Christian Witness: Volume 5

The Gospel by St. John

This portion of the word of God has commonly been the most precious to the Church. Many a soul has enjoyed it as such, without, perhaps, exactly knowing why it was so; for the correctness of our spiritual tastes and desires is often much above the measure of our spiritual intelligence. And it is well that it is so. But the special delight of the saints in this portion of the scriptures may be accounted for; and I believe the reason of it lies in this-that it particularly presents the Lord to us in that person and in those actings which do immediately associate Him with the Church,

Before, however, I give what appears to me to be the general character and order of this gospel, I will suggest some introductory things which have helped me, as I judge, to a fuller understanding and enjoyment of it myself. May the Lord control our thoughts, and lead us into His own truth!

From the whole of their history, the people of Israel might have learned how entirely dependent they were on those resources which God had in Himself, beyond, and independent of, their own system; for by such resources they had been in all stages of their history sustained and conducted. Their father Abraham had been called by an act of sovereign grace. (Josh. 24:3.) God's own hand had preserved and strangely multiplied them in Egypt. (Ex. 1:19) In distant solitudes, where Israel was not known, Moses was prepared to be their deliverer from Egypt. All through the wilderness, their journey had shown them their utter dependence on God. By His Spirit, and not by might nor by power, did Joshua, after Moses, fulfill his ministry, reducing the nations of Canaan; and afterward, though in different circumstances, there was still the same thing. Joshua's sword, which had been the verifier of the Lord's faithfulness to Abraham and his seed, had no sooner been sheathed, and the blessing transferred from the hand of God which had thus brought it, to the hand of Israel which was now to keep t it, than it was lost. It slipped away from its new guardian at once. Faithlessness and weakness were clearly now marked in Israel, as truth and power had been in Jehovah. Israel and Canaan were Adam and the garden again. But this only gives fresh reason for the same grace as before. Ere the first chapter of the book of Judges closes, Israel, by disobedience, had forfeited everything. The inhabitants of the land were not driven out. But the rest of that book only shows us God's presence among them; repairing the mischief from time to time with His own hand, and in the energy of His own Spirit.

And this must needs be the character of God's acting in a time of forfeited blessing. Either judgment must be executed in righteousness, or blessing be brought in sovereign grace. Man by the previous trial having been found wanting, must be humbled and set aside, and God come in with some new energy of his own to do a strange act, something anomalous or irregular, something beside the order of the dispensation, and independent of what were properly its own resources. All the deliverances wrought for Israel in the times of the Judges, are accordingly of this character. The appearance in Israel of Deborah, Gideon, Jephtha, and Sampson, is such a thing, as the system, if maintained by its own resources in its own path, would never have led to.

Thus as to Deborah-" She judged Israel in those days." But this was not quite such a successor to him who was " king in Jeshuran," as we might have counted upon. But the honor had passed into the hand of a woman, for Israel was out of order. Trespass had come in with a disturbing force, and the remedy must be applied, if at all, by God's own hand. And so it was. Therefore in her magnificent song, she sings-" O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength;" a confession that the source of her strength and victory was all in God, and that in the energy of the Spirit, and in that only, she had fought the battle of the Lord and conquered.

So with Gideon.-He was not of Judah to whom such honor had by ancient right belonged, but of Manasseh, and his family, the least in Manasseh. But such an one is called away from his threshing, to bear that sword which was soon to distinguish itself as " the sword of the Lord and of Gideon." But what was this sword of such renown? Three hundred men with trumpets and pitchers! Strange weapons of war against the host of Midian. But Midian ran before them. A cake of barley bread tumbled in and over-turned the tents of the enemy. For it was the Lord Himself, who was now in action again, and the treasure of Israel's strength might therefore well lie in an earthen vessel.

And Jephtha in his turn tells the same tale. The son of a strange woman, Ile had been disclaimed by his brethren in Israel, and cast out among the Gentiles. But this is the one whom the Lord chooses, again to be Israel's savior in the day of their trespass and trouble. But where is Israel's honor now? where is the glory and worth of their own system, when he whom his brethren despised and cast out as a base thing, is their only hope in their calamity? The honor was not their's, nor was the strength of their own system their help and defense now. The Spirit of God in sovereign grace to Israel, comes upon Jephtha. The battle was the Lord's. Israel had again destroyed himself, but in God was his help.

And all this we have again displayed in Samson. All that ushers in and conducts him in his strange course of action, speaks of the strength and way of God alone. There was nothing in the system of Israel that could account for it. Samson was a child of promise, raised up in the dishonored tribe of Daniel and thus was a sign of God's grace and sovereignty. And according to this, he is at once separated to God, drawn as far as might be, out of the strict Jewish order and line of things. The path which he trod lay right across the beaten path of Israel. The secret of God was with him, but none knew his riddle but himself. His kindred in the flesh did not know it, for it was the secret of God. And he himself has done with father, and mother, and country, and the law of Israel, and is under a new and special dispensation. Contrary to the law, and yet by the direction of the law-giver, he marries a daughter of the Philistines. And throughout his course he does not go the common way of Israel, or use the resources of Israel, but he does strange and surprising acts from the time that the Spirit first moved him in the camp of Daniel to the time when he died in the midst of the Philistine lords. All that he does was of one great character. An unknown energy stirred and conducted him. Israel's own resources were again by all this, set aside, and God himself was displayed in His own grace and power.

So after the book of Judges closes, we see the same thing. Samuel like Samson was a child of promise, and a child of promise is always the sign of grace; (Rom. 9:8.) for it says, " not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." And therefore at his birth, his mother Celebrates through the Holy Ghost, the praises of grace. He becomes at first a mere waiting boy in the tabernacle, but from thence he is called forth that all Israel might know him to be the prophet of God; and finally see in him the raiser of the stone Ebenezer-the deliverer and help of the nation."

And after him, in David, we again see God's own way and resources displayed in the time of Israel's need. For David was taken from the sheepfolds to feed Israel. His father and his brethren took no account of him; Israel knew him not, but the Lord chooses and anoints him. He becomes for awhile an exiled and needy wanderer, but at last he has the kingdom settled in his house, by a covenant of sure mercies forever.

Thus from the call of Abraham their father, to the exaltation of David their king, through Moses, Joshua, the Judges, and Samuel; every stage in this wondrous journey, is seen to have been accomplished in the grace of God-the resources of their own system, and which lay in their own hands, proving utterly vain.

And I would add, that the prophets were another line of witnesses to the same truth. They were raised up for Israel's guidance and help, by an extraordinary energy of the Spirit. The primitive settlement of things in Israel, did not provide such a ministry. The nation was to stand in the remembrance and obedience of the words which Moses had delivered to them. (see Deut. 6; 11; 31) But forgetting these words, an extraordinary presence of the Spirit of God is called for, and that is displayed in the person and ministry of the prophets.

Thus, by this line of teachers or prophets, as by the other line of rulers or deliverers, testimony to the need of God's own resources in their behalf was left with every succeeding generation of Israel. And this was continuously telling out to them, that they could not stand in their own covenant, and that all their hope of final honor and rest lay in the grace and power of God. And so we know it will be-Israel will stand as God's people in the latter day, in the strength that is laid up for them in the Lord Jesus; to whom therefore, these two lines of witnesses point, and in whom, as the true prophet of Israel, and as the true king of Israel, they will both end. And what refreshing will it be for those who are weary of man, and sick of his wisdom and his doings, to walk in a sphere where man shall be hid, and God alone displayed! " The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."

But there was another and a deeper purpose of God which was constantly seen in the history of Israel. The eminent persons have been noticing, were all of Israel, and pledged only Israel's mercies. But God had purposes beyond Israel,-purposes touching the Gentiles, of a very exalted character; and this He signified also by another line of witnesses, formed, as we shall now see, of eminent personages, who were all of them Gentiles, or strangers to Israel.

There appears to have been a body of Gentiles at all times, living in the midst of Israel, who take an inferior rank to Israel, though enjoying blessings and ordinances with them. But there was also a line of distinguished Gentiles, who, whenever they appeared in the history, took a place, and were called into scenes and, services, as did, on the other hand, greatly raise them above the level of Israel. Both of these things are, I judge, very significant, illustrating the plans then reserved in God's counsels for the Gentiles or strangers, the great body of whom. will hereafter in the kingdom take a place subordinate to Israel, though in Israel's joy, while there will then be an elect and distinguished, body of them (those who are now called out to form the Church of God,) whose place and dignity will be far above that of Israel.

The first of these distinguished strangers who meets us, is Melchisedek. The honor that was put upon him, need not to be particularly spoken of here; it is generally so well understood. But he only begins a series of persons, each illustrious in their generation and day, like himself.

After him, we meet with Asenath and Zipporah, the wives of Joseph and of Moses; they were both strangers to Abraham: but they became the mothers of those children who were given to these two illustrious fathers in Israel, while they were in their days separated from Israel; and thus do they hold dignities that the chiefest daughters in Israel might envy.

We next are introduced to Jethro, who on Israel's coming out of Egypt, takes upon him without rebuke, though he was but a stranger, a priest of Midian, to do priestly service in the presence of Aaron; and to give counsel touching affairs of state to Moses. This was occupying for a while, a very illustrious place in the midst of Israeli The brightest glories in Israel were thus for awhile, outshone; and Moses and Aaron, the king and the priest in Jeshurun, are set aside by this stranger. Fair token, like Melchisedek before, of great things to come for the Gentiles.

After Jethro, we see Rahab, another stranger, but one who, we may all remember, was brought to have a high memorial in Israel; such a memorial indeed as the daughters of Israel longed for continually. For the hope of Israel comes through her after the flesh; (Matt. 1:5.) and she is the one whose faith is spoken of in connection with the faith of their father Abraham. (Jam. 2).

Next, in Jael the wife of Heber, the Kenite; we see the stranger again much honored. It was by her hand, in a very special measure, that God subdued the king of Canaan before the children of Israel, so that her praise is thus rehearsed-" Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber, the Kenite be! blessed shall she be above women in the tent!"

After her, in a third female, in Ruth the Moabitess; we see the stranger again honored with many honors. Though a daughter of an unclean and rejected people, she is given a place equal to the chiefest mothers in Israel. Like Rahab before her, the hope of the nation comes through her according to the flesh; (Matt. 1:5.) and she is given a standing equal in dignity with Rachel herself. (Ruth 4:11.) She had no natural kindredness with Israel; but through grace she is grafted on Israel to become the bearer of the stem of Jesse, whose branch is, as we know, the only hope of the people.

And afterward in the times of David, we have the stranger kept most honorably in view. This appears first in Uriah. He was a Hittite; but his fidelity to the God of Israel, and zeal, self-devoting zeal, in the cause of Israel, shine out blessedly in contrast even with Israel's chiefest and noblest and best child in that day. This poor relic of the defiled Gentiles, rebukes no less a son of Israel, than king David himself.

We get the stranger again in these times of David, in Ittai the Gittite. (2 Sam. 15) He with his 600 men, appears to have joined himself to David, when forced to seek a refuge among the Philistines. And he continued faithful to David down to the very end. He came into the land of Israel with him, after Saul had been removed, and the language of such an act was just what Ruth had been before to Naomi, "thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." He was not of Israel, but more true to Israel's anointed king, than Israel was; for in the time of David's second sorrow, when his people had revolted to Absalom, and the land was in rebellion, it was this stranger that clung to him whether for life or death. "Wherefore goest thou also with us," said David to him, " return to thy place, and abide with the king, for thou art a stranger and also an exile; whereas thou tamest but yesterday, should I this day make thee go up and down with us, seeing I go whither I may? return thou, and take back thy brethren: mercy and truth be with thee." And Ittai answered the king and said, " as the Lord liveth and as my lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be." How beautiful and affecting all this is! how perfect the tenderness of David, and the faithfulness of this his long tried friend and servant, and how eminently by all this is the stranger distinguished in Israel.

But in these same days of David, the stranger or Gentile, is again introduced to us in the person of Araunah; and as usual, in a way of eminence and honor. David's transgression had brought the nation under judgment, and the angel of the Lord was going through the land slaying his thousands, when at the bidding of the Lord, his hand is stayed at the threshing-floor of this Jebusite. There it was that mercy first rejoiced against judgment. Sin was reigning in Israel unto death, but grace is made to reign unto life first, in this inheritance of the Gentile. What a high distinction was this! what a note of favor to the Gentiles I Surely all this had a voice, though there was no speech nor language. For the fullness of the Gentiles is first to come in, and then all Israel is to he saved. God's grace to us now, is the pattern of His future grace to Israel; (Rom. 11:30, 31.) as Araunah's threshing-floor gave the rest of the land a pattern of that abounding grace, by which it was to be delivered from the sword of the angel.

Afterward, in the times of the kings, I may notice both the widow of Sarepta, and Nauman, the Syrian. Not that they were either of them ever brought to high estate in Israel, as other strangers, but they were made the standing monuments of distinguishing and electing grace. (see Luke 4:25—27.) After these, we reach Jehonadab the son of Rechab. (2 Kings 10) He is made assessor with Jehu, in judgment on the house of Ahab. And as this action of Jehu, was the foreshowing of the Lord's judgment of apostate Israel, (Hos. 1) we get in Jehonadab thus honorably associated with Jehu, a type of the stranger, or the Church associated with the Lord in the coming day of His vengeance on the apostasy. For then the Lord is to come with ten thousands of saints to execute judgment-the armies in heaven are to follow the word of God on white horses.-And thus this introduction of Jehonadab, not only again gives us the stranger in very eminent and holy honor, but also the glimpse of some of the high dignity, that is in reserve for the Church of God, in the latter day.

Thus among the Patriarchs, and successively in the times of Moses and of Joshua, of the Judges, of David, and of the Kings, the stranger is occasionally presented to us, and always in distinction. But beside this occasional testimony, there was the abiding presence and testimony of the stranger or Gentile in Israel. I mean in that family to which this Jehonadab, and others whom I have noticed, belonged; the family of the Rechabites, who continued in Israel from the earliest times down to the latest, from Moses to Jeremiah. (Judg. 1:16. Jer. 35) And all through these many centuries, they dwelt as strangers in the land. At the very first, they went up from the city, to dwell in the wilderness, and at the very end, they are seen maintaining the same character. They neither built houses, nor bought fields, nor sowed seed, nor planted vineyards; all the days they dwelt in tents, and did not eat of the fruit of the vine. Thus they were a standing order of Nazarites, more separated to God than even Israel; and so faithful were they to their consecration-vows, that at the end when the Lord was pronouncing judgment upon His own people, He pledged to the house of Rechab, that they should not want a man to stand before Him forever. Throughout the long period of their tabernacling in Israel, wherever we hear of them, it is always to their praise, always taking such a place of honor, and sustaining such a character of holiness, as distinguishes them, like all the other strangers, quite above the level of the nation.

Now upon all this I would observe, that as Melchisedek ought to have been to the Jews, a notice of a better order of priesthood, than that of Aaron, (Heb. 7) so this line of strangers, following thus as it were in the train of Melchisedek, might have been in like manner, the constant notice of better things in reserve for the Gen-tiles, than all that which had distinguished Israel. Israel might by them have been prepared for the calling out of the Church, which with the Son of God as her head, is the true stranger upon earth, and which is to hold a more honored place under God, than Israel ever knew. The Church is that to which all these eminent strangers pointed beforehand. For the Church does not tread in Israel's path. She is a stranger where Israel was at home. Her citizenship is in heaven and not on the earth. The saints are the sons of God, and the world knoweth them not even as it knew Christ not. They stand as at the end of the world, (1 Cor. 10:11.) dead and risen with Christ. The Son of God was given no place on earth, and they as with Him, do but sojourn here, separated in principle from all around them, as the Rechabites were separated from Israel, among whom they therefore did,) but tabernacle or pitch their tents.

I do not however speak of the histories of these strangers as typical. I only point to the fact of their high exaltation in Israel, as being a notice from God, of his high exalted purposes concerning the Church-the true strangers. The histories of some of them may have been so typical, (as I have noticed Jehonadab's sitting with Jehu in his chariot, was) as the histories of others of them may not have been so. But it is not the details of their histories that I have been here looking at, but simply the fact of their exaltation in Israel.

Thus these two lines of personages, end in Christ: The line of distinguished Israelites or Jewish worthies, who were called forth in the special energy of the Spirit, for the help and guidance of Israel, ends, as I have already noticed, in Christ; as Israel's true prophet and king-" the God of Jeshurun," who in the latter day; is to be the shield of their help, and the sword of their excellency. The line of distinguished Gentile strangers, who sustained a character and bore dignities and honors far above the level or ordinary calling of Israel-ends in Christ as the head of His body, the Church. And the coming kingdom will manifest Him and those who are severally associated with Him, in these several glories: All things in heaven and on earth shall be then gathered in Him. The true strangers or the saints, will then shine in the heavens,' " as the sun in the kingdom of their father;" and Israel will find their rest, their holy rest, on the earth, under David their prince and shepherd.

Now all this leads me to our gospel; for of Christ as the Son of God, the stranger upon earth, and of the Church which has association with Him in that person and character; the gospel of St. John is the appropriated witness. Indeed it is that which gives it its distinction, and makes it, as I have already noticed, that portion of the oracles of God, which is most precious to the saints.

And let me here observe, that this office of St. John under the Holy Ghost, suits well with the place which he had previously filled in connection with the Lord Himself. He was the disciple whom Jesus loved, and who lay in His bosom; and now he is made to tell us of Him, whom the Father loved, and who lay in the Father's bosom. It was with his Lord's person that John had been familiar, and it is of His person that he is now made the special witness.

May we have understanding hearts to understand the secrets disclosed in this heavenly word! Could we but discern it, every line of it, carries with it, its own divine authority. But, beloved, the only safe and profitable knowledge, is that which we get in communion with the Lord, through the Spirit; and that which, when acquired, ministers to still more enlarged communion. May we prove this, more and more.

I would now follow our gospel in its order, observing briefly, and as I may have grace given me, upon its general character, and detailed contents.

Chap. 1:1-18.-I read these verses as a kind of preface, serving to introduce this gospel in its due character, as the gospel of the Son of God-the Son of the Father-and the Baptist's testimony is here summarily appended to this preface, as serving the same end.

And here I would notice that in this gospel, our Lord Jesus is not merely Son of God, but Son of the Father. As Son of God, the promised king of Israel was known to the nation. (see Matt. 26:63.) But as Son of the Father-as the one whom the Father sent, they knew Him not. And it is generally as Son of the Father, that we are to remember Him, while reading this gospel.

And here too I remark, that the place which our blessed Lord immediately takes on His appearing upon earth, is that which I have already observed belongs to Him as the Son of God, and to His body the Church, that is, the place of a stranger. He is here shown to us at once in this character,-as light in the midst of darkness,-the maker of the world, and yet not known of the world, coming to His own and yet not received of His own; made flesh, and yet only tabernacling for awhile among us. All this shows Him to be the stranger here, and it is thus that this gospel introduces him. And accordingly at the beginning, it assumes that His question with the world, and His question with His earthly people Israel, were both determined. (see ver. 11, 12.) The Spirit of God in our Evangelist, at once shuts up the world, under the condemnation of being " without God," and concludes Israel in unbelief; and upon this brings out an elect family, not registered in the earth or born of flesh, but born of God, for whom " grace and truth," the fullness of the Father in the Son, were now provided.

And on these prefatory verses, I must further observe, that they take us up to God Himself. The book of Genesis, as one has remarked, opens with creation; but the gospel by St. John opens with Him who was before creation, and above creation. It is to Him that we are here immediately taken. Creation is passed by, and we get to " the Word," who was with God and was God.

This is the opening of our gospel, defining it to be the gospel of the Son of God, the creator of all things, the declarer of the Father, the fountain and the channel of grace and truth to' sinners. And according to this, the glory which St. John tells us we have beheld, is that " of the only begotten of the Father," that is, a personal glory, while the glory which the other Evangelists record as having been beheld, was the glory on the holy mount; that is, an official glory merely. And this again characteristically marks the end and bearing of this divine gospel.

l9-28.-And even in these verses the action can scarcely be said to have commenced, for they give us, only by way of recital, the Baptist's testimony to the Jews, before the Lord Jesus had been manifested to him as the Son of God. For so little had the Spirit of God in St. John to do with Jewish testimony, that all this is given here by way of recital, telling us what had been the Baptist's confession to the messengers of the Jews.

29-42.-But here the action fully opens, and this is with the Baptist's direct testimony to Jesus, after the manifestation of Him as Son of God.

And having borne witness to Him as the Son of God and the Lamb of God, the Baptist appears as one who had consciously, fulfilled his course. In the 35th verse he is as one who had retired from his ministry, and was simply enjoying that in which it had all resulted, the manifestation of the Lamb of God. He is there heard merely uttering the hidden satisfaction of his own soul, when he said, "behold the Lamb of God!" For he does not appear to have addressed these words to His disciples, but they, hearing him thus in holy happy contemplation of Jesus, follow Jesus. And beloved, it is this which gets the same honor now. Our power in drawing others after the Lord, mainly rests in our, joy and communion with Him. John had done with himself, and was lost in thoughts of the Lamb of God; and His disciples seem to catch his mind, for they leave him and follow Jesus.

But where do they follow Him? we are not told. In all grace the Lord encouraged them to follow, and they came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day, but where it was we know not. They follow Him along some untold path, and were with Himself, but that is all we learn. For the Son of God was but a stranger on the earth, and they, if with Him, must be strangers too, without place or name here. And so is it here signified; for this little gathering was to the Son of God, and to the Lamb of God; but in principle it was not here-in principle the earth did not own the place, for this was the first handful of wheat for the heavenly granary-the first fruits of the Church or heavenly family unto God and the Lamb.

But there are some points in these verses that I would a little further observe upon. The Baptist speaks of Jesus being really before him, though coming after him; and he repeats this as with some jealousy. (5:15, 27, 30.) And St. Paul, referring to John's ministry, alludes to this feature of it. (Acts 19:4.) But this, I judge, is very. blessed; for in this the Holy Ghost, who spake of John, honors Jesus as the great subject of all the divine counsels, the great ordinance of God to whom all other ordinances pointed, and in whom they ended. And therefore though he came after them, he was before them; and John, as if speaking the mind of all ordinances and ministries, says, "after me cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was before me." For it was the Son alone that had been set up from everlasting; (Prov. 8:23.) the great first object in all the divine counsels; and every prophet, and ordinance was but his servant, for a testimony to him. And again on these verses, I observe, that John and the. Lord had no knowledge of each other till John came forth in ministry. John had been brought up in Judea; our Lord in Galilee. But on the Lord's approaching John to be baptized, John at once acknowledged Him-acknowledged Him without any introduction. There seems to have been some consciousness that this was He, awakened within him. (Matt. 3:14.) He had, indeed, acknowledged Him even before he was born. (Luke 1:44.) The world knew Him not, but John knows Him; and thus condemns the world. But he does not know Him so as to bear witness to Him as the Son of God, till the Spirit descends and abides on him-for that, as John was admonished, was to be his divine attestation.

And further-I must here observe, that this gospel in full consistency with its general character, gives us in these verses, what I may term the personal call of Andrew and Peter; while St. Matthew, not noticing this, gives us their official call. But this is in beautiful order with the mind of the Spirit, in the two Evangelists; with such thankfulness and delight should we mark the perfection of the divine testimonies.

43-51.-In these verses, we have the action of a subsequent period, called here "the day following." This action is the ministry of Jesus Himself; and the fruit of that ministry in the persons of Philip and Nathanael.

But this is a new thing. This was not a gathering to Him as "the Lamb of God," as the former had been, but a gathering to Him as the one " of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write." And therefore this is a sample, not as the former was, of the Church or heavenly family, but of the Israel of God that is to be saved in the latter day after the Church has come in. And this Israel of the latter day will be known to Him in grace in the midst of the Jewish nation, as Nathanael here is known to Him while under the fig-tree-the standing symbol of the Jewish nation. (Matt. 21:19.) And this Israel of the latter day will make the same confession to Him which Nathanael here does. They will own Him and receive Him as the Son of God, and the king of Israel. And when this comes to pass, all will be ready for the display of the glory; the distant glimpse of which the Lord here accordingly catches, and a sight of which, in due season, He then promises to Nathanael, the representative, as we have seen, of His Israel.

All this, I thus judge, is very significant, and will be found to be confirmed by the opening of the following chapter:-

Chap. 2:1-12.-We have just had the Church and Israel severally and distinctly manifested in the two gatherings to Christ in the previous chapter. Accordingly we here get " the third day," or the marriage; the wine for which Jesus Himself provided.

Now these circumstances give notice of the mystic import of the scene before us. For the "third day," (which is the same as the resurrection-day,) the marriage, and the wine of the Lord's own providing, are things which stand allied with the kingdom, in the thoughts of those who are familiar with scripture, on this subject. And thus I doubt not for a moment, that this marriage and wine sets forth the coming kingdom of the Lord, where He is to appear both king and bridegroom,

To this marriage in Cana, the Lord had been bidden as a guest; but at the close of it, He takes another character there, and becomes the host providing and dispensing the wine. So by and by, when we have tasted of the inferior joy which our skill or diligence may have provided; He Himself will prepare the joy of the kingdom, and drink anew with us there of the fruit of the vine. And by this easy gracious action, He transforms the mere marriage- feast at Cana, into a mystery, and makes it the occasion of manifesting His glory, setting forth in it that kingdom of which He had just been speaking to Nathanael. He becomes Himself the host or bridegroom. The governor sends to the bridegroom who had bidden them all there, as though He were the one. But it was Jesus who provided the joy of the place, and who is still keeping

"the good wine" for His people till the last-till all other joy is over. Jesus was the true bridegroom. This was the feast when He turned the water into wine; as He will in the kingdom again pass by all our resources of joy, and give what eye hath not seen, nor the heart of man conceived.

And I cannot refuse adding (so sweet are these notices of the Church's interest in these things,) that it is the servants, and they only who are here thrown into connection with the Lord. They are in his secrets, while even the governor knows nothing about them. And the mother also, (kindred with him in the flesh,) is thrown at a distance from him. (v. 4.) It was the servants who were brought the nearest to him in the whole scene. And so with us, beloved. Jesus, the Lord of glory, the heir of all things was a servant here; He came " not to be ministered unto but to minister;" and those who are humblest in service are still cast the nearest to Him. And in the day when He will provide the true wine of the kingdom, His servants that have served Hint shall, as here, be dispensers of the joy under Him, and be distinguished as in the secret of His glory. "If any man serve me, him will my Father honor."

13-22.-After all this, we see our Lord at Jerusalem, there with authority cleansing the temple, and thus asserting the royal prerogatives of the Son of David. (see Matt. 21:12.)

