumstances of misery-" Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.... for verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people: for in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." And again, " We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." These and such like passages spew us some of the gracious objects of the incarnation in humiliation as to the brethren. He would become so associated with them as to learn all their sorrows, Himself the man of sorrows, the prince of grief, that they might have liberty before Him, and He power likewise to be touched with every feeling of infirmity. And the extent of His sorrows thus, and therefore of power of sympathy, is thus marked, chapter 5:7; " Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him."

The second object referred to has the devil more as its end. " Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." It is far too common for us to limit the scope of the divine objects to those one or two things in which we can trace our own individual interest; thus in effect making ourselves, and not Jesus, to be the center of scripture. There are many portions which, skew us such is not the mind of Christ, presenting to us many varied and different objects accomplished by one and the same action in God. See for instance the parable of the sower, Matt. 13; the object of the testimony of the word of the kingdom is there shown to be not only the salvation of the church, or the manifestation of the true character of the seed in them who receive it into ground prepared; this is but one of the objects effected by the sowing of the good seed; besides this, it makes manifest the character of the birds of the air, that is the devil -and the unprofitable character of the stony ground, that is the flesh-and the injurious character of the thorns, that is the world. So that, while we might only look for that which concerns ourselves, we should see but one point of instruction here, and overlook those others of equal interest to the divine mind in the places, and of pre-eminent moment to us if following the Lord. The connection of the death of the Lord with Satan in like manner is too much overlooked, though the perception of it puts the church's freedom and liberty in a very clear and bright light. Having referred to this once before, when speaking of the blood, I shall here only briefly allude to it. The power of Satan against man was both in itself, and in its effect upon conscience, in the array of the character of God against fallen man, and the position he had taken by, and in the fall. Man was guilty and in rebellion, and against that Satan rejoiced to see the character of God ranged. Yea, and more than this, his power of death was by the just award of God; and upon every man that came into the world he could justly press it, for all had sinned: but when Jesus came, he had no claim or right over Him-against Him personally there was no sentence from God for sin; and when Satan touched Him he had exceeded his commission, and it became a just thing for the very God who had sanctioned his power of death, to sanction it no longer; justice and righteousness, which had been Satan's defense in the infliction of death, now, more loudly, called for vengeance; yea, and he had, like they of old of Gaza, taken captive one whom neither he nor his prison could hold-one that could up in the night and take the city gates upon his shoulders, leading captivity captive, and thus, by death, He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and delivered them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. The Lord's death, looked at vicariously, and as a matter between Him, and the Father, and the Spirit in the church, was the freedom of the church; but as looked at personally between God and Satan, it was Satan's death-warrant and sentence. " Now is the prince of this world judged," &c. But the matter stayed not there: the power of the jailer was destroyed, and the work effected, by means of which (as we see in chaps. 19 and 21 of Revelation) all his power and works shall be shortly crushed, the captives were free; and this same death which broke the jailer's arm and power it is, which delivers from his thraldom, and from the tyranny of fear, those who, all their lifetime, had been subject to bondage through fear of death; for seeing His death substituted for their judgment, death has ceased to be to them what it was, and has rather become the blessed rest of the weary pilgrim in his march through the world: and thus the Lord has gained the church from Satan now, and by His death stopped the power and force of his accusations forever' to them that believe, and fitted them thus to become temples of the Holy Ghost, and to take their place outwardly and in conscious liberty among the sons of God.

The Death Part 4.3

3. "Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." (Heb. 5:7.)

What a contrast between this and the preceding portion! In that the Son, having marked the high calling and nature of the church in His Father's mind, is presented to us as coming clown into the midst of her sorrows and captivity, by His own death to destroy him that had the power of death- that is the devil, and to deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage: here the same blessed One is seen realizing in His own person all the sorrow and anguish of the fear of death, and, though heard, not delivered from it -" when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared." Unasked, undesired, he came, in the deep sympathy of His own perfect soul, to remove the fear of death, and that too at His own proper charges, from those that were under-lying it. But in this act and deed He had placed Himself where all that love which was in the Father toward Him, could only act under restraint. How wondrous is the love of God to the church, how marvelous the grace of Christ toward her. May we never forget either His love in thus tasting death for us, or the reality of the bitterness of the draft to His soul; and may we ever remember, that He having drank the cup, it remains not for us.

The Death Part 4.4

4. "For this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the

redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth." (Heb. 9:15-17.)

