Miscellaneous Papers

John Gifford Bellett

4. Signs, and Waiting for the Son from Heaven

New Creation

THERE is a deeper purpose and nobler work in God than creation. Creation occupied His hand, and displayed His power and Godhead, and was then, in some sense, left at man's disposal, so that its condition was to be determined by the allegiance or rebellion of man. But there was another work ordered in the counsels of God before the world, to be accomplished in due time, with which God joined Himself, and thus never suffered it to fail. This purpose and work are laid in and effectuated by the Word, who is with God, and is God. The opening of Genesis shows us the work of creation, and creation entrusted to man; the opening of St. John shows us the Word, who was before creation, and the work accomplished by Him. Blessed joy to look at either Himself or His work! May our souls now taste this while doing so. It is grateful to the heart to turn that way when wearied with self—with man and his doings—with the world and its vanities. The living waters then, as it were, recede to their native bed, for such indeed is the action of the Spirit in the saint when he retires to God and His Word. The new mind finds its home there.

I would follow this work of redemption or New Creation by the Word through a few meditations which lead the thoughts of the soul that way. But it is not the effort of mind even on Scripture which I desire to trust, but the more artless confidence that can follow where His word and Spirit lead, remembering the while assuredly that the diligent soul shall be made fat, and that Paul has counseled Timothy to meditate on these things.

Our meditations, then, on New Creation may lead us, in the first place, to the subject of sin. St. Paul treats it in a very lively and energetic style in Rom. 5; 6 He gives it a kind of life and office, as it were; treating it as a person and as a king. He shows us that it entered this world through man's disobedience; and, having entered it, at once took the seat of government, and death became both the power and character of its kingdom.

And this is the aspect of "this present evil world." It is the place or scene of the reign of sin and death, and nothing is left untouched by its influence. Such has been the entrance, and such is the present power of sin in this world. But there is another action in this same world, as our apostle further shows us—of which the grace of God is the source, as the disobedience of man has been the source of the presence and reign of sin. And this grace through Christ has brought in righteousness and life; as disobedience in Adam opened the door to sin and death. And having entered, the apostle shows us still further that righteousness does more than merely measure the power of sin, for sin came in upon one offense; but righteousness comes in, and sweeps away from the scene thousands of offenses which followed in the train of that one, and accordingly it has its kingdom now also. Life has its action here as well as death, but it is not visible like the other. The reign of sin is felt, and the power of death is seen all abroad—the reign of righteousness which brings life with it, is as yet only known to faith. But grace is triumphant—it has brought in a gift, a righteousness which asserts, through Jesus, its supremacy over all the aggravated power of sin and death. And how was this? How could grace thus take its way? How could righteousness and life enter a scene where sin was reigning unto death, and had title so to reign? Our apostle shows us that a victim has been provided by grace, and rendered up to the claims of sin. Sin reigned unto death. Death may bound his empire, but up to death he has title to exercise his power. And Jesus, the Son of God, has owned this title—"He died unto sin;" He took the penalty—He received the wages of man's departure from God. "In the day thou eatest thou shalt die." Man did eat, but Jesus also died. And thus Jesus owned the rights, and yielded to the exactions of sin. He had to do with it in His death. He was then dealing with it—righteously bowing under its dominion. But all the while He was the Son of the living God. He had life in Himself, life untouched by Adam's disobedience; and thus He outlived the stroke of sin, and destroyed him that had the power of death; and asserted a kingdom of righteousness and life, in which, not only He reigns, but all those reign with Him who, by faith, rejoice in His victory.

Thus sin and death in their dominion are overthrown. The Son of the living God has asserted His supremacy in the very region of the power of sin. Sin has reigned unto death—even to the death of Christ on the cross; but there sin was met by righteousness—there death was abolished by life. All that sin could command, and that was death, it got there—there it exacted death of Jesus; but Jesus carried a life in Him which remained untouched by all this, and in that life, and the righteousness from whence it flowed, He and His saints reign forever together.

Thus has sin been disposed of. It entered and reigned, but has now been set aside; and we have not to own it in any wise, but to be dead to it. For we are in union with the Son of God, and as His death was "unto sin," His resurrection was "unto God." As it is written, "In that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God"; and our union with Him being in resurrection as well as in death, we are thus alive unto God," and should so account ourselves. We should assert our places in the risen Son of God, and know that we are dead to sin, our old man being crucified, and that we have nothing more to do with it. Sin may seek to have to do with us, but we are to reckon ourselves as dead to it—to see it as sunk in the flesh-as deposited in that pit out of which we have risen in Christ, separated from it, leaving it to perish in its own corruption; and, in the faith of our place in Christ, to say of it and all its workings in the flesh—" Yet not I, but sin that dwelleth in me." Sin was once a king, as we have seen, reigning unto death, and using the members of man as the instruments of its power, but now faith apprehends it as imprisoned in the flesh, sunk in that pit where all shall perish.

We are thus introduced to thoughts on the flesh thus in close connection with sin. And the Scripture teaches much upon it, showing us clearly, as indeed what we have already said might lead us to anticipate, that the saint has entirely renounced it. May it be so more and more in our conduct, beloved, as it is thus fully in our calling.

The flesh of Jesus, I judge, carried in it the real enmity between Jew and Gentile, inasmuch as it was the only flesh that was ever really circumcised; or inasmuch as Jesus was the only real Jew who ever lived-the only child of man that ever really separated or consecrated the human nature to God, keeping in Himself the "law of commandments contained in ordinances." And thus in Himself He separated flesh from all beside, and that was the true "partition wall," the true witness against all else that was of man as uncircumcised. (Eph. 2)

But His flesh—or flesh in such a One—is now gone. We do not know Him after the flesh. All His perfectness in it led Him to the cross, contributing with other personal worthiness to His fitness to die there for us. But having now died there, His cross is the end of all flesh. That cross was endured for us. It was the wages of sin that was in our flesh, and slew the enmity that was between God and men accordingly.

But something beside or beyond flesh is therefore to be looked for now, and so we find it; for now Christ is found in resurrection, and Jew and Gentile are equally and together presented to God as spirit, or as New Creation—"a new man in Christ Jesus"—"one body"—the body of their risen Christ. The law had previously come to seek something good in the flesh—to get out of it fruit unto God. But it found none. The Son came, on the other hand, not looking for good in it, but to make atonement for it—to hang on the cursed tree as the representative of it. (Rom. 8)

Paul had in his doctrine accordingly done with it altogether. Could he return to it when he saw it thus disposed of by the Son of God? He could not. He saw it to be a mighty wreck—it may be as yet not entirely buried out of sight, or gone to the bottom—but He was no longer in it, but in the risen Son of God. He had been cast on a new world, where God's eye rests with delight forever—he was in a new creation with the risen Son of God.

And if he had done with the flesh, he had done also with the law; for they were one, as being bound together—the old husband and wife, as he speaks in Rom. 7 The law—with its strictures, and forbid-dings, and demands—was as the ropes and tackling’s, and the rubber-bands of that which, as I have said, he had now left as a wreck, and if the vessel be behind him, so is all the provision.

And as he would not glory in his own flesh, neither would he in that of another. If he were crucified to the world, so was the world to him. And it is, indeed, edifying to observe the strength with which he renounces the flesh. There is nothing which the flesh has incurred, or is exposed to—nothing that it possesses—nothing that it can do—that he does not declare his escape from or renunciation of, in fullest strength and confidence of faith in Jesus. Thus, is the flesh subject to condemnation! Yes, but Jesus has borne the judgment of it, and the believer, through grace, is not regarded as in the flesh but in the spirit— it is not he who does the deeds of his own condemned flesh, which is thus exposed to judgment, but it is "sin" that dwells in him (Rom. 7;8). Has the flesh its religion? He counts it all as loss and dung—its ordinances and observances, and legal circumcision; its bonds and fears he renounces, and is found only in the righteousness of God by faith. (Gal., Phil., Col.) Has the flesh its wisdom? Yes, the world has its princes—the wise, the scribe, and the disputer—but Paul insists that God has made it all foolishness, and desires only that wisdom which the Spirit alone could search out and reveal, and which no eye, nor ear, nor heart of mere man could converse with (1 Cor. 1;2). Has the flesh its excellency of speech and other advantages which ministry of the Word might use? Yes, but he would use none of them; but as he was a minister of the Spirit, so would he be a minister in the Spirit only (2 Cor.). Thus he escapes from it, or renounces it in all its pretensions and in all its exposure. It was an attempt to revive the wisdom of the flesh, or the power of the flesh in ministry, with which he had to contend at Corinth; and it was an attempt to revive the religion of the flesh, which he withstood in Galatia and at Colosse. But he put no confidence in anything that was of it. He was not in it, but in One who was raised from the dead. He was in Christ, in New Creation or the Spirit. He had his justification in the blood of the Son of God, and his personal graces and ministerial powers in the Holy Ghost, and there only. And this glorious act of faith, which thus leaves the flesh—in its condemnation, its religion, its endowments, its everything—behind us, is our strength standing against its lusts and its tempers; for when such arise to tempt the soul, the soul should gird itself with this remembrance, that we have done with it altogether. And the same thing is our strength in walking in the charities of the gospel, for it accustoms us to look at that which is of the flesh in our brethren (and which is the trial of our Christian charities) as not being properly themselves, but something which they have in real principle renounced.

And it has struck me from Gal. 1:13 to 16, that St. Paul tells us that God's great purpose by him was to give proof of the profitlessness of the flesh in its best estate, and of the entire renunciation, accordingly, by the divinely taught soul. For after there showing his advantages in fleshly religion (as he does also in Phil. 3), he tells us God had "separated him from his mother's womb,"—then "called him"—then "revealed His Son in Him"—by which separation I judge that he means his election to be the minister and representative of a gospel that was not to allow any conference with or confidence in the flesh at all; and accordingly all his previous life—before he was actually called to such ministry—had been a gathering together and exhibiting of advantages in the flesh, that now he might make a more glorious renunciation of them. Hence he was born a "Hebrew of the Hebrews." Hence he was "circumcised the eighth day." Hence he "profited in the Jews' religion," and persecuted the church through fleshly zeal. Hence he was "touching the law" blameless. All this had marked the man who had been separated from his mother's womb, and thus fitted him for showing out afterward the vanity of all that was fleshly; so that when he was actually called into ministry to do so, he might be able to tell us how much in it, and of it, he had had-that his renunciation of it might be the more marked. It was like the fitting of the vessel for the glory it was destined to carry, or the instrument for the work it was ordained to execute, so that we might be able to see that if flesh in Paul was nothing, flesh in any other must surely be nothing. Paul was apprehended to make the greatest attainments in it, that he might renounce it altogether, and thus expose its utter and certain vanity. And I would here notice two instances in our Lord's ministry, in which He, in like manner, strikingly denounces the flesh.

John 3—He sets the flesh aside in the words, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," because He connects with this the need of man being born again of water and the Spirit. John 6—He again sets the flesh aside in the words, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." And from His conversations on these two occasions with Nicodemus and with the multitude, we learn how we are to renounce the flesh, and that is, by learning God or Christ as sinners. Neither Nicodemus nor the multitude came to Jesus as sinners, and therefore He had to tell both of them of the worthlessness of the flesh.

And this leads us to this most needed and precious lesson very simply and very surely. It is the sinner who comes to Jesus as such, under conviction of sin, that renounces the flesh. Happy, simple, and precious result for our souls of all this needed primary truth—the worthlessness of the flesh and its consequent renunciation—that the way to attain this truth is to learn God as sinners.

Our death is the judgment or end of the flesh "the body is dead because of sin." There is judgment afterward, but that belongs to God, and is the trial and condemnation of the secrets of the hearts, or according to man's works, as written in the Books; but of flesh or fallen nature of man, as injured and tainted by disobedience, death is the judgment: the flesh perisheth in its own corruption.

As connected with this which we have just meditated on, I would now for a little consider the law.

The law addresses itself only to the flesh, for it has dominion over a man only so long as he liveth. But as in the flesh dwelleth no good thing, all the application of the law to it only serves to bring out increased evil. This is the seventh of Romans. It is like cultivating a piece of ground which has only noxious seed in it; the more you manure it, the more abundant harvest of thorns and thistles you get from it. So the more exact we are under the law, the more actually are we cast at a distance from God. St. Paul seems to have this thought in Phil. 3 All the features of his former condition, or when he was under the law, or in the flesh, were in his favor, or to his praise. He speaks of them as being so—and among these was his zeal—a right zeal under the law, but directly contrary to God, for it exercised itself in persecution of the church.

For zeal under the law must exercise itself against the church—for the church lives in grace. Zeal in the flesh must exercise itself against the church, for the church walks in the Spirit. And thus the more praise Paul had from the law or the flesh, the more was he in collision with God. It is quite true that there is a certain using of the law which is, on the other hand, according to God. Thus Zacharias and Elizabeth walked in all its ordinances and commandments blameless. But that was owning of it simply as God's dispensation for the time, as the schoolmaster, till faith came. That was according to God. But the taking up the law as the thing, threw Paul (and must so throw all who do it) into direct enmity with God and His purposes, and into a denial of His truth; for it denies the corruption of the flesh, the grace of God, and God's purpose from the beginning to act on promise.

It exalts man: it nourishes that nature of which the truth says, "In it there dwells no good thing." And all this did Paul when under the law, so that when he was enlightened and came under grace, his estimate of himself was altogether changed; then he says of himself that he had been a blasphemer, a persecutor, the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1). Then he learns the value of his former gains—that they were all loss (Phil. 3). They had been advantages in the flesh, but the flesh being evil, the more it is advantaged and nourished, the further are we from the good. And this good thing he now learns is only in Christ, in the Spirit, or the new life; to nourish and exercise which became from that moment his one great care and business (Phil. 3).