To all this authority that He thus assumes, He is then challenged for His title, and He simply pleads His death and resurrection. "Destroy this temple," says He " and in three days I will raise it up." And so it is. This is His title. His rights and honors as creator of the world and as the Lord of Israel, were as we saw, denied Him; (see 1:10, 11.) His title to them was disallowed and we know that He has acquired all power in heaven and earth by another title, death and resurrection which has displaced the usurper, and regained for man the forfeited inheritance. This gives Him now sure unquestionable title to everything, But how would He have been straitened had not this His baptism been accomplished? Had not the corn of wheat fallen into the ground and died, it would have abided alone. But because He humbled Himself to death, God hath exalted Him, and given Him a name above every name.

Chap. 2:23; 3:21.-Thus the joy of the kingdom was exhibited,-the power of the kingdom exercised, and the Lord's title to it set forth and pleaded. Now in due course, the title of others to enter into the same kingdom with Him, becomes the question; and this question accordingly is here discussed. And deeply affecting to us all, is this holy and solemn matter.

Man is a creature whom the Lord the creator cannot trust. Adam's breach of allegiance in the garden made him so. Man then did all he could to sell God's glory into the hand of another. The dispensation of the law has proved him to be still unworthy of the confidence of God, and this character is here stamped on him by the Lord Himself. " Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men." He knew what was in man, and could find nothing that He could trust. What a sentence Nay, more than this. Man as he is, can never be so improved as to be trusted again by God. Man's affections may be stirred,—man's intelligence informed,-man's conscience convicted, but still God, cannot trust him. Thus we have read, " that many believed in His name when they saw the miracles that He did, but Jesus did not commit Himself unto them." Man in this was putting forth his best; he was moved by the things that Jesus did; but still the Lord could not trust him. For in the kingdom there is to be none of this distrust of man, but the Lord must have in His people there, the joy and confidence of well-tried allegiance; as he says, " ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom." But in man himself, there is none of this trustworthiness, he must therefore be born again.

The need of this new birth, He here preaches to Nicodemus. But having stated this requisition; the Lord graciously discloses to Nicodemus the seed of this new life. He preaches to him redemption through the sufferings of the Son of man as its means, and from the love of God as its rich and blessed source. The word of this salvation is the seed of this needed new life, the word which by the gospel is preached to us. (1 Pet; 1:25.). And when the Lord had thus disclosed the seed of this new life to Nicodemus; He seeks to sow it in Nicodemus himself, to sow it (where it ever must be sowed if unto fruit,) in his conscience. For Nicodemus had come to the Lord by night, as though his deeds could not bear the light, and the Lord aiming as it would seem, to reach his conscience; just on their parting says, " Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." Thus our Lord here teaches the need of the new birth,' through the word of salvation. Without it man cannot be trusted of God. And without it the kingdom of God could not, as our Lord here further teaches us, be either sure or eternal. What association for instance, had the elder brother with that which was the characteristic joy of the Father's house? None! He never had so much as a kid to make merry with his friends. None but a returned prodigal could draw forth the ring, the best robe, and the fatted calf. And so the kingdom is such a kingdom as mine but redeemed sinners can apprehend its joys, or have any place it.. There is not one righteous person in it from one end of it to the other. All are redeemed. Everything in it is reconciled by, blood, as it is written-" and having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself,' by Him,. I say, whether things in earth or things in heaven."

Deeply interesting to us all is this beautiful conversation. And I would further observe, that in it our Lord shortly alludes the earthly and heavenly things. The new birth, as the needed entrance into the kingdom, is the subject of the conversation; but our Lord just hints that this entrance opens both earthly and heavenly places. And St. Paul's discourse in Rom. 11, is of this kind also. He speaks there of the partaking of the fatness of the root of the olive, as the only way of all blessing, as the Lord here speaks of the new birth. But he afterward shows that that way introduces to different orders of blessing, which he expresses by the terms-" the gospel," and " the election;" (see v. 28.) answering to the " heavenly things," and the " earthly things" of this passage. And scripture, I judge, teaches us that the Church now grafted on this fat root (that is, grace which is opened for us in Christ-and made known of old to our common father Abraham,) grows up into heaven; Israel by and by grafted on the same root will spread itself over the earth, and the whole will form the beauteous fruitful tree of God's own planting, filling heaven and earth. As Jacob saw the same mystery under the figure of a adder, whose foot was set on the earth, but the top of which reached to heaven; and to which our Lord alluded in speaking to Nathanael. Such will the coming kingdom be; it will have its heavenly and earthly departments-its higher and lower glories-and the Son of man will be the center of all: " the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man"

22-36.-After the Lord had thus discussed with Nicodemus the question of man's entrance into the kingdom, He is seen for a little moment pursuing His ministry, as minister of the circumcision in Judea. (ver. 22.) But we see this only for a moment. For to detain such things before us would not have been within the scope of this gospel, which takes (the Lord as we have seen, out of Jewish connection altogether. And in the next passage we may notice the same; (ver. 23, 24.) for the Baptist is here seen in connection with Israel, but it is in like manner, only for a passing moment; and in order too as it would seem, to give him occasion under the Holy Ghost, to bear a testimony to Jesus, not at all in His Jewish glory, but in higher honors end sweeter joys, than Jesus could have ever known as Son of David. (see ver. 25, 26.)

On this occasion the disciples of John were jealous for their master, because all seemed to them to be going after Jesus. They seem to be of the spirit of Joshua of old, who, when one reported that Eldad and Medad prophesied in the camp, moved with envy because of his master, said, " my lord Moses forbid them." But as Moses there rebuked Joshua, so here John acknowledges that all His joy was fulfilled in that, which was thus provoking the displeasure of his disciples. He was but the bridegroom's friend. He had waited for such a day as this. His course was now therefore run, and he was willing to retire and be forgotten. Like his fellow-servants the prophets, he had held up a light to guide his generation to Christ, to lead the bride to the bridegroom, and now he had only to retire. He stands here, as at the end of the line of the prophets, and in his own name and theirs, leaves all in the hand of the Son of God. And when he gets on this theme, (the glories of Him who was greater than he,) how gladly does he go on with it. The Spirit leads him from one ray of this glory to another. And blessed is it, when Jesus is the theme that thus awakens all our intelligence and desire. Blessed, when we can each one of us be thus willingly lost and be nothing, that He alone may fill all things. Be it so with thy saints, Lord, through thy heavenly grace, more and more!

Chap. 4-Thus John is gone, and with him everything but the ministry of the Son of God. All now lies in His hand alone, and accordingly He here goes forth simply as the Son of God-the Savior of the world. He appears before us here (4:1.) as one that was rejected of Israel, and is now leaving Judea the place of righteousness, simply as the Savior of sinners. And going forth in this character, He must needs go through an unclean place, for in such only could the Savior find His proper objects. But journeying among us in such a character, cost Him bitter pain and weariness; the sample of which we find here. But He took this journey for the love He had to sinners; and so here we find Him, as soon as He gets out to the unclean place, addressing Himself to a woman that was a sinner.

It was quite in consistent righteousness that the Jews refused all commerce with the Samaritans. It was according to their calling to say, " it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation." For this was a testimony against evil, and such testimony was the very trust which Jehovah had committed to Israel. They were to be God's witnesses against the world,-they were the clean separated from the unclean, for a testimony to the righteousness of God against a corrupted earth. But Jesus was now standing aloof from Israel. He had left Judea, the place of righteousness, and was standing in defiled Samaria as Son of God-the Savior of sinners. He had already gone to Judea, looking for righteousness, the proper fruit of that country, but had not found it.-He is not now to look for it in Samaria. Here He must be in another way altogether-in the way of grace only, and in the consciousness that He was so, that He was here only thus in grace, as the Savior of sinners, He addresses Himself to the woman.

There had been from the beginning, a secret with God beyond and behind all the revealed requisitions and order of righteousness that had been established in Judea. There was " grace and the gift by grace." The Jew might have had committed to him a testimony to righteousness against the world; but the Son of God was the gift of God to the world, entrusted with life for it; " the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ;" and in the blessed consciousness that he carried with Him this secret of grace for sinners, He now says to the woman, " give me to drink." She wonders of course, as well she might, that He did not keep his distance as a Jew; but she did not yet know that the secret of God was with Him. But this was soon to be disclosed, The glory that excelleth was about to fill this, unclean place. The Lord God is now taking His stand, not on the burning mount in righteousness, but at the head of the river of life, as the Lord of the well, ready to dispense its waters,

W hat blessing is thus preparing for this poor outcast! None other than an outcast could know it. But such must also know that the source of this blessing is not in themselves. And this the. Samaritan here learns. She is made to know herself-to look well, and carefully round on all things that ever she did, and to see that it left her only a wilderness and land of darkness. Her conscience is dismayed-" he whom thou now hast is not thy husband." But wilderness and land of darkness as it was, the Son of God was there with her, This was blessing, such blessing as an outcast in a wilderness could know. It was to outcast Jacob, who had only the stones of the place for his pillow, that heaven was opened, and God in fullest grace and glory was revealed. So here with this daughter of Jacob. The Lord was again opening the rock in the desert. The ark of God was now again planted with the camp in the midst of the wilderness. The unclean Samaritan is spoken to by the Son of God, the Lord of the well of life; and this was joy and the power of love to her, for it separates her from her own pitcher, and fills her spirit, and her lips, with a testimony to His name. Beloved! this is divine! A poor Samaritan whom righteousness had bidden to stand by in an unclean place, is thus made the pattern of the workmanship of Jesus, and taken into the secrets and intimacies of the Son of God! It was her very place and character of sinner that thus throws her in His way. It is only the sinner that lies in the Savior's path. And, brethren, whatever of sorrow or of trial the entrance of sin may have caused us, or may have still to cause us, yet without it we could not have had our God as we now have Him, opening His own bosom, the treasure-house of love for us, and giving us forth the Son from thence.

The disciples, on their return, wonder, like the woman, that Jesus bad not kept His Jewish distance. But still they are conscious of the presence of a glory that was above them; for " no man said, what seekest thou? or, why talkest thou with her?" They did not as yet know the secret which the Son of God carried. He then shows them, as white already for harvest, fields which their faith had never surveyed. They knew of no fields but such as of old had been parted among the tribes. In their esteem, God's husbandry must be confined to that sacred enclosure. But there was, as we have already seen, a secret with God. It was the Son of God-the Savior of sinners, who had now gone forth with seed, and His toil had prepared a harvest for the reapers, in the defiled plains of Samaria. He shows His disciples a company just coming out from Sychar, who were soon to say, " this is indeed the Christ-the Savior of the world." And thus were they ready for the sickle. The harvest in Judea was plenteous; (Matt. 9:37.) but in Samaria it was white for the reapers. The Lord had borne the toil of the sower; had talked, weary and faint, with the woman; but He would now share with His disciples the joy of the harvest; and in pledge of this, He abides for two days with this little gathering out of Sychar, believed on, and owned as the Savior of the world.

These two days at Sychar, were thus a little taste of the joy of harvest. They were some of the most refreshing which the thoroughly wearied Son of God ever tasted on this earth of ours. For He found here some of the brightest faith He ever met with, and it was only the faith of sinners that could ever have refreshed Him here. Nothing in man could ever have done this-nothing but that faith which takes man out of himself into God. But this joy was only for two days. He is quickly called down to a lower region. After these two days, He goes on to Galilee; and thus gets into Jewish connection again: and He goes with this sad foreboding, " a prophet has no honor in his own country." And with increased trial of heart must He feel this now, from the liberty which He had just been knowing among the poor sinners in Samaria. And His foreboding was found to be true. He finds faith in Galilee, it is true, but faith of an inferior order. The Galileans receive Him, but it is " because they had seen all things that He did at Jerusalem." The nobleman and his house believed, but not until they had carefully verified Him by their own witnesses. The gathering at Sychar had believed Himself-the Galileans now believe Him for His works' sake; (see 14:11) the Samaritans knew Him as in Himself—the Jews were now, as it were asking a sign again. The one accordingly came into union with the Son of God; the other receive health from the physician of Israel; and thus defiled Samaria is, in blessing, before righteous Judah.

Here the first section of our gospel closes. It has led us in the paths of the Son of God along this evil world of ours. At the opening of it, we saw His glory, and found that the moment it shone out upon the world, it proved the darkness of the world. The Son of God met no answer from man. The world that was made by Him, knew Him not. But He carried with Him a secret-the secret of the grace of God to sinners, deeper than all the thoughts of men. A stranger He was on the earth;-but the revealing of His secret to poor sinners, had virtue to make them strangers with Him.

(To be continued, if the Lord will.)

St. Paul's Companions and Yoke-fellows: Titus.

The epistle to Titus is addressed to " Titus mine own son after the common faith," implying that he was converted by the ministry of the Apostle; where and at what time cannot be ascertained with any certainty, but being " a Greek," as all the first christians at

THE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN.

(CONTINUED FROM PAOB 63.)

HAVING followed our Lord through chapters i-iv, of this Gospel, I desire now, in God's grace, to track His further way;-and may the Lord Himself, through the Spirit, make this work the occasion of holy and thankful delight.

In chapters v-x, we see our Lord in'intercourse with the Jews. But to exhibit His public life and ministry is not the great purpose of the Spirit in this Gospel. He is not seen here, as in the other Gos-pels, going about the cities and villages of Israel preaching the king-dom, if haply they would repent. But the departure from God of that world through which He was passing, seems to be ever on His mind; and He is seen coming forth, only at times, to act in power or in grace, on all around Him. He does not, as the social Son of man, eat and drink here as in the other Gospels. He rather in every scene takes His elevation as Son of God,-the stranger from heaven; as I have noticed already in the scene of the Marriage at Cana.

And so towards His disciples,-He appears to take a distance even from them. They are not the companions of His ministry in this

VOL. V.

134 THE GOSPEL BY' ST. JOHN.

GOspel, as they are in the others. He does not here appoint the twelve, and then the seventy; but ministry is left in His own hand. The Apostles are seen but little with Him till the 13th chapter, when indeed, His ministry has closed. And even when they are with Him, it is with dome reserve. (See iv. 32., vi. 5., xi. 9.)

But, on the other hand, in no Gospel is He seen so near the sinner. He is alone with, the Samaritan; alone with the adulteress; alone with the outcast beggar. And this gives its highest interest to this, most precious portion of the word of God. The joy and security of being thus alone with the Son of God, as is here exhibited, is beyond everything to the soul. The sinner thus learns his title to the Savior; and discovers the blessed truth that they were made for one another. The moment we learn that we are sinners, we may look in the face of the Son of God, and claim Him as our own. And what a moment in the very days of heaven that is! The Son of God came to seek and to save sinners: and He walked as a solitary man on the earth, save when He met a poor sinner. Such a, lone had title, or even power, to interrupt the solitudes of this Stranger from heaven. The world knew Him not. His paths were strange and lonely among us, save when He and the sinner found their way to each other. The Leper outside the camp met Him, but no one else.

And here let me say, that this being alone with Jesus, is the sinner's first position. It is the beginning of his joy; and no one has right to meddle with it. That which has called itself the Church in every age of cbristendom, has sought to break in upon the privacy of the Savior and the sinner, and to make herself a party in the settlement of the question of the sinner's sin. But in this she has been an intruder. Sin casts us upon God alone.

And indeed, beloved, in the variety of judgment now a days, itis needful to our peace to know this. Others may require of us to join them in particular lines of service, or in particular forms and order of worship; and may count us disobedient if we do not. But, however we may listen to them in these things, we dare not give up, in fear of them, God's prerogative to deal with us as sin-

THE GOSPEL BY ST. Ions:

ners Himself alone. We must not surrender to any the right of the' blessed God to talk with us alone about our sins. Nor should our-own anxiety on a thousand questions that may arise, righteous as that anxiety may be, be allowed to lead us for a moment to forget, that as sinners we have been already alone with Jesus; and that He has once and forever, in the riches of His grace, pardoned and accepted us.

This solitude of Christ and the sinner, our Gospel most comfortingly presents to us. But as to all others,, Jesus is here but at a distance and in reserve. And so as to place as well as toper-.sons. The Lord in this Gospel does not seek even Jerusalem. He is there only at the bidding of one or other of the annual Feasts. For the Son of God had nothing to do specially with any place; -the wide wilderness of this world, where sinners were to be found, was the only scene for Him.

But I will continue now to follow the chapters in order.

V.-In the introduction to my first paper on this Gospel, I have shown that there was, through all the stages of the history of Israel, the occasional putting forth of a special energy of the Spirit, by which, and not by the resources of their own system, the Lord was sustaining Israel, and teaching them to know where their final hope lay. From the call of Abraham to the throne of David, we saw this.

Now I judge that. Bethesda was a witness of the same thing. Bethesda was not that which the system itself provided. It was opened in Jerusalem, as a fountain of healing, by the sovereign grace of Jehovah, (as indeed its name imports,) Neither was it an abiding but only an occasional relief, as the Judges and. Prophets had been. Like them, it was a testimony to the grace and power that were in God Himself for Israel; and had perhaps, yielded this its testimony at certain seasons all through the dark age which had passed since the days of the last of their Prophets. But it must now be set aside. Its wafers are to be no more troubled. He to whom all these witnesses of grace pointed, had now appeared. As the true fountain of health, the Son of

God had now come to the daughter of Zion, and was showing Himself in Jerusalem.

It was a Feast-time, we are told. (v. i.) All was going on at Jerusalem, as though all were right before God. The Feasts were duly. observed; the time was one of exact religious services. But Bethesda alone might have told the daughter of Zion that she needed a physician, and was not in that rest which faith-fullness to Jehovah would have preserved to her. And the Lord would now tell her the same truth. He heals the itnpotent man; thus' taking the place of Bethesda: but He does so in a way that tells Israel of their lass of the sabbath-the loss of their own proper glory: " for the same day was the sabbath."

The nation is at once sensitive of this. It touched the place of their pride; for the sabbath was the sign of all their national dis-tinction; and they resent it-" they sought to slay Him, because Ile had done these things on the sabbath day."

The Lord answered them, " my Father worketh hitherto and I work;"-words vvhich again told them of their loss of this sabbath in which they boasted, yea, that they had long lost it, lost it from the beginning; for that in every stage of their history, God had been working in grace among them; working as " His Father," of which this Bethesda was the sign, and that He Himself had now come, just in the same way, to work in grace among them; of which this poor restored cripple was the sign. This was the voice of these words, " my Father worketh hitherto and I work;" thus refering to the act of grace all through Israel's history, which I have noticed in the introduction to my first paper on this Gospel. But on this the Jews resent Hitn the more; and not being in the secret of His glory, they charge,Him as with blasphemy, for call-ing God His Father.

To this He again answers, still as before, speaking of Himself as Son, but taking a place of subjection also. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself."

But all this is most blessed. One who came into this world on behalf of God and His honor, could take no other place. It was the only place of righteousness here, " He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him." Man had, through pride, dishonored God. Man did an affront to the Majesty of God, when he listened to the words, " ye shall be as God." And the Son who came to honor God, must humble Himself. Though in the form of God, He must empty Himself here. God's praise in a world that had departed frotn Him in pride, must have this sacrifice. And this sacrifice the Son offered. But this did not suit man; this was not according to rnan; and man could not receive or sanction such an one. " I am come in tny Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive."

This is a deep and holy matter, beloved. By His humiliation and subjection, the Son was at once honoring God and testing man; giving the "only Potentate" His due right in this world, but thus becoming himself a sign for the making manifest of the thoughts of the heart. And the Jew, the favored Jew, was found in this common atheism of man; for to disclose this hidden spring of un-belief in Israel, our Lord's discourse in this chapter was tending. It was not for want of light and testimony. They had the works of Christ, the Father's voice, their own scriptures, as well as the

testimony of John. But withal they had the love of the world in them, and not the love of God; and were thus unprepared for the Son of God. How could they receive one who had no object but to honor God, while they were receiving honor one of another? How could man, apostate in pride, brook the lowly Son of man-the emptied Son of God? This was the source where their un-belief took its rise. There was no association between them and the only one on earth who then stood for God's honor before men. His form of humiliation was now disallowed, as His work and grace at Bethesda had before been refused. His brethren should have understood how that God by His hand would deliver them; but they understood not; they believed Moses, and were thus, in

principle, still in Egypt, still in the flesh, still unredeemed. Had they believed Moses, they would have believed Christ, and been led out by Him, as at this time, from under the hand of Pharaoh, (the power of the flesh and the world.) But under all that, through unbelief, this chapter finds them and leaves them.

VT.-A new scene opens here.-It was the Passover; but God's mercy, which that season celebrated, Israel had slighted. They had still to learn the lesson of Egypt and the wilderness; and in patient love, after so many provocations, the Lord would even now teach them..

Accordingly, He feeds the multitude in a desert place; thus showing the grace and power of Him who for forty years had fed their fathers in another desert. The disciples, like Moses, wonder through unbelief, and say as it were, " shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them to suffice them?" But His hand is not shortened. He feeds them; and this awakens zeal in the multitude, and they would fain come and by force make Him a king. But the Lord could not take the kingdom from zeal like this. This could not be the source of the kingdom of the Son of man. The Beasts may take their kingdoms from the winds striving upon the great sea; (Dan. 7) but Jesus cannot. This -was not His mother crowning Him in the day of His espousals. (Cant. iii.) This was not, in His ear, the shouting of the people bringing in the head stone of the corner. All this stir among them, this following of Him across the lake, was not, in His thoughts, the symptom of His people made willing in the day of His power. He retires from all this, and on the following day opens to them the mystery of the true Passover, and the manna of the wilderness, which they had still to learn. They had still to learn the virtue of the Cross,-the true Passover that delivers from Egypt, from the bondage of the flesh, and the judgment of the law; enabling the sinner to say, " I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live." Yea indeed, alive because crucified with Him; for the wages of

• I refrain from noticing the scene at sea in this chapter, though I judge it to be very significant.

sin is death: and sin thus in the Cross had its wages. Death has had its sway, and the law can return to the throne of God with its own vindication; for it has executed its commission against us,-we are crucified with Christ. "He that is dead is free from sin." And now it is, "not I, but Christ liveth in me." This is the true Passover-the power of redemption; in the grace of which we leave Egypt, or the place of bondage, and come forth with the Son of God into the wilderness, there to feed on manna, there to live by every word that has proceeded out of the mouth of God.

And though thus in some sense distinct, the Lord in this discourse seems to combine the virtues of the Passover and the manna. It was in the time of the Passover that He thus preached to them on the manna. For both pertained to the same Israel,the same life., The Paschal blood was upon the lintels for redemption, while the Lamb was fed upon within the house. The Israelite was in living./ communion with that which gave Him security. And this was the beginning of life to Him; in the strength of which He came forth) fo feed on the manna in the wilderness.

And so with us. When brought out into the wilderness withi our Redeemer, we get the manna and live there by every word off! God. The soul of the sinner must be saved by the blood; and the1 mind of the saint and the life of the saint must be formed and) nourished by the word. To trust in anything but the blood of the Lamb of God, is not after the pattern of Israel redeemed out of\ Egypt; and to grow by anything but the word of God is not after) the pattern of Israel fed in the desert.

But Israel, as we here find, had not as yet so come forth out of the bondage of Egypt into God's pastures in the wilderness. They trove that as yet they knew not this life; that as yet they had never really kept the Passover, or fed on the manna. They murmured at Him, Their thoughts were too full of Moses: " He gave them bread from heaven to eat," said they. But ere they could indeed eat of the manna, they must make the law fall into the paths of love, into thoughts of the Father, and not of Moses. For it is love that leads us to the Cross. While the soul shrinks from

God, there will be no going to it. There must be some appre• Ihension of love in God ere the flesh of the Son of man can be fed lupon. Moses never gave that bread, The law never spread the 'feast. It is love that does that; and love must be apprehended ere we can sit at it, And this is the reason why so few guests are Ithere, for man has hard thoughts of God, and proud thoughts of himself. But to keep the feast, we must have happy thoughts of God. Communion with the Father and with the Son; communion with God in love is life.

But Israel was not in this communion. They here " go back," they thrust Him from them, and in their hearts turn back again into Egypt: their carcases fall in the wilderness; and a remnant only feed on "the words of eternal life," and live;-a remnant, who look l'ound on all as a barren waste yielding no bread without Him; as a dry and thirsty land from one end of it to the other, save for the Rock that follows them; and they say, to whom shall we go?"

And whence this remnant?-" according to the election of grace," as the Lord here further teaches, showing us the acts of the Father in this mystery of our life, that it is He who gives to the Son, and draws to the Son, all who come to Him; that His teachings and drawings are the hidden channels through which this life is reaching us, till it is manifested in our coming to Jesus, and saying, "Lord. to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God," This is the faith and utterance of that elect remnant who coming out of Egypt, live by faith on the Son of God.

But I would pause a little here, over a subject which this chapter suggests, and which is connected with our life, of which this chapter treats. I mean the eating of blood. Here our Lord commands us to eat blood, even His own blood; but under the law blood was forbidden. Under the law all slain beasts were to be brought to the door of the Tabernacle, and their blood offered on the altar, and by no means to be eaten. (Lev. 17) This was

ti confession that the life had reverted to God, and was not in man's power. To eat blood under the law would have been an attempt to regain life in our own strength; -an attempt by man to reach that which he had forfeited. But now under the Gospel the ordinance is changed. Blood must be eaten-" Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, there is no life in you.° For the life that had reverted to God, God has given to make atonement. The blood of the New Testainent has been shed for the remission of sins; and life, through that blood, is now given to sinners in the Son of God:-" In Him was life." He came from God with the life for us. " He that hath the Son bath life," And we are commanded, as well as besought, to take life from Him. And truly we may say, Our God has thus perfected our comfort and our assurance before Him; making it to be as simple disobedience in us not to take life from Ellin as His gift, as it would be simple pride and arrogancy of heart, to assume to take it by our own works. What a pleading of love this is with our souls. We are disobedient if we are not saved! Death is God's enemy as well as our's; and if we do not take life from the Son, we join the enemy of God. " Ye will not come unto me that ye might be saved," says the aggrieved Son of God.. And when inquired of certain, in this very chapter, what theykshould do to do the works of God, He has but to reply, " This is the work of God, that ye believe in Him whom He hath sent." To believe and take life, as the gift of God through the Son of His love, is the only act of obedience that the blessed God claims from a sinner; the only tiling that a sinner, till he is reconciled, can do to please Him.

This is grace, wondrously and blessedly revealed. And I would here suggest, that this ordinance that forbad the eating of blood, was as the flaming sword of the Cherubim in the garden. Both that sword and this ordinance told the sinner that there was no recovery of forfeited life by any effort of Ins own. And Adam's faith, I judge, most sweetly displays itself here. He did not seek to put back that sword, as through he could regain the tree of life him.

YOL, V.

self. But what did he do? He took life from God. He took life through grace, and the gift by grace. He believed the promises about the woman's seed; and in that faith called the woman, " the mother of all living." He took life as the gift of God through Christ, and sought it not by works of the law; or through the flaming sword.

