II.The old was RESTRICTIVE — the new UNIVERSAL.

III.The old was TRANSIENT — the new ETERNAL.

IV.The old was SENSUOUS — the new SPIRITUAL.

1. This will must, first of all, be viewed as the will ordained of old by the Father — the eternal decree of the infinite Jehovah, that a people whom He chose should be sanctified and set apart unto Himself.

2. This wilt by which we are sanctified was performed of the ever blessed Son.

3. This work is applied to us by the Holy Spirit.

II. THE EFFECTUAL SACRIFICE by which the will of God with regard to the sanctity of His people has been carried out. "By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ."

1. This implies, first, His incarnation, which of course includes His eternal Deity. Jesus Christ, very God of very God, did certainly stoop to become such as we are, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh.

2. All this is implied in the text, because it speaks of the offering of the body of Christ. But why does it specially speak of the body? I think to show us the reality of that offering; His soul suffered, but to make it palpable to you, to record it as a sure historical fact, He mentions that there was an offering of the body of Christ.

3. I take it, however, that the word means the whole of Christ — that there was an offering made of all Christ, the body of Him, or that of which He was constituted.

III. THE EVERLASTING RESULT.

1. The everlasting result of this effectual carrying out of the will of God is that now God regards His people's sin as expiated, and their persons as sanctified. Offered, and its efficacy abides for ever.

2. They are reconciled.

3. They are purified.

(U. H. Spurgeon.)

II. THE ATONEMENT. What controversies have raged round it! What a stumbling-block it is even now to many! Let us beware not only of endeavouring "to explain the efficacy of what Christ has done and suffered for us beyond what the Scripture has authorised" — this is a danger on one Side — but also let us beware of endeavouring to explain it away, and of "confining His office as Redeemer of the world to His instruction, example, and government of the Church" — this is danger on the other side. Both dangers are real ones. A great statesman once said in eloquent words of our own Church, "Take the history of the Church of England out of the history of England, and the history of England becomes a chaos without order, without life, and without meaning." And may we not say with all reverence, "Take the history of the death of Christ out of the history of the world, and the history of the world becomes a chaos without order, without life, and without meaning"? We must cling to the fact that Christ is "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," and that by "the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all," there was made "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." The fact of the Atonement is revealed, but how it is efficacious, or why it was " necessary," we are nowhere fully told. Still, we are not to make it more mysterious by shutting our eyes to what is told us; and we must not forget that the doctrine does not stand alone. It should never be dissociated from the great truths of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. Take the doctrine of the Atonement in connection with these two central doctrines of the Christian faith, and then these three things follow, each of which is worthy of serious consideration:

1. He who bore our human nature, and wrought human acts, and died on the Cross for us was a Divine Person. "Not, indeed, God alone; for as such," it has been truly said, "He would never have been in the condition to offer, or to die; nor man alone, for then the worth of His offering would never have reached so far; but He was God and man in one person, and in this person performing all those acts; man, that He might obey and suffer and die; God, that He might add to every act of His obedience, His suffering, His death, an immeasurable worth, steeping in the glory of His Divine personality all of human that He wrought."

2. From the fact that He was God the Son, the Second Person in the Blessed Trinity, who is one with the Father, it follows that we must never, even in thought, imagine a discordance of will between the Father and the Son, nor so represent the Atonement as if there was a clashing of will within the Godhead. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself," and "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And what greater proof of love can be imagined than this?

3. In considering the doctrine of the Incarnation, we are to remember that it was not the death of a man which brought about such great results. He who died for us was the "Second Adam," the Head of the redeemed humanity. If it is His Godhead which gives His offering its infinite worth, it is His position as the Second Adam which qualifies Him to represent us. It is often said that if you would win back to self-respect some poor despairing wretch who has fallen so low as to be utterly reckless, and lost to all sense of shame, you must begin by making him understand that there is some one who cares for him yet. And if we can learn at the foot of the Cross of Jesus Christ that though we are sinful and hardened, it may be, and despairing, yet, in spite of all, God loves us with that yearning, passionate love which led Him to give Himself for us, then I think that our hearts will be broken, and we shall yield to the power of that love which knows no rest, and can never tire until it has found those it died to win.

(E. C. S. Gibson, M. A.)

1. Christ's death was a self-immolation.

(1)His self-proprietorship.

(2)His unexampled philanthropy.

2. His death was a self-immolation for sin. He died to put away sin: to put it away in its guilt-form — in its idea-form — and in its habit-form. His death was a self-immolation for sin unrepeatable. "One... for ever." Sufficient for all lands and ages.

II. THE PRESENT:ERA OF CHRIST'S REDEMPTIVE HISTORY. "Sat down at the right hand of God."

1. Rest.

2. Heaven.

III. THE FUTURE ERA OF CHRIST'S REDEMPTIVE HISTORY. "From henceforth expecting," &c.

1. Christ has enemies. Fallen angels and sinful men.

2. These enemies He will subjugate. Some will be subdued by the moral influences of His truth and love; and some by the resistless might of His retributive justice. Lessons:

1. The repugnance with which humanity should regard sin.

2. The true test by which we may determine the worth of our Christianity. The absence of sin.

3. The certainty of Christianity's ultimate triumph.

4. The absurdity of waiting for any further helps to conversion.

(Homilist.)

1. One sacrifice serves for all God's Church — not only one priest, but one offering.

2. This one offering of Christ serves effectually for all God's Church. Not only are all His people cleansed, they are all fully and eternally cleansed, by it.

II. We must now follow our Lord INTO HEAVEN. The text carries Him there in His human nature; and more than that — in the character He bore here in His human nature, the great Expiator of our sins. The apostle's language intimates to us —

1. The repose of Christ in heaven, a repose indicating the completeness and perfection of the work He had performed on earth.

2. The high exaltation of Christ in heaven.

(C. Bradley, M. A.)

1. He offered His body (Isaiah 1.6; PEa. 69:21; Isaiah 52:14). These were sufferings of no common kind.

2. But, in suffering, He offered His mind. The sufferings of our Redeemer's soul must be considered as the soul of His sufferings.

3. He offered in sacrifice His glory — by which we understand how glory will follow up the shame. Now, our Redeemer's feelings were not blunted or stoical — nay, they were delicately fine; and when they called Him " a deceiver of the people," "a glutton, and a wine-bibber"; when they said He had a devil — that He was not fit to live: He must have felt the indignity with great acuteness.

4. He offered in sacrifice the consolations of heaven's protection (Matthew 27:46).

5. He offered in sacrifice His life (John 15:13; Romans 5:8).

6. He offered in sacrifice His will. He prayed that the cup of suffering might pass from Him (Matthew 26:42); yet He gave His person into the hands of those who put it to torture: He voluntarily resigned Himself to that train of overwhelming and distressing ideas, that threw His mind into an agony and bathed Him in a bloody sweat.

II. FOR WHAT PURPOSE DID HE OFFER THIS SACRIFICE? Whenever we think, or read, about the sufferings of Christ, we are immediately directed to sin (1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 2:24; Isaiah 53:5). This Man offered Himself a sacrifice for sin —

1. To avert the consequences of it. Jesus Christ paid the penalty, that He might deliver the sinner from the consequences of his sins.

2. He died that He might remove the presence of sin, by doing away the love of it; by cleansing the guilty in the" fountain opened for sin and uncleanness," — rendering the person " without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing."

3. He offered Himself a sacrifice to overcome the forfeiture of sin.

III. THE EXALTATION OF OUR REDEEMER.

1. This was through the medium of His resurrection.

2. And He has now " sat down at the right hand of God." God is a great and invisible Spirit, with whom literally there can be neither standing nor recumbency. We must, therefore, understand this phrase figuratively; and it is —

(1)Expressive of rest.

(2)Honoured.

(3)Power, authority, dominion.

IV. THE PURPOSES OF HIS WILL SHALL BE FULFILLED. Of the adversaries of Jesus Christ we observe —

1. That Satan is the most subtle, ancient, and formidable.

2. Error. Error may be said to be a hydra with many heads. These systems degrade God's creatures, rob the Redeemer, murder the souls of men; and as such they must come down: by the general diffusion of knowledge, by the spread of the Scriptures, by the piety of God's people.

3. Another enemy is to be found in wicked, unconverted men. But these enemies shall be the footstool of the "Lion of the tribe of Judah." Upon unconverted men, Jesus Christ will employ His gospel on their understandings, and His Spirit on their consciences, and His providence on their circumstances and their bodies; and these weapons shall be " mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds."

4. Another enemy of Christ is death. He is said to be the last enemy that shall be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26).

5. All these enemies have been made by one worse than the devil himself, and that enemy is sin. To destroy sin the Son of God was manifested — for this purpose He offered Himself a sacrifice — for this purpose He has commanded His gospel to be preached to every creature — for this purpose He is, at this moment, seated at the right hand of God, invested with all power, to employ whatever instrument He thinks proper, and to give a blessing to those means that they may be effectual.Application:

1. Here we discover the character of sinners. They are said to be enemies to Christ.

2. We learn, again, that these unconverted persons must be His footstool, whether at home or abroad. Will you be conquered by the sceptre of His grace; or will you be broken in pieces by the iron rod of His wrath?

3. We see the duty of the people to extend by conquest the triumphs of the Redeemer: to bring home His rebel outcasts, that they may be saved from sin and Satan's snare.

(W. Atherton.)

1. He accomplished what all others failed to do.

2. He accomplished what none others need attempt after Him.

II. Is His RELATION TO HEAVEN.

1. Enjoyment of tranquil repose.

2. Elevation to highest honour.

3. Execution of universal power.

III. IN HIS RELATION TO THE MILLENNIUM.

1. He has opponents.

2. His enemies are in process of subjugation.

3. His ultimate supremacy will be complete.

(B. D. Johns.)

II. THE PERMANENT SUFFERING OF THE INNOCENT AND BENEVOLENT REDEEMER WOULD DEFEAT THE VERY END OF ATONEMENT. That end is, to diminish suffering in the universe. If we are to be saved at the eternal expense of such a Being; if He is to be for ever buffeted and spit upon, while we are crowned with glory; if He is to sink under the Father's frown, while we rejoice in the light of His countenance — then the cost is too great. To awaken the most generous sentiments in the hearts of the redeemed, and to sustain them, Christ must be rewarded with everlasting honour and joy. To enjoy heaven by the continued sufferings of our Friend and Redeemer, would make us selfish; to see His sufferings, and not be selfish, would make our own happiness impossible.

(E. N. Kirk, D. D.)

(W. J. Dawson.)

1. He has done all that was necessary to make an atonement and an end of sin. He has done so much, that it never will be needful for Him again to be crucified. Oh! if the last thread had not been woven in the great garment of our righteousness, He would be spinning it now; if the last particle of our .debt had not been paid, He would be counting it down now; and if all were not complete, He would never rest, until, like a wise builder, He had laid the top-stone of the temple of our salvation. No; the very fact that He sits still, and rests, proves that His work is finished.

2. And then note again, that His sitting at the right hand of God implies that He enjoys pleasure; for at God's right hand "there are pleasures for evermore." Now I think the fact that Christ enjoys infinite pleasure has in it some degree of proof that He must have finished His work. He has joys as God; but as the man-God, His joys spring from the salvation of the souls of men. That is His joy, which is full, in the thought that He has finished His work and has cut it short in righteousness. I think there is some degree of proof, although not, perhaps, positive proof there, that Jesus must have finished His work.

3. The fact that it is said He has sat down for ever proves that He must have. done it. Christ has undertaken it to save all the souls of the elect. If He has not already saved them, He is bound to do something that will save them, for He has given solemn promise to His Father, that He will bring many souls unto glory.

4. Yet, the best proof is, that Christ sits at His Father's right hand at all. For the very fact that Christ is in heaven, accepted by His Father, proves that His work must be alone. Why, as long as an ambassador from our country is at a foreign court, there must be peace; and as long as Jesus Christ our Saviour is at His Father's court, it shows that there is real peace between His people and His Father. Well, as He will be there for ever, that shows that our peace must be continual. But that peace could not have been continual, unless the atonement had been wholly made, unless justice had been entirely satisfied; and, therefore, from that very fact it becomes certain that the work of Christ must be done.

II. THE GLORY WHICH HE HAS ASSUMED. "After He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right-hand of God." Now, by this you are to understand the complex person of Christ; for Christ, as God, always was on His Father's throne; He always was God; and even when He was on earth He was still in heaven. But Jesus Christ, as the man-God, has assumed honours which once He had not; for as man, He did not at one time sit on His Father's throne; He was a suffering man; but as God-man He has assumed a dignity next to God; He sits at the right hand of the glorious Trinity.

1. From this we gather, that the dignity which Christ now enjoys is surpassing dignity. There is no dignity to be compared to that of Christ.

2. In the next place, Christ has real dignity. Some persons have mere empty titles, which confer but little authority. But the man-Christ Jesus, while He has many crowns and many titles, has not one tinsel crown or one empty title. He overruleth all mortal things, making the evil work a good, and the good produce a better, and a better still, in infinite progression.

3. And once more: this honour that Christ hath received (I mean the Man-God Christ) was deserved honour; that dignity which His Father gave Him He well deserved.

4. We must consider the exaltation of Christ in heaven as being in some degree a representative exaltation. Christ Jesus exalted at the Father's right hand, though He has eminent glories, in which the saints must not expect to share, essentially He is the express image of the person of God, and the brightness of His Father's glory, yet, to a very great degree, the honours which Christ has in heaven He has as our representative there.

III. WHAT ARE CHRIST'S EXPECTATIONS?

1. We are told, He expects that His enemies shall be made His footstool. In some sense that is already done; the foes of Christ are, in some sense, His footstool now. What is the devil but the very slave of Christ, for he doth no more than he is permitted against God's children? What are wicked men but the servants of God's providence, unwittingly to themselves? In that sense all things are now Christ's.

2. But we expect greater things than these at His coming, when all enemies shall be beneath Christ's feet upon earth. We are, therefore, many of us, "looking for that blessed hope; that glorious appearing of the kingdom of our Saviour Jesus Christ"; many of us are expecting that Christ will come; we cannot tell you when; we believe it to be folly to pretend to guess the time, but we are expecting that even in our life the Son of God will appear, and we know that when He shall appear He will tread His foes beneath His feet, and reign from pole to pole, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.

3. Christ will have all His enemies put beneath His feet, in that great day of judgment. Oh I that will be a terrible putting of His foes beneath His feet, when at the second resurrection the wicked dead shall rise; when the ungodly shall stand before His throne, and His voice shall say, "Depart, ye cursed."

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(A. B. Davidson, LL. D.)

1. From the fact that God has established and introduced it to human knowledge.

2. From its interior structure, its fitness to man, the reply which it gives to His deepest demands.

3. From the fact that the supremacy of Christianity will nobly complete the circle of history; will give unity, wholeness to the annals of the race, and will show through their courses a sublime method.

4. The specific declarations of God in the Scriptures assure us of that result.

5. The historic progress of Christianity among men, with the nature of the arena on which it now acts, gives assurance of its supremacy. How then ought its friends to labour for Christianity, to spread its truth, its promise, and life I How vividly also does this last thought come to us: the personal obligation of each of us to submit from the heart to Christ's dominion. The ancient legend of the Church, that Julian died exclaiming as he expired, "Galilean, Thou hast conquered," is certain to be realised in the substance of its history in every soul not submitted to Christ. His rule at last shall be complete, and the period of that sway shall compass eternity. In that last and glorious age there will be found no place on earth, no place in heaven for him who hath not bowed to Christ! The dominion of Messiah hath no promises for him.

(R. S. Storrs, D. D.)

(A. Bax.)

(A. Bax.)

(J. Fleming, D. D.)

II. IN WHAT SENSE ARE WE TO UNDERSTAND THAT CHRIST HAS PERFECTED THESE THAT ARE SANCTIFIED? When the golden vessels were brought into the temple or into the sanctuary, they were sanctified the very first moment that they were dedicated to God. No one dared to employ them for anything but holy uses. But they were not perfect. What did they need, then, to make them perfect? Why, to have blood sprinkled on them; and, as soon as the blood was sprinkled on them, those golden vessels were perfect vessels, officially perfect. God accepted them as being holy and perfect things, and they stood in His sight as instruments of an acceptable worship. Just so was it with the Levites and the priests. As soon as ever they were set apart to their office; as soon as ever they were bern, in fact, they were consecrated, they belonged to God; they were His peculiar priesthood. But they were not perfect until they had passed through divers washings, and had the blood sprinkled upon them. Then God looked upon them in their official priestly character, as being perfect persons. Here is one sense of the text. The apostle says that we who are the priests of God have a right as priests to go to God's mercy-seat that is within the veil; but it were to our death to go there unless we were perfect. But we are perfect, for the blood of Christ has been sprinkled on us, and, therefore, our standing before God is the standing of perfection. Our standing, in our own conscience, is imperfection, just as the character of the priest might be imperfect. But that has nothing to do with it. Our standing in the sight of God is a standing of perfection; and when He sees the blood, as of old the destroying angel passed over Israel, so this day, when He sees the blood, God passes over our sins, and accepts us at the throne of His mercy, as if we were perfect. Therefore, let us come boldly; let us "draw near with a true heart in frill assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." And now we will have one more thought, and then I shall have given you the full meaning of the text. In the seventh chapter, the nineteenth verse, there is a word that is a key to the meaning of my text, and that helped me all through it. "For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did, by the which we draw nigh unto God." Then with this, compare the tenth chapter and first verse, "The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year, continually make the comers thereunto perfect." There is the word "perfect"; and we have it in the text; "for then," says he, if they had been perfect, "would they not have ceased to be offered." Why offer any more, if you are a perfect man? "If the sacrifice made is perfect, the worshippers, once purged, should have had no more conscience of sin." Now mark. The Jewish sacrifice was never intended to make the Jew's moral character any better, and it did not; it had no effect upon what we call his sanctification; all the sacrifice dealt with was his justification, and the perfection would be sought after; the perfection is not of sanctification, but of official standing, as he stood justified before God. Now that is the meaning of the word "perfect" here. It does not mean that the sacrifice did not make the man perfectly holy, and perfectly moral, and so forth; the sacrifice had no tendency to do that; it was quite another matter. It means that it did not perfectly make him justified in his own conscience and in the sight of God, because he had to come and offer again. But now behold the glory of Christ Jesus as revealed to us in our text. "Those sacrifices could not make the comers thereunto perfect." They could not feel in their own conscience that they were perfectly justified, and they wanted fresh offerings; but I see the slaughtered Lamb on Calvary. Years ago I sought Him and I found Him. I do not want another Lamb; I do not want another sacrifice. I can still see that blood flowing, and I can feel continually that I have no more conscience of sin.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

2. The subject of this consecration are the sanctified.

3. The effect is glorious and most excellent, and includes regeneration, justification, reconciliation, adoption with the inferior degrees of them all, and also the resurrection and eternal glorification. And surely so rare an effect must have some excellent cause; and so it hath, and that is, that one offering of Christ.

(G. Lawson.)

(A. Saphir.)

(R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

(S. H. Kellogg, D. D.)

1. It contains the Divine things, the other only the symbols.

2. It is the end of culture, the other only the means.

3. It is self-obvious, the other requires explanation.

4. It is imperishable, the other temporary.

(Homilist.)

II. The doctrine, then, is that THERE IS NO MORE SACRIFICE FOR SIN, BECAUSE CHRIST SUPPLIES ALL THAT IS NEEDED.

III. Lastly, does not this doctrine ANSWER A QUESTION that has often been propounded to me, namely, HOW IT IS THAT THERE ARE SO MANY HEARTS WHICH CAN FIND NO PEACE? Some people are always learning, but never coming to the truth. They are good people in many senses, but they cannot be happy. They are always discontented. Now, what do you think is the reason? I am sure it is this, they will not agree that Christ shall be all in all to them.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

1. The special residence of the Deity.

2. The scene of holy services.

3. The residence of holy beings.

4. From this place those blessings are communicated that make us holy.

II. THE WAY OF ACCESS.

1. A new way.

2. A living way.

3. A consecrated way.

III. THE MANNER OF APPROACH.

1. With boldness.

2. With a true heart.

3. In full assurance of faith.

4. With hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.

5. With bodies washed with pure water.Application. Learn:

1. The gospel method of salvation. The blood of Jesus. Its expensiveness and its preciousness.

2. There must be personal application before we can enjoy its benefits.

3. All who thus personally approach shall obtain mercy.

4. How shall they escape who neglect so great salvation?

(J. Burns, D. D.)

II. THE WAY TO IT. We must not forget, in considering the way to this house, that the house itself is spiritual, that it is the home for the thoughts, for the affections, for the will of God; a sphere in which His Spirit finds fellowship, satisfaction and rest; in which He is all and in all — the spring, the source of all power and life, and of all the forms of life answering to the power. Then, clearly, it must be a house only accessible on certain definitely determined conditions; conditions, not arbitrary, but imposed by the very nature of things, given in the very nature of God and His relations to His creatures. Everything has its own way by which it may be entered. Things must be related to have access to each other. Spiritual things have spiritual ways of access, and require spiritual discernment. No wonder then that the text speaks of the way to the House of God as a "new way." It is not the original way of man's primitive nature, but a way newly opened up in view of the necessities of the state and circumstances into which man's sin and sinfulness had brought him, a way for sinners into the holiest of holies, the presence of God. The way of His descent to us may become the way of our ascent to Him. But, it is further called a "living way," not merely because it leads to life, nor because it gives life, nor because it vitally renews itself, nor because its use is restricted to the living — though in all these senses there is much truth; but because it is a way set up in Him who is the Life. Christ is the way to Christ, as the light is the way to the sun, and the seed-life of the flower the way to the flower. He is the life-fountain and also the stream which conducts to it. But, in addition to its being "a new and living way;" it is also said to be a way which Christ has "consecrated for us through the veil of His flesh." By this expression, "the veil of His flesh," the apostle gathers up in unity of significance the whole incarnate relations of the Son of Man, in His representative character, on our behalf, and represents them as a veil of separation between Him and the house of His glory which He had with the Father before the world was, and says, "Only through that can there be a way for man to God." And this was true for Christ Himself as well as for us. Only by the rending of the veil of His flesh could He, who "came out from God," return to Him.

III. THE SEVERAL CHARACTERISTIC QUALIFICATIONS WITH WHICH WE ARE EXHORTED TO DRAW NEAR TO GOD WITHIN THE VEIL. "Let us draw near in the full assurance of faith"; that is, being fully assured that this way of " access to God" for sinful men has been opened up; thai God has solved His own problem; and that in Christ, His representative and ours, the Son of God and Son of Man, it stands a completed work, with its gate on this side the veil, for us as for Him — the cross, and, through the veil, its goal — the cross crowned in glory. Assured of this, let us draw Hear, none daring to make us afraid; for should any arrest our course, and demand our right; to enter within " the holiest," we can point them to the way, and to our hearts, sprinkled with the blood of Him who in our nature and in our name is set over the house of God. Having this assurance of faith, "let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering." An assured faith in the fact that we have the new and living way of access to God cannot fail to beget a stedfast hope. Faith not only warrants but demands hope, is in fact the substance of our hope. And He who is its Author has made abundant provision for its growth and expansion in the great exceeding precious promises He has given us, through which we "become partakers of the Divine nature," and "receive the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls."

(W. Pulsford, D. D.)

1. "The blood of Jesus." This blood is the most precious thing that we can conceive of. It is set before us in Scripture in different views.(1) It is compared to the blood of the passover lamb. It may therefore be said to be the blood of protection and of deliverance.(2) It is compared with "the blood and water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop," used by Moses at Sinai. It may therefore be said to be the blood that ratifies the covenant.(3) It is compared with " the blood used on the day of atonement." It may therefore be said to be the blood by which we draw nigh unto God.(4) As under the Old Testament, "almost all things were purged with blood," so it is said to be " the blood which cleanseth us from all sin."(5) To show its unspeakable value, it is said to be "the blood of God" (Acts 20:28).

2. Another warrant is, that we have "a new and living way" — that is, a way quite different from that which the high priest had of old to enter into the "holy of holies."

3. This way is said to be "consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh." Now, every obstacle is removed; and every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is warranted to enter for himself into the immediate presence of God, and there transact all the concerns of his own soul.

4. Another powerful and suitable warrant is expressed in these words — "and having an High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near." When we consider this High Priest, what He is, what He has done, and what He is continuing to do, we have encouragement inexpressible. He is God and man. He is our Brother — our Righteousness — our Sanctification — our Redemption. How glorious is our great High Priest! How happy to be under His guidance — His management — His care!

II. YOUR WELCOME.

1. "Draw near with a true heart." This implies that you have nothing in view but the supply of grace which you find you need. Let this lead you to inquire of what graces you stand in the utmost need; and let this alone employ all your present desires and petitions to your heavenly Father.

2. Another evidence of your welcome is "full assurance of faith." This you can have by the study of Christ, in His person, and offices and intercession. In all He is, in all He does, and in all He has done, He is perfect. He can save every soul, be the condition of that soul what it may. But farther, He can give the Holy Spirit, to unite unto Himself — to conform to the Divine image. In one word, He can give "full assurance of faith." Did you ever ask this " assurance " from Him? Did He ever deny it to you? This " assurance" is your welcome.

3. A farther evidence of your welcome is to draw near with "hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." This is done by the Holy Spirit, for Christ's sake. When the Spirit enables you to believe, lie at the same time applies to your heart the virtue of the precious blood of Christ. This removes all opposition to faith — to love — to every other grace in the mediatorial person of Christ. This "purges the conscience from dead works" (Hebrews 9:13, 14). With such attainments you may, with full welcome, draw near to the mercy seat; for these constitute your welcome there.

4. The last evidence of welcome mentioned in our text is, "our bodies being washed with pure water." This language is also figurative, and is taken from the act of consecrating Aaron and his sons to the priest's office. This is obtained by the promise (Ezekiel 36:25-27).

(James Kidd, D. D.)

2. Notice, in the next place, the term " boldness." This is put in contrast with the fear under the law, which deprived the worshipper of all confidence; and it marks the holy liberty of the child of God, compared with the bondage in which he was held under the law. One of the great snares of Satan is to endeavour to beat men off from this point, as if it were presumption, But read the Word, and see for yourselves what is said upon the subject. "He suffered, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God."

3. But still observe — it is by the blood of Jesus, because "without shedding of blood there is no remission." It is the blood of Christ alone that annihilates the distance between the believing sinner and God; there is no approach but through that blood, and "those who are afar off are made nigh" by it.

4. This is called " a new and living way," because it is peculiar to the new covenant of grace, and because it is always new and efficacious; it does not wax old, as did the first covenant; that was for a time only, till "the times of reformation," we are told, but this is for ever. And it may be called living, because it is the only way of entering into life.

5. But the apostle goes on to say, that our Lord has consecrated for us this way "through the veil, that is to say, His flesh." The meaning of this expression appears to be, that as when the veil was rent at the death of our Lord there was no longer any hindrance to entering into the holiest, so Christ's flesh being rent by His death, a way was opened to all believers, by the sacrifice which He offered, into the very kingdom of heaven. There is very much instruction for us here. Every other priesthood but the priesthood of Christ has the effect of keeping the worshipper at a distance from God; but His priesthood is put before us as a motive to draw near.