It is singular what confusion the translators of our, generally excellent, authorized version have made in some passages by needlessly rendering one and the same Greek word by a variety of English words. Thus the word διαθηκη, rendered uniformly throughout chapter 8 "covenant," is here rendered "testament;" covenant is surely the correct rendering. Probably they felt this in chapter 8, as seeing that to have rendered it testament would have been to make the law not a compact from God, ratified with the symbolic blood of bulls and goats, but (which it evidently is not) a testamentary deposition of the slain beast. Perhaps also in chapter 9, the, verses before us formed their difficulty, and it was one which the more easily passed from the truth of the second covenant, so far at least as it has been applied to the church being a testamentary deposition of the Lord's; though this is not the meaning of the passage.

The passage would read much more simply thus:-" And for this cause he is the mediator of the new covenant, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a covenant is, there must also of necessity be the death of the thing covenanted over. For a covenant is of force upon the basis of dead things: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the thing covenanted over is alive. Whereupon, neither the first covenant was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant which God hath enjoined unto you."

Whereby we get a most simple truth presented to us about the confirmation of the covenant; and the death of the Lord presented us at once the redemption of the transgressions which were under the first covenant, and the ratification of the second covenant. The transgressions under the first covenant would just be the fruits of its imperative demands upon fallen man, in weakness and in rebellion before God; the more " do and live " is pressed upon him, the more will he feel both his own inability to do, and the motions of sin which are by the law: the second covenant acts in blessed contrast to this, as it is written in Heb. 10:16: " This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." And Oh, how wondrously full the value of the Lord's death!—at once the antitype of all the Mosaic and Levitical sacrifices! the redemption of transgressions under that covenant, and the power and virtue of that better compact of pure divine grace, wherein God pours forth out of His own abundant fullness, according to His estimate of the wants and necessities of His poor fallen creatures, and gives all blessings unto them that believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord!

The Death Part 4.5

5. "Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory forever and ever, Amen." (Heb. 13:20, 21.)

These two verses cannot be separated, if we would have the comfort and the instruction our God would teach us by them; for it is the character in which our God is presented in the former, which forms the known security of the church's power for the service presented in the latter. And I would, en passant, notice here, how much those rob themselves and God of, who either separate privilege and precept, or overlook the different titles and names, under which God presents. Himself, when seeking to instruct and guide the church. The call to be perfect in every good work to do His will, having that which is wellpleasing in God's sight wrought in us, would be a sorrow-quickening thing if presented to us by itself, for it would be a draining demand upon nature for more than nature contains; but when it comes as a given character in God, wherein He has presented Himself as the worker of all blessing, yea,. the basis of all blessing, in Himself raising the Lord, our Lord Jesus, from the dead, and that, too, in the character of the great Shepherd of the sheep, and through the blood of the everlasting covenant, it comes with joy and blessing, for rich is the cluster of mercies and blessings it brings along with it; and it is impossible to think of them and not to rest in Him who did them, as the doer and effectuator of all the other things which they seem to involve, suggest, and lead into. And thus the precept, instead of being a heavy, heart-breaking burden, becomes a blessed and refreshing consolation, because it throws us afresh off the resources of nature, upon the fullness of the grace and power of God.

The Death Part 4.6

6. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:3-5.)

O that the saints were brought off their own dark fleshly experiences to rest more simply upon God and His work! "Surely there are comparatively but few who have learned to tell the beads of mercy which are theirs in Christ; -"begotten again to a lively hope, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time." Is it not a precious string of rich gems? But whose are they? Surely they are the property of every believer! Yet they, know it not; but, too many of them question and doubt, as though nothing were theirs; and why is this, but because instead of taking what God has done as their portion and security (that, is, the experience of faith and the Spirit), they will look for evidences and testimonials inside themselves (which is the experience of unbelief and nature), whereby they, never get a firm footing in grace at all. Blessed truth, that the resurrection of Jesus was our begetting again to a lively hope to all these blessings and glories.. May the knowledge, of this as a thing true, in God eternally true, lead us into perfect freedom, and holy joy and delight. For this will bring our poor dark hearts into the place of light, and peace, and gladness, and enable us to sing for joy, and to find strength (for the joy of the Lord is His people's strength) to go forth and do His will.

The Death Part 4.7

7. "Christ.... manifest.... for you who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God." (1 Peter 1:20, 21.)