All this mystery of the sinner's life was thus illustrated from the very beginning, even in the frith of Adam; and in this chapter is blessedly unfolded in our Lord's discourse to the people. That life begins in the power of redemption by the paschal Lamb slain in Egypt; and grows by the manna of the wilderness. But our

)

'chapter shows us that Israel was still a stranger to it-that they had not learned the lesson of Egypt and the wilderness, in the know= ledge of the redemption and life that is in Christ Jesus.

VIL-A new scene again opens here. It was the season of the Feast of Tabernacles; as the preceding scene had been laid in the time of the Passover.

This was the most joyous season in the Jewish year. It was the great annual festival at Jerusalem; the grand commemoration bf Israel's past sojourn in the wilderness, and of their present rest In Canaan; the type also of Messiah's coming glory and joy as king ofIsrael. His brethren now urge the Lord to take advan. tage of this season, to leave Galilee and go up to Jerusalem; there to exhibit His power and get Hirnself a name in the world. But they did not understand Him. They were of the world; He was not of the world. The Son of God was a Stranger here; but they Were at home. They might go up and meet the world at the Feast, but He was for God against the world. He to whom it bore witness, could not go up and claim His own there, because the World was there, because the god of this world had usurped and Was corrupting the scene of His glory and joy.

But how fallen was Israel when this was so! and What was their boasted Festival when the spring of its joy, and the heir of its glory, must thus stand estranged from it! The gold had beebine dim. The ways to Zion were still solitary; none were really

coming to the solemn Feasts.. in spirit the Prophet was still. weeping. (Sam. i. 4.) The Lord goes up, it is true, but not in His glory; He does not go as His brethren woud have had 13irn, but in obedience merely as one of the nation, to take the place of the humbled and not of the great one of the earth. And when arrived at this city of solemnities, we see Him only in the same character, for He goes to the Temple and teaches; but when this gathers notice, He hides Himself, saying, " my doctrine is not mine but His that sent me.' He hides Himself, that not He, but the Father who had sent Him, might be seen. Like the one who had emptied himself, and taken the form of a servant, He is willing to be nothing. They who were at the yeast, manifested their ut• ter apostasy from the principle of the Feast, and say, " how knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" In their pride they acknowledged no source of knowledge or wisdom above man himself.. They would have the creature in honor; but the Feast celebrated Jehovah, and was for the setting forth the honors of Him who now in righteousness had to hide His glory, and sepa.. rate Himself from it all. Israel and the Feast, Israel and the Son of God, were thus utterly dissociated. They had nothing in each other. And thus, whether we listen to the Jews, or to the men of Jerusalem, or to the Pharisees in this chapter, all tell us of their rejection of Him; and He has in the end to say to them, " where I am, thither ye cannot come."

Jesus thus refuses to sanction this Feast. He tells Israel that they had now no title to the rest and glory that it pledged them -that they were not really in Canaan, and had never yet drawn water out of the wells of salvation-that their land, instead of being watered of the river of God, was but a barren and thirsty portion of the accursed earth-that they had forsaken the fountain of Hy, ing waters, and all their own cisterns were but broken. And accordingly, as the Feast was closing, Jesus puts the living waters into other vessels, and dries up the wells that were in Jerusalem. Ile turns the fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein; and opens the river of God in other.

places. " In the last day, that great day of the Feast, Jesus stood a.nd cried, saying, if any man thirst let him come unto me, and drink: he that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

And in connection with this, I would here shortly trace " the river of God" through scripture, and we shall see it owning differ-ent channels according to different dispensation.

In Eden it took its rise in the earth to water the garden, and from thence to wander in other streams over the earth: for the dis-pensation was one of earthly good. Man knew no source of bles-sing or streams of joy than such as were connected with creation, In the wilderness the smitten rock was its source, and every path of the camp of God was its channel. It followed them, for at that tirne they only were the redeetned of the Lord, whom His eye rested on in the world. In Canaan afterward, the waters of Shi-loah flowed softly. The land Jehovah watered from His own buckets, and made it to drink of the rain of heaven; and for the souls of the people, every feast and every sacrifice was as a well of this water, and the current of the yearly service of the sanctuary was its constant channel. For Israel was then in that dispensation the people of the Lord, and their land his dwelling. place. But the time had now come, as we have seen, for leaving Canaan a dry land, and for opening the river of God elsewhere. It was now to take its rise, as the Lord here teaches us, in the glorified Son of man in heaven; and the channels, through which it was to flow, were to be the bellies of His members on earth. For the dispen-sation was now to be one " of spiritual blessings in heavenly places"-the earth was not for the present to be watered, but only the Church of God. But by and by in the kingdom, when the present age, like others, has fulfilled its course, and other dispen-sations arise, this same river will own other channels and springs. It will rise in the throne of God and the Lamb, and flow through the golden street of the city, for the gladdening of the multitude before the throne; (Rev. 7:17., xxii. 1, 2.) and it will also rise lInder the sanctuary in the earthly Zion, fen the watering of Jeru.

salem, and the whole earth. (Ezek. 47, Joel 3, Zech. 14) For then will be the tiine of the two-fold blessing-the time of -the hea-venly and-the earthly glory. Everything will then know the grace and power of God dispensed among them-all will then be visited by "the river of God which is full of water." The Feast of Ta-bernacles will then be duly kept in Jerusalem; and that nation of the earth that will not go up to keep it there, " on them there shall be no rain," no gracious visitation of this fruitful river of God; but it shall be left to knoi,v the sterility of that soul that refuses to drink of the water which the Son of God giveth.

Upon all this, I would only further notice the connection that there is between our thirst, and the outflow of this living. water. (See verses 37, 38.) The saint thirsts, then goes to Jesus for the water that He has to give; and afterward comes with the river of God, the water of life, the flowing of the Spirit in him, for his own refreshing and that of the vveary. His thirst receives the abounding presence of the Holy Ghost, and opens in him a channel for the river of life which now rises in the ascended Head of the Church, to flow through Him to others. 0! that we panted more after God, as the hart after the water-brooks; that we longed more for the courts of the Lord. Then would the Spirit fill our souls, and we should comfort and refresh one another. And this is indeed the power of all ministry. Ministry is but this out-flowing of the living water, the expression of this hidden abounding presence of the Spirit within us. The Head has received the gifts for us; and from the Head, all the body by joints and bands, having nour-ishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. And this is our only Feast of Tabernacles, till we cele-brate a still happier one with the palmy multitude before the throne. For this Feast cannot now be kept in Jerusalem; the saints must have it in its only present form, by walking together in the liberty and refreshing of the Holy Ghost.

And this Feast, this " joy in the Holy Ghost," is something more than either the Passover of Egypt, or the n-lanna of the wild-pi-less. Those were for redemption and life; but this is for joy

and the foretaste of glory; those were of the flesh and blood ofIthe Son of man, broken and shed here; but this is the Son of man glorified in heaven. And thus it savors more of Canaan than of the wilderness, through for comfort in the wilderness: so the Feast of Tabernacles was not a wilderness-Feast at all, but altGgether at Feast in Canaan.

But Israel knew as yet nothing of these things, as is here shown to us In the fifth chapter, the Lord had met them as in Egypt with redeeming grace and power;-witness the restored cripple. That was like Moses casting down his rod in the sight of Israel in proof of his embassy. But it only ended in proving that they would remain in Egypt; for they refuse to believe Moses, believing riot Him of whom Moses wrote; and what redemption from Egypt was there for Israel,. if Moses were refused? In the sixth He had met them as in the wilderness, with the manna; but only in like manner to prove that they were not feeding there, as the camp of God upon the bread of God. In this chapter He had met them as in Canaan; but all had shown that Canaan was still the land of the uncircumcised, where the world was, and not Joshua. and the Israel of God-the land of drought and not of the river of God. He therefore now stands outside the city of solemnities, and in spirit ascends to heaven, as Head of His body the Church, to feed the thirsty from thence. He says, "if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." The Jews may reason about Him among themselves, and then go every man " to his own house;" but He, owning now His present estrangement from Israel, and consequent homeless condition on the earth, goes to the Mount of Olives.

VIII.-Thus was it in Israel now. They knew not that they were still in bonds and needed His hand to lead them out and feed them again. They knew not that they had still to reach the true Canaan,-Iinrnanuel's land. They had been there rejecting the grace of the Son of God, and of course were still making their boast of the law; and now in the confidence that it was their's, and that they could use it, and by it entangle the Lord, they bring forward the adulteress.

They had, to be sure, noticed His grace to sinners. All His Ways must have told them that. And they judge it of course an easy matter to show Him to he the enemy of Moses and the law. But He here gains a holy and glorious victory. Grace is made to shout a triuttph over sin; and so, the sinner over every accuser. The Lord i'does not here impugn the law. Ile could not, for it was holy; and He had come, not to destroy, butto fulfill it. He does not acquit the guilty. He could not, for He had come into the world with full certainty as to the sinner's guilt. It was that which had brought Him among us. And therefore in the present case, He does not pretend to raise such questions. The sinner is convicted, and the law righteously lies against her. But who can execute it? Who can cast the stone? That question He may and does raise, Satan may accuse, the sinner may be guilty, and the law may condemn; but where is the executer? Who can handle the fiery power of the law? The answer is-none but Himself; none can avenge the quarrel of divine righteousness upon the sinner, none have bands clean enough to take up the stone and cast it but Jesus Himself; and He refuses. This is the triumph of grace; and this is the joy of the sinner. This is the song of victory on the banks of the Red Sea: the power of the enemy lying dead on its shores. The accusers go out one by one. The poor sinner had been learning that he was waiting to be gracious. She had been led of the Spirit to know what He meant by writing on the ground; and she now calls Him " Lord;" and He has but to say, " neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more."

This was full deliverance; and the same deliverance awaits every sinner who, like the poor adulteress here, will come and be alone with Jesus. As sinners, (as I have observed before,) we have to do only with God. We may do offense or wrong to others, and they may complain and challenge us. But as sinners, God must deal with us alone; and the discovery of this is the way of blessing. David discovered it, and got blessing at once. His act had, it is true, been a wrong to another. He had taken the poor man's one little we lamb. But he had in all this sinned against God

also. And in the discovery and sense of this, he says, " I have.sinned aga2nst the Lord." But the effect of this was, to leave him alone with God. As a wrong doer, Urialt might have to do with him; but as a sinner, he hail nut. God must deal with him alone; and the moment his sin thus casts him alonewith God, he; like the poor adulteress here, listens to the voice of mercy: " the Lord bath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die." lie suffers chastening for the wrong he had done; but the wages of sin are remitted.

It is ever the sinner's victory, when he can thus by faith claim to be alone with Jesus. The Priest and the Levite have then passed by, forwhat could they do? What heart or ability had the law to meet the sinner's case? It is grace;-the Stranger from heaven, that must help. The poor wounded sinner is lying in the way, and the good Samaritan must meet him. And truly blessed is it when all through its further way, the soul still remembers how it thus began in solitude with Jesus the Savior.

And He is glorified in all this, as surely as we are comforted; glorified with. His brightest glory,-His glory as the Savior of the guilty. A vial is prepared for redeemed sinners, which is to bear an incense, the like to which can be found no where else. (Ex. 30:37.) Even the vials of angels do not carry such sweet perfume. They praise the Lamb, it is true; but not in such lofty strains as the Church of redeemed sinners. They ascribe, it is true, " power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing," to Him; but the Church has a song before the throne, and they sing, " Thou art worthy, for thou west slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue. and people, and nation."

Now all this blessing for the sinner, and this glory for the Savior, we see here. The sinner is hid from her accuser, and the Savior silences him. The officers had been lately disarmed by the holy attraction of His words; and now the Scribes are rebuked by the convicting light of His words. (vii: 46., viii. 9.) These were not carnal weapons, but weapons of heavenly temper. Their en-

mity had now exhausted all its resources. They had assayed the force of the lion, and the guile of the serpent; and all having now passed, the Son of God at once takes His elevation, and spews Himself in His place of entire separation and distance from them. He raises the pillar of light and darkness in the present wilderness of Canaan, and puts Israel, like the Egyptian of old, on the dark side of this pillar. " I am the light of the world," says Jesus, " he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness."

Such was Israel now, spiritually called Egypt. But how was Israel gone, when all this could be exhibited! They had no association with Abraham or with God, though they boasted in them; for they had no faculty to discern Abraham's joy, or the Sent of God. They must take their place of atheistic darkness and aliena• tion. And this was a solemn moment for Israel, the most solemn. In St. Matthew, the Lord tested the Jews by His Messiahship, and in the end convicted them of rejecting Him in that character. But in this gospel, lie tests them by other and higher proposals of Himself; as the light, the truth, the doer of the works, and the speaker of the words of God, as the Son of the Father; and thus convicts them, not of mere unbelief in Messiah, but of the common atheism of man. In this character Israel is here made to stand, Cain like, in the land of Nod,-in the place of the common departure of man from God. He had spoken the words of the Father, but they understood not, they believed not. As the Sent of the Father, He had come (as such an one must have come,) in grace to them; but they refused Him. And so is it among men unto this day. The gospel is a message of goodness, but man receives it not. Man wilt not think well of God. 'That is the secret of unbelief. The gospel is " goodness;" (Rum. xi. 22.) and man still asks, is it. from God?-for man has hard thoughts of God. Doubting the truth of scripture is doubting that God is love. It rises from the secret thought that He is rather an austere one, and Satan is persuading us still to have this thought. lie does what he can to obscure the sinner's title to God, that thus the sinner may look for some inheritance elsewhere.

VOL, V. V

160 THE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN.

So here with Israel. Jesus judged no man, but spake the word of the Father, which was freedom and life to them. But they un-derstood not His speech, as He says to them. Their minds were formed by their father who was a liar and a murderer; and " grace and truth,'' which came to them by Jesus Christ, they had no ears to hear. And now as the disallowed witness of the Father, the hated light of the world, He has no place at all in the land, no certain paths of this eatth- to go forth unto; He " passes by" as knowing no spot or person here, but still as the light of the world, shining' wherever His'beams may reach, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

IX, X.-Accordingly in this character He is now separated from Israel. Israel is left in darkness; and the pillar of God moves onward. Jesus, " the light of the world," goes forth and meets one who had been blind from his birth. In such an one His works could be xnanifested.

The Lord God, it is most true, is a great king, and acts as a sovereign. He is the potter that has power over the clay. " Who bath made the seeing or the blind, have not I, the Lord?'' But the Son came not from the throne of the king, but from the bosom of the Father. He came to manifest The Father. The blind may be in the world, but the Son came only as the light of the world: and accordingly, as such alone He here applies Himself to His blessed labor of grace and power, and opens the eyes of this blind beggar.

But what was this to Jerusalem? There was darkness there, and the light may shine, but will not be comprehended. Instead of that, as we read here, " they brought to the Pharisees him that afore time was blind." There was a high court of inquisition at Jerusalem, which must try the ways of the Son of God. Instead of welcoming Him as of old, when the pillar of God was raised, and saying, " Rise, Lord, let thine enemies be scattered," they love their own darkness, and will walk in it. At first they ques-tion the man himself; but not finding him quite to their purpose, they ccmmit the case to witnesses who, they judge, were in their

THE GOSPEL TM ST..TOHN. 151

own power. They call his parents. But again they fail; the fact that the light had shone among them cannot be gainsayed. They then seek to divert the whole matter into such a channel as would leave untouched their own pride and worldliness; and they say, " Give God the glory; we know that this man is a sinner." But this will not do either. The poor soul maintains his integrity; and then they seek to alarm him by separating him from all ac-knowledged ground of safety. " Thou art His disciple," say they, but we are Moses' disciples.'' But he is kept still, and not only, kept, but led on from strength to strength. He has, and more is given him. He follows as the light leads, till at length it so shines as to reprove the darkness of the Pharisees; and they hurl against him the thunders of the Church, and cast him forth without the

camp.

But where do they cast him? Just where every lonely outcast sinner may find himself, where the unclean Samaritan and con-victed adulteress had before found themselves-into the.presence and across the solitudes of the Son of God, which is the very gate of heaven. For the Lord had gone without the camp before him. This sheep of the flock was now " put forth;" but it was only to meet the Shepherd who had " gone before." In that place of shame and exposure, they embrace each other. " There was he found by one who had himself been shot by the archers." The xneeting there was a meeting indeed. This poor Israelite, while he was within the camp, had met Jesus as his healer; but now that he is put without, he ineets Him as the Son ot God. Ile meets Him to know Ilim as the one who, when he was blind, had opened his eyes, and now that he is cast out, talks with him. And, be-loved, this is ever the way of our meeting Jesus as sinners, arid as outcasts, in the unclean place. If He take us up there, it must be in the futi grace of the Son of God-the Savior of sinners. And thus our character as sinners leads us into the sweetest and dearest intimacies of the Lord of life and glory. As creatures, we know the strength of His hand, His Godhead, and wisdom, and

u 2

goodness; but as sinners we know the love of His heart, and all the treasures of His grace and glory.

And I may notice here the changed tone of this poor beggar. In the presence of the Pharisees lie was firm and unbending. He does not abate the tone of conscious righteousness and truth all through. He set his face as a flint, and endured hardness. But the moment he comes into the presence of the Lord, he is all humility and gentleness. He melts, as it were, at the feet of Jesus. 0 what a sweet pattern is this of the workmanship of the Spirit of God! courage before man, but all the meltings of love, and the bowings of worship before the Lord that has loved and redeemed us.

But this unclean place without the camp, where the Lord of heaven and earth now stood with this poor sinner, was not only thus the place of liberty and joy to the sinner, but also the wide field of observation to the Lord. From this place He surveys Himself, the beggar, and the whole camp of Israel; outside of which He had now gone with His elect one: and in the parable of " the good Shepherd," He draws the moral of it all. In the scene of' the ninth chapter, He had shown that He had entered by the door into the sheepfold; for He had come, working the works of the Father, and had thus approved Himself to be in the confidence of the owner of the fold, the sanctioned Shepherd of His flock. lie was now estranged from Israel, but like Moses in such a case, was to keep the flock of His Father in other pastures, near the mount of God. The Pharisees, because they were resisting him, must therefore needs be " thieves and robbers," climbing into the fold some other way. And the poor blind beggar was a sample of the flock who, while they refuse the voice of strangers, hear and know the voice of Him that had entered by the door; and there do they themselves enter by Him, "the door of the sheep," and find safety, rest, and pasture.

All this had been set out in the scene before us. and is thus expressed in the parable. And thus the parable also passes a blessed commentary on the present condition of this poor outcast. The Jews, no doubt, judged, (and would have had him judge like-

wise,) that he had now been cut off from safety, being cut off from themselves. But Jesus here shows that not until now was he in safety; that had he been left where he. was, He would have become a prey to those who were stealing, and killing, and destroying; but that now he was found and taken up of one, who to give him life would lay down His own.

All this we have both in the narrative and in the parable. And it is just at this point in our Gospel that the Lord and the remnant meet together; " the poor of the flock" are here manifested, their own shepherds pitying them not; and the Shepherd from heaven takes them up as all His care, to guard and to feed them. (Zech. 11)

But the love and care of Him who said to him, " feed the flock of slaughter;'' (Zech. 11:4.) is also seen here most blessedly. It is perhaps the sweetest thing in the parable. We learn the mind of the Father towards the flock. For the Lord here says, " as the Father knoweth me, so know I the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep:" thus letting us know that one of the deepest secrets of the Father's heart was His love and care for the Church; for that He who knew Him thoroughly, knew this, and accordingly was laying down His life for the Church. The flock, indeed, was the Father's before it was committed to Christ the Shepherd. " Thine they were, and thou gavest them me." They lay in the Father's hand before they were put into Christ's hand. They were the Father's by election before the world was, and became Christ's by gift of the Father, and by purchase of blood. And all the tenderness and diligent care of the Shepherd, does but express the mind of the owner towards His flock. The Shepherd and the owner of the flock are one. As the Lord here says, "I

and my Father are one." One, it is true, in glory; but one also in their love and carefulness about their poor flock of redeemed sinners. Christ met the Father's mind when He loved the Church and gave Himself for it'; and they rest forever one in that love, as surely as they rest one in their own glory. This is truth of precious comfort to us. It teaches us that "our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." We learn, indeed, that God is love; and the moment we discover this, we get our rest in God; for the wearied broken heart of the sinner may rest in love, though nowhere else. " God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."

Here, then, " the poor of the flock" feed and lie down. But Beauty and Bands are to be broken. The shepherd's staves that would have led and kept Israel must now be cast away. It was only a remnant that knew His voice. Who can hear the voice of a Savior but a sinner? The whole need not the physician. And thus in this place our Lord's dealings with Israel close. He refuses to feed them any more: " that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off." (Zech. 11:9.)

And I may notice that His dealing with Israel closes here in a way fully characteristic of this Gospel by St. John. They seek to stone Him, as we read here, because that " He being a man had made Himself God." In the other Gospels; the soul of Israel loathes Him (as Zechariah speaks) for other reasons; because for instance, He received sinners, or impugned their traditions, or touched their sabbath. But in this Gospel it is the assertion of His Sonship of the Father, the assertion of the divine honors of His person, that chiefly raises the conflict. (See v and viii. chapters.) In this place we observe that the Lord, in answer to the Jews, pleads the manifestation which He had now given of Himself, as others had done in Israel before Him. Others set in authority had been called " gods," because they had manifested God in His place of authority and judgment, and were the powers whom God had ordained. And lie in like manner had now manifested the Father. The judges and kings could have shown that the word of

God had come to them, committing to them the sword of God. And so had Jesus now shown Himself the Sent of the Father, full of grace and truth, working now among them as the Father had hitherto worked, in the exercise of grace, restoring and healing and blessing poor sinners. Thus had He shown that the Father was in Him, and He in the Father. But their hearts were hardened. The'darkness could not comprehend the light, and He has but to escape out of their hands, and take up again a position in the earth apart from the revolted nation.

Here the second section of our Gospel ends. It has presented to 'us our Lord's intercourses and controversies with the Jews, and in the course of them we have seen Him setting aside one Jewish thing after another, and bringing in Himself in the place of it. And what is the bringing Him in, but a shouting of " grace, grace," for poor sinners! In the 5th chapter we see Him setting aside Bethesda, the last witness of the Father's working in Israel, and taking its place as minister of grace, Himself. In the 6th and 7th chapters, we see Him setting aside the two Feasts-the. Passover and the Tabernacles, (the first of which opened the Jewish year with the life of the nation, while the second closed it with their glory,) and taking the place of these ordinances Himself, showing that He was the only source of life and glory. In the 8th chap. after exposing the utter unsuitableness of the law to man, and that it was but death to him, He takes His place as " the light of the world," as the one by whom alone, and not by the

law, sinners were to find their way into truth and liberty, and thus home to God. And then in the 9th chapter, in this character of the light of the world, He goes out from Israel. He had been casting His beams on that people, but they comprehended Him not. He goes forth therefore, and draws the poor of the flock after Him; and in the 10th, exhibits Himself and them outside the camp, leaving the land of Israel, as the Prophet had spoken, a chaos without form and void: the word of the Lord that would have called it into beauty and order being refused, giving over the place of Jehovah's ancient husbandry, on which His eyes rested from one end of the year to the other, and which He watered with the rain of His own heavens, to become the wilderness and shadow of death.

XI, X II.-Thus was it now with Israel. They were left in unbelief and darkness, having refused the proposals of the Son of' God. But these chapters show, that though Israel may delay their mercy, they shall not disappoint it finally. God's purpose is to bless, and He will bless. In the way of His own covenant, that is, in resurrection power and grace, He will bring the blessing to Israel. It was as the quickener of the dead, that He had of old entered into covenant with their father Abraham. It was thus that He appeared to Moses, as the Hope of the nation, at Horeb. (Ex. 3, Luke 20:37.) It was by resurrection that He was to give to Israel the promised Prophet, like unto Moses. (Deut. 18 Acts 3) It is in this character that all the prophets speak of Him as acting for the seed of Abraham in the latter day. And our own Apostle tells us that the resurrection of Jesus is the pledge of all the blessing promised to the fathers. (Acts 13:33) Jehovah will restore life and glory to Israel, in resurrection power and grace. When all their own strength is gone, He will Himself arise for their help. He will plant glory in the land of the living. The barren woman shall keep house. The Lord will call them from their graves, and make the dry bones live, And that lie will ac-

complish all this for Israel, is here, in these two chapters, pledged and foreshewn. The previous chapters had shown Israel to be in ruins and distance from God; but here, ere the Lord entirely hides Himself from them, lie gives them in the raising of Lazarus and its results, full pledges of final life and glory.

'This I doubt not is the general bearing of these two chapters; and thus they form a kind of appendix to the previous section, rather than a distinct portion of the Gospel. I would now look at their contents a little snore particularly.

The Lord had left Judah, and was in retirement beyond Jordan, when a message that one (in Judea) whom He loved, was sick. He abides in the place where He was, till this sickness had taken its course, and ended in death. Then He addresses Himself to His journey, for He could then take it as the Son of God, the quickener of the dead; and in the full consciousness that He was about to act as such, He now sets forward, saying, " our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." He also consciously bore the day along with Him; for " the life is the light of men;"- and thus He says also, in answer to the fears of His disciples, " are there not twelve hours in the day? if any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world." He not only saw the light of this world, but He was the light of the world-not merely a child of light, but the fountain of light. His disciples, however, are dull of hearing. They neither discern the voice of the Son of God, nor see the path of the light of life. They judge that death to Himself, rather than life to others, was now before tlim; and they say, " let us also go that we may die with Him." There might have been human affection in this, but there was sad ignorance of His glory. The disciples now, like the woman afterward, would fain take their spices to the Savior's tomb; but both should have known that He was not there.

Onward He then goes, the Son of God, the quickener of the dead; and His path lies to the grave of Lazarus, His friend, in Judea. There He stands in the full vision of the triumphs of sin; for

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sin bath reigned unto death;" and had all ended here, Satan had prevailed. Jesus wept. The Son of the living God wept over the vision of death. In another Gospel, He had wept, as the Son of David, over the city which He had chosen to put His name there, because she had refused Him. But here, as the Son of God who had life in Himself, He weeps over the vision of death. But He

ygroaned in Hitnself also; and He that searcheth the hearts, knew That groan; and Jesus, in the full consciousness that it was heard, had only to acknowledge the answer with thanksgiving; and in the power of that answer to say, " Lazarus come forth." And he that was dead did come forth, the Witness that, " the Father hath life in Himself, so had He given to the Son to have life in Himself.'

Here did the path of the Son of God end. He had now met the power of sin at its height, and had shown that He was above it,- the resurrection and the life.

But still this was not the destruction of him that had the power of death; for it was not the death and resurrection of the Captain of salvation Himself.—Nor was it properly a pledge to the saints of th,eir resurrection in glory, for Lazarus came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes, to walk again in flesh and blood.' It was rather a pledge to Israel of the quickening power of the Son of God in their behalf, showing them that the promised resurrection or revival of' the nation rested on Him, and that He would in due time accomplish it.