In the seventh chapter of Romans, to which I already referred, the apostle, as it were, entertains the claims of the law upon the believer, and he shows that they have been already answered and disposed of. And he does this very simply. He says that the authority of the law addresses itself only to a living man—that is, a man in the flesh. It is the flesh, or man as born of Adam, that the law was given to. But the believer has ceased, in this sense, to be a living man, has ceased to be of Adam, inasmuch as he has died and risen again; and consequently, being a dead and risen man, the law does not address its claims to him —he is not the object of the law.

But in this the law is not spoken of in the same relation to us as sin had been. Sin had been spoken of as a master or a king, but the law is here spoken of as a husband. And in the close of this chapter, having thus shown how that both sin and the law have been disposed of or set aside—the one as a master, the other as a husband—the apostle tells us they have been discharged with very different characters indeed.

Sin has been discharged with as bad—the law with as good a character as ever the inspired pen of an apostle could write for them. All evil in us is declared to have come from the one, while from the other nothing flowed but that which was holy, just, and good. And the moment the real character of the law was understood by the quickened soul, a grievous state of things arose: the commandment came—sin revived—and the man died. The law was felt to urge one thing upon the conscience—sin was felt to exact another thing in the old man or the members—and this state of things drew forth the sense of death in the soul and cry for deliverance; and the answer came in Jesus, revealed in the power of His death and resurrection.

Thus the law, coming to act on flesh or man in moral corruption, was found altogether unequal, through the inbred, essential evil that was there; and rather aggravating the mischief by showing sin also as transgression. It has been disclaimed. The Lord has disclaimed it as His instrument; and the believer, who stands in the mind of the Lord, has disclaimed it as his confidence, and Christ has come, the instrument in God's hand instead of the law, and the object of the believer's confidence instead of it also.

Man, and the law that had acted on him, being thus put aside, God is introduced into the scene, and His instruments and ordinances. And as thus introduced, I desire to look at God for Himself a little moment, as Scripture may blessedly show Him thus in the gracious service of poor ruined man.

God is that glorious One (not to speak of Him merely in Himself, or in creation and providence, or amid the powers and thrones of angels) who has resources for our need, and remedy for our mischief, though we be those helpless sinners which the law has proved us to be. To carry such in Himself is His prerogative, and our owning it by faith is at once His praise and our blessing. It is as such He is proposed to faith. It was "God Almighty," that is, God the all-sufficient One, that was revealed to the Patriarchs. Abraham and Sarah were dead as to their bodies; but I am the "Almighty God," says the Lord, and their faith owned it. "I have resources to meet the dead state of your bodies," was the language of God, and His servant bowed his head (Gen. 17).

This was claiming divine glory on the one hand, and giving it on the other. And as the reverse of this, the apostle charges some with not having "the knowledge of God," because they questioned the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:34). For such questioning showed that they had not apprehended God as God—that they had not given Him due divine glory—otherwise they would have believed that He had resources even for a state of death, as Abraham did. As the Lord before condemns the Sadducees on the very same point, as not knowing the power of God (Matt. 22:29).

We are thus to give God His honor; we are not only to refuse our confidence to any beside, but we are to give it Him. Just as in Israel: it was not only that the land was to be cleansed of idols and groves, but a house or tabernacle was to be raised to God. Idol deities were to be removed, but the one true God Almighty was also to be brought in. It would not have done simply to clear the land of abominations without also bringing in the true Glory, and so exactly with us now. We are not only to flee idolatry, but to become true worshipers: we are not only to refuse our confidence as sinners to all beside, whether to our works, or our penances, or the church, or righteousness of man of any kind, but we are to give our confidence, as sinners, to God. We do not know Him or worship Him as God if we do not apprehend Him as worthy of that confidence, as One who has resources in Himself for our condition, though it be like Abraham's, a condition of death, even of death in trespasses and sins. For God is One who can meet all necessities. That is His divine glory. A mere convicted sinner may have cleared the land of idols—like the sword of Joshua, he may go from city to city, and from king to king, to demolish and destroy the abominations of the land, but it is only the believing sinner that finishes Joshua's work, by putting the tabernacle of the Lord at Shiloh; and thus, while Ashtoreth and Baalim are removed, Jehovah is brought in—the full and worthy honors which are God's are given Him.

To come short of this is really to come short of the knowledge of God. It is for God the apostle pleads in r Cor. 15. It is not for the Father, nor for the Son, nor for the Holy Ghost. The rights and honors of each of the blessed Persons in the Godhead, the apostle, as instructed, knew how to maintain in their due place. But there it is God he pleads for—and that is the highest thought in some sense: and accordingly he touches, in the holy argument, on the closing dispensation of "God all in all." The glory that first broke out is seen at the last. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." "When he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all." But with this ineffably, inconceivably excellent advantage, that in the march of this glory, from the beginning to the end, it has unfolded and displayed itself in such ways as are never to be forgotten; but which, rather, have left their traces, their indelible traces behind them forever. The glory has passed before us, showing itself to us increasingly in its progress; and when at the end we see it, the glory still, it is as having thoroughly opened itself, so that we may enjoy it in all its fullness, in its inner parts and secrets, through the eternity of the new heaven and the new earth.

And I might refer to Gal. 4:8, as giving this view of God, that the disciples there, by returning to observances, and in that way sustaining their confidence in the flesh, were showing that they were leaving God and the knowledge of Him, because, if duly known, they would have seen that He had all that was needed by them even as sinners, and that days and months and years would therefore add nothing to them.

We all come short, sadly so, for our own soul's joy, in this knowledge of God according to His revelation of Himself—which is the only true or divine knowledge. He is of unspeakably blessed perfections, and most glorious is His goodness. He is love, as we read; and, therefore, every defect or mistake in the understanding of Him must reduce our joy and blessing, for love secures them to perfection.

The glory and delight of God in the works of His hands do not result so much from their own proper excellence, or because they display His handiwork, but His glory and delight are rather in them, because of their either imparting or receiving blessing; for such are the delights of love.

Thus the heavens, with the sun running its course through them, glorifies and delights Him, chiefly because they set themselves forth in blessing to the earth. And they are called His "witnesses," because they give the fruitful seasons which fill the heart with gladness.

So the church. It is not the gifts of His Spirit as displays of His power, but as serving His saints, and edifying them in light and comfort, that forms His value of them and delight in them. Accordingly St. Paul, carrying the mind of God with Him, says, "I would rather speak five words with my understanding—that I might teach others also—than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." Tongues were more the exhibition of Power—prophesying for the edification of the saints—and the apostle, having the mind of God, did therefore value the latter. And the nearer we are in spirit to God, the more we shall find our delight thus in blessing. Look at Gabriel. He stood "in the presence of God." In what character then did he come forth from that presence? As the messenger of glad tidings to the earth (Luke 1:19).

So the Beloved. He dwelt in the bosom of the Father. In what character and for what end did He come forth from that bosom? To give Himself up to the death of the cross for the rescue and life of sinners.

The more revealed the Beloved's nearness, the brighter was the expression of love or of God. The bosom was a place more intimate than the presence: and so was the death a richer expression of God than the message. But all this, and the like to it, abounding in Scripture, shows us God. God is love—and His glory, or the ways of His showing Himself, are accordingly. They are ways of blessing. All that properly came from Him—be it from the outer courts of His presence where servants wait, or the sanctuary of His bosom where the Beloved lay, the divine, eternal Son; be it in the gifts of His Spirit in the church, or in the works of His hands in creation—all in their divers measures and glories come forth to tell of Him in blessing, to reflect His person in diffusing fruits of liberty and gladness around. Thus we reach our God in divine understanding. And it is very blessed thus to see that the knowledge of God once associated itself with the certainty of our own blessing, so that to be without "hope" is to be without "God" (Eph. 2). And to refuse salvation, that is, not to obey the gospel, is the same, and will be judged the same as not knowing God (2 Thess. 1). GOD IS NOT KNOWN when the gospel is preached, if that gospel be not received by faith or obeyed. But all this is blessed. It casts the soul, as it were, on the necessity of blessing. God must be given up otherwise, for to know Him is to know blessing from Him. If I refuse the salvation of the gospel, I refuse God. I am without God in the world. If the soul has apprehended Him, it has apprehended One who blesses. And thus, as Scripture teaches, to know Him is life eternal (John 17:2). To know Him more and more is only the increasing communication of grace and peace (2 Peter 1:2). Sad it is, that He, being such a One, our souls have such short, and cold, and weak tales to tell of Him.

God is thus led up to our thoughts as acting in a fallen world where man had been found out by the law to be helpless as well as evil. It now becomes us to look at the way and action of the blessed God in such a world, and for such a creature as man, and that has been, and is redemption.

Redemption is God's principle in this world. Creation was for redemption, and not redemption after creation—because in counsel the Lamb offered Himself before the world was (Psa. 40, Heb. 10). And the saints are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). And in the garden of Eden itself, before the transgression, in the sleeping man, and the woman taken out of him, there was the type of redemption or life drawn out of death (Gen. 2); and the moment sin entered, the secret of redemption was published (Gen. 3:15).

But beside all this, Lev. 25, which is the special Scripture upon redemption, shows us, as I have observed, that redemption was God's principle; for there we are taught that neither the people nor the land could be sold forever, but always subject to redemption, or, as we say, by way of mortgage. And if the Israelite had no kinsman able or willing to redeem him or his Land, the Lord Himself would redeem both in the fiftieth year, or year of jubilee. Thus it is clearly apparent that redemption is God's principle. But what does it imply? The paying of a price, a full price for the thing or person sold. The purchaser of an Israelite, or of his possession, was to have the full money weighed out to him ere he could be required to restore the man or his land to the kinsman. The Scripture shows, in like manner, that our glorious Kinsman (the God of heaven and earth, manifest in the flesh) has by Himself paid the full price of our redemption, paid the debt that lay upon us and our inheritance. For in the balances of the throne of God (where righteousness was seated) the price was weighed, and weighed with the nicest hand, that no wrong might be done to any one through man having sold himself and all that he had by his sin. And thus Scripture calls Jesus a redeemer, in the sense of this glorious chapter on redemption (Lev. 25). He visited and redeemed His people. And the price that He paid was His blood, or Himself. "He gave himself a ransom for many"—"a ransom for all—to be testified in due time." "By his blood having obtained eternal redemption for us," "Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood." And many such passages tell us.

And the scales of the throne of God tested the weight of this price before it was paid. They had before tried the weight of the blood of bulls and goats, but they found all such blood to be light and insufficient. But when the blood of God's own Lamb, God's divine Son, was put into that balance, which was thus held by the hand of Him that sat on the throne, who judges right—the balance stood, the will of God, the Great Creditor, was satisfied. And by the satisfying of that will we are sanctified (Heb. 10). By the payment of that price our persons and lands are repurchased by our glorious Redeemer or Kinsman.

I do confess, to touch the doctrine of repurchase o redemption appears to me to touch the dearest thought in the mind of God, for it is, as Lev. 25 blessedly shows us, as I have said, His own principle And why is it so dear to Him? Because it glorifies His love, that is, Himself, above everything; for it shows such a way of self-sacrifice in God, that though this ransom, this price of redemption, demanded the Son from His bosom—the Isaac—yet the Isaac was delivered.

And what comfort to the conscience to know that the full price has been paid. What comfort to a poor redeemed Israelite it must have been to know that his creditor, to whom he had sold himself, had been paid the uttermost farthing of his demand by his gracious kinsman. The heart gets comfort from knowing that God's love was gratifying itself in the work of our redemption. But the conscience gets ease from knowing that God's righteousness has been honored and secured, that the demand of His throne has been fully answered. And the adequacy of this price of our redemption is variously witnessed to us. I would exhibit the testimonies to it thus:—

(1.) Before the world began it was fixed on at such a price in the covenant. Its sufficiency was even then recorded in "the volume of the Book" (Psa. 40; Heb. 10).

(2.)From the beginning of the world it was pleaded at such a price, whether shed on the altars of the worshipers, or put on the lintels of the houses of the redeemed (Gen. 3:8; Ex. 12). And as such price it was owned of God.

(3.)At the end of the ages it was offered on Calvary, and then in the rending of the veil God publicly owned (as before in the volume of the Book He had secretly or in counsel owned) the value of His blood as the ransom or price of redemption.

(4.) It is now preached by the Holy Ghost in the gospel as such sufficient remission of sins ( Heb. 10:4-17),

(5.) Finally, through eternity, its simple value is to be our praise. And thus is the price of our redemption variously witnessed to us. God delighted to own it, it is true. He was glorified in this well-settled purchase: His love was gratified also. The heart, as led by Scripture, may indulge itself in all these blessed thoughts and assurances. But I speak now only of the value that the soul finds in looking at the blood of Jesus as the money or the price paid down for our ransom. The conscience gets its desire from that fully answered. As such price, I again observe, the blood is to be trusted. And as such price it is called the "blood of the everlasting covenant," being that consideration—full, adequate, well ascertained and settled consideration—on which the covenant stands; which ratifies it, therefore; which gives it its character of being at once a holy and yet gracious covenant, a covenant preserving the holy rights or righteousness of God, and yet providing abundant grace for sinners. "This is the new covenant in my blood." No other blood could do. That of bulls and goats had been tried under the law, but it was found light and inadequate. And let me add, that no thoughts of God's love are to interfere with the demands of His righteousness. These demands must be answered, as they have been indeed in this redemption of sinners by the blood of Jesus. God's love, it is true, is without measure. But that love is not a mere emotion, a mere sentiment that can exercise itself as it will. It is rather that which, at an unutterable cost, provided redemption for the guilty, a righteous ransom for sinners, Love in God was that which sat down and counted the cost of making sinners its object. If we think of love, without believing the provision it made for the demands of righteousness, we are dealing with a sentiment of our own, and not with the blessed revelation of God.

But this rather by the way. I have here principally been considering redemption as that which marks God's purpose, and is the principle of His action in our world. It was His counsel before the foundation of the world, and will be celebrated in the praise that is to surround the throne forever and ever.

But in the scriptural character of redemption there is more than mere repurchase or ransom. In the ordinances of Israel a redeemer was a well-known personage, and his services, as set forth under the law, were various:—

(1.) He had to ransom the person or land of his brother if sold (Lev. 25). This I have been noticing.