In Heb. 13 we had a passage somewhat similar to this, only there God's conduct in graciously raising Him from the dead for us was the pledge of all power to us for service to God; here the same thing is presented, as shewing that in God there is a basis and claim for our faith and hope. God raised Him from the dead, and God gave Him glory, and that for the sake of us who believe: now if this resurrection, as we have seen, is the begetting of us to a lively hope, with all the attendant blessings-what a blessed rest in Himself has God presented for our faith and hope! And surely, nothing but having these in God Himself will suffice. All and everything outside of God is variable and uncertain, but He changes not, and the faith and hope which- are in Him cannot fail nor cease, I do think, in our own day, there is very little of faith and hope in God. What with wrong and erroneous views of the work of the Son, such as many have, imagining His work was not the result of, and the expression of, the Father's grace, but something brought in to move the Father; and what with the confounding together of the work of the Son and of the Spirit, and again, the confused notions about faith and the Spirit, it has come to pass that really very few have their faith and hope in God Himself. Reader, is it so with thee? A simple rest upon, and expectation from, God Himself, resulting from the knowledge of what He has proved Himself to be by the marvelous work He has done in raising Christ from the dead for the church, and giving her glory, that our faith and hope might be in God. And surely, this last clause skews that not only has He presented a basis for faith and hope in Himself, but moreover, that He lays claim to have them there. Alas, our little faith, our little intelligence of service to One so gracious, so patient, so anxious in love toward us!

The Death Part 4.8

8. "It is better.... that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." (1 Peter 3:17, 18.)

The force and meaning of this, when taken in connection with the few first verses of chapter iv., is very plain, "Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." No one, indeed, but one understanding the mystery of the union of Christ and the church can comprehend such things; but to such the argument is weighty and simple; Christ died for you on account and by reason of your flesh, therefore you must count it a thing crucified, and to be crucified with Him. And thus we are reminded here of the gracious way in which our God has given us His sentence against, and full estimate of, our flesh, and that in such a way as to make His sentence necessarily the plea of every one that believes against the sins of the flesh. As connected with the death of the Lord, and the lesson thence to be derived by us, I shall here make no further remark; but as there are two parts of the context which have presented to many great difficulties, I would just make a remark or two, tending perhaps to throw some light upon the subject to many minds, and which seem to me connected with the meaning which, rightly or wrongly, I attach to the passages in question.

The argument, it will be observed, is especially addressed to the Jewish Christians (see the opening and course of the epistle), and at this part, from chapter 3:18 to chapter 4:7, turns upon the question of the effect of the knowledge of God's judgment upon a believer. This, to a Gentile mind, would have been comparatively a simple thing, requiring merely the enunciation of it. But to a Jewish mind the case was somewhat different, for it had before it, not only its own state as one that had been subjected to law, but likewise the case of the antediluvian world, concerning which it might raise a question, such as, whether the statement" of the principle was so universal as to include them. And this question would arise, not from captiousness necessarily, for he that knows God and His ways aright, knows the uniformity of the principles of His conduct. It is this, as it seems to me, which leads Paul into his argument in the epistle to the Romans, chapter 5:12-11; for he was ever careful, as we should be, to establish in the minds of those with whom he had to do, that God's ways were equal; and so he shows them there, that there having been no standard of right or wrong given to any body of people in the world, until the law came by Moses, did not at all touch the question of God's judgment as to man's real state. Until Moses, there had been no standard given in the world, and no God, present daily, to mark departure from this standard, and to bring it into present judgment for it; and after Moses this had been the case: nevertheless, though in the world there might be this difference, the prevalence of death from Adam to Moses, showed that God's estimate of them all was very much the same-all died.

In the same way Peter here seems to me to anticipate such thoughts arising, and in several of the verses in the context to be laboring to show that the principle he was stating was of universal applicability as to man. I should read and paraphrase it thus, " It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing." For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just One for the many unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: and then, lest a Jew should say, as it seems to me,-" well, we see the needs-be of such a testimony and estimate to one who has been under the law, but what of those as to whose sin God bore no such testimony in themselves, as He had by the law to us Jews: say, the antediluvians?" Peter adds, and by the which Spirit (the very same whereby Christ was quickened), He went and preached (by Noah) unto the spirits (now) in prison; which formerly were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, &c.

The Death Part 4.9

9. "Grace unto you and peace.... from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead.... I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.... These things saith the first and the lad, which was dead and is alive." (Rev. 1:5, 18; 2:8.)

The book of the Revelation is a very solemn and yet blessed book. It opens to us, in a peculiar way, the dark outline of the churches' departure from God, and gives us many fearful details of the trials and difficulties the faithful few will have to meet with; in corresponding contrast most bright and blessed is the aspect in which the blessed Lord presents Himself.