But Israel had no eyes to read this sign of their mercy, nor heart to understand it. Instead of its becoming the ground of their faith, it is made the Occasion of the working of full enmity. " From that day forth they took counsel together, to put Him to death." The husbandmen set themselves to cast out the heir of' the vineyard. And their entire departure from their father Abra-ham, and thus their complete apostasy from God is now tnani fested. Israel had been separated out of the nations unto God but they now deliberate, and take their place among the natio40; again. Unlike Abraham, they take riches from the king of Sodorii instead of blessing from the hand of Melchizedek. They choose the patronage of Rome, rather than know the resurrection-power of the Son of God. " If we let Him thus alone," say they, " all will believe on Him, and the Romans will come, and take away both our place and nation.".And the judgment then cotnes upon them. " Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not." For now, having the voice of the Spirit for the last time in their Iligh Priest, there is no ear to hear it aright; and hav-ing the doings of the Son of' God among them for the last time, there is no eye to perceive Him aright.

But still Ile was the quickener of Israel; and in the latter day, the dry bone shall hear the word of the Lord and live; of whichf as I have observed, Lazarus is here the pledge. And the remnant in Israel in that day, is also here illu,trated in the family at

her Lord, and really meets Him. There isnot the same distance between theni as there had been between the Lord and Martha. Mary on meeting Him falls at His feet, and He, on seeing her; groans in spirit. This Was a meeting indeed, a Meeting between the Lord of life and His worshipper. Mary does not, like Martha, multiply words without knowledge; nor has the Lord to rebuke any slowness of heart in her as He had in Martha. But We know He loved them both. Blessed is it to have living fellowship with Him, beloved. Some may ' have more burning, thoughts of Him, and brighter views f Him than others; but though our measure be but the Martha measure, yet there is heaven in the fellowship, wherever it is true and living. That is our peace. But com-inunion. with Jesus, such as Mary had, will enlarge our measure OS it did her's

We should earnestly desire and cultivate it. She is always, when seen, seen

at His feet. (See Luke 10:39., John 11:32., xii. 3.) Her constant attitude

was that of worship, love, and humility. And it is this that has power in it, and the peace that it brings flows on still: for "when He giveth quietness, who fhen can make trouble?" To be at His feet, is the power of knowledge, the.

liberty of serviec, the savor and life of worship,

160 THE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN.

Bethany. Into the midst of this well loved family, the Lord comes, and there finds refreshment, and fellowship, and the acknowledgment of His glory; as He will find these' things in His remnant in the latter day. There He sits as " the Lord of life;" the witness of His quickening power being seated beside Him: and there too He sits as " the king of glory;" the homage of His willing people being laid at His feet. In these two holy dignities is He now received by this faithful household. " While the king sitteth at His table," (says Mary now, as the remnant will say by and 'by,) " my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof." (Cant. i. 12.)

It is thus He here sits; one faMily in the apostate land owning Him Lord of life and King of glory. But the city and the strangers there were soon to see Him thus as well as this house at Bethany, as by and by, the nation and the whole earth will own Him after the remnant.

Accordingly, " on the next day," as we read here, much people, moved by the report of His having raised Lazarus from the dead, meet Him on His coming to Jerusalem, and lead Him into the royal city, as the Son of David, the king of Israel. The time was the time of the Passover; but the people are moved as with the joy of the Feast of Tabernacles, and take branches of palm-trees to gladden their king. And the nations, as it were, come up to keep the Feast also; for certain Greeks come to Philip, and say, "Sir, we would see Jesus." Here glory shines for a moment in the lancl of the living. Here was Lazarus raised from the dead, the city receiving her king, and the nations worshipping there. The great materials of the kingdom in which, as the Son of man, He is to be glorified, had now.passed before the Lord. The joy of

• But in this house at Bethany, we see also the Church. For in the Church, the witness of Christ's resurrection-power is seen during the long ago of Israel's unbelief, and before the remnant is manifested. And in the Church also during that age, the Lord finds His only refreshment and fellowship. And in Martha serving, Lazarus silting, and Mary anointing the feet, we see the members of the Church in their various graces and character of communion with the Lord: some waiting on Him in the activities of love; some resting beside Him in the calm certainty of His favor and salvation; some pouring,forth the -fullness of their loving and worshipping hearts.

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Jerusalem, and the gathering of the nations, He had now witnessed, and entering in spirit for a moment into the kingdom, He says, " the hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified." But it was but for a moment. This was but a passing taste of His cup of salvation. This season was really to be the Passover, and not the Tabernacles to Jesus; and His soul passes, for another moment, through His paschal trouble. But the Father again acknowledges Him. He had glorified Him as Son of God, quickener of. the dead, at the grave of Lazarus; and now He glorifies Hint as Son of man, Judge of the world and of the prince of the world.

And here did His path as the Son of man end; as His path as the Son of God had before ended at the grave of Lazarus. The Son of God and Son of man had now been fully displayed before His unbelieving Israel. He was glorified among them, as the Prince of life and the holder of all authority and power. The things now accomplished and displayed in these two chapters, were the fulfilling of His words to them at the beginning: these were " the greater works" at which they should " marvel." (chap. v. 20, 22.) They had now witnessed His quickening power as Son of God, and had His judicial glory as Son of man pledged to them by the voice from heaven. They should have honored Him as they honored the Father. But instead of this they were soon to kill Him. They were soon to disown the Lord of life and the king of glory, on whom all their hopes of life and the kingdom hung. He had now tested them by the promised " greater works:" but there was no response from Israel. The harvest was past, the summer ended, and they were not saved. The lamentation of the Prophet was now to be uttered, " Lord who hath believed our report." It was not that His works had not manifested Him as the hope of Israel. Many even of the chief rulers felt and owned them in their consciences, as we here read. But they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God, as Be had said unto them. (v.44., xii. 43.) All that remained now was judgment on Israel, and the heavenly glory of this earth-rejected Son of God. (40, 41.) So does our evangelist himself tell us, drawing the aw-

162 THE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN.

ful moral of the whole scene. " He bath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, that they shohld not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Esaias when he saw His glory and spoke of Him." And thus all closed in judgment upon Israel, and in glory, heavenly glory, glory within the wail, for the blessed Jesus. (fs. vi. 1, 2.)

Thus our Gospel here seats the Son. of God in heaven again. His way in this Gospel ends there, as it had begun there. (i. 1.) The Gospel by St. Matthew had ushered Him forth as the Son of David from.Bethlehem, and closes with thin (as far as His ministry was concerned,) on the Mount of Olives. (Matt. 1 xxiv.) But this Gospel had opened with His descent, from the bosom of the,Father, and here it closes (as lar as His ministry is concerned,) by His return to heaven. And there He still dwells in the high and holy place, and the humble and broken hearted are there with Him, He speaks from heaven; and His voice must be in the power of all that finished work which has taken Him there. lie has hirced His way (for lie is the" violent" one) into the Holiest through the outer courts, throwing down all enmities, all middle walls, and has again come forth from thence, in the power of the Holy Ghost, to preach peace to all. (Hph. ii. 12-22.) He cannot but speak of all that is there, and not of what is here. He cannot but speak by his Spirit of the peace, and gladness, and glory that are there, and not-of the accusings that our sins still committed hare would fill our hearts with.

His path thus ends in full grace to sinners as it had begun. All through His divine ministry in this Gospel, the Lord had been acting in grace, as the Son of the Father, and as " the light of the world." His presence was "day time" in the land of Israel. He had been shining there, if haply the darkness might compre'- hend Him. And here at the very close of His ministry (xii. 35;

THE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN. 163

36.) we see Him still as the light casting forth His last beams upon the land and people. • He can but shine, whether they will comprehend Him or not. While His presence is there, it is still day time. The night cannot come till lie is gone. " As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." But here " He departs and hides Himself," and then God, by His Prophet, brings in the night upon the land. (v. 40.) But the Son of God, the light of this world sets in Judea, only to rise in other spheres. (v. 44-50.) For His cry in these closing verses is not addressed to Israel merely, but to the whole earth. It is but the same " light of the would,'' that had lately run His race in Judea, coming forth out of His chamber to run a longer race. And this race He is runs! ring still. " The day of salvation" is still with us. The night of judgment on the Gentiles has not yet come. We may still walk without stumbling, we may still know whither we are going. The light still says " awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Such are thy ways, blessed Savior, Lauub of God, Son of the Father!

(TO BE CONTINUED, IF THE LORD WILL.)

THE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN.
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 163.)

I HAVE followed the Lord through chapters i-xii, of this Gospel,
noticing His.ways as the Son of God, and also His intercourse and
controversies with Israel. His path on earth had been that of the
stranger from heaven. A path of deep sorrow and lowliness, and
much in the track of the Prophet Jeremiah, so that some said, " it
is Jeremias." Like Jeremiah, the Lord had been the witness of
the sin of the daughter of Zion: like him, He had warned her, and
taught her, and would fain have healed her. But like him, He
had seen the stubbornness of her heart, had suffered rebuke and
rejection from her, and had now only to weep for her. He had,
as in the words of Jeremiah, said to her, even to the end of his
ministry, (see chap. xii. 35.) " give glory to the Lord your God.
before He cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the
dark mountains, and while ye look for light, He turn it into the
shadow of death, and make it gross darkness; but if ye will not
EE 2

hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride." (Jer. 13:16.)

Jesus had now thus wept over Jerusalem, for she had not re-, pented. The Boar had now again left his woods to devour her; the " Destroyer of the Gentiles" was again on his way, as in the Prophet's day. The captivity in Babylon had no more purged away the dross of Zion than the waters of Noah had sanctified the earth; and all was again ripe for another judgment. But as in the midst of all this, Jeremiah of old, had had his Baruch the companion of his temptations, (Jet, xxxvi, and xliii,) to whom from the Lord lie pledges present life, (chap. xlv.) and with whom he deposits the sure evidence of final rest and restoration; (chap. xxxii.) so now, Jesus has His saints, the companions of his rejection, to whom He gives the present certainty of life, and the sure promise of future rest and honor.

And now we get our Lord in secret with His Baruch, His chosen ones. We have done with His public ministry: and we have Him now with His own, telling them, as their Prophet, the secrets of God.

And being here about to listen to Him as the Prophet of the Church, I would observe that what the Lord giVes us as our Prophet is our present riches. It is not with us, as with Israel of old, " blessings of the basket and of the store," nor is it with us now, as it will be by and by, " authority over cities-but " we have the mind of Christ." Treasures of wisdom and knowledge h:d in Christ are our present treasures. (Col. 2:2.) And accorct• ingly having now turned away from Israel towards His elect, and looking at them alone apart from the world, He makes known to them all things that He had heard of the Father. (xiii-xvii.) By and by, as the King of Glory, He will share His dominion with the saints; but now He has only the tongue of the learned for them, that He may teach them the secrets of God. It is only as their Prophet, that He now enriches them. As to other riches they may count themselves poor. As one of them of old said (and said it, beloved, without shame), "silver and gold have I none."

And all the glory that He himself had while He was on earths

was the glory of a Prophet. He is now, it is true, glorified as a Priest, (Heb. 5:5.) and He will be hereafter glorified as a King. (Matt. 25:31.) But the only glory He had when He was here, was that of a Prophet. "He taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all." And so with us. Our present treasure is that of "scribes instructed unto the kingdom of heaven."

Our Lord Jesus is the Prophet like unto Moses, who had been promised of old. God saw Moses face to face. He spoke with him, as a man speaketh unto his friend, saying of him, " with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold." In all this high prerogative, Moses was the shadow of the Son of God. Moses had access to God. First he was on the heights of the hill with Him beyond the region of thunder and tempest; then within the cloud of glory, as it stood at the door of the temporary Tabernacle; and lastly in the very holy of holies, when the Tabernacle itself was reared (Ex. 24 xxxiii. xxv. 22.) And he stood in all that nearness to God, whenever he pleased, and without blood-though even Aaron, we know, could be there only once a year, and that not without blood-all this telling us in affecting and intelligible language, of the divine personal worthiness of our Prophet, of the Godhead-glory of Him, whose shadow Moses was, who was then in the bosom of the Father, and has now spoken to us.

And what Moses learned on the top of the hill, or within the cloud of glory, or from off the Mercy Seat in the Holiest, was just the secret which the Son has now brought out from the bosom of the Father. Moses learned there the grace of God, and saw " the glory of goodness." (Ex. 33:19.) Blessed vision? And so the only begotten Son was among us " full of grace and truth."

But the services which the Lord renders us as our Prophet are various; and in this variety, we shall find the special character of this Gospel by St. John fully maintained.-In the opening of St. Matthew there the Lord, as the Prophet, revealed the mind of God touching the conduct of his people, interpreting the law in its extent and purity, thus determining the divine standard, and apply.

ing it to the conscience. He prescribed the order and ways of the Saints, so as to make them worthy of the regeneration and the kingdom, calling the soul into exercise towards God, and giving it its due ends and objects. (See Matt. 5-7) But in our Gospel, He is the Prophet in a higher character. He declares " the Father," and reveals the " heavenly" things. He speaks as the One who had " ascended into heaven," and was " from above." (John 3:13. 31.) It is not so much our conduct, as God's thoughts that He here tells us of. He tells us of the mysteries of life and judgment; He declares the love of the Father, the works and glories of the Son, and the place and actings of the Holy Ghost in and for the Church of God. He is, in this Gospel, the Prophet of the secrets of the Father's bosom, disclosing the most hidden ways of the Sanctuary. He here speaks as the Word, who was with God, and was God, giving us such knowledge as a mere walk on the earth in righteousness and Aervice, would not have needed, but such as makes us nothing less than " friends." (John 15:15.) And gives us communion, in knowledge, with the ways of "the Father of glory." (Eph. 1:17.)

Such is the variousness of the Lord's exercise of His prophetic office, and such, I judge, the peculiar exercise of it, which we have in this Gospel, the exercise of it in its highest department, again making this Gospel so peculiarly precious to the Church. And when the gathering of the Church in this present " day of salvation" is over, and all have come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, we shall not lose our Lord as our prophet. We shall listen to Him as such, even in the kingdom. His lessons will feed us forever. Solomon was a Prophet as well as a Priest and a King. His servants stood continually before him, and all kings of the earth sought his presence to hear him. The Queen of Sheba came to prove him with hard questions, and he answered her in all her desire. When she beheld all his ways, the king's magnificence, the priest's ascent to the house of God, and the prophet's wisdom, these were altogether more than a match for her heart—the half had not been told her-"there was no more spirit in her."

And so in the coming kingdom, we shall have that which shall fill the eye with glory, give the heart its satisfied affections, ever feed the still enlarging thoughts of our minds with the treasures of wisdom that are hid in our divine.Prophet, and withal give our ears the music of his praise forever. And blessed are they who now thirst after Jesus, for then they shall be filled.

But let me here say, for my own admonition as for my brethren, that we should constantly suspect and dread all mere effort of mind, while listening to the words of our Prophet, that is, while reading the Scriptures. I am never conscious that God is my Teacher, when I am putting my mind to an effort. The Spirit is a ready Teacher, as well as a ready Writer. And the light of the Spirit, though it may shine at times through our darkness but dimly, yet it will always evidence itself with more or less certainty. And let us remember also that it is a Temple light, a light that suits the Sanctuary. It was in the holy place, that the candlestick stood; and so the intelligence that is awakened in the soul by the Holy Ghost, is attended by the spirit of devotion and communion. It is a Temple light still, it leads us to God Himself. And 0 that we may know nothing, beloved, but by His teaching and for His glory!

I have already noticed the Lord's different exercise of His prophetic office in St. Matthew's Gospel and in this. In His final discourses with His elect, after His public ministry is over, as given us by these two Evangelists, the same characteristic difference is still to be clearly discerned. In Matthew He talks with them in the Mount of Olives about Jewish matters, (xxiv-xxv.) but here He leads them in spirit into heaven, to open to them the Sanctuary there, and to tell them of heavenly secrets. (xiii—xvii.) For Matthew all through presented the Lord in Jewish connection, but this Gospel, as we have seen, concerns itself immediately with the Church, whose calling and glory are heavenly. And accordingly the Lord now takes His seat, not on the Mount of Olives to tell His remnant of Israel's sorrows and final rest, but in heaven, to disclose to His saints the actings of their High Priest there, and their own peculiar sorrows and blessings as the Church

of God, during the age of that 'heavenly Priesthood. The hev venly Priesthood is the great subject throughout these chapters, and on them I would now somewhat more particularly meditate, remembering that it is the Lord only who teaches to profit.

XIII-XVII.-All these chapters form one section of our Gospel; but I will consider them in distinct portions, as their con., tents seem to me to suggest.

XIII.-Here at the opening, the Lord's action-washing the disciples' feet, is an exhibition of one great branch of His heavenly service.

His service, as our High Priest, the Lord did not enter on, till He had accomplished His passion on earth, and ascended into the heavens; and thus it was not, as we read here, till " after the sup-, per was ended," that He took a towel and girded. Himself to wash His disciples' feet. For " the supper" was the exhibition of His passion and death, as He had said, "take, eat, this is my body." And accordingly the Lord seems to go through the whole of this mystic scene, in the consciousness that He had now finished His sufferings-had ascended and was looking back on His saints-for it is introduced by these words, " having loved His, own which were in the world"-words that suggest the apprehension He now had of His saints being still in the world, while He had left them for higher and holier regions. And in the sense of all this, and that He was still, though glorified again in and with the Father, the gracious servant of their need and infirmities, He girds Himself with a towel and washes their feet-thus giving them to know that He was abiding in the heavenly Sanctuary, just to impart to them the constant virtue of the "holiness" which, as their High Priest, He ever carried for them on His forehead before the throne of G od. (Ex. 28)

Thus there is a difference between the mystic import of " the supper," and of this subsequent " washing of the feet," and the

• The supper is not noticed in this Gospel, save by reference. And this is in beautiful keeping with its general character; for it is, as we have already seen, the Gospel of the Son, the Gospel of the glory rather than of the humiliation of Jesus. And therefore we get Him, as here in this chapter, in His Priesthood, but we do not see Him in His passion as at the supper.

difference I judge, to be the same as between " the day of atonement" and " the ashes of the Red Heifer," under the law. The day of atonement like the supper, set forth the virtue of the blood of the Son of God, the ashes of' the Heifer like this washing, the virtue of the intercession of the Son of God. The day of atonement was but one day in the Jewish year, a great annual day of reconciliation, on which the sin of Israel was put away once En. all; the ashes of the Heifer were provided for every day's transgressions, for all the occasional defilements which any Israelite might contract, while passing through the year. So with the blood-shedding first, and the priestly intercessions of the Son of God afterward: as a scripture says; " 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."

And we have the same blessings in the same order in another form, viz.-the paschal Lamb had once and forever redeemed Israel out of Egypt, but in the wilderness, it was the intercession of Moses that turned away wrath from the occasional trespasses of the Camp of God, And so the blood of Jesus our Passover, and intercession of Jesus our Mediator-the supper first and then the washing of the feet, the death here and then the Ye in heaven for us. He that is once washed in the blood needeth not save to wash his feet, and that washing of his feet, that removal of the soil which the saint gathers in his walk along this earth day by day, the High Priest who is in heaven for him accomplishes by his presence and intercession there. He is the Mediator of the new covenant as well as the Blood of it.

Thus the love of the Son of God for the Church, as it had been from everlasting, so must it.be to everlasting, as it is here written, " having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." Every age and scene must witness the same love in some of its services, and in its abiding fervor and truth. No change of time could affect it. The dreariness of this world and glories of heaven found it in His heart the same. Neither sorrow nor joy, suffering nor glory, could touch it for a moment. His death here and His life in heaven alike declare it. Nay much

VOL. V. V V

more. He had served her in this love before the world was, when He said, " lo I come"-and in the kingdom after the world, He will serve her still in the same love, making His saints to sit down to meat, while He waits on their joy. (Luke 12:37.)

Such was the Lord, such is the Lord, and such will He be in His unceasing service of love towards His saints, and He here tells them to be Ilis imitators. " If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet." He expects to see among us on earth, the copy of that which He is daily doing for us in heaven. He is there daily washing our feet, bearing our need, and meeting our defilements before the throne; and He would have us daily washing one another's feet, bearing one another's infirmities, and helping one another's joy, here on the footstool.

This action and teaching of the Lord was thus a taking of the Church, like Moses before, up into the Mount to thew her the pat-terns, according to which the things on earth were to be made. Moses then stood above the Law, beyond the region of fire and tempest, and so the Church here. The disciples here are called up in spirit into the heavenly Sanctuary, and there shown the ways of the High Priest in His daily love and care of them, and they are told to go down and do likewise. As was said to Moses, " see thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the Mount.'' The time for the taking of Moses into the Mount to abide there, had not then come. He was then only to visit it, that he might see the patterns, and receive orders. And so here. The Church was not yet ready for the glory, and for the Father's house. "Where I go," says the Lord to the disciples; " thither ye cannot come." They shall follow afterward, as the Lord here further promises, but for the present there was to be only a sight of the patterns on the Mount, that they might copy them on the earth. But /ove alone can fashion those copies, for love is the artificer of the originals in heaven. As the Lord here again says, " by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.'' It is not as of old, the skill of such as "wotk in brass" that will do now, but the skill of such as " walk in love," The

fashioning of any kind thought in the heart toward a brother, the arming of the mind with power to bear and forbear in love, the goings forth of the soul in sympathies, and the molding off or softening down of any hard or selfish affection: these are the copies of the heavenly patterns. It is only as " dear children" we can be " imitators of God." (Eph. 5:1.) And what comfort is this. When the Lord would appoint on earth the witnesses of His own ways in heaven, He tells us to love one another, to wash one ano-ther's feet! What a sight of Him, though within the vail, does this give us! " He shows His thoughts how kind they be." What manner of daily occupation of our Priest in his Sanctuary on high is here disclosed to us!

And, beloved, let me here admonish myself and you, to seek to walk more amid these witnesses of the Lord than we do. For this would be our assurance before Him, and our joy among our-selves. If our ways were steady unwavering ways of love, we should be ever walking as in the Sanctuary, in the midst of the shadows and emblems of Christ; we should have the Lord's thoughts in all their kindness and constancy ever before us, and what joy and assurance would that give us. No suspicions of His love, no cloudings of doubt and fear, could then gather on the soul, but we should hear Him with our ears, and see Him with our eyes, and handle Him with our hands, for all that ear, or eye, or hand, met from one another would thus witness as well as savor of His love. This indeed, beloved, would be a. sweet dwelling " in the house of the Lord," a blessed beholding of " the beauty of the Lord,'' which Prophets and righteous men of old so desired. (Psa. 27:4.) But all this display of glorious love, the poor heart of man is not prepared for. Peter expresses this com-mon ignorance. He does not yet understand this connection between glory and service. He follows his human thoughts, and says, " thou shalt never wash my feet." But Peter was to know all this by and by, as His Lord here promises, for Peter and His Lord were one. But Judas must be separated. " I speak not of you all," said the Lord. The presence of the Traitor in the naidst of the Church up to this solemn moment, was needed, for

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the Scripture had said, " he that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me." Judas must receive the sop from the Lord's own hand. The pledge of love must be given and despised, ere Satan could enter; for it is the rejection of love that matures the sin of man, as the remaining unmoved by this signal mark of kindness from the hand of His Master perfected the sin of Judas, and Satan then entered. Satan's indwelling is not here noticed till the sop was refused-as man in this dispensation of ours, has despised love and thus matured his sin-as the Lord afterward says, " if I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin." (xv. 24.) But having now resisted the love of the Gospel, man has " gone his way," as Judas here, having received the sop, " went out" to betray Him who had given it. And our F,vangelist adds-" it was night." Solemn words-night in man, and night for Jesus.

But He at once looks beyond this night, for dark as it was to be to Him, it was to open into the perfect day. Jesus would be glorified in God at once, for God was glorified in Him. Indeed He was the only Son of Man in whom God ever was glorified. He had kept the nature without spot, and was now about on the cross to present it to God a sheaf of untainted human' fruit, fitted for God's garner. Man in Jesus had been glorified, for all that bad proceeded from Him, all that had been drawn out of Him, was according to God. (xiv. 30, 31.) Not one speck sullied the moral beauty of' man in Jesus. Man in Jesus had not come short of the glory of God. And God who had thus been glorified in Him, would therefore glorify Him in Himself. But as to all beside, it was altogether otherwise. Jesus could go at once to God, by virtue of all this moral glory, but as to all beside, it matters not whether saints or unbelievers, whether Peters or opposing Pharisees, there could not be this. A place with God must be prepared ere even the saints could be gathered into God's garner (xiv. 1); and therefore the Lord here says to them, " ye shall seek Me, and as I said unto the Jews, whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say to you."

This clay of His own glory in God, Jesus her anticipates,

saying, as soon as the Traitor was gone out, " Now is the Son of Man glorified." And so, by and by, there will be room again for the display of the glory, when the Son of Man shall have gathered out of His kingdom all things that offend, and all that do iniquity, when the Traitor shall again " go out," then shall the glory be witnessed, and the righteous shine forth as the Sun in the kingdom of their Father. The floor once purged, the sheaves of glory will be gathered into the garner.

XIV-XVL-Having thus passed, in spirit, through the night, and taken His place in the day that lay beyond it, the Lord now turns to His disciples, and in these chapters, as the Prophet of the heavenly things, instructs and comforts them, telling them of the mystery of His own heavenly Priesthood, and of their calling, and duties, and blessings, as the Church of God still sojourning on earth during that Priesthood.

The heavenly Priesthood of the Son of God, in other words, the present Dispensation, during which He is on the Father's throne, and we in " the kingdom of God's dear Son," was a secret with God hidden from the thoughts of Israel altogether. " The little while," was a stage in the divine procedure, of which both the Jews and the disciples were equally ignorant. (John 7:36. xvi. 17.) They had all thought that Christ was to abide forever, for their prophets had chiefly spoken of Him in connection with earthly dominion. There were however many intimations, both from prophecy and from history, which might have prepared them for this. Thus, Joseph's residence and glory in Egypt, and during that time his forgetfulness of his kindred in Canaan, till stress of famine brought them to him, had clearly typified this mystery.-So had Moses' sojourn in Midian. (See Acts 7) We may judge, no doubt, that both Joseph and Moses had constant recollections of their own people, and many a desire towards them, while separated from them-but it Was an untold desire.

• I would notice here the assurance of heart which the consciousness of love at all times gives us. Peter and John are not at all alarmed at the Lord's solemn hints about the Traitor, but they rather take counsel together to search and find out the meaning of those hints, and who it was that should do this thing. Could our hearts so stand, beloved, before the searchings and discernings of the Spirit of judgment? Conscious love is bold as a lion.

224 TIIE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN.

So we know that the Lord is now mindful of Jerusalem, her walls are continually before Him, engraven on the palms of His hand. But apparently He is to them as a man astonied, and as a mighty man that cannot save.