(2.) He had to avenge the blood of his brother if shed by a murderer (Num. 35).

(3.) He had to raise up seed to his brother if he had died childless (Deut. 25).

Our blessed Lord Jesus fulfills all these duties, having in grace made Himself our Kinsman, by taking on Him the nature and the cause of the "seed of Abraham," though "God over all":—

(1.) He has ransomed or repurchased both us and our inheritance, which had been righteously forfeited by transgression, paying the full price, weighing out the uttermost farthing to His most just demands upon us, not indeed in silver and gold, but in His own most precious blood. (See Acts 20:28 Rom. 3:24, 25; Eph. 1:7-14; Col. 1:14; 1 Tim. 2:6; Heb. 9:12; 10:14; 1 Peter 1:18, 19.)

(2.)He avenges us on all our enemies, regarding us not as debtors (as in the previous case), but as injured, and as such standing up to judge our wrongs upon them that are against us, whether it be sin, the devil, death, or hell. (See 1 Cor. 15:54-59; Col. 2:15; Heb. 2:14.)

(3.)He quickens us or raises up seed to His brother—rebuilds His kinsman's house, by making us children of God again—a seed which Adam never produced, creating us anew, giving us to be the sons of God, which the flesh never did. (See Rom. 9:8; Gal. 3) And this is all. These things contain deliverance, life, victory, justification, and all we need; whether we look to ourselves dead in sins, but made alive to God, (to God, whom we have wronged and offended,) or to the devil, who has beguiled us. This doctrine of a Redeemer is the ancient religion—the only religion from the beginning—to unfold which, in all its incidents and results, is the great theme and purpose of the Book of God.

Thus the Redeemer is the great personage in the Book of God from beginning to end. His work sustains the praise of God forever. He was revealed long before the law, and has now survived the law-for we are now "dead to the law," but shall live to Him, as we live by Him, forever.

This notice of the Redeemer has presented Jesus, the Son of God, to us as Re-purchaser, Avenger, and Quickener. Such, as we have seen, were the three characters and duties that belonged to the Kinsman or Redeemer under the law, and which meet all our necessities. But our meditations now must lead us to the quickening Spirit, or to Jesus, the Kinsman, building up His brother's house.

At the beginning Adam was the channel of life from God to that family whom God had set up as His image here, over the works of His hands. But sin entered, and death by sin. Then came forth the promise of the woman's Seed, who was not only to have His own heel bruised, and to bruise the serpent's head, but also to become the channel of life to man now dead in trespasses and sins. And accordingly, by faith, Adam calls his wife "the mother of all living," thus owning that the dead sinner must now find life in a newly constituted fountain. Adam, as God's creature, becomes unfruitful to God, and the woman's Seed is revealed to faith as the channel (or source) of life.

From that moment faith apprehends this mystery, and looks for life, not to the flesh in Adam, but to the woman's Seed. According to this is the mystery of the barren wife, of which we see so much in the Scriptures. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, the wives of three leading Patriarchs, all belong to this class; and their barrenness, healed by the mighty power of God, sets forth the mystery of life received, not of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God—of God, not acting through Adam or flesh, as at the beginning—but in His own way of sovereign grace and power, as through the woman's Seed. This is very simple. Hannah, in after time, rehearses the same mystery. So Elizabeth in the times of the New Testament. But at length the true Seed of the woman is manifested, begotten indeed as the woman's seed, in the simple, sovereign energy of God, so that all His types now appear to have been but faint resemblances. For it is not a barren wife receiving strength to conceive seed, but a virgin—the new thing in the earth—"a woman encompassing a man"—a woman alone getting seed, according to the very first promise.

This is the new source, the new channel of all life. Jesus, the Son of God. God manifest in the flesh. The Word made flesh. The Lord from heaven made the Second Man, and as such "a quickening spirit," out of whom all life is now drawn—the flesh being dead in sin—cut off from the living God.

The first man had been "a living soul." The Second is a "quickening Spirit." The first had a life subject to death, or subject to be cut off from all communion with God. The Second carries a life which has triumphed over death and all its power. The first was of the earth, the Second is the Lord from heaven. The first was but natural, the Second is spiritual.

And thus all that live by Him (Jesus) are spiritual. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." He is not a living soul, but a quickening Spirit; and His nature gives character to that life which He communicates, as Adam's earthly nature would have given character to all that derived life out of it, had it not corrupted itself; and as now dead in sin, it gives character to all flesh, which is still taken out of it, and accordingly corrupt and dead as to God.

Thus the Son of God is the "quickening Spirit," not the Holy Ghost, but Jesus the Son. The Holy Ghost afterward dwells in the new creature, but that new creature is "in Christ," having derived its life out of Him who is the quickening Spirit. And that which is born of the Spirit being spirit, a distinct principle of life in us, it has its due actings, its own proper faculties and affections.

This is a blessed truth: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh;" and "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." As one has said, "The person of every believer bears the image of the two Adams." The image of the first Adam is wholly sinful, as Adam was. The image of the Second Adam, distinctly considered, is wholly righteous, as Christ is. This new life, drawn from the Second Adam, Christ, "the quickening Spirit," is spirit, the new creation, the new man, the inner man, the divine nature in us, life of the risen Jesus, which the Holy Ghost can own as His temple, to form, and fill, and nourish, and so strengthen with His own might, as to give it to stand in the battle with that which is still in us of the old Adam.

Thus do we see our own creation in Christ Jesus—and this meditation leads us to another on the Holy Ghost, which I would now for a little pursue. As soon as we become the Lord's we are "one spirit," being "joined unto the Lord," and such as the Holy Ghost can own. And in this age He does so own us. For it is the Lord in us whom He thus owns, and Him He can own, of course, everywhere. He could never own or adopt the flesh—and the law never took us out of the flesh—but the word of grace unites us as one spirit to the Lord. Nay, the Holy Ghost did not acknowledge flesh in un-fallen Adam, for Adam was not a temple of the Holy Ghost. But He can own even a poor sinner who, by faith, is one with the Son An individual body He owns, just because He finds the Lord there (1 Cor. 6:17-19). Our collective bodies or the Church He owns, because, in like manner, He finds the Lord there (Eph. 2:20, 21). He makes both of these His temples—dwelling in them—because the Lord is there in this age.

And thus the believer is not only "spiritual," as being by faith "one with the Lord," but he becomes a "temple of the Holy Ghost." The Holy Ghost enters and dwells in Him. Then the Spirit bears witness with the believer's spirit (Rom. 8:16). His own spirit tells him he is a child, because, by faith, he is one with the Son of God's love. And the Holy Spirit joins in this testimony, because He has entered us as owning the Son in us, and in us cries or breathes out, "Abba, Father.”

But even this "indwelling of the Holy Ghost" is matter of revelation, as well as our oneness with the Son, or our being "spirit." Therefore it is neither to be prayed for nor experienced, but believed. Sweet and refreshing, and God glorifying fruit of this indwelling will surely be known and enjoyed; and that more or less as we walk in holy diligent cultivation of the spiritual mind and in our communion with God. And that will be our experience. But at first we are not to put the soul to any effort to experience the indwelling of the Spirit, but to believe the revelation that He does indwell. And the happy way to reach experience is simply to have faith in the revelation. And it is, moreover, on this very ground that our responsibility arises. We are all debtors, under this age, to walk the Spirit, just because we have the Spirit.

From all this we gather that the Spirit is imparted by the word of the gospel—that "word" is the seed of new or spiritual life in us, and is received by faith; and then the Holy Ghost comes and dwells in us as the seal of our redemption. And this shows us there is connection, but not identity, between the "word of grace" and the Holy Ghost. The word of grace gives liberty to the sinner, purifies the conscience, makes us one with the Son, and thus prepares us for the entrance and indwelling of the Holy Ghost.

All the elect have been born of the Spirit, have derived their life unto God from the woman's Seed, the Head of the new creation. But not till Jesus, the Son of man, was glorified, did the Holy Ghost dwell in the elect, as now He does. He was given occasionally, at all times, to God's servants, for official service and testimony (Ex. 31; Num. 11:26; 1 Sam. 10:10; 1 Chron. 18:12). That was, however, different. For then, according to the order and notice of Scripture, the Holy Ghost was still in heaven, as in Isa. 48:16, but now dwelling in, and given to, the saints. He is owned by the same Scriptures of God as on earth (Acts 2:28; Eph. 4; John 14:16).

Our meditations thus conduct us through great things of our God, which, however, we must not dismiss till we look at resurrection, which, with its results, is to be the great presentation of the blessed and wondrous purpose of our God.

God's secret I judge to have been resurrection from the beginning. That which He graciously calls "my covenant" was established on that principle. It shows itself in God's dealing with Adam. It was intimated by the very first promise of the woman's seed, for that was something above nature, above flesh and blood. It was, as the prophet calls it, "a new thing in the earth." And though the Son of God became the woman's seed by incarnation, yet, in the mighty results of that, and in the character of the Bruiser of the serpent's head, indeed in all that we now enjoy, either of His person or His work, it is in resurrection we know Him. As the apostle says, "Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we Him no more." And accordingly we are now, even in this first promise about the woman's Seed bruising the serpent, to have respect to Christ in resurrection, for there, and there only, the full fruit and issue of that bruising is to be enjoyed. And afterward resurrection is connected with God's secret or covenant in His dealing with Noah. "The end of all flesh is come before me. Make thee an Ark of gopher wood." Here again resurrection was God's relief or resource when He took cognizance of the utter corruption of all flesh in His sight. For the ark was the chariot of God's salvation conducting Noah out of the old into the new creation. It was plainly the symbol of death and resurrection. "Everything in the earth shall die," says the Lord to Noah, "but with thee will I establish my covenant;" thus revealing the secret that His covenant, His purpose touching this creation, was to establish it, after death had ruined it, on the ground of resurrection.

So in His dealings with Abraham. Abraham was to have a son and an inheritance on the same principle. He and Sarah were without children, and without so much ground as to set his foot upon. But he was to have a seed as numerous as the stars, and an inheritance that was to stretch northward and southward, eastward and westward. And this was all called "God's covenant" with him, again plainly telling us that God's purpose, or secret, or covenant, rested on resurrection, rested on the setting aside the flesh in its strength and resources, in doing something beyond and above nature, which is the same as resurrection, or the quickening of the dead and strengthless body of Sarah. And accordingly Isaac is born out of the dead bodies of Abraham and Sarah. With Isaac is God's covenant. Ishmael may be blest—as he is—but with Isaac, and Isaac alone, is the covenant, plainly again telling us that God has taken resurrection as the principle of His action, the ground of His counsels. Man may receive blessing in nature, it is true, and in the divine overflowings of goodness such Ishmael promises are enjoyed every day, but the covenant is with Isaac. The real abiding and sure blessing is all, not in nature, or mere flesh, but in resurrection.

And the inheritance comes in the way of resurrection as well as the seed or heir. It lay under the bondage of corruption for a time. It was in the hand of the Amorite while he was filling up the measure of his sin. But then it is rescued from such a pit of corruption. It passes through its baptism or circumcision. It, and all its fruits, go through a process of sanctification. Like a leprous house, it is cleansed by the dead and living birds, and thus, as in resurrection, it is fit for the people who were in covenant with God; a risen inheritance becomes a risen people, and Canaan was thus a sample of the whole creation, which is now as dead in corruption, but to be raised in glory (Rom. 8).

The dispensation of the law then takes its course. But it was not God's covenant. It was man's covenant, because it took flesh and blood for its principle. It was flesh and blood, or the strength of the natural man which is addressed or operated on, and thus it was man's covenant and not God's. But it ended in the full conviction that man could get no blessing from it.

God is then manifest in the flesh. The Son of God becomes incarnate. In His own person He stands untainted. He renders to God a beauteous offering of perfect human fruit. Flesh and blood in His person was the loveliest piece of creation God ever looked on. It was indeed a meat-offering, an unleavened sheaf out of the earth. But it must be set aside ere the head of the serpent can be bruised by this promised and precious Seed of the woman. Not, however, set aside like flesh and blood in all beside as worthless, but set aside by a meritorious death, that by death this woman's Seed might destroy him that had the power or death, the old serpent who had brought death. And such is the end of flesh and blood in the Son of God. And therefore, in it, we are not to know Him anymore. We are to know even Christ Himself now as dead and risen ( 2 Cor. 5.), the Lord of a new creation, up to which He has cleared the way by fully meeting all the penalty which the old creation has incurred; arid in which new creation we (by faith in His atonement and victory for sinners accomplished by His death) stand with Him, a dead and risen people, the true circumcision, who rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

And I cannot close without alluding to a blessed instance of the Lord retiring to thoughts of resurrection as His relief, when He looked on the end of flesh. I mean in His visit to Jerusalem. (See Mark 11) He came down to Jerusalem. He looked on man then as of old He had looked on him in the days of Noah. But all was evil. And He said of it, represented in the barren fig-tree, "No fruit grow on thee henceforth forever." And having pronounced this doom on flesh, even in Jerusalem, the most favored nursery of it, He went out to Bethany. And what was Bethany but the witness to resurrection? There Lazarus was, who had actually been raised; and there Mary was, who had the faith of the resurrection. So that Bethany was the same relief to the thoughts of Jesus now, as the Ark of gopher-wood had been to His thoughts in the days of Noah.

And touching all this, faith is our duty. For faith takes us into God's counsels about the covenant. Faith says, as God says, "the end of all flesh is come before Me," and resurrection, the Ark of gopher-wood, becomes the believer's object or resource, as it is God's. It is the thing we look for, as it is the thing that the blessed God has purposed and promised. And thus faith takes us into God and His secret. Precious faith, we may well call it, that thus takes us up in spirit to that light in which the mind of God dwells, and in confidence to that work which God has accomplished.

And precious hope which carries us beyond the present Ishmael blessings of nature, and gives us desire for the inheritance in resurrection according to God. Creation is but the avenue or ante-room. Without faith in resurrection "the power of God" is not known (Matt. 22:29), "knowledge of God" is not attained (1 Cor. 15:34), for creation did not show God fully—but redemption, leading to resurrection, does.