6. Another expression is made use of, which is full of point. "In full assurance of faith." Faith is needed in God's service, because "without faith it is impossible to please Him." "Full assurance" is to be understood of faith in the priesthood of Christ. It is the superiority of that priesthood which the apostle aims to establish throughout this Epistle. And the " assurance of faith" does not respect the assurance which a man has of his own salvation, but of the efficacy of Christ's priesthood, and the sufficiency of His atonement and intercession, as opposed to all other ways of access.

7. But the apostle goes on to say — "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." This is a consequence of our having a "full assurance" of the efficacy of Christ's priesthood, that we get delivered from the burden of an evil conscience. The conscience of every man has been defiled by sin, nor could the offerings under the law perfect a man with respect to it; but the blood of Jesus can, and when applied to the conscience takes away the condemning power of sin, as respects the guilt of it.

8. Another effect is, that the man desires to "perfect holiness in the fear of God"; which is just what we are taught in the last phrase of the text — "our bodies washed with pure water." This denotes purity of life and conversation. Thus must we be careful to cultivate holiness of life, if we would approach Him with acceptance; as the former clause, "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience," had reference to our justification, so this latter clause has reference to our sanctification, or to our growth in grace and conformity to the image of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

(J. W. Reeve, M. A.)

1. In actual historical fact the glorious veil of the temple has been rent in twain from the top to the bottom: as a matter of spiritual fact, which is far more important to us, the separating legal ordinance is abolished. Jesus has made thee nigh, as nigh to God as even He Himself is.

2. This rending of the veil signified, also, the removal of the separating sin. Pardon, which removes sin, and justification, which brings righteousness, make up a deed of clearance so complete that nothing now divides the sinner from his reconciled God. The Judge is now the Father: He, who once must necessarily have condemned, is found justly absolving and accepting. In this double sense the veil is rent; the separating ordinance is abrogated, and the separating sin is forgiven.

3. Next, be it remembered that the separating sinfulness is also taken away through our Lord Jesus. It is not only what we have done, but what we are that keeps us apart from God. Through the death of our Lord Jesus the covenant of grace is established with us, and its gracious provisions are on this wise: "This is the covenant, &c., I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts." When this is the ease, when the will of God is inscribed on the heart, and the nature is entirely changed, then is the dividing veil which hides us from God taken away: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."

II. WHAT WE HAVE.

1. We have "boldness to enter in."

2. Let us follow the example of the high priest, and having entered, let us perform the functions of one who enters in, "Boldness to enter in " suggests that we act as men who are in their proper places.

3. If you will look at the text, you will notice that this boldness is well grounded. "Having therefore boldness." Paul is often a true poet, but he is always a correct logician.

4. Why is it that we have boldness? Is it not because of our relationship to Christ which makes us "brethren"

5. We may have this boldness of entering in at all times, because the veil is always rent, and is never restored to its old place.

III. How WE EXERCISE THIS GRACE.

1. We come by the way of atonement.

2. An unfailing way.

3. A living way.

4. A dedicated way.

5. A Christly way.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(H. Bushnell, D. D.)

2. Jesus dedicated it to the use of the redeemed host by first travelling along it Himself (for the essence of the dedication ceremony consisted in a solemn opening for the first time to public use).

3. It is also a living way, the path of a living spirit, not a routine of mechanical obedience; by quickening in us His own spiritual life Christ brings us near to God, and unless His spirit live in us we cannot follow in His way.

4. This way leads through the veil of flesh. The flesh is a real veil, shutting men out from the sight and knowledge of God, just as the typical veil shut out all but the high priest from the holy chamber of God's presence. It forms an obstacle not only against the unclean and sinful, who desire to hide themselves from God's holy eye and wilfully build up a wall between themselves and Him, but -even against God's own people who, in spite of an earnest desire to come to Him, are hindered by the necessary imperfection of their mortal nature. Even Jesus Himself had to make His way through this veil of flesh; for He was made subject to the infirmity of the flesh, and liable to temptation. Sinless as He was, He had the understanding and the will of the flesh, its thoughts and desires, its natural appetites and affections. He had therefore to crucify the flesh in will and to be crucified in deed, to put off His mortal garment, and pass through death unto life, before He could altogether pierce the veil of flesh. By passing through this Himself He opened a way for His brethren also to pass through. As the typical veil was rent asunder at His death, so a wide road was opened through the veil of flesh, that all those whom He hath consecrated in His blood may enter in the strength of His spirit into the presence of God.

(F. Rendall, M. A.)

(G. Lawson.)

(J. C. Cumming, D. D.)

(R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

(Gideon Ouseley.)

II. As the connection between the two Testaments would be broken by the denial of the priesthood of Christ, so THE HARMONY BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT DISPENSATIONS OF .REVEALED RELIGION TO MAN WOULD BE DESTROYED. The frame-work of revealed religion has been precisely the same in all ages: that man is a sinner; that on the ground of his own right he cannot be justified; that law, though it admits of atonement and satisfaction, is inexorable in the exaction of its penalty; that the guilty can only be pardoned through the sufferings of the innocent; that God can only be approached through mediation; and that intercession for the guilty is admissible only as it has respect to sacrifice for sin. How impressive, how solemn are these truths, transmitted as they are to us by the testimony of all ages, and marked and signalised by the rites of the Church wherever she has erected her temples! This is sufficient to prove that they are the expression of the counsels of the Divine mind; that they are the axioms on which He governs the guilty race; and that, like Himself, they are unchangeable.

III. If we have not in the gospel a real sacrifice and a real priesthood, then CHRISTIANITY LOSES ITS EXCLUSIVE CHARACTER, and can no longer claim to be the religion of mankind. That the religion of Jesus Christ makes such a claim cannot be doubted; and that it was understood by its first preachers to have this exclusive character is matter of history and not of reasoning.

IV. IF WE HAVE NO SACRIFICE, NO PRIESTHOOD, IN THE GOSPEL, THEN CHRISTIANITY, INSTEAD OF BEING THE CONSUMMATION AND PERFECTION OF ALL OTHER DISPENSATIONS OF RELIGION TO GUILTY MAN, IS IN FACT INFERIOR, IMPERFECT, AND THE LOWEST IN HOPE AND CONSOLATION. Who can lay his hand upon his heart and appeal to God that he has never offended in thought, in word, in temper, or in deed? The same gospel which reveals the righteousness of faith reveals also the wrath of God from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God," No; thanks be to infinite mercy, we are not so left. We have a High Priest over the house of God. If any man sin, there is a sacrifice of infinite value: the death of the incarnate Son of God. Repentance, and a believing application to the blood of atonement, are followed by conscious pardon. The grace of the Holy Spirit is given to the humble and praying believer to realise in his experience and conduct the holiness of the gospel.

(R. Watson.)

1. Moses at the burning bush. "Draw not nigh hither." Fire symbolic of judgment. God cannot thus be approached unto.

2. Children of Israel of Mount Sinai. The injunction given to stand off from the mount, God present in holiness, requiring perfect obedience to His law. This man could not render. Therefore there was no hope of being reconciled to God by the law.

3. Yet now the apostle says, "Let us draw near." How is this? Because

(1)Christ hast fulfilled the law — He has become a daysman between us and God,

(2)God has drawn near to us.

(3)He Himself has invited us to draw near-"Come unto Me," &c.

II. HOLDING FAST. A very necessary injunction in these days of apostasy from the faith.

1. What not to hold fast —

(1)Human traditions. These are useful in so far as they are in accordance with Divine revelation, but are to be specially shunned when they make the Word of God of none effect.

(2)The speculations of theologians. These vary as the wind, and are not to be relied upon.

2. But —

(1)The profession or confession of our faith without wavering — "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus thou shalt be saved."

(2)The faith itself once delivered to the saints. Why? That others may see the good works that spring from a lively faith, and be led to ask for the old paths.

III. CONSIDERING ONE ANOTHER.

1. HOW may we do this?

(1)By loving rebuke — not from the love of fault-finding. Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

(2)By showing love to our fellows. Christ's new commandment: "Love one another."

(3)By obeying the injunction — "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." Bear one another's burdens. Wash one another's feet.

2. What would be the result of thus considering one another?

(1)More unity among believers.

(2)More power in the Church.

(3)More blessing in the world.

(4)More glory to God.Application:

1. To the sinner. You are yet afar off. Christ invites you to Him. He will abundantly pardon.

2. To the believer. You need, every day — yea, every hour — to be coming to Christ for blessing.

(H. Whittaker.)

1. With the heart. Some honour God "with their lips, bug their heart is far from Him." You meet an acquaintance, and complain that he was distant, i.e., he was not hearty.

2. With sincerity. "A true heart." We may be hearty without being honest.

3. With faith. Note the relative position of this. Only hearty and honest seekers will ever be true believers, such always will "in an honest and good heart receive the word." Bug though faith is placed after heartiness and honesty, let it not be overlooked-otherwise our coming is vain.

4. "With a pure heart." Sprinkled from an evil conscience, &c. Conscience no longer accuses; our sins are forgiven. Conscience no longer sleeps, allowing us to sin, but is restored to its original office. Conscience is no longer defiled; it is washed, purged. Outward life is, therefore, right — "Our bodies washed with pure water."

II. "LET US HOLD FAST."

1. What to? "The profession of our faith," or, "the confession of our hope." This is a better rendering. Christianity is a hope — "Christ in you the hope of glory." That is Christianity in a sentence. The confession is the outward sign of the invisible hope. Duty to confess, and to hold fast to the confession.

2. "Hold fast." A drowning man, holding a rope, brings all the nervous force of his system into his hands, and clings for dear life. Put all the force of the soul into faith, and so cling to Jesus.

3. "Without wavering." Very fashionable now to doubt; and we are told if, we certainly believe anything we cannot grow. Be it so. We can only be safe, happy, strong, or useful, by being fully decided — by ceasing to waver.

III. "LET US CONSIDER." A Christian man is a thoughtful man. From the nature of his position — saved from the wreck — he is in a position to look around — to think.

1. "To provoke one another." Not to say: "I am safe," or, "I shall enjoy religion"; but to consider the work of your fellows and the wants of others. Not to say: "How little can I do," but how much.

2. "Provoke one another."

3. "To love and good works." Who shall love most, who shall do most, is the only question worth asking- the only provocation Christianity allows.

(J. Colwell.)

1. Let us draw near with a true heart, in the full assurance of faith.

2. Let us hold fast the profession of hope without wavering.

3. Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, labouring and waiting together, and helping one another in the unity of brethren. Faith, hope, and love — this is the threefold result of Christ's entrance into heaven, spiritually discerned.A believing, hoping, and loving attitude of heart corresponds to the new covenant revelation of Divine grace.

1. Having received, through Christ's sacrifice and Christ's present priesthood boldness, a full right of access into the holy of holies, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. The privilege is right of access unto God, the duty is that of approach; and no man values the right of access who does not desire to approach. There can be nothing which really satisfies the heart of any man in being told that he is at liberty to approach God, if he has no inclination to approach unto God. We can only approach with our heart, and by faith, which has its seat in the heart; with a heart which is in earnest, true, and purposeful in this very work of approach. God desireth truth in the inward part. A true heart is a heart which accepts the testimony of God, which distrusts itself, which believes God's Word, declaring our sin, guilt, and helplessness, and which responds simply, and without reservation, humbly and joyfully to the Divine gospel of the gift of God, eternal life through the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. A true heart is a heart purified by trust in Jesus. A true heart is a heart which desires to be with God and to live unto Him. What is meant by full assurance of faith? Nothing else but faith in full, vigorous, healthy exercise. Faith in what? Not faith in our having faith, in our being accepted; but faith that we have a right of access, that Jesus is the living way, and that He is the High Priest in the holy of holies. The object of faith, of the weakest and smallest spark of faith, as much as of faith in plenitude or full assurance, is not ourselves, but Christ in His person and work. The eye does not see itself; faith is not to stand on itself; your full assurance is to be that Christ's blood is precious, and that He has entered as the Forerunner. Then you are at peace. Faith means trust, reliance, confidence, leaning. There is no other worthy of trust, none else reliable but Jesus. But if you wish to have an additional object of faith in your own progress and spirituality, you are, like Peter, looking away from Jesus unto the unstable sea. Nor have I any other proof of my faith's genuineness yesterday, but my exercising faith this moment. It is an ever-present tense — "He that believeth hath eternal life."

2. We are exhorted to hold fast the profession of our hope without wavering. Before the First Advent believers looked forward in faith and hope to the good things to come. Believing the promise, they expected in hope the glory of Messiah's reign. With us this unity of faith and hope is substantially the same; but it appears now in a twofold manner. Faith rests on the past, the accomplished work of Jesus; hope looks to the future, the return of our Saviour. And the more we realise Jesus as the living Lord, the more shall we look forward, waiting for His coming, and going forth to meet Him. If we believe that He has come, we also hope that He will come. The profession of our hope is most practical and testing. Hereby we profess that we are strangers and pilgrims upon earth, that we are seeking heavenly things, labouring for heavenly rewards, laying up for ourselves heavenly treasures. We must forsake the sins, pleasures, and honours of Egypt; we must purify ourselves, as Christ is pure. If we profess hope, we must also rejoice, though we be in tribulation; we must view the sufferings and trials of this present life as not worthy to be compared with the coming glory. Then hope, resting on faith, supports faith, and fills us with courage and patience. "Till I come," is the voice of the Saviour, when faith beholds His dying love; and going forth to meet Him, going forth out of the world's sin, bondage, gloom, is the response of the bride.

3. But in thus drawing near unto God, and holding fast the profession of our hope, we must bear in mind that we are called to be a brotherhood, and that faith and hope are to be exercised in love. We are the body of Christ, and members one of another. We are to please not ourselves, but our brother unto edification. We are to consider one another as fellow pilgrims; to study our brother's need and sorrow, difficulty and trial; to exercise our mind on our duty and relation to him, that thus we may be helpful to him in his course, and stimulate and encourage him to good works. To consider one another in the right spirit is to look above all at the Christian character of our brother; to regard him, not so much in the light of his natural disposition; to love him, not so much on account of qualities congenial and pleasing to us; still less to exercise criticism, and to cherish suspicion and uncharitable judgment; but to fix our thought on the one great fact of brotherhood in Christ. And running together in a holy rivalry the same race, we should behold in our brother features of Christian character and activity in which we are deficient. And in this spirit of love we should cherish Christian communion; "not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together." Christianity is eminently an individual heart-affair; but it is also eminently social. The promise of Christ's presence is to the assembly gathered in His name.

(A. Saphir.)

1. Sin has set us at a distance from God (Isaiah 59:2).

2. Sinners stand at a distance from God till they be called, and that powerfully (John 6:44).

(1)Insensible sinners will .not (John 5:40).

(2)Sensible sinners dare not (Luke 5:8).

II. WE MAY DRAW NEAR TO GOD. Glad news this to poor sensible sinners! Come in, ye blessed of the Lord; why do you stand back? you may draw near to God. For —

1. God is on a throne of grace in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:19).

2. There is a way to the throne never trod, nor designed to be trod, by any but sinners such as you, and the like of you. This is no back entry, but the most glorious way to the throne. Adam had a way to it, but that is blocked up; there is a new and living way consecrated for us (ver. 20).

3. He is a friend of ours who is set over the house of God (ver. 21).

III. WE OUGHT TO DRAW NEAR: "Let us draw near." For —

1. It is the command of God (James 4:8).

2. If we do not draw near to God, we dis-honour His Son, and so dishonour Himself, in so far as we frustrate the great design of the mystery of Christ (John 5:23).

IV. PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUBJECT, in an use of exhortation.

1. Come back, sinners, draw near towards God and duty. What have you gained by going from Him?

2. Not only draw towards God, but come forward, and draw near to Him as a God in Christ. You may get near to Him ere you come to heaven; in His ordinances in the lower house, there you may have access to Him. Particularly, let us draw near to Him —(1) In prayer (chap. 4:16).(2) In the holy sacrament of the supper. God is again coming to us in that ordinance: an ordinance appointed for the most special nearness out of heaven (1 Corinthians 10:16).

3. Let us draw near in these ordinances —(1) As rebels accepting the King's peace, indemnity in the blood of His Son; draw near, and welcome (Isaiah 27:5).(2) As petitioners to the King.(3) As servants of the house, to serve our Lord, to wait upon Him, and behold His glory (Psalm 116:16).(4) As friends; friends of God, to have fellowship with Him, who may freely converse with Him: to unbosom ourselves to Him, and to be let into the secrets of the covenant (John 15:15).(5) As children to a Father in Christ, to receive the portion of children.(6) As a spouse to a husband, for our Maker is our Husband. Let us embrace Him in the arms of faith, give the love of the heart to Him a full vent (Song of Solomon 8:6).

4. But how must the business of our drawing near to God be managed? The apostle here lays down four directions:(1) Draw near to God sincerely. Hypocrisy is a disease in the vitals of religion; it pretends one thing and intends another.(2) Draw near in the "full assurance of faith." Faith's special object is the blood of Christ.(3) Get your hearts beforehand " sprinkled from an evil conscience." Are you to come to His table? pray that all controversies be done away between you and Him. If you are to appear before the Lord, go, dip, wash, bathe in the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness (Zechariah 13:1) that you may be clean.(4) Let your outward conversation be blameless, free from scandalous sins (Psalm 24:4).

(T. Boston, D. D.)

1. We draw near to God when we engage properly in the solemn exercise of public worship.

2. Again, we draw near to God when we engage properly in the exercise of social worship.

3. We also draw near to God, in a peculiar sense, when we engage properly in the exercise of secret devotion.

II. How THIS DUTY MAY BE ACCEPTABLY PERFORMED. TO draw near "with a true heart," means to worship God with sincerity, which is an indispensable ingredient in Christian piety. But do not confound sincerity with worthiness: that is another thing altogether. If we wait for a blessing at the hand of God till we are worthy of it, we shall die unblessed, and be lost for ever. We have nothing to plead but the worthy name of Jesus, and we need no other; and while we pray in His name, we may know ourselves sincerer however unworthy. The "assurance of faith" is a firm persuasion, a satisfactory evidence, that God does accept, pardon, save, and bless us, for Christ's sake; and this firm persuasion, this satisfactory evidence, arises, not only from the exceeding great and precious promises of His Word, but chiefly from the direct influence of His Spirit, bearing witness with our spirit that we are His children. "Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." There are some evils from which a man may escape; but shall a man flee from a guilty conscience? As well might he endeavour to escape from his shadow when the sun is shining. Wherever he goes, or whatever he does, he feels self-reproach and a sense of the displeasure of the Almighty. Now let us accept the call of grace, be sprinkled from an evil conscience, and restored to the favour and image of God, that, like the apostle, we may "have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men." "And our bodies washed with pure water," in Christian baptism. Water baptism is an outward sign of the inward grace of purification.

III. A FEW BRIEF, PRACTICAL INFERENCES.

1. The first inference from the whole subject is, whoever neglects the means of grace, deprives himself of religious enjoyment.

2. The next inference is, they who use the means of grace will profit thereby.

3. Finally, we infer from this text, what is elsewhere plainly declared, "Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you."

(T. A. Morris, D. D.)

(Anecdotes of Luther.)

(Andrew Murray.)

(Andrew Murray,)

1. It is an error to suppose that assurance of personal salvation does not admit of degrees; in other words, that it may be as full and strong in one just entering on the Christian life as it can be in one who has kept the faith for many years, and has passed through the varied experience of the Christian course. "In ordinary cases," says a man eminent for his ability, piety, and experience, "I entertain a better opinion of the modest, doubting, and fearful professor than of the bold and assured one."

2. Another error on this head is, that assurance of personal salvation is essential to salvation. This is held by those who teach that the faith which justifies is a confident assurance that the individual is himself in Christ, and so saved; and it is involved in the opinion of those who teach that every man who is in Christ knows this, and so is assured of his own safety. Now nothing can be more unscriptural than such doctrines. In all the New Testament there is not a single instance in which the apostles indicate, in the most distant way, that saving faith is a man's belief in his own salvation. No; their invariable cry was, Repent, and believe in Christ; accept the offered salvation through faith in Him. Trust in Him; rest on Him; come unto God through Him and be saved. It is no doubt true that to believe in Christ is to trust in Him for our own individual salvation, for the forgiveness of our own sins and the salvation of our own souls. But to trust in Him for our salvation is a very different thing from believing that we are actually saved in Him; to have assurance that His work affords a sufficient ground for us to rest upon as well as others, is a very different thing from having assurance that we are actually resting on that work for salvation; to know that Christ "loved the Church, and gave Himself for it," is a very different thing from knowing that He loved us and gave Himself for us. "Nothing," says the sagacious Andrew Fuller, "can be an object of faith except what God has revealed in His Word; but the interest that any individual has in Christ, and the blessings of the Gospel, more than another is not revealed. God has nowhere declared concerning any of us, as individuals, that we shall be saved; all that He has revealed on this subject respects us as characters. He has abundantly promised that all who believe in Him, love Him, and obey Him shall be saved; and a persuasion, that if we sustain these characters we shall be saved is doubtless an exercise of faith; but whether we do or not is an object not of faith, but of consciousness .... The grand object on which faith fixes is the glory of Christ, and not the happy condition we are in as interested in Him .... If we be concerned only for our own security, our faith is vain, and we are yet in our sins." To these wise and weighty words I can add nothing, and nothing needs to be added.

3. The last error I notice is, that we can arrive at assurance of our own personal salvation otherwise than by means of a holy life. This is the criterion which Scripture everywhere proposes; and when any other is proposed, the door is opened for all manner of delusions and fanaticism. If men imagine they can directly see the existence of faith in their souls, or if they suppose that a conviction of their being of the number of the elect is borne in on their souls by the Holy Spirit, or if they infer from some pleasant feelings in their own minds that they are the objects of God's favour, they are either deluding themselves with what is impossible, or they are trusting to what may be a mere fancy or passing emotion of their own minds. The only sure evidence of our being in a state of grace, is our being in heart and life holy. From this two things follow. The one is, that no man can in this life be absolutely sure that he is sated, because no man in this life can become perfectly holy; the other is, that as holiness of heart and life is salvation, it is only in proportion as this is attained that we have any real ground for believing that we are personally saved. "By their fruits," said our Lord, "ye shall know them." The great thing for us is to apply the right test to ourselves, and to look for those signs of salvation in ourselves which our Lord and His apostles have laid down, that we might try ourselves by them.

(W. L. Alexander, D. D.)

(J. Trapp.)

1. First consider our present condition, as shown us in Scripture. Christ has not changed this, though He has died; it is as it was from the beginning — I mean our actual state as men. The history of redemption, if it is to be effectual, must begin from the beginning with every individual of us, and be curried on through our own life.(1) When this is borne in mind, how important the Jewish Law becomes to us Christians I important in itself, over and above all references contained in it to that gospel which it introduced. To this day it fulfils its original purpose of impressing upon man his great guilt and feebleness. Those legal sacrifices and purifications which are now all done away, are still evidence to us of a fact which the gospel has not annulled — our corruption.(2) Next, to pass from the Jewish law, you will observe that God tells us expressly in the history of the fall of Adam, what the legal ceremonies implied; that it is our very nature which is sinful. Herein is the importance of the doctrine of original sin. It is very humbling, and as such the only true introduction to the preaching of the gospel. "Thy first father hath sinned": this is the legend on our forehead which even the sign of the Cross does no more than blot out, leaving the mark of it. This is our shame; but I notice it here, not so much as a humbling thought, as with a view of pressing upon Tour consciences the necessity of appearing before God at stated seasons, in order to put aside the continually-renewed guilt of your nature. Who will dare go on day after day in neglect of earnest prayer, and the Holy Communion, while each day brings its own fearful burden, coming as if spontaneously, springing from our very nature, but not got rid of without deliberate and direct acts of faith in the Great Sacrifice which has been set forth for its removal?(3) Further, look into your own souls and see if you cannot discern some part of the truth of the Scripture statement, which I have been trying to set before you. Recollect the bad thoughts of various kinds which come into your minds like darts; for these will be some evidence to you of the pollution and odiousness of your nature. Even if you reject them, still do they not answer Satan's purpose m inflaming your mind at the instant, and so evidence that the matter of which it is composed is corruptible?

2. Again, reflect on the habits of sin which we super-added to our evil nature before we turned to God. Instead of checking the bad elements within us, perhaps we indulged them for years; and they truly had their fruit unto death. Then Adam's sin increased, and multiplied itself within us; there was a change, but it was for the worse, not for the better; and the new nature we gained, far from being spiritual, was twofold more the child of hell than that with which we were born. So when, at length, we turned back into a better course, what a complicated work lay before us, to unmake ourselves! And however long we have laboured at it, still how much unconscious, unavoidable sin, the result of past transgression, is thrown out from our hearts day by day in the energy of our thinking and acting!

3. Further, consider how many sins are involved in our obedience, I may say from the mere necessity of the case; that is, from not having that more vigorous and clear-sighted faith which would enable us accurately to discern and closely to follow the way of life. We stand before God as the Israelites at the passover of Hezekiah, who desired to serve God according to the Law, but could not do so accurately from lack of knowledge; and we can but offer, through our Great High Priest, our sincerity and earnestness instead of exact obedience, as Hezekiah did for them. What I have said is a call upon you, in the first place, to daily private prayer. Next, it is a call upon you to join the public services of the Church, not only once a week, but whenever you have the opportunity; knowing well that your Redeemer is especially present where two or three are gathered together. Christ died once, long since: by communicating in His Sacrament, you renew the Lord's death: you bring into the midst of you that Sacrifice which took away the sins of the world; you appropriate the benefit of it, while you eat it under the elements of bread and wine.

(J. H. Newman, D. D.)

I. WHAT IS THE USE OF CONSCIENCE?

1. To guide us and keep us from doing wrong. You know we have reins for our horses to keep them in the way they should go; and our consciences are the reins by which God guides us, and if we only mind the reins we shall save ourselves from sin and sorrow.

2. To keep an account of what we do. Conscience is God's scribe or private secretary; it writes down all that we do, or say, or think, or feel. During the reign of Queen Mary, Bishop Latimer was brought to trial for conscience' sake. In the room in which the trial took place was a curtain, and behind this curtain a man writing. Whenever the bishop answered a question he heard the sound of this man's pen as he wrote down each word that was spoken. The bishop said that the sound of that pen made him very careful to say nothing but what was strictly true. And this shows us how we should act at all times. Conscience, God's secretary, is writing down everything that we do, "whether it be good or whether it be evil." And the book in which this is written is " the book of God's remembrance," of which the Bible tells us, and out of which we are to be judged at last.

3. As a detector, to find out sin after it has been committed. You know we have what are called detective police. When a robbery has taken place, or a murder has been committed, the business of these men is to try and find out the guilty ones. And God makes use of conscience as His detective police to find out those who have sinned secretly.

II. How MAY CONSCIENCE BE INJURED?

1. By not giving it good light. We have compared conscience to the eye of the soul. We may also compare it to the window of the soul. A window is of use for letting light into room, and also for looking through, that we may see what is outside of the window. But if we wish to have a correct view of the things that we are looking at through a window, what sort of glass is it necessary to have in the window? Clear glass. Suppose that the glass in the window instead of being clear is stained glass — one pane red, another blue, another yellow, and another green. When we look through the red glass what colour will the things be that we are looking at? Red. And so, when we look through the blue glass all things will be blue, they will be yellow when we look through the yellow glass, and green when we look through the green glass. But suppose we have thick, heavy shutters to the window, and keep them closed. Can we see anything through the window then? No. And can we see anything in the room when the shutters are closed? No; it will be dark. And conscience is like a window in this respect. We must keep the shutters open and the windows clean, so that plenty of pure light can get in if we wish to see things plainly. God's blessed Word, the Bible, gives us exactly the kind of light we need in order to have a good conscience. Let us be careful that we do not injure our consciences by not letting in this light.