And beside those typical histories, or allusions, the Prophets had spoken directly of this mystery. They had foretold Jerusalem's widowhood, which was to continue for a season. Moses at the beginning had left a standing testimony with Israel, that the Lord, for a time would hide His face from them, and provoke them to jealousy by those who were "no people." (Dent. xxxii.) David had said that Messiah, as his Lord, should for a while sit at the right hand of God. (Psa. 110) Isaiah had a vision of Christ in the heavenly glory during a season of judgment on Israel. (Isa. 6) Ezekiel saw the glory leave the city, and then after a season return to it. And the Lord had said by Hosea, " I will go and return unto my place, till they acknowledge their offense and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early." In his own ministry the Lord Jesus had already referred to this same mystery. In St. Matthew, he corrects the thought that Christ was to abide forever, by a recital of those scriptures, which spoke of the rejection of the Stone by the builders. In St. Luke he had shown, by the parable of the Nobleman going into a far country, that there was to be an interval between the first appearing of Messiah, and his appearing in His kingdom. But now in our Gospel, he treats of this matter more fully, showing the character of this interval, or of His session for a while at the right hand of God in heaven, for it is in this that the Church has her immediate interest, and this Gospel, as we know, especially deals with the calling and interests of the Church.

Having therefore, now closed His public ministry, and being in retirement with the Church, he occupies himself with this subject. In the action of the 13th chapter, in the teaching of these 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters, and again in the action of the 17th, it is the heavenly Priesthood that He is variously either exhibiting or teaching. And thus does He show that His present interval of separation from Israel, He is blessedly occupying for the Church.

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Jerusalem was to know a season of orphanage, but not so the Church. (Lam. 5:3, and John 14 ]8, Gr.) In sympathies, in intercessions, in the diligence and wakefulness of one whose eye is over them, He is all action towards His saints now. He is separated from His brethren according to the flesh, it is true, but He is, the while, like Moses tending the flock of his Father at the Mount of God.

And I have been much struck with the whole expression and tone of that scene of Moses in Midian. (Ex. 2:18-iii.) There is such an air of holy solitariness, and yet of family joy about it-nothing is allowed to appear, but the father, the wife, the children, the flock, the Mount of God, and God himself. In the midst of those beloved ones, and far away from the pollutions of Egypt, and the unbelief of Israel, we see the man of God. We see him there, like the Son of God now, cast in among strangers, first giving them deliverance from their oppressors, and then life, (i.e. opening to them the well of water, the constant symbol of life), and then tasting among them the sweet comforts of a beloved home and family, in holy retirement. 0 beloved, would that his family now were refreshing the solitudes of the Son of God better than they do! 0 that there was a more " beautiful flock" for His care and tendance at the Mount of God! A more joyous scene to compensate Him for His present loss of Israel! But He has laid down His life for them, He has given Himself for the sheep, and in His love He abideth faithful. But this only by the way. These chapters do, however, lead me further to say, that the ministry of the Son had done nothing that was effectual upon the hearts of His disciples. For so the divine order ran-the Father had worked hitherto, the Son was now working, but the Holy Ghost had also to work, ere the Church could be set in her place. And thus it is not until now, we get the name of God fully revealed. The revelation of it shines gradually brighter and brighter as dispensations advance.

In Gen. 1 it is simply " God" that we see and hear. It is " God who there goes through the six day's work, and then rests on the seventh.-But in Gen. 2 it is " the Lord God" that we

226 'rue GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN.

see and hear. We have the creation of the heavens and the earth again given to us, but all is now under the hand of " the Lord God," and not of " God" simply.

And these are thus two stages in God's revelation of Himself. In the 1st chap. we see Him coming forth as God simply, for His own delight and glory. He takes His full delight in the work, beholding it all to be very good, and He glorifies Himself by the work, setting over it one in His own image, the representative of Himself. This is what we get here in the 1st chapter, where " God" only is seen, and seen as having respect thus to His own delight and glory in the works of His hands.

But in the 2nd chapter we see " the Lord God," that is, God in a covenanted character, God entered upon purposes and plans for the blessing of His creature. And therefore much of the previous detail of the work, as it proceeded under the hand of " God," is here omitted, and many things are here brought into view which had no place before. Thus we have here in strong relief, and which we had not at all in the 1st chapter, the Garden, and the River, the manner of creating the man, of investing him with

dominion, of forming the woman, and of instituting their union-

and we have also the mystic Trees, and the Commandment with its penalty-for all these concerned the place and blessing of the creature in covenant with " the Lord God."

Thus did He begin to unfold His name to us; and after these first notices of " God" and " the Lord God," we get the name, " God Almighty" published to Abram. This was a further revelation of Himself. And this was done, when Abram was " past age," and had nothing to lean upon, but the almightiness, or all-sufficiency of God. (Gen. 17:1.) And in this name, which declared this needed sufficiency, God led him and Isaac and Jacob after Him, for they were all strangers and pilgrims on the earth, having nothing but the promise of tin Almighty Friend for their stay and staff. (Gen. 28 xxxv. xxviii.) But in process of

THE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN. 227

time, God was known to their children by another name. Bringing them into the covenant, into the promised inheritance, He calls Himself " Jehovah," that is, the covenant God of Israel. (Ex. 6:1-6.) And under God as Jehovah, Israel take their seat in Canaan.

But still all this did not communicate God in the full glory of His name. There was grace in God, and gifts by grace, which these ways of His did not fully unfold. But this is done in the name which is now published to us, the name of " Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." This is the full name or glory of our God, and grace and the gifts of grace are effectually brought to us by that dispensation which publishes it to us.

Thus it was not until the present age that the full name and glory of our God was published. The Father had been working, it is true, (as was observed under chapter v. see p. 136.) in all ages of the Jewish times; but still Israel was put nationally under God simply as " Jehovah." The revelation of " the Father" had to wait for the ministry of the Son, and certain dispensations had to finish their course, ere the Son could come forth. The Son could not have been the minister of the law-such ministry would not have been worthy of Him, who dwelt in the bosom of the Father. It was committed to Angels; and the Son did not come forth in ministry, till the " great salvation" was ready to be published. (Heb. 2:1, 2.) So the manifestation of the Holy Ghost waited for its due time. The Holy Ghost could not wait on the ministry of the law, any more than the Son. Smoke, and lightning, and the voice of thunder were there, (Ex. 19) but the Holy Ghost came forth with His gifts and powers to wait on the ministry of the Son, on the publication of the great salvation. (Heb. 2:4.) The Spirit of God could not be a spirit of bondage gendering fear-the law may do that, but the Holy Ghost must gender confidence.

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44 As many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God."

Thus till the Son had finished His work, the Holy Ghost could not come forth. For the heart must first be purged from an evil conscience, so that the Temple might be sanctified for the in-dwelling Spirit, and the Holy furniture (that is, the spirit of liberty and adoption, and the knowledge of glory) must be pre-pared for this Temple, and all this could be done only by the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son. And thus the revelation of the Holy Ghost waited for these things. He had been, it is true, the Holy power in all from the beginning. He had spoken by the Prophets. He was lhe strength of Judges, and of Kings. He was the power of faith, of service, and of suffering, in all the people of God. But all this was below the place which He now takes in the Church. His indwelling in us, as in His Temple, had not been spoken of, of old, but now He does so dwell, spreading out within us a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy. As the spirit of wisdom, He gives us " the mind of Christ," spiritual senses for the discerning of good and evil. As the Spirit of worship, He enables us to call God " Father," and Jesus " Lord," and makes intercession in us with groanings that cannot be uttered. He sheds abroad in the heart " the love of God," and causes us " to abound in hope." He is in us a well of water springing up into everlasting life, and He is the source also of " rivers of living waters,'' flowing forth from us, to refresh the weary. And He forms the Saints together as " a spiritual house," where " spiritual sacrifices" are offered, no longer admitting " a worldly sanctuary," and " carnal ordinances." For they are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit, and gifts causing them all to grow up into Christ in all things, are dis-pensed among them.

In these ways and for these services, the Holy Ghost was now to dwell in the Saints, telling them " plainly of the Father," and " taking of the things of Christ," and showing them unto them. And this would give the Church her full form and standing, having thus communion in knowledge, through the Holy Ghost,

with the Father and the Son. And thus it is God and not ourselves that we have now immediately to do with. In the law it was otherwise. The law dealt with us immediately, saying " thou shalt, and thou shalt not." But now it is God we have first to do with. We are absolutely summoned away from ourselves, and are not to remember whether we were Jews or Greeks. We have God to look to, God to hear, God to do with. And this is the highest possible point of blessing for a poor sinner to apprehend-s° blessed is it, that Satan does what he can to keep us short of it, to make the ear heavy to the voice of God, the eye dim to the ways and works of G od, and the heart unresponsive to the heart of God. He would fain busy us with anything, that the light of the glory of the Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, may not shine in. He makes some busy with thoughts of their right-eousness, and others busy with thoughts of their sins, that He might keep them, either through vain glory or fear, apart from God Himself.

Now to draw the disciples out from a mere Jewish place into this elevation of the Church of God, and by this to comfort them under the sense of His absence, is the Lord's great purpose in the discourse which He holds with them in these Chapters-the like to which never passed between the sons of men-the heart and mind of God had never before so largely and blessedly communicated their treasures to the desires and thoughts of his people, as now the Lord was doing. Most sacred moments indeed of communion between heaven and earth were these.

At the beginning the Lord says, " let not your heart be trou-bled, ye believe in God, believe also in me." This at once gives them notice of another object of faith than what they as yet had. God, in the sense of these words, had been already known by Israel. The disciples, in their Jewish place, were already be, lievers in God. The Lord here allows that, as He had before asserted, speaking to the woman of Samaria, " we (i. e. Jews) know what we worship." The Jews had God; their faith was not wrong, but only defective; and the Lord would now fill it out. He would now have them to know the Father through the Son-

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and the whole of this discourse with his disciples furthers this design. He speaks particularly of the Father, and promises the Comforter to make these things, (the things of the Father, and the Son) known to them.

This was the character of grace which this gospel at the beginning intimated, when St. John wrote-" to as many as received him, to them gave he to become the sons of God." And this early notice of the value and power of the Son's ministry, is here in these chapters largely unfolded. But while this is doing, we have several forms of Jewish ignorance brought out-necessarily so, I may say, for Israel did not stand in this knowledge, into which the Lord was now leading them. Peter expresses ignorance of the infirmity of the flesh, and boasts, " I will lay down my life for thy sake." Thomas is ignorant of Christ's departure, and separation from this earth, and says, " Lord we know not whither thou goest," for Israel had been taught to say that Christ was to abide forever. Philip betrays his unacquaintedness with the Father, for it was not the knowledge of the Father in the Son that Israel had been led into. Judas wonders at any glory, but the manifested worldly glory of Messiah, for such was Israel's hope. And tidy all stand amazed at the mystery of " the little while." But out of these thoughts, the heavenly Prophet is here leading them. They had been already drawn out from the apostate nation, as God's remnant accepting Jesus as Messiah come from God, but they had

of the Father are not so familiar to their souls, or so prominent in their con., fessions of faith, as the New Testament would inspire. And I see this rebuked by the Spirit of God in one very affecting instance, St. Paul was the Father in the faith of the Saints at Corinth-for in Christ Jesus he had begotten them, as he says, through the Gospel. But they had listened to others, and been drawn away somewhat from him. He then pleads with them, as a Father, and claims from them as from children. (See 1 Cor. 4:14, 15.) But in this, he presents our heavenly Father, as we see in (2 Cor. 6:13-..18.) And thus we can now use all his pleadings with the Saints at Corinth, as expressing the desires of our Father towards all his Saints. He watches with gracious jealousy over any decline of the filial affection towards himself, He says "my Son give me thy heart," it is the heart of ohilciren that He desires, as Paul did among the Saints at Corinth. As the Lord Jesus is jealous over us, that we walk before Him as His espoused one, so is the Father jealous over us, that we walk before Him as His adopted one. What joy should it be to our hearts, that we are the favored objects of such love as this, dear brethren, put these hearts of ours are dull to apprehend it

still to know the Son as come from the Father, who had, while He was with them, been showing them the Father, who was now about to return to the Father, and would come again to take them home to the Father. These were the great things of His love, that their divine prophet here reveals to them, but they were as yet strange things unto them. Truths, however, they are, upon which all that is peculiar to the Church rests.

But I may observe, that the course of our Lord's own thoughts through this conversation, is only for a while interrupted by these defective Jewish thoughts of His disciples. His purpose was to elevate them to the sense of their calling as the Church of God, and thus to comfort them; and that purpose He steadily follows, however He may for a time have to rebuke their slowness of heart. Thus in the interruption occasioned by Peter, (xiii. 33., xiv. 1.) the Lord, in answering Peter, is called to contemplate and foretell his faithlessness, and denial of Him; but this does not turn out of their course the thoughts of kindness about him and the rest of them, which the Lord was pursuing. " Let not your hearts be troubled," says the gracious Master, immediately after forewarning Peter of his baseness. So at the close of the conversation. He had to tell His too confident disciples, that the hour was then at hand, when every one of them would go " to his own and leave Him alone;" and yet, without allowing an interruption of His flow of love towards them for a single moment, He at once assumes His own thoughts, saying to them, " these things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace-in the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

And so, beloved, with His saints ever since. We may, through our own folly, have to listen to the " cock crowing"- have to receive rebuke and go out and weep; but the heart of Jesus does not repent of His purposed kindness toward us. His purpose is to save, and He will save-His purpose is to bless, and who shall hinder / He has not beheld iniquity in them. They are to have peace accomplished for them by His death, life brought to them by His resurrection, and glory to be hereafter theirs at His return.

These are their blessings, and of these He tells them here, for their comfort under the sense of His going away.

The works that Jesus did, in St. Matthew's gospel, are owned to be those of the Son of David. (xii. 23.) They are there as the seals of His Messiahship; but here the Lord offers them to His disciples as the seals of His Sonship of the Father. He would have them looked upon, not merely as tokens that He could order the kingdom of Israel according to the promises of the prophets; (Isa. 35:5, 6.) but as witnesses that He was the dispenser of the Father's grace and power, for He says " believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very work's sake." And this is in full consistency with our gospel. And the " greater works" which He immediately afterward promises that believers in Him should do, were to be, as I judge, works of the same character, works that were to savor of the Father's grace, such as the bringing poor condemned sinners into the liberty of children of God. As St. Paul says, "in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel." And so it is still. Sinners are still brought into the liberty of dear children. " I will not leave you orphans," says the Lord in this place, " I will come to you, because I live, ye shall live also." No orphanage for them, no lamentation from them as there was from Israel, that they were fatherless. (Lam. 5:3.) The adoption of the saints during the orphanage of Israel, is here brought out by the Lord in terms of deep and wondrous meaning. They were to know that " He was in the Father, and they in Him, and He in them." The Father, the Father, is the holy burthen here?

And there is a little action of the Lord's here that I must notice. At the close of the 14th chap. He says, " peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you;" by this telling them, that ere He left this world, He would leave His peace behind Him, peace for them as sinners, accomplished by His death. And after thus telling them of peace, He says " arise, let us go hence."-Upon which we may assume that they all rise from the paschal table, and walk forth toward the Mount of Olives, and then it is that He at once presents Himself to them, as in resurrection, their life, the source

of quickening power, saying, "I am the vine, and ye are the branches."

Thus there is a beauteous significancy in the whole action. He sits at the paschal table till peace had been pronounced, for on that table the pledges of their peace were at that moment spread, but as He rises from it, He tells them of their resurrection-life, life that they were to know as united with Him risen above the power of death, the true vine. And He tells them that there is no other life but this, saying, if a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered." And having thus disclosed to them the root of life, He shows them the joys, and holy prerogatives of this life, teaching them that they were to have His own joy, the joy of the Son, fulfilled in them, and were also to enter into the dignity and grace of friendship with their Lord, and to assure themselves that His glory and their blessing were now but one interest. And the Lord here tells them that,the Father's great purpose now was, to glorify the Son as this Vine or Head of life, that having planted it as the only witness of life in this earth which is the scene of death, the Father would watch over it with the care and diligence of a husbandman. This the Lord here shows to be the Father's present care, to have the vine in beauty and fruitfulness, to glorify Jesus as the BEAD OF LIFE, as by and by He will glorify Him on the throne of glory as HEIR OF ALL THINGS. In old times God's eye, as her husbandman, was upon the land of Israel, (Deut. 11:12.) but now it is watching over this vine, which His own hand has planted.

All this told the disciples of exceeding riches of grace, but withal He tells them, that this union with Him was to separate them from the world, this friendship with Him was to expose them to the world's hatred. The world was soon to express its full enmity to God, and then to them. The revelation of God in love, the revelation of the Father in and by the Son, was soon about to be fully refused by the world. This was hatred indeed, hatred " without a cause," hatred for love. The Cross of Christ was soon to present man's fullest hatred meeting God's fullest love. Ignorant of the Father, it might he still zealous for God,

and think to do God service by killing the children of the Father. For there may be zeal for the synagogue, yea and for the God of the synagogue, with entire separation from the spirit of that dis-pensation which publishes riches of grace and reveals the Father in the Son.

But this view of the sorrows which his Saints might endure from the world, leads the Lord to exhibit the services of the pro-mised Comforter in them and for them, still more blessedly. He tells them that the Comforter would stand for them against this world, convicting it of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, but at the same time dwelling in them the witness of their Father's love, and their Lord's glory. This comfort He provides for them against the day of the worlds hatred.

And here let me observe, that the Spirit was to be received of the Father. God had approved Jesus ofsNazareth: (Acts 2:22.) but it was of the Father that the Holy Ghost was to be received and He would approve His presence according to this. Look at the character of His presence in the Church immediately on His being given. (Acts 2) What an oil of gladness, what a spirit of liberty, and largeness of heart, is He in the Saints there? Jesus had received Him in the ascended place, where He Himself had been made full of joy with God's countenance, and giving Him forth from such a place, He manifests Himself here accordingly-, imparting at once something of that joy of God's countenance into which their Lord had then entered. They gladly received the vvord, ate their bread with gladness and praised God. And this joy could easily dry up other sources. They parted with what might have secured human delights, and provided for natural desires. The Holy Ghost in them, was joy and liberty and large-ness of heart. It was the Spirit " of the Father." It was the reflection on the Saints here of that light which had now fallen on Jesus in the Holiest-the oil had run down from the Beard to the skirts of the clothing.

Indeed we can form but a poor idea of the value of such a dis-pensation as this which the Comforter was now to bring, to a soul that had been under the spirit of bondage and of fear gendered

by the law. What thoughts of judgment to come, were now bidden to depart from the soul! what fears of death were now to yield to the consciousness of present life in the Son of God! and what would all this be but the anointing as with an oil of gladness. And the disciples, by this discourse, were under training for this joy and liberty. The schoolmaster was soon to give up his charge-his rod and his book of elements were now to be dis-pensed with, and in this discourse the Son is leading the children on their way home to the Father, from under such tutors and governors, and they are soon to reach it, there to know, through the Holy Ghost, the liberty and joy of adoption.

Such was this interesting hour to the Church. The Holy Ghost, the witness of the Father and the Son, and thus the Spirit of adoption, was soon to be imparted, and they were now led forth from the school of the law, to wait for it. With thoughts of the Father arid of the Son, and of the Church's interests in all their love, the Holy Ghost was now soon to fill the Saints. And this accordingly He now does in our dispensation. He tells us, as the Lord here promises He should, of the delight that the Father has in the Son, of His purpose to glorify Him, and He tells us also of our place in that delight and that glory. He takes of these things, and the like, and shows them to us. This is the service which the Holy Ghost is now rendering to the Church. And I may here notice hew sweetly this is typified in the intercourse that passed between Abraham's servant and Rebecca in (Gen. 24) The whole of that scene set forth the election of a Bride for the Son by the Father-but the place which the servant occupies in it, is just the place of the Holy Ghost in the Church, ministering (as in divine grace) to the joys of the Son, and the Church, in perfecting the purposes of the Father's love.-In that scene the servant of Abraham tells Rebecca of the way in which God had prospered his master-what a favored and beloved one Isaac was, how he had been " the child of old age," and how Abraham had made him the heir of all his possessions. Ile then discloses to her, the counsels which Abraham had taken touching a wife for this much loved Son of his, and lets her see clearly her own election of God,

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to fill that holy and honored place.. And at last he puts upon her, the pledges of this election and of Isaac's love.

How exquisite all this is. Nothing could be more touching and significant than the whole scene. Would that our hearts knew more the power of all this, under the Holy Ghost, as Rebecca knew it under the hand of Abraham's servant. It was because he had filled her with thoughts of Abraham and of Isaac, and of her own interest in them, that she was ready to go with this stranger alone across the desert. Her mind was formed by these thoughts, and she was prepared to say to her country, her kindred, to her father's house, '‘ I will go." And the thoughts of our heavenly Father's love, and of our Isaac's delight in us, alone can give us holy separation from this defiled place where we dwell. Communion with the Father and the Son through the Comforter, is the only holy way of distinguishing the Church from the world. There may be the fear of a coming judgment working something of actual separation from it, or the pride of the Pharisee working religious separation from it, but the present knowledge of the Father's love and the hope of the coming glories of the Son, can alone work a divine separation from its course and its spirit.

The Father's love, of which the Comforter testifies, is an immediate love. It is the lme of God that has visited the world in the gift of the Son (see iii. 16), but the moment this love of God is believed, and the message of reconciliation which it has sent forth is received, then are believers entitled, through riches of grace, to know. the Father's love, a love that is an immediate love, as the Lord here tells us. (xvi. 2E1,27.) It is of this love of the Father, as of the glory of the Son, that the Comforter tells us by the way homeward. He is our Companion for all the journey, and this is the theme of His discourse with us. How did the servant, I doubt not, as he accompanied Rebecca across the desert, tell her further of his master, adding many things to what he had told her in Mesopotamia. For he had been the confident of his master, and had known him from the beginning. He knew his desire for a son, and God's promise, and God's faithfulness. He knew of Abraham's victory over the kings, of his rescue of Lot, and

meeting with Melchisedek. He knew of the covenant, the pledge of the inheritance. He knew of the dismission of Ishmael from the house, and of Isaac's walk in it without a rival-of the mystic journey up Mount Moriah, and of Isaac being thus alive from the dead. All this he knew, and all this doubtless he told her of, as they traveled on together, with these recollections and prospects delighting her, though her back were now turned, and turned forever, upon her country and her father's house. And, beloved, were we more consciously 's on the way" with the Comforter, the way would to us in like manner be thus beguiled by His many tales of love and glory, whispering of the Father and of the Son to our inmost souls.-Be it so with us, thy poor people, blessed Lord, more and more!

XVII.-After thus comforting them with the knowledge of their standing, as the Church of God, and thus, as it were, making gracious amends to them for His own present absence from them, and the hatred they were to suffer from the world, the Lord again exhibits, in this chapter, one of His priestly services, as He had done (as we have already seen) in the 13th. But the services are different, both, however, together constituting a full presentation of His ways as our High Priest, or Mediator, in the Heavenly Temple. In the 13th chapter, He had, as it were, laid one hand on the defiled feet of His saints, here He lays the other on the throne of God-forming thus a chain of marvelous workmanship reaching from God to sinners. In the 13th chapter, His body was girt, and He was stooping down towards our feet-here His eyes are lifted up, and He is looking in the face of the Father. What blessing that is asked for us, by One who fills up the whole distance between the bright throne of God, and our defiled feet, can be denied? all must be granted-such an one is heard always, and all of joy and of glory is here claimed for us by Him.

Thus we get, beloved, the sufficiency and acceptance of the Advocate, and the fullness of His pleading. But we may notice an order in which he here makes His requests, and lays His clahns before the throne.

First.-He makes request in behalf of the Father's own glory.

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Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." His first thought was thus upon the Father's interest; as He had before taught His disciples, ere they presented their own desires and necessities, to say, " Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."

Life eternal the Lord here lays in the Father's hand; saying, " as thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as thou bast given Him.'. By this, our Mediator bows to the truth of God, which Satan of old had traduced, and which man had questioned. (Gen. 3:4.) But He then adds, " and this is life eternal that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent"-by this, owning that life is now to be had only through redemption, that it is not the life of a creature merely, but of a ransomed creature, a life rescued for us from the power of death by the grace and might of the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ the Savior.

Secondly.-He claims His own glory. " Glorify me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." And this claim He then grounds upon His having finished the work, that had been given Him to do; saying, " I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." For this was a work, into which no blot had entered, in which, therefore, God could rest and be refreshed, as in His works of old; -a work which the Father might behold and say of it, " it is all very good," in which He might again find a Sabbath.

And this I would here say, is the Believer's comfort, that he sees his salvation depending on a finished work, in which God "smells a savor of rest." At the beginning, on finishing the work of creation, God sanctified the seventh day, resting in full satis, faction in all that His hands had formed. But that rest man disturbed, so that God repented that He had made man on the earth. Again, in due time, the Lord provided for Himself another rest, erecting another Tabernacle in Canaan, and offering to Israel a place in that rest, giving them His Sabbath. (Ex. 31:13.) By the sword of Joshua, this rest in Canaan was first made good to Israel (Josh. 21:44. xxiii. 1.) and then under the throne of

Solomon. (1 Chron. 22:9.) But Israel, like Adam, disturbed this rest-the land did not keep her Sabbath for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein (2 Chron. 36:21.) The blessed God has now found another and a sure rest. In the work finished by the Lord Jesus Christ (and which the Lord here presents to Him,) He again rests, as in His works of old, with fullest complacency. This finished work is altogether according to His mind. By the resurrection of the Lord, the Father has said of it, " behold it is very good." It is His rest forever, He has an abiding delight in it, His eyes and His heart are upon it continually. The work of Christ accomplished for sinners has given God a rest. That is a thought full of blessing to the soul. And the faith that duly estimates that work, gives the sinner entrance into the same rest. When faith sets a right value on the blood, there is rest, God's own rest for the soul. " We which have believed do enter into rest." But it is then that the Saint, or believing Sinner, begins his toil. The moment I rest as a Sinner, I begin my labor as a Saint. The rest for the Saint is a rest that remaineth; and therefore is it written again, " let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief." Thus the Sinner rests now, the Saint labors still, and will till the kingdom come.

Thirdly.-He prays for His people. He asks that they might be kept through the Father's name, and sanctified through the Father's truth, so that they might be one in the communion of the Son's joy now; and He asks that they might be with Him where He is, and there behold His glory so that they might be one with Him in that glory hereafter. As it is written, " we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." And these requests for his people He grounds simply on this, that they had received the Son's testimony about the Father, had believed surely in the Father's love. " I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me."