But ere we leave this mystery of resurrection, I would look at the mind of the Spirit in 2 Cor. 5, as connected with it.

There is, I believe, in the opening of that chapter an allusion to the tabernacle and the temple, which were successively the dwelling-places of the Ark. The tabernacle conducted it through the wilderness, and it was a temporary thing made of clothes and boards, all liable to be soiled and torn, and broken in their passage. The temple in due time received it in the land, and then it entered its abiding place, which nothing could move or injure. And this temple was just as costly to the eye as the tabernacle had been unattractive. The tabernacle had appeared but as a dirty badger-skin house, for all the glory was then concealed, but the temple now appeared full of magnificence to every beholder. "See what manner of stones and what buildings are here.”

But withal, they both contained the very same ark. It was conveyed from one to another, as being the chief thing round which all else, be it unsightly or glorious, gathered. And so with us, as the apostle here intimates. We have the earnest of the Spirit, we have life of God in us, life from Jesus, the quickening Spirit, and the Holy Ghost Himself dwelling in us—and this is the great thing after all. This is as the ark, to which all, whether tabernacle or temple, was but secondary. This is the present glorious tenant of our "vile body," the earthly house of this tabernacle; by and by to be the glorious inmate of the "glorious body, the house of God not made with hands." The same ark, the same Christ, the same Spirit. And by this God shows that He already owns us as decidedly or simply as ever He will. "He that hath wrought us for the self same thing is God." God has put His hand to us already; God has got His own interest or kingdom in us even now, just as God had appropriated the tabernacle to Himself, unsightly as it was, as surely as He afterward did the beautiful temple.

And this is the simple joy of faith, that God has already laid His hand on us, and put His glory in us, so that it is His interest and His care to preserve us, according to which the Spirit given is "the earnest," as He is here called.

And in passing through these verses, the apostle, I judge, glances at Adam as created. "Since that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked." Adam was naked. His nakedness, it is true, expressing his unconsciousness or innocence, but, expressing his exposure or liability also; for, being only a creature, he was open to the assaults of the enemy. But when the saint reaches the house of God, then it will not be nakedness or exposure, but clothing and security. Then it will not be a mere creature, but a creature thus enclosed, as it were, in God's own workmanship, he himself wrought by God for a house built by God. And being thus clothed, there will be no nakedness, no liabilities any more. It will not be Adam again. And from this our apostle seems to draw a great inference. In ver. 16 he says, "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh." He had surveyed resurrection. He had looked in spirit at the temple in contrast with the tabernacle. The eternal house in contrast with the earthly house. He had owned God as the builder of that temple, and as the Giver of the Spirit to dwell in it forever. He had longed for the clothing of glory as something far beyond even the nakedness of innocence. And under the light and sense of all this, he now loses sight of flesh or old creation. He cannot return to it. He has seen "a glory that excelleth." He has seen resurrection or new creation in Christ, the Son of God, outshining all the old thing as begun in earth and in flesh. He cannot look again at flesh; yea, Christ Himself in the flesh has been outshone by Christ in resurrection.

Flesh in Christ had been lovely, it is true. It had a glory—as the law had a glory—but like the glory of the law, that glory of Christ in the flesh was now outshone, and the apostle had turned from it to the "more excellent" glory. Paul, as it were, could give up Christ in the flesh, when he got this view of resurrection.

And having taken before us this place, having shown himself in this attitude of soul, he shortly tells us the main character of this object that was now filling his vision, the feature of this new creation in the Son of God, which was now spread around him. That it was a grand system of reconciliation, devised and perfected by God Himself; by which, even now, the rebellious might enjoy in spirit a full return to God through Jesus, and walk before Him, not in the distance, and darkness, and death of their own condition in sin, but in the light and liberty, the assurance and joy of His own righteousness.

This was the present aspect of the new creation, by and by to be perfected in that state of resurrection to which he had been before looking, and the light of which had, as we saw, led him to these present thoughts. And such will be our eternity, shining in the righteousness of God with glorious bodies; living, moving, and having our being, not in Adam or flesh, but in Christ, and in glory. And at last there will be "the new heavens and the new earth," the former things will all have passed away. Even the kingdom will be given up, and "God" will be "all in all.”

He that sat upon the throne said, "Behold I make all things new.”

Woolen and Linen.

THE path of the Church of God is a narrow path, such a one that the mere moral sense will continually mistake it. But this should be welcome to us, because it tells us that the Lord looks that His saints be exercised in His truth and ways, unlearning the mere right and wrong of human thoughts, that they may be filled with the mind of Christ.

The case of Elijah judging the captains of the king of Israel, referred to as it is in the course of the Gospels, brings these thoughts to mind. (See Luke 9:51-56.) The Lord had steadily set His face toward Jerusalem, under the sense of this, that "He was to be received up." Something of the thought of glory and of the Kingdom was stirring in His soul. I believe the consciousness of His personal dignity, and of His high destiny, as we speak among men, was filling Him as He began His journey toward Jerusalem. "It came to pass, when the time was come that He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before His face." The expression of conscious dignity breaks forth from this, and gives character to the moment, and the disciples feel it. They appear to catch the tone of His mind, and therefore, when the very first village, through which the path of their ascending Lord lay, refused Him entrance, they resent it, and would fain, like Elijah in other days, destroy these insulting captains of Israel.

This was nature, the natural sense also of right and wrong. Why then did the Lord rebuke it? It was not wanting in either righteousness or affection. The day will come when the enemies of Christ, who would not that He should reign over them, shall be slain before Him. There was nothing unrighteous in the demand, "Wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, even as Elias did?" if we but think for a moment of the person and rights of Him who was thus wronged and insulted. Nor was there a wrong affection in this motion of the heart. Jealousy for their divine Master stirred it: this motion may be honored, the moral sense may justify it fully; but Christ rebukes it: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of," said the Lord to them.

But why, again I ask, this rebuke? Was it because they were exacting beyond the claims of Him whom they sought to avenge? No, as we have said, for such claims will have their day; but the disciples were not in the spiritual intelligence of the moment through which they were passing. They had not "the mind of Christ;" they did not discern the time so as to know what Israel ought to do (1 Chron. 12:32); they did not distinguish things that differ; they were not rightly dividing the word of truth. This was their error: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of, for the Son of man is not come to destroy menus lives, but to save them." It was not a wrong principle of moral action which the Lord discovers in their souls, but ignorance of the real or divine character of the moment through which they were passing. They did not perceive-what thousands (disciples of this day, as they were of that day) do not yet perceive-that the path of Christ to glory does not lie through the judgment of the world, but through the surrender of it; not through self-vindication, but through self-renunciation. This was their mistake, and this is what the Lord rebuked. They naturally thought that this indignity must be recognized; that if the prospect of glory was filling the mind of their Master, and if they themselves, in the spirit of such a moment, had gone before His face to prepare His way, whatever stands in the way must surely be set aside. Nature judged thus; and nature thus judging would be justified by the moral sense of man.

But the mind of Christ has its peculiar way, and nothing guides the saint fully but that: analogy will not do, there must be the spiritual mind to try and challenge even analogies. Certain correspondences were remarkable here: Elijah was but a stage or two from the glory, just going onward to be "received up," when he smote again and again the captains and their fifties. He was on a hill, full of great anticipations, we may say, and the chariots and horsemen of Israel and his heavenly journey were lying but a little before him in vision. The soul of their Master appeared to the disciples on this occasion to be much in company with that of Elijah. But analogies will not do, and the use of them here was confounding everything, taking the Lord Jesus out of His day of grace into the time of His judgments; inviting Him or urging Him to act in the spirit of the times of Rev. 11 when He was in the hour of Luke 4 The witnesses of Rev. 11 may go to heaven through the destruction of their enemies, fire going out of their mouth to consume them that hurt them, as after the pattern of Elijah; but analogies are not the rule. They must be challenged by that "mind of Christ" which distinguishes things that differ, and which teaches, in the light of the Word, that Jesus goes to heaven through a path which procures the salvation and not the destruction of men; through His renunciation of the world and not His judgment of it. Elijah avenged himself on the insulting captains and then went to heaven; the witnesses will ascend to heaven, and their enemies shall behold them: (Rev. 11:3-10 but Jesus takes the form of a servant, and is obedient unto death, and then God highly exalts Him. And so the saint: so the Church. "Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations. I appoint unto you a Kingdom, as My Father hath appointed Me.”

Here was the mistake: here was the not knowing what manner of spirit they were of. Analogy strongly favored the motion of their minds. The moral sense, which judges according to man's thoughts, and not in the light of God's mysteries, justified it. But He who divinely distinguishes things that differ rebuked it: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." The way of the disciples here would have disturbed everything, counteracting all the purpose of God. They remind me of the servants in the parable of the tare-field. The disciples were right according to man, and so were those servants. Is it not fitting to weed the wheat? Are not tares a hindrance, sharing the strength of the, soil with the good seed, while they themselves are good for nothing? The common sense of man, the right moral judgment, would say all this, but the mind of Christ says the very contrary: "Let both grow together until the harvest." Christ judged only according to divine mysteries. That is what formed the mind in the Master, perfect as it was; and that is what must form the like mind in the saint. God had purposes respecting the field. A harvest was to come, and angels were to be sent to reap it, and then a fire was to be kindled for the bundled and separated tares; but as yet, in the hour of Matt. 13, there were no angels at their harvest-work in the field, nor fire kindled for the weeds, but all was the patient grace of the Master. The Lord will have the field un-cleared for the present. The mysteries of God, the counseled thoughts and purposes of heaven, precious and glorious beyond all measure, demand this; and nothing is right but the path that is taken in the light of the Lord, in the knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven.

Nor is the Church to go to heaven by passing through a purified or regulated or adorned world, any more than Christ would have gone to heaven through a judged world. This is to be well weighed; for what is Christendom about? Just practically gainsaying all this. Christendom affects to regulate the world, to keep the field clean, to make the path to heaven and glory lie through a well ordered and ornamented world. It has put the sword into the hand of the followers of Christ. It will not wait for the harvest, nor will it go into "another village." It avenges wrongs instead of suffering them. It orders the Church on the principles of a well regulated nation, and not on the pattern of an earth-rejected Jesus. It is full of the falsest thoughts; judging according to the moral sense of man, and not in the light of the mysteries of God. It is wise in its own conceits.

I know full well there beat in the midst of it, a thousand hearts true in their love to Christ; but they know not what manner of spirit they are of. I know that zeal, if it be for Christ, though misdirected, is better than a chill at the heart, or indifference as to His rights or His wrongs. But still, the only perfect path is that which is taken in the sight of the Lord, in the understanding of the mysteries of God, and the call of God, and the directions of the energy of the Spirit, and not merely after the fashion or dictate of the morals and thoughts of men. And the call of God now demands that the tare-field be left un-purged, that the indignity of the Samaritans be left un-avenged, that the resources and strength of the flesh and of the world be refused rather than used, and that the Church should reach the heavens, not through the judgment of the world by her hands, but through the renunciation of it by her heart, and separation from it in company with a rejected Master.

“He that gathereth not with Me scattereth" (Luke 11:23), that is, he that does not work according to Christ's purpose is really making bad worse. It is not enough to work with the name of Christ: no saint would consent to work without that; but if he do not work according to the purpose of Christ, he is scattering abroad. Many a saint is now engaged in rectifying and adorning the world—getting Christendom as a swept and garnished house; but, this not being Christ's purpose, it is aiding and furthering the advance of evil. Christ has not expelled the unclean spirit out of the World. He has no such present purpose. The enemy may change his way, but he is as much "the god" and "prince of this world" as ever he was. The house is his still, as in the parable (see Luke 11:24-26). The unclean spirit had gone out: that was all; he had not been sent out by the stronger man; so that his title to it is clear: and he returns, and all that he finds there had only made it more an object with him. He finds it clean and ornamented; so that he returns, with many a kindred spirit, and thus makes its last state worse than its first.

Mistakes of this kind are very old mistakes. David was erring this way when he purposed to build a house for the Lord; but it was an error, though committed with a right desire of the heart. The time had not come for building the Lord a house, because the Lord had not yet built David a house. The land was still defiled with blood; and till it was cleansed there was no place for the rest and Kingdom of the Lord. David therefore greatly erred, yet not through double mindedness, but through ignorance. David's error was this:—that the Lord could take His throne in the earth before the earth was purged. The servants in the parable erred, on the other hand, in this, that the Church was made the instrument of purging the earth or the world. I might say, in the language of the Levitical ordinance, that David was about to put on a garment of "divers sorts," but the Lord prevented it. The motion of his heart—as far as it was expressive of himself—was acceptable with the Lord, but still it was hindered and disappointed. Something to tell us how jealous the Lord is, that His own principles be observed, and the position in which He has set His servants and witnesses be maintained; nay, that even the most affectionate and jealous desire of the saint, though it be valued by the Lord and get its personal reward or acceptance, can never reconcile the mind of the Lord to an abandonment of His thoughts and purposes. All would be confusion. David's thoughts, however innocent, and in some sense to be approved of God, would have confused everything, bringing about this strange result—the Lord taking His throne in an un-cleansed kingdom, and allowing His servant to give Him rest, before He had given His servant rest! What confusion this would have been! What an evil testimony these mixed principles would have produced! Who could have read in the result, had it been allowed, either the grace or the glory of the God of Israel?