2. By not minding what they say. The apostle Paul speaks in one place of men's consciences, which, he says, have been "seared with a hot iron" (1 Timothy 4:2). Notice how thin and tender is the skin on your hand or face. It is so delicate that it can feel the slightest touch. Not even a feather can rest upon it without your feeling it. But suppose you should have a red-hot iron applied to your hand. It would burn the skin off, and make a sore which would give you great pain. Afterwards it would heal over, and the skin would grow again, but the new skin would be very different from that on your hand now. Instead of being smooth and tender like this, it would be rough and hard, and have very little feeling. And the apostle means to say that if we do not mind what our consciences tell us we shall injure them just as the skin of our hand is injured by being "seared with a hot iron." You know what an alarm-clock is. It is a kind of clock made to wake persons at a particular hour by making a loud noise. Suppose you have one of these clocks, and you wish it to waken you so that you can rise every morning at four o'clock. You wind it up at night and set the index-finger on the dial-plate pointing to four. The clock keeps on through the night, ticking away, till four o'clock in the morning. Then it begins to strike and ring, and makes such a racket as is sure to wake any ordinary sleeper. This is a very convenient way of being roused from sleep. Yes, it is a sure way, if you only mind the clock, and get up when it calls you. But if you turn over and go to sleep again for two or three mornings, the alarum-clock will lose its power, or rather you will lose your power of hearing it or of being awakened by it. No change will take place in the clock, but a great change will take place in yon. The clock will continue to sound the alarm at the proper hour, and it will make as much noise as ever it did, but it will lose its effect. You will sleep quietly on, just as though the alarm had never been given. Now, conscience is God's alarum-clock. If we stop when it says " stop," if we do what it tells us to do, then we shall always hear it; but if we get into the habit of not heeding its warning, and not doing what it tells us to do, then by and by we shall cease to hear it.

III. How MAY AN EVIL CONSCIENCE BE HEALED? The answer to this question will depend upon the way in which we injure our consciences. We may injure them by doing wrong to those about us, or by sinning against God. And this must be taken into account in saying how the injured conscience can be healed. Suppose we feel distressed in our consciences on account of some wrong done to a friend or neighbour; then the way to get rid of this trouble, and heal our injured conscience, is to go and tell that friend of the fault — to say that we are sorry for it, and ask his forgiveness, thus making up for the wrong we have done. But if our consciences are troubled on account of our sins against God, then how are they to be healed. How are we to get rid of this trouble? Oh, it is dreadful to feel that God is angry with us I When we know that this is the case we never can be happy till our sins are pardoned and our consciences are healed; and it is for this reason that the Bible tells us of Jesus as "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." He shed His precious blood and died for us on purpose that our sins may be pardoned, and we may be at peace with God. And this is what the apostle refers to in the text when he speaks of "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil .conscience."

(R. Newton, D. D.)

(J. Vaughan, M. A.)

(F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

II. We have made A PROFESSION OF OUR FAITH, AND A CONFESSION OF OUR HOPE, By the memories of the day when you made that profession, be firm in it to the end. If you were not false then, if you were not deceivers then, hold fast the confession of your hope without wavering, for" He is faithful that promised." Let us remember also the many times in which we have repeated that profession of faith, that confession of hope; for instead of retracting it, we have gone on to repeat it. We have been marked anew with the King's name. If you ask how you have renewed your vows, I reply: you have done it many a time at the table of communion. You have repeated your profession in the shop, and in the market, and in the place of business, and among your friends, and in your family, and to the partner of your life. Those around you know you to be professedly an heir of heaven, a child of God: it is well that they should. We have considered how we began this profession, and we have also seen how often we have made it since. Let us think for a minute what it has cost us. Religion has cost many of its disciples somewhat dear: but it has cost nothing compared with its worth. What bashfulness it cost you to make the first confession of your faith! What a struggle it then appeared! You cried to God about it and you obtained courage; and now you wonder how you could have been so foolishly timid. Do not in future fall into the same fears. But perhaps some of you lost the friendship of many by becalming disciples of the Lord Jesus. I know one who became a member of this Church: she had moved in high and fashionable circles, but she said to me, "They have left me — everyone of them." I said, "I am very thankful; for it will save you the trouble of quitting them. They will do you no good if they profess to be your friends; and they will do you less harm by giving you the cold shoulder." It is about the best thing that happens to a Christian man when worldlings cut his acquaintance.

III. WHAT ARE WE NOW TO DO?

1. We are called upon to hold fast the profession of our faith.

(1)Of course this includes the holding fast of your faith.

(2)Hold you next to your hope.

2. But that is not the text. It is hold fast your profession of faith, your confession of hope; that is to say, stand to what you have done by way of avowment of these things. Constantly keep up your confession. You made it once. Renew it.

IV. WHY ARE WE TO DO THIS? We are to hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, because He is faithful that has promised. Have you found Him faithful? Has the Lord failed you? Has the Lord been untrue in His promises to you? If He has, then do not hold fast your profession. If, after all, it has been a mistake and a delusion, then give it up. But if He is faithful that has promised — if till this moment you have proved the power of prayer, the wisdom of providence, and the truth of the Sacred Word, then deal with my Lord as He has dealt with you. Be not faithless to the Crucified.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

1. It is put on when we become the members of His visible Church.

2. It is one part of religion itself.

3. It will expose to difficulties and sufferings.

(1)Assaults of Satan.

(2)Opposition of world.

(3)Indisposition of our own hearts.

II. THE DUTY ENJOINED.

1. There must be decision of character. Not halting between two opinions. Not half-hearted. All our powers surrendered to God.

2. There must be constancy of spirit. Heart established, mind fixed, soul stayed upon God. Constant in duties; especially prayer, praise, reading the Divine Word, etc. Always setting the Lord before us, etc. Not as the morning cloud and early dew, &c.

3. There must be perseverance in practice. We only retain our hold by pressing onwards, etc. Not weary, but faithful unto death.

4. In short, we must hold fast our profession.

(1)By the exercise of vigorous faith.

(2)By the constraining influence of Christ's love.

(3)By the cheering attractions of a lively hope.

(4)By the supporting and staying effects of holy patience.

(5)By the continual use of all the appointed means of grace.

III. SOME MOTIVES BY WHICH THIS DUTY MAY BE ENFORCED. Love to Jesus is a powerful motive. Gratitude for past mercies. Our present happiness, and our prospect of eternal felicity. But Christ's faithfulness is here laid down as the great motive.

1. He has promised to give us grace to hold fast our profession; and "He is faithful."

2. He has promised to acknowledge our profession; and " He is faithful."

3. He has promised to reward our profession; and " He is faithful."Application:

1. Learn that religion requires both the devotion of the heart and the profession of the life.

2. The way to heaven is associated with conflicts.

3. Stedfastness is essential to our final salvation.

4. God has provided abundant resources for our comfort and safety.

5. The end will amply recompense for the trials of the way.

(J. Burns, D. D.)

(H. O. Mackey.)

(Coleridge's Aids to Reflection.)

2. This promise is not the promise of any man or angel, but of God; this is more than if all the best men and all the holy angels had bound themselves unto us and given us all security, which possibly they could. The reason hereof is that His power is absolute and almighty, and nothing can resist or hinder it if once it begin to work. Besides, God's mercy is like His power, and as He is able, so is He willing to do what He hath promised, and He hath signified His will and purpose, through faith, by His power to preserve us unto salvation.

3. Yet one may be able, and for a time willing, and yet upon several reasons and motives change his mind, for the mind and will of man or angel is not absolutely immutable; and so, though perhaps they will not, yet it is possible, they may fail us. But God will not, God cannot, for God who hath promised is faithful; for as He cannot forget or be hindered by any contrary power, so He cannot change His will. If He say the word, it must be done; if He pass His promise, He will perform. This faithfulness presupposeth His power and His promise, and it is the immutability of His will, for as He is unchangeable in His being, so He is in His promise (1 Samuel 15:29; Malachi 3:6). So that all is sure on God's part, and man hath no cause to waver, except he neglect his duty; and if he perish, his destruction must be of himself. And shall we, who have so great advantage, so many helps, so blessed an opportunity, and the promise of a faithful God, neglect and injure ourselves so much as to lose this glorious and incomparable prize? Shall we come out of Egypt, and come so near the borders of the heavenly Canaan, and turn hack? or refuse to go forward? Let us detest and eternally abhor to waver; let us go on whatsoever it may cost us.

(G. Lawson.)

I. IT IS A FACT — "He is faithful that promised."

1. Of whom it is that our text speaks. "He is faithful that promised." Our text points to Him who fills the throne itself; we are contemplating Him as engaged to us by a covenant ordered in all things and sure; and as having communicated in consequence exceeding great and precious promises, while He is faithful to each and every promise which He has thus made.

2. We regard the Divine promises themselves. These promises are not mere movements of the Divine mind arising only under the exigencies of new circumstances or of events which spring up in the progress of time, but they flow from the deep fountains of His own grace and love; they embrace all that which is involved in the gift of His dear Son, the great work of the Saviour, the communications of the Divine Spirit, and in the application of every blessing which God has engaged to bestow on His Church on earth. They are all written with His own hand, they are all stamped with His own authority; and in His own Word they stand out in all their truth and in all their fulness.

3. We now consider the faithfulness of God to His promises. The first promise was that the seed of the woman should arrive in the fulness of time, and that He should bruise the serpent's head; that He should give Himself as a ransom, and purchase the Church with His own blood. That promise has been fulfilled. Then, the promise of the Holy Ghost. The Redeemer ascended up on high; and He has poured forth the Divine Spirit: it has been granted and it is still continued to the Church.

II. As IT IS THE EXPRESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN'S EXPERIENCE — "He is faithful that promised." When you are brought by the Holy Spirit to a just consideration of your own state as sinners, and with your eyes fixed upon the Infinite One, and stripped by transgression of all the rights with which you were originally invested, and when you see the manner in which God bestows everything out of His own fulness, and supplies your daily and your hourly wants; it is not on yourself or fellow-men that you can depend, for they are weak and evanescent as you are. It is not on your own works and your own productions that you can repose. It is not on your toil, your labour, your skill, or your acquisitions, that you can depend; for whatever your gains, they may take to themselves wings and fly and leave you desolate and utterly worthless. But the eye of faith contemplates the Infinite Being. It takes hold of God through His gracious word of promise; it looks at the atoning sacrifice of Jesus; it stands by that sacrifice, and embracing that Saviour as the only hope, the soul contemplates a faithful God.

(Owen Clarke.)

1. They flow solely from the free and sovereign good pleasure of Jehovah.

2. They have all an immediate connection with the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).

3. The form in which they are directed is not always the same, but sometimes assumes a more absolute, and sometimes a more conditional, appearance.

4. None of the promises, how conditional soever in their form, are altogether beyond the reach of sinners, so long as they are in the land of the living and place of hope.

5. They are many and various, every way suited to the numerous and diversified wants both of saints and sinners.

II. SOME CONSIDERATIONS TENDING TO ESTABLISH OUR CONFIDENCE IN THE DIVINE FAITHFULNESS AS A SECURITY THAT THE PROMISES WILL BE FULFILLED.

1. Faithfulness is an essential perfection of the Divine nature. The name of the Lord is faithful and true.

2. The promises upon the accomplishment so much of our comfort depends are promises of grace.

3. The truth of God is pledged in the most solemn manner for the accomplishment of His promises.

4. Nothing unforeseen or unexpected can occur as a reason why we should doubt the Divine faithfulness.

5. God is omnipotent, and therefore it is not the want of power that can render Him unfaithful.

6. God is unchangeable both in His nature and purpose; it is impossible, therefore, that He can ever disappoint the hopes that His goodness has raised.

(G. Campbell.)

(R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

I. MUTUAL CONSIDERATION IS TO BE A CULTIVATED INFLUENCE. If YOU place your children under Christian culture, they will develop considerate natures. Just in proportion as you do that you will feel the need of the renewing grace of God, and you will ask God's help through the Holy Ghost. But you must train as well as teach and pray, because God will not rain graces into your children. The Divine counsel to us is: Go to work: get the soil ready; do your duty, and help will come.

II. MUTUAL CONSIDERATION IS TO BE A PROVOCATIVE INFLUENCE. Provoke unto love. You can show persons so much love that they are obliged to love you in return.

III. MUTUAL CONSIDERATION IS TO BE A CHURCH INFLUENCE. "Not forsaking the assembling," etc. What has that to do with mutual consideration? Why, this: it is only by commingling in the communion of the Church that we can get into these mutual relationships at all. If you forsake the assembling of yourselves together, how can we know your power or weakness, your want or your grief? How can there be something provocative to service, if you are not obedient to the roll-call, if you are not in the ranks? There is more than this in it — there is a subtle element in the fellowship of the saints that elevates the entire spiritual manhood and womanhood in us, that stirs up the flagging influence.

(W. M. Statham, M. A.)

I. THE INCITEMENT.

1. We need stimuli to unfold our souls and to open our hands. To see that a thing is right ought perhaps to be enough to incline us to be it, and to do it; but in many cases it is not enough. We are idle, and shrink from the exertion — self-willed, and kick at the constraint — dispirited and weakened by distrust — isolated, and we cry complainingly, "I am left alone." We need to be provoked.

2. And the text tacitly declares that we can incite each other. That men provoke each other to evil works and to hatred is a fact universally known — but the power to incite, and the susceptibility of being incited, are as really capacities for good as for evil. The electric telegraph can convey truth and falsehood, evil report and good report; and human influence may awaken human sympathy, and arouse purpose and will both for right and for wrong.

3. The incitement required is both general and special. There is that which shall make others "ready to every good work," and that which shall provoke to some particular ministration. For the former Paul instructs Titus when, having repeated the great facts of the dispensation of mercy, he writes, "These things affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God may be careful to maintain good works." So that, according to Paul, contemplation of the love of God and of Christ is one means of maintaining good works. This is like connecting a minor wheel in a piece of machinery with the main movement. Our heart is to be incited by connection with God's heart. For the more special incitement we have the pattern of Paul when he moved Corinth to imitate Macedonia in their liberality to the poor saints in Judaea. To say to our fellow believers with respect to any good work, "Do this — it needs doing — you can do it — you ought to do it — God will prosper your effort — I will help you — if you do it not the omission will be sin" — is to provoke to good works. And to make peace between those that are at enmity; to express faith in a good man when others utter causeless suspicion; to show hope where others are tempted to rejoice in alleged iniquity; to endure when others are irritated; to cover another's faults, and to set forth another's virtues — is to provoke to love.

II. THE CONSIDERATION HERE REQUIRED. This is based upon observation — we must know each other, and to know we must observe. The incitement will be regulated by what we observe and by what we discern. One needs be moved to fear through warning, another moved to hope by encouragement, and another quickened by emulation. One may be incited by going before him, and letting him see you lead; but another by following him, and making him hear the fall of your quicker step. But no one is to be left as savourless salt, and as reprobate silver, or as a broken vessel, until after we have exhausted our resources in attempts to incite him. We arrive by this text at certain facts connected with mutual Christian influence to which we shall do well to take heed.

1. There is a serious influence of which Christians are mutually capable and susceptible. No vocation or gifts raise a Christian disciple beyond it; and no station however low is beneath its reach. When by speech I undulate the atmosphere, I know not the effect of those air waves in the universe; they flow on until they reach the shore of our firmament, and then, it may be, subside to rise again in other spheres. But far exceeding this is the influence of soul upon soul. It is not confined to the spirit we immediately move, but is transmitted from spirit to spirit, and becomes an impulse in the world of mind, both infinite and eternal. How awful is the power of soul over soul!

2. Christians are within a certain limit responsible for their influence. They are accountable, not for what that influence does, but for what that influence is. We are to try to incite to kindness and to corresponding actions. This is a good and happy influence. The direction of our influence is to be a study. Those who need this incitement are not to be passed by — but their lack of love and of good works is to awaken our consideration.

3. In the Church of Christ there should be mutual and reciprocal influence of the holiest and happiest kind. All are not apostles, all are not prophets, all are not pastors and teachers; but all are taught of God to love one another, and all may provoke to love. If any member of our body were smitten with paralysis, we should try to excite the torpid nerves; if one particular branch of a tree were barren, we should neither cut it off nor overlook it until after we had pruned it; and on the same principle we are required specially to incite those who are barren and unfruitful in the service of our Lord Jesus Christ.Nor is there any position in Christian life at which this incitement is needless, or from which it is to be withheld.

1. For Christianity's sake let us consider one another to provoke unto love. If careless of each other, we shall misrepresent the system to which we adhere, and those who from lack of incitement are unloving and inactive will misrepresent it too. The effect of this will be that men, instead of going to our Leader and searching His oracles to know if we correctly represent Christianity, will take our embodiment of it, and finding it not less exclusive and individual than false religion, or no religion, will refuse attention to our advocacy of its claims.

2. For God's sake, and for Christ's sake, let us consider one another to provoke unto love. Christianity is the means God has devised that His banished be not expelled from Him. The correct representation of the system is one means of applying it; so that when Christianity is misrepresented, God feels not Himself to be blasphemed merely, but His master-work to be retarded.

3. For each other's sake, and for our own sake, let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works. Who of us would like to be surprised as were the foolish virgins, or to be rejected as the wicked and slothful servant? Let us provoke one another to take oil in our vessels with our lamps, and put out even our one talent to usury. Hearty discipleship to the Saviour will go far to secure this result. Love Christ yourself and you will incite others to love; do good yourself and you will provoke others to good works. Nor can you then measure your influence. The perfume which Mary's hand freed from its prison is fragrant still the north wind has not driven it away; the odours of the east wind have not swallowed it up; the vapours of the south and west winds have not diluted it; but in every wind it has found an untiring wing, and we are refreshed by its sweetness in the present day. But we must intend to provoke; we must consider, and observe, and know, and attend to one another. There are many impediments to love and to good works which we are required to remove. There are wrong definitions of love — our making it a sentiment, not a principle — or complacency in existent good and not benevolence. There is our waiting to do some great thing, instead of doing what our hand finds to do. The liking to serve alone while yet we complain of it; the almost fear lest others should do what we do, and be what we are; the asking that God's kingdom may come, and yet fearing lest in coming, "myself," "my Church," "my ism," should be swallowed up — all this and muchmore needs removing.

(S. Martin.)

I. "WORKS." Work is the condition of life in the world. The law of both kingdoms alike is, "If any man will not work neither should he eat." Work has been made a .necessity in the constitution of nature, and declared a duty in the positive precepts of Scripture. Idleness is both sin and misery. When a sinner is saved — when a man becomes a new creature in Christ, he is not set free from this comprehensive law. The Lord has a work of righteousness on hand, and the disciple yields himself a willing instrument. His heart is more hopeful now, and his hand more skilful. More honourable work is prescribed, and better wages wait him. Christ was a worker. He went about doing. "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business? My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Christ was a worker, and Christians are like Him. The world is a field. It must be subdued and made the garden of the Lord. Son, daughter, "go work to-day in My vineyard."

II. "GOOD works." It is not any work that will please God, or be profitable to men. A bustling life will not make heaven sure. The works must be good in design and character. The motive must be pure and the effect beneficent. But does not the gospel decry good works? You make a grand mistake if, because you are warned not to trust in good works, you grow less diligent in doing them. If a skilful architect, observing you expending your summer days and your manhood's strength in an effort to build a house upon the sand, should benevolently warn you that the labour would be labour lost, you would poorly profit by his counsel if you should simply desist from the work, and loiter idle near the spot. The architect, your friend, did not object to the expenditure of your time and strength in building; but he saw that the higher your wall should rise. on that foundation, the more certain and more destructive would be its fall. He meant that you should find the solid rock and build there — build with all your might. The gospel rejects good works, not as the fruit of faith, but as the meritorious ground of hope before God. Life does not spring from them; but they spring from life. As ciphers, added one by one in an endless row to the left hand of a unit, are of no value, but on the right hand rapidly multiply its power, so although good works are of no avail to make a man a Christian, yet a Christian's good works are both pleasing to God and profitable to men.

III. "Love and good works." Verily good works constitute a refreshing stream in this world wherever they are found flowing. It is a pity that they are too often like Oriental torrents, "waters that fail" in the time of greatest need. When we meet the stream actually flowing and refreshing the land, we trace it upward in order to discover the fountain whence it springs. Threading our way upward, guided by the river, we have found at length the placid lake from which the river runs. Behind all genuine good works and above them love will sooner or later certainly be found. It is never good works alone; uniformly in fact, and necessarily in the nature of things, we find the two constituents existing as a complex whole, "love and good works" — the fountain and the flowing stream. The love is manifestly in this case human in all its exercise. It is love from man to man. Like the water, it flows visibly out of the ground in the fountain, and along the ground in the river's bed; but, like the water, it comes secretly at first all from heaven.

IV. "PROVOKE unto love and good works." Let us attend carefully to the meaning of the term "provoke," bearing in mind, however, as we proceed, that whatever kind of action the word may be found to indicate, it is action on ourselves, and not on our neighbours. The term in the original signifies, For the purpose of stirring up, or sharpening, or kindling love. We need not be surprised to find that injunction here. The love that is current in the Church is defective in kind and quality. It greatly needs to be stirred up. It is like a fire smouldering, and ready to die. Oh, for a breath from heaven to quicken it! We would fain see it bursting into a blaze, and hear all our jealousies and hollow hypocrisies crackling off in the flame. Love must be kindled into a paroxysm; for that is the original term untranslated, and that term, even in our own language, truly indicates the inspired apostle's mind. All the really effective machinery for doing good in the world depends for propulsion on the love that glows in human breasts: with all the revival of our own favoured times, the wheels, clogged with the thick clay of a predominating selfishness, move but slowly. Up with the impelling love into greater warmth, that it may put forth greater power!

V. "CONSIDER ONE ANOTHER to provoke unto love and good works." The exercise prescribed for provoking unto love conclusively determines the persons on whom the provocation was expected to take effect. It is the considerer, not the considered, who is provoked unto love. By thinking of my brother in his need I may be stirred up to pity him, but the mental process that goes on within my breast does not touch him for good or for evil. He may not know that I am considering his case; he may not know that there is such a person in the world. When we consider the heathen in India and China our meditation takes effect, not on them, but on ourselves. It stirs up, not them to love us, but us to love them. The question here, let it be remembered, concerns not the Divine cause of love, but the human agency employed in kindling it. It is the Spirit that quickeneth; but at present we look only to the lower side — the instrumentality of men. When fire is kindled by light direct from the sun, the same two must always conspire — the descent of the burning ray from heaven, and the preparation for receiving it on earth. The solar rays must be concentrated on combustible material by means of a glass with a convex surface, held in a certain attitude, and at a certain distance. Without these preparations, even the sun in the heavens cannot kindle a flame. Thus it becomes a question of deep interest, What attitude must we assume, and what preparation must we make, in order that love, by the ministry of the Spirit, may be kindled in our hearts? Here is the prescription, short and plain: "Consider one another." To consider ourselves may be the means of begetting in us a desire for mercy; to consider Christ may be the means of begetting in us a trust in the Saviour; but in order to kindle in our hearts a self-denying, brother-saving love to men, the true specific is to "consider one another."

VI. "AND consider one another, to provoke unto love and good works." I would not play with a word; I would not extract the doctrines of grace from a copulative conjunction. But in this passage the little word "and" is the link by which all that we have yet gotten hangs on the higher — hangs on the highest. The exhortation to consider is the last of three which are given in an exact logical series, occupying verses 22-24. Come to the Saviour for the cleansing of your own conscience, and abide in peace under the light of His countenance: then and thence look out upon your brother: the result of the combination will be thoughts of love and acts of kindness, as certainly and as uniformly as any of the sequences in nature. He who has drawn near and is holding fast, that is, he who has himself been forgiven through the blood of the Lamb, and is living in the consciousness of being accepted in the Beloved, cannot hate and hurt his brother. The act of considering or looking upon an object is of no avail to direct aright your own course, apart from the position in which you stand when you make your observations. A red light shines aloft at the narrow entrance of a safe harbour. A ship sweeping along the coast in a storm sees the light and makes straight for it through the waves and the darkness. She strikes a rock, and goes down in deep water. Why? This is the harbour, and the light she made for marks its mouth. Ah! it is not enough that you see the light; you must see it from a particular position, and make for it then. The right position is always correctly determined and laid down on the charts. Generally it is fixed by one or more other lights which you must see in line before you head for the harbour. "Consider one another" — that is the last and lowest of the three lights which lead to love. The course is marked for the Christian in his chart. One clause of the instruction is, Keep your eye on that light, and run in; but another clause in combination with it, equally Divine and equally necessary, intimates that ere you can go in with safety to yourself or benefit to others, you must get into line with these other two lights which stretch away upward, and lean at last on heaven.

(W. Arnot.)

II. Let us consider what our neighbour is: how near in blood, how like in nature, how much in all considerable respects the same with us he is.

III. Equity doth plainly require charity from us, for every one is ready not only to wish and seek, but to demand and claim love from others, so as to be much offended, and grievously to complain, if he do not find it.

IV. Let us consider that charity is a right noble and worthy thing; greatly perfective of our nature; much dignifying and beautifying our soul.

V. The practice of charity is productive of many great benefits and advantages to us; so that to love our neighbour doth involve the truest love to ourselves; and we are not only obliged in duty, but may be encouraged by our interest thereto: beatitude is often pronounced to it, or to some particular instances of it; and well may it be so, for it indeed will constitute a man happy, producing to him manifold comforts and conveniences of life, some whereof we shall touch.

VI. Charity doth free our souls of all those bad dispositions and passions which vex and disquiet them: from those gloomy passions which cloud our mind; from those keen passions which fret our heart; from those tumultuous passions which ruffle us, and discompose the frame of our soul.

VII. It consequently cloth settle our mind in a serene, calm, sweet, and cheerful state; in an even temper, and good humour, and harmonious order of soul; which ever will result from the evacuation of bad passions, from the composure such as are indifferent, from the excitement of those which are good and pleasant; "the fruits of the Spirit," saith St. Paul, "are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness," or benignity; love precedeth, joy and peace follow as its constant attendants, gentleness and benignity come after as its certain effects.

VIII. Charity will preserve us from divers external mischiefs and inconveniences, to which our life is exposed, and which otherwise we shall incur.

IX. As charity preserveth from misehiefs, so it procureth many sweet comforts and fair accommodations of life.

X. Charity doth in every estate yield advantages suitable thereto; bettering it and improving it to our benefit.

XI. We may consider that secluding the exercise of charity, all the goods and advantages we have (our best faculties of nature, our best endowments of soul, the gifts of Providence, and the fruits of our industry) will become vain and fruitless, or noxious and baneful to us; for what is our reason worth, what doth it signify, if it serveth only for contriving sorry designs, or transacting petty affairs about ourselves? What is wit good for, if it must be spent only in making sport, or hatching mischief? To what purpose is knowledge, if it be not applied to the instruction, direction, admonition, or consolation of others? What mattereth abundance of wealth, if it be to be uselessly hoarded up, or vainly flung away in wicked or wanton profusion; if it be not employed in affording succour to our neighbour's indigency and distress? What is our credit but a mere noise or a puff of air, if we do not give a solidity and substance to it, by making it an engine of doing good? What is our virtue itself, if it be buried in obscurity or choked with idleness, yielding no benefit to others by the lustre of its example, or by its real influence? What is any talent, if it be wrapped up in a napkin; any light, if it be hid under a bushel; anything private, if it be not by good use spread out and improved to public benefit? If these gifts do minister only to our own particular advantage, to our personal convenience, glory, or pleasure, how slim things are they, how inconsiderable is their worth!