But how full of blessing it is, to see that we are presented before God simply as believing that love. How surely does it

tell us that the pleasure of our God is this, that we should know Him in love, know Him as the Father, know Him according to the words of Him who has come from His bosom. This is joy and liberty. And it is indeed only as having seen God in love, seen the Father, and heard the Father in Jesus, that makes us the Church of God. It is not the graces that adorn us, or the services we render, but simply that we know the Father. It is this which distinguishes the Church from the world, and gives her her standing, as here, within the notice of the throne of God. It is simply this, that the Mediator here tells the Father about us, that we have received His word, received the Son's testimony of love brought from the Father's bosom. And in this there is something most precious and comforting to the soul.

Thus does the divine Intercessor plead before the Throne. The Father's glory, His own, and His people's, are all provided for and secured; and having thus poured forth the desires of His soul, He just commits " the world," the great enemy, to the notice of the righteous Father. 0 righteous Father," the world hath not known thee." For it had now proved itself to be a world that indeed knew not the Father, that hated Him whom the Father had sent, and out of which the Lord was now sanctifying himself, and drawing his people. He does not here call for judgment upon it, but leaves it (as something with which, as our High Priest, he had nothing to do) simply under the notice of the "righteous Father," to whose judgment it belonged. It is merely as being ignorant of the Father, that the Lord here presents the world. He does not arraign her sins before the Throne, but simply presents her as thus ignorant of the Father; as before when presenting the Church, He did not speak of her graces or services, as we saw, but simply this, that she knew the Father.

And as the knowledge of the Father makes the Church what she is, so this ignorance of the Father is that which makes the world what it is. The world is that which refuses to know God in love, so as to rejoice in Him. It will make up its own pleasures, and draw from its own resources; it will have anything, but the music and the ring and the fatted calf of the Father's

house. The world was formed by Satan of old, in the Garden of Eden. There the serpent beguiled the woman, and being listened to and spoken with, he formed the human mind according to his own pattern. We have the history and character of this evil work in Gen. 3 God's love and God's truth were then traduced by the enemy-man believed the slander and made God a liar. The lust of the flesh, the lust'of the eye, and the pride of life, were then planted in the soul as master-powers (verse 6); and then conscience, and fear, and avoidance of God became the condition into which man was cast. The man and the woman began to know themselves that they were naked; and then they hid themselves among the trees, retreating from the voice of God. And then from the covert where they lay, they send forth excuses for themselves, and challenges of God. " The serpent beguiled me and I did eat," says Eve-" the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat," says Adam.

Such was man then, and such has the world been ever since. Man's own lusts are ruling him, with fear of God, and desired distance from Him, and the secret whisper of his soul within him is this, that all this mischief must lie at God's own door.

From such a world the saints are in spirit and in calling delivered, and the world itself left, as here, for judgment. " They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." The world had no place in Jesus. The prince of it came and only drew forth from Him the full witness of this, that He loved the Father, and would do as He had commanded. (xiv. 30, 31.) So the saints have left it. They have come forth from their covert at the voice of the Son; they have heard of the Father's love, even towards them vile rebels; they have believed it, and have walked forth in the sunshine of it. The promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head,' drew Adam forth from behind the trees of the garden; though dead in sins, he believed this promise of life, and came forth accordingly, calling his wife, " the mother of all living." And so, as we have seen in this chapter, it is just the believing the message of love, which the Son has

brought to us from the bosom of the. Father, it is just this, that makes the Church what she is, an election out,of the dark and distant regions, where the world dwells, and where the spirit of the world breathes. And it is, as we have also seen, the refusal to listen to this message of love, that keeps the world the world still. " 0 righteous Father, the world hath not known thee." For men have only to receive God's word of reconciliation, to believe His love in the gift of His Son, and then to take their happy place in His Church among His chosen ones.

Here the third section of our Gospel ends. It has shown us Jesus as the High Priest of our profession doing His constant services for us-it has shown us also Jesus, the Son of tile Father, revealing the Father to the children. The blessed God bad got Himself a name, the name of " Jehovah," by His signs and wonders in Egypt and Israel. (Jer. 32:20.) But now was He getting Himself another name, a name of still richer grace, the name of " Father.'' This name He gets in the person and by the work of the Son of His love, and the power of it is now made effectual in the hearts of' the children by the Holy Ghost.

Lo, these are parts of thy ways, our God and Father, but how little a portion of thee do our narrow souls understand and enjoy!

(TO BE CONTINUED IP THE LORD WILL.)

THE

CHRISTIAN WITNESS.

No. 4.] OCTOBER, 1838. [VoL. 5.

JOSEPH.-GEN. xxxvii-xlvii.

He "that was separated from his brethren."

Fon judging the history of Joseph to be typical or allegorical, like that of Hagar and Ishmael and a thousand others in Scripture, we have clear warrant of the Holy Ghost. See Acts 7 But without this warrant, the use which in the New Testament is made of the Old Testament narratives, might authorize. us to look for some mystery or " hidden wisdom, in one of them so strongly marked as this.

I propose now simply to follow out the series of events in this history, as given us in these chapters, briefly unfolding what I judge to be their mystical or hidden meaning. May the Lord, in such sweet and heavenly lajmurs, both enlarge and control our minds!

XXXVIL-This chapter gives us the first part or section in the history.

Joseph here signalizes himself as the righteous or separated one, and as such provokes the enmity of his wicked brethren. The light makes manifest the deeds of darkness, and the darkness

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hates it, as Joseph's Lord was afterward hated of the world, for He testified that its deeds were evil. And this enmity is only further moved by tokens of the divine favor, which are put upon the righteous one. Joseph was a younger son, no way entitled according to the flesh to distinguishing favor; yet the Lord marks him out as the appointed heir of blessing and glory, and Joseph speaks of the goodness Ile had found, and of the high pur-poses of God concerning him. But his brethren did not care for any divine purpose which interfered with their pride. He might be the one that was to receive the kingdom, but they said " we will not have this man to reign over us." A s Cain had slain his brother Abel because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous, so it is now. Joseph's brethren envy him; and again when in the field together, like another Cain, they take counsel together whether to slay him, to cast him into the pit, or sell him to strangers. And they do sell him for twenty pieces of silver. And they who could thus trespass against their innocent brother's life, easily deem it a light thing to wound their aged father's heart. " This have we found," said they of Joseph's coat which they send to Jacob besmeared with blood, " know now whether it be thy son's coat or no." And thus was their offense of high and double bearing-they sinned against their aged father, and their righteous unoffending brother.

In all this we have the stiff-necked and uncircumcised Israel betraying and murdering the just one. His father had sent Joseph to his brethren to inquire after their welfare. But it was not as the bearer of' kind tidings that they saw him or received him, but " behold this dreamer cometh, come therefore and let us slay him." So afterward towards the Greater than Joseph; it was not as the minister of grace and messenger of love, but as the envied Heir of the Vineyard that they looked on him with mali-cious heart, and said, " come let us kill Him and the inheritance shall be ours." His love was refused, and for envy his brethren deliVered Him unto death. For His love they were His adver-saries. There might be one in the council who would plead for the prisoner, as Reuben did, who would not consent to the council

and deed of them (Luke 23:51, John 7:51); but this could,prevail nothing. Thirst for blood may yield to covetousness, but the evil heart in some of its desires against the righteous one, must have its way. For thirty pieces of silver they sold him to stran-gers. They crucified IIim that was the Father's elect One, and all His delight. " They pleased not God, and were contrary to all men;" they sinned against God and their brother.

XXXVIII.-This chapter gives us the second part in the history.

The spirit of revelation here interrupts the course of Joseph's history, in order to give us a view of his brethren during Joseph's separation from them. And what is the view we get of them here? just filling up the measure of their sins, making terms with the uncircumcised, and defiling the holy seed.

And so it is now. The holy seed has mingled itself with the seed of men, and all in Israel is corruption and uncleanness. They have profaned the covenant of their fathers' as Judah here does; and the Lord has been a witness between them, and the wife of their youth. Judah dealt treacherously and profaned the holiness of the Lord, marrying the daughter of a strange god. He wrought lewdness with many, and the holy flesh passed from him. (Jer. 11:15.) So Israel has played the harlot with many lovers, and is now, while Jesus is separaLed from them, filling up the measure of their sins.

But while the Spirit of God thus for a moment raises the veil, and we see the abominations that are now done in Israel, we are given also to catch the faint glimpse of distant blessing. Judah is brought to know and confess his sin; the pledges of his full abomination are produced and owned by him in the spirit of a repentant one; and then " mercy rejoices against judgment." Pharez comes forth, and he is the second Jacob, the supplanter, who in spite of fleshly title in his elder brother, gets the birth-right. The kingdom suffers violence at his hand, and he takes it by force. And from this Pharez comes the true Inheritor of the blessing, the righteous Supplanter of every usurper, the one that shall prevail, and whose kingdom shall stand forever. (Matt. 1:3.)

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XXXIX-XLI.——These chapters together form the third part in the history.

Here we see Joseph filling up the measure of his sorrows, while his brethren are filling up the measure of their sins. He in exile preserves his purity and separation to God, like a Nazarite purer than snow and whiter than milk, while they at home are defiling the covenant. God is with him, and man against him. He takes his place in the cloud of witnesses, suffering for righteousness' sake. For conscience towards God he endures grief, suffering wrongfully. But the Lord is still with him. God shows that His covenant was with him, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed; for Potiphar first, and then the keeper of the prison, were made to prove this in their own persons. The archers are sorely grieving him, and shooting at him, but his bow abides in strength, and the arms of' his hands are made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob. He may be persecuted of men, but God will not forsake him, but give him favor in the sight of strangers in spite of all the dishonor and humiliation to which the wickedness of his kindred and others may reduce him. And all this " affliction of Joseph" is made the discipline of God, who loved him; for as we read, "the word of' God tried him" (Psa. 105 la.) This tribulation under the divine hand was made to work patience, and by it the crown was brightening for him.

And we find Joseph not only distinguished with favor, but in some sense glorified also even in his prison. For though power in the earth is not his yet, so that he could burst his prison doors, yet we see him glorified as a. Prophet, knowing the secret of God.

And thus was it with the Lord in the day of His sorrow, and still with Him in measure in His sympathy with the Church, for

in that He is still saying, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me." In Jesus, as in Joseph, it was clearly shown that though in weakness and rejection, God's covenant was with him, that he was God's object, all blessing passing through His hand, though in shame and poverty. And even beyond this. Jesus was in His day of sorrow, like Joseph, glorified as a Prophet. (Luke 4:15.) And so in His saints now in measure. " They may be despised, but they have the mind of Christ," they are in the secrets of God, they know the love of the Father, the judgment of the world, and the coming kingdom and power of Jesus. And of these secrets they bear witness of to sinners, as Joseph told of' the secrets of God to Pharaoh, and his servants. They tell both of judgment and of mercy, as he did.

Such are the ways of Christ, and the saints now. They are among strangers in a world that is but foreign to them, and where they have no citizenship. They may be poor, " silver and gold having none," lonely, in prison, and forgotten there, like Joseph. But " God is with them." Patience with self-denial, and a holy keeping of their Nazaritism or separation to God, is their calling, and their present praise. But even in the humiliation, they have " treasures of wisdom and knowledge" in Christ. They can interpret time dreams that tell out God's purposes, the voices of the Prophets and Apostles are their delight and their counselors.

But in the close of all this, we see Joseph not only as at the first comforted in sorrow, but brought out of sorrow-not only glorified as a Prophet, but introduced into the full confidence of him who held the royal power, and authority in the earth. Pharaoh was_then the lord of Egypt, and Egypt was then the lady of kingdoms, and Pharaoh gives Joseph authority to go over all the land, as the great executor of all rule, desiring that no man in Egypt was to lift up hand or foot without him. Joseph receives the king's ring, and rides in the second chariot. He is made lord of Pharaoh's house, and ruler of all his substance, to bind his princes at his pleasure, and teach his senators wisdom. (Psa. 105)

He becomes the sole treasurer and dispenser of' the resources of the whole earth, the one who alone could ope.n and shut those store-

houses from which his once injurious brethren, and all the world were soon to become entire dependents for preservation in the earth. Only in the throne was Pharaoh greater than he-and all this Pharaoh makes him and gives him, because he owned that the Spirit of God was in him, that he had been distinguished as " the friend of God," knowing his ways, and was entitled to he called "the revealer of secrets."

This was indeed glory among the strangers. The poor was thus raised from the dust, and the beggar from the dunghill, to be set even above princes. But this was not all. Joseph must have joy as well as glory among them, and the king gives him a wife, a lady of honor, and Joseph becomes the husband and father of a family in this strange land. Like Adam he gets Eve as well as dominion.

Such was Joseph now. And surely a greater than Joseph is here. Surely this is none other than Jesus the Son of God seated beside the Father on His throne in His full confidence and favor, and though cast out by Israel, receiving unquestioned title to all power, and made the Treasurer of all that grace and blessing upon which Israel and the nations are soon to draw for life and preservation in the earth. And all this because a right spirit was in Him as Pharaoh owned in Joseph. Jesus honored not Himself. " Do not interpretations belong to God," said Joseph-" My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me," said Jesus. Jesus was obedient, wherefore. God has highly exalted Him. " Grace is poured into thy lips, therefore God hath blessed thee forever."

And beside all this present glory on the throne, the Son of God has received a present joy, as we have seen Joseph did in Egypt. He has now received from among Gentile strangers, a new unlooked for family. And Joseph's Egyptian family clearly typify Christ's heavenly family, or the Church. For in the joy of His having received the Church, the Lord has for a while forgotten Israel, as Joseph called his first-born " Manasseh," for " God," said he, " hath made me forget all my toil and all my father's house;" and his second son, he calleth "Ephraim," for, " God," said he, " bath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction."

All this a child might trace; but the Holy Ghost, who graciously reveals "to babes and sucklings," has Himself led us in this interpretation. In the 7th Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the rapture of the Son of man into heaven, is given exactly the same place as the glory of Joseph in Egypt. The whole bearing of St. Stephen's words leads to this. He is drawing out the proofs, that Israel had been always resisting the Holy Ghost; that as their fathers had done, so had that present generation been then doing, and thus that their treatment of Joseph and Moses (whose history as well as Joseph's he recites) were thus types of their treatment of the Just One. Joseph, it is true, was at the last made known to his brethren, as we shall see presently, and at the last also Moses delivered his people. But during a long interval, both were separated from the in, And so with Christ. In the end he will be made known to Israel, as their Redeemer and Brother; but for the present he is separated from them. And His separation is unto heaven, as Joseph's had been unto Egypt, and Moses' unto Midian. And wives and children given to Joseph and Moses in the place and during the season of this separation, is thus necessarily the type of the gathering of the Church to Jesus now.

But Joseph and Moses not only get a special glory and a peculiar joy in the separated place, but they are there also under preparation for becoming the future benefactors and redeemers of their unbelieving brethren. Joseph, as I have already been noticing, is made the treasurer of those supplies on which Israel was soon to draw, and Moses gets the rod of strength by which he was soon to make a passage for Israel forth from the land of their bondage. But till the appointed hour, Israel was in an evil case, filling up their sins, and knowing the service of the nations; as now they are a scattered and outcast people, and their sanctuary a disclaimed dishonored ruin, while He, whom they have rejected, is in heaven. So perfect are the patterns given of old, of the secrets which are now revealed unto us by the Spirit.

XLII.-XLIV.-These chapters give us the fourth section of the history.

In the preceding sections, we have seen, first, Joseph cast out by

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his brethren; secondly, his brethren filling up the measure of their sin: thirdly, Joseph brought to glory and joy in the midst of those strangers among whom his brethren's enmity had cast him. And all this we have seen as setting forth Jesus, Israel, and the Church.

But Israel is not always to lie in their blood or be forgotten. Their sins and iniquities are soon to be remembered no more, as soon indeed as sore affliction brings them to Jesus and to repentance, as here stress of falnine in the land of Canaan leads his brethren to seek that help which was now laid for them on Joseph alone.

Joseph, however, had something more to do for them, than simply to supply their present need. He must not only prepare a blessing for them, but them for a blessing. And though the method which he may take may be strange in their sight for a while, yet love and wisdom were to direct it all, from beginning to end. In order to bless them with real blessing, as he purposed, he must lead them to repentance, and he orders his behavior before them now, according to this purpose. He had once come to them, and they had said, " behold this dreamer cometh;" they now come to him, and he says, " ye are spies, ye are spies." He makes himself strange, and speaks roughly to them, and by this he calls their sin to remembrance. " We are verily guilty," say they, "concerning our brother." But he hides himself while all this is going on. He speaks to them by an interpreter. It was indeed his work, but it was his strange' work; he was doing his act, but it was his strange act. He orders circumstances so as to let sorrow work repentance, but he does not yet show himself. For all this may be the way of his hand, but it was not the way of his heart. In secret, though unknown to them, he enters into the very sorrows that he was occasioning. In their affliction, like One that is better than he, he was afflicted. He would not have put on this rough mood, could he have helped it. But by this their iniquity was to be purged, and this was all the fruit, to take away their sin. His love therefore must be firm and wise, as well as tender. They had once bound and sold their poor brother to

strangers, and now a stranger takes and binds one of them. All this was fixing the arrow of conviction in their hearts, there to spend its venom, and lay the sentence of death deeply in them. He dismisses the rest with present supplies for their houses, charging them not to see his face again, except their youngest brother was with them. For he must know whether they had as yet the affections of children and of brothers, or whether they were still, as once, when he had known them, reckless of a brother's cries and a father's bereavement.

Ere they departed, however, he commands his steward to restore every man's money to his sack. But this was only to carry on the same work of repentance in their now awakened hearts. And so it does-for on opening their sacks, and discovering their money, " their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another, what is this that God bath done to us." The money in their sacks will not let them forget, that though they may now have turned their backs on that stranger in Egypt who spake so roughly to them, and called their sin to remembrance, yet God's eye was still upon them, and God had still to do with them.

Thus the work goes on in their souls. They had been convicted, and godly sorrow was then working fear in them. And very soon much more than sorrow and fear is seen in them, for being returned home, and letting their father know that Benjamin's presence with them was the only terms on which they dared to hope for a fresh supply from Egypt, Reuben and Judah at once stand forth in the spirit of self-sacrifice-" slay my two sons," says Reuben, "if I bring him not unto thee." " I will be surety for him" says Judah, " of my hand shalt thou require him."

All this blessedly shows how repentance was yielding its meet fruit in them. But to aggrevate their grief, and thus still to carry on the work in their souls, Jacob seems now for the first time to come to a suspicion that they had been guilty concerning Joseph. He had before said, "an evil beast hath devoured him"-but now it is " me have ye bereaved of my children." He seems to say of them, " I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." All this must have stirred the arrow

VOL. V. S S

afresh in their hearts, that it might still be doing there its needed work.

But Jncob at last consents to let Benjamin go-and after all this exercise of heart, and with Benjamin in their hand, more prevailing than all the honey and balm and spices which they car-ried, they return to Joseph. On seeing Benjatnin, Joseph is moved to new affections, and fresh kindness, and he gives his house com-mandment that all these men should dine with him at noon. But kindness or roughness works alike with an evil conscience. To the defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure. A shaken leaf might well frighten the brethren now, for conscience had made cowards of them all. " They were afraid because they were brought into Joseph's house." And other thoughts await them there. They are seated before Joseph, " the first-born according to his birth. right, and the youngest according to his youth," and they mar-velled one at another, while they ate and were merry. So wisely was Joseph calling in every passion of the mind, and weaving them together, wonder with fear, and gratitude with joy, that there might be a thorough renevval unto repentance.

Thus does the vvork go on, and prosperously too,,but it has some way to travel, ere it reach the perfection that Joseph had purposed. He lays a further plan for fully testing whether indeed a child's heart and a brother's heart were in them. Joseph's cup is put into Benjamin's sack, and they are again dismissed with fresh supplies. But now was the crisis. Benjamin, the cup being found on him, becomes forfeitedlo Joseph. This was the solemn inoment in the whole proceeding; and the question is, how will the once murderous brethren, and the once thankless children, now carry themselves? Are they still what once they were, or has the heart of flesh been given them? Will the sorrows of Benjamin move them, with whom the cries of Joseph could not prevail? or will the thought of the grief of their aged father at home, plead with their hearts as once it refused to plead? These were the questions, and they get their triumphant answer. Judah stands before Joseph in the shame of confessed iniquity. They were all innocent touching the cup, but they were not so touching their brOther, and this their sin only is before them now. " What shall we say, what shall we speak,'' says he, "how shall we clear our-selves, God bath found out the iniquity of thy servants." Joseph for a moment feigns as though their former iniquity thus confessed, were nothing to him. Benjamin is his, and he must remain with him. Then Judah draws near, and again pleads as with the bowels of a son and a brother for Jacob and for Benjamin. " The lad" and " my father," are the oft-repeated burthen of Judah's sorrows now. He is ready to abide a bondman himself, only let " the lad" go back to " his father;" let the father's heart be com-forted, and the brother's innocency preserve him, and Judah will be satisfied come to lihnself what may.

Thus did Judah plead, proving himself indeed one " whom his brethren might praise." And now nothing more is asked for. Joseph had not been willingly afflicting his brethren. All his way was only to lead them to this place of repentance. He meets them now not as a judge, but as a brother. His love could no longer hide itself: " cause every man to go out from me," said he, and then he made himself known to his brethren. He showed to them his thoughts how kind they were. Ile set free their evil conscience, and bound up their broken hearts. The channels were now cleared, and grace and blessing flow through in living, refreshing, and glad. dening streams.

So it will be with Israel and the Lord. The Lord has now re-tired to His place, the place to which Israel's enmity had sent Him, but made to Him of God the place of honor and of family delights, as Egypt was to Joseph. But in their affliction, by-and-bye, they will seek Him in that distant place, (Hos. 5:15,) and He will then be found of them, and in richer wisdom and love than even that of Joseph, lead them to repentance, sit over them as a refiner and purifier of silver, give them a broken and contrite heart, cause them to look on Him whom they pierced, and then open to them a fountain for all their sin, and treasures of consola-tion for all their sorrows. For though He has spoken against them, He remembers them still, and in all their afflictions has been afflicted, and will then rejoice over them. Joseph no longer spoke

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322 JOSEPH.

that had now been brought back from famine and the curse.

There may be no speech or language here, but.a voice is heard by the ear that is awakened. Joseph has now received his brethren, and enriched them with the richest of the land. He has also presented them without shame before the lord the king. He has preserved the whole earth, and secured the full glory of the throne of his master. And so will it be in the end of the days. The long forgotten and then repentant brethren shall be seated in the true Goshen, the glory of all lands, and Jesus shall own them and present them as His brethren without shame, and the world shall then be established from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. God shall be merciful to Israel, and bless them, and the earth shall yield him her increase, and the people, yea all the people shall praise Him. (Psa. 67) At His name every knee shall bow of things in heaven and things in earth, and, every tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

I do not notice the remaining chapters of this history, for in them Jacob becomes principal again,' and the place which Joseph occupies in them, is of another character. But these chapters give us properly Joseph; and constitute one complete mystery, beginning with the rejection, and ending with the kingdom of Christ, taking up, • by the way, his union with the Church and his heavenly glory.

• All but the land of the Priests was purchased and becomes a part of Pharaoh's footstool. And so in the coming kingdom-all shall be of the footstool, but the inheritance of that family who have been united to Joseph in his Egypt, to Jesus in heaven, and who are to be kings and priests unto God then, the heirs of the Throne with Jesus, having their inheritance apart from the footstool.

THE GOSPEL BY ST. JOHN.
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE M.)

I uAvE hitherto followed this Gospel in its order, down to the close
of the 17th chapter, having distributed it so far into three principal
sections:-the first, introducing our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son
of God, the Stranger from heaven, and giving us His action and
reception in the world as such,-the second, exhibiting Him in His
intercourses and controversies with Israel,-the third, giving Him
to us in the bosom of His elect, instructing them in the mysteries
of the heavenly Priesthood, and in their standing as the children
of the Father. And now we have to consider the fourth and
closing section, which gives us according to the order and wisdom
of the Spirit in St. John, all that attended on the death and resur-
2 z z

rection of the Lord. May the entrance of the Lord's words still give light, and bear with them to our souls a savor of that blessed One of whom they speak!

But while in labors like these, beloved, we seek to discover the order of the divine word, and are led to wonder at its depths, or admire its beauty, we should still remember that it is the truth of the divine word that we must chiefly consider. It is when the word comes with "much assurance" that it works effectually in us. It will not profit if not mixed with faith. Its power to gladden and to purify, will depend on its being received as truth; and as we trace out and present to one another the beauties, the depths, and the wonders of the word, we should ofttimes pause and say to our souls, as the angel said to the overwhelmed Apostle who had seen the lovely visions, and heard the marvelous revelations, " these are the true sayings of God."

The place in our Gospel to which I have now arrived, presents our Lord Jesus Christ in His sufferings. But I may notice here, that it is not His sufferings that seem at all to occupy Him in this Gospel. Throughout it, He appears to stand above the reproaches of the people, and the world's rejection of Him. So that when the last passover was approaching, though in the other Gospels we see our Lord with His mind full upon 'His being the Lamb that was chosen for it, saying to His disciples, " Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified," yet in our Gospel, it is not so. He goes up to Jerusalem at the time, but it is to seat Himself in the midst of an elect household, and then to display His royal honors in the city, and to receive the homage of the nation. No forethought of the cross was on His mind then. (xii. 1.) And so afterward. When He is alone with His disciples, He stands above His sorrows and the world still-He does not tell them of the Jews betraying Him to the Gentiles, and of the Gentiles crucifying thin -He does not speak of His being mocked, and scourged, and spit upon, as in the other Gospels. All this is passed by. The many things that the Son of man was to suffer at the hands of sinful men, lie untold here. But on the other hand, Ile assumes the hour of the power

of darkness to be past, and as soon as we find Him alone with His elect, He takes His place beyond that hour. (xiii. 1.) Gethsemane and Calvary are behind Him, and He apprehends Himself as having reached the hour, not of the garden or the cross, but the hour of the Mount of Olives, the hour of His ascension; our Evangelist saying, " now when Jesus knew that His hour was come, that He should depart from this world unto the Father," these words showing us plainly that His mind was not upon His suffering, but on the heaven of the Father that was beyond it. He spreads before them not the memorials of His death here, but of His life in heaven, as we have seen, for He washes their feet after supper. And all His discourse with His beloved ones afterward, (xiv.- xvi.) savored of this It all assumed that His sorrow was past, -that He had finished His course,-that He had stood against the Prince of this world, and had conquered,-that He had continued in the Father's love, and that all was now ripe for His being glorified. His words to them assumed this, and on the ground of this, He strengthened them to conquer as He had conquered. Instead of telling them of His sorrows, His object is to comfort them in theirs. He gave them peace, and the promise of the Comforter, and of the glory that was to follow. And when for a moment, as urged by their state of mind, He speaks of their all leaving Him alone in the coming hour, it was not, save with this assurance, " And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." And in like manner when He was separating Judas from the rest, we read that " He was troubled in spirit," but as soon as the traitor was gone, the Lord rises at once to His own proper elevation, and He says, " now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him." Thus, if His soul pass through a groan or a trouble, it is but for a moment, and just to lead Him into a fuller view of the glory that was beyond it all.