The rebuke of Peter at Antioch was more peremptory; for Peter erred, not like David, through ignorance, but through the occasional fear of man, which, as we are taught, and as we experience, "bringeth a snare;" and it was something worse than confusion, it was perversion;—in Deut. 20:19, 20, we have an ordinance against perversion, or turning things to a wrong use. But still, even if it amount only to confusion, and that by the hand of the dearest and most loved servant, it is not to be allowed, as this case of David shows; as also in his other act of bearing the ark from Kirjath-jearim. The confusion there was not made excusable by all the true-heartedness and religious joy that attended it (1 Chron. 13): it could not be. Place by subjection was not to be given to it for an hour, and, however acceptable with God the motion of David's heart was, these ways must be withstood, because the way, and purpose, and counsel, and thoughts of the Lord are precious in His sight and are to stand forever. It is not that David and Peter were men of mixed principles, as the word is, or were wearing, as the-ordinance speaks, garments of woolen and linen; but these instances in their history illustrate a serious truth, which is much to be remembered, that the Lord will vindicate His own principles, in the face of even His dearest servants; that He will and He must withstand the motions of their hearts if they go to obscure or disturb His purpose and His testimony, even though such motions have much of a personal moral character in them, which He can accept and delight in.

But, beside these cases of David and of Peter, and of the disciples in Luke 9, who, in mistaken misapplied zeal for the Lord whom they loved, would have avenged His wrongs with a true and righteous affection, there is a generation who are seen apart from the way of God, through double-mindedness. Such a generation may be tracked all through Scripture, a people of mixed principles, as we say, who wear garments of woolen and linen, contrary to the call of God and the pure ordinances of His house. It may be humbling to oneself more than to most others, to look at such a generation, but it has its profit' for the soul, and its seasonableness in this hour. Lot was associated with the call of God. Like Abram, his uncle, he left Mesopotamia, and then after the death of Terah, his grandfather, he came with Abram into Canaan, and he was a righteous man, and there was no palpable blot upon him. Abram betrayed the way of nature, again and again recovering himself, with shame too, from the snare of Egypt and of Abimelech. But Lot was not so rebuked all the time he sojourned in Sodom. We only read of him that his righteous soul was vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked. But withal, he was sadly of the generation I am now speaking of. If Abram's garment was soiled now and again, it was not "a garment of divers sorts," but Lot's garment was "woolen and linen." He was untrue to the call of God: he became a citizen when he ought to have been only a sojourner, choosing well-watered plains, and taking a house in a city, when God's witness was going over the face of the country, from tent to tent, and from one tabernacle to another. Fewer mistakes are recorded of him; but what then? He was a man of mixed principles all his days, while Abram all his days was true to the call of God. And his life of false principles leads him into sorrows that are his shame, and that is the real misery of sorrow. He was taken captive while he lived in the plains of Sodom, and was nigh unto destruction after he had removed to that city, and he is still, and ever has been in the Church, the witness to us of one, saved it is true, but "so as by fire." He had no comfort in his soul; his righteous soul was vexed day by day. This is told of him, but no brightness is there: no joy, no strength, no triumph of spirit is told of him. The angels held much reserve towards him, while the Lord of angels was in nearness and intimacy with Abraham. He had to escape with his life as a prey, when Abraham was on high beholding the judgment afar off. And, what is full of meaning, we observe, that after he had taken his own course, and become a man of mixed principles, departing from the track where the call of God would have kept him, he and Abraham had no communion. Abraham will run to his help in the day when his principles were bringing him into jeopardy; but there is no communion between them. They could not meet in spirit. The saint of God will own him as his kinsman, and do him the kinsman's service; but there is no present communion between them. And this is no uncommon case to this day. Such was Lot. Instead of making his calling and election sure, he is one whom the people of God acknowledge on the extraordinary testimony of the Holy Ghost, rather than on the necessary and blessed credit of his assured call of God, or as one of that people of whom Paul could say, "Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.”

Nature prevails sadly and variously in all the recorded saints of God; in some more, in some less, just as the fruitfulness of the Spirit is seen in them in affections and services; in some thirtyfold, in some sixty, and in some an hundred. But this is a different thing from being men of mixed principles. It was so with David. Nature prevailed in him at times, but he was never a man of mixed principles. He never deliberately sat down in a connection which was untrue to the call of God under which he had to act. His character was formed by that call, and his ways were according to it: but it was not so with his friend Jonathan; his life was not formed by the call of God, and the energy of the Spirit working in the rule of that call. He acted nobly and graciously at times, but still he was not the separated man. He was not true to the pure principles of God made manifest in that day. He was a man of faith, and of many endearing spiritual affections, such as give him, without reserve, a place in the recollections of the saints. But withal he was not where the call of God would have had him. Saul's court was a defiled, even an apostate, place then. God was with David then. The glory was in the wilderness with him; the dens and caves of the earth hid it in that day. The ephod was with David, the priest, the sword of God's strength, the witness of victory. The flower and promise of the land were with him also, those who gain a name in the cave of Adullam, or in the day of vengeance at Ziklag. Such sons of Israel as these, such as shine afterward in the court and camp of the kingdom, were all with David then. The call of God was then to the caves and dens of the earth with the son of Jesse, and the energy of the Spirit worked there; but Jonathan was not there. That is the sad story. Jonathan was not where the glory was, where the priest with the ephod was, where the rejected man after God's own heart was, where all the promise of the coming kingdom was. That is the sad story. Jonathan was lovely individually, he had done some noble deeds, and was breathing some heavenly affections; and to the end, we may be sure, David lived in his heart; and many misgivings about his own father, we may be equally sure, that same heart was troubled with. He never personally gave David anything but joy; while we know those who companied with him, even in his afflictions, were betimes both a shame and a sorrow to him. But still his position was not true to the call of God in that day. It kept him apart from all that was of God then, though he had the Lord with himself personally. Till he falls on Mount Gilboa, he is with the camp and the court that fall with him there, dishonored and defeated as they were, having ere then lost the glory, and all that was of God nationally departed from them. A common case he illustrates. Was it ignorance of the call of God, or double-mindedness? We will not say; but still in this our day there is, like Jonathan, many a saint, dear to one's heart and outshining in personal graces the larger number of the day, who is found apart from the place where the energy of the Spirit, according to the rule of the dispensation, works. Noble and generous deeds are done by them individually; but their connection is their dishonor, as it was Jonathan's—linked with a world which is speedily to meet the judgment, and in courts and camps which are to lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that be slain with the sword. "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon." Jonathan illustrates this, and this is known abundantly to this hour. But Jonathan cannot sanction the place; Jonathan's presence did not make Saul's camp or court other than it was. The only impression the soul has of Lot in Sodom is that of a tainted Lot, and not of a sanctified, I purified Sodom. According to the word in Haggai, “If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No. "But" If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, “It shall be unclean.”

There are however "things that differ," and the soul exercised of God is to distinguish them. There is a soiled garment, which is however, at the same time, not a mixed garment, a garment of "divers sorts," of "woolen and linen." Our way under the Spirit is to keep our garments undefiled; and anything other or less than that is not the way of communion with the Lord. But still, a soiled garment is not a mixed garment; nor is a garment with a thread now and again of another sort, to be mistaken for one whose texture is wrought on the very principle of "woolen and linen." Scripture, ever fruitful and perfect, exhibits characters formed by what has been termed "mixed principles" and characters which occasionally become tainted by such, but are not throughout formed by them. The life of Lot, as we have been seeing, was formed of mixed principles throughout. There was double-mindedness in Lot; I say not the same with the same clearness of Jonathan; but still the life of each of them, from the outset to the close, when the scene of temptation set in, was tainted by connection with evil. Lot, though associated with the call of God, was a man of the earth; Jonathan, though witnessing the sorrows and the wrongs of David, continued in the interests of the persecutor unto the end. Their life was thus formed by connections, which were untrue to the way of God and the presence of the glory all through. The garment upon each of them was made of divers sorts, of woolen and linen. But look at Jacob in contrast, and in him we find one of another generation; he was a cautious man, who had his worldly fears and schemes and calculations; and they greatly disfigure several passages of his life. His building of a house at Succoth, his buying of a piece of ground at Shechem, were things untrue to the pilgrim life, the tent life, which a son of Abraham was called to know. But Jacob is not to be put with Lot; his life was not formed by Succoth and Shechem, though we thus see him there, and out of character there, but he was a stranger with God, in the earth. And in the closing days of his pilgrimage, when he was in Egypt, though with many a circumstance around him there to tempt him to have it otherwise, we have many a beautiful witness of the healthful and recovered state of his soul.

The days, for instance, of Ahab king of Israel, king of the ten tribes, were fruitful in illustrations of this kind. There were in those days an Elijah and a Micaiah, a Jehoshaphat and an Obadiah, beside seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal; and all these in the midst of the foulest departure from the ways of God, the times of Jezebel and her abominations.

But all these are not to be classed together. To use the language of "woolen and linen," or "garments of divers sorts" I might say, there was no mistaking the cloth of Elijah and Micaiah. The leathern girdle of the one, and the prison bands of the other, tell us what men they were, and bespeak their complete separation.

The seven thousand we cannot speak of particularly; we know them only under the hand of God as "a remnant according to the election of grace," and that in an evil day they "had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal." But Obadiah was not Elijah, and again, as between him and Jehoshaphat, we are still to distinguish: such was the moral variety illustrated for our admonition in these days.

Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, of the house and lineage of David, was a separate man, but a man who, at times, and that too pretty largely, is found in defiling connection. He was of Jacob's generation, though it may be more faulty than Jacob in that generation. Vanity betrayed him again and again, as worldly policy betrayed the patriarch. Jehoshaphat joined affinity with Ahab. In the day of the battle he put on the royal apparel; a garment sadly and shamefully of "divers sorts;" and it was near costing him his life, as the same clothing nearly cost Lot his life in the city of Sodom. He acted there in terrible inconsistency with the sanctity and separateness of the house of David. But, though all this is so, I am not disposed to put Jehoshaphat in company with Lot. His life was not one of mixed principles; his garment was not advisedly wrought of "woolen and linen" together, though sadly and shamefully untrue to the testimony which became a son of David and a king in Jerusalem. Very noble deeds were done by his hands, and very dear affections were breathed by his spirit, and the God of his father owned him; but, like Jacob, and to a more painful extent, he was betrayed; he was betrayed into connections which make his testimony a very mixed, imperfect thing. It was not merely nature prevailing at times—that may be seen in all, in those of the best generation, in Abraham, and in David. It was not merely a soiled garment whose blot is palpable, but a garment the texture of which is scarcely discernible whether indeed it be of one sort, or a condemned garment of "woolen and linen;" so shamefully do the "divers sorts" appear in it at times, but not throughout.

But the garment which Obadiah wore in those days cannot be mistaken. It needs no close inspection to make out what it is. The "divers sorts," of woolen and linen, are to be seen in it from head to foot. His life was of that texture. It was not that he was betrayed at times merely, nor was it that his way was stained at times, but his whole life evinces a man of mixed principles. He was a godly man, but his ways were not according to the energy of the Spirit in that day. He had respect to the afflictions of the prophets, hiding them in caves from the persecution, and feeding them there; but all the while he was the adviser, the companion, and the minister of king Ahab, in whose kingdom the iniquity was practiced. The "linen and woolen" thus formed the garment that he wore all his days. It was not the leathern girdle of Elijah; and, when they come together, this difference is preserved and expressed most strikingly. Obadiah is at some effort to conciliate the mind of Elijah. He reminds him of what he had done for the persecuted prophets of God in the day of their trouble, and tells him that he fears the Lord; but Elijah moves but slowly and coldly towards him. Painful all this between two saints of God; but it is far from being rarely experienced; it is a common thing I would say; but much more commonly felt than owned (1 Kings 18.).

There could have been no blending of the spirits of Abraham and Lot after Lot took the way of his eye and of his heart, and continued in that direction—a citizen of Sodom. We are not told this, it is true, in the history; but we find from the history, as I observed before, that they never meet after that, and we may easily know why. Because such things are real and living things still. The Abrahams and the Lots of this day do not meet; or if they meet, it is not communion. They do not enjoy refreshment in the bowels of Christ. Abraham rescued Lot from the hands of the king Chedorlaomer, but this was no meeting of saints; they could not blend. And if the people of God cannot come together in character, they had better be asunder. In spirit they are already severed.

So was it, in a far more vivid expression of it, in Elijah and Obadiah. The man with the leathern girdle —God's stranger in the land in the days of Ahab—could not be found much in company with the governor of Ahab's house. But they meet in an evil day, a day which may remind us of the day of the valley of the slime pits, the day of Lot's captivity. Ahab his master had divided the land with Obadiah to search for water in the day of drought. The Lord his God had put the sword of His servant Elijah over the land to give it neither rain nor dew; and, in an hour of Obadiah's perplexity and of Elijah's commission under God, they meet.

The occasion is one of interest and meaning, and has lessons for our souls. There is effort on the part of Obadiah, and reserve with Elijah. This is naturally and necessarily so. Obadiah seeks to combine with Elijah, but Elijah resents the effort. Obadiah calls Elijah his lord, but Elijah reminds him that Ahab is his lord. For this will not do. We are not to be serving the world and going on in the course of it behind each other's back, and then, when we come together, assume that we meet as saints. This will not do; but the attempt to have it so is very natural, nay, it is very common to this hour. But Elijah acted in character, faithful to his brother now as he had been to his Lord before; and beautiful this is, and precious it ought to be whenever we get it. Obadiah had been walking with the world in Elijah's absence, and Elijah cannot let him now assume that he was one with him, though in his presence. Obadiah pleads, "What have I sinned that," etc. But why this? Elijah had not accused him of sinning. Why this alarm and perturbation of spirit? Elijah was not hazarding his life, or safety, or any of his interests; he was disturbing nothing that belonged to him. Why this alarm and taking refuge in the thought, or finding his plea in the fact, that he had not sinned? It is a poor low state of soul when a saint has only the consciousness of this—that he has not sinned. Is that enough to enjoy the communion or understand the mind of an Elijah? Had not Obadiah been in Ahab's palace when Elijah was by the brook Cherith? That is the question, and not the question whether he had sinned or not. Had Obadiah been with him over the barrel of meal or the cruse of oil? Elijah had not told him that he had been sinning; he need not shelter himself or commend himself thus. But Elijah cannot but let him know that their spirits were not blending; for they had met from different quarters. "Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets?" What was all this to the point? Elijah had not been going over his past history: it was better to leave the most of it untold; and it is a miserable thing for a saint of God to be trading after this manner on his character or his past ways. This is no title, no sufficient title, for the present communion of the saints, nor competency for it either.