XII. Charity doth hugely advance and amplify a man's state, putting him into the possession or fruition of all good things: it will endow, enrich, ennoble, embellish us with all the world hath of precious, of glorious, of fair; by appropriation thereof to ourselves, and acquiring of a real interest therein.

XIII. If therefore we love ourselves, we must love others, and do others good; charitable beneficence carrying with it so many advantages to ourselves. We by charitable complacence do partake in their welfare, reaping pleasure from all the fruits of their industry and fortune. We by charitable assistance do enable and dispose them to make grateful returns of succour in our need. We thence assuredly shall obtain their good-will, their esteem, their commendation; we shall maintain peaceable and comfortable intercourse with them, in safety, in quiet, in good humour and cheer. Besides all other benefits we shall get that of their prayers; the which of all prayers have a most favourable audience and assured efficacy.

XIV. We may consider that charity is a practice especially grateful to God, and a most excellent part of our duty; not only because He hath commanded it as such with greatest earnestness; nor only because it doth constitute us in nearest resemblance of Him; but as a peculiar experience of love and goodwill toward Him; for if we love Him, we must for His sake have a kindness for His friends, we must tender His interests, we must favour His reputation, we must desire His content and pleasure, we must contribute our endeavours toward the furtherance of these His concerns.

XV. Seeing God vouchsafeth to esteem whatever is done in charity to our neighbour (if done with an honest and pious mind, as to his friends) to be done unto Himself; that in feeding our indigent neighbour we refresh him; in clothing our neighbour we comfort him; we do by charitable beneficence oblige God, and become in a manner benefactors to Him; and as such assuredly shall be requited by Him: and is not this a high privilege, a great honour, a mighty advantage to us?

XVI. We may consider that charity is a very feasible and very easy duty; it requireth no sore pain, no grievous trouble, no great cost; for it consisteth only in good-will, and that which naturally springeth thence.

XVII. We may consider that charity is the best, the most assured, the most easy and expedite way or instrument of performing all other duties toward our neighbour: if we would despatch, love, and all is done; if we would be perfect in obedience, love, and we shall not fail in any point; for "love is the fulfilling of the law"; love "is the bond of perfectness"; would we be secure in the practice of justice, of meekness, of humility toward all men, of constant fidelity toward our friends, of gentle moderation toward our enemies, of loyalty toward our superiors, of benignity toward our inferiors; if we would be sure to purify our minds from ill-thoughts, to restrain our tongues from ill-speaking, to abstain from all bad demeanour and dealing; it is but having charity, and infallibly you will do all this; for "love worketh no ill to its neighbour; love thinketh no evil"; "love behaveth not itself unseemly."

XVIII. Charity giveth worth, form, and life to all virtue, so that without it no action is valuable in itself, or acceptable to God. Sever it from courage; and what is that but the boldness or the fierceness of a beast? From meekness and what is that but the softness of a woman, or weakness of a child? From courtesy; and what is that but affectation or artifice? From justice; what is that but humour or policy? From wisdom; what is that but craft and subtilty? What meaneth faith without it but dry opinion; what hope, but blind presumption; what; alms-doing, but ambitious ostentation; what undergoing martyrdom, but stiffness or sturdiness of resolution; what is devotion, but glozing or mocking with God? What is any practice, how specious soever in appearance, or materially good, but an issue of self-conceit or self-will, of servile fear or mercenary design?

XIX. So great benefits doth charity yield; yet if it did not yield any of them, it would deserve and claim our observance; without regard to its sweet fruits and beneficial consequences, it were to be embraced and cherished; for it carrieth a reward and a heaven in itself; the very same which constituteth God Himself infinitely happy, and which beatifieth every blessed spirit, in proportion to its capacity and exercise thereof.

(I. Barrow, D. D.)

1. Mutual consideration.

(1)In the frailties of our common nature.

(2)In the oneness of our calling as saints.

(3)In our common exposedness to afflictions and dangers.

(4)In our reciprocal duties both to the Church and to the world. In the body every member and part has its specific function — none without their use; so in Christ's Church every one must be an eye, or ear, or foot, or hand, &c.

(5)In the prospect of our eternal fellowship in the heavenly world.

2. Affectionate provocation.

(1)To greater love to God. Who demands our supreme affections — our undivided hearts.

(2)To greater love to each other. For we must love each other even as Christ loved us.

(3)To greater love to a dying world. For whom the Redeemer died, and to whom the gospel tidings must be constantly proclaimed.

(4)To good works. Works of piety, justice, &c., but especially works of benevolence (Matthew 5:7; James 1:27; Hebrews 13:16; Psalm 37:3).Now we must thus provoke our brethren —

(1)By our own example.

(2)By affectionate exhortation.

(3)By fervent prayer with and for each other.

II. ENFORCE THE DUTIES SPECIFIED IN THE TEXT.

1. Because of our liability to lukewarmness and indifference.

2. Because love and good works are essential to genuine godliness.

3. Because, if we abound in these, our usefulness and happiness must be greatly extended.

4. Because in proportion to these will be our reward in the heavenly state.Application:

1. We learn the true spirit which should dwell among Christ's disciples.

2. The necessity of mutual excitement, to the cultivation of that spirit, and the work it produces.

3. How many display the very opposite spirit, and are lamentably barren of good works.

(J. Burns, D. D.)

I. REASONS.

1. Consider the many and weighty injunctions which are to be found in the Word of God upon the subject (Romans 12:9, 10; 1 Thessalonians 4:9, 10; Hebrews 13:1; 2 Peter 1:7; John 15:17; Colossians 1:4; 1 John 3:11; 1 John 4:20, 21).

2. The character and conduct of Him whose disciples we profess to be.

3. The influence which our conduct will have on others.

4. Love is a grace greatly superior to either faith or hope.

5. Let ministers of Christ particularly cherish this temper and cultivate this spirit.

II. MOTIVES.

1. The state of mankind in general — a state of darkness, sin, guilt, infidelity.

2. What God has done for us and requires of us.

3. Let the age in which you live, and the country in which a benign Providence has cast your lot, be considered another motive.

4. The brevity of human life, together with the precariousness of bodily health and strength, we mention as another motive to induce you to attend to the text.

5. Your responsibility.

6. The judgment to come.

(S. Mummery.)

I. THE LABOUR OF SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHERS IS EMPHATICALLY A GOOD WORK.

1. It concerns itself with the young in whom character is most plastic, and result is most probably to be looked for.

2. This work of teaching children is essentially good, because it affects the future. The destinies of the world lie in their hands. When we were on a plain, a little distance this side of Arizona, we were told that there, at a height of 7,300 feet, we were on the continental divide. The stream that we had just lost sight of, the river Colorado, flowed into the Gulf of California; and the one now rippling at our feet, the Rio Grande, was making its way into the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, a district not remarkable in its appearance, was the point; whence water flowed so far apart, as to fall into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. I feel sometimes as if standing at such a point as that, and you teachers in your classes may feel thus this afternoon. Here within your reach and sight are lives which may flow heavenward or hellward; and their whole future depends upon the channel into which, in a few short years or months, the stream of thought and feeling makes its way.

3. Sunday-school teaching may be called a good work, because it has an ennobling effect upon the teacher. How many of you have to thank God for a service which has been to your own soul an unspeakable blessing? Your contact with fresh, innocent, trustful childhood preserved you from becoming narrow and misanthropic, at a time mayhap when you were hardly dealt with in business.

4. Your work is good, not least on this account, that you feel yourself, while doing it, thrown back upon God, if you have seriously undertaken it.

II. BUT IS THERE ANYTHING IN OUR METHODS WHICH COULD BE IMPROVED? DO other practical workers find any helps which we should be the better for? If so, let us in that aspect " consider one another " in a spirit of love. I visited Sunday schools in various parts of America. And throughout the United States it appeared to me that their methods were superior to our own, whatever the results may be.

1. The expenditure of the church upon the children is far greater than with us. The class-rooms and schoolrooms are carpeted throughout, brightened by pictures and banners and flowers, presenting the appearance of comfortable parlours rather than of halls.

2. Nor could I help noticing the contrast between the teachers there and in some schools (happily not in all) here. Among us no sooner does a teacher get married, or even engaged, than the Class is forsaken; but there men and women of ripe experience grow grey in the service, and this naturally does much to retain the elder scholars, whom we generally lose.

3. Another feature of American Sunday-school work I wish to touch upon. It is that all classes are represented among the scholars who attend. No parents keep their children away because, being richer and cleverer than their neighbours, they consider it derogatory to their dignity to allow their children to go into ordinary classes. You say you teach them at home. Do you, as a matter of fact? Is not such teaching often interrupted by visitors and friends? Is there not also practical difficulty in constituting into one class the children of the home, who are of different ages, but who might have teachers adapted for each, in the grades of a Sunday school? And, further, does not a comparative stranger often speak more directly on personal religion than a parent, and is it not a curious but indubitable fact that the first confession of faith is more easily made to one who is known as the religious teacher outside the family?

(A. Rowland, LL. B.)

(J. Vaughan, M. A.)

(S. Martin.)

(J. Bruce.)

(F. W. Farrar.)

(A. Moody Stuart.)

(J. Service, D. D.)

1. Assembling together is a duty.

(1)God has commanded it.

(2)The practice is co-equal in point of time with the existence of the Christian Church.

(3)It is necessary for carrying out the Lord's work.

(4)It is essential for the spiritual well-being of every Christian man.

2. A privilege. To neglect it is to starve the soul.

II. THE OBJECT OF MEETING TOGETHER.

1. TO draw near to God.

2. To receive spiritual blessings.

3. To exhort one another.

III. THE INCREASING IMPORTANCE OF THIS MEETING TOGETHER AS THE PARTICULAR DAY NAMED IN THE TEXT DRAWS NEAR.

1. The day that you may be deprived of the opportunity of meeting.

(1)From sickness.

(2)From loss of inclination.

2. The day of trial and affliction.

3. The day of death.

4. The day of judgment.

(G. Sexton, D. D.)

1. That to assemble together is a Christian duty.

2. Some who profess attachment to Christ's cause neglect this duty. Some are once-a-day worshippers; others are fine-weather worshippers; while many are merely fancy-worshippers, and go to the Lord's house just when it may please them. Great reason is obvious, no spiritual relish, only a name to live, &c. Only form of godliness, etc.

3. It is of the utmost importance that we do not thus forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

(1)On God's account, who demands and infinitely deserves our service.

(2)On the Church's account. The Church is to be visible.

(3)Especially on our own account.We are deeply interested in these assemblies. We might "forsake," &c., if we had no mercies to acknowledge, no sins to confess, no blessings to crave, no enemies to overcome, no soul to sanctify, no hell to escape, no heaven to gain.

II. A SPECIFIC DUTY STATED. We should exhort each other —

1. To watchfulness and vigilance.

2. To determination and constancy.

3. To zeal and diligence.

4. To courage and perseverance.

III. A POWERFUL MOTIVE.

1. The day is approaching.

2. This day is truly a momentous one.

3. The believer sees the day approaching. That is, he never loses sight of that truth.Learn:

1. The place of the Christian's delight will be God's house.

2. From our present circumstances, we all stand in need of exhortation (1 Thessalonians 5:11; 2 Timothy 4:2; Hebrews 3:13).

3. We cannot fail to be stimulated, both to diligence and faithfulness, if we keep the truth before us that the day is approaching.

(J. Burns, D. D.)

II. GOD'S POSITIVE INSTITUTIONS CONCERNING IT. All the directions He gave to Moses concerning the tabernacle, concerning the priests, concerning the sacrifices, concerning the Sabbath and feasts, were institutions of a public nature, and supposed His worship, to which they all related, to be a public worship. He hath nowhere declared for the cessation of public worship; but, on the contrary, hath plainly intimated His will to have it continued, and promised that His presence shall propitiously attend on our Christian assemblies lawfully met in obedience to Him, as it formerly did on the Jewish. For the promise then was (Exodus 20:24). So now it is wheresoever, i.e., whether at Jerusalem as before, or in any other place, two or three, i.e., any indefinite number, of you are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of you (Matthew 18:20).

III. That public worship is the duty of all Christians may be proved likewise from THE VERY BEING AND ECONOMY OF THAT CHURCH. For, in the first place, if we consider what the Church simply is, we can have no other conception of it but of a number of people called together and chosen out Of the unbelieving world, to profess the faith of Christ and to worship God according to the instructions which Christ gave. Now, a number of people, called out of the world to worship God after the same manner, and with unity and consent touching any instructions given them for that end, must in all reason be supposed to do this by meeting and assembling together. But if we consider it under that metaphor which the scriptures gives us of it when they call it Christ's body, and the several Christians that compose it, the members of that body (1 Corinthians 7:27). This will still further convince us that Christians are bound to worship God in communion; for why is the Church represented as a body but to signify to us its unity? And what can that agreement be which unites Christians so as to make them one Church or spiritual body but their joining together in the performance of those offices for which they were incorporated, and therefore surely in the worship of God, which is none of the meanest of those offices. And yet this will further appear from the order and government of it. For if it had no need of public worship, why are we so solemnly admitted into it, and excluded out of it?

(Joseph Watson, D. D.)

1. Consider the fact implied in the text concerning the existence of a stated day for Christian worship among the Hebrews is a fact palpable and acknowledged by us. Here is the sacred ordinance. It is ours. We ought to use is according to its design, and not forsake on it the assembling of ourselves together.

2. Consider none of the circumstances which I described, not to excuse but to explain the conduct of the "some," condemned in the text, can be pleaded by us. We were not brought up Jews, and the keeping of the first day holy does not clash in our minds with any reverence which we have been accustomed to attach to the seventh. We were not brought up Gentiles, in ignorance of God and Christ and immortality, trained to be of the earth earthy, so that the keeping of the Lord's Day should be to ourselves something new, and to all around us a thing outrageous and revolutionary. We are not exposed to any violence of persecution if we obey the exhortation before us. We are verily guilty, we have no excuse to allege, if we forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

3. Consider what high ends are answered by our assembling ourselves on the Lord's Day. Strength and beauty are in the sanctuary.

4. Consider the consequences likely to result from neglecting the ordinances of the sanctuary are disastrous. The man who neglects them declines the open profession of his faith; he cuts himself off from the highest exercises of his nature and the purest sources of virtue and happiness. His indifference and carelessness will grow on him, till backsliding becomes desertion, and desertion will become rebellion, which can only issue in his outcasting himself from the presence of God and the beatific vision of heaven; a life ruined and a soul lost, — without God, without hope:

(Professor Legge.)

(J. H. Newman, D. D.)

(J. C. Barry, M. A.)

1. To express submission to the authority of the Lord their God.

2. To improve in spiritual knowledge.

II. SOME OF THE IMPORTANT EFFECTS OF ATTENDING ON ASSEMBLIES FOR WORSHIP.

1. The belief of a dependence upon God, as the Author of all our blessings, is preserved and enlivened in the mind.

2. We exercise and improve the benevolent affections of the heart.

3. We are training up for the devotional exercises of the heavenly temple.

III. EXHORTING ONE ANOTHER, and so much the more as ye see the day approaching."

1. If exhortation was necessary in the days of the Apostle Paul, it may be easily admitted that it is equally so in ours. Let me exhort you to remember that weekly worshipping assemblies are not an appendage to Christianity which we may add or keep off at pleasure.

2. The text adds this awful reason for exhortation, "and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching." A regular and devout improvement of the Lord's Day, is an excellent preparation for meeting the Lord when He comes. The transition seems natural and easy, from a house of prayer on earth to a house of praise in heaven.

(Robert Foote.)

1. Public worship is sanctioned by Divine authority, and the example of the saints in every age.

2. Public worship has the special promise of the Divine presence.

3. The profit and advantage arising from public worship require also to be considered. Our own interest is concerned, as well as the glory of God (Psalm 36:8; Psalm 92:13). There the ignorant are instructed, the languid are quickened, the broken-hearted are bound up, and the wounded in spirit healed.

II. INQUIRE INTO THE CAUSES OF NEGLECT.

1. In some instances it arises from a spirit of scepticism and infidelity.

2. In others it arises from a spirit of profaneness, daring to resist convictions, and to trifle with obligations which cannot be denied.

3. Neglect of public worship frequently proceeds from sloth and idleness.

4. It is often the effect of self-conceit and pride. There are some who think they know enough, and have no need of instruction; they are also good enough, and need not to be made better.

5. The interference of personal prejudices too frequently prevents an attendance on the means of grace, but can never be urged in justification.

(B. Beddome, M. A.)

1. Come to worship.

2. Resist the influence of a bad example, "as the manner of some is." The object of public worship is twofold.

1. Edification, having in view the stimulus and encouragement of believers, and their defence from manifold temptation.

2. Conversion, having in view the salvation of those who are afar off. A special blessing is theirs who love the house of God; their own dwelling shall be watched and blessed. "They shall prosper that love Thee."

(J. Parker, D. D.)

(G. Lawson.)

(C. F. Buchan.)

(William Burns.)

(Win. Brown, M. D.)

(Sword and Trowel.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

1. I like to walk out on Sundays to see the works of the Creator.

2. The church is hot and close, and I like to get into the fresh air.

3. The world is God's house; I can worship God anywhere.

4. What's the use of going to listen to a man reading a discourse? I could do that as well as him.

5. I can read and pray at home quite as well as at church.

6. I work hard all the week; Sunday is the only day I can be with my family.

7. Sunday is the only day I've got to attend to my garden.

8. I mend my children's shoes on Sundays.

9. I go to see my daughter who is in service on Sundays.

10. The sermons are dull and the ministers want talent.

11. On Sunday mornings I attend to my private business, in the afternoons and evenings I rest.

12. I want to read the newspaper on Sundays.

13. I wouldn't go to be a hypocrite.

14. If I go I cannot have my pipe, which I enjoy after a week's work.

15. My dress is not good enough to go in.

16. They preach, but very few of them practise.

17. When I've got the will to go, I'll go.

18. Going to church won't carry me to heaven.

19. It's all done to frighten the people and to keep them down.

20. I had enough of religion and imprisonment at the Sunday school.

(The Christian.)

(Anon.)

(Scientific Illustrations and Symbols.)

(Mons. Landriot.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(United Presbyterian.)

(J. Jortin, D. D.)

1. Duties become more numerous and complicated as you advance in life, and you need religion to enable you to discharge them.

2. Circumstances will become more and more trying as you advance, and you will need religion to enable you rightly to bear them.

II. THE OBLIGATIONS TO RELIGION INCREASE AS THE DAY APPROACHES. Sinner, each drop in the rich showers of mercy that are rained upon thee every moment has a voice, and that voice says, with imperial emphasis, "Yield yourself to God."

III. THE OBSTRUCTIONS TO A RELIGIOUS LIFE INCREASE AS THE DAY APPROACHES.

1. Your insensibility increases.

2. Your indisposition increases.

3. Your incapacity increases.

(Homilist.)

I. The apostle did not say to the Hebrews that their "DAY" Or GRACE WAS "APPROACHING," nor can I say so to you. Their day of grace had come, and so has yours. Your day of grace did not approach with this new year; you had it last year, you have had it all your years, you have it still — it has followed you into this new year. "Now is the accepted time, now is the clay of salvation." The gospel sun has risen upon you in all its light, in all its warmth, in all its privileges, in all its responsibilities. But there is a setting of the gospel sun as well as a rising. Of this the Hebrews are warned. The gospel is not always left in the same country, nor in the same part of the country; not always in the same town, nor in the same congregation in a town. Now, avail yourselves of these opportunities while you have them, and tell your neighbours to do the same. You are not all doing this as you ought.

II. But, then, secondly, in many places and in many persons, where a day of grace was long enjoyed, there has also succeeded a "DAY OF VENGEANCE." "God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap"; and the reaping is often in this world as well as the sowing. The retribution is not always kept for eternity; there is retribution in time. Opportunities are put an end to; domestic circumstances occur, withdrawing men from means of grace, from the gospel; distances are enlarged, and prosperity is diminished; expenses cannot be incurred, and opportunities cannot be enjoyed, as before. There is a solemn calamity. Domestic judgments fall also upon families; I say not in anger, because of means abused, but as a matter of fact, whatever the motive may be in Him who brings them. Without presuming to scan His reasons, we are commanded to observe His doings; and these things He does. He brings, in various ways, domestic and relative and personal judgments, which cut short, or greatly diminish, the opportunities of grace. Now in other ways days of vengeance, putting an end to days of grace, are brought upon men, as in national calamities. A day is approaching which may shake every throne and every established church in Christendom. And what then? What should Christians be prepared for? We should all be prepared for storms. How do we prepare for natural storms? Why, we build a strong house and have it fortified against the tempest. We take care that the doors and windows are made capable of resisting the impetuosity of the gale. We seek a hiding-place from the tempest; and in a climate like this we should be considered mad if, with the means of having a house over our heads, we were to wait until the storm came to get a house. We prepare the house for the storm, and we prepare it with the more earnestness because we see the storm approaching. What is to be done here, then, as ye see a day approaching when your means of grace may be removed — a day when even our own favoured country, hitherto comparatively quiet, may be disturbed. Is there, then, no possibility of a day approaching? And where should Christians be found? We have a new and living way of access to God; we have a High Priest over the house of God. We should "hold fast our profession," for "He is faithful that promised." And we should "consider one another," have a friendly eye to things around, consider where failures are, kindly, but firmly, point them out, to "provoke unto love and to good works," and this "the more as ye see the day approaching."

III. Though no such day as I have imagined should approach our favoured nation within our time, yet is there another "day approaching" which calls for preparation — a day which no power can ward off, no riches bribe. It may come suddenly to many of us; to all it is approaching with gradual, but determined and decisive step. It is giving notes of warning as it comes in many of us. "WE HAVE THE SENTENCE OF DEATH IN OURSELVES." It was Dr. Watts who said to a friend that came to see him on his death-bed, "You come now to see an old friend; we have talked on many subjects of learning, and criticism, and controversy; now none of these things suit me; I must now take that view of the gospel which the poorest Christian in the town can take as well as I." And so he died, in simple reliance on Jesus. See, then, my brethren, that you realise this reliance, "so much the more as ye see the day approaching."

IV. "WE MUST ALL APPEAR BEFORE THE JUDGMENT-SEAT OF CHRIST." Every one of you "must give account of himself to God," where there will be no possibility of concealment, no doubtful examination of witnesses, no hesitation about facts, no cross-examination to ascertain what the facts were, but where all will be transparent to the Judge — all that we have done in the flesh, whether it were good, or whether it were bad. How shall we be ready for the " day" which is thus " approaching"? The answer is as before: no man shall stand in that judgment but the man who is in Christ Jesus. This is the only preparation for the judgment — "the day" of the judgment of God.

(H. McNeile. D. D.)

1. The day of providential trial, when the judgments of God will fall on the wicked, and the Church of Christ will have to pass through the fires and floods of persecution.

2. Then the day of death is approaching — approaching us all, and perhaps is much nearer to us than we generally suppose. We see it approaching in every grey hair on the head, in every attack of disease, in every puncture of pain, in every token of decay, in every symbol of mourning, in every funeral procession, and in every open grave.

3. And the day of general judgment is approaching. Oh what separations, what disclosures of character, what wrecks of false hopes, what shrieks of despair, what bursts of joy, what strange transitions, will then be seen and heard!

II. THE INFLUENCE WHICH THE DAY APPROACHING SHOULD HAVE UPON OUR PRESENT CHARACTER AND CONDUCT.

1. Be diligent and earnest in seeking your own personal salvation, "and so much the more as ye see the day approaching."

2. Then, next to this, be diligent and earnest in the discharge of all Christian duties, and the improvement of all your Christian privileges, "and so much the more as ye see the day approaching."(1) The first is, to live near to God, in a new spiritual state of regeneration and grace, in covenant union, in a holy walk and conversation, in child-like obedience, in fervent love, and in ardent desire: "Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith."(2) The second is, steadfastness in our religious views and professions, amidst all trials and temptations: "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering."(3) The third is, mutual affection, influence, and co-operation: "Let us consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good works."(4) The fourth is, a careful observance of the appointed seasons of conversation and worship: "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is."

3. Then you should be diligent and earnest in a cultivation of a spirit of weanedness from the present world, and of attachment to heaven and heavenly things, "and so much the more as ye see the day approaching." When that day comes, what a poor insignificant thing will this world appear! How low and brief its pleasures! How vanishing its wealth and honours! How dim and fading its brightest glories! How infinitely below the capacities and wants of an immortal mind!

(Wm. Gregory.)

(O. Feltham.)

(New Cyclopedia of Illustrations.)

1. An accurate and extended acquaintance with the disclosures of the gospel.

2. A decided conviction of the truth and authority of the gospel.

3. A partial experience of the power and excellence of the gospel.

4. A distinct and open profession of the gospel.

II. THE PECULIAR FEELING INVOLVED IN THE COMMISSION OF APOSTASY. It must be done wilfully.

1. From sin committed through want of due information and conviction.

2. From sin committed through hasty inconsideration.

3. From sin committed through powerful and unexpected temptation.

4. From the occasional falls of the true believer, which are subsequently followed by deep, and perhaps speedy repentance. Apostasy is not one act of sin, but a continued state of mind and conduct. It is a falling away, persevered in to the close of life, and issuing in a state of hopeless wretchedness.

III. THE AWFUL CONSEQUENCES RESULTING FROM THE COMMISSION OF APOSTASY.

1. It occasions a necessary exclusion from the attainment of mercy.

2. It induces a terrifying apprehension of coming wrath.

(Essex Remembrancer.)

(R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

2. Neither are sins of ignorance intended, but such as are against light and strong conviction. To sin against knowledge is one of the greatest aggravations, and that which leads on to perdition.

3. The text speaks not of sins in general, though knowingly or presumptuously committed, but of some sin in particular, and such as excludes from the hope of salvation. Now this appears to be no other than an absolute and entire rejection of the truth which had been professedly received. Those who cast the Son of God from His throne must expect that He will cast them into hell. They divest Him of His glory, and He will cover them with disgrace.

I. THE DEATH OF CHRIST WAS A REAL AND PROPER SACRIFICE FOR SIN. The sacrifices under the law were figurative: this was real and effectual. They were shadows: this was the substance.

II. THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THE ONLY SACRIFICE FOR SIN.

III. THOSE WHO REJECT THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST ARE LEFT WITHOUT HOPE.

1. If Christ became a sacrifice, this will account for the treatment He met with both from the hands of God and man.

2. If the death of Christ be the only sacrifice for sins, let us not only hold fast this doctrine, but actually build upon it as the foundation of all our hopes and comfort.

3. As the passage which we have now considered speaks terror to these who either never embraced the doctrine of Christ's atoning sacrifice, or who have shamefully apostatised from it, so it speaks terror to them only. Such indeed are running a dreadful risk of unpardoned guilt and Divine displeasure, and it behoves them to take warning. But let those who put their trust in Christ crucified, and who know no other hope, rejoice and be exceeding glad; for He is able to keep that which they commit unto Him until that day.

(B. Beddome, M. A.)