And now it is just the same in these chapters (xviii.-xix.) which give us His sufferings, as He descends into the deepest shades of His lonely way. Even here it is still strength that accompanies Him throughout, and glory that appears before Him throughout. And thus whether in labor, in testimony, or in

sufferings He is still in this Gospel in His elevation as Son of God. He walks on in the consciousness of His dignity, He takes the cup as from the Father's hand, and lays down His life of Himself.

I will now proceed with the remaining chapters in their order as before.-(xviii.-six.) We may remember that in the 17th chapter, we saw our Lord as the High Priest in the heavenly temple, making His requests; from that place He now comes down to meet the bout of the power of darkness. In that chapter His heart and His eye had been full of His Father's glory, of His own glory, and. of the Church's; and forth from all this, thus in spirit set before Him, He now comes out to endure the cross.

In the other Gospels He meets the cross, after the strengthening that He had received from the angel in Gethsemane; but we have nothing of that scene here, for that was the passage of the Son of man through the human anticipation of His agony, with the strength of God by an angel ministered to Him. But here it is the Son of God whom we see, descending as from heaven to meet the cross, and His passage through the whole of the hour of the power of darkness is taken in the strength of the Son of God. He seeks no companionship here. In the other Gospels we see Him leading aside Peter, James, and John, if haply He might engage their sympathy to watch with Him for one hour. But here there is none of this. He passes all alone through the sorrow. The disciples, it is true, go with Him into the garden, but He knows them there only as needing His protection, and not as yielding Him any desired sympathy. " If ye seek me, let these go their way." The angel does not strengthen Him in the garden, neither do His disciples stand with Him there for any cause of His. He comes down as the Son of God, from His own place on high, where He had just in spirit been, (as we saw in the 17th chapter,) to walk alone to Calvary. Though His present path lay to the cross, it was still a path of none less than the Son of God. The loneliness of the Stranger from heaven, is marked here, as it had been all through this Gospel.

And let me add here, (a reflection that has occurred to me with much comfort,) that there is a greatness in God, in the sense of

which we should much exercise our hearts, for it is blessed. There is no straitness in God, all in Him is worthy of Himself. The Psalmist appears to give himself to this thought in the 36th Psalm. All that he there sees in God, he sees in its proper divine greatness and excellency. His mercy is in the heavens, His faithfulness unto the clouds. His righteousness is like the great mountains, and His judgments like the deep. His preserving care so perfect, that the beasts as well as men are the objects of it. His loving kindness so excellent, that the children of men hide themselves as under the shadow of His wings, His house is so stored with all good, that His people are abundantly satisfied with its fatness, and His pleasures for them are so full, that they drink of them as of a river. All this is the greatness and magnificence of our God, not only in Himself, but in His ways and dealings with us. And, beloved, this is blessed truth to us. For our sins should be judged of in the sense of this greatness of our God. It is true, indeed, that sin is exceeding sinful. The least soil or stain upon God's fair workmanship is full of horrid shapes in the eye of faith that calculates duly on God's glory. A little hole dug in the wall is enough to show a prophet great abominations; but when brought to stand side by side with the greatness of the grace that is in our God and Savior, how does it then appear? Where was the crimson sin of the adultress? where the sins that had, as it were, grown old in the Samaritan woman? They may be searched for, but they cannot be found. They disappear in the presence of the grace that was brought to shine beside them. The abounding grace rolled away the reproach forever. God who taketh up the isles as a very little thing, and measures the waters in the hollow of His hand, takes away our sins as little things in the riches and magnificence of His grace.

With these thoughts we may well encourage our hearts. Our God. would have us know Him in His own greatness. Set sin alone, and the least speck of it is a monster. Set it beside His grace and it vanishes. And all this expression of the divine greatness breaks forth in Jesus throughout this Gospel. There is every where the tone and bearing of the Son of God in Him and about Hirn, though we see Him even in toil or in suffering.

But this, beloved, only by the way. We have now followed our Lord over the brook Kedron, and the spot must have been one of sacred and affecting recollections to Him. For here it was that David had once stopped with Ittai his friend, and with Zadok and the ark, as he went forth from Jerusalem in the fear of Absalom. Over this very brook, and up this very ascent of Mount Olivet, the King of Israel had then gone weeping, His head covered and His feet bare, while Ahithophel (who like Judas now had once been His counselor) was betraying Him to His enemies. (2 Sam. 15) Jesus we read, ofttimes resorted hither, no doubt with these recollections. But it is the Son of God we have here at the present time, rather than the Son of David. The brook is passed, and the garden is entered, not with tears, and without the ark, but more than the ark in all its glory and strength are to be displayed now. The Lord comes forth to them, a band of cruel officers and soldiers as they were, with this word, " whom seek ye?"-thus addressing them as in the repose of heaven, which was His. And He comes forth in the power of heaven, as well as in its repose-for on His again saying to them, " I am He," they go backward and fall to the ground. And thus did He stand as Son of God, the Lord from heaven. No man could take His life from Him. He has even to show them their prey, for all their torches and lanterns would not otherwise have discovered Him to them. Every stage in the way was His own. He laid down His life of Himself. They that would eat up His flesh must stumble and fall. They that desired His hurt must be turned backward and put to confusion. The fire was ready to consume this Roman captain and his fifty. Had the Son of God pleased, there on the ground the enemy would still have lain, but He came not to destroy men's lives, but to save, and therefore He would lay down His own. It was just seen that the glory that might have confounded all the power of the adversary, was hid within the pitcher, but he would fain hide it still.

And now it was that, in spirit, He sang the 27th Psalm. The Lord was His light and His salvation, whom should He fear? He had just seen God's glory in the sanctuary (as we saw in the 17th

chap.) and according to this Psalm, His longing was, to dwell in that house of the Lord forever. It was a time of trouble, it is true, but, in spirit, His head was lifted up above His enemies, and He was soon to offer in the tabernacle, sacrifices of joy, and sing His praises unto the Lord. (Psa. 27:1-6.)

Thus as Son of God He stood in this hour, and could have stood against hosts of them; but He would take the cup from the Father's hand, and give His life for the Church. Those who were with Him become now, in their wilfulness, an offense to Him. His kingdom was not as yet of this world, and therefore His servants might not fight. But Peter draws his sword, and would fain have changed the scene into a mere trial of human strength. But this must not be. It is true the Son of God could have stood. He might again have been the ark of God, with the power of the enemy falling before it; but how then should the Scripture be fulfilled? He rather leaves Himself in the hands of sinners. "Then the band, and the captain and the officers of the Jews took Jesus and bound Him."

Thus was it so far with the Lord. And as we still follow Him, we still trace the way of the conscious Son of God. Whether we listen to Him with the officers or with.the High Priest, or before Pilate, it is still in the same tone of holy distance from all that was around Him. They may do to Him whatsoever they list-He is as a stranger to it. He is not careful to answer them in their matters. He would pass through all in loneliness. The daughters of Jerusalem do not here either yield Elhn their sympathy, or receive His, nor does a dying thief share that hour with Him. He is the lonely Son of God all through that dreary way. But none other stand thus in God but Himself. Peter is found in the way of sinners, warming himself among Them, as one who had only the resources which they had. Another (perhaps John.hirnself) takes his place as the acquaintance of the High Priest, and gets his advantage as such. But all this was a sinking down into mere nature, and leaving the Son of God alone in God -as He had said to them, " ye shall leave me alone, and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me."

VOL. V. • A A A

And His path, I need not say, is without a stain. Let God be true, but every man a liar. So Jesus is without fault, though all beside fail. He was " justified in the spirit." He has no step to retrace, no word to recall. He could righteously vindicate Him-self in everything, and even reprove His accuser, and say, " If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil, but if well, why smitest thou me." But even Paul, in such a case, had to recall his word, and to say, " I wist not, brethren, that he was the High Priest."

And as we follow Him on to the cross, we have the Son of God still. We see His title to the kingdom verified with all authority. The enemy would have had it blotted out, but he cannot prevail. Pilate, who before had despised the claims of Jesus, saying to the Jews, " behold your King," will now have them published in all the languages of the earth, and it is not in the power of the Jews to change His mind DOW as before. The cross shall be the Lord's standard, and Jehovah will emblazon it with inscriptions of His royal dignity, be the earth never so angry.

But this is the only Gospel that gives us this conversation between Pilate and the Jews about the inscription on the cross, for it savored of the glory of Jesus, which is the great theme of this Gospel. And so, it is only our Evangelist that notices the woven coat which was something that the soldiers would not rend-a little circumstance in itself, but helping still to keep in view, in full harmony with this Gospel generally, the holy dignity of Him who was passing through this hour of darkness.

And here it is also that our Lord lays aside His nunzan afec-lions. He sees His mother and His beloved disciple near the cross, but it is only to commend them the one to the other, and thus to separate Himself from the place which He bad once filled among them. Sweet indeed is it, to see how faithfully He owned the affection up to the latest moment that He could listen to it-no sorrow of His own, though that was bitter enough as we know, could make Him forget it. But Ile was not always to know it. The children of the resurrection neither marry nor are given in

xnarriage. He was the Son of God, and they were not henceforth to know Him " after the flesh." He must now form their know-ledge of Him by other thoughts, for they are henceforth to be joined to Him as the Lord " in one spirit." For such are His blessed ways. If He take His distance frorn us as not knowing us " in the flesh," it is only that we may be united to Him in nearer affections and closer interests.

And to look deeper than the circumstances of this hour, if we mark the Lord's Spirit on the cross, we shall still discern the Son of God. He thirsted-He tasted death, it is true-He knew the drought of that land where the living God was not. But His sense of this is still expressed in His own tone. It does not come forth in the cry " my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." That is given us in its proper place. But here there is no amaze-ment of spirit, nor horror of great darkness for three hours, neither is there a commending of Himself to the Father. But it is simply, " I thirst"-and when He had entered and passed through that thirst, He verifies the full accomplishment of all things, saying, " it is finished." He does not commend His work to the approval of God, but seals it with his own seal, attesting it as complete, and giving it the sufficient sanction of His own approval. And then when He could thus sanction all as finished, He delivers up His life Himself.

These were strong touches of the mind in which He was passing through these hours. And these hours now end. The Son of God vvas now made perfect as the author of eternal salvation to all that obey Him, and the fountain for sin and for uncleanness, is now opened. The water and the blood come forth to bear witness that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. (1 John 5:8-12.) We have not here the Centurion's con-fession, " truly this was the Son of God." We have not Pilate's wife, nor the convicted lips of Judas, bearing Him witness. Jesus does not here receive witness from men, but from God. The water and the blood are God's witnesses to His Son, and to the life that sinners may now find in Hirn. It was sin that pierced Him. The action of the soldier was just a sample of man's

A A A 2

enmity. It was the sullen shot of the defeated foe after the battle, but thus only the more loudly telling out the deep-seated hatred that there is in man's heart to God and his Christ. But it thus also only sets off the riches of that grace that met it and abounded over it, for it was answered by the love of God. The point of the soldier's spear was touched by the blood. The crimson flood came forth to roll away the crimson sin. The blood and the water issue through the wounded side of the Son of God. Now was the day of atonement fully come, and the water of separation, the ashes of the red heifer, were now sprinkled. This was the Lamb which Abel had offered. This the blood which Noah had shed, and which had awakened in God's heart, thoughts of unmingled grace to sinners. (Gen. 8:21.) This was the ram of Mount Moriah, and this was the blood which daily flowed round the brazen altar in the temple. This was the blood which is the only ransom of the unnumbered thousands before the throne of God.

But though pierced, thus to be the fountain of the blood and the water, the Lord's body must not be broken. The paschal Lamb may be killed, but not a bone of it is to be broken. That is, it shall do all the purpose of divine love in sheltering the first-born, but beyond that it is sacred, no rude hand must touch it. And this was the Lord's own security. For He was to say, "all my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee, which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him, yea the poor and needy from him that spoileth him." And this was the Church's security also. For the Church is His body. He is the head, and we the members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, and not a bone of that mystic body is to be wanting. All must come unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. For all from of old have been written in God's book, and are to be fashioned and curiously wrought together, even every one of them. (Psa. 139:16.)

Thus was it with our Lord, in our Gospel, while He was yet on the cross. In every feature we see the Son of God. And as we follow Him from thence to the grave, it is the Son of God still.

We do not there see Him numbered with the transgressors, and with the wicked in His death, but we do see His grave with the rich. Two honored sons of Israel came to own Him, and charge themselves with His body, to spend their perfumes and their labor upon it.

But in all this, we have again something to notice. When the Lord's body was pierced, it not only, as I have observed,, allowed God's witnesses, the blood and the water to be heard, but it gave occasion to that which was written, "they shall look on Him whom they pierced." And this word which tells of Israel's repentance in the latter day, here introduces the action of Joseph and Nicodemus, and thus makes them the representatives of repentant Israel. They come last it is true, in the order of faith. They had both of them been afraid of their unbelieving nation, afraid of the thunders of the synagogue, had not continued with the Lord in His temptations, but were only secretly His disciples. They were slow of heart; but still in the end they do own the Lord, and are brought to look on Him whom they pierced. They take the body from the cross, fresh with the piercing of the soldier's spear. And as they lowered it from the tree, surely they must have looked, and looked well upon the hands and feet and wounded side. And surely they must have mourned as they looked, for their hearts had been already softened to take some impression from the crucified One. And so will it be with Israel. They come last in the order of faith, and are indeed slow of heart, but in the end they will look on Him whom they have pierced, and mourn, as one mourneth for his only son.

Thus was it now with Joseph and Nicodemus, and thus will it be by and by with the inhabitants of Jerusalem. These two Israelites, as true children of Abraham, claim the body of the Lord and consecrate it, as with the faith of the Patriarch (Gen. 1:2. 26); and as true subjects of the king of Israel, they also honor it with the honors of a Son of David. (2 Chron. 16:14.) They spend large and costly perfumes upon it, and lay it up in the garden, in a new untainted tomb, on which the smell of death had never yet passed.

And here all closes for the present. Here in the second garden, as I may call it, the second man is now laid in death. In the first garden, the first man had walked with access to the tree of life; but he had chosen death in the error of his way. Here in the second garden, death, the penalty, is met. Jesus, without having touched the tree of knowledge, suffers the death. In the first garden, all manner of trees good for food, and pleasant to the eyes were seen. But here nothing appears now but the tomb of Jesus. This was what man's sin ended in, as far as man was concerned. But let us wait a little space. By all this, the Son of God is soon to become the death of death, and hell's destruction, to bring life and immortality to light, and to plant again in the garden for man the tree of life. Let but the third morning arise, and this garden which now witnesses only Jesus in death, shall see the Son of God in resurrection.

XX.-Accordingly we here at the opening of this chapter so find it. Jesus has risen the bruiser of the serpent, being made through death the destroyer of him that had the power of death.

This was the third, the appointed day-the day on which Abraham of old had received his son as from the dead, the day of promised revival to Israel (Hos. 6:2), the day also on which Jonah was on dry land again.

But the disciples do not as yet know their Lord in resurrection. They know Him still only "after the flesh," and thus Mary Magdalene is now seen early at the sepulcher seeking His body. And in the same mind Peter and his companion run to the sepulcher shortly after her, their bodily strength merely and not the intelligence of faith carrying them there. And there they behold, not their object, but the trophies of His victory over the power of death. There they see the gates of brass and the bars of iron cut in sunder. The linen clothes and the napkin, which had been wrapped about the Lord's head as though He were death's prisoner, were there seen strewing the ground like the spoils of the vanquished. The very armor of the strong man was made a show of in His own house, all this telling loudly that He who is the plague of death, and hell's destruction had

been lately in that place doing His glorious work. But in spite of all this, the disciples understand not. They as yet knew not the scripture that He must rise from the dead, and they go away again to their own home.

Mary, however, lingers still about the fond spot, refusing to be comforted because her Lord was not. She would fain have taken sackcloth, and like another, have spread it for her on the rock, could she but find His body to watch and to keep it. She wept and stooped down and looked into the sepulcher, and saw the angels. But what were the angels to her now? The sight of them does not terrify her, as it had the other women, (Mark 16) for she was too much occupied with other thoughts to be moved by them. They were, it is true, very illustrious, sitting there in white, and in heavenly state too, one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. But what was all splendor to her now? The dead body of her Lord was what she sought and desired alone, and therefore she has only to turn from these heavenly glories in further search of it; and then seeing, as she judged, the gardener, she says to him, " Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away." She simply says, if you have borne Him away, not naming Jesus; for, fond woman as she was, she supposes that every one must be as full of her Lord as she was.-Well, beloved, this may have been but huinen passion and ignorant affection, but still it was spent on Jesus. And would that something more of the temper of it where shed abroad in our hearts. Her affection sought a right object, though it sought it not wisely, and in the wonted kindness and grace of Him with whom she had to do, He Gives her now the fruit of it. To her who had, more was now to be given: She had learned thoroughly the lesson of knowing Christ " after the flesh." She was the truest of all to that, and her Lord will now lead her to richer knowledge of Himself. He will take her up to higher regions than as yet she thought of, to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense. (Cant. iv.)

And to do this in all gentleness He first answers her human affection, letting her once again hear her own name on His well-

known voice. That was just the note which was in full unison with all that was then in her heart. It was the only note to which her soul could then have responded. Had He appeared to her in heavenly glory, He would still have been a stranger to her, for as yet she knew Him only as Jesus. But this must be the last time that she was to apprehend Him thus " after the flesh." For He is now risen from the dead, and is on His way to the Father in heaven, and earth must no longer be the scene of their communion. " Touch me not," says He to her, " for I am not yet ascended to lily Father.

I need not, perhaps, observe how fully characteristic of our Gospel all this is. In St. Matthew, on the contrary, we see the women on their return from the sepulcher meeting the Lord, and the Lord allowing them there to hold His feet, and to worship Him. But here it is to Mary, " touch me not." For this Gospel tells us of the Son in the midst of the heavenly family, and not in His royalty in Israel and in His earthly glory. The resurrection, it is most true, pledges all that earthly glory and kingdom to Him (Acts 13:34), but it was also one stage to the heavenly places, and that is the feature of it which our Gospel gives us. Jesus was raised from the dead " by the glory of the Father," and therefore He could not stop short of that, but must go upward till He reach the Father.

And Mary, as we have seen, is entitled to be the first to learn these greater ways of His grace and love, and also to be the happy bearer of the same good tidings from this far and unknown country to the brethren. For Jesus now says to her, " go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."

Thus is she honored, and she goes to prepare the brethren for their Lord, while He prepares to meet them with a blessing beyond all which they had as yet attained. And her tidings seem

And here again I would notice another characteristic difference in the Gospels. In Matthew, the message was, to meet Him in Galilee; and accordingly the disciples do so-but here, it does not name any place on earth, but simply tells them that He was going to heaven, there in spirit to meet them before His Father and their Father, His God and their God.

to have got them all in readiness for Him; for on His seeing them the evening of the same day, they are not amazed and in unbelief, as they are In St. Luke's Gospel, but seem all to be in waiting and expectation. They are no longer scattered as before (ver. 10), but folded together as the family of God, and the elder brother enters in, laden with the fruit of His holy travail for them.

This was a meeting indeed. It was a visit to the family of the heavenly Father by the First-born. It was in a place that lay beyond death and outside the world. And such indeed is the place of appointed meeting with our Lord. Those who in spirit stay here, never meet Him. For He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of strangers and pilgrims. The world is a defiled place, and we must meet Him in resurrection, in the kingdom that is not of the world. And so was it here with the Lord and His brethren. He now, for the first time, really meets them, meets them in the appointed place outside the world, and there meets them in no less character than His own brethren. Now it was that He began to pay His vows. He had made them on the cross. (Psa. 22) First, that He would declare the Father's name to the brethren, secondly, that in the midst of the Church He would sing His praise. The first of these He was now beginning to pay, and has been paying all through this present dispensation, making known to our souls the name of the Father through the Holy Ghost. And the second He will as certainly pay, when the congregation of all the brethren is gathered, and He leads their songs in resurrection joy forever.

Now also is the promised life actually imparted. " Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me, because I live ye shall live also." The Son of God as having life in Himself now comes with it to His saints. He breathes on them now, as of old into their nostrils. (Gen. 2) Only this was the breath of the second Adam, the quickening Spirit, who had a life to impart that was won from the power of death, and which was therefore beyond its utmost reach. The brethren are now given to know that Christ was in the Father, and they in Him, and He in

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them. They now know the full peace of the cross-He shows them His hands and His side. Their sorrow now was turned into joy, for they were glad, "when they saw the Lord." He was now revealing Himself to them, as He does not unto the world. The world, in this little interview, was quite shut out, and the disciples, as hated of the world, are shut up within their own en-closure, just in the place to get a special manifestation of Himself to thern, as Ile had said unto them. (xiv. 22-24.) In the world they were now knowing tribulation, but in Him peace.

All this was now theirs in this blessed little visit of " the First-born from the dead " to His brethren,,imparting to them the blessing which belonged to them as children. And thus this little intercourse was a sample of the communion which we enjoy in this dispensation. For we are still taught, as they here were, to know our oneness with the Son of God, and thus our adoption and fellowship with the Father, we enjoy the settled peace of the wounded hands and side of Jesus, we are glad because of Him risen from the dead, and have life in the Holy Ghost, life of the risen Lord, imparted to us. Thus, as we lately saw the armor of the conquered enemy strewing the distant field of battle, so bere do we see the fruit of victory brought home to gladden and assure the kindred of the conqueror.

And these fruits of the victory of the Son of God were now commanded to be,,carried about in holy triumph all the world over. " As my Father hath sent me, so send I you," says the Lord to IIis brethren. And with a message not of judgment but of grace had He Himself come forth from the Father. He had come, not from the throne of God to avenge God upon us, but rrorn the bosom of the Father to declare the Father to us. And with a commission of the same grace are the brethren here sent forth. They are sent forth from the Lord of life and peace, and with such a ministry, they test the condition of every living soul. For the message they bear is from the Son of the Father, a message of peace and life secured in and by Himself, and the word then was and still is, " he that hath the Son hath life, and he that bath not the Son of God bath not life." Thus the Lord

here adds, making them, in this, the test of the.condition of every
one, as having the Son or not, " whosoever sins ye remit they are re-
mitted unto them, and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained."

Such was the Lord's first interview with His disciples after He had risen from the dead. It has set before us the saints, as the children of the Father, and their ministry as such, and thus given us a sample or first-fruits of that harvest in the Holy Ghost, which the saints have been gathering ever since in this dispensation.

And here, though it may draw me aside for a little space, I cannot refuie noticing, that the ministry committed to the disci-ples by the Lord after He had rose from the dead, takes a distinct character in each of the Gospels. And as each of the Gospels has a distinct purpose (according to which indeed all the narratives are selected and recorded), so is the various language used by the Lord in each of the Gospels in committing this ministry to His disciples, to be accounted for, and interpreted by, the specific cha-racter of the Gospel itself.

In St. Matthew this commission runs thus:-" Go ye and teach all 22aii012S, baptizing them in the nanze of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have comnuznded you." Now this commission was strictly to the Apostles, who had been already ordained by the Lord, and associated with Him as minister of the circumcision. (Rom. 15:8.) And thus it contemplated them as in Jerusalem, and going forth from thence for the discipling of all nations, and for the keeping of them as such in the commandments and ordi-nances of the Lord. For the purpose of that Gospel is, to pre-sent the Lord in Jewish connection, as the hope of Israel to whom.the gathering of the nations was to be. And thus the conversion of nations, and the settlement of the whole world around Jerusa-lem as the center of worship, is accordingly assumed here. A system of restored and obedient nations rejoicing with Israel will be exhibited by-and-bye; and the risen Lord looks to that when com-mitting ministry to His Apostles in the Gospel by St. Matthew.

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But in St. Mark this prospect of national conversion is a good deal qualified. The terms of the commission there are these:" Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth • not shall be damned." Here it is not the discipling of nations that is contemplated, but universal testimony with partial acceptance. For St. Mark presents the Lord-in service or ministry, and thus the case of some receiving the word and some receiving it not is here anticipated, for these we know, are just the two results that have attended on all ministry of the word; as it is said in one place, " some believed the timings that were spoken, and some believed not."

In St. Luke, the Lord, after interpreting Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms, and opening the understandings of the disciples to understand them, delivers ministry to them in this way:-" thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to safer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in u s name, among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem"-and ye are witnesses of these things,-and behold I send the promise of my Father upon you, but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high."-Now this commission does not appear to have been strictly to the eleven, but others were addressed by it. (See Luke 24:33.) And their ministry was to begin with Jerusalem and not from it. And they are not allowed to go forth in their ministry till they had received new power, thus allowing that what they had received from Jesus while still on earth was not sufficient.

Now all this was a breaking away from mere earthly or Jewish order. It does not assume Jerusalem to be as yet gathered, nor as yet the source from whence the water of life could flow, nor the center around which the worshipping nations might come, as St. Matthew had done. This was therefore the commission with something of an altered character, suitable to this Gospel by St. -Luke, which does not present the Lord so strictly in Jewish asso-

the Apostles at Jerusalem, had not as yet been rejected. The possibility of that testimony being received might therefore be assumed, and the Lord seems to me to do so here in St. Matthew's Gospel.

ciation. But now in our Gospel by St. John we do not get this commission at all, nor any mention of " the power from on high." We simply get, as I have been noticing, the life of the risen Man imparted, and then the disciples with that life in them sent out to test, by virtue of it, the condition of every living soul. The Lord gives them their ministry as from heaven, and not from the mountain in Galilee. He sends them forth from the Father and not from Jerusalem. For in our Gospel, the Lord has left all recollections of Jerusalem behind, and has given up for the present, all hope of restoring Israel and gathering the nations.

This variety in the terms of this commission and ministry, is very striking, and considering the different purpose of each Gospel, it is exquisite and perfect. The mere reasoner may stumble at it, and the man who honors the Scripture, and would fain preserve its fair reputation, may attempt many ways to show the literal consistency of these things. But the word of God, beloved, does not ask for protection from man. It seeks for no apologies to•be made for it, however well intentioned they may be. In all this there is no incongruity, but only variety, and that variety perfectly answering the divers purposes of the same Spirit. And though thus various, every thought and every word in each is equally and altogether divine, and we have only to bless our God for the sureness and comfort and sufficiency of His own most perfect testimonies.

But this, brethren, by the way, desiring that the Lord may keep our minds in all our meditations, and in all the counsels of our hearts.

We left the Lord in company with His brethren. He was there putting them into their condition as children of the Father, and raising them to heavenly places. But He has purposes touching Israel as well as the Church. In the latter day He will call them to repentance and faith, giving them their due standing and ministry also. And these things we shall have now in order unfolded before us.

that term stands rather connected with Jewish ministry, and tins is still in character with our Gospel.