And these are Obadiah's thoughts, and refuges, and pleadings, now that he is in the presence of a faithful witness of Christ. He had not sinned, and in days past he had done service. What a low sense of the common calling of the people of God the soul must have that can think it can be maintained, and that saints can go on together on such a title and competency as this! If the world be served when we are behind each other's back, though we may not have sinned, as people speak, and though we may have had character and done services in past days, we are not fit for each other's presence as saints of God.

Have we been in the heavenlies or in Ahab's court? Have we been making provision for the flesh or desiring the things of Christ? There are other things than pleading "we have not sinned," or trading on established character and past services. These are what alone fit us for the true communion of saints. Obadiah was governor over Ahab's house; how could such a one as Elijah be comfortable or at ease with him?

He felt reserve, and he expressed it, in manner if not in words. Obadiah is the man of words on the occasion—that was natural also, and is the ordinary style of such occasions or of such intercourses between Elijahs and Obadiahs to this hour. For indeed it is not communion when there is effort on the one side and reserve on the other. This is surely not the communion of saints. But it all has a voice in it, and is common enough now-a-days. They were not in company with each other: that was the fact. Their spirits could not blend. The garment of divers sorts, of woolen and of linen, which a saint of God could not but wear in Ahab's court, ill-matched the leathern girdle of a separated suffering witness of Christ. We see this saint of God thus in his party-colored dress but once; but this voice is thus full of holy, serious meaning to us. The poor widow of Zarephath, whom Elijah had lately left, enjoyed the full flow of Elijah's sympathies; and that humble, distant homestead, with its barrel of meal and its cruse of oil, had witnessed living communion between kindred spirits, and presented a scene which had its spring and its reward with God. But Elijah and Obadiah were not thus in company with each other. Elijah is too true to let Obadiah come near to him in spirit, or to answer the effort he was making to conciliate him.

There is character in all this, I am fully sure. Abraham and Lot never met, as we have said, after they parted on Lot's lifting up his eyes on the well-watered plains of Sodom. There was moral distance quite sufficient to keep them asunder, though a Sabbath day's journey might have brought them together. Very significant evidence that is! And so Elijah and Obadiah: their meeting was no meeting. As well might Abraham's rescue of Lot out of the hands of Chedorlaomer be called a meeting. This was not "the communion of saints." This was not refreshment of bowels in the Lord. But all this repeats for the heart an oft-told tale.

Ebed-melech, in the days of another Elijah, was a man of this Obadiah generation, not however so strongly marked as his elder brother. Like him he loved the prophet of God, and in the face of an injurious and insulting court, and, hindered by the timid policy of the king, pleaded for Jeremiah and served him with gracious personal service. But he was not a witness as the prophet was. He was afraid of the Chaldean (Jer. 39:17), the sword of the Lord's anger, and such was not the condition of the Lord's witness. But his weakness was not despised in the rich grace of God. His measure received its measure again, and in the day of the judgment of the Lord, Ebed-melech got his life for a prey, when Jeremiah was had in honor. Ebed-melech was saved then, but that was all; the prophet was rewarded.

Thus have we seen a generation in other days, who, though the people of the Lord, show themselves sadly apart from the place to which the call of God would have led them. Such was Lot and such was Jonathan, and such were Obadiah and Ebed-melech. It was more or less double-mindedness in them, or love of the world in greater or smaller power in their souls. But such a generation is abundant to this hour. Saints are seen in situations and connections from which the call of God would separate them just as surely as it would have kept Lot out of Sodom. But this may be added with equal sureness in a multitude of cases—this impure connection arises from ignorance, or want of hearts instructed in the Kingdom of God. They have not listened to the voice of the mysteries of the Kingdom, but conferred with flesh and blood. They have not heard the Shepherd's voice calling them outside. They have not understood the Church as a heavenly stranger on the earth, and that connection— religious connection—with the world is Lot in Sodom, or an Israelite with a garment of "divers sorts, of woolen and linen.”

The world is marked for judgment even more surely than Sodom was; ten righteous would have spared the cities of the plain, but nothing can cancel the judgment of "this present evil world.”

Here let me add, however, that the distinction of Lot and of Jonathan may be seen in many a soul now a-days. Lot had nothing to sanction Sodom to him: all that he knew to be of God was outside; and even nature had no plea to plead for Sodom. Abraham and Sarah were outside, the witnesses of the call and presence of God, and his kindred in the flesh. All that was sacred in religion or nature were outside; and providences pleaded with him to the same end, for the plains of Sodom had already brought him into jeopardy of life and liberty, and warned him to dread the city. It was the world and nothing else that was heard in, Lot's heart in favor of Sodom. But with Jonathan nature had a plea. All that was of God, it is true, was in that day outside Saul's court and camp; but the claims of kindred, the voice of nature, nay, the authority of nature, were known and felt from within. The father and the family were there, though David and God were not.

And so now-a-days, there is many a thing that pleads from within. Nature, this moral and religious, plead there; opportunities of service and testimony, obedience to authority maintenance of order, the dangers and evils threatened to the social wellbeing, the peace of families and example to children and servants—these things are pleaded, and they all come from within, and put in various claims for the course of the world.

But these, and all such put together, call never speak to the saint, or plead with him with the authority of the call of God. If the Church be a „heavenly stranger on the earth, alliance with the world defiles her, nay, ruins her as a witness for God; and to defile after this manner, to seduce from the place of testimony, is the enemy's purpose, and has been so from the beginning. Was not the serpent in the garden seducing Adam from the place the Lord God had set him in? Nay, earlier even than that, are we not told about the angels that sinned, that they kept not their first estate?

So afterward with Israel, "ye are my witnesses," says the Lord of them; but the enemy prevailed till the testimony was gone. "His house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

Here were successful attempts of the enemy, to drag from the place in which God had set His witness. It is not merely that there was a soil, or a blemish, or a rupture, but a revolt, a departure, a yielding up to the enemy the great purpose or thought of God.

The contrary effect precisely, in the precisely like attempt, as has been observed by another, is seen in Jesus. "If thou be the Son of God," said the tempter. His design was to lead Him to the abandonment of His place, His place of perfect and entire subjection which knows only God's will. But all was perfection and victory in Jesus, but in Jesus only, whether before Him or after Him; for the witness of this dispensation has been as corrupted as others. That which was set to be a heavenly stranger on earth, the companion of the rejected Christ, has faithlessly allied herself with the rejecting world; and what ruin can be more complete than this?

The "man of God," who was deceived by the old prophet, would have had security in the divine principles, had his soul been alive to them. The word received, it is most sure, would have secured him; for it expressly forbade his eating and drinking in that place. But divine principles would have been his shelter also. The word he had received, when he set out on his journey, was founded upon them, as we may easily perceive. For how, I ask, could the Lord employ an unclean vessel? The old prophet had been clearly laid aside as unfit for the Master's use. He was dwelling in the very city where the Lord had a business to be done, but he was passed by. The Lord had gone down to Judah to get a witness against the altar at Bethel, though a saint of His own was living on the very spot. How could "the man of God" think that the Lord could employ the prophet of Bethel as His vessel? He had already passed him by. He had already, after this manner, treated him as unfit for His use, according to the principles of His own house, that an un-purged vessel is not fit for service (2 Tim. 2) How could the man from Judah be careless about all this? The word he had received was enough to tell him how this principle of God's honor was at that moment, so to speak, alive in God's thoughts, because he was enjoined neither to eat nor to drink in that unclean place, nor was he to return by the way that he came: so particular was the commandment in keeping him apart from all fellowship with that against which He was employing him to testify. And yet "the man of God" is beguiled to receive a message as from the Lord, by the hand of one who was in contact and communion with the unclean thing, against which he has been brought all the way from Judah to testify! Strange forgetfulness! sad and shameful carelessness about the principles of the house of God. A saint as he was, and servant as he was, faithful too in the face of the offers of a king—his carcass is not to come to the sepulcher of his fathers (1 Kings 13.).

When the eye is single the whole body is full of light. There is consistency and harmony in the action, when the moving principle is maintained single and unmixed. Micaiah's action in 2 Chron. 18 was of such a nature, but Jehoshaphat's body was then anything but "full of light." In the hour when he left Micaiah to go to the prison of king Ahab, while he himself accompanied that same king of Israel to the battle, who would have known him to be a saint of God? where was the body "full of light" then? It was the clouding and overcastting of all the illumination which he really partook of. There was no harmony, there was no pure and cloudless noonday, marking the pathway of Jehoshaphat then; no making of "his calling and election sure," as the apostle speaks. It is happy to follow that dear man a stage further (2 Chron. 20). For in the days of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, Jehoshaphat's body is again "full of light." He acts as a son of David ought to act; he seeks the Lord, the Lord only; and all is faith and victory and joy. But when in the earlier day Micaiah was sent to the prison of Ahab, and he himself went to the battle of Ahab, where was the son of David then? The whole body was full of darkness.

The captives, returned from Babylon to the land and city of their fathers, in like manner read us an instructive lesson on this subject of the garment of "divers sorts;" and their history affords both encouragement and warning. They do not refuse to accept the punishment of the nation's sin, and therefore they take their place in subjection to the Gentile power whom God had set over them for their sins. They accept the favor of Cyrus, of Darius, and of Artaxerxes, in the spirit of the injunction "honor to whom honor, fear to whom fear." They speak of a Gentile power as "the great and noble Asnapper," and evidently feel grateful for the kindness shown to them by one of these powers after another, blessing God because of them, and ready-hearted, I am sure, to pray for the life of the king and of his sons. But with all this they were a separated people. Their refusal of Samaritan connection was as earnest as their acceptance of the favors of the Gentiles.

The zeal, and revenge, and clearing of themselves of the mixed principle and of the abomination of bringing Greeks into the temple to pollute that holy place, was as simple and firm as it would have been in the days of Joshua or of David. They refused the garments of divers sorts. If they would have worn that livery, it might have saved them much trouble in the progress of the work of their hands, which was also the work of the Lord; but they could not and would not. The thing was not according to the ordinance; and they would not.

Paul might have saved himself a prison if he had accepted the testimony of the damsel at Philippi; but it was Samaritan help again, or something worse, and he could not; and the man who on that occasion refused the garment of woolen and linen must therefore, for his faithfulness, have his feet made fast in the stocks and wear prison bands. But all is right in the end, whether with Paul or the returned captives. Their God pleads their cause.

Here, however, some new and serious points of instruction on the matter of mixed principle occur. I feel I can pursue this with a sense of personal need and application. The further history of the captives from Babylon warns us as well as instructs us. They refuse the strange alliance, they will not wear the garment of divers sorts; but then they wear their own garments without a girdle—that is the moral of the story. They go to build their own houses when the Samaritan enmity stops their building of the Lord's.

This is warning to us, as it was shame to them, and the Spirit of the Lord has to awaken them as from sleep and intoxication. They served themselves when the service of the Lord was interrupted. Ease and indulgence and self-pleasing take the place which had now been left vacant. Haggai and Zechariah have to call them to the girding of their loins, and the trimming of their lamps. By no means do they send them back to make terms with the Samaritans. They do not tell them that they erred in refusing the garment of divers sorts; they only call on them to gird up the pure garments they were wearing—to do the Lord's work in the Lord's way, though Samaritans might again withstand them.

All this is full of meaning for us. The Spirit of God, let the exigency be what it may, will never have the saint in "woolen and linen;" but at the same time He would have the pure garment girded. An un-girded garment, though pure, is not after His mind; and often does He find that wanting as in the days of Haggai and Zechariah, and this is our deep rebuke—a pure position kept with little spiritual grace.

The returned captives were in the right position. Their place was a better place than that of their brethren, who dwelt still in the distant cities of the uncircumcised, and they did well, as I have been saying, when they refused alliance with the Samaritans; such alliance would be but the wearing of garments of divers sorts, of "woolen and linen." This they did not do, but those who stand such a trial fail under another. Though they thus refuse to wear mixed clothing, their garments, as we have seen, were not girded, and even worse than that, they were sadly soiled and spotted. These returned Jews were doing much worse than their brethren who were off in the distant lands of the heathen. Their ways in the Holy Land were deeply rebuked by the ways of their brethren among the Gentiles.

The Jews abroad had redeemed their brethren from the heathen, to whom they had been sold; while the Jews at home, or the captives returned to Jerusalem, were selling their brethren for debt (Neh. 5). What a sad sight! What a humbling and searching fact! Is there not much that is miserably kindred with this to be known still? This is something like "form without power." "The Kingdom of God is not in word but in power." Position may be quite according to God, but the practical godly grace, with which it is filled and occupied, may be scanty and poor. And how should this warn us not to count on the virtue of a merely pure and separated position! If it be trusted in, or held with an un-judged and unwatched heart, even they among the uncircumcised may rebuke us. Much love and service is often to be found within, as I have been speaking, while little of the power of holiness, and of the mind of heaven, accompanies those who go outside. What I mean is this—that there is often less grace and moral power in the purer position than there is in the defiled connection. As with Jonathan. David loved him dearly, and yet he was not David's companion. But the companions of David's temptations were at times a trial to him, talking on one occasion of even stoning him, while Jonathan personally was always pleasant to him. What an outside and an inside was this! And yet David's outside place was the place of the glory then, and his companions were in the right position. But what exhibitions are all these! And yet we see the same around us at this hour. There is no lesson I would more press on the attention of my own soul than this—and I think I can say I value it: Position without power, principles beyond practice, jealousy about orthodoxy and truth and mysteries, with little personal communion with the Lord—all these the soul stands in constant fear of and in equal judgment and refusal.

The earnestness about many and many a right thing that was found at Ephesus, the stir and activity even of a religious nature that prevailed in Sardis, and the orthodoxy of Laodicea, were all challenged by the Lord, and we deeply justify the challenge (Rev. 2, 3)

The tithing of mint and anise, when judgment and mercy were passed by, was exposed by the divine mind of Christ; and in the Spirit the saint joins in the exposure, "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt.”