2. Truth may be truth, and yet not known to any man or angel, and the truth was first known only unto God; yet it pleased Him, out of His great mercy, to reveal His mind to man, and in particular this truth of the gospel by Christ and His apostles, who made it known unto others, who by that means came to know it. This knowledge was not mathematical, physical, political, or metaphysical, as some use to speak, but theological and Divine, and a light above the light of nature. The word may signify not only knowledge, but acknowledgment of this truth, by a full assent upon conviction. And this might be caused, not only by outward revelation, information, and miracles, but also by the illumination o! the Spirit, and supernatural gifts" for God goes far with man, and doth much to save him: He many times penetrates his inward parts, and by His Divine light and power enters into his very heart, and all this to convert him.

3. They received this knowledge. God did not only offer it, but give it, which He might be properly said to do when they received it. They had it not by nature; for it is far above the natural man. They acquired it, but not by their own power and industry; neither did they merit it. Yet in this receiving they were not merely passive, yet passive because they could be active. God must do something without man, before he can actively receive, He must prevent him by revelation and information without, and by illumination and operation within, and this done, man may be active. For, to receive it is certainly an act not only of the understanding which assents, but of the will which approves. So that he both wittingly and willingly receives, and that with some delight, and proceeds to profession, and continues for a while to believe, approve, profess. Though this receiving of knowledge may seem only to be acknowledgment, yet it is something more. Truth is opposed to error, knowledge to ignorance, acknowledgment to dissent, approbation to rejection of this truth.

(G. Lawson.)

II. The parties that must suffer are adversaries: adversaries are apostates, who are not merely disobedient subjects, but revolters.

III. There remains a certain fearful looking for of this judgment.

1. Though they never fear it, nor think of it, yet they are obnoxious to it.

2. This will certainly be their doom; and as they are obnoxious by law, they shall certainly suffer that which they have deserved.

3. If they ever seriously reflect upon themselves, and remember what they have done; as conscience will now and then lash them, and mind them of their crime, they must needs expect it, and their fear will be very great. For as they apprehend the peril, so will their fear be; and they cannot apprehend the judgment, but as very grievous, pressing hard upon them, and unavoidable, and so it will torment them before the time of execution.

(G. Lawson.)

(R. W. Hamilton.)

1. To undervalue it, if it be of any worth.

2. To vilify it.

3. To vilify it very much.

4. To express this contempt by casting it upon the ground and trampling upon it, which is the greatest debasement, and is sometimes an expression of utter detestation.Thus Jezebel was thrown down upon the earth, and trampled upon by Jehu's horses. To vilify and debase things that are base is no fault; and to despise unworthy men is tolerable; but the apostate undervalues the Son of God; and the greater His dignity, the greater the indignity. He is not mere man, though man, yet as man the best of men; for He is the Son of God, and that not any kind of son, but the only begotten and beloved Son of God, the brightness of His Father's glory, and the express image of His person; and so the Son of God, that He is God. Thus neither the Person and Deity of Christ, nor His natures, nor the personal union of them, nor His transcendent gifts, nor His heavenly wisdom, nor His glorious works, nor His rare virtues, nor His great work of expiation, nor His glory and power; which He enjoys at the right hand of God, could anyways move him; but he debaseth Him that was higher than the heavens, as low as the dust under his feet; yet this debasement was only an act of his base mind, but could not in the least degree obscure the excellency of Christ, This is the first aggravation of apostasy.

II. HE COUNTETH THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT, WHEREBY HE WAS SANCTIFIED, AN UNHOLY THING.

1. By the blood understand the sacrifice of Christ, so much magnified in the former chapter; for it is that blood by which Christ, entering the holy place of heaven, obtained eternal redemption; that blood which purgeth the conscience from dead works to serve the living God; that blood which confirmed the everlasting covenant, in which respect it is called the blood of the covenant. This covenant is called the covenant of grace, wherein God promiseth remission of sins, and the eternal inheritance of glory, upon condition of repentance and faith in Christ. And it is called the blood of this covenant because upon it the covenant was grounded, and by virtue of it all the promises thereof are made effectual.

2. This was the blood by which this apostate, upon his receiving the knowledge of the truth, was sanctified. For —(1) This blood, as offered and accepted of God, made his sin remissible.(2) Upon the profession of his faith his sin was, at least conditionally, pardoned and purged.(3) So long as he continued in his profession, and so far as he proceeded according to certain degrees in faith and the profession of it, so far he might be said to be in a state of justification, and not only to justification, but sanctification.

3. Yet this sanctifying blood the apostate counts unholy or common. To be common blood may be understood —(1) Such as hath no expiating and purging power.(2) Such as is no better than the blood of bulls and goats sacrificed.(3) Such as differs not from the blood of other men.(4) Such as is the blood of a malefactor, guilty and vicious person, and that is impure and unholy blood. So that the apostate, though he had received some kind and measure of sanctification from it, yet ascribed no more virtue and excellency to it than to common blood; denied the sanctifying power of it, nay, did account it unholy. Yet you must note, that though it be so vile in his conceit, yet it is really in itself the only sanctifying blood to all such as do sincerely believe. This is the second aggravatior,.

III. THE APOSTATE DOTH DESPITE UNTO THE SPIRIT OF GRACE.

1. This Spirit is not the spirit of man, neither is it any angel, nor any created person of substance; but it is an uncreated Spirit, the Spirit of God, so as that it is God; therefore the perfections and operations of God are predicated of it.

2. This Spirit is said to be the Spirit of grace. Thus He may be called in opposition to the spirit of bondage and fear, which is the spirit proper to the law. For the Spirit by the law, which had no expiation for sin, no promise of power to keep it, nor of pardon if transgressed, could work nothing but fear, which was a continued slavery. The Spirit of the gospel, which is the Spirit of Christ, promised and given in the gospel, is a Spirit of comfort and confidence.

3. They do despite unto this Spirit. In this despite there are injury, reproach, contempt; and the greater the person to whom the despite is done, the more heinous it is. This here meant is not done to man, but God; because done to that Spirit which is so the Spirit of God, that He is God. This is committed —(1) By resisting the sanctifying power of God.(2) By undoing all that God, by His Spirit, had done in him for his salvation.(3) By accounting the gifts, notions, motions of this Spirit, the works, delusions, and impulses of the devil; and that not only in himself, but in others sanctified by this Spirit, and endued with His gifts. This is a sin against God the Father, who loved us, and sent Christ to redeem us; against God the Son, who had shed His precious blood for the expiation of our sins; against God the Holy Ghost, who had begun the work of sanctification and consolation in us.

(G. Lawson.)

(Ralph Robinson.)

(B. K. Noel.)

(Baxendale's Anecdotes.)

(A. P. Pierson, D. D.)

I. THIS SEEMING CONTRADICTION IS OFTEN HARMONISED IN HUMAN LIFE. Most of US have known the love of home, as amongst the dearest experiences of earthly life; and we shall not easily forget the dewy eyes that looked so carefully into the trunk that was being packed for us with sacrificial love. True! but yet we can remember times when it was "a fearful thing to fall into our earthly father's hands"! The fatherly spirit seemed turned into a consuming flame of righteous anger. Nay, in cases of guilty betrayal, the deeper the parental love, the more intense the indignation at the harm done to some dear child of the home. And who can measure the terrible influences of sin in God's fair universe? Is His voice the only voice that is to be silent? Is His hand the only one that is not to hold the sword of justice? Is He who is the author of the eternal moral law, and who is the inspirer and quickener of all moral intuition, to be assailed as wanting in love, if by the lips of one of His own inspired apostles He declares that " it is a fearful thing to fall into His hands"?

II. THIS SEEMING CONTRADICTION WAS HARMONISED IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST HIMSELF. All ages since the Redeemer's advent have at least agreed in the testimony that He was a Lord of love. And yet, while His whole life is a revelation that "God is love," He casts some clear light, upon the truth that "it is a fearful thing to fall into His hands." Wicked men trembled as He read their hearts. He saw where sin was taking the forms of hypocrisy and hardness. And would any universe be beautiful or desirable that had not a retribution for such as these hardened hypocrites? Would it not be a fearful thing, if it were not " a fearful thing for them to fall into the hands of God"? Were they to "devour widows' houses for nothing"? Were they to be "full of all uncleanness," and yet meet no condemnation from the immaculate God? Where is justice in the universe, if they escape from "the wrath to come"'?

III. THIS SEEMING CONTRADICTION IS NOT A CHRISTIAN ONE ALONE. It is "a fearful thing to fall into the hands" of Nature, if you disobey her laws. The tempest, will not let you play with the lightning; the precipice will not let you tempt her indulgence by plunging into the depths; the sea soon casts upturned and ghastly faces on to the shore if you tack amid the rocks, even though there be "beauty at the prow, and pleasure at the helm"! And what are we reminded of when Nature thus resents our negligence and ignorance? We are told that all these laws and powers could not be altered for one instant in the smallest degree without injuring man, and that to secure his welt-being and safety all these laws are established. What would be the good of saying, Now you must choose one horn of this dilemma — "You cannot say, Nature is love, and yet it is a fearful thing to fall into her hands"?

IV. THESE SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS HAVE BEEN HARMONISED WITHIN BY CONSCIENCE ITSELF. Instincts are often truer than arguments. We feel in relation to what is Called crime that a merely reformatory system is not enough. It would be wrong to pass over their crimes, wrong to make Nemesis impossible! What? with their miserable victims of yesterday tortured, pillaged, traduced, and murdered! Would it be right to say, as does Mr. Voysey, "Love makes no bargain, and imposes no conditions; can never so betray itself as to say, 'Believe and thou shalt be saved,' but, 'thou shalt be saved whether thou believest or not!'" A fearful enough universe such an one would be; an altogether unmitigated misery to live in it. "Love imposes no conditions"! Is it so? Is there to be no "Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow"? I venture to affirm that the righteous instincts of human nature say emphatically, "Amen," as of old, to all these condemnations.

(W. M. Statham, M. A.)

1. It must be a fearful thing for impenitent sinners to fall into God's hand when we remember the character of God as revealed in His judgments of old (Deuteronomy 7:10; Isaiah 66:6). What instances does the Scripture give of what Paul calls " the severity of God," and how true is it that " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God"!

2. Pursuing our heavy task, we shall not draw your solemn attention to the words of the Saviour. Our Lord Jesus Christ we believe to be the incarnation of God, and to represent our God under a most tender aspect. It is a very remarkable fact that no inspired preacher of whom we have any record ever uttered such terrible words concerning the destiny of the lost as our Lord Jesus Christ.

3. We feel that it must be a fearful thing to be punished for sin when you remember the atonement.

4. The conscience of every sinner tells him that there wilt be a wrath to come. Dying men who have lived in impenitence, have often exhibited fears that are not to be accounted for, except upon the supposition that the shadow of a terrible doom had cast itself upon their minds.

II. Let me urge you NOT TO ATTEMPT TO DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF THE BENEFICIAL EFFECT WHICH A PROPER CONSIDERATION OF THIS DOCTRINE WOULD HAVE UPON YOU.

1. Do not deny the fact, at any rate if you do, be consistent and deny Scripture altogether.

2. Do not have the edge of this truth taken off by those who suggest a hope that though you may be punished for a time in the next world you will ultimately be destroyed and annihilated.

3. Some suppose that instead of annihilation, restoration awaits the lost. What can there be about hell fire to change a man's heart?

4. Some ungodly men say, "Well, you do not believe for a minute that there is any material fire, do you?" But if it were not so, do you think that soul punishment is a trifle? Why, man, it is the very soul of punishment. It is far more dreadful than bodily pain.

III. CONSIDER HOW THIS TEXT IS PUT. The punishment to be endured is here described as falling into the hands of the living God. Will not that be fearful? But what could there be that would alarm the soul in falling into the hands of the living God? Let me remind you. You sinners, when you begin to think of God, feel uneasy. In a future state you will be compelled to think of God. That thought will torment you. You will have to think of God as one to whom you were ungrateful. You will feel remorse, but not repentance, as you recollect that He did honestly invite you to come to Him, that He did call and you refused. As you think of the happiness of those whose hearts were given to Him, it will make your miseries great to think of what you have lost. Well may the wicked gnash their teeth, as they note the overthrow of evil and the establishment of good!

IV. IF THESE THINGS BE SO, THEN ACT ACCORDINGLY.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(Aubrey L. Moore.)

(J. Howard Hinton, M. A.)

(Thomas Davies, on David Mallet.)

(A. S. Patterson.)

II. THE ENCOURAGING CONSIDERATIONS WHICH HE ADDUCES (ver. 34).

1. The conduct of these persons demands our highest admiration. Simply to acquiesce without murmuring would have been no small matter; but to meet joyfully such a visitation, was strange indeed. When the harvest is suddenly blasted, the utmost we expect in the husbandman, after all his care and toil, is patient resignation; no one, under such circumstances, thinks of joy. But these persons took joyfully the spoiling of their goods — those goods including their earthly all.

2. They were influenced by the consideration of the treasure laid up for them in heaven, which the spoiler could not reach, nor aught else destroy. They knew that they had there a better and a more enduring substance than the possessions of this passing world.

(1)More satisfying.

(2)More enduring.

III. THE DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS WHICH HE ENFORCES.

1. Confidence. This feeling is to be regarded as the fruit of faith, and is displayed by courage in the face of difficulties and oppositions. It includes freedom from bondage and fear, and also a prevailing persuasion of our acceptance with God.

2. Patience. This is another fruit of faith, and is not the least important of those things which are lovely and of good report. There are three things which call for the exercise of this grace. We have need of it —

(1)In bearing provocation.

(2)In suffering affliction.

(3)In waiting under delays and disappointments.In each of these senses the Hebrews had to exercise this grace, but especially in the latter. What the apostle exhorts them to cultivate is the opposite of that impatience which cannot wait; but he tells them that they would not have to wait long. "For yet a little while," &c. The overthrow of the Jewish state would put an end to their power to annoy them. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted, think of this "little while." Every wave is numbered between thee and the desired haven; and then the little while of time will be swallowed up in the unending ages of eternity.

3. Perseverance. "Now the just shall live by faith" — in the exercise of a calm and constant trust in God — "but if any man draw back, My soul," &c. To draw back, after putting our hands to the gospel plough, is a sin highly aggravating in its nature, and, if persisted in, one that will be most awful in its results (2 Peter 2:20-22; Hebrews 6:4-6; Hebrews 10:26-31). Some years ago there was a shipwreck in one of our channels. Among the passengers were a father and his son. They were a considerable distance from shore, but, as their lives were at stake, they resolved to make an effort to reach it by swimming. Before long, the son became very faint, and the father, perceiving it, cried out, "Hold on! Hold on! " Again and again did he repeat the words, Hold on! and he did not cry in vain. The youth was stimulated thereby; and at length, in spite of the roaring winds and boisterous waves, they reached the shore in safety. Now, what this shipwrecked father said to his fainting son would we say to those who have named the name of Christ, especially to the young disciple. By all the fearful consequences with which backsliding will be attended we bid you, Hold on!

(Expository Sermons.)

II. THE RECEPTION OF THIS LIGHT BRINGS CONFLICT. We should expect the possession of Christ to bring gladness, peace, power; and so it does, but only as the effect of battle. The influx of light ever arouses opposition. Why is this conflict inevitable? It is because of the antagonism of the light and that which it expels. It is because there is a Divine necessity that truth and error should come into collision. It is because it is the destiny of the light to rule. It must be diffused. It exposes all that is withered, noisome, dead. The aim of the light is to fashion a different world altogether. The face of Nature is the work of light. And the light of Christ is spreading, rising, will prevail.

III. THE LIGHT THAT PROVOKES THE CONFLICT GIVES US FORTITUDE TO ENDURE AND CONQUER. All power is in the light. If we shut our eyes to any part of it, we are weakened, we are without the correlative energies that go with the light — fire, heat, electricity.

IV. THE MEMORIES OF THE PAST VICTORIES OF THE LIGHT SHOULD BE CHERISHED FOR PRESENT HELP. "Call to remembrance." Is it dark with you now? Does your way lie through shadows? Remember that "He turns the shadow of death into the morning." The twilight of doubt shall be followed by the dawn of certainty. The night of sorrow by the morning of joy. The evening of life by the noontide of heaven. The present darkness of the world shall be succeeded by the universal shining of the light of the gospel.

(J. Matthews.)

(W. Arvine.)

(A. A. Bonar, D. D.)

1. They were reproached. Thus they might be used either by words or deeds. For so to speak or do anything that tends to our disgrace is to our reproach. Perhaps they called them sectaries, heretics, apostates, innovators, seditious persons, and also did so account them, and in this respect did hate them. These reproaches in themselves were bitter and grievous, yet they were more grievous because of afflictions, for they afflicted them by scourging, imprisoning, banishing them.

2. Yet these were made still more grievous, because they did reproach and afflict them not so much privately as publicly, in open view, to make their shame and ignominy the greater. They brought them as it were upon a stage, and as into a theatre, where multitudes, even thousands, might gaze upon them, revile them, scourge them, and make a sport of their sufferings. Every one must take notice of them as base persons, troublers of the world, the refuse and scum of mankind, and abhor them.

3. This was part of their great fight, and a great fight it was, because naturally we much desire to preserve our credit, honour, and reputation, which to some high spirits which the world terms generous is dearer than life, for men choose rather to die than live in disgrace and lose their honour. And as we desire respect in the world and abhor ignominy and contempt, so we love our liberty, ease, and peace, and are very unwilling to lose them.

II. Partly they endured a great fight WHILST THEY BECAME COMPANIONS OF SUCH AS WERE SO USED.

1. Some part of the Church doth suffer sometimes and not another. The storm which fell upon them was past, yet another falls upon their brethren, and they are reproached and afflicted sad made a gazing stock as they had been.

2. They became companions of these, for they owned them, were grieved inwardly for their sufferings, and did relieve and comfort them. By doing thus they were exposed to the derison of others: their former sufferings might be called passion, this compassion.

3. This also made a part of the great fight: for Satan's design in this was to strike a terror into them, and to let them know what a dangerous and restless condition they were in if they should continue to be Christians. And if he could not daunt and discourage them, yet he would at least grieve and vex them, for he knew the passion of their brethren would be their compassion, and that in their suffering they would suffer.

(G. Lawson.)

2. Another particular is, their joyful enduring the spoliation of their goods. Then —(1) When trial cometh of men's faith in Christ, such as mind to be constant must prepare themselves to quit their goods if God please so to honour them with employment.(2) When we see we must lose our goods for Christ's sake, or suffer any other inconvenience, we ought to do it cheerfully, and count our gain in Christ more than our loss in the world; seeing there is no cause of grief, if our eyes were opened, and our earthly affections mortified.

3. Their encouragement and cause of joy was the sensible feeling within themselves of the comfort of eternal riches in heaven keeping for them. Then —(1) It is the assurance of our heavenly inheritance which must make us ready to quit our earthly movables.(2) Whoso getteth a heart to quit anything on earth for Christ, shall have better in heaven than he can lose here.(3) God useth to give earnest of what He is to give, in sensible feeling of spiritual riches to such as believe in Him.(4) When men can esteem of things heavenly, as they are, that is enduring goods; and of things earthly as they are, that is perishing movables; then shall they readily quit the earthly in hope of the heavenly.

(D. Dickson, M. A.)

1. A "better" substance than anything on earth, in its moral character, social enjoyments, spiritual services.

2. More "enduring."

II. THE CHRISTIAN'S CONSCIOUS INTEREST IN THEM.

1. Attainable.

2. Valuable.

3. Needful.

4. Will soon be realised.

(Homilist.)

1. The state where our possessions are placed. They are " in heaven."

2. The character by which our heavenly possessions are distinguished. We have property in heaven substantial and valuable — far superior to all the productions of the globe, and which is to last for ever.

3. The certainty with which the heavenly possessions are regarded — "Knowing in yourselves." The Divine word informs us — and here let the heart rest in joyous confidence — that the blessing is prepared for all those who are believers in the Son of God.

II. THE CONSIDERATION OF THE PROPERTY POSSESSED BY CHRISTIANS IN ETERNITY OUGHT TO POSSESS A POWERFUL INFLUENCE UPON THEM IN TIME.

1. If we know that we have "in heaven a better and an enduring substance," we shall not allow inordinate affection for the things. of the present world.

2. If we know that we have "in heaven a better and an enduring substance," we shall exercise patience and fortitude under the privations and sufferings of life.

3. If we know that we have "in heaven a better and an enduring substance," our dispositions and thoughts will be imbued with the spirit of heaven, and testifying a growing meetness for its enjoyments.

(J. Parsons, M. A.)

II. THE TEMPER OF MIND WITH WHICH THIS TRIAL WAS SUSTAINED. They exhibited a Christian generosity, crowned with a Divine devotion; they remembered their fellowsufferers, and forgot their own sufferings. And, what is much more remarkable, "ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods." Simply to acquiesce unmurmuring in such a dispensation of Providence as this; not to be driven by it to dissemble; not to flinch from an honourable adherence to truth; might have been thought all that could be expected of human nature. But "joyfully" to meet the severest of circumstantial distresses, rendered the more severe by its cruel injustice, this is an elevation to which Christian piety only can ascend!

III. THE PRINCIPLE WHICH CHERISHED AND MAINTAINED THIS DIVINE TEMPER: "knowing in yourselves," etc.; not taking this prospect upon probable testimony, but relying on it as a certain reality.

1. In how many respects this heavenly substance is " better" than any that is of an earthly nature.(1) It is better, in as much as earthly substance is merely the instrument of enjoyment: while heaven is enjoyment itself, essential felicity.(2) Again, earthly objects have no power to satisfy the mind; they cannot tranquillise the heart: on the contrary, by an unhappy, tendency, they enlarge the desires which they gratify; they inflame the passions which they indulge, nor can they ever fill the vast vacuity which they are condemned to leave in an immortal mind.(3) Earthly treasure can only enable its possessor to surround himself with superfluous pomp, to "walk in a vain show"; it can only gratify the taste and imagination, or catch the applause of the multitude: it has no power to come into contact with the soul; none to calm the perturbations of conscience, heal the corrosions of remorse, or give comfort to the dying.

2. This is also an enduring substance. Temporal wealth is extremely transient. Lessons:(1) How much we are indebted to God for that kind of evidence of Christianity which arises from the sufferings of its first disciples!(2) How ought we to magnify that almighty grace which enabled them to suffer!(3) Let us apply their example for our own improvement. Piety must rise above the world in a holy superiority to its alluring pleasures.

(R. Hall. M. A.)

1. By contrast. It is designated "substance," as opposed to shadow. All the pleasures and enjoyments of the world are a shadow; there is nothing solid or substantial in them. Afflictions are but a shadow (2 Corinthians 1 2 Corinthians 5:17). Our present existence is but a shadow (James 4:14). It is like an eagle in the air, like a ship in the sea, a flower on the earth; as a tale that is told, a watch in the night, a hireling accomplishing his day: man fleeth also as a shadow. Death is a shadow; there is no substantial evil in it to the Christian. But religion is a substance; the gospel is a substantial reality. There is a most delightful promise in the book of Proverbs, where Christ is represented as speaking under the character of wisdom, "I will cause them that love Me to inherit substance; I will fill their treasures." Heaven is all substance: its pleasures and enjoyments, its worship and devotions.

2. By comparison. It is called "a better substance." It is better in comparison with the present state of our existence, because there is some good in this world. We must not despise God's providential mercies, nor undervalue our temporal supplies. We should thank Him for the atmosphere that vivifies, but most of all for the air of holiness and the breath of devotion. We should thank Him for the bread which perisheth, but most of all for the bread of life, the hidden manna. We should thank Him for the water that quenches the thirst, refreshes, and purifies, and revives, but most of all for the streams of salvation, the water of which if a man drink he shall never die. We should thank Him for the use of our bodily limbs, but most of all if we have been taught to walk at liberty in God's laws, and run in the way of His commandments. We should thank Him for the faculty of reason, but most of all if, by a spiritual perception, our senses are exercised to discern both good and evil. How much better will the enjoyments of heaven be than the highest degree of happiness realised by believers in a state of grace!

3. By continuation. It is an enduring substance. It is a city which hath foundations — a kingdom which cannot be moved — an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away — a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens — a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. When the angel of death shall spread his cloud over everything terrestrial, the celestial abodes shall shine forth with a grandeur which nothing can demolish, and which eternity itself will but increase.

II. THE CHRISTIAN'S PRESENT ASSURANCE.

1. Believers have a present title to this inheritance. They have the promise of it. The gospel is God in a promise; and the saints in glory are said to be inheriting the promises. They have the hope of it, which is no more nor less than the prospect of future good grounded on present evidence. They have preparation for it, being "made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light." They have a title to it, and this by virtue of their adoption.

2. They shall have the future possession. There must be the trial of faith, the exercise of patience, the sifting of your motives, the test of principles, and the examination and pondering of the heart.

3. They have inward assurance. "Knowing in yourselves," &c. Assurance is a pearl that most want, a crown that few wear. It may be ascertained by the testimony of the Spirit, accompanied with the witness of personal experience.

(Essex Remembrancer.)

I. THE TRUE POSSESSION. We own ourselves only on condition of being Christian men. For, under all other circumstances and forms of life, the true self is brought into slavery and dragged away from its proper bearings by storms, and swarms of lusts, and passions, and inclinations, and ambitions, and senses. A man's flesh is his master, or his pride is his master, or some fraction of his nature is his master, and he himself is an oppressed slave, tyrannised over by rebellious powers. The only way to get the mastery of yourselves is to go to God and say, "Oh, Lord! I cannot rule this anarchic being of mine. Do Thou take it into Thine hands. Here are the reins; do with me what Thou wilt." Then you will be your own masters, not till then.

II. THE SUPERIORITY OF THIS POSSESSION.

1. It is better in its essential quality. The apprehension of union with God is the one thing that will satisfy the soul; the one thing which having, we cannot be wholly desolate, however dark may be our path; and without which we cannot be at rest, however compassed with succours and treasures and friends; nor rich, however we may have bursting coffers and all things to enjoy.

2. It is an enduring possession. These things, the calm joys, the pure delights of still fellowship with God in heart and mind and will — these things have in them no seed of decay. These cannot be separated from their possession by anything but his own unfaithfulness. There will never come the time when they shall have to be left behind. Use does not wear these out, but strengthens and increases them. The things which are destined "to perish with the using" belong to an inferior category.

III. THE QUIET SUPERIORITY TO EARTHLY LOSS AND CHANGE WHICH THE POSSESSION OF THIS TREASURE INVOLVES. When you strike away the false props, the strength of the real ones become more conspicuous. If we possess this true treasure which lies at our doors, and may be had for the taking, we shall be like men in some strong fortress, with firm walls, abundant provisions, and a well in the courtyard, and we can laugh at besiegers.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

(C. Heywood.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(D. L. Moody.)

2. It is a better substance than anything they can have or lose here.

3. It is an enduring substance; it will outlive time, and run parallel with eternity. They can never spend it; their enemies can never take it from them as they did their earthly goods.

4. This will make a rich amends for all they can lose and suffer here. In heaven they shall have a better life, a better estate, better liberty, better society, better hearts, better work, everything better.

5. Christians should know this in themselves.

(Matthew Henry.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(John Trapp.)

1. Confidence in Christ.

(1)In His inherent goodness.

(2)In His power and will to save.