" Grace unto you and peace.... from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead."

The blessed Captain of Salvation having waded through all necessities and trials, and gained the Shore, calling to those for whom He stemmed the mighty stream, to mark the place He held and this His present victory over all their very present trials after the full experience of them. And surely this is both blessed and gracious. For landed safely there, and now, care and thought no longer demanded from Him, for Himself and His God, the work being finished which He gave Him to do, His whole care and thought could be for the church; and who so fitted as He to sympathize with her as Himself, just come out of the conflict in which she still is? And the blessedness of this, His position, so held' for the church, shortly afterward shines out; for when John fell at His feet as one that was dead when he saw Him-this was His gracious way: " And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

" If God be for us, who can be against us?" is a blessed word; but how pre-eminently blessed is this presenting of the Lord in His risen glory, just returned from the conflict, as being for the church too. Jesus, manifested as God, with memory fresh as to all the details of the conflict for us, Himself having the mastery of them all, present to give us the same. May God realize the blessed thought to us, that in confidence of His possessing the keys of hades and of death, we may advance with all boldness under the immediate scrutiny of His eye. Strongly confirmatory of the view here taken of the object of the character thus assumed by the Lord, to my own mind at least, is the use of the same character in the address to the church of Smyrna, " These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive."

Any one that carefully reads the letters to the seven churches, will see that not only are the insignia under which the Lord introduces Himself to them, respectively, different, but that likewise there is an internal harmony in each letter between the insignia adopted-the state of the church, and the promises or warnings given to it. It was, I believe, the peculiarly trying state of things at Smyrna, but the faithfulness of the church thereunder, which led the Lord Jesus, in addressing it, to take the same choice character in which He had introduced Himself to John in the first chapter, in the midst of his embarrassing feebleness, and by which, John, in opening the book, is led by the Spirit to introduce Christ, as sending with Him, which is, and which was, and which is to come, and with the seven spirits that are before His throne, grace and peace to them.

The Death Part 4.10

10. "In the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb, as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.... Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.... Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing."

These three passages, in painful contrast to the world's course of thought, give us Heaven's estimate of the Lamb as it had been slain. And, first, we have this as connected with the mind of God, and the settled ordered arrangements of the glory of the place.

" In the midst of the throne, and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a lamb as it had been slain." And not only do we find Him in this place of glory as to the throne of the Lord God Almighty, but even that throne itself sharing in His name, as oft afterward the throne is called the throne of God and the Lamb. Then, secondly, we have the song of the elders (representatives of the church on earth) in full accordance with the mind of Him, before and around whose throne they are hymning still the death of Jesus: " Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we shall reign on the earth!' And then; thirdly and lastly, the full chorus of those whose minds are in. full unison with the mind of heaven; "And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever. And the four living creatures said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth forever and ever."

Surely it ought to give us great boldness and liberty, when thinking of the glory that awaits us, and the place prepared for us, amid the many mansions of the Father's house; to see the place those grand and leading truths (which our present necessities and circumstances so press home upon our hearts and minds) hold in the hearts and minds of them that are there. If our sin, and sinfulness, and misery, and failure, make the death of Jesus, and His life from death, our one abiding constant resource, these things are better known, and more appreciated there, whither we go, than here. And, indeed, while from the flesh in us we may be more conscious of being driven to them by pressure of passing circumstances, and the evil in us and around, we must never forget, that the secret of our power to value them at all, is the mind of Christ, which we have from the Spirit; and this is the mind of heaven; so that in principle we, as those there, do rejoice in these things in their intrinsic value, though it may be that, amid much weakness, and infirmity, and failure, we may be more conscious of being driven to them by circumstances than drawn by their intrinsic preciousness.

The Death Part 4.11

11. "All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." (Rev. 13:8.)

When will the end of grace be reached, love divine fathomed, or the, value of the death of Jesus be fully, rightly known? Here we have it in a new and fresh light still. The book of life endorsed with His name, as " the Lamb that had been slain," and the connection in which this book is here presented, show us, moreover, that it is in this character that deliverance is found in Him for those who worship not the beast. Blessed Lord, how various is Thy love and glory, how precious the applications and uses to Thy saints of them, by the Spirit in Thy word! How wretched and ruinous the state and condition of those that know them not, amid that world, whence Thy grace has redeemed us to Thyself, that we, knowing our names written in Thy book of life, might be enabled to give ourselves wholly to Thee as Thy worshippers and servants. Amen, and Amen.

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