We refuse position without power, as we would principles without practice; or truth and mysteries and knowledge without Christ Himself, and personal communion with Him. But in the stainless, perfect page of the Word we find all honored, and nothing thoroughly according to God but where each and all is in its place and measure honored. As he says Himself, "These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." But here I will turn aside for a moment to what is a sweet relief to the soul: that to know Him in grace is His praise and our joy. We instinctively think of Him as one that exacts obedience and looks for service. But faith owns Him as the One that communicates; that speaks to us of the privileges rather than of the duties; of the love, and the liberty, and the blessings of our relationship to Him, rather than of the corresponding returns from us.

This is truth, beloved, we need also now-a-days, though it may be a little beside my leading thought just now.

The call of God separates us, but we need the Spirit of God to occupy the place according to God, and the loving devoted mind. "Salt is good," the divine principle is the good thing. But salt may lose its saltiness’. The right position or the divine principle may be understood and avowed, but there may be no power of life in it.

What variety of moral instruction is thus provided for the soul in the words of the Lord! But let us still listen, and we shall still learn, for the mine is never exhausted.

The history of the two tribes and a half has its peculiar instruction for us. They do not stand in company with the Lot of the days of Abraham, though in some respects they may remind us of him. For, as I have just said, it is wonderful what a variety of moral character and of Christian experience puts itself before the soul in the histories of Scripture; the lights and shades are to be traced, as well as the leading features. This strikes us forcibly in the history of this people. They are not Lot, but they remind us of him. Like him their history begins by their eyeing well-watered plains good for cattle. While yet on the wilderness side of the Jordan they think of their cattle: Abraham, their father, had never been on that side of the river. Moses had said nothing to them respecting those plains of Gilead. Nor did their expectations, when called out from Egypt, stop short of the land of Canaan. But Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh had cattle, and they sue for an inheritance there, on the eastern or wilderness borders of the river, for there cattle might graze to advantage.

They had no thought whatever of revolting, of sacrificing the portion of Israel, or of separating themselves or their interests from the call of God. But their cattle would be nicely provided for in Gilead, and there they desired to tarry, though, of course, only as Israelites under the call of God. How natural! how common! They hold to the hope of the people of God, though not walking in the suited place of that hope. In power of character and conduct they were not a dead and risen people, but they are one in faith with such. They would declare their alliance with the tribes which were to pass the Jordan, though they would remain on the wilderness side of it themselves. They were not, like Lot, a people of mixed principles, who deliberately form their lives by something inconsistent with the call of God; but they were a generation who, owning that call and prizing it, and resenting the thought of any hope but what was connected with it, are not in the power of it. Again I say, how common! This is a large generation. We know ourselves too well to wonder at this.

Moses is made uneasy by this movement, and he expresses his uneasiness with much decision. He tells this people that they bring to his remembrance the conduct of the spies, whom he had sent out years before from Kadesh-barnea, and whose way had discouraged their brethren, and occasioned forty years' pilgrimage in the wilderness. There was something so unlike the call of God out of Egypt, in the hope of Canaan, thus to linger in any part of the road; and Moses resents it. Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh have to explain themselves, and to give fresh pledges that they by no means separate themselves from the fellowship and interests of their brethren; and they do this with zeal and with integrity too. In this they are not like Lot. They would not have taken the eastern Gilead had this been the forfeiture of their identity with those who were going to the western—the Canaan inheritance.

But Moses cannot let them go as Abraham parts with Lot; they are not to be treated in that way. Neither does the judgment of God visit them, as it did the unbelieving spies who brought up an evil report of the land. But Moses eyes them and fears for them, and has his thoughts anxiously and uneasily occupied about them. What shades of difference do we find in these different illustrations of character! What various textures may we inspect in these woolens and linens! Different classes among the people of God, and shades of difference in the same class. We have Abraham and Moses and David, we have Lot and the tribes in Gilead and Jonathan, we have Jehoshaphat and Obadiah—and yet these are the people of God. Sodom was Lot's place, Saul's court was Jonathan's place, and the palace of Ahab was Obadiah's; while Abraham dwelt in a tent, David in a cave of the earth, and Elijah with the provisions of God at the brook Cherith, or in the Gentile Sarepta. Here were distances! And so as between Jonathan and others, for Jonathan was (strictly speaking or distinguishing) neither Lot nor Obadiah, though we set them, generally, together as a class. Neither was Obadiah Lot exactly. And as between Lot, Jonathan, and Obadiah, on the one side, and Moses, Abraham, and Elijah, and such like, on the other, we see the Reubenites, Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh—a generation who will not admit the thought of their separation from the call and the people of God, but who betray in moral action that which is inconsistent with that call. And this is indeed a common class—nay, this is the common class. (See Num. 32) One's own heart knows it full well. Joshua, who had the spirit of Moses, holds this same people in some fear and suspicion, just as Moses had done before. He calls them to him, and he addresses to them a special word of exhortation and warning when the time of action in the camp of God begins (Josh. 1). Little things of Scripture are at times very symptomatic. It is so, I doubt not, in Josh. 1 As to the tribes generally, Joshua has but to say, "Prepare you victuals, for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it." They were free; they were in traveling order; they had but to know the hour of departure. Like Noah, all was ready for the voyage into another world, and he needed only time to put himself and his family into the vessel. The two tribes and a half were not so equipped in traveling order. They were encumbered, and instinctively, as it were, Joshua acted to them as towards a heavy baggage in the hour of decamping. He had to challenge them—at least he felt he had—to remind them of their pledges to Israel, for they were not under his eye as if they had been altogether Israel themselves. In measure he is to them what the angel who came to Sodom was to Lot.

So mark this same people again in Josh. 22 The ark had gone over, the feet of the priests bearing it had divided the waters of the Jordan, and the ark had gone over conducting and sheltering the Israel of God;' and it is true that Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh had gone over too. But Israel and the ark remained there, and the two tribes and a half return—return to settle where their brethren had but wandered; return to present this questionable and strange sight —Israelites finding their place and their interests outside the natural boundary of their promised inheritance, find a home where the ark had never rested.

Ere they set out on the return, Joshua seems to feel this, and specially warns and exhorts them; and as soon as they make the passage and but touch the place which they had chosen, they begin to feel it also. They are not quite at ease in their souls, and they raise an altar. This is full of language in our ears. An Israelite in the land of Gilead at this living day of ours understands it.

Jehoshaphat was, after this manner, uneasy when he found himself on the throne with Ahab, and under the pressure of that uneasiness (which attends on the heart of a true Israelite in an uncircumcised place) he asks for a prophet of the Lord. This is the language of the renewed mind in a foreign land. The two tribes and a half raise an altar and call it "Ed." It was a witness, as they purposed, of this: that Israel's God was their God; that they had part in the hopes and calling of the Israel of God. But why all this? Had they taken up their portion in Canaan they would not have needed this; they would have had the original and not a reflection. Their souls would have had the witness within, and "Ed" would not have been needed without. But they were not in Canaan, but in Gilead. Shiloh was not in view, and they had to give themselves some artificial, some secondary help, to prop up their confidence by some crutch of their own devising, that it might be known that they and the Israel of God were one. All this is full of meaning, and is much experienced to this day. Some witness of what we are, and who we are, as saints, is craved by the soul, and called for by others, when we get into a position in the world which the call of God does not fully combine with. Some artificial or secondary testimony is felt desirable; the countenance or acceptance of others, the examination of our own personal condition, with many a restless action of the soul, reasonings with ourselves about it all, remembrances of better days invoked now and again. Something of this secondary character, like the altar at Ed, is needed, where the soul is not fully simple and faithful: all this is still known, and all this, I judge, is the writing on this pillar in the land of Gilead. Lot's wife, the pillar of salt, has a writing upon it, which the divine Master Himself has deciphered for us; and, I doubt not, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, would have us, under His anointing, read and learn the writing on this pillar, which Israelites outside the natural bounds of the promised inheritance once reared. It may warn our souls, if we love quietness and assurance of heart and deep peace of soul, not to return and find a settlement where the Church of God has duly found a pilgrimage. Does my soul read this writing? Every heart knows its own humiliation. These disturbances of spirit, this demand of Jehoshaphat for a prophet of Jehovah, this altar of Ed, witness both for and against us. They bespeak the saintly or renewed mind, but they bespeak it in such conditions, such exercises and experiences, as a more single-eyed and full-hearted love to Christ would have spared it.

Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh are challenged a second time. Joshua and the tribes in Canaan have to challenge them now, as Moses had to do before. Their altar in Gilead awakens suspicions now, as their desire to settle in Gilead had awakened suspicions then. This is all natural and common, and all symptomatic. Saints in Gilead are not such as "make their calling and election sure" to the hearts of their brethren, at least without some inquiry. A great stir is made among the tribes who were now in Canaan, and within the conscious possession of Shiloh, and of God's tabernacle there, and an ambassage is formed to inquire into this matter. Something, they know not what, struck their eye, which, at least, appeared to be at variance with the common call of Israel; and it must at least be explained. What a living picture this is! We are surely at home in such a spot as this, and know the customs of the place. I believe the apostle, in the epistles to the Corinthians, is very much, in the New Testament form, a Phinehas, a son of Eleazar the priest, crossing the river to inquire after the pillar in the land of Gilead. There were things at Corinth which alarmed Paul, symptoms of sad departure from the common call of the heavenly saints. They seemed to be "among the princes of this world," to be "reigning as kings on earth." His ministry in the meekness and gentleness of Christ was getting to be despised, and others were getting to be valued because of their place and advantages in the world. The way of the schools, the way of the wisdom of men, was regaining its authority, and saints seemed as though they were returning to settle where the Church was to be but an unknown stranger. In the zeal of Josh. 22, Paul crosses the river, and, whatever the discovery may be, the action is a painful one, and the need of it a scandal in the history of the Church. The tribes of Gilead may satisfy Phinehas and his brethren more than the Corinthian saints satisfy the apostle; all such differences and varieties in the conditions of the people of God are known at this hour; but there is this common sorrow and humbling that the calling and election is not made sure; and we have either to take journeys, or to occasion journeys, that our ways, our Ed, our altars, our pillars, may be inspected and inquired after, instead of our resting and feeding together, and together gathering around and learning the secrets of the tabernacle and altar at Shiloh. In the New Testament, the Church at Corinth was the Israelite on the wilderness side of the river. The apostle's fears respecting the saints there were not respecting Judaizing influences; nor were they on account of the working of liberty of thought and infidel speculations, at least at the time of the second epistle; nor were they respecting the turning of grace into lasciviousness. These fears occupy the mind of the Spirit in addressing other saints and churches: but at Corinth it was worldliness that was dreaded. A certain man appears to have gained attention from the saints there; he was one who had, both from nature and from circumstances, something to attract the mere worldly heart of man. He was, I believe, as modern language speaks, a gentleman. He had a fine person and an independent fortune, and the Corinthian saints had evidently to a great extent got under his influence. To some extent they were beguiled. They had begun to look on things after the outward appearance; they were suffering a man to vaunt himself and to take occasion to be somebody among them, simply from the advantage he had from nature and from circumstances.

Such a bad condition of things the apostle had to withstand. Affection and confidence towards himself had been withdrawn in measure, because he had no such advantages to boast, which they were thus beginning to prize. And surely he was purposed not to affect such things at all. And though he had certain things "in the flesh" of which he might glory, still he would glory rather in his infirmities. He would be "weak in Christ." The natural or worldly advantages which this man had and used among the saints, our apostle exposed, as Moses would expose the woolen and linen garment or other mixtures. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers," says he to the saints now; as Moses had said of old to Israel, "Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together: thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen together." But Paul himself was not thus yoked and clothed; indeed he was not. He was among the foremost of the tribe of Judah in crossing the river.

Surely I may say all these things illustrate profitable lessons for us. We are not to be mixed up with that from which the call of God separates us; we are not to wear the garment of divers sorts. But if we refuse it and put on only the pure clothing, take the place and be found in the connection to which the call of God leads, we are to be there with girded as well as with an unmixed garment, and to watch too that it be unspotted. The world is that, not to the improvement of which Christ calls us, but to separation from which He calls us. But if, beloved, in form we take the separated place, let us seek the grace and the power which alone can adorn and furnish that place for the Lord!

And such is the character of the hour we are now passing through. The god and prince of this world is allowing the citizens to sweep and garnish his house, and they are led to admire it afresh in its adorned condition, and to flatter themselves that it is by no means the same house that it once was. But this delusion is solemn; it is as much the home of the unclean spirit as ever it was, and only the more suitable for him because it is swept and garnished, and ere long he will use all these operations of the citizens for his final and most awful purposes. "He that gathereth not with Me scattereth." Is our labor according to the purpose of Christ? Is it by the rule of His weights and measures? If it be not, though we may labor in His name, we are but doing what the enemy will soon turn to his own account. In the parable, the sweeping and the garnishing turn out at the last to have been all for the unclean spirit, to whom the house as much belonged as ever it did, though it be true he had left it for a season. Whatever is done for the improvement of the house is done for the master of the house, and Satan is the god of this world as much as ever he was, and will be till the judgment of it by the Rider on the white horse takes place. The lengthened peace of the nations which Europe so long and till lately enjoyed, gave abundant Occasion to the sweeping and garnishing of the house. In man's way the sword was turned into a plowshare. The earth and its resources, man and his skill, have been produced and cultivated beyond all that ever was known; and the house looks a different thing from what it was, now that it is under these cleansing and ornamenting labors of its servants. Advancement in letters, morals, refinement, and religion is immense; peace societies, temperance societies, literature for the million, and music for the million, with the general confederacy of the nations, loudly tell all this, as do the boasts in the age, which are heard every hour. But this diligence is according to the mind of the real master of the house, or the god of this world. This is serious truth: "He that gathereth not with Me scattereth." This is a serious word: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." It is confusion. It is the illicit weaving of woolen and linen together. But, beloved, while one says this, the heart owns it, and would be humbled by the confession of it, that many a dear honest-hearted servant of Christ, who is laboring with a mistaken purpose, and working—not by the weights and measures that are according to the standard of the sanctuary—with a true affection and zeal, and singleness, and diligence, and fervor, may be far before others of us who have clearly discerned their mistake.