2. Confidence in the riches which Christ will give.

II. SPIRITUAL CONFIDENCE IS TO BE FIRMLY HELD. For .the better understanding of this, it is well to bear in mind the difference there is between confidence and faith. They are much the same in their exercise; still they are different. Confidence is the outcome of faith. Confidence is stronger than faith, and leads the soul onward to be bold and daring. Faith is as the root; confidence the branch springing out of the root. Confidence grows on faith, and cannot live without it; but faith may exist without confidence, though there can be no doubt that the one is affected by the other, and that as the one strengthens the other strengthens, or that as the one wanes the other also wanes. We see, therefore, that we may cast away our confidence by unbelief. Once begin to doubt the power and will of Christ to bless us, and our confidence is gone. The faith may not altogether have departed, but confidence is thrown away. In fact, it seems to be possible for one to have all the evidences of Christ's character and goodness set before him, so that he cannot doubt, but must believe in Christ's divinity and salvation; and yet to have no real confidence in Him, no confidence which leads one to trust Him fully, and to go forth in His name in all boldness and with Christian courage. If, then, you are a possessor of this confidence, hold it fast. It is a step in advance of the ordinary Christian plan. It leads to something more, something higher, bolder, and grinder, for Christ and for His cause. Hold it fast, and exercise it. The more it is cultivated and exercised, the more it will grow and the stronger it will become.

III. SPIRITUAL CONFIDENCE BRINGS ITS OWN REWARD.

1. We have it here upon earth. You cannot confide in Christ one single hour without receiving some blessing. If you have this confidence, it matters but little what may befall you here. There may be war, or jealousies, or collapses in business, or bodily suffering, or temptation, or any other kind of trial as sharp as death itself, yet your mind is calm amidst it all; and, like the bird which sits on some secluded twig and sings sweetly while the thunder roars and the lightning flashes, so you are joyful in the Lord, and amidst every storm can sing to the praise of your Saviour.

2. We shall have a further reward hereafter. Self-devoting unselfishness for Christ's sake will be its own reward in heaven. Can any soul absolutely confide in Christ and not be made holier in heaven than he is here? He will also be rewarded with the rest of heaven — blessed, peaceful rest, after his toils and sufferings here. He will have the glories of heaven poured upon him in such a measure as he never anticipated, and of a kind of which he had not conceived.

(H. F. Walker.)

(S. B. Bangs.)

1. Confidence in the principles which you have espoused. There must be certain undoubted truths about which you can sing, "O God, my heart is fixed, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise" — things which you perceive to be plainly taught in the Scriptures — things brought home by the power of the Holy Spirit.

2. This is the groundwork of true confidence but to make it complete there must be an open avowal of our belief in our Lord Jesus.

3. To do all this you must know your own interest in those truths man will readily let go a truth which may condemn him. Who will die for a truth in which he has no share? The man who can live and die for Christ is the man who believes that Christ has lived and died for him.

4. This means, besides, a full and firm reliance upon the faithfulness of God, so that we are free from all mistrusts and fears, and simply rest in God.

5. Where this confidence really reigns in the soul, it takes the form of full acceptance before God.

6. Upon this there follows that further confidence, of which John says, "This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He heareth us" — confidence that when we pray we shall be heard.

7. Over and above that, how delightful to feel that even what we do not pray for, by reason of our ignorance or forgetfulness, our gracious God will bestow.

8. You may add to all this the confidence that He is able to keep that which you have committed to Him; for we have this confidence — that whether we sleep or wake we shall be together with Him.

II. How THIS CONFIDENCE MAY BE CAST AWAY.

1. By changing it for self-confidence. Be empty, and Christ will be your fulness, but if you become full in yourself you have done with Christ. Cast not away your confidence by leaving your simple reliance upon Jesus Christ.

2. Some, however, cast away their confidence by giving way to sin. Old Master Brooks says, "Assurance will make us leave off sinning, or sinning will make us leave off assurance." You cannot grieve your Heavenly Father and yet feel the same confidence towards Him.

3. Another way of losing our confidence is by getting into worldly company and mixing up with the gay and frivolous. A child would soon lose his loving, confident feeling towards his father if his father had an enemy opposite, and he constantly went into that enemy's house, and heard all the language that was used there.

4. You can very easily lose your confidence by changing your aim in life. While your object is God you will be bold as a lion, but a sordid motive is the mother of cowardice.

5. Some unhappy professors have apparently cast away their confidence in utter unbelief.

III. THE REASONS GIVEN FOR HOLDING FAST OUR CONFIDENCE.

1. "Cast not away therefore you confidence." What does this "therefore" mean? Why, it means this — because you have already endured so much. Do not lose the victories which you have already gained. If it was wise to go so far, it will be wise to go on to the end. I recollect going over the Col D'Obbia on the Alps, and when I got a little way down I found myself on a steep mountain side upon a mass of loose earth and slates. There seemed to me to be some miles of almost perpendicular descent and no road. My head began to swim. I set my feet fast down in the loose soil, turned my back to the scene below me, and my face to the hill-side, and stuck my hands into the earth to hold as best I could. I cried to my friend, "I shall never go down there: I will go back." He coolly replied, "Just look where you have come from." When I looked up it appeared to be much worse to try and clamber up than it could possibly be to go down, and so he remarked, "I think you had better go on, for it is worse going back." So we must go on, for it will be worse going back. Let us gird up the loins of our mind, and push onward with firm resolution, by the help of the Spirit of God.

2. Do not cast away your confidence, for it has great recompense of reward. There is a reward in it now: for it makes us happy. Do not cast away your confidence, since it yields you such pure delight. But it makes you strong both to bear and labour. When you are like a child in confidence before God, you can endure pain and reproach right bravely. And, moreover, it makes you victorious. And, best of all, there is a recompense of reward to come.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

2. There are those who begin a religious life upon the nourishment abundantly supplied to them in the peculiar circumstances in which they are born, but who have a slender capacity for supplying themselves with nourishment. They lack that motive force which makes religion, and that inspiration which gives them vital courage. Those who are slenderly endowed in this respect, find, as soon as they begin to live a Christian life for themselves, that it is very dull. It is for such persons that the external routine of church duties is peculiarly useful. If they could be held to some set, stated exercises allied to religion, they would find themselves, both by the regularity of these exercises and by their routine nature, to be greatly sustained and helped. For they are persons that are living upon a low plane.

3. Men suffer discouragements arising from the misconception of the relations of joy to the Christian life. They think while they are joyful that they are growing, and when they are not joyful, then they are going behind-hand. But pain is a far more growing element than joy. Sunshine is not more indispensable to harvests than rains and cloudy days. And in the Christian life the yoke and the burden are eminently profitable to men. There are many men who think that religion is an invitation to go into the house and sit before a great fire that has been built for them. Religion is an invitation to more than that. It is also an invitation to the felling, hauling, and preparing of the fuel. And is not this rational? Is not this the way to make true and wholesome natures?

4. There are discouragements arising from conflicts and rivalries between lawful secular occupations and religious emotions. Our whole life is a religious life. The experiences of inspiration may be spiritual in the closet; .but the real life of every man is that into which he puts his energy, his strength, his vitality, his power. Wherever men are, there they ought to put their power of understanding, their power of sentiment, their power of feeling, their power of planning and execution. That is the thing for a Christian man to do. And the kind of power which he has, and the moral quality of it, depend upon the influence of the interior and invisible life.

5. A large element of discouragement arises in minds of fine temper, on account of the discrepancy which must always exist between ideality and practical reality. There will always be a chasm between duty and performance. The higher our conception of justice is, the harder it will be to reach it. The fact is, a person of a vivid imagination will conceive of an amount of duty and a fineness of experience which it would be impossible, except by a tutoring of years and years, to meet. Do not you suppose that Raphael's mind, before his hand was trained to paint, painted pictures that were infinitely more beautiful than any that his hand painted? No men are so apt to be discouraged as those who are living far up along the scale. They judge themselves by a high ideal of life. I would not have them discouraged finally; but it does not do any hurt for a man to be enough discouraged to keep down pride and vanity. Men are discouraged, frequently, from a perception of the weakness and unfruitfulness of their will-power — their power of executing what they mean to do. Men resolve, and do not accomplish. The relation between the power of the will and the thing to be executed is different in different people. I have often said that moral stamina lay in the will more than anywhere else. The will is like a rudder. Some ships are very hard to steer, and some are very easy. Some you can hardly turn from their course, and some you can set about by the least touch of the wheel. So it is with men. And they are discouraged, usually, if they find it hard to direct their course aright, because they think it is owing to some wickedness in them. Persevere, and work manfully, with weakness and temptation, in darkness and light, and you will reach your Heavenly Father soon. No father on earth was ever so lenient with the faults of his boy who wanted to do right, as God is with your faults if you want to do right, and will try to do right. In a little time you will know that this is so. Not to mention the other classes of discouragement, I remark, in closing, that behind and within all our personal labour is our God. No man will ever reach heaven that does not himself strive; but no man will ever reach heaven simply through his own striving. There are two co-ordinate lives; there is power within a power; there is God in us; and that is the secret of the power by which we are saved. It looks as though the pointers of a watch kept time; but is it the strength of the pointers that carries them round? No. Down deep below there is the coiled spring that moves the wheel, and, in obedience, the pointers move and register the time. But suppose the pointers were taken off? Then all the springs in the world, though they might set the wheels playing round, would not indicate the time. The measuring power would be gone. Both of them, the spring and the pointers, must be concurrently adjusted in order to keep time. It is God that is the mighty spring within us; and it is we that on the great dial of time are moving round in obedience to this interior force. There is, behind our own will and within our own purposes, the Divine influence; and this truth affords a ground whereon we may comfort ourselves in discouragement.

(H. W. Beecher.)

(S. Coley.)

I. How PATIENCE IS TO BE HELD FAST. Patience is composed of confidence, hope, and belief in future perfect redemption; it prevents our becoming faint-hearted (Romans 8:25). Two other ingredients of patience are obedience and humility, which keep the spirit calm and submissive.

1. If we cast away confidence and the joyful hope of a better future, all capacity for patience is gone. Thence the answer of the text to the question, "How can we hold fast patience?" is, by resisting the temptation to cast away confidence and joyousness. This is particularly great at the present day.(1) In private life, where vice is gaining the upper hand, many impure passions are fostered, so that the capacity for earnest labour and quiet endurance is lost. If everything does not go quite smoothly; if health and fortune are squandered; if this sad seed begins to ripen into a sad harvest, then weariness of life. lays hold on the guilt-laden soul, which finds itself more and more firmly clasped in the temptation to cast away all confidence, and with it often life itself. Resist the temptation. Life is, and always will be, a great blessing; and so long as Christ and forgiveness of sins is preached, there is no cause for despair.(2) In the spiritual life and work of the time, pessimism is, to many, the fashionable philosophy of the day, i.e., the casting away our confidence in a better future. As if those promises no longer stood firm.(3) In social life: you all know how many, at the present time, have cast away confidence in a satisfactory development of our social conditions, and devise plans of annihilation; how their number increases in many lands, so that here and there a throne is trembling. What are they? What but an embodiment of that hopelessness which refuses to know anything of the blessing and support of our Christian faith in the guidance of the world by God in Christ.(4) Even in Christians there is no lack of temptation to cast away confidence; here, heavy, manifold, and long-continued sufferings, or the sudden loss of apparently indispensable props; there, the too slow march of the kingdom of God, so that zeal outruns all discretion, and here and there turns to new and questionable methods of a more rapid line of procedure for the spreading abroad of the kingdom.

2. But how, then, are confidence and joyfulness to be held fast in spite of all temptations to the contrary? If confidence is steadfastly to endure, look not unto men and unto the circumstances that lead into temptation, but cast thyself wholly upon God. The more thou growest in the knowledge of Him, the more strength wilt thou receive to persevere in cheerful confidence and patience. Then, too, look upon Christ. He is the visible form of the patience of God, the Lamb of God, who bore without a murmur so much contradiction. Is it a time to cast away confidence, now in the midst of the rapid extension of Christ's kingdom at home and abroad? And in order that it may become easier for us to hold fast our confidence, the text adds another weighty reason and stimulus: "which hath great recompense of reward."

II. WHY IS IT SO INDISPENSABLE TO SHOW OPENLY THAT WE POSSESS THIS PATIENCE?

1. Without it we cannot do the will of God. It is the will of the God of patience that we should be patient as His children (2 Corinthians 6:4). Let us do the will of God patiently upon earth, by patient continuance in well doing seeking for eternal life (Romans 2:7). Have we patience not only with ourselves, and the slow progress of our work, but with others also? (1 Thessalonians 5:14; Ephesians 2:14). But specially by patience in suffering must we learn to do the will of God. Learn not to shrink from little troubles, but to bear them quietly, so that, in time, thou mayest be able to endure great ones (Romans 12:12; Hebrews 12:1). All virtue is, as it were, shorn of half its glory, if it be not crowned with patience (ver. 38).

2. Patience is also indispensable for the receiving of the promise. He alone that doeth the will of God and endureth in faith and patience, can receive the whole rich contents of the Divine promises of grace for this life and for the life to come. Hence the exhortation (chap. 6:12). It is impossible for Him who loses patience, and with it hope, to have a part in the future fulfilment of hope.

(T. Christlieb, D. D.)

(Morgan Dix, D. D.)

I. PATIENCE IS NEEDED FROM THE NATURE OF OUR WORK. The will of God rules all. Let us beware, therefore, of the hasty work of impetuous desire. Patience is something sublime, august, working itself out through hindrances to our aims. Patience! for the veil will one day be torn down, and the beautiful statue appear. Patience! for what testimony to the power of truth so potent as that it sustained men in their hours of grief and gloom?

II. PATIENCE IS NEEDED FROM OUR OWN PERSONAL CONSTITUTIONS. These constitutions differ. But for the most part we find our active powers in royal ascendency. We can do, we can dare; but we have little power to wait and to endure. When the waterfloods rise to our waist and to our throat, and almost overwhelm us, our patience fails. Thus we need Divine chastening in relation to our weakest point. We need patience day by day, not only that our natures should work, but that they should work to beautiful ends, and in humble and submissive ways. I have stood by the white water-wash when the mill sent forth two boiling streams, with fleecy foam and rushing roar; and at another time I saw one cascade, at another none. What silence then! To work the mill is not enough. The stones must be patiently adjusted, with corn there to be ground, or there is noise without result. So remember that work is not enough; it must have in it patience as well as strength. We have need of patience under disappointment: we forget that to be set right in God's way is best. A child learning music dislikes the discipline that keeps to " the scales." To play pleasant tunes is so much easier and brighter; but that would only end in inefficiency and imperfection. Even philosophy has glimpsed the truth that the way of success is a way of non-haste: as the Spanish proverb has it, "The world is his who waits." But what in life can compare with life itself? The great soul within us, that is all in all. For that to be redeemed and saved, for that to be made meet for the inheritance of the" saints in light," who would not endure?

III. PATIENCE IS NEEDED BECAUSE OF THE RELATIONSHIP WE SUSTAIN TO OTHERS. Life is full of varieties. Nature is. And so is human history. We are not all alike. Our opinions differ. Friendship has to learn how to live, not in the absence of differences, but in spite of them. It is a sorry thing if people must see eye to eye before they come heart to heart. We all have faults which must grieve others, but human forbearance is the very life of love. Without it we become petulant, prejudiced, and proud. How patient we ought to be with our children! And in Church life how needful it is that we be patient with each other in all diversities of taste and judgment.

IV. PATIENCE IS NEEDED BECAUSE OF THE DELAY OF HARVEST TIME. It seems so long! Whatever field we walk in, we are tempted, like the children in Longfellow's tale, to dig up our plants after a few days to see if they are taking root. We are discontented if we do not see the result of our labours. We forget the patience of God. And perhaps no really good work in this world was ever done without patience. Things hastily done are generally ill done. The great painters, what toilers they were! The great speakers, what elaborate skill they used! What evils have been wrought in the Church of God by endeavours after a speedy harvest! What sensationalisms have had to be endured; what strained excitements have ended in sad relapse! We need in all real work to wait for the harvest. But then the real lasts and lives. There is principle in it; there is permanence in it; there is health in it. The forced plant soon droops and dies.

V. PATIENCE IS NEEDED BECAUSE THE HARVEST IS IN HEAVEN. The harvest is to be eternal life. Our light afflictions are but for a moment. The revelation of immortal rest is the only one that will satisfy the heart, or, indeed, the intellect. We cannot understand the meaning of our sorrows unless we look to the great reward.

(W. M. Statham, M. A.)

1. Patience secures the possession of our souls in every circumstance that tends to discompose our minds.

2. Patience will prevent hasty and rash conclusions, either from present troubles or from the suspension of desired good.

3. Patience will fortify against any unlawful methods for accomplishing our deliverance or desires.

4. Patience disposes a man to go on in the way of his duty, whatever discouragement may arise from the pressure of his troubles or the deferring of his hopes.

II. THE NEED AND OCCASION WHICH A CHRISTIAN HAS FOR THE EXERCISE OF PATIENCE.

1. A Christian has need of patience to persist in doing the will of God, even in his ordinary course.

2. A Christian hath need of patience to persist in bearing the will of God, and in doing his duty under it, when his course is peculiarly embittered. For instance, to bear the shock of sudden and unexpected trials, which are apt to overset a man at once and to produce hasty thoughts and unadvised words, both of God and man (Psalm 31:22; Psalm 116:11). To suppress a tumult, and keep the mind in frame upon such an occasion, is a very great attainment. To bear succession of exercises, one after another, is still more. To have God's waves and billows to pass over us, and yet keep our heads above water, neither thinking Him unkind, nor unjust, nor unfaithful, nor losing the use of reason and grace, is a noble firmness of mind (Job 1:20-22). To bear the long continuance of exercises. Many who have behaved well upon the first attack have been tired out by the length of afflictions. To bear the hand of God when He touches us in a most tender point; not only in small trials, but in great and heavy afflictions. To bear God's rod when we cannot account for His reasons or ends in it. To bear sharp afflictions when natural spirits are decayed. To bear affliction patiently when an unlawful way of deliverance seems directly to offer itself and to promise relief. It is hard in such circumstances to choose suffering rather that sinning; to be content to bear our burden still rather than be eased of it upon such terms.

3. A Christian hath need of patience to persist in waiting to the end to receive the promise, especially if he has lively views of a happy state before him, and comfortable hopes of his own title to it; if his course be greatly embittered in the meanwhile by bodily infirmities, by troubles in the world, by the removal of many of his pious friends and acquaintance to heaven before him; if his service and usefulness are to appearance much over; if he hath long thought himself going, just at harbour, but finds himself driven back again to sea: every such instance is a fresh trial to him.

III. THE WAY TO WHICH CHRISTIANITY DIRECTS US FOR SUPPLYING THIS NEED, OR FOR FURNISHING US WITH THE PATIENCE REQUIRED.

1. Whatever is a trial of our patience, we should consider it as the will of God concerning us.

2. We should strengthen our faith in the discoveries of the gospel and live in the daily exercise of it.

3. We should carefully cultivate the principle of love to God.

4. Let us often represent to our minds the present advantages of patience. It is its own reward, as impatience is its own punishment.

5. We should often contemplate the great examples of patience.

6. We should be earnest in prayer to God for this grace (James 1:4, 5). For a clue —

(1)Let those who are destitute of the principle he sensible of their need, and solicitous that they may obtain it.

(2)Let us be solicitous to have this necessary principle daily strengthened, to exercise it upon every proper occasion, and that it may "have its perfect work."Be solicitous to exert its most excellent acts. Not only that we may be preserved by it from sinking and murmuring and notorious misbehaviour, but that there may be the most complacential acquiescence in the will of God, that we may be in a frame for praise in the darkest day: "Blessed be the name of the Lord." Study to have the actings of patience easy and ready to you as there is occasion; to be able to say with Paul, "I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die for the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 21:13). Be careful that the exercises of it be lasting; that it be a fixed habit, and not only by starts; like Moses, who made the exercise of patience so constant a practice that we find but one instance to the contrary through his whole story.

(John Evans, D. D,)

II. THE GREAT ADVANTAGES OF PATIENCE.

1. It lightens affliction, disarms it of half its sting. Impatience greatly adds to the momentum of affliction; but the firmness which belongs to patience prepares us to bear the pain. What, indeed, is fortitude but patience?

2. Patience gives room for those moral effects which are designed in the affliction. A tranquil state of mind gives us aa advantage for receiving the benefits of our affliction; being purified, having the unholy fires of the soul quenched, the beauties and beatitudes of the Spirit imparted. But these Divine purposes are not fulfilled in a turbulent mind.

3. Affliction endured with patience redounds to the glory of God. Nothing is a more practical proof of devotedness to God than submission; nothing more recognises God as the great Governor of the world than obedience to Him, as well in what He inflicts as in what He prescribes.

III. CONSIDERATIONS ADAPTED TO STRENGTHEN THIS VIRTUE.

1. Affliction is sent by God; His hand is there.

2. Consider the gracious and glorious design which God has in afflicting us; it is " for our profit" — for nothing less than this — "that we may be partakers of His holiness! "

3. There are some familiar comparisons, naturally suggested to a reflecting mind, which tend to support the afflicted. One is the comparing of our trials with those of many others among the people of God. What are ours to theirs? to those of David; Isaiah, supposed to have been sawn; Jeremiah, cast into a dungeon; or the martyrs of later times?

4. What are our troubles compared with our deserts?

5. What are our sufferings compared with our eternal prospects and hopes?

6. The time is hastening on when all these afflictions will be no more.

(R. Hall, M. A.)

(Dean Vaughan.)

1. In a new religious life all reformations which are physical in their nature should be speedy. Evils in this sphere are to be cured at once. Absolute and total discontinuance is the law for the flesh. A man who begins a Christian life must recollect that, so far as the body is concerned, the law is that there is but a very short space between cause and effect in the lower elements of it.

2. But the strictly religious elements go on. These are the elements of negation — those which involve leaving off and not doing. The moment you enter upon the sphere of the higher elements of religious experience, which is the sphere of change or development, the results cannot be immediate. The term between cause and effect will vary in duration with the peculiar advantages which different persons have; with the peculiar susceptibilities of different persons; with the intensity of inspiration which is brought to bear upon them, and under which they are called to act; yet growth in grace is, in the nature of things, a gradual growth. Every single step upward implies and requires the harmonisation of all the elements below in a man's nature and in his surroundings, and that often is comprehensive and very difficult. Not only is all growth in grace gradual which implies development of the higher nature, but you must make up your mind that you will oftentimes set in operation courses which will finally fulfil themselves and disclose beneficial effects. You will set them in operation; and then you will have to wait a great while before you come to the result. And you are not to be discouraged because in labouring for spiritual qualities you do not find them as soon as you could wish. A man cannot say to his temper what he can say to his body. A shrew, being converted, can hold her hand so as not to beat the child, and a little later she can control her tongue, so as not to scold the servant, perhaps; and by and by she can manage her temper, but that takes much longer; and at last she develops a spontaneous emotion of kindness where before there was temper, and that takes longer yet. But still there is a regular progress all the way up; and although there seems to be but little progress made, many persons actually cover a sphere so much wider, and there is so much contained in the little which they do that they really, in the sight of God, are lifted far higher than they are in their own sight, because they are always looking to see physical results — results that the eye can measure, or that the outward senses can recognise, instead of the hidden elements of moral excellence. We have need of patience, after we have done the will of God, before we reach the results. God is dealing with men by difficulties, by tasks, by bereavements, by sorrows, by trials, to prove the higher part of their nature. Give me, now, a bit of wax, and see how soon I will take it in my hand and mould it into any form that I want. Give me a bit of alabaster, and I cannot work that as I can the wax, because it is harder. Give me a bit of marble, and that must be cut more slowly. But give me a diamond, rough and rude, and tell me to cut the faces on that by which it shall reflect all the rays of light and show its hidden powers of beauty, and it is a long task. Yet though it is a long task to cut a diamond, when it is once cut it is worth all the labour that it has cost. Wax is quickly done, but it is of very little use after it is done. A diamond, on the other hand, is long in doing, but once done it lasts for ever. We are not, therefore, to suppose that God is angry with us because we have blow upon blow, and grinding upon grinding, and stroke upon stroke, day after day. He deals with us as with sons. How little we know about this! How little we know what is being done to us! There is a great part of God's providence that must always be mysterious to us — for that is the term by which we speak of ignorance. In labouring for others, therefore, we ought to bear in mind this principle, that perpetually we are to carry along together both the physical and the moral development of the world, and that he who lays out his work so as to see the result as he goes along must of necessity be a low worker, he that sees at the end of the day all that he has done during the day has done very little. He that is a true worker is always throwing effects over beyond himself to which he will not come for months, or for years; it may be; and he is a true worker who, after he has done the will of God, has patience till he receives the promised reward — the legitimate effect. This comes home to parents. There are parents who say: "How much I have laboured with that child! and with what discouraging results! There are my neighbours — they have no trouble at all with their children; but my children, it seems to me, are bound to the gallows or the gaol." Now, you take a child that is knit from single threads, take a child that has no particular force, and that is reasonably well balanced, and it is not hard to bring him up, for a little effort here and there is sufficient to torn him. A man can put his hand at the spout of a watering-pot and turn the stream here or there or anywhere; but let a man turn Niagara with his hand if he can. Here is a child that has intensity in him. The child would do very well if the mother would let it alone. Let her wait. It takes a great while to unfold a nature, if it be a large nature. Have patience. Believe and understand that the lower things can be speedily done, but that the intermediate affections require a long time for their development, and that the higher moral nature requires a still longer time. Have faith in God. Work, work, and wait! Do not remit any work; but the worry — remit that.

(H. W. Beecher.)

1. The world in which we live is hostile.

2. We are in an imperfect state in body, mind, and heart; hence suffer affliction.

3. We wait for the fulfilment of the promise that Christ will come again.

II. THERE IS A LABOURING TIME. "After ye have done the will of God."

1. It is a righteous work.

2. It is a work that secures benefit for ourselves.

3. In this labour we have Divine assistance, for it is God's will we do.

III. THERE IS AS ENJOYING TIME TO COME. "Receive the promise."

1. Rest (Hebrews 4:9).

2. An inheritance (1 Peter 1:4).

3. Companionship with Christ (John 12:26; 1 John 3:2).

4. A speedy deliverance (ver. 37).Conclusion:

1. To bear patiently our present trials is our present duty.

2. Faith, which prompts us to do the will of God, secures for us, through Christ, our salvation.

(B. Knepper.)

I. PATIENCE NEEDED UNDER PERSECUTION. Why did the Hebrew Christians need patience? These Hebrew Christians needed patience, first of all, because they had been exposed and were still exposed to persecutions involving some degree of physical suffering. They had been, on some occasion respecting which no details have reached us, "spoiled of their goods." This trouble, the writer says, the Hebrew Christians had borne " cheerfully, knowing that they had in heaven a better and an enduring substance." They had suffered also, it would seem, as objects of popular ridicule. It is hard to be identified with a cause which is treated as ridiculous; and, when ridicule is accompanied by leagalised robbery, and by worse things than robbery looming in the distance, then the exercise of patience becomes exceedingly difficult. On the other hand, it seems clear that, as yet, in this particular Church no life had been taken. There had as yet been no martyr. "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood." This is interesting if only as showing that the Hebrews addressed in the Epistle cannot have been members of the Church of Jerusalem. Many years had passed in that Church since Stephen had sunk outside the city gate beneath the stones of his murderers, many since James the son of Zebedee had been slain by the sword of Herod. But the fact that there bad been no martyr is of moral as well as critical and historical interest. It shows that the persecution which called especially for the exercise of patience was a moderate persecution — moderate as persecutions went in those days; and for this reason patience may have been more difficult to practise than would have been the case had the persecution been fiercer.

II. LESSER TRIALS MAY DEMAND MORE PATIENCE THAN GREATER. Many a man will not utter a murmur when he knows that he is lying in agony between life and death, and when those around him know that each hour may be his last; but let that same man be afflicted with a malady which entails great distress, but something less than very acute suffering — which implies no danger to life, but which nevertheless makes him a confirmed invalid — which is of a character to allow those who wait on him to reflect less frequently on the seriousness of his illness than on the trouble which it entails upon themselves, and patience becomes, in average cases, very difficult. There is here felt to be no demand for a supreme effort at self-mastery — an effort which cannot or may not be necessary for long. There is here no sense of such support as is yielded by friends kneeling around a bedside — by sympathies stimulated to the very highest point of tension. It is more difficult to be patient when the irritation is great and when the situation is commonplace.

III. MENTAL PERPLEXITY DEMANDS PATIENCE. In their time of trouble their Jewish neighbours would have plied the recent converts with arguments for returning to the old synagogue which they had left. To begin with, it would have been urged that they would thus escape a great deal of trouble. The Jewish religion was an old, respectable religion, well known to the authorities of the empire, and, in ordinary circumstances, tolerated, if not very much liked. It was legally recognised, and by belonging to it a man escaped numberless annoyances which attached to membership of a body which, in the eyes of the pagan world, was a new sect, to which neither law nor society as yet had much to say that was not offensive or insulting. Why not, then, come back to the synagogue, the old religion which, besides having a recognised place in the world, was in possession of so much with which Christians had presumably parted company?

IV. SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. The sum of the answer is that in possessing Jesus Christ our Lord Christians had everything that the religion of Israel could possibly give them and a great deal more. The angels ministered to Christians, too, as the heirs of salvation; but Christ was greater than the highest angel, to none of whom — no, not to the highest — had it ever been said, "Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee." Moses was, no doubt, a ruler in the house of God, but he ruled as God's viceroy. Christ ruled in it as a Son over His own house. He ruled that which He had made and which He owned. And if the glories of Aaron's priesthood were undisputed, Christ, too, was a priest, but in a higher sense — after the order of Melchisedek. And the Jewish sacrifices — what were they but " shadows of the good things to come" — shadows of the realities which Christ brought with Him from heaven? That most solemn action of all — the entry into the earthly Holy of Holies — what was it but a figure of the entrance of our ascended Lord into the inmost sanctuary of the heavens, where His presence is of itself an intercession?

V. THE HEBREW CHRISTIANS NEEDED PATIENCE WHEN DEALING WITH EACH OTHER. They could keep at times and to a certain extent, out of the way of their pagan persecutors, out of the way of Jewish controversialists. They were thrown into intimate and constant contact with other members of the Church; and it seems more than probable that the Church of Alexandria, like the Churches of Rome and Corinth, contained in those first ages very different elements, the co-existence of which was a trial to patience. At Rome we know there was a quiet but vigorous struggle between the converts from Judaism and the converts from heathenism. At Corinth, to the indignation of the apostle, Christians even went to law with Christians in the courts of the pagan empire, or, as he puts it, "brother with brother, before the unbelievers." At Alexandria there would have been, from the nature of the case, very different degrees of Christian attainment, very different ways of dealing with questions of the day. It is impossible that the whole Church of Alexandria can have been meant by the writer's vivid description of those "dull of hearing," who needed "milk" when they ought to rejoice in "strong meat," who, considering the time that had elapsed since their conversion, ought to have been teachers, and yet needed that some one should teach them what were " the first principles of the doctrines of Christ." There must have been others to whom this description did not apply, but who may well have been tempted to irritation with those to whom it did. For them, perhaps, such sentences as the following were intended: .... Lift up the hands which hang down and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for the feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed"; "Follow peace with all men."

VI. THE SLOW GROWTH OF CHARACTER. In no department of life is patience more necessary than in dealing with human character. The young, the slow, the undeveloped, the timid, claim it at our hands. No character that is worth anything develops all at once — develops at a single impulse. It grows gradually, first from silence and reserve to decision and explicitness, and then to full productiveness and beauty. As our Lord has said, "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." And yet how often is patience wanted on the part of older people when dealing with and judging of the young. We expect the work of ten years to be crowded into ten weeks. We expect the growth of character to reveal itself to some moral microscope of ours, or to the naked eye, when we will.

VII. PATIENCE DEMANDED IN THE PRESENT DAY. The great change which Jesus Christ introduced into man's estimate of conduct was the exaltation of the passive virtues. The old pagan world meant by a "virtuous" man a brave, strong, just, energetic human being, who might be, but who probably would not be, humble, submissive, self-subduing. The gospel ideal of character is described under the title of "the works of the Spirit," and it runs thus: "Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." For the old pagan or for his modern representative virtue is mainly active, pushing, aggressive, demonstrative. Virtue is the warrior; it is the athlete; it is the ruler of men. Anyhow, it is the proud self-assertion of conscious force. It thinks cheaply of Christendom, with its ideal of patience and submission. It has a quiet contempt for the martyr, as though he were wanting in manly dignity and self-respect. Christian patience, it says, is the slave cringing beneath the lash of his master — cringing because he is weak and ignorant.

VIII. PATIENCE IS STRENGTH. If "better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city," then most assuredly the action of the will represented by patience is higher than the action of the will represented by physical courage; for, in the latter case, will is exerted upon something external to man; in the former it is turned in upon man himself: it is engaged in controlling the very force which animates it. It would be far easier, I apprehend, for nine men out of ten to join a storming party than to lie on a rack or to hang on a cross without repining. Yes, patience is strength, and patience is moral strength: it is wisdom. In exercising it we, the creatures of a day, make one of the nearest approaches possible for us to the life of God.

IX. PATIENCE OF GOD. Of God, St. has finely said, "Pattens quia aeternus" (Because He lives for ever, He can afford to wait).

X. PATIENCE THE LAW OF PROGRESS. IS not patience the very law of your conquests in science? Those revelations of new powers in nature which from time to time astonish the world those discoveries which make man's power over the conditions of his existence sensibly greater than they ever were before — have been prepared for, are being prepared for, by a group of moral and intellectual efforts under the presidency of patience — patience which neglects no facts, patience which is wearied by no disappointments, patience which inspires, which controls, which combines all the group of workers which obey her. And is not patience, I will not dare to say the law, but the hope of your art? Why does our architecture at its very best fall so far short of those great creations of days when our forefathers had neither our knowledge, nor our wealth, nor our marvellous resources? There may be more answers to that question than one, but one is that we have not the patience which is needed for these splendid efforts. We care more to see what we attempt in its completeness than to forego our personal satisfaction for the sake of the grandeur of our work, and our work is dwarfed and impoverished accordingly. Or what is the most necessary quality for any who would promote man's social or political welfare? Wisdom, no doubt, is necessary, and energy, and freedom from the chains of prejudice, and buoyant courage, and readiness to recognise the conditions under which success is possible; but above all these is patience.

XI. CONDITIONS OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE UNCHANGED. And as for individual life its conditions are just as they were eighteen centuries ago. Here the modern is just as the ancient world. Sin remains; death remains. When science has so revolutionised our life as not only to alleviate but to banish pain, as not only to postpone but to do away with death, then we may do away with patience. Till then patience is as necessary as it ever was. Patience is needed to enable us to meet the inevitable, and to transfigure it by joyfully accepting as a Father's will that which else must overtake us as if it were the iron will of a relentless fate. And in this, as in all other virtues, Jesus Christ our Lord is our highest model.

(Canon Liddon.)

(A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.)

II. TO SHOW THAT THE TRUE BELIEVER HAS NEED OF PATIENCE.

1. Where is our dwelling-place? It is on earth, which is not the place of our rest. The heavenly is the only inheritance that is undefiled either with sin or with sorrow. We are also in a strange land. What have we to look for but trials, of which all are partakers? The present is also a state of warfare. We are in an enemy's land.

2. What is our life? It is a scene of sorrow and trouble, of vanity and vexation of spirit.

3. What is our character? We are followers of God, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling; not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world.

4. What is our peculiar situation in reference to the richer and better part of our treasure and inheritance? We are children of hope. Truly it is said, "The greatest part of the saint's happiness is as yet in promise." Now, "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick"; and the object of our desire as Christians not always being within grasp or at our own command, we must with patience wait for it.

5. What is the will of God with which we have a special concern, in the observance of which we are neither to tire nor to rest until all be fulfilled in reference to ourselves? The will of God is twofold — that of His purpose as shining through all the wise and mysterious arrangements of His providence respecting His people, and that of His command as connected with the whole extent of required duty. With both of these we who are called by God's grace must unhesitatingly comply. To the former, or what may be termed His providential will, as Christians we must without murmuring bow. The mind is to be prepared for whatever may befall us. Oh, what need of patience! To the latter, or what is often called God's revealed will, we must ever have respect. Self is not only to be denied and the cross taken up, but the will of God is to be done. And this is the will of God, even our sanctification; and that not in part, but wholly. As far as in us lies we must walk in all the statutes and ordinances of the Lord blameless, however great the disrelish which may sometimes be felt for duty, however fierce the opposition we may meet with. Who, then, can doubt whether Christians have need of patience?

III. THE EXCITING REASONS TO CALL FORTH THE EXERCISE OF THIS CHRISTIAN VIRTUE,

1. The first shall be drawn from the source of afflictions. The hand of the Lord is in all these things.

2. The second shall be taken from the promised reward.

(Essex Remembrancer.)

(H. S. Carpenter.)

(Bp. Horne.)

(H. Smith.)

(H. W. Beecher.)

(J. Ruskin.)

(E. H. Chapin.)

(Beza.)

(Jas. Hamilton, D. D.)

(J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)

(W. W. Champneys, M. A.)

II. IT IS ESSENTIAL UNTO FAITH TO BE ACTED ON THE PROMISED COMING OF CHRIST TO ALL THAT LOOK FOR HIS APPEARANCE.

III. THERE IS A PROMISE OF THE COMING OF CHRIST SUITED UNTO THE STATE AND CONDITION OF THE CHURCH IN ALL AGES.

IV. THE APPARENT DELAY OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF ANY OF THESE PROMISES REQUIRES AN EXERCISE OF THE FAITH AND PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS.

V. EVERY SUCH COMING OF CHRIST HATH ITS APPOINTED SEASON BEYOND WHICH IT SHALL NOT TARRY.

VI. THIS DIVINE DISPOSITION OF THINGS GIVES A NECESSITY UNTO THE CONTINUAL EXERCISE OF FAITH, PRAYER, AND PATIENCE, ABOUT THE COMING OF CHRIST.

VII. Although we may not know the especial dispensations and moments of time that are passing over us, yet ALL BELIEVERS MAY KNOW THE STATE IN GENERAL OF THE CHURCH UNDER WHICH THEY ARE, AND WHAT COMING OF CHRIST THEY ARE TO LOOK FOR AND EXPECT.

VIII. FAITH IN ANY CHURCH SATISFIES THE SOULS OF MEN WITH WHAT IS THE GOOD AND DELIVERANCE OF THAT STATE; ALTHOUGH A MAN DO KNOW OR IS PERSUADED THAT PERSONALLY HE SHALL NOT SEE IT HIMSELF, NOR ENJOY IT. The faith of this kind is for the Church, and not for men's individual persons.

IX. "UNDER DESPONDENCIES AS TO PECULIAR APPEARANCES OR COMINGS OF CHRIST, IT IS THE DUTY OF BELIEVERS TO FIX AND EXERCISE THEIR FAITH ON HIS ILLUSTRIOUS APPEARANCE AT THE LAST DAY.

X. EVERY PARTICULAR COMING OF CHRIST, IN A WAY SUITED UNTO THE PRESENT DELIVERANCE OF THE CHURCH, IS AN INFALLIBLE PLEDGE OF HIS COMING AT THE LAST UNTO JUDGMENT.

XI. EVERY PROMISED COMING OF CHRIST IS CERTAIN, AND SHALL NOT BE DELAYED BEYOND ITS APPOINTED SEASON, WHEN NO DIFFICULTIES SHALL BE ABLE TO STAND BEFORE IT.

(John Owen, D. D.)

(W. Gurnall.)

I. THE JUSTIFIED MAN SHALL LIVE IS THIS WORLD. A man's outward condition forms no correct criterion by which we may ascertain the measure of his acceptance with God. The possession of riches and honours does not necessarily imply that the possessor is the favourite of heaven, or that he is peaceful and happy in his own mind. How often do we see the true Christian labouring under the pressure of poverty — struggling hard against the tide of adverse circumstances; or if, in a higher sphere of society, he engages in the pursuits of business, "all things are against him," and every exertion which he makes proves painfully abortive. But in the midst of all these vicissitudes he "lives," and his is a happy life. Again, behold the believer when he is stretched upon the bed of sickness. He may be exhausted by weakness, or racked by pain, yet "he lives." Though a dark cloud passes over him his soul is serene. Again, behold the Christian in the day of persecution. It is to this point the apostle makes special allusion in the context. The early disciples of the blessed Jesus derived no worldly advantage from the profession of their faith in Him. What enabled them to sustain the rage of their persecutors? It was faith in their Master — it was confidence in His promises. And in one word, what in every age has supported the people of God under the pressure of calamity, or the prospect of a dying hour? Not certainly the remembrance of the good they had done, or the glory they had achieved — not the contemplation of their own merits, or their moral and intellectual attainments, but simply the inwrought principle of a living faith — that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

II. THE JUSTIFIED MAN SHALL LIVE IS THE WORLD TO COME. Faith, indeed, is not the procuring cause of eternal life. The possession of faith gives us no absolute or inherent claim on the Almighty for the pardon. It is merely the instrument of our justification. It is the link that connects us with the Saviour, and in virtue of this connection we receive every blessing we enjoy. Eternal life is the purchase of the Saviour's sacrifice.

(A. B. Parker.)

I. WHAT IS IT TO LIVE BY FAITH? This living by faith is not a single and transient act, but something habitual and permanent. And therefore its nature, as of other habits, will best appear in its acts and objects.

1. The acts of faith. The Scripture holds them forth under the notion of dependence and recumbency. And we may thus describe it: living by faith is constant dependence on God as one without whom we cannot live. Three things concur to its constitution.(1) A sense and acknowledgment that we cannot live without God. This is presupposed. Our life depends on Him; and it is our life to depend, life in its latitude; life and all that pertains to it; life and livelihood; life of body and soul; in its being and well-being; in its being and actings, and all that maintain it in both. God is that to the soul which the soul is to the body, enlivens it and acts it; so Christ quickens and acts the soul.(2) There is a relying on God for all these, for continuance of what we have, and supply of what we want; rolling ourselves and the burden of our affairs on God. This is the formal act of faith.(3) Constancy, frequency. It is a continued thing; a life of faith, not one act of believing; a whole life of acts. Since we always stand upon the brink of sin and death, and have no security from falling but God's maintaining and our apprehending of Him, we should continually depend and hang upon God, never let go our hold.

2. The object of faith is God in Christ as made known in His attributes, offices, relations, promises, and providences. We may refer the objects and support of faith to these heads.(1) Divine attributes. Those are the pillows and grounds of faith, rocks of eternity, upon which faith may securely repose: "Though the earth shall be removed," &c.(2) The offices of Christ. These are strong supports to faith as any though less made use of: in special His —

(a)Priestly office (Hebrews 4:14-16).

(b)Regal office (Acts 5:31).

(c)Prophetical office (Deuteronomy 18:15).(3) Mutual relations betwixt God and His people. These are the sweet food of faith, which, digested, nourish it into strength, and enable it to vigorous actings; and to this end we find them frequently used by the saints (Psalm 119:94; Jeremiah 14:9); and from particular relations: servant Psalm 143:12; Jeremiah 3:14); Father (Isaiah 63:15). "Doubtless Thou art our Father"; where there are the strongest actings of faith upon divers relations.(4) Promises. These and faith are so usually joined as though they were relatives. These are the wells of salvation out of which faith draws joy, &c.(5) Providences of God are objects and encouragements to, faith. The consideration of what He has done for others, and for themselves, has supported the saints. These are the hands of God stretched out on which faith takes hold (Psalm 119:132; 1 Samuel 17:37; 2 Timothy 4:17, 18).

II. How DO THEY, HOW MUST WE LIVE, BY FAITH? Here I shall give particular directions how faith may act with most advantage upon its several objects formerly propounded, and show what encouragement faith may find from them in all its actings.

1. Attributes of God. For the direction and encouragement of faith in acting upon them, observe eight particulars:(1) Study the attributes. Labour to know them distinctly, effectually. Though faith be not knowledge, yet it is not without it. Nay, the more we know the more we believe (Psalm 9:10).(2) Assure thy interest in the attributes. Let thy knowledge be applicatory. Be not satisfied that thou seest God, till thou see Him .to be thine; what He is in Himself, but what He is to thee.(3) When thou art acting thy faith, so methodise the attributes of God as thou mayest thereby prove and make it evident to faith that God is both able and willing to do what thou wouldst believe. That God is willing and able are two handles on which both the hands of faith may take hold, and so act more strongly (as we do) than if it use but one. A man ready to drown, if he can lay hold upon anything with both hands to keep him from sinking, is more secure than if he can but stay himself by one. Faith is but weak when it fastens but upon one of these; the doubting of either will keep off faith from its steadfastness.(4) Let faith fix on that attribute which is most suitable to thy condition. And here faith may meet with many encouragements: first, there is no condition thou canst possibly fall into but some attributes afford support; secondly, there is enough in that attribute to uphold thee, as much as thou standest in need of, as much as thou canst desire; thirdly, there is infinitely more; though thy condition were worse than it is, worse than ever any was, yet there is more than thou needest, more than thou canst desire, more than thou canst imagine, infinitely more. Some one attribute will answer all thy necessities; some most, some many. For, first, some of God's attributes encourage faith in every condition. Omnipotency. When thou art surrounded with troubles and dangers there is the power of God to rely on; so Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20.). Art thou afraid to fall away? Stay thyself on God's power: "We are kept by the power of God through faith." Omnisciency, Wantest thou direction, knowest not what to do, at thy wit's end? Eye Omniscieney (2 Chronicles 20:12). Fearest thou secret plots of Satan, crafty conveyances of wicked men, such as no eye can see or discover? Trust omnisciency. Immensity. Art thou deserted by friends, or separated from them by imprisonment, banishment, infectious diseases? Let faith eye immensity; as Christ, "Yet I am not alone," &c. All-sufficiency. Let faith set this against all thy wants. I want riches, but the Lord is all-sufficient; liberty, children, friends, credit, health; He is liberty, &c. I want grace, the means of grace, comfort; He is these. Dost thou fear death? The Lord is life. Dost thou fear casting off? The Lord is unchangeable. Mercy. This will hold when all fail. It is the strength of all other supports, and that in all conditions. It bears up faith when nothing else can, under the guilt of sin and sense of wrath; in misery, that is the time when faith should eye mercy. Hence you may argue strength into faith. If one attribute answer many, yea, all conditions, will not all answer one? Secondly, there is enough in any one attribute to support thee as much as thou needest or desirest, let thy corruptions be never so strong, thy wants never so many. Thirdly, there is more than enough that thou needest or canst desire; more than is necessary for thy condition, for a worse than thine, for the worst that ever was.(5) There is no condition possible but some attribute encourages faith; so there is nothing in God that discourages faith in any condition, the most formidable condition.(6) Learn to draw arguments for confirmation of faith in acting upon attributes. These we may raise: first, from ourselves, laying this ground, that whatever engages God encourages faith; for it is easier to believe that one will act for us who is engaged, than one who has no inducement thereto. Secondly, from the attributes themselves separately considered. To instance in two that faith makes most use of power and mercy. Power renders everything easy. This consideration much strengthens faith. Then for mercy this pleases Him. "He delights to show mercy." Now can we doubt the Lord will do that for us which He delights to do? (Jeremiah 9:24). Thirdly, from attributes associated. We may doubt of creature power because it is limited, but He is omnipotent. The creature may have strength but want wisdom, and this may disable him, and weaken our confidence; but God is omniscient. A friend may have strength and wisdom too, but may be far from us; oh, but He is omnipresent. A man may have all these but be prevented by death; but God is eternal. A man may have power, wisdom, propinquity, life, but not be willing; but God is merciful, gracious, compassionate, and joins other attributes to His mercy, the more to confirm faith. Fourthly, from God's design in manifesting His attributes, viz., His glory. Here is a stronghold for faith.(7) Compare the attributes with what men usually trust, and see how infinitely they transcend; how much more reason there is to rely on God's attributes than on riches, strength, princes.(8) Learn from the attributes to answer all objections that may discourage faith, viz., I cannot believe, have used all means, &c.; God is able to work faith. But my own impotency is moral, sinful, contracted by sin; God is merciful. But I am unworthy; He is gracious. But I have turned grace into wantonness; He is patient. But I have abused patience, and what reason to expect He should longer forbear me? His love. But I have played the harlot; He is unchangeable.

2. The offices of Christ. To direct and encourage faith herein, take the rules:(1) Acquaint thyself with the offices of Christ, what they contain and hold forth to us and for us.(a) Kingly office.

1. As He is King He is lawgiver; writes laws in our hearts. Gives not only laws to be obeyed, but hearts to obey; laws for obedience and principles of obedience.

2. To subdue our enemies (Psalm 2:6, 8), our lusts, the world, the powers of darkness. He will bruise them with a rod of iron.

3. To rule us. The government is on His shoulders. He sets His throne in our hearts, and takes care that we live under His government in peace, plenty, safety; peace of conscience, plenty of grace, perseverance.(b) Prophetical. To declare His Father's will, to make us understand it; to enlighten our minds; to send the Spirit of Truth to clear up obscurities, resolve doubts, remove scruples, satisfy cases of conscience.(c) As priest. So He suffered and intercedes. His sufferings are both satisfactory and meritorious.(2) These offices are purely relative; wholly ours, for us, in reference to us; relative both in their constitution and execution. He was made King, Priest, &c., for us, and does exercise these for us.(3) These being the offices of Christ, He is to perform them ex officio as a duty. He who was independent, and stood in no need of us, was pleased, for the encouragement of our faith, to come under the engagement of a duty.(4) Christ, as He is Mediator, is both God and man, and executes His offices as Mediator. Here then faith hath all the encouragement that both heaven and earth can afford.(5) Let faith begin first to act on the priestly circe. This is the basis of the other. Persuade thyself that He is thy Priest, and it will be easy to believe Him thy King and Prophet. If He have executed that He will execute these.(6) They are adequate to our conditions. This is necessary for the life of faith, that in every condition possible it have something to rely on.(7) Consider how affectionately Christ executed these offices on earth, and it will be a strong ground to believe He will not neglect them in heaven.(8) The Father and the Spirit are engaged for the execution of these offices.

3. Promises. How faith may act with most advantage upon promises, and get support and encouragement from them in its actings.(1) Consider the latitude of them- There are promises suitable to all estates.(2) Collect the promises, treasure them up, methodise them aright, meditate on them; many in one.(3) Accustom yourselves to a holy kind of discourse and reasoning. Faith does not abolish but improve reason.(4) Confine not God in His performances to things, degrees, times, or persons.(5) As to conditional promises, if you have the qualification in sincerity, let not the want of degrees discourage you from application. The lowest degree of grace entitles to the promise.(6) He that can lay just claim to one promise has interest in all; he that can apply any one, has property in every one.(7) The Lord's word is more valuable in His account than all His works; He will suffer all the works of His hands to perish rather than fail in the least degree to perform the most inconsiderable promise.(8) Persuade thyself that God had a particular respect to thee in every promise.(9) Consider, it is all one with God to do as to say, to perform as to promise; it is as easy, He is as willing, as able, to one as the other.(10) Believers have a just and unquestionable title to all things promised besides that title which the promise conveys. They have right to them, and therefore have no reason to doubt but the gracious God will bestow them, especially when He has confirmed the former title by promise. All that is promised was bequeathed to believers by the eternal will of the Father, and purchased for them by the precious blood of Christ, and they are instated therein by many endearing and interesting relations. They have as much right thereto as an heir to his inheritance, or a wife to her jointure; for they are co-heirs with Christ and married to Him (1 Corinthians 3:23).

(D. Clarkson, B. D.)

1. It seems absolutely essential to the nature, and necessary to the design and success of a Divine revelation, that the messenger of it should, upon producing sufficient evidence and proper attestations from Heaven, insist upon an acknowledgment of its truth, as proceeding from that Being who cannot deceive His creatures, whose admonitions would not be offered but for our advantage, and whose authority cannot be disobeyed without danger.

2. The principal reason why faith is so indispensably required and declared to be the condition of salvation is because it is the surest principle of holiness, the basis of obedience, the natural foundation of universal virtue. If, for instance, we believe in our hearts, and are persuaded of the existence of a God, supremely powerful, wise, and good, possessed of every conceivable and possible perfection, we cannot but reverence and adore a nature so infinitely superior; and every sentiment of our heart must pay homage to Him. If we apprehend Him to be the original of good, the fountain of mercy, we shall be naturally led to acknowledge His goodness in all the expressions of worship, praise, submission, and obedience. If we believe that He sent His Son into the world to purchase, on certain conditions, the pardon of our sins, and an eternity of happiness; we must think ourselves obliged to obey the precepts of His doctrine, to imitate the examples of His life, to comply with the conditions required, and be grateful for so amazing an expression of mercy.

II. I SHALL NOW PROCEED TO OFFER SOME OBSERVATIONS SUGGESTED BY THE PRECEDING DOCTRINE.

1. If faith be the ground of holiness we may hence learn the reason of the general prevalence of iniquity in the world; which is a want of faith, or want of attention to the objects of it.

2. If faith he subservient to holiness, and derive its value from its efficacy and influence on our manners, we may hence learn to estimate the intrinsic value of every doctrine, and to weigh the degrees of malignity and danger in particular errors. Doctrines are valuable in proportion to their moral importance, or subservience to virtue; in proportion to their influence in inclining us to preserve in our minds a constant sense of our dependence on our Maker, and of the duties we owe Him, and of our obligations to observe integrity, and justice, and equity, and charity, in all our dealings.

3. If the design of faith was to lead us to the practice of all righteousness let us not rest our hopes of salvation on a bare acknowledgment or belief of the gospel, in an ineffectual barren faith, productive of no virtue, but let our faith have its proper influence; let our manners correspond with our principles, and let us live as we believe.

(G. Carr, B. A.)

1. Doth not the text plainly teach us that faith is the continued act of the Christian? Just as long as he lives here below, if he doth live to God at all, he lives by faith.

2. Faith is a great practical virtue. The text does not say that the just man shall study the doctrine of faith in his retirement, and be able to frame a correct definition of what faith is. It is true that the just man should be meditative, studious, a man well instructed in the history of revelation and the mystery of the kingdom of God; but that is not what the text saith. It doth not say that the just man shall converse about faith, and make the object of faith the constant theme of his discourse. It will be so: what is in the heart will be sure to come out in the tongue. But that is not the truth taught here. In plain English, it is this — the righteous man will carry his faith into his ordinary life. He will live by faith.

3. Faith hath a great quickening power over all the faculties of the spiritual man. This is the Prometheus that stole the heavenly flame, and brought it down to men made of clay, and made them live the lives of the immortals. This it is that brings immortality to us through Jesus, who brought life and immortality to light. Whenever faith rules in a man it quickens all his graces. The believer is the man to love — to love his God, his neighbour, his enemy. The believer is the man to hope — to hope for deliverance out of present affliction; to hope for the eternal outgoing of the issues of all this life's battle and strife. If there be any patience, if there be any forgiveness, if their be any generosity, if there be any loving-kindness, if there be any zeal, if there be anything lovely and of good repute, all these are quickened and brought out into their life and force according to the life and power and energy of the faith which a man possesses.

4. Turning this doctrine over in rather a different form, but still keeping to it, let me say that the believer lives only by faith. All other kinds of living are to him spiritual death.

II. A PROMISE. My faith shall ensure my life. Oh, 'tis joy to have faith that makes you immortal! The faith of the just shall constrain them to live. They cannot die; they must not die. God Himself shall as soon die as they shall. The just shall live by faith. This is not true of any other but those who have faith. You know the story I have told you sometimes, of the good old soul whose minister called to see her when she was dying, and amongst other things he said to her, "My sister, you are very weak; don't you feel yourself sinking?" She looked at him, and gave no answer, but said, "Did I understand you, minister? Please tell me what you said; I hope you didn't say what I thought I heard?" "Why," said he, "my dear sister, I said to you, don't you feel yourself sinking?" And then she said, "I did not think my minister would ever ask me such a question as that! Sinking? Did you ever know a sinner sink through a rock? I am believing in Jesus Christ; if I were resting anywhere else I might sink, but as I am resting upon Him, did you ever know a sinner sink through a rock?" Yes, and that is just the very point. It is so. God does in the very words of our text seem to assure us that if we believe, we have got on a rock, that if we believe, we shall live. We shall live by our faith under all circumstances and difficulties.

III. A KIND OF PRECEPT. IS it not clear that as life is the main thing for us to look to, nature itself having taught us by its instincts to guard with all care our life, therefore our faith, upon which our life so evidently depends by virtue of our union to Christ, ought to be the object of our most sedulous care. Anything which comes in the way of our faith we should strive against, while the promotion of our faith should be our first endeavour.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

1. The term "just" not used in its comparative and popular sense. It is so used sometimes in the sacred Scriptures, as in Romans 5:7. There are those who are "just before men." Their words are true, their promises faithfully kept, their actions irreproachable. Measure them by the Divine standard, and they dwarf down to nothing; see them as God sees them, and all their righteousness is as filthy rags.

2. Not in its strictly legal sense. There was a time when there were just men on earth; that time was brief. There are just men "made perfect," but they are before the throne of God, and serve Him in His temple. There are none on earth now.

3. The term is used in the evangelical sense — justified.(1) Not to make just. The term is a law term, and has a proper legal meaning, which is,(2) To pronounce just (Deuteronomy 25:1; Romans 3:4; Exodus 23:7). How, then, can it apply to us? We give the satisfactory reply in the language of the apostle (Romans 3:21-24).

4. This declaration is connected with the faith of the justified person. Luther at one period suffered so much from a sense of sin, that his health rapidly gave way. An old monk entered his cell and spoke kindly. He knew little but his creed, which contained something that gave him comfort, and he said in his simplicity, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." Luther repeated, "I believe in the forgiveness of gins." "Ah!" said the monk, "you must not only believe that David's or Peter's sins are forgiven — the devils believe that. The commandment of God is, that we believe our own sins forgiven. Hear what the Holy Ghost says: 'Thy sins are forgiven thee.'" He renounced the thought of meriting salvation, and trusted with confidence in God's grace in Christ Jesus.

II. THE LIFE HE ENJOYS. He "shall live by faith."

1. Observe the import of this assurance. "There is, then," said Luther, after studying these words, "for the just another life than that possessed by the rest of men, and this life is the fruit of faith." What is that other life? The elements of life are(1) Sensation and perception. There is a world of sense for the natural man; there is an ideal world of speculation for the philosopher; there is a spiritual world for the believer. It has another sun, other produce, other inhabitants (Hebrews 12:22, 23). It is life to see this spiritual world, and faith is the eye that sees it (1 Corinthians 2:9, 10).(2) There are vital functions which are necessary for its support. A tree or an animal live because they can derive nourishment from the material world. "As new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." Christ says, "I have meat to eat which the world knoweth not of," and He promises to His disciples that He will give them the hidden manna. How different are the Bible, the sanctuary, godly discourse, sermons, means and ordinances to the believer and the unbeliever! All these exercises are conducted by faith.(3) There is activity. The missionary Luther was distinguished for his zeal. The Thessalonians from whom the Word sounded out. The heroes in Hebrews 11. all worked by faith.(4) There is enjoyment. Healthy life produces enjoyment. This is a common use of the term "life" as distinguished from mere existence (Romans 5:1-5). Whence we see that true happiness flows from faith.

2. The truth of this assurance.(1) God has said it (Philippians 1:6; 1 Corinthians 1:8; 1 Peter 1:5).(2) He has provided for it (Colossians 1:19; John 14:19; Galatians 2:20; John 1:16).(3) History and experience prove it. Whenever Christ has been exalted, the Church has lived. Do you not feel that as you look to Him you live?Application:

1. Sinner, are you dead? This voice bids you live by faith.

2. Let believers cleave to this doctrine.

(The Evangelical Preacher.)

1. As found in Christ.

2. As conformed to Christ.

3. As practically just. Their faith produces good works; they are honest, upright, abhor evil, and cleave to that which is good.

II. THE FACT AFFIRMED. "Shall live by faith."

1. Because by faith they are united to Christ, and derive from Him all needful influence.

2. Because faith anticipates the glories of heaven, preparatory to which the Christian contest is carried on.

3. Because faith overcomes temptation.

III. THE RESULT PRODUCED.

1. They live by faith in the darkest seasons.

2. They live a holy and pleasant life, because faith brings into exercise all other Christian graces.

3. By faith they live in constant expectation of heaven.

(Homilist.)

2. Upon faith followeth righteousness; for the just have faith, and are just and justified by faith: for by "just" are here meant the justified by faith according to the tenour of the new covenant. For man being sinful and guilty cannot be justified by his own innocence, purity, inherent righteousness, and perfect obedience. For he that hath faith is just; he that continueth in faith, continueth just; and he that is finally believing is finally just.

3. As guilty man is just by faith, so being just he shall live by faith. By life in this place is meant a spiritual, happy, and eternal life; the life of glory, which is the great reward, which will certainly follow upon final faith; for it is faith which, by virtue of Christ's merit and God's promise, gives a right to life; and upon a final faith, the possession and full enjoyment of this blessed life doth certainly follow. The duty therefore which the apostle urgeth is final perseverance in faith; and the motive whereby he seeks to stir them up to performance is the certain fall possession of the great rewards for which he allegeth God's own Word and promise recorded in the prophet. And if they will hearken unto God speaking by the prophet, and take His Word and promise, there is great reason why they should persevere.

(G. Lawson.)

(F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

(S. Coley.)

(Churchman's Monthly.)

1. Some who once were accounted disciples of Christ have drawn back into open profanity and infidelity (2 Peter 2:20, 21). Persons of this character, who have stifled conviction, and hold the truth in unrighteousness, become generally the most hardened and daring in wickedness. Common restraints are removed — the voice of conscience is silenced — the Spirit of God ceases to strive, and they are given over to a reprobate mind — to fill up the measure of their iniquities, and at last to perish in unbelief.

2. Others who apostatise from Christ fall into gross and dangerous errors (2 Timothy 2:17, 18). I add —

3. There is still a more secret and disguised kind of apostasy, which is not on that account the less ruinous; I mean when persons who have once had a profession of religion become careless, lose all zeal about the things of God and eternity, and discover a proportionable eagerness in worldly pursuits. This is a way of apostatising from Christ the more dangerous, because it is the least apt to be perceived. The decay is so gradual and insensible. They have changed their views, their manners, their company. Perhaps some alteration in their outward circumstances has produced these unhappy effects. Raised from a state of dependence to wealth, their minds have been intoxicated with worldly prosperity; and by a strange kind of infatuation. Or, perhaps, without any visible cause, their profession of religion has gradually declined, and their devotion to the service of their God and Saviour proved as the morning cloud and early dew, which soon pass away. After maintaining for a while an appearance of serious godliness, they have gradually sunk into sloth, possibly into bad habits, which deaden every religious feeling.In conclusion:

1. Let gratitude to the Redeemer for the blessings you have received constrain you to cleave to Him with full purpose of heart.

2. Let a regard to your best interests urge you to cleave steadfastly to Christ. Solid sense and real piety, instead of being incompatible, are closely and intimately united.

3. Let the dreadful doom of apostates deter you from the aggravated sin of drawing back from Christ.

(A. Ramsay, M. A.)

II. THE SEVERAL SORTS AND DEGREES OF APOSTASY. The highest of all is the renouncing Christianity, or of some essential part of it, which is a virtual apostasy from it; but there are several tendencies towards this which they who are guilty of are in some degree guilty of this sin.

1. Indifferency in religion, and want of all sort of concernment for it; when a man, though he never quitted his religion, yet is so little concerned for it, that a very small occasion or temptation would make him do it.

2. Withdrawing from the public marks and testimonies of the profession of religion, by forsaking the assemblies of Christians for the worship and service of God; to withdraw ourselves from those, for fear of danger or suffering, is a kind of denial of our religion.

3. A light temper of mind, which easily receives impressions from those who lie in wait to deceive and seduce men from the truth.

4. A departure from the purity of the Christian doctrine and worship in a gross and notorious manner.

III. THE HEINOUSNESS OF THIS SIN. What an affront it is to God, and how great a contempt of Him!

IV. THE TERRIBLE PUNISHMENT IT EXPOSES MEN TO. This sin is placed in the highest rank of pardonable sins, and next to the sin against the Holy Ghost, which our Saviour declares to be absolutely unpardonable. And indeed the Scripture speaks very doubtfully of the pardonableness of this sin (Hebrews 6:4-6; 2 Peter 2:20, 21; 1 John 5:16).

(Archbp. Tillotson.)

1. No one surely can doubt that there are sins which exclude a man, while he is under their power, from salvation (see 1 John 3:8, 10; Philippians 3:18, 19; Galatians 5:4).(1) All habits of vice are such (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10).(2) Next, it is fearful to think (fearful, because, among ourselves at this day, men are almost blind to the sin), that covetousness is mentioned (Ephesians 5:5) in connection with sins of the flesh, as incurring forfeiture of grace equally with them. This accords with our Lord's warning, "ye cannot serve God and mammon;" as much as to say, If you serve mammon, you forthwith quit God's service; you cannot serve two masters at once; you have passed into the kingdom of mammon, that is, of Satan.(3) All violent breaches of the law of charity are inconsistent with a state of grace. "Thieves, revilers, and extortioners." "Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and murderers."(4) And in like manner all profaneness, heresy, and false worship (Hebrews 12:16; Galatians 1:8).(5) And further, hardness of heart, or going against light (Hebrews 4:7, 11). Such are greater sins or transgressions. They are here specified, not as forming a complete list of such sins, which indeed cannot be given, but in proof of what ought not to be doubted, that there are sins which are not found in persons in a state of grace.

2. That there are sins of infirmity, or such as do not throw the soul out of a state of salvation, is evident directly it is granted that there are sins which do; for no one will pretend to say that all sins exclude from grace, else no one can be saved, for there is no one who is sinless. However, Scripture expressly recognises sins of infirmity as distinct from transgressions, as shall now be shown. For instance: St. Paul (Galatians 5:17) allows that it is possible for the power of the flesh and the grace of the Spirit to co-exist in the soul; neither the flesh quenching the Spirit, nor the Spirit all at once subduing the flesh. Here then is a sinfulness which is compatible with a state of salvation. Again, the same apostle says, that we have a High Priest who is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities," in that He had them Himself, all but their sin: — this implies that we have sinful infirmities, yet of that light nature that they can be said to be in substance partaken by One who was pure from all sin. Accordingly, in the next verse St. Paul bids us "come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy." Such words do not imply a return into a state of salvation, but pardon in that state, and they correspond to what he says (vers. 19-22; Romans 5:2). In like manner St. John says, "If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another: and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." It seems then that there is sin which is consistent with "walking in the light," and that from this sin "the blood of Christ cleanseth us." And St. James says, "In many things we all offend," that is, we all stumble. We are ever stumbling along our course while we walk; but if we actually fall in it, we fall from it. And St. Jude: "Of some have compassion, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire." Distinct kinds of sin are evidently implied here. And lastly, our Lord Himself had already implied that there are sins which are not inconsistent with a state of grace, when He said of His apostles, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

3. It remains to show that these sins of infirmity tend to those which are greater, and forfeit grace; which is not the least important point which comes under consideration. An illustration will explain what I mean, and may throw light on the whole subject. You know it continually happens that some indisposition overtakes a man, such that persons skilled in medicine, when asked if it is dangerous, answer, "Not at present, but they do not know what will come of it; it may turn out something very serious; but there is nothing much amiss yet; at the same time if it be not checked, and, much more, if it be neglected, it will be serious." This, I conceive, is the state of Christians day by day as regards their souls; they are always ailing, always on the point of sickness; they are sickly, easily disarranged, obliged to take great care of themselves against air, sun, and weather; they are full of tendencies to all sorts of grievous diseases, and are continually showing these tendencies, in slight symptoms; but they are not yet in a dangerous way. On the other hand, if a Christian falls into any serious sin, then he is at once cast out of grace, as a man who falls into a pestilential fever is quite in a distinct state from one who is merely in delicate health. I conclude with advising you one thing, which is obviously suggested by what I have said. Never suffer sin to remain upon you; let it not grow old in you; wipe it off while it is fresh, else it will stain; let it not get ingrained; let it not eat its way in, and rust in you. It is of a consuming nature; it is like a canker; it will eat your flesh. And then again, sin neglected not only stains and infects the soul, but it becomes habitual. It perverts and deforms the soul; it permanently enfeebles, cripples, or mutilates us. Let us then rid ourselves of it at once day by day, as of dust on our hands and faces. We wash our hands continually. Ah! is not this like the Pharisees, unless we wash our soiled souls also?

(J. H. Newman, D. D.)

1. The person here meant is one who has made some professions of religion, and has taken some steps in it.(1) First, he must have been convinced in his conscience and judgment of the truth and excellency of religion.(2) Secondly, the person here supposed must not only have been convinced of the excellency of religion, but must have come to a resolution of choosing it for himself.(3) Thirdly, the person here supposed did actually enter on this way; he chose religion and he followed it; he gave clear and practical evidence of the purpose which he had formed, and plainly showed that he was in earnest.

2. The person of whom we are speaking, having walked for a longer or shorter time in the way described, is now drawing back. He has been deterred, perhaps, by the difficulties which seemed to stand in his way, and to oppose his progress; I say seemed, because if he had persevered he would have found that they would have yielded and have come to nothing. Or perhaps he has been overcome by the persuasion and influence of worldly friends and relations. Or perhaps the world has involved him in its cares or pleasures, in its business or dissipations; and these, like thorns, have choked the good seed which was beginning to shoot, and have rendered it unfruitful. Or, to mention only one other cause, he has not watched against his favourite sin; he has not denied and mortified it. To make this part of the case, however, more plain, I will state to you some few of the particular symptoms which distinguish it. When a person is drawing back in religion, he will discover his retrograde movement by many proofs, to those who know what religion is, and have the means of observing his conduct. It does not follow that he will return exactly into the same paths in which he was walking before he appeared to become a religious character; but he will plainly show that he is not now the same religious character which he lately was. He will insensibly become less correct in his conduct and conversation. He will not now be so careful of his company. He will gradually become less frequent and regular in his attendance on public ordinances; while the devotion and attention that used to mark his behaviour there are too visibly declining. If, in addition to these outward marks of declension, you were to follow this person home, and observe his conduct in private, you would see the Bible less frequently consulted, and religious duties less diligently performed. Communion with God is no longer his delight and enjoyment.

II. THE AWFUL THREATENING DENOUNCED. "If any man draw back." If there should be a person in the state that has been here described, what does the Lord declare respecting him? "My soul shall have no pleasure in him." We are told that the Lord does "take pleasure in His people." — "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him; in those that hope in His mercy." He regards such persons with favour and complacency. He delights over them to do them good. But He hath no pleasure in them that "draw back." He sees, but He cannot approve them. But further, the expression in the text has a still more alarming sense. It is a dreadful thing to be excluded from the lovingkindness of the Lord; but it is a far more dreadful thing to be shut up under His displeasure. Yet such is the case with the person of whom we are speaking. Such is the real meaning of the text. No persons are so offensive to Him, as those, who, having for a time walked in His ways, at length draw back. For such conduct is the greatest affront, and most direct indignity which can be offered to God. The man who draws back does in a manner say, that the ways of sin and of the world are preferable to the ways of religion. Can anything be more dishonourable to Jesus Christ, or show a greater contempt of His mercy and grace? Address three kinds of persons.

1. Those who have entered, as they suppose, on the paths of religion, and are now walking in them. Take heed that ye draw not back. To this end "be watchful and sober." Those who would walk safely, must walk humbly. The Lord will guide and keep the meek. Watch against the sin that most easily besets you. Be regular and fervent in private prayer, and in secret communion with God. This is the life and source of religion in the soul. If you would not draw back, go forwards. Press towards the mark; grow in grace, add one Christian virtue and temper to another, so wilt your progress be clear and certain: your calling and election will be made sure.

2. I would address those who in their hearts may be conscious, at least fearful, that they have drawn back. Consider from whence you are fallen.

3. I would, in conclusion, address another class-those who perhaps may be saying to themselves: "We are free from this charge. We have never made any particular profession of religion, so that we cannot be said to have renounced it. We are at least no hypocrites. God cannot accuse us of having drawn back from His ways." Because you are not hypocrites, and have made no pretentions to religion, shall you escape the judgment of God? Why have you not made pretentious to religion? Be assured, that so long as you are in this state, the Lord hath no pleasure in you. He abhors ungodliness and sin, and both hates and will punish all the workers of iniquity.

(E. Cooper, M. A.)

(Scientific Illustrations and Symbols.)

(S. Rutherford.)

(Jr. Trapp.)

(E. P. Thwing.)

(New Cyclopcedia of Illustrations.)

(R. S. Barrett.)

1. Belief in another's testimony. We go to places, and attend meetings; we write letters, and maintain intercourse with others; we transact business, and conduct our affairs; we sail for foreign ports; we do ten thousand things, trivial or important, simply on the testimony of others, because we believe in them and what they say.

2. Belief in God's testimony. His testimony is contained in the Scriptures. In them He reveals His nature, perfections, government and laws; His relations and designs towards us; judgment to come, and future states of being; things unseen and eternal. We accept the testimony — that it is from Him, and, consequently, that what it declares and unfolds, promises and threatens, is true and real. "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater."

3. Belief in God's testimony concerning the Redeemer. He has testified that Jesus Christ is His eternal, only-begotten, well-beloved Son, one with Him in nature and operation; that "in the fulness of the time" He was born of a woman, became partaker of flesh and blood, and was made in our likeness," &c. We believe the testimony concerning Jesus Christ, because He who testifies cannot deceive.

4. Trust in Christ as our Saviour. Believing the testimony God has given us concerning His Son, concerning His Divine person and mediatorial office — that He came "to seek and to save the lost." We cast ourselves unreservedly and wholly on Him; we confidently give up ourselves to Him; we trust in Him.

II. THE ORIGIN OF FAITH.

1. It is of God. The Godhead is the fountain of all blessings, the primary cause of all gracious effects. We have neither the inclination nor the ability to believe unto salvation. The desire and strength must be granted. If we have a true apprehension of our demerit and exposure to perdition, and are disposed to flee to Christ: and if we have a full persuasion of His sufficiency to save, and are able to cast ourselves on Him, it is of Divine favour and operation.

2. God produces faith by the Holy Spirit. Convicted, illumined and made willing by the power of the Holy Ghost, we realise our sinfulness, our awful danger; we see Christ in the beauty and excellency of His Divine person, and in the suitableness and sufficiency of His atoning work; and we surrender every other ground of hope, and rest altogether and only on Him for salvation.

III. THE INSTRUMENT OR MEANS BE WHICH FAITH IS PRODUCED AND MAINTAINED. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God."

IV. THE DEGREES OF FAITH. The rock on which saved sinners stand is equally stable to all, but the foothold of all is not equally firm. Faith may decline; how far it would be difficult to determine. Even the believer, in a time of desertion and darkness, may question his interest in Christ, and fear coming short of heaven. On the other hand, faith is sometimes strong.

V. THE EFFECTS AND EVIDENCES OF FAITH.

1. It imparts peace. The storm is changed into a calm. The dark night is past, and morning dawns. The fever, the agony, is over. And in proportion as faith is maintained, so is peace. If faith languish, and be temporarily interrupted, distress of soul returns; if it flourish, and be strong and vigorous, tranquillity continues.

2. It produces holiness. "The operation of God," its tendency is to godliness, A holy principle, it produces holy practice; good seed, it yields good fruit; a pure spring, pure streams flow from it; a latent power, it manifests itself in godly deeds.

3. It purifies the heart. A believing sight of Christ crucified, imparted by the Holy Ghost, reveals the terrible evil of sin, and fills us with repugnance of it. Faith in vigorous exercise, we cannot but loathe sin. The heart purified, sanctified, "holiness to the Lord" shall be inscribed on all pertaining to us.

4. In producing holiness, faith works by love. Believing in Jesus Christ, we are assimilated, though very imperfectly, to His human disposition and conduct. How attractive and effective are words and deeds of love I Faith and love are beautiful graces and potent factors.

5. It overcomes the world.

(Alex. McCreery.)

I. First, then, IF WE LOSE OURSELVES WE WIN OURSELVES. All men admit in theory that a self-centred life is a blunder. Jesus Christ has all thoughtful men wholly with Him when He says, "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life shall find it." There is no such way of filling a soul with blessedness and of evolving new capacities as self-oblivion for some great cause, for some great love, for some great enthusiasm. Many a woman has found herself when she held her child in her arms, and in the self-oblivion which comes from maternal affections and cares has sprung into a loftier new life. But whilst all these counterpoises to the love of self are, in their measure, great and blessed, not one of them will so break the fetters from off a prisoned soul and let it out into the large place of glad self-oblivion as the course which our text enjoins when it says: If you wish to forget yourselves, to abandon and lose yourselves, fling yourselves into Christ's arms, and by faith yield your whole being, will, trust, purposes, aims, everything — yield it all up to Him; and when you can say, "We are not our own," then first will you belong to yourselves and have won your own souls. Nothing else is comparable to the talismanic power of trust in Jesus Christ. When thus we lose ourselves in Him we find ourselves, and find Him in ourselves. I believe that a life must either spin round on its own axis, self-moved, or else it must be drawn by the mass and weight and mystical attractiveness of the great central sun, and swept clean out of its own little path to become a satellite round Him. Then only will it move in music and beauty, and flash back the lustre of an unfading light. Self or God — one or other will be the centre of every human life. It is well to be touched with lofty enthusiasms; it is well to conquer self in the eager pursuit of some great thought or large subject of study; it is well to conquer self in the sweetness of domestic love; but through all these there may run a perverting and polluting reference to myself. Affection may become but a subtle prolongation of myself, and study and thought may likewise be tainted, and even in the enthusiasm for a great cause there may mingle much of self-regard; and on the whole there is nothing that will sweep out, and keep out, the seven devils of selfishness except to yield yourselves to God, drawn by His mercies, and say, "I am not my own; I am bought with a price." Then, and only then, will you belong to yourselves.

II. Secondly, IF WE WILL TAKE CHRIST FOR OUR LORD WE SHALL BE LORDS OF OUR OWN SOULS. I have said that self-surrender is self-possession. It is equally true that self-control is self-possession; and it is as true about this application about my text as it was about the former, that Christianity only says more emphatically what all moralists say, and supplies a more efficient means of accomplishing the end which they all recognise as good. For everybody knows that the man who is a slave to his own passions, lusts, or desire — that the man who is the sport of circumstance, and yields to every temptation that comes sweeping round him, as bamboos bend before every blast — is not his own master. He "dare not call his soul his own." What do we mean by being self-possessed, except this, that we can so rule our more fluctuating and sensitive parts as that, notwithstanding appeals made to them by external circumstances, they do not necessarily yield to these. He possesses himself who, in the face of antagonism, can do what is right. Trust in Jesus Christ, and let Him be your Commander-in-Chief, and you have won your souls Let Him dominate them, and you can dominate them. If you will give your wills into His hands, He will give them back to you and make you able to subdue your passions and desires. What does some little rajah, OH the edge of our great Indian Empire, do when troubled with rebels that he cannot subdue? He goes and makes himself a feudatory of the great central Power at Calcutta, and then down comes a regiment or two and makes very short work of the rebellion that the little kinglet could do nothing with. If you go to Christ and say to Him, "Dear Lord, take my crown from my head and lay it at Thy feet. Come Thou to help me to rule this anarchic realm of my own soul," you will win yourself.

III. Thirdly, IF WE HAVE FAITH IN CHRIST WE ACQUIRE A BETTER SELF. The thing that most thoughtful men and women feel after they have gone a little way into life is not so much that they want to possess themselves, as that they want to get rid of themselves — of all the failures and shame and disappointment and futility of their lives, and that desire may be accomplished. We cannot strip ourselves of ourselves by any effort. The bitter old past keeps living on, and leaves with us seeds of weakness and memories that sometimes corrupt, and always enfeeble; memories that seem to limit the possibilities of the future in a tragic fashion. Ah, we can get rid of ourselves; and, instead of continuing the poor, sin-laden, feeble creatures that we are. The old individuality will remain, but new tastes, new aspirations, aversions, hopes, and capacities to realise them, may all be ours. You can lose yourselves, in a very deep sense, if, trusting in Jesus Christ, you open the door of the heart to the influx of that new life which is His best gift. Faith wins a better self, and we may each experience, in all its blessedness, the paradox of the apostle when he said, "I live " now, at last, in triumphant possession of this better life: "I live" now, I only existed before; "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." And with Christ in me I first find myself.

IV. Lastly, IF BY FAITH WE WIN OUR SOULS HERE, WE SAVE THEM FROM DESTRUCTION HEREAFTER. I have said that the word of my text is substantially equivalent to the more frequent and common expression, "salvation"; though with a shade of difference, which I have been trying to bring out. And this substantial equivalence is more obvious if .you will note that the text is the second member of an antithesis, of which the first is, "we are not of them which draw back into perdition." So, then, the writer sets up, as exact opposites of one another, these two ideas, perdition or destruction, on the one hand; and the saving or winning of the soul on the other. Therefore, whilst we must give due weight to the considerations which I have already been suggesting, we shall not grasp the whole of the writer's meaning unless we admit also the thought of future. So, then, you cannot be said to have won your souls if you are only keeping them for destruction. And such destruction is clearly laid down here as the fate of those who turn away from Jesus Christ. Now it seems to me that no fair interpretation can eject from that word "perdition," or "destruction," an element of awe and terror. However you may interpret the ruin, it is ruin utter of which it speaks. Now, remember, the alternative applies to each of us. It is a case of "either — or" in regard to us all. If we have taken Christ for our Saviour, and, as I said, put the reins into His hands and given ourselves to Him by love and submission and confidence, then we own our souls, because we have given them to Him to keep, "and He is able to keep that which is committed to Him against that day." But I am bound to tell you, in the plainest words I can command, that if you have not thus surrendered yourself to Jesus Christ, His sacrifice, His intercession, His quickening Spirit, then I know not where you find one foothold of hope that upon you there will not come down the overwhelming fate that is darkly portrayed in that one solemn word.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

(J. Welsh.)

(J. H. Brooks, D. D.)