Thomas, we read, was not with the brethren when the Lord visited them. He did not keep his first estate, but was absent, while the little gathering were holding themselves in readiness for their risen Lord, and now he refuses to believe his brethren, without the further testimony of his own hands and eyes. And just so is it with Israel to this day. Thomas and the Jews were both outside the closed doors, when Jesus showed Himself to His heavenly brethren within. And the Jews to this day, like Thomas then, are refusing the Gospel or good tidings of the risen Lord.

But all was not to end thus. Thomas recovers his place, and " after eight days" is in company with the brethren again, and then Jesus presents Himself to him. For this second visit was for Thomas ' sake. And the unbelieving disciple is led to own Him as his Lord and his God. As by-and-bye, " after eight days," after a full week or dispensation has run its course, it will be said in the land of Israel, " lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord, we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." Israel will own Immanuel there; and as the Lord here accepts Thomas, so will He then say of Israel, " thou art my people."

But here we are to notice something further significant. The Lord accepts Thomas it is most true, but at the same time, He says to him, " Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou bast believed, blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed," And so with Israel in the latter day. They shall know the peace of the cross, the full peace of the wounded hand and side of Jesus here shown to Thomas, but they shall take a blessing inferior to the Church. They shall get life from the Son of God, but they shall only walk on the footstool, while the saints are sitting on the throne.

And here the mystery of life, whether to the Church now or to Israel by-and-bye closes, and our Evangelist accordingly here for a moment pauses. This was the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, which whosoever believeth has life in His name. Many other things indeed might have been added, but these were enough to attest the Son, and thus to be the seed of life. The

third witness from God had now been heard. The water and the blood had before come forth from the crucified Son, and now the Spirit was given by the risen Son. The three that bear witness on earth had thus been now heard, and the testimony from God that He " has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son," was therefore now complete, and our Evangelist just says, " these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name."

XXI.-Thus we have seen life actually dispensed by the risen Lord to His brethren, and ministry committed to them as such, and we have also sure life pledged to Israel in the person of Thomas. But this restored Thomas, or the Israel of God in the latter day shall (like the Church now, get ministry as well as life) be used as well as quickened. And we get the pledge of this also now in due order.

In the opening of this chapter we see the Apostles brought back to the condition in which the Lord at first met them. Peter and the sons of Zebedee are again at their fishing. Indeed their former labor had come to nothing. Their nets had then broken. The Lord had proposed to use them, but Israel in His hand had proved but a deceitful bow, a broken net. But now they are at their toil again, and the Lord appears again, and gives them a second draft. And on this, in company with the Lord Himself, they now feast, and their nets remain unbroken.

And thus will it be with the Israel of God in the latter day. Like Thomas, as we have seen, they shall walk in the light of the Lord, and then as here, the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto them. Waters shall issue from the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, and fishers shall there stand and spread their nets, and their fish shall be of "the great sea, exceeding many." (Ezek. 47:10.) " The great sea," the wide Mediterranean, as the Prophet here suggests, and not the narrow lake of Tiberias, shall then employ their nets, and the fish shall be " according to their kinds," for Midian and Ephah, and Kedar and Nebaioth and all lands shall yield their stores then. And the net shall still be ready for other

drafts, the unbroken net. For one generation shall tell His praise unto another, and shall declare His power.4

And this our Evangelist notices was " the third time" that Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was risen from the dead. At the first, as we saw, He met the brethren to give them, as the heavenly family, their fellowship and ministry. At the second, he restored Thomas the representative of Israel's final conversion and life. And now at the third, He gives the pledge of Israel's final ministry and fruitfulness unto God.

Thus the three distinct visits give us the full view of the Church and of Israel. But I must particularly notice another acting of the consciousness of love, which is very sweet.* Peter knew that in spite of all that had happened, there was a link between him and the Lord, and Peter therefore is not afraid to be alone with Him. The last time they had been together, it is true Peter had denied Him, and the Lord had turned and looked upon him. But Peter knew that he loved his Lord notwithstanding; and now he is not afraid to cast himself into the sea and reach Jesus alone, before the rest of them. And there is something truly blessed in this. Law could never have brought this about, nor indeed have warranted it. The rod of the law would have beaten him off, and made him keep his distance. Nothing but grace could allow this, nothing but the cords of love could have drawn denying Peter the nearest to his slighted Lord after this manner.

Thus was it so far with the beloved and loving Peter. But there is more still. The dinner, as we read, was now ended, the purpose of this third visit was now answered; but in order to close all in wondrous grace and glory, and in a way also most

The Apostolic testimony at Jerusalem and its abundant success, as recorded in Acts 2-4 is the pledge-fulfillment of this ministry and its fruit in the latter day, which is here typified.

suitable to, and characteristic of our Gospel, the Lord now turns to Peter making him again his special object. He addresses Himself to him in a way as could not, and does not fail to call his sin to remembrance. The three denials of his Lord seem to be quite brought to mind, when Jesus the third time says to him, " lovest thou me." Then was Peter grieved, for Peter was then convicted. But the Lord was only leading him into full blessing. He restores him to his ministry, for another was not to take his bishoprick; and then pledges him strength to serve his Lord in it without a second denial, or failure. 1-he constitutes him His witness and servant in the full power of a martyr's faith. And hal;ing pledged this grace to him, that he should thus witness for him faithfully even unto death, he says to him, " follow me."

This was a moment of sweetest interest. We know that if we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him, and if we follow Him, we shall go after Him, that where the Lord Himself is, there His servant shall be also. Now this call on Peter, was a call to follow his Lord along the path of testimony and suffering, in the power of resurrection, to the rest in which that path ends, and to which that resurrection leads. Jesus had said to Peter before He left him, " whither I go thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterward;" (chap. xiii.) and the Lord as we know, was then going to heaven and the Father through the cross. So here this call was, in spirit, making good that promise to Peter. It was a call on him to follow his Lord through death up to the Father's house. And upon saying these words to him, the Lord rises from the place where they had been eating, and Peter thus bidden, rises to follow Him.

But John listens to this call, as though it had been addressed to him also, and on seeing the Lord rise and Peter rise, he at once rises also. For he ever lay nearest the Lord. He leaned on His breast at supper, and was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He ever stood in the place of closest sympathy with his Lord. His

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eye, as it were, touched his Lord's eye, his mouth His mouth, his hand His hand. And thus, by a kind of necessity (blessed neces-sity) on the Lord's rising, he rises, though unbidden.

And thus we now see them. The Son of God has risen and is walking out of our sight, and Peter and John are following Him. All this is lovely, and deeply significant. We do not see the end of their path, for while thus walking, the Gospel closes. The cloud, as it were, receives them out of our sight. We gaze in vain after them, and the path of the disciples is just as far removed from us as that of their Lord. It was indeed, in type or in prin-ciple, the path that leads into the Father's house, which we know is prepared for the Lord and His brethren; the presence of God in heaven, which is through grace, theirs as well as His.

Surely we may say, the bridegroom at our feast has kept the best wine until now. If our souls could enter into this, there is nothing like it. St. Mark in his Gospel tells us of the fact of the Lord being received up into heaven (xvi. 19), and St. Luke shows us the ascension itself, while the Lord was lifting up His hand and blessing His disciples. (xxiv. 51.) But all that, sweet as it was, is not equal to what we get here. For all that left the disciples apart from their Lord. Ile was then going to heaven, but they were to return to Jerusalem. But here they are follow-ing their Lord up to heaven. Their path does not stop short of the full end of His path.

Surely this is none other than " the gate of heaven" to which our Gospel conducts us, and whereat it leaves us. Surely the Lord is in this place, in fullest grace to His chosen. The first resurrection, the receiving of the brethren into the Father's house, is here pledged to us. In this, Peter and John are the represen-tatives of us all, beloved. Some, like Peter, may glorify God by death, and others as is intimated here to John, will be alive and remain till Jesus come; but all are to follow, whether Peter or John, Moses or Elias, vvhether asleep in Jesus or quick at His coming, all shall be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air, and be with Him in holy blessed safety, while judgments are taking their course upon the earth against the wicked. It will be

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to them like the.ark to Noah or Zoar to Lot. And being received unto Himself they vvill go with Him into the prepared mansions of the Father's house, as He has said unto us.t

And I may observe, this is the only view of our Lord's ascen-sion which our Gospel gives us. And it is that view of it which is strictly in character with the whole Gospel, which gives us as has been observed, our Lord Jesus in connection with the Church as the family of the Father, the heavenly household. And so this ascension is not so properly to the right hand of God, or place of power where He abides alone, but to the Father's house where the children are to dwell also. For their path in that direction reaches as far as His, through His boundless grace; as here, wherever it was that Jesus went (some spot unknown and untold as to this earth), there did Peter and John follow Him. He is here acting as though He had gone and prepared the promised mansions in the Father's house, and had come again, and was now receiving them unto Himself, that where He is, there they might be also. And this will be really so at the first resurrection, when the brethren meet their Lord in the air. The Son of God was now at the end, as He had done in the beginning, showing His own where He dwelt (see chap. i. 33); only at the beginning He was a stranger on earth, and they abode with Him but one day, but now He is returning to His proper heaven, and there they are to abide with Him for event •

Our Evangelist then just lets us hear the full response of the believing hearts of all God's elect to those truths and wonders of grace which had now been told out. " We know that His tes-timony is true." They set to their seal that God is true. And all is then closed with a shnple note of admiration-for such, in principle, I judge the last verse to be. And indeed this is all He

t 'We have no mention in this Gospel of " the coming of the Son of man." That is spoken of in St. Matthew and the others, for that expresses the Lord's coming to the earth again for judgment on the nations, and for deliverance to the remnant; and does not iniply the first resurrection or the rapture of the saints into the air.

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could do. Was it not beyond His praise? what heart could conceive the full excellence of His ways whose name He had now thus been publishing?

Here the fourth section of our Gospel ends, and here the whole' ends. And what a journey through it has that of the Son of God been! Made flesh at the beginning, He walked on earth as the stranger from heaven, save as He was occupied in ministering grace and healing to sinners. The prince of this world at length came to Him, but.finding nothing in Him he cast Him out of the world. But this he could not do, until as the Savior the Son of God had accomplished the peace of all that trust in Him. Then He triumphantly broke the power of death, and as the risen Lord imparted the life which He had won for His people, and finally by a significant action, as we have seen, pledged to them that where He was going, there they should follow Him, that they might be there also.

Thus our Gospel began with the descent of the Son, and closes with the ascent of the saints. And the time of this ascent, or being taken into the air, I judge is altogether uncertain. It may be to morrow, and it will be, when the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in, when all the saints have been brought in the unity of the faith, to a perfect man. It does not depend on a certain lapse of time. No prophecy which involves computation of time, I believe, at all belongs to it. Such belongs only to the Lord's return to the earth, and not to the taking of the saints into the air to meet Him. At that return of the Lord to the earth, the saints will be with Him, and this earth will then be prepared to be their common kingdom and inheritance. And that return I grant, must await its prescribed time, and the full spending out of the days and years announced by the prophets. But no days or years measure out the interval from the Lord's ascension until the ascension of His saints. The Holy Ghost, it is most true, has given us moral characters of certain times, thus defining "the latter times," and " the last days." (1 Tim. 4:2 Tim. 3 &e.) But He tells us also that even then, " the last time" had already come. (1 John

ii. 13.) So that faith is entitled to look for her joy in meeting the Lord in the air every hour; with patience, the while, to do the will of God. And the prophecies that compute time (as far as they are still future), will not (I merely give my own judgment) begin to be applied, or the times they notice ben to run, till this rapture into the air, this first resurrection, take place. Then indeed the suffering remnant in Israel may begin to number out the days for their comfort, and for food of hope. And in their deepest sorrow they may lift up their heads, as knowing that their salvation draweth nigh.

After all this, beloved, our God may well claim our confidence, and be our title to full holy liberty, and the sure and constant source of gladness to us. This is to honor Him as the Father. And if we now have a thought of Him that leaves a sting behind it, it is the thought of foolishness and of unbelief. All is brightness to faith. Such is God our Father-and in the Son of His love we are accepted. " He will not live in glory, and leave us behind." And the language of our hearts towards Him abidingly should be, " come, Lord Jesus."-And this confidence of present adoption, and this joy of hope we have through the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in us, our Companion by the way, our " other Comforter" till the Bridegroom meets us.

To our gracious God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be glory forever and ever! Amen.

The Sent One

"My Father is greater than I." (John 14:28.)

How sadly different is the measure of intelligence which men display when occupied with the things of God and with the things of man. Who, when bade study some plan proposed for the bettering or renewing of anything upon earth, is there who would not endeavor, whilst studying it, to mark the adjustment of the various parts of its machinery, and their suitability to accomplish the object proposed. Say that his intelligent sympathy and co-operation through a wearisome course of labor, were supposed by the proposed plan, would any one feel it enough, merely to have read the proposal, or would he feel that he might read it carelessly, that the having read it was enough, that he had nothing to do with the suitability of the machinery or with the object to be accomplished thereby? Surely he would rather feel that unless the object were distinctly known to him and kept, before his mind, all his study would be in vain; the whole question being, is this course capable of producing such or such a given effect? But alas! when man comes to the things of heaven and of God, he has, by nature, no intelligence to exercise; and that which he receives in Christ, the mind of Christ," (1 Cor. 2:16.) he is too prone to neglect. Satan avails himself of this; and the saints are found. oft reading the bible with preconceived thoughts of what they will or ought to find there, as opposite from what they will find as possible. Happy are the few who find grace to correct themselves and their own notions, by subjection to the blessed contents of God's scriptures. Many an infidel rejects the bible because it contains no systematic proof of the existence of a God. Surely his own existence is no great assumption for any one to make when sitting down to write a book. How much more when the living God was the party. Alas! the naughty pride of the flesh which sets man up to judge his Creator, and leads hint to count everlasting misery in his own way better than the fullness of blessing in God's. It is the same pride of the flesh and independence of mind concerning God's object, which leaves the minds of so many to be exercised upon the question of the Deity of the Son and the Deity of the Spirit. The questions are taken to Scripture, as though God's object, or one of them at least, in writing the book, must have been to advance proofs of the Divine nature of the Son and of the Spirit. And then some are stumbled because the evidence they can collect, is of so indirect a nature. Indirect! to be sure it is indirect; and this in, directness is its strength. In writing the bible God had no such thought as to make man judge of Deity. Neither was it even one of His objects to bring out proofs of the Divine nature of the Son and the Spirit. He writes in and from His own circumstances. And the Divine nature of the Son and of the Spirit, are as much assumed in what He has written, as is even the existence of a God. God's object in the bible was just to unfold the way and glory of Redemption. And they who humbly follow it out as traced in the Scriptures, will find thousands of collateral points taught them; but if they get upon these collateral points separately from their connection with the object fur which they are revealed, let them take heed: " what God bath joined together let not man put asunder." I do not say that direct proofs weighty and abundant cannot be brought forward in proof of the unqualified Deity of the Son and of the Spirit: there can be I knew; but what I do say is, that if we try to prove truth according to the good pleasure of our own minds, and net according to the way God teaches it, we are in danger as not being led by the Spirit therein. Just so is the way in which men look at the Savior; either they will look exclusively at His being the Son of God, or they will forget this and look at Him as the Son of man: but the whole virtue is lost if we regard Him in any other way than in the double nature-God manifest in the flesh. This will appear plain if we consider what Redemption is.

God's purpose in Redemption is to glorify Himself by the exceeding riches of His grace and power and wisdom shown in Christ Jesus. The substance of the Gospel was and is just this that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." (2 Cor. 5:19.) And the blessing of them that know the truth in the love of it is, they have been reconciled to God by Jesus Christ; (ver. 18.) they have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus; (4:6.) they have acknowledged the mystery of God, even of the Father and of Christ. (Col. 2:2.)

The work and object of our Lord was to reveal the Father. There were riches and glories in God most suited for man's fallen state; but how should they be made his? God could not come in contact with the sinner even to bless him, and the sinner could not come into the presence of God, as God, even for a cure. Jesus was the way of infinite wisdom, grace, and truth. His sufficiency for the work was just this, that " in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." (Col. 2:9.) The perception of " God in Christ" is the turning-point of blessing to man. To know Jesus, but not to know the Father in Him, is not faith. Unless " God in Christ" be seen and rested upon, there can be no cleansed conscience, no repose, no assurance or obedience. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon our minds, that the only place in which we can find light and truth as concerning God the Fat her,- the only place in which we can make sure of the Spirit's power and teaching, is whilst beholding by faith " the glory of God in the face of Jesus;" and that this was the object of the revelation of the Son-not to reveal Himself, but to reveal the Father. The Son is presented to us, not that we may know Himself; for it 15 written, no man knoweth the Son but the Father only.-He is presented simply to declare the Father. (John 1:18.) " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. (14:9.) In every position in which the Son is presented to us, He is presented as being the servant of the Father, and of the Church for the Father's sake. Appointed by the Father to office, fulfilling all the duties of office as the servant.

I will endeavor to show this,-that Jesus is presented in Scripture as the servant of the Father, first, from those Scriptures which present to us the works and offices proper and peculiar to Himself; and then, secondly, by quotations exhibiting the posture of His heart and mind while found occupied therein.

His High Priesthood was service, and Jesus received it at the Father's hand. " Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; who was FAITHFUL to Him that APPOINTED Him. (Heb. 3:1, 2.) " Seeing then that we have a great High Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.' (4:14.) " No man taketh this honor unto himself, (i.e. High Priesthood,) but He that is called of God, as was Aaron. So also Christ glorified not Himself to be made a High Priest;. but He that said unto Him, Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee. As He saith also in another place', Thou art a Priest forever, after the order of Melchisedec called of God an High Priest after the order of Melchisedec." (v. 4-6, 10.)

Can anything be clearer than that our adorable Lord was the Father's servant for the Church's sake in this High Priesthood?' And if called to, instated in the High Priesthood by the Father, and faithful in it to Him that appointed Him, then all its duties and offices present Him as the servant also. And thus accordingly we are taught to look at Him while entering into heaven itself, now to appear before God for us: (ix. 24.) having appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, (26) we are taught, I say, to look upon Him as the servant of the Father, and of the Church for the Father's sake. For as it was not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins, when He came into the world He avowed this, saying to His Father, (and therein bearing witness before all, of His being the Father's servant,)

" Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin, Thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O GOD by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all." (Heb. 10:4-10.)

The blood that He presented, when by His own blood He entered in once into the Holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us, that blood (needed in our case, at once both as to the heavenly things themselves to which we are called, and for the purging of our consciences from dead works to serve the living God,) that blood, I say, He presented to us in the character of the servant of the Father. More than this, both the glory and the weakness which are presented to us in the first two chapters, as being His in connection with the office of Daysman, to stand between God and us, and between us and God, are represented as taken upon Himself in sympathy with and subjection to the Father's will.

That which commends Him to the Church, as a sure resource in every time of trouble, is, that He is such an one as can be touched with the feeling of their infirmities; one who knows what temptation, and crying, and tears mean; one that " learned obedience by the things which He suffered." But the provision of this suitability in Jesus we find attributed to the Father, " 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:" (Heb. 2:10.) and from ver. 11, I judge that it was the perception by the Son of such loving union in the mind of the Father to these sons, that led Him, as it were, to greet them as " my brethren," and then associate Himself with them in all their circumstances of misery.

" Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil; and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their life-time subject to bondage." (14, 15, ver.)

But not only was it the Father's will which guided Him into that which meets our minds, and gives us liberty of soul in drawing near to God through Him, but also the Father's good pleasure which conferred upon Him the glory proper to Him a Mediator- the rank, estate, dignity, and glory, in which He should Bland in the courts of the Lord's house as the Mediator provided and appointed of the Father. Let me not be misunderstood, His fitness for the office was one thing; the glory and estate proper to the office in order that its duties should be fulfilled, was another. The fitness of Jesus for the Mediator was just " that He was God manifest in the flesh," essentially one with the Father, Jehovah, Lord God of Sabaoth, from before all worlds. This and this alone could. suffice; this and this alone could give virtue, and character, power, weight, and value to the blood. It was the blood of God's own Son. Of whom else could the blood speak from the mercy-seat of God in the Holiest of all? Whose blood else could silence Satan, or still the accusing consciences of ten thousand times ten thousand, whose robes were to be washed in the blood of the Lamb? Such alone was His qualification for the office. But when ushered into it by the Father, He found a new glory in it, proper and peculiar to itself. This glory is opened to us in Phil. 2:6-11, Eph. 1:10, as what it shall he hereafter: the blessedness of it we know in that by faith we see Jesus in the midst of the Father's throne as the Lamb once slain, but now alive again. There He is, all things under His feet, and Himself given to be the Head over all things to the Church; heaven opened and we in Spirit and affection gathered there unto Him and the Father. A study of the ten last verses of the 1st chapter of Hebrews, in connection with the Scriptures whence the quotation is made, opens much of the riches of the glory appointed unto the Mediator; as also other Scriptures. And furthermore I would observe, that on ourselves all this is pressed. in detail, by the Holy Ghost, with peculiar emphasis, in the Scriptures, so that we are taught to read our Father in the works and doings of our blessed Lord. See this as to

1.-PROPITIATION FOR SIN. (Rom. 3:24, 25.) Christ Jesus " whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood." (Rom. 8:32.) "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." (Gal. 4:4.) " God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law," &c. &c.

2.-THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. (Acts 13:33.) God

has fulfilled... the promise made unto the fathers... in that He has raised up Jesus again; And as concerning that He raised Him from the dead, &c., (Rom. 4:25.) if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was raised again for our justification. (Eph. 1:20.) The Father is represented as having raised Christ from the dead, and His object in so doing is stated 1 Peter 1:21, " who believe in' God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God, &c. &c.

3.-HIS PRESENT POSITION IN HEAVENLY PLACES FOR THE

SAINTS. (Eph. 1:20-23.) "According to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when lie raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and bath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all." See also (Heb. 2. 5-9. Col. 3:3.) " Fur ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

4.-THE DISPENSER TO THE CHURCH OF BLESSING. (Acts 1.

4.) " Wait for the promise of the Father, which ye have heard of me." (2-32.) " This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear," arc. &c. &c.

5. THE SECOND APPEARING OF JESUS which is the Church's hope. (1 Tim. 6:14.) " Keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: which in His times He shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, &c." (1 Thess. 4:14.) " Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him."

Secondly.-I will now endeavor to quote a few Scriptures exhibiting the posture of our Lord's heart and mind while found on earth occupied with these works, as presenting Him in the same most blessed position of the servant of the Father for the Church's sake.-As the One who, though the Son, and not thinking it robbery to be equal with God, yet emptied Himself, made Himself of no reputation, took on Him the form of a servant, and put His trust in God, and all this for the Church's sake, to show her the Father. The gospel of John, as it opens to us more than the other gospels, the glory of the person of Jesus as the only begotten Son of the Father from before all worlds, so likewise is more full of proofs of His subjection to the Father. From it and it alone will I now quote a few of the many passages adducible on this most deeply interesting subject.

Chap 1:18. He is presented as the revealer of the Father. " No man bath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."

The names of the Lamb of God Chap 1. 29-36. The Messias or Christ (ver. 41.) both present Him, if considered attentively, as in subjection to the Father. So also will He appear in the 3rd Chapter, when considered as the One given " to be lifted up." (ver. 16.)-" The One sent not to condemn but to save. (ver. 17.) (" The One whom heaven had honored above John. 27.) The One of whom alone it could be said." He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him.-The Father loveth the Son, and bath given all things into His hands." (ver. 34, 35.)

In Chap. 4. We find Jesus speaking of Himself thus, as the gift of God (ver. 10.)-Again, " my meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." In Chap. 4. ver. 19

He says distinctly to the Jews-" The Son can do nothing. of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth; these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth and He will show Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them: even so the Son quickeneth whom He will. For the Father judgeth no man, but bath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all should honor the Son; even as they honor the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which bath sent Him. Verily, verily, I say unto you He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life." (Ver. 26.) "As the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; and hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man." ( Ver. 30.) " I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge,: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which bath sent me." (Ver., 36.) " I have greater witness than of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father bath sent me." (Ver. 38.) " Whom He bath sent, Him ye believe not:" (Ver. 43.) " I—am come in my Father's name and ye receive me not; if another shall come in His own name, him ye will receive."

Again.-CHAP. 6. He speaks of Himself as the One sealed by God the Father. (ver. 27.) Sent by the Father. (ver. 29.) Given as bread from heaven by the Father. (33.) " All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me, And this is the Father's will which hath 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." (37-40.) " As the living Father bath sent me, and I live by the Father: se he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." (57.)

CHAP. 7. "My doctrine is NOT MINE, but His that SENT me (16.)... "be that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true." (18) " I am not come of myself, but He that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But I know Him; for I am from Him, and He hath sent me." (28, 29.) " I go unto Him that sent me." (33.) CHAP. 8. "I am not alone, but. I and the Father that sent me:" (16.) " the Father that sent me beareth witness of me." (18.) " He that sent me is true; and I speak those things which I have heard of Him." (26.) "I do nothing of myself; but as my Father bath taught me, I speak these things. And He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him." (28, 29.) " I speak that which I have seen with my Father;" (38.) " neither came I of myself, but He sent me." (42.) " I honor my Father, and ye do dishonor me." (49) " I seek not mine own glory." (50.) " I know Him (the Father) and keep His saying." (55.) CHAP. 9:4. " I must work the works of Him that sent me." CHAP. 10. " This commandment have I received of my Father;" (18.) " the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me." (25.) "My Father which gave them (the sheep) me, is greater than all." (29.) " If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not." (37.) CHAP. 11. " Father I thank thee that thou hest heard me. And. I know that thou Nearest me always: but because of the people... I said it, that they may believe that thou hest sent me." (41, 42.) CHAP. 12. " What shall f. say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour: Father, glorify thy name;" (27, 28.) " Him that sent me." (44.) " For I have not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak;" (49.) " whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak." (50.) CHAP. 13. " Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God." (3.) " He that receiveth me receiveth Him that sent me." (20.) CHAP. 14. " The Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." (10.) " I will pray the Father:" (16.) " the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me." (24.) "My Father is greater than I." (28.) " As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." (31.) CHAP. 15. " I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman." (1.) " I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love." (10.) " All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." (15.)

I have quoted the words illustrative of the subject, just as they occurred, without regard to their connection; in conclusion, let any one read carefully the 17th chapter of the gospel of John, and it cannot but be observed how prominent and important a place this same truth held in the mind of our blessed Master at the time of His prayer. His whole desire seemed to be to mark Himself as the one who was the sent Servant of the Father and of the saints for the Father's sake.

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Christian Witness: Volume 5

Table of Contents

The Gospel by St. John

The Sent One