I dread indifference even more than mixture. I would shun Laodicea more than Sardis. May we learn the lesson in both its features—Sardis, with its religious bustle which gave it a name to live, will not do; Laodicea, with its selfish cold-hearted ease and satisfaction, will not do. Let us be diligent, but in pure service; occupying talents, but occupying them for a rejected Master; looking for nothing from the world that has cast Him out, but counting on everything in His own presence by and by!

Latter Times and Last Days.

IT is sorrowful to have to look at departure from God and His truth. It has been said of the Lord, that His soul tasted some of its bitterest grief when He looked on the treachery of Judas; and ours should be thus affected when we think of the corruptions of Christendom, which are as the kiss and the treason of that apostle again.

“The mystery of iniquity" had begun to work, we know, in the times of the apostles. And as the small seed cast into the ground carries with it the form and character of all that which the harvest is afterward to manifest and yield, so the leaven that was working secretly then, to the keen eye of the apostles, had in it the varied evils which, in the progress of corruptions, were to be manifested in Christendom: so that Paul guards Timothy, even then, against the pravities of both "the latter times" and "the last days," as though Timothy himself were in the midst of them.

But these pravities are different. In "the latter times," there was to be a departure from the word of God, or from the religion of "the truth," which alone is "godliness." Consequently, there would be the giving heed to something beside the word or the truth, to "seducing spirits," and to "doctrines of devils" or demons. Then there would be speaking lies in "hypocrisy," making an exhibition of religion; and all this, man's religion, or what man has got up, would "sear the conscience," deaden it to God's religion, or the religion of "the truth," fortified, as it would be, by man's forbiddings and "abstinences," which must be complied with and practiced, though so contrary to the thoughts and gifts of God. (See 1 Tim. 4)

“The last days," on the other hand, were not to be religious, but infidel. Superstitious vanities were to yield to man's will and independency. He was to be a lover of "himself"—and in the train of that, "heady," "high-minded," "disobedient to parents," "covetous," and such like—all qualities and characters making him as one who had broken the bands, and cast away the cords; not religious, but willful. And in the midst of all this, there was to be "the form of godliness"— the appearing to return to that from which "the latter times" had departed, "godliness," or the religion of "'the truth;" but when looked at a little within, no "power" would be found, though so much "form" (2 Tim. 3).

Now, here we see a great moral reaction. All the cords and bands of the latter times cast away, and man indulging and admiring himself—religious vanities gone, but human independency asserted.

And these things have had their day. In the two great characteristic eras in the history of Christendom we get them—in the times before and since the Reformation. In the times before, there was man's religion, opposing itself to "the truth," and having its own vanities; in the times since, there has been man's pride, asserting his independency and breaking off all bands. These have been the characters of the two eras. Of course, something of the second was known during the time of the first, and much of the first still lives in the second; but these different pravities are the characteristics of the two eras.

And what is a very solemn truth; I judge that the history of corrupted Christianity will close by a kind of coalition between the two pravities. And of such a state of things we get the pattern in the time of our blessed Lord, when there was both man's religion and man's independency combined against Him—the unclean spirit who had gone out, having himself returned and brought with him other spirits more wicked than himself. There was Jewish religion, which would not let its votaries go into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; and there was Jewish infidelity, which could say, "We have no king but Cæsar.”

This is a solemn, fearful prospect. Surely, there is real godliness in the midst of it all, but the sight is dreadful.

And there was the counterpart of what I have been here tracing in the wilderness. There was, first, the calf (Ex. 32), and then the captain (Num. 14:4)—the two ensigns of Israel's departure from God during their journey from Egypt to Canaan, the two distinct standards of rebellion, set up at different eras.

The calf was the ensign of man's religion. Man had his own gods then, and in eating and drinking, and rising up to play, man exhibited his religion, spake "lies in hypocrisy." The captain was the ensign of man's infidelity. Man was his own god then, setting up himself to be his own leader, as though answerable to none, breaking all bands, "heady, high-minded.”

Thus, by either the calf or the captain, man is ever working against God and His truth. It is either false religion or a spirit of independency that is moving him. And reaction is always to be dreaded, even by the true worshipers and saints of God, as is also the spirit of the times in which they live. Both of these must be watched against. If the present time exhibit much of the spirit of human pride and independency, of course the saint has to guard against his being drawn into the stream, and carried along the current which has set in around him. But he has also to guard against reaction. He has to watch and pray, that he may not, through dread and hatred of the present form of evil, look for relief by a return to the previous form of evil. I believe there is very much of both of these at present. I see people who should have stood only in godliness, dropping into the current of these times; and in the revival of high church principles, and return to ecclesiastical ceremonies and observances of human imposition, there is evident unhealthy reaction among men of a sensitive righteous order of mind, who have marked the evil that is now predominant, and have sought relief from it, but have been turned back by Satan to the religiousness of man, and away from "godliness" or the religion of "the truth." In avoiding the evil of the last days, they have returned to that of the "latter times," at least in measure.

In the midst of all this condition of things, I believe the poor saint of God, who "walks in the truth," as John speaks, may now see himself. His path is narrow. Errors on both sides threaten and attract him. The calf and captain are erected as the standards of rival parties. The Word alone is to work his passage through both, and the Spirit to lead him along; he is to "purify himself by obeying the truth through the Spirit." He has been baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and his soul is to know its living communion according to this. He has to continue in the things that he has learned, knowing the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make a child, a fool in this world's wisdom, wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. He is to know that, as a sinner, he is cast only upon God—as a sinner, God, and not man, has to do with him—and taking his sin, yea, and his sins too, into the presence of God, he is to see them there, by faith, washed away by the precious blood of a precious Sacrifice. He has to keep his conscience unclouded, so that his living communion with the Father and the Son, in the life of the Holy Ghost, be not broken, and to walk in the love of the Spirit with all who are Christ's, and in the charities of the gospel with all men—doing withal what service among the saints he may be fitted to do by gift of the Spirit, and what service to others he may have opportunity or power to fulfill—waiting daily for the Son from heaven, who, he is to know, has delivered him from the wrath to come.

Signs, and Waiting for the Son from Heaven

IN the calculations of men, events unfold themselves as the effects of causes which are known to be operating. But, while this has its truth, to faith it is God who, in His supremacy, holds a seal in His hand, to stamp each day with its character or sign.

This gives the soul a fresh interest in the passing moments. Some of them may be more impressively stamped than others, but all are in progress, and each hour is contributing to the unfolding of the coming era. Like the seasons of the year, or the advances of day and night. Some moments in such progresses may be more strongly marked than others. But all are in advance. Every stage of Israel's journey through the desert was bringing them nearer to Canaan, though some stages were tame and ordinary, while others were full of incident. And so, all the present age is accomplishing the advance of the promised Kingdom, though some periods of it have greater importance than others.

These "signs of the times," or sealing’s of God's hand upon the passing hour, it is the duty of faith to discern, because they are always according to the premonitions of Scripture. Indeed, current events are only "signs," as they are according to, or in fulfillment of, such previous notices.

The words of the prophets made the doings of Jesus, in the days of His flesh, the signs of those days (Matt. 12:17, 23). And have we not words in the New Testament which, in like manner, make all around us at this moment, or in every century of the dispensation, significant? Have not words, which we find there, abundantly forecast the characters of such dispensation, and given beforehand the forms of those corruptions that were to work in Christendom? They have told us what now our eyes have seen. They told us of the field of wheat and tares—of the mustard seed which became a lodging place for the fowl of the air —of "the unmerciful servant," or of the Gentile not "continuing in God's goodness"—of the great house, with its vessels unto honor and dishonor, and of other like things. They told us of "the latter times," and of "the last days," and they still tell the deadly character which that hour is to bear that is to usher forth the man of sin, and ripen iniquity for the brightness and the power of the day of the Lord.

All this is so. And let me ask, if every hour be, after this manner, bearing its character, or wearing its sign, what mark are we, individually, helping to put upon this our day? Is the purpose and way of the Lord ripening into blessedness, at all reflected in us? or, are we, in any measure, aiding to unfold that form of evil which is to bring down the judgment? If the times were to be known and described according to our way, what character would they bear; what sign would distinguish them?

These are inquiries for the conscience of each of us. We cannot be neuter in this matter. We cannot be idle in this market place. It may be but in comparative feebleness, but still, each of us, within the range of the action of Christendom, is either helping to disclose God's way, or to ripen the vine of the earth for the winepress of wrath.

The Lord tells us that the sign on which our faith must rest is that of a humbled Christ, such a sign as that of Jonah the prophet. Our faith deals with such a sign, because our need as sinners casts us on a Savior, or a humbled Christ. But hope may feed on a thousand signs. Our expectations are nourished by a sight of the operations of the divine hand displaying every hour the ripening of the divine counsels and promises, in spite of the world, and in the very face of increasing human energies.

These signs may be watched, but watched by the saint already in the place and attitude assigned him by the Spirit. They are not to determine what is his place, but they may exercise him in it. His place and attitude is beforehand and independently determined for him—waiting for the Son of God from heaven.

This posture the Thessalonian saints assumed on their believing the gospel (1 Thess. 1:9, 10). The apostle seems afterward to strengthen them in that posture, by telling them that from it they were to be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:17). And again afterward, he seems to guard them against being disturbed in that attitude, against being tempted to give it up, by further telling them, that that place of expectation should be exchanged for the place of meeting ere the day of the Lord fell in its terrors on the world and the wicked (2 Thess. 2:1). And still further. This very posture of waiting for the Son from heaven had induced a certain evil. The Thessalonian saints were neglecting present handiworks. The apostle does not in any wise seek to change their posture, but admonishes them to hold it in company with diligence and watchfulness, that, while their eye was gazing, their hand might be working (2 Thess. 3)

Other New Testament scriptures seem also to assume the fact, that faith had given all the saints this same attitude of soul; or, that the things taught them were fitted to do so. (Seer Cor. 1:7; 15:23; Phil. 3:20; Titus 2:13; Heb. 9:28.)

Admonitions and encouragements of the like tendency, that is, to strengthen us in this place and posture of heart, the Lord Himself seems to me to give, just at the bright and blessed close of the volume.

“I come quickly" is announced by Him three times in the twenty-second of Revelation—words directly suited to keep the heart, that listens to them believingly, in the attitude of which I am speaking. But different words of warning and encouragement accompany this voice.

“Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book" (verse 7). This warns us, that while we are waiting for Him, we must do so with watchful, obedient, observant minds, heedful of His words.

“Behold, I come quickly; and My reward is with Me, to give everyone according as his work shall be" (ver. 12). This encourages to diligence, telling us, that by the occupation of our talents now during His absence, on the promised and expected return He will have honors to impart to us.

“Surely, I come quickly," is again the word (ver. 20). This is a simple promise. It is neither a warning nor an encouragement. Nothing accompanies the announcement, as in the other cases. It is, as it were, simply a promise to bring Himself to His expectant people. But it is the highest thing, the dearest thing. The heart may be silent before a warning and before an encouragement. Such words may get their audience in secret from the conscience. But this promise of the simple personal return of Christ gets its answer from the saints. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." "Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

Thus the Lord, after this various and beautiful manner, does the business of the Spirit in the apostles. His own voice, in these different and striking announcements, encourages the saints to maintain the attitude of waiting for Him.

Great things are a doing. The Church, the Jew, and the Gentile, are all in characteristic activity, each full of preparation and expectancy. But faith waits for that which comes not with such things. The rapture of the saints is part of a mystery, a part of "the hidden wisdom." The coming of the Son of God from heaven is a fact, as I judge, apart altogether from the history or the condition of the world around.

The Lord Jesus in John 11, 12

THESE chapters show us in what different channels the Lord's thoughts flowed from those of the heart of man. His ideas, so to speak, of misery and of happiness, were so different from what man's naturally are.

The eleventh chapter opens with a scene of human misery. The dear family at Bethany are visited with sickness, and the voice of health and thanksgiving in their dwelling has to yield to mourning, lamentation, and woe. But He, who of all had the largest and tenderest sympathies, is the calmest among them; for He carried with Him that foresight of resurrection, which made Him overlook the chamber of sickness, and the grave of death.

When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, He abode two days longer in the place where he was. But when that sickness ends in death, He begins His journey in the full and bright prospect of resurrection. This makes His journey steady and undisturbed. And, as He approaches the scene of sorrow, His action is still the same. The issue, as I need not say, comes in due season to vindicate this stillness of His heart, and this apparent tardiness of His journey.

But the sense of resurrection, though it gave this peculiar current to the thoughts of Jesus, left His heart still alive to the sorrows of others. For His was not indifference, but elevation. And such is the way of faith always. Jesus weeps with the weeping of Mary and her company. His whole soul was in the sunshine of those deathless regions which lay far away from the tomb of Bethany; but it could visit the valley of tears, and weep there with those that wept.

But again—when man was lifted up in the expectation of something good and brilliant in the earth, His soul was in the holy certainty that death awaits all here, however promising or pleasurable; and that honor and prosperity must be hoped for only in other and higher regions. The twelfth chapter shows us this.

When they heard of the raising of Lazarus, much people flocked together from Bethany to Jerusalem, and at once hailed Him as the King of Israel. They would fain go up with Him to the Feast of Tabernacles, and antedate the age of glory, seating Him in the honors and joys of the kingdom. The Greeks also take their place with Israel in such an hour. Through Philip, as taking hold of the skirt of a Jew (Zech. 8) they would see Jesus and worship. But in the midst of all this Jesus Himself sits solitary. He knows that earth is not the place for all this festivity and keeping of holy day. His spirit muses on death, while their thoughts were full of a kingdom with its attendant honors and pleasures. